I am old enough to have done an 11 plus examination in the UK. This was an examination taken as the name implies at the age of 11 and which determined whether you would progress to a grammar school, which was academically focussed, or go on to a secondary modern school, with a curriculum aiming at technical skills. Whilst it was theoretically possible to switch schools this was rare. And, prior to the raising of the school leaving age many pupils attending secondary modern schools left school at the age of 14 or 15.
In the 1960s most UK education authorities moved to comprehensive schools, catering for all students between the ages of 11 and 18, although at the age of 16 there was the option of going to further education colleges which offered both general and vocational education. Successive increases in the school leaving age posed an issue of how to develop a relevant and appropriate curriculum for non academically oriented students. And whilst, in theory the comprehensive system offers equal opportunities for all students, in reality there is a heavy class bias in terms of formal achievement.
Furthermore the recent policy of increasing the percentage of the age cohort attending university – the target I think is 50 per cent – has increased the divide in prestige between academic and vocational courses.
In contrast, in Germany the majority of school students progress to a three year apprenticeship. It is very noticeable that whilst in the UK company boards tend to be dominated by directors with business or accounting qualifications in Germany companies are often headed by engineers. The German system is impressive in providing quality training for an occupational career. However, there remain issues. There is a big difference in the quality – and prestige – attached to apprenticeship in different companies and between different occupations. And, just like in the old UK 11 plus times, students are allocated to different school routes at an early age – 11 or 12 according to which Lander (region) they live in.
The UK has made a number of efforts to increase the prestige of vocational education, introducing new qualifications and attempting to revive apprenticeship training through the New Modern Apprenticeships. Now both the Labour and Tory parties have come up with the idea of bringing back vocational schools, a measure which has been condemned by the tecahing trade unions.
The Guardian newspaper reports teachers as warning that “The poorest pupils will be segregated from their wealthier peers under Labour and Tory plans for scores of 1950s-style vocational schools to train the next generation of plumbers and engineers…..
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) passed a motion today at its annual conference in Liverpool expressing “deep concern” that the most disadvantaged young people would be coerced into technical schools, triggering another class divide in the education system. Poor pupils and those who spoke little English or had special needs would be steered into such schools because they typically performed less well in exams and lowered state schools’ league table rankings.
Teachers said pupils would be given an “empty promise” that once trained in a trade they would be able to secure a job. They added that the schools would widen the divide between academic and vocational qualifications.”
I share the concern of the National Union of Teachers around early selection of school routes and that students from poorer families will be pushed into attending what might be seen as second class schools. But I fail to see what is wrong in providing a choice of technical education and different forms of learning. Furthermore the quote about the next generation of plumbers and engineers sounds patronising at best. In fact this displays the root of the problem – the low prestige attached to becoming a plumber or engineer rather than taking a course in business studies at university. The provision of high quality technical schools could do something to change this.

Back to the mini series of informal learning.
First the background to all this. Training is taken increasingly seriously, at least in Europe. Although, I am not sure the causal link has ever been proved, it is generally accepted by economist and politicians that there is a link between the competences of the workforce and productivity and innovation.  Although some researchers have pointed to the continuing existence and even increase in low skilled jobs, for instance within the food and hospitality sector, there is a general assumption that changing production processes and particularly the integration of new technologies within production and in the economy more widely are leading to higher skills and knowledge requirements for work. This, in turn has two political implications: one the danger fo skills shortages especially in high technology sectors and secondly the risk of social exclusion for those with low levels of education and training.

In Europe there have been a number of policy initiatives to address this issue:

• Some countries, such as the UK have attempted to radically increase the percentage of young people going to university
• In other countries, such as Germany, there has been an attempt to modernise traditional training programmes such as apprenticeships
• At a policy level there has been an emphasis placed on lifelong learning, although how this has been implemented at a strategic level is less clear. This has included attempts to increase the volume of training – especially continuing professional development – and the provision of more flexible training
• There has been encouragement for the expansion of elearning as a means of both extending training provision and providing easier access to training
• There have been measures ot increase the supply of training, for instance through subsidies and special programmes for the unemployed
• There have been measures to increase demand for training through incentives
• There have been measures to increase participation in training both through ‘coercion’ for those unemployed and a more general move to move responsibility for ’employability’ in terms of updating of skills and knowledge to the individual

