How fast we get used to almost ubiquitous technology.

On Tuesday last week I went to London for a meeting. There was supposed to be a wireless network but I couldn’t get it to work. But, I thought, five hours off-line is not such a bad thing, so I did not try too hard.

In the evening I went to Bonn for a project meeting followed by a two day workshop at the BIBB – the German Federal Institute of Vocational education and Training. There was a network but no chance of a connection. The BIBB is located in a government building with a fearsome firewall around it. The hotel did have some access. However the free online PC was broken and the only available network costing eight Euros an hour was infuriatingly slow. Four days with next to no connectivity left me twitching. I felt cut off and out of touch with my friends. It took me until Friday to work out that I could at least use SMS from my mobile phone (although I am very slow typing on telephone keypads). But that is better than nothing.

It was a remiunder how fast we have got used to and come to rely on being connected. It made me think about how the world used to be before wireless networks. And whilst coming back to 350 unanswered work emails was irritating, it was the social contacts and networks I missed most. I guess it shows how rapidly technology is impacting on all facets of our lives and identities (or is it just me  🙂 ).

I am speaking at a joint Evolve / Educamp on line session tonight about e-Portfolios and PLes. Coincidentally, I have been working on background research for the Mature project which is seeking to develop Personal Learning and Management Environments to support professional development and knowledge maturing services.

One topic in my brief for Mature was to look at barriers to the introduction of PLEs and PLMEs. As I wrote two weeks ago, PLEs are with us now – in the sense of how learners are using computers to support their own learning. But at the same time there appear to remain institutional and organisational barriers to the wider adoption of PLEs.

Anyway this is what I came up with for the Mature work. I would love any comments or feedback.

Issues in introducing PLEs

Despite the interest from the educational technology community, the implementation and institutional support for PLEs remains slow. This may be a reflection of the need to address a series of issues, both related to approaches to teaching and learning and technology development.

Learner Confidence and Support

One of the reasons why current VLEs have been successful is that they allow universities to centralize support and thus ensure a certain level of competence and quality of experience (Weller, 2005). Supporting learners in creating their own learning environments would be a major challenge.

Furthermore many learners may not have the confidence and competence to develop and configure their own tools for learning. However, Wild, Mödritscher and Sigurdarson, (2008) consider that “by establishing a learning environment, i.e. a network of people, artefacts, and tools (consciously or unconsciously) involved in learning activities, is part of the learning outcomes, not an instructional condition.”

Moreover, the advances in Wb 2.0 tools and social software are reducing the technological complexity and knowledge required by the user in configuring such tools.

Moving beyond issues of technology, many learners may feel challenged by the shift towards more learner centred provision and by the idea of managing their own learning. Setting aside issues of whether this is a core or meta level competence, learners will often still require support.
Institutional control and management

A further barrier to the introduction of Personal Learning Environments may be fear by organisations of loss of institutional and managerial control. This is a complex issue. It may imply a difficulty in pedagogical change and innovation with the move towards more learner centred learning. It may reflect the requirement of institutions to utilise computer based systems for managing programmes and students with present functionality for this provided through integrated Virtual Learning Environments. It could also reflect the requirements of centralised curricula and prescribed learning materials and learning routes. It may also reflect the preference of Systems Administrators to control software systems and server access and the need for data security.

At university level many students now use their own laptop computers, thus alleviating some of these issues. However, this will not be so in an enterprise.

Also at university level, many institutions are moving towards Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs). These may allow specific learning services to be delivered in formats that can be consumed through a PLE, whilst maintaining the integrity of administrative systems and services.

Contexts of learning

In seeking a generic approach to PLE development, design and provision, there is a danger of overlooking the different contexts in which learning and knowledge development take place. Not only will different users be dealing with different knowledge, subject areas and data, but the physical environment in which the learning takes place will vary as will use of the learning. This may have profound implications for PLE design and deployment.

Experimentation, Development and Interface design

There are many interesting projects working on different aspects of learning design and development and contributing to what we might call a future PLE. Inevitably, much of this work is being undertaken by computer programmers and specialists, with a greater or lesser understanding of education and learning. To evaluate the potential of such developments requires trialling with real users. Yet, most of these projects are at best at a beta stage of development. Many do not have well developed user interfaces and the design of such interfaces is time consuming. Yet, without such interfaces it is difficult to persuade users (individual and organisational) to involve themselves in such trialling.

User centred design models may offer a way forward in this respect.

