I am back from the European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning. The summer school, which is targeted at PhD students and is co-organised by a number of European research projects and networks. was held near Terchova in the Slovakian mountains. It is a very beautiful area. Unfortunately it was wet and cold for the whole week. Worse the network connection was insufficient for 90 people and only skype worked with any degree of reliability.

Ok, these problems happen. But what of the summer school itself? Here are comments from students at the summer school:

“I didn’t want to bonded with lecturers …I would prefer to meet ‘relevant’ people, to have discussions, to know at least what today’s lecture is about.  Interesting things are mostly between lectures”.

“Bar Camp Format”
“Work during workshops, not just listen activities”
“ Get Summer School participants (after the selection period) involved in the organisation of the Summer School programme”
“ Not too much aggressive advertisement & self-appraisal of projects”
“why so much focus on projects rather than areas of research?”
“Presenters should have better presentation skills”
“more practical sessions”
“Lecturers & students F2F and get advice on PhD topic”
“Take account of cultures – religions & dietary requirements: why ask if there are dietary requirements and fail to offer choice or take account of the responses to the questions asked”
“Use less traditional approach.  Instead of a 50 min lecture & a 10 min discussion: the lecture does a 10min and the remainder discussions.  Maybe having 2/3 lectures and then splitting into groups to discuss specific issues”
“More online activities leading to the summer school week”
“Internet connection is a must”
“The organisers should know the topic of all PhDs. The could form groups of interest with a competent advisor so that they can discuss & work on the topics”
“Voice for the novice researchers”
“More from an educational background”
“It seems that we are mostly IT and some of us are education oriented, but we have an agenda for ‘computer science for educators’ or ‘education for IT people’ – that is confusing!’
“Round table discussions. E.g. meet with 6 people for 15 mins & then switch & mix-up again”
“Equality between lecturers & students.  Instead of ‘traditional’ lecture styles, the sessions could be improved by actually using TEL”
“A session with PhD students only – like the one we had on the first day”
“More ‘democratic’ choice of topics for the lectures/workshops”
“A presentation should be 10 slides, 20 mins, 30 as a min font size”
“Workshop on how to create posters”
“There should be a meeting to get to know each other at the beginning &  topic outlines from students”
“Can we control/select the topics of classes?”
“It would be interesting to have game-based learning sessions”
“Lectures & projects in short form”

Overall, students were critical of the summer school. Whilst talking about the uses of technology and new forms of pedagogy, the summer school was organised in a somewhat old fashioned didactic format. There was a sharp distinction between lectures and students (the lecturers even were allocated better bedrooms in the hotel!) and each morning was given over to a series of one hour lectures. Many of the afternoon workshops tended to be lecture like in format with limited interactivity and limited opportunities for discussion between participants. And whilst there were a number of interesting presentations, as the feedback suggests, it seemed that the agenda or programme for the summer school had been determined by offering slots of the sponsoring projects, rather than being based around the needs of the participants. The general philosophy appeared to be one of knowledge transmission, with PhD students supposed to learn through listening to the views of experts (this was sometimes a little surreal as we talked of moves from an expert model to crowd sourcing and knowledge exchange through Web 2.0).

Nevertheless, a free pool table, the great Slovakian beer and so many talented people guaranteed many fascinating conversations. A big hullo to Maria, Mike, Ashley, Chris, John, Ricardo, Eva, Carl, Zina and everyone else. Any time you fancy a game of pool, juts give me a shout.