All these measures have obviously taken a considerable investment, with the cost being shared between employers, individuals and the state. As to how effective they have been in another matter. Some work we did earlier this year, for a tender which we failed to get, revealed there is little reliable data at a macro level. Even that data which does exist, for instance the statistics on training collated by Eurostat should be regarded as highly dubious. Although Eurostat routinely collates statistics for training from different European countries, the definitions of training vary in the different countries. Hence the UK appears highly proactive and engaged and Germany to be a low training provider, despite all common sense evidence to the contrary.

At a micro economic level, we rely on Return on Investment Analyses, about which I am frankly dubious.

But my major point to make here is that we have invested in a particular model of education and learning, with little measure of its effectiveness. Of course we do have evaluation studies and learner assessment.

Evaluation can be formative or summative (or both although I think this is more problematic). Even where sohisticated it does not provide us with any measure of what could have been achieved if learning was undertaken in another way (apart from in rare comparative studies).

Assessment is increasable based on outcomes – on measuring what learners know or able to do at a particular point in a course or at the end of a course. And in setting course objectives or outcomes we are stipulating what we say people should be able to achieve. Now this is all very well as a course planning tool, but is it an effective tool for motivating and stimulating learning at an individual or organisational level?

Essentially present models of training needs analysis, based on a ‘standardised industrial paradigm’ and a schooling model seek to measure a deficit between what skills and knowledge industry needs and what skills and knowledge learners possess. We have various tools for doing this – most based on bringing experts together to work out the partner needs for identified occupational profiles. Once we have identified teh profiles we can design courses to match those profiles.

This process has a number of flaws – flaws which are becoming ever more apparent in a period of rapid technological change.

• Occupational profiles tend to be based on present occupations – not future occupations
• Training outcomes tend to be based on that which it is easy to assess (and thus ignore affective learning)
• Training programmes tend to be based on what is easy to teach in a traditional way
• We tend to ignore the previous experiences of learners
• We tend to ignore the particular opportunities for learning which can be present in different contexts
• Occupational profiles are inevitably generalised, missing the specific needs of particular workplaces
• Processes are based on standardisation rather than standards
• We fail to account for the ability of people to shape or change work processes through learning

But mots importantly the present training course driven, schooling paradigm, fails to recognise the intrinsic curiosity, creativity of human beings to learn from the environment around them. such learning does take place through informal learning. But it is largely discounted by our present systems.

Jay Cross says that be it formal, informal or in between, people learn best when they:

• Know what’s in it for them and deem it relevant
• Understand what is expected of them
• Connect with other people
• Are challenged to take choices
• Feel safe about showing what they do not know
• Receive information in small packets
• Get frequent progress reports
• Learn things close to the time they need them
• Are encouraged by coaches or mentors
• Learn from a variety of modalities (for example, discussion followed by a simulation)
• Confront maybes instead of certainties
• Teach others
• Get positive reinforcement for small victories
• Make and correct mistakes
• Try, try and try again
• Reflect on their learning and apply its lessons

The present training system provides little opportunity for learning  from mistakes. All to frequently learners are not challenged to take choices. Outcomes tend to prescribe a ‘correct way of doing things. Learners often have limited opportunities to practice what they learn. And although there is some evidence of a move towards coaching and mentoring, far too often approaches to training are overly didactic.

A study I undertook a few years ago on the use of Information and Communication Technology for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises found little evidence of formal e-learning (or indeed of any formal learning programmes. But in the 106 case studies we undertook in six different European countries we found teh widespread use of business and social software for informal learning though everyday work activities. Such activities ranged from emailing a friend of colleague to participating in on-line communities. such activities we found, were:

a)    Purposeful
b)    Heavily influenced by context
c)    Often resulted in changes in behaviour
d)    Were sequenced in terms of developing a personal knowledge base
e)    Problem driven or driven by personal interest
f)    Social – in that they often involved recourse to shared community knowledge bases through the internet and / or shared with others in the workplaces.