There is an interesting report today in the Guardian newspaper on the results of an annual survey, undertaken by the UK based ChildWise charity. The finding include:

Some 30% of the 1800 young people questioned say they have a blog and 62% have a profile on a social networking site. Accrording to the report children and young teens are more likely to socialise than do homework online.

Screen time has become so pervasive in the daily lives of five- to 16-year-olds that they are now skilled managers of their free time, juggling technology to fit in on average six hours of TV, playing games and surfing the net, it suggests.

But reading books is falling out of favour – 84% said they read for pleasure in 2006, 80% in 2007 and 74% this year.

Children who use the internet spend on average 1.7 hours a day online, but one in six spent more than three hours a day online on top of the 1.5 hours they spent on their games consoles. They still have time for 2.7 hours of television – though the report says they tend to multitask, doing these activities simultaneously.

One in three said the computer is the single thing they couldn’t live without, compared with a declining number – one in five – who name television.

Pupils are using the internet less while at school, frustrated by the low-tech access and the restrictions put in place to stop them from accessing inappropriate material.

Younger girls are now catching up with boys in the use of games consoles.

Before Christmas I did an interview over Skype with Janine Schmidt, Dennis Brüntje, Franz Büchl, Oliver Härtel from the University of Ilmenau in Germany. the title of the interview was ‘Identität 2.0 durch E-Portfolios’ – Indentity 2.0 through e-Portfolios. They have very kindly sent be a transcriot of the interview. A slighly edited versiona appears below. You can also see n more of teh project work on the students’ web site.

JS: Okay. What was the most impressive and effective usage of an ePortfolio you came across so far? Could you please specify your experience?

GA: It’s a hard question. Most impressive and effective use of an ePortfolio. (…) I’ve seen many different people using ePortfolios in many different ways. But of course, it really depends on how you defining ePortfolios in those terms. I think probably the most impressive I’ve seen in formal education was a vocational college in northwest of England where they were using ePortfolios on an auto-mechanics course. And one module on this course they were making a custom car, and they were getting kids who probably haven’t got lots of qualifications really recording their experiences as they went of the work they were doing and reflecting on the work they were doing, so that greatly impressed me.

JS: Okay. So ehm. The second question will be like focal topic for definition and classification of ePortfolios: How do you define ePortfolios and which significant characteristics do ePortfolios have compared to conventional portfolios?

GA: Well firstly and obviously what distinguishes an ePortfolio from an ordinary portfolio is the use of some kind of electronic interfaces, some kind of electronic media. I’d have to say as well I’d say that ePortfolio can be very much mixed, but pretty obviously the use of electronic media gives us a whole new series of capabilities. But after that the definition starts to break down a bit: and I think you can see vaguely three or four different ways in which ePortfolios had been developed and been used. Unfortunately, the predominant thing comes from they’re using higher education and especially from the USA, where they’d been very much used as an assessment vehicle allowing students to record a progress towards preset learning outcomes. Now I don’t think that’s helpful because the students are tended to see them as a part of an assessment regime and in many cases higher education students are already over assessed. And it’s very much limited, the potential of what is seen as legitimate learning. You’ve had another tendency in the UK to see them as a vehicle for planning learning, PDP-processes, which is another way to look at them. Or you’ve got another tendency, which is more of what I favour, which is to see ePortfolios as a way of recording all your learning including informal learning. And of course there is a strand in the literature certainly in the research of ePortfolios which sees ePortfolios as a powerful vehicle or potentially powerful vehicle for reflection on learning. Though I have to say that how that process of reflection is scaffolded and undertaken is less well researched or less well understood and perhaps just a matter of recording, so you got a powerful point about recording learning, assessing learning, reflecting on learning, etcetera, etcetera many different processes and how ePortfolios been used and what they’d been used for, different processes had been emphasized by different people. And to some extend, and this is quite important, some of those processes had been hard coded in ePortfolio-software and series of assumptions made and those assumptions aren’t always made transparent by the people who have developed the ePortfolio applications.

JS: Okay. So the next question would be: Would you rather consider ePortfolios as a loosely composed tool construct or as a specific method used in educational context? Or do you even have a complete different point of view?
(more…)

Whilst we were at Online Educa Berlin, we undertook a series of interviews and audio and video recordings. These are slowly trickling out of the post production department!

The first out is recording of a presentation by Derek Stephens and Neil Witt from the Jisc Users and innovation programme Web2Rights project.

Web2Rights is a JISC funded project, whose purpose is to develop a practical, pragmatic and relevant toolkits to support the projects funded within the JISC Users and Innovation Programme in their engagement with next generation and Web2.0 technologies and emerging legal issues, such as IP, libel and accessibility.