Apologies for the lack of posts on this site in the last few days. The reason will become apparent soon. I am in Terchova in Slovakia at the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning (EATEL) summer school. This is the fourth of the annual summer schools, sponsored by the different EU funded research projects on Technology Enhanced Learning, and targeted primarily at Doctoral students. There are nearly 100 of us here from most of the EU members states and from further afield.
The reason for the lack of posts is not lack of ideas,  far from it. The simple issue is that we have very limited bandwidth. There is a wireless network which works perfectly well – as long as no more than about 10 people try to access it at once. For a summer school on technology enhanced learning this does provide a problem. But at least it has forced me to think about the issues faced by those without easy access to the internet. We appear to get windows when we can get online. I have found the best time is when everyone is eating!
Now for a little about the content and process of the summer school. Personal Learning environments are a big issue, with five or six sessions around PLEs. There is little agreement on the definition of a PlE, although I sometimes wonder of we are getting to hung up trying to define things. There is a clear difference between those of us who see a PLE fundamentally as a pedagogic approach to learning and those who view a PLE in terms of technology platforms and applications. There also seems to be a difference between some who are focusing on the personalisation of learning applications, content and processes and those who see PLE as fundamentally owned by learners. However, at least between the different European projects concerned with PLEs, there seems to be a growing consensus that the Mask up PLE (Mupples) approach, based on widgets, provides a perspective to flexible and user centred development fo PLE tools and functionality.
There has also been a number fo discussions around recommender systems. At a technical level recommenders systems would appear feasible to develop and implement. The problem is for what purposes! Are they an answer looking for a problem.
There have been constant references to leaner styles with a desire to be able to personalise everything – form platform to content to learning processes to take account of different learnings styles. However, there also seems little understanding of what learning styles are, or of the literature and research that refutes learnings styles theory.
And that brings me to a bigger issue. Many of the researchers at the summer school have a background in computer studies or in programming. Of course they all have an interest in learning – or presumably they would not be here. But the understanding of pedagogy is limited. They tend to take the present educational and institutional systems as am immutable fact. There are also a number fo us here who come form an education or pedagogic background. Yet the interchange between our different perspective is problematic. We are not yet really talking the same language, neither do we have adequate translation tools.
Perhaps one of the answers lies in the format of the summer school. The format is somewhat traditional, with two or three guest lectures a year and four or five workshops, in two parallel sessions. To overcome the divide between pedagogists and educationalists probably requires amore inetractice approach and concious design to enhance interdisciplinarity and the exchange of ideas and c0mpetcnes between those with different specialisms. I am not convinced that forma lectures lake the most fo the wonderful learning opportunities present in such an intensive and multi cultural event.
Furthermore, many of the presenters are struggling, especially in planning and managing workshops. I wonder, given that it is a requirement for doctoral students to participate in presentations and workshops, if we should not be giving them more support and even training in this. This requires real competences, competences which are not necessarily acquired informally through being a researcher.

I spent most of yeterday writing interim reports for the European Commission funded Eurotrainer Network project. Report writing is not one of my favourite activities. Anyway the main things Pontydysgu is responsible for in the project is developing and maintaining the network platform and tools and organising an annual online conference.

firstly, I was surprised at how many different tools we have used. In addition to the main platform, which is a WordPress site with the  Freefolio plug-in, we have used the following web tools and services (as taken from the platform report):

• Google forms for conference and event registration. These can be embedded within the platform and generate an automatic spreadsheet
• A Network of Trainers in Europe Facebook group – http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#/group.php?gid=128088685360. This currently has 220 members and provides a valuable and easy way to mail directly information to participants.
• A PB wiki – this was established to provide a quick and easy to use platform for the exhibition area associated with the online conference.
• An email list server. This is maintained by the UK higher education Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). It currently has more than 70 members.
• A video and audio Flash meeting platform. This is hosted by The UK Open University.
• The Elluminate suite for online conferencing. This was provided by the Conference sponsors, the UK JISC Evolve network.
• A Diigo site for collecting and sharing bookmarks (this is displayed through a widget on the platform)
• A Flickr site for collecting and sharing photographs (this is displayed through a widget on the platform).

I also had to write an ‘activity report; for the work undertaken by Pontydysgu for the project.  I have written yet another report on the online conference itself, so in the activity report I limited myself to a bullet point list of what we did. I think it serves as a useful check list for those seeking to organise online events. I like running on line events but if people think they are less work than face to face seminars and meetings they are sadly mistaken!

• Development of concept and format for the conference and presentation of concept and format to the network partners
• Writing, production and dissemination of call for papers and presentations and exhibition materials
• Contacting potential contributors to the conference
• Production and dissemination of publicity materials for the conference
• Development of conference pages on Network web site
• Production and management of conference sign up form
• Contacting and liaising with other networks, projects an organisations to publicise the conference
• Production and dissemination of pre-conference newsletters
• Organisation of conference platform through the conference sponsors, the UK Jisc Evolve network
• Organisation and moderation of pre-conference training sessions for conference presenters
• Dissemination of help materials in use of the platform
• Provision of a technical help line for conference participants
• Organisation of session moderators and organisation of training sessions
• Overall conference moderation
• Organisation, technical hosting and dissemination of conference exhibition
• Recording of conference sessions (as Elluminate recordings and as downloadable MP3 recordings) and development of web pages for viewing these materials
• Development and distribution of online evaluation questionnaire.
• Analysis of evaluation returns and production of report on the conference

Reflection is increasingly seen as a key process in learning, particularly for work based or practice based learning. This involves reflecting of what you have done and what it means. Reflection may be especially important in making explicit tacit learning and in scaffolding new knowledge and ideas.