In the enterprises we studied the greatest incidence of ICT based learning tended to take place in enterprises:
Where employees had greatest freedom in the organisation of their work

• Where employees had the greatest opportunities for proposing and implementing changes in the way work was organised
• Where the nature and technologies being used were changing fastest
• Where ICT was most involved in the work process
• Where employees had most responsibility for the outcomes of their work
• Where team work was most important
• Where employees were integrated in communities of practice
• Where employees had opportunities to develop their own occupational profiles
• With networks with other enterprises
• Where ICT was used for Business to Business (B2B) processes
• Which were involved in e-commerce

All this suggests to me there is an alternative to our present policies focused on formal training. It is possible to develop strategies for encouraging and facilitating informal learning in the workplace and in the wider community. In other words we can move beyond an era in which education and training has been overly associated with and prescribed by a schooling system This would of course, require a redirection of resources. Moreover it would require a new focus on learning opportunities, rather than deficit training needs analyses. And of course, it would require re-examining how we support teaching and learning, at realigning pedagogical models. Yet I also think the pieces of the jigsaw are there. They merely need to be put together.

In the next in this series I will re-examine the work we undertook though the European TTplus project on professional development for trainers and look at how the Framework we developed in that project could be more generalised to support wider approaches to learning.

References

Attwell  G.(ed) 2007, Searching, Lurking and the Zone of Proximal Development, e-learning in Small and Medium enterprises in Europe, Vienna, Navreme

Croos J (2006)  Informal Learning: rediscovering the Natural Pathways that Inspire Innovation and Performance, Jossey Bass

Photo: James F. Clay

Here is the second in my series on informal learning. This is an extract from a a paper called ‘Rediscovering Apprenticeship?: A Historical Approach’ which I wrote in 1997. The paper, based on an interview with my father, provides a narrative account of an apprenticeship as a coach fitter in the Great Western Railway works in Swindon, England in the 1940s. The full paper can be downloaded at the bottom of this post.

“Apprentices were moved around between the gangs, usually spending about three months with a particular gang before the foreman would move them on. “Although it was not hard and fast we were moved in a fairly organised way. Apprentices always started on No 1 gang, which was a light job based in a siding outside the shop where we had to refurbish drop light windows. This meant removing the drop lights and the mouldings, which would be repaired inside, and then re-glazing the windows prior to fitting them back in the coach. After three months we were moved to a gang that undertook more complex work. The work got a little more complex with each move.

The chargeman for each gang was responsible for telling us what to do. Inside No. 7 shop we were mainly working on a bench. The men working on the next bench would show us how to do each job. When we were working outside the shop we were put with an individual tradesman who would teach us the job. Obviously some were better than others were”.

There was no written curriculum or even a list of skills or tasks that had to be learnt. “What we learnt depended totally on what a particular shop did. In fact our work was similar to a cabinetmaker. We were expected to achieve a tip-top finish. When we were working on the drop lights we would spend a whole day just sand papering – and then often the chargehand would make us do them all again. Time was not a problem – the question was quality”.

There were no written plans or procedures – learning was from practice. “Later I was sent ‘up the line’ to work outside the shop with the door gang. That was where I got my first interest in crossword puzzles. The tradesman was called Ted Quinn”. The door gang was responsible for hanging the interior doors in the carriages. “There is an art to hanging doors and making them slide – a knack to it. We had to screw a quarter inch rod with brackets above the door. The doors hang and rolled along the rod on wheels. If they were too high they would lift off the bottom guide rail, if they were too low they would stick or come off the rollers. Ted Quinn would get it right every time. He was fast enough that he would do a little work, then settle back to his crossword puzzles. If an apprentice mastered the skill he would be kept on the gang but some could never get the knack of it”.

New work, rather than repair and renovation, was highly regarded, mainly because it paid more. One of the best jobs was fitting the interior of compartments. This involved erecting the seats, interior panelling, mirrors, and putting up the net and blinds. Tradesmen would aim to complete one compartment each day. “Apprentices could be seen as a hindrance in this work – if you were not good you could slow the job down.” There were a number of specific skills to be mastered: “The best tradesman was a Hector Neaves. Everyone knew him as ‘one cut Neaves’. He would look at something and then cut a piece of wood which would fit first time nine times out of ten”.