There are a number of ways in which these projects will engage with Web2.0 and the resources created here will be relevant for projects which are:

• Adapting and deployment of pre-existing tools, technologies and software
• Developing new tools, technologies and software
• Adapting and using own content
• Use of third party created content

However the outputs of the project will be relevant for many projects. the issues the Web2Rights project is looking at the challenges of Web 2.0 technologies, present for Intellectual Property (IP) Rights and other legal issues. These issues include:

• Do IP rights exist in a virtual world and, if so, who owns them?
• Who owns the rights in works that are a result of collective collaboration?
• What happens if you can’t find the rights holders?
• What are the legal risks associated with Web 2.0 engagement?
• How can risks associated with content reuse be sensibly managed?

We have posted two versions of the presentation. The first is an MP3 audio recording and the second an M4a Enhanced version (this includes slides and can be viewed on iTunes or an iPod).

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Last week I was in Greece for the fourth in a series of European workshop son the training of teachers and trainers from vocational education and training. It was great to participate in an event with genuine involvement. Yes we were looking at policy, but rather than listening to long presentations and powerpoints, the workshop was designed as a series of activities for eliciting and discussing ideas.

One thing which has become clear in this series of workshops, which involve participants from every European country, is that whilst our systems may differ, and instruments and mechanisms for training of teachers and trainers are certainly different, the key issues are the same in all our countries.

Whilst in every country we have programmes for training vocational teachers, in many countries pathways and training programmes for vocational trainers are muddled. Many trainers are selected for their occupational and craft skills and may have no training as a trainer.

In every workshop their has been as emphasis on the importance of new technologies. Although many countries are providing continuing training programmes in the use of new technologies, these tend to focus on the technology itself, rather than how to use technology for learning. Access to e-learning resources is another commonly stated issue.

In every workshop concerns have been expressed about the quality of teaching and training. Whilst some countries have established registers of trainers, in general this is seen as a bureaucratic imposition, rather than a genuine move to improve quality. One popular theme has been for more evaluation, and for better evaluation tools, along with tools for self evaluation and peer group evaluation.

A question for the workshops, which are sponsored by the European Commission DG Education and Culture, is whether there should be a European Framework for the training of VET teachers and trainers and, if so, what that Framework should look like.

Here participants have been divided. On the one hand, a European Framework could provide better access to training for teachers and trainers and might serve to raise the status of teachers and trainers. On the other hand, there is a fear that a Framework imposed from above will be too inflexible and will not respect existing systems and cultures.

Most participants were more keen for a bottom up development focusing on providing more professional development support for teachers and trainers. Technology Enhanced Learning is seen as an opportunity in that respect.

There has also been considerable discussion around the idea of competence frameworks. Many countries and projects are seeking to develop competency frameworks for vocational teachers and trainers. However, there is a doubt that VET teachers and trainers jobs and practice are sufficiently similar for a single competency framework. Furthermore, for trainers a common set or ‘core competences’ applicable to all practitioners, may be too vague to be really useful and may well ignore many of the activities undertaken by trainers in a specific context. Some participants have also questioned the use of competency at all, seeing it as a lowest common denominator, rather than an aspirational tool for learning.n Instead it has been suggested, we should seek to develop individual and group learning programmes negotiated with the teachers and trainers themselves, with peer group support and even assessment.

There is a richness of ideas coming from the workshops. The outcomes are being made available on the project web site. As yet it is hard to discern any clear cut policy directions. In that respect, the issue of how we train teachers and trainers may be seen as a reflection of the emergent debates around the future of education itself.

From my interest in the use of new technologies for learning, the key issue is how we can move from using technology to provide training and professional development in the uses of technology in teaching and training, to using technology for wider areas of training and professional development.

There has been some discussion lately questioning why Personal Learning Environments have been so slow to take off. I think this misses the point. PLEs are here. they are being used every day by thousands of users all over the world. True, there is no branding saying PLE. And the PLEs differ greatly, technologically and in how they are being used.

PLEs were never about developing a new generation of educational software. PLEs were about a change in the way learners used technology to support their learning. PLEs were about reflection on different sources and contexts of learning. PLes were about learners taking control of their own learning. PLEs were about collaborative and social learning

Web 2.0 and social software has facilitated that happening. Be it Facebook or Ning, blogs or Wikis, Webquests or social bookmarking, it has taken place. Not every learner is progressing at the same pace and has the same confidence in developing, configuring and using their PLE. Why should they? Learners move at different speeds in different contexts and at different stages of their lives and learning journeys. Learners have different personal preferences for the tools they use for learning and the mode of learning they prefer. Learning takes place in different contexts – institutional and workplace. But the changes we talked about when we first discussed the idea of the PLE is happening all around us.