Yet reflection is not always an easy learning process. It may be particularly sterile when learners are told to go and reflect! Whilst it is possible to teach or practitioner the skills involved in reflection – active listening, questioning, commentating – reflection is difficult to undertake on demand.

Furthermore, the forms that we use to report on academic learning – essays and papers – may either not be particularly conducive to immediate reflection or may be far too time consuming – especially for work based learners.

Personally I see reflection as a conversation, with myself or with others. And that works best for me out of the office or at the end of the day. That is when I think on what I have done and what it might mean. I often sit in my local pub with my iPod Touch or just a back of an envelope and furiously scribble notes or more often somewhat chaotic mind maps. The fact that I often never look at the results (and sometimes cannot read them anyway) does not seem to matter – it is the process which counts.

This is where I think audio can come in. I have been greatly impressed with the Jisc funded Sounds Good project.  The main aim of Sounds Good was to test the hypothesis that using digital audio for feedback can benefit staff and students by:

• saving assessors’ time (speaking the feedback rather than writing it)

and

• providing richer feedback to students (speech is a richer medium than written text).

The project has in general been extremely successful. But if speech is a richer medium for staff providing feedback then why not for students reflecting on learning.

And the increasing availability of easy to use recording technologies utilising mobile devices makes this process simple. Anyway here is a short audio reflection on e-portfolios and data security and on using audio for reflection!

Here is an audio comment from our colleague Jenny Hughes “Reflections on Reflection”:

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Regular readers will know that I love audio. I have a great face for radio or so they tell me! And for a long time I have been wanting a way to easily record podcasts on the run. So when I say a tweet from Josie Fraser about audioboo I was instantly curious.

OK it looks a bit underdeveloped. A basic web site and recording limited to the iphone. But it is a great idea – a youtube for audio. And so we bought a microphone for the ipod touch, signed up for an account and away we went. Here is the first offering. You may be relieved to know audioboo only allows you to only record 3 minutes at a time.

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Much as I enjoy doing presentations at conferences it does seem oh some Web 1.0 ish. So i am working on how to make such events a little more interactive. Twitter is great – if conference organisers can make available a second screen at events. At least then people can ask questions during the presentation (I always tell people they are free to interrupt me but they seldom do). I have messed with buzz groups during the presentation but this always seems a little artificial.

I like the presentation Dave Cormier did at the WIAOC conference last weekend. I wasn’t at it, neither have I watched the video but his community crowd sourced slides both provide a wealth of shared learning and give the impression the event was a lot of fun. For explanation of the idea behind it see his blog.

I am going to try doing something like that next week at the ProLearn Summer School in Zilina.

I have just been writing a long overdue abstract for my keynote presentation at the DFG Research Training Group E-Learning conference on Interdisciplinary approaches to technology-enhanced learning (IATEL) in Darmstadt in June.

I was not quite sure what to talk about – the overall theme I was given is Learning in Networks – from learning in the Network to the learning Network and back.

So I am crowdsourcing the abstract to blog readers. What have I missed out? What other ideas should I include? All contributors will get a citation on the final slide!

Abstract

Graham Attwell will look at the evolution of learning networks.

The presentation will also look at the development of educations systems and the spread of mass education through an industrial model with curriculum based on expert knowledge. He will go on to examine key issues including control at the level of content, institutions and curriculum.

The presentation will look at the changing ways people are learning and developing and sharing knowledge using Web 2.0 and social software tools. Such practice is facilitating the development of personal learning pathways and integration within dispersed communities if practice.

The presentation will examine recent ideas and theory about learning in networks including the idea of rhizomatic curricula and connectivism.

As learning networks become more important, the issue of digital identities is attracting more attention. How do individuals interact in learning networks and whet is the role of tools such as Twitter? How important is the idea of place within learning networks?

The presentation will consider how learning takes place in Personal Learning Environments drawing on the work of Levi Stauss on bricolage and Goffman’s dramatulurgical perspective.

Finally the presentation will consider the implication of ideas of learning in networks and Pe

The Guardian newspaper has published a very level headed article about the findings of the recently published UK report on “Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World.”

I haven’t read the report yet (it is on today’s to do list) but according to the press release “findings from the report show that students typically spend four hours a day online, a figure that looks set to rise as teenagers make increasing use of Web 2.0 technology in their daily lives.  One of the challenges for the higher education sector is therefore to ensure that staff can keep pace with the advancing technology which many of their students rely on every day, using the technology to enhance the student learning experience.”

The Guardian interviewed Martin Weller and Brian Kelly. Much of what they said was predictably sensible. I was, however, intrigued by this quote from Brian Kelly.