There were no formal tests or assessment, neither was there any requirement to attend school. Those that did go to night-school could study for a National Diploma. This offered the opportunity on completion of apprenticeship to transfer to the Drawing Office, a position that was highly paid and the highest status. Many of the workers in the Drawing Office had passed their 11 plus and stayed on at school until the age of 16 prior to entering an apprenticeship. Few working class students went on to university. Other ‘grammar school boys’ joined the railway as clerks, a position which paid better and where they could “wear clean clothes”. Clerks also worked only 44 hours a week compared with 50 hours for tradesmen and labourers.”

Download the full paper here: apprenticeship_paper

As some of you may have seen from my twitter stream, this week I have been in Bucharest. The main reason for my visit was to speak at the launch event of a new European funded project on Lifelong Learning (more on that tomorrow).

But, on Monday, I was luck enough to be invited by my friend Magda Balica to the university who teaches a seminar based course on pedagogy.

This week she was looking at the use of mindmaps and she set the students a groupwork task to draw a mindmap with ‘learning; at the centre. I was extremely impressed with the results, and als0 with the willingness of a number of the groups to produce the maps and report on them in English for my benefit.

It was interesting that most of the groups recognised the diverse sources of learning and the different contexts in which they learnt. Interesting too, and less encouraging, was how separated the different contexts appeared to be. If joined at all, learning from different sources and contexts was seen as mediated, for instance by friends or classmates. The students were in general fairly scathing about the quality of formal education in schools in Romania, although I am doubtful that the response of German or UK students would be much different.

These were some of the comments in their report backs, as recorded in twitter:

• Student in Romania – fame is important as the result of your learning and career – recognition
• Student in Romania – you can live more from life than from school
• Student in Bucharest – we want to leave Romania – we have no education, no health system, just a promise of improvement
• Student in Bucharest – in school we learn as little as we can

Although many of the students had Facebook accounts, none had seen Twitter before and there was general excitement about getting ‘real time’ feedback from people in different countries.

Anyway, I promised to post the mindmaps on this blog (click on any of the photos below for a larger version). Thanks to all who made my stay in Romania so interesting and enjoyable.

Last year, together with my colleagues Jenny Bimrose and Sally Anne Barnes from the Institute for Emplyment Research at the University of Warwick in the UK, I ran a number of focus groups with young people on the use of technology for Careers Advice, Information and Guidance. The focus groups were part of research comissioned by the CfBT, a UK based educational charity. The main aim of the resaerch was to examine the skills needed by Personal Advisers working in the publicly funded Connexions service to deliver internet based guidance.

The full report is not yet published. But the executive summary of the report is now available for free download from the CfBT web site.

Whilst obviously the report is focused on the UK careers  advice,  information and guidance services, the issues raised are pertinent far further afield.

Here are two excerpts from the summary report.

Demand from young people for internet-based guidance

Progress towards achieving widespread access to advanced internet based services through phones and / or mobile devices seems unstoppable, with young children exposed to new technologies from birth. Internet-based devices now offer a range of functions way beyond basic phone-calls and SMS text-messaging with social interactions unrestricted by time or space. Young people use information and communications technology (ICT) not just for accessing information, but for creating and sharing knowledge.

All of the young people who participated in our study were able to access the internet either at home, school or college, on a daily or weekly basis. They also accessed the internet using various means (for example, mobile devices and games consoles as well as personal computers). Although many parents / carers were monitoring young people’s level of ICT usage, the nature of internet access was not being restricted – irrespective of age group.
Overall, we found a high level of ICT usage by young people, with internet-based services an integral part of their social networking, communication and entertainment. Findings from our study also indicate how young people think that internet-based services could be an effective way of delivering guidance services more flexibly and effectively in the future.

However, the importance of shaping these services in a way that reflects the current usage by young people is clear. So, for example, the majority of young people in our study use technology to gather information. This suggests an increase in the use of online multi-media to develop personalised information, together with increased access to different types of high quality, online information. Additionally, it indicates the need for P.A.s to coach young people in how to distinguish amongst reliable, unreliable and biased sources of online labour market information. Other ways young people in this study felt their current usage of internet-based services should shape guidance services in the future related to chat rooms; online, multi-media; personalised information; and email communication.