Of course it is true to say that institutions have not supported that change – if they have recognised it at all. Institutions remain wedded to control and management models and the LMS or VLE suits that purpose. However, the slow move to web services, the slow adoption of standards and increasing interoperability are making it easier for learners to utilise institutional course provision within their PLE.

But the big change will not be through the univeristy and schooling systems. The big change will be as work based leaners and learners not enrolled on any institutional course use technology to support their learning. Of course that will not be educational technology as such. It will be tools like Diigo or PBwiki, Twitter and WordPress. This does pose a question as to the future role of educational technology. Essentially the adoption of the PLE has passed educational technology by. The cutting edge of the so called educational technology community is no longer with the developers or systems administrators. It is the pedagogists, the teachers, the facilitators and the learners who are leading development. And that is as it should be.

It is the season of predictions for 2009. Here is mine – 2009 will be the year of Open Education. Seminars, workshops, lectures, courses – all available on line and for free. I am not sere I trust my  star-gazing ability – or my ability to predict technology development trends for that matter – so we are doing our best to make sure it comes true by organising a series of events ourselves.

Over the next few days I will be posting details of a whole series of different events. First up, here is the spring Open Seminar series being organised by the JISC Evolve network in collaboration with the German Educamp Network who are staging a series of conferences around Web2.0 social software and elearning. is organising the third EduCamp in Germany.

Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar Live

26 January 1900 CET, 1800 UK time – Dragons Den special – Learning and Multi user Virtual Environments

23 February 1900 CET, 1800 UK time – The reality of communities

March 2009 – time and date ot be announced – LIVE broadcast from JISC Emerge conference.

You can listen live to all the programmes by going to http://tinyurl.com/6df6ar in your web browser. This will open the live stream in your MP3 player of choice.

Emerging Mondays Seminars

The open online seminars will take place on the Elluminate platform. We will announce the address for the events shortly, together with the final line line up of presenters. Each seminar will feature tow short introductions with most time being given over to discussion.

PLEs and E-Portfolios – is this the future of education?
January, 19th 2009, 1900 CET, 1800 UK time. Click here for access to Elluminate.
Speakers: Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu
Moderators: Thomas Bernhardt and Marcel Kirchner

• What does a PLE look like?
• What is PLE? A technical concept or a pedagogic method?
• How can we use e-Portfolios and PLEs in practice?What is the difference between a PLE and an E-Portfolio?
• Is the PLE the future of education?

Careers and the Internet – how does Web 2.0 impact on our Online Reputation and Identity
February, 16th 2009 – 1900 CET, 1800 UK time. Click here for access to Elluminate.
Speakers: Steven Warburton, Kings College, Eduserve funded Rhizomes project
Moderators: Cristina Costa and Marcel Kirchner

• How can we use E-Portfolios and other tools for applying for jobs and building identities
• The risks and opportunities in developing a web identity
• Privacy 2.0

Enterprise 2.0 – the potential of Social Software for learning in enterprises
March, 16th 2009 – 1900 CET, 1800 UK time. Click here for access to Elluminate.
Speakers: Timothy Hall, University of Limerick, Ireland
Moderators: Cristina Costa and Steffen Büffel

• How is social software being used for learning in enterprises
• Can social software support communities of practice
• How can social software support informal learning

Edupunk – Free the educational system
April, 6th 2009 1900 CET, 1800 UK time
Speakers: Dr. Martin Ebner and Steven Wheeler, University of Plymouth
Moderators: Thomas Bernhardt, Marcel Kirchner and Cristina Costa

• Edupunk – hype or reality
• Does e-teaching need a pedagogical apprenticeship?
• Why and how far students should be involved in the developing process of courses?

ThoughtFest 09

5-6 March, Salford, Manchester, UK
Thought Fest is a two-day event being organized by Pontydysgu with the support of the JISC Evolve network and
the European Mature-IP project.

The event will bring together researchers in Technology Enhanced Learning in an open forum to debate the current issues surrounding educational technologies and discuss how and where research impacts on practice and where practice drives research.

Whilst there will be keynotes by Graham Attwell and Steven Warburton, Thought Fest is a user driven workshop and we welcome ideas for sessions, demontsrations activities. Accomodation and food for free – you juts have to pay for your travel.

More details here or sign up on this page.