“Some university student unions are also warning students about online ethics and the danger of slagging people off online, or posting pictures of drunken nights out that they wouldn’t want their mother or future employers to get their hands on, he says. “We’ve had no time to develop a culture. Everyone knows how to answer a telephone but it takes time for those conventions to come about, and there are no conventions for cyberspace.””

I think he is wrong. One of the remarkable things about Web 2.0 and social software is how fast cultures and especially conventions have evolved and become accepted, despite the novelty of the applications. Take Twitter. Twitter is still new and fast growing and despite the lack of any rules (or hardly any) a vibrant culture has emerged. RTs. FollowFriday. Hash tags. And so on. Just take the hashtag convention. That is emerging in a context of social use and is negotiated informally within the community of users. This is where i think Twitter get it right and Facebook get it so wrong. Twitter encourages the community to negotiate its rules and conventions. Facebook tries to impose the rules though manipulating access to APIs and data and ends up producing something which we feel we do not own. And it is the ownership and sense of ownership within the community which enable us to define our own digital identities, rather than having them imposed on us. Enough for now, but I will return to this issue.

NB Congratulations to Jisc on their latest website overhaul. The incorporation of Twitter comments and a general more Web 2.0 approach have transformed the Jisc site into an interesting and vibrant space – that is not something you can say for many institutional or agency web sites. European Commission – take note.

Here are the remaining podcasts recorded when making the Jisc e-Learning Show.

Rob Ward is Director of the Centre for Recording Learning Achievement. He talks about progressions routes and e-Portfolios in this interview.

Sandra Winfield is project manager at the Centre for International e-Portfolio Development at Nottingham University. She talks about the use of e-Portfolios to support work based learners.

Tony Toole, from the University of Glamorgan, talks about the use of mobile technologies and social networking applications to support work based learners in Wales.

Alan Paull is a consulatant who has been working on the development and implementation of the XCRI standard for exchanging course information. Here he explains what the standard is and how it can be used

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I did a series of interviews to gather materials for last weeks Jisc e-Learning Show radio broadcast. If course we could only use very small parts of the interviews in the programme.

Now we are releasing the full version of the interviews as podcasts. There is some rich material here for anyone interested in the use of technology to support e-Portfolios, work based learning, mobile learning, the exchange of course information etc. This is the first of two posts – the second will contain the remaining interviews.

Bob Bell is Fe in HE coordinator for the Jisc Northern Regional Support Centre. In this interview he talks about work based learning.

Clive Church works for EdExcel. He is particularly interested in the development and use of e-Portfolios.

Derek Longhurst is Chief Executive of Foundation Degree Forward. In this interview he looks at the challenges changing forms of learning and knowledge development pose for universitie sand discusses future policy options.

Lucy Stone is project manager at Leicester College, where she is introducing mobile technologies to support work based learners.

Lucy Warman is developing a Jisc project designed to involve students in sharing experience at the University of Central Lancashire.

Thanks to all the interviewees for their time and ideas and to Dirk Stieglitz for post production work.The music is called Musiques en Principauté de Boisbelle and is composed and played by DaCapo. It can be found on the Creative Commons music web site Jamendo.

The music is by

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Here is the podcast of  the first broadcast of a new pilot live internet radio programme, the Jisc e-Learning show. The programme is based on a symposium on Lifelong Learning, led by Jisc earlier this spring.

The issues discussed include

• the use of mobile technologies and e-Portfolios to support learners.
• engaging with employers
• Project mainstreaming and sustainibility
• developing and supporting work based learning
• changing the culture of higher education
• funding models and policies

and much more.

Guest include Derek Longhurst from Foundation Degree Forward, Clive Church from Edexel, Lucy Stone from Leicester College, Tony Toole from the University of Glamorgan, Bob Bell, HE in FE consultant for the northern region, Sandra Winfield from Nottingham University and Rob Ward from the Centre for Recording Achievement

the show also features a live panel discussion with Oleg Liber from CETIS, Claire Newhouse from the Lifelong Learning Network national forum and Andrew Ravenscroft from London Metropolitan University.

This was a pilot programme and is a little different in style from our sometimes raucous Sounds of the Bazaar. We would particularly appreciate feedback. Is this the kind of programme Jisc should put out? What do you think about the format? Is the programme too long (or too short) and what would be the best time we could broadcast on? What about the music – too much, too little (or too classical :)). Do you have ideas for future Jisc radio shows? You can leave comments below or I would especially appreciate it if you could leave any comments on the Jisc e-Learning blog which also provides a link to the podcast feed.

The music is called Musiques en Principauté de Boisbelle and is composed and played by DaCapo. It can be found on the Creative Commons music web site Jamendo.

The programme was produced by Dirk Stieglitz.

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