Despite high levels of ICT competence and the trend towards more openness, collaboration, peer communication and user-generated content, the young people still highly valued their face-to-face contact with P.A.s, because of their professional expertise. However, where P.A.s are accessed on-line, they will need to demonstrate a level of proficiency in internet-based technologies at least equal to those of the clients accessing their expertise to maintain their respect.

Internet-based guidance

There is a strong policy steer for organisations delivering guidance services to young people in England to make greater use of internet based services to deliver guidance, despite there being much still to be learned about this aspect of professional guidance practice. For example, reliable evidence on the impact of introducing internet-based services is currently lacking and the potential for cost savings is unknown.

A range of internet-based services are, or could be, used to deliver guidance, including for example, email, web chat, SMS messaging, mobile phones, website, software and video conferencing. An important first step in delivering effective and efficient internet-based guidance services would be agreement about a common, up-to date language to describe exactly what it comprises. Not only is there a lack of consistency in the terms currently used to describe this area of practice (e.g. web-based guidance; e-guidance; internet-based guidance), but the types of services listed under these terms vary. Once Connexions organisations are able to specify which internet based services they wish to offer to clients, then the training support required will be easier to identify. For example, one Connexions organisation may decide to increase its offer of guidance to young people via a telephone helpline, whilst another wishes to develop guidance by email and yet another decides to concentrate on supporting P.A.s to develop multi-media labour market information resources to deliver as part of group work with young people. Training requirements for each of these methods of delivery would be slightly different.

Where guidance organisations have already embraced technology in the delivery of services, there seems to be a tendency to invest resources in training a group of practitioners to specialise in particular areas of practice. For example, Career Services New Zealand has trained one group of practitioners to work on a telephone helpline service alongside their face-to-face work, whilst another group has been trained to offer e-mail guidance.

Last Friday I attended a seminar on e-learning 3.0at the British Library organised by Bryony Taylor, Senior Policy Advisor for Technology Enhanced Learning at Lifelong Learning UK. The ideas behind it were pretty neat – to bring together researchers, practitioners and policy makers from from higher education, further education, libraries and community learning to debate and identify the needs of the lifelong learning workforce in a rapidly changing world. And, fair play to the organisers, instead of the usual sit and listen policy events, there was opportunity for discussio0n and debate.

The symposium was chaired by David Melville, Chair of LLUK and Chair of the Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experiences (the report is well worth reading).

There were four short inputs (called ‘think pieces’). Laura Overton spoke on Towards Maturity – the changing nature of work place learning, Damien Kilkenny from Preston College spoke on the changing nature of learning in further education, Phil Bradley talked about the changing nature of learning in libraries and I spoke on the changing nature of learning in higher education.

The major aim of the seminar was to identify the key training needs of the education workforce and this is where things got interesting. The organisers had thought we could do this by identifying competences needed to cope with changing technology and by finding the gaps between the present skills of the workforce and future skill requirements. But, despite the diverse backgrounds of participants, almost all of us rejected this approach. The question was not one of competences or skills deficiencies we said, but rather to identify learning opportunities. And, one of the most important needs, we felt, was for staff to have time for learning.

Anyway here are the official outcomes as documented on the Learning 3.0 Ning web site.

“The group identified that the needs of learning professionals today are a mixture of skills, competencies, attitudes and behaviours. The main workforce needs identified included:

• A new mind-set – recognition of the need to change and willingness to change
• Flexibility and adaptability
• Resilience
• Digital life skills
• Mentoring and coaching skills
• Facilitation skills
• Ability to manage online identities/online presence
• Ability to self-evaluate new technologies for their use in teaching and training
• Curating online content made by others

What are the recommendations for addressing the workforce needs identified? Some of the recommendations of the group included:

• Showcase good practice from across the lifelong learning sector which highlights the benefits of using technology.
• Identify the barriers to effective use of technology and make recommendations as to how these can be overcome.
• Ensure all staff in the lifelong learning sector are given time to learn and develop as part of their job.
• Create a network of volunteer mentors and coaches for digital life skills in lifelong learning.
• Create a digital life skills framework for learning professionals which includes skills in:
  • Managing your organisation’s/department’s online presence
  • Managing online identities
  • E-portfolios
  • Safety and security online
  • Self-evaluation
• Identify how practitioner”

Short videos of the introductions and so0me of the discussions are also available on the web site. Here are excerpts from my presentation (note – the audio recording level is very low – you will need to turn up the volume).