Educamp
April 17th – 19th
Venue: Ilmenau, Thuringia, Germnay
What is the EduCamp all about?
The EduCamp-Network (http://educamp.mixxt.de/) is organising the third EduCamp in Germany. This will also be the first international EduCamp. The event will take place from the 17th to the 19th of April, 2009 in Ilmenau, Thuringia. Details of previous EduCamps can be found at http://educamp.mixxt.de.

There will be some initial structure for the programme, but after the panel discussion on Friday, the EduCamp will be organized as a barcamp. Sessions and workshops will be organised by participants at the beginning of the event. On Sunday the topic under discussion is “EduOpenSpace” (OpenSpace?). Participants will form clusters to discuss some of the related topics.

Topics
The issue of how we can use social software, such as weblogs, podcasts, wikis, micro-blogging, VoIP in education in schools, universities and companies is a subject attracting much interest. Developing connections to other people and joining learning networks is central to the Information society. Mulitple knowledge resources all access to the exchange of experiences and the construction of knowledge.

The last EduCamps meeting discussed ‘Teaching and Learning 2.0’. This meeting will continue those discussions.

EduCamp is an open event and everyone interested in welcome to attend. It will take place at the Humboldtbau at the Technical University of Ilmenau.

The main topics for the EduCamp are Corporate Learning 2.0 and e-learning in schools or universities. Other topics include the use of E-Portfolios, Digital games and virtual worlds in education. In line with the idea of barcamp, everyone is invited to propose their own topics for discussion.

Happy new year to you all. Its time for the first meeting of the year.

I am off to Athens early tomorrow for s workshop being organised as part of a European funded project looking at the training and practice of VET teachers and trainers.

Starting last October, the project is organising six workshops in different European countries, each bringing together practitioners and experts from 3-6 different countries to discuss research, practice and policy in the training and practice of VET teachers and trainers. Part of each workshop will focus on findings, conclusions and recommendations of previous work in this area but there will also be a focus on identifying and addressing new topics and major issues of concern.

The workshops are open to policy makers, researchers, experts and practitioners. We are trying to update the web site as we go to provide access to the outcomes of the different workshop activities. Following the Athens workshop this week, the next workshop will be in in Bonn in Germany on 22-23 January. It is open to participants from Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Interpretation may be available in English, German, Hungarian and Czech. Travel and accomodation costs are paid by the project. If you are interested in coming please contact Graham Attwell as soon as possible – graham10 @ mac.com.

There will probably be a further workshop in Bremen in March. It is not quite sorted out which countries will be included, but in all probability it will include Iceland, Romania, Netherlands and possibly one or two more. I will post details as soon as they are avaiable.

Last week I wrote an article about the controversial General Teaching Council of England proposed code of Conduct for teachers. Commentators had protested at what they saw as intrusion into the personal lives of teachers. Furthermore, there was a concern as to who was saying what was and what was not acceptable behaviour and how such a code might be used to suppress ideas seen by authorities as undesirable.

Recent events in London show the dangers. As reported in the Guardian newspaper a  Special Needs teachers, Adrian Swain, was dismissed a week before Christmas from St Paul’s Way, a comprehensive in Tower Hamlets, east London for refusing to stop wearing clothes which failed the school’s new dress code.

What were the offending clothes? Adrian Swain, who teaches Physical Education, came to work wearing track suit bottoms and trainers.

There is widespread suspicion that the real reason for sacking Adrian, is because he is secretary of the local teachers union, the National Union of Teachers.

The school justification for the enforcement of a dress code is that teachers should not wear anything that the students are not allowed to. And, for non UK readers of this blog, the UK persists in allowing schools to force students to wear school uniforms, even for very young children. When my stepdaughter was 7, I was summonsed to a meeting the her headteacher, who told me that she would no longer be allowed into school if she wore Doctor Martins shoes. The reason for the ban, said the head, was because wearing such shoes was hindering her learning!

As Foucault said prison is not unique. It is positioned within the disciplined society, the society of generalized surveillance in which we live. “What is so astonishing,” Foucault asked, “about the fact that our prisons resemble our factories, schools, military bases, and hospitals-all of which in turn resemble prisons?”

Commenting on the Swain case, Brian Lightman, former president of the Association of School and College Leaders, said many schools had dress codes for their teachers because staff were role models to their pupils. This begs the question of what sort of roles are being modelled, The sacking of Adrian Swain has no connection to his abilities as a teacher. It is all to do with reinforcing uniformity and maintaining the role of schools as an instrument of control. The proposed Code of Conduct for Teachers is designed for the same purposes. It should be stopped.