Find more videos like this on Learning 3.0

Find more videos like this on Learning 3.0

Find more videos like this on Learning 3.0

Find more videos like this on Learning 3.0

I caused some amusement on Twitter yesterday, tweeting out “Anyone know of closed group microblogging service which will run on windows 2000 / IE6?.” Lets provide some background to this.

I am helping run an on-line course for a large education provider.

The management is keen on professional development to update staff on how to use Web 2.0 and social software as part of their professional practice.

Cutting a long story short, the difficulties started when we found they were unable to access Elluminate from some of their computers. Things got worse when we discovered they were unable to access most to the sites we wished the learners to use e.g youtube, slideshare, Facebook due to a corporate Firewall.

We worked around the problem with the IT department taking down the firewall for nominated users, using a special log in.

We decided to use Edmodo for communication between the participants. Then, yesterday, we discovered that  many of the organisations computers are using Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 2000 operating system. Edmodo will not work on this set up. Hence the flurry of last minute searching for a solution. Thanks to advice from @wollepb we looked at the free cloud hosted service of Laconia from StatusNet. This is an impressive service, through in the end we decided to throw caution to the wind and go with Twitter.

Now for some lessons. If education organisations wish to use Web 2.0 and social software, they have to ensure proper access, both through the Internet and through appropriate up to date hardware and software. Indeed, there is little justification for using Internet Explorer 6 in this day and age. And corporate firewalls are hindering the productivity of organisations and even more so the ability of staff for informal learning in the workplace.

But, in this case at least, the managers are keen for learning to take place. I suspect they simply did not know of their organisation’s IT policies or understand the implications. Equally I am sure the IT department has been acting as they see it in the best interests of users in delivering a service with an ageing infrastructure. And I also fear this situation is not so uncommon in education organisations around the world.

The answers? I think managers and IT departments have to understand that the provision of computers and internet access is not just a technical issue. It effects the ability of staff to deliver services. It inhibits the development innovative pedagogies and services. Our pre-course questionnaire suggests most of the participants are familiar and have used many social software services, presumably from home. Lack of work access can only lead them to conclude that such services are not part of their professional practice but are limited to social use. Maybe we could devise some kind of model policies or better still policy discourse to allow organisations to explore these issues.

Another quick article in the ‘rethinking e-Portfolio and Personal Learning Environments’ mini series.

One of the problems in Technology Enhanced Education, I am coming to think, is that new media are very different from traditional paper and book based media. And as Friesen and Hug (2009) argue that “the practices and institutions of education need to be understood in a frame of reference that is mediatic: “as a part of a media-ecological configuration of technologies specific to a particular age or era.” This configuration, they say, is one in which print has been dominant. They quote McLuhan who has described the role of the school specifically as the “custodian of print culture” (1962) It provides, he says, a socially sanctioned “civil defense against media fallout”  – against threatening changes in the mediatic environs.

So what is appropriate content for an e-Portfolio may not be that required by our education systems and institutions, Much of university education is based around essays. Research is still judged by publications in scholarly journals.

Essays and journal content do not make for inspiring web content, however good. Indeed like most other people, I simply print out papers I want to read. But more importantly such paper oriented publications lack the richness that the web can bring, through linking, through the use of multi media, through links to people and increasingly through location specific enhancement.

This problem is not unique to education. As the Guardian newspaper reports, it is also a pressing issue for publishers nervously awaiting the arrival of the iPad and wondering how to produce materials for both print media and for use on a mobile device.

The Guardian interviews Wired editor Ben Hammersley who says “Digital convergence pushes content to more and more devices, but for the requirements of each can be very different. For example, location data can be important for reading stories on the iPhone, while linking is essential for web publishing, and typography has to change for publishing on a tablet computer.”

Hammersley is developing a new content managements system to overcome this problem. Called ‘Budding’ , the system appears to be based on mark up code to allow multiple use of texts.

“Having to learn to write in markup isn’t an imposition, any more than having to learn shorthand or telegraphese. And as with learning any new language, you gain a new soul: writing in markup would allow you to embed code” Hammersley explains on his blog.

“The ability to embed code within a story gives us whole new realms of possibilities for journalism and publishing. Digital platforms are connected and location aware, so why not use that? At the moment the answer is “because your infrastructure won’t let you,” but if it could, the potential is extraordinary.”

In another blog entry he says: “One of my basic points is that having lots of metadata means you can do lots of really nice stuff when you transition from print to online, or print to multimedia. But that metadata needs to be captured and stored as close to the original author as you can. The moment when you can write this stuff down and store it is fleeting, and once it has passed, it has passed forever, for profitable values of forever at least.”

And according to the Guardian: “Budding should also provide an archive for writers as the project aims to transfer the writing and editing online to the cloud, and export it from there to multiple formats such as Indesign or blogging software.”

This sounds very much like part of a Personal Learning Environment to me: a tool which can allow us both to capture contextual learning where and when it happens and to repurpose it for presentation in different media, including on-line through an e-Portfolio and in written formats for essays and scholarly publications.

The only draw back I see is the mark-up language – would academics, students, learners use mark up. Maybe they would, if there was enough obvious gain. And maybe we could develop a simple menu allowing the markup to be added from a visual editor. After all, word processors juts use a menu system to add mark up to text (and a long time ago with Word Perfect the mark up code was written).

Ben Hammersley says he is going to offer Budding free to authors. I’ve signed up for a trail. But could we work out a mark up code for a PLE or e-Portfolio?

References

Friesen N and Hug T (2009), The Mediatic Turn: Exploring Concepts for Media Pedagogy, In K. Lundby (Ed.). Mediatization: Concept, Changes, Consequences. New York: Peter Lang. Pp. 64-81.

McLuhan, M. (1962), The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Some more very quick notes on teaching and learning, e-portfolios and Personal Learning Environments.

Lets start with the old problems of Virtual Learning Environments – yes one problem is that they are not learning environments (in the sense of an active learning process taking place – but rather learning management systems. VLEs are great for enrolling and managing learners, tracking progress and completion and for providing access to learning materials. But the learning most often takes place outside the VLE with the VLE acting as a place to access activities to be undertaken and to report on the results. In terms of social learning, groups are usually organised around classes or assignments.

The idea of Personal Learning environments recognised three significant changes:

• The first was that of a Personal Learning Network which could be distributed and was not limited by institutional groups
• The second was the idea that learning could take place in multiple environments and that a PLE could reflect and build on all learning, regardless of whether it contributed to a course the user was enrolled on
• The third is that learners could use their own tools for learning and indeed those tools, be they online journals and repositries, networks or authoring tools, might also be distributed.

Then lest throw social software and Web 2.0 into the mix. This led to accordances for not just consuming learning through the internet, but for active construction and sharing.

This leads to a series of questions in developing both pedagogies and tools to support (social) learning (in no particular order):

• How to support students in selecting appropriate tools to support their learning?
• How to support students in finding resources and people to support their learning?
• How to support students in reporting or representing their learning?
• How to support students in identifying and exploring a body of knowledge?
• How to motivate and support students in progressing their learning?
• How can informal learning be facilitated and used within formal course outcomes?

How can we reconcile learning through communities of practice (and distributed personal learning networks) with the requirements of formal courses?

I am not convinced those of us who advocate the development of Personal Learning Environments have adequately answered those questions. It is easy to say we need changes in the education systems (and of course we do).

In one sense I think we have failed to recognise the critical role that teachers play in the learning process. Letsg o back to to Vykotsky. Vykotsky called those teachers – or peers – who supported learning in a Zone of Proximal Development as the More Knowledgeable Other. “The MKO is anyone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the leaner particularly in regards to a specific task, concept or process. Traditionally the MKO is thought of as a teacher, an older adult or a peer” (Dahms et al, 2007).

But the MKO can also be viewed as a learning object or social software which embodies and mediates learning at higher levels of knowledge about the topic being learned than the learner presently possesses.

Of course learners operate within constraints provided in part by the more capable participants (be it a teacher peer, or software), but an essential aspect of this process is that they must be able to use words and other artefacts in ways that extend beyond their current understanding of them, thereby coordinating with possible future forms of action.

Thus teachers or peers as well as technology play a role in mediating learning.

In terms of developing technology, we need to develop applications which facilitate that process of mediation. Some social software works well for this. If I get stuck on a problem I can skype a friend or shout out on Twitter, There is plenty of evidenced use of Facebook study groups. Yet I am not sure the pedagogic processes and the technology are sufficiently joined up. If I learn from a friend or peer, and use that learning in my practice, how does the process become transparent – both to myself and to others. How can I represent by changing knowledge base (through DIIGO bookmarks, through this blog?). And how can others understand the ideas I am working on and become involved in a social learning process.

I guess the answer lies in the further development of semantic applications which are able to make those links and make such processes transparent. But this requires far greater sophistication than we have yet achieved in developing and understanding Personal Learning Environments,

I am truly appalled at the digital economy bill now being rushed through the UK parliament.

The bill includes a three strikes rule to cut off internet access for alleged file sharers – which according the Guardian newspaper “could suspend the broadband connections used by anybody accused of file sharing three times whether or not they are convicted of copyright infringement.”

The Guardian also reports that “the notorious Clause 17 – which has now had its scope diminished – had proposed to give the secretary of state the power to update copyright law without parliamentary assent.”

They go on to say “the Liberal Democrats caused uproar when they proposed an amendment to the bill apparently aimed at bringing more judicial oversight into the system – but that critics could end up shutting down major websites such as YouTube.”

“The change – which gives the high court the power to shut down entire websites if they host “substantial” amounts of copyright infringing material – came in for strong criticism, particularly after it emerged that the language used was identical to a proposal by British music industry body the BPI.”

In a blog entitled “The Day Democracy Died“, Lilian Edwards, a specialist in online law said:

This is simply disgraceful. It is law making by industry, for industry, on the nod of all three major political parties (and against the grassroots sentiment of at least one of them). This is no longer just about copyright, or downloading, or even freedom of speeech and due process. It is about democracy, and whether this country is run by MPs or by lobbyists and Big Capital. It is a day when as a democrat, and a lawyer, (and not as a “copyright activist” as one commenter wrongly called me – I believe in copyright, I just don’t believe in destroying the legal system to enforce it) ) I am deeply , deeply disappointed.

This law raises series issues for education. In a paper entitled “What is the significance of Open Source Software for the education and training community?” and written in 2005 (I think) i said the issue of sharing raises important social issues over ownership and content. I quoted Dai Griffith who addressed some of these issues at the open session of the June 2004 SIGOSSEE project meeting in Limerick on Open Source software in education.

He argued that the Web has changed the technology for publishing and that the publishing industry and legal framework is responding by seeking to reinforce the existing structures. The way they are doing this is by promoting the metaphor of ideas as property as ‘Intellectual property’. This metaphor says:

• An idea is an object
• Copyright is property
• Reuse of an idea is theft

Dai Griffiths rejected this metaphor. He asked how do you know if someone “steals” your copyright materials? Copyright infringement is illegal, he said, but it is not theft, pointing out there was art, music and literature before copyright. Copyright is a limited monopoly granted by the state. It is important, but it is not an inalienable right.

Copyright is a body of inconsistent, ad-hoc arrangements to regulate markets. Dai Griffiths argued that copyright should benefit the citizen, not the author or the publisher. He quoted the US House of Representatives report on the Berne Convention:

“The constitutional purpose of copyright is to facilitate the flow of ideas in the interest of learning.”… The primary objective of our copyright laws is not to reward the author, but rather to secure for the public the benefits from the creations of authors”

(Implementation Act of 1988, cited in LR Patterson & SW Lindberg, The Nature of Copyright 1991).

I would argue that the primary objective of the digital economy bill is not to reward the author, nor to secure for the public the benefits from the creations of authors, but to secure the interests of an outdated, self seeking and degenerate industry. They are not interested in music, they are not interested in film, they are not interested in literature, the are not interested in art, they are not interested in learning, they only care for their profits. This bill has nothing to do with the digital economy – it is about reinforcing copyright. Shame on our politicians for supporting them.