Some great presentations at Online Educa Berlin. And over the next ten days we will be bringing you some of the slides and videos. This presentation, by Cristina Costa looks at Digital Storytelling.
I am in a workshop at the ‘Alpine Rendezvous’ on “technology-enhanced learning in the context of technological, societal and cultural transformation.” Long words. More interesting stuff than it sounds – though I am struggling with some of the media theory. I am also trying to work out where the theory and practice match – if they do at all.
Anyway, my presentation here was based on work for the Mature-ip project around a Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment (WOMBLE). And I have focused on work based learning and the potential use of mobile devices. I will post the slides juts as soon as I have recorded an audio track to accompany them. Without that the slides will make little sense. I will also try to provide an overview of the workshop (although that is going to be hard).
For now, just a quick note about hardware and software on mobiles. We really do seem to be back in the grim days of the browser wars. A Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment would preferably run natively on an iPhone or android phone, or indeed a Symbian or Windows based machine.
The reality is that to develop applications for all the platforms will take too long and cost too much. Therefore we are looking at developing a browser based PLE, using server end and javascript applications.
I have my doubts that this will work. Handling browsers on mobiles is still a clunky experience compared to running native applications. But i see little other choice.
We urgently need standards for phone based applications. the present situation only provides more power to propriatary platforms and pllaication providers.
I’ve been participating in the Jisc on-line e-Learning conference this week, based on my video on ‘Do Institutions have a future‘. I’ will post later on the organisation and use of technology at the conference – although just to say here that I think it a great pity Jisc did not make this an open conference.
Anyway the discussion has swung back and forth looking at such issues as drivers and barriers to change, models of governance and democracy, resilience and change and the design of physical and on-line learning spaces. One interesting feature is the influence of the ecology movement both in raising the issue of energy resources as a driver for change and in borrowing ideas from the wider environmental movement as the basis for change in educational institutions.
I am particularly taken by idea sput forward by Fred Garnett on participatory education in a participatory democracy and the work of London Learning Lab on an Open Context Model of Learning – Transformational Pedagogy.
Here’s a quick contribution I have just made on one of the conference threads on ‘Are the barriers still too high for change?’
“Been in meetings all day so only just catching up on discussions. But issues seem to be a continuation of yesterday. A few thoughts – the student ‘voice’ hasn’t appeared here. and in driving change students will be important. Are the barriers too high. Well – not if we are talking about barriers to learning. those are coming down everyday as more and more high quality learning materials appear on the internet. I was at a friends house lat night where she had to kindness to let me watch the football on television. Being bored herself, she was playing or so I thought on her ipod touch. When I looked at what she was doing she was following a tutorial on Exel. However she was frustrated that Flash videos will not play on the ipod so I showed her ITunes U which has 200000 videos and podcasts freely available on line. That is not counting of course all the OERs appearing daily. And there are increasing numbers of free courses.
The question then is what is the role of the university. Is iTunes U and OERs a barrier to change in universities? A threat? If we have abundance of free resources how do universities react. Do they promote peer group learning using OERs? Or emphasise their role in accreditation. And if we move towards outcomes based learning will the traditional course model any longer hold sway. Or do we see universities as spaces for learning in the community linked organically to other community learning spaces in the way Fred seems to suggest.”
Are wiffys tweets with attitude?
Following on from 25 ways of using mobile phones for learning, I thought I might blogsquat on Graham’s blog and look at some of my favourite mobile apps.
Today I am being excited about Wiffiti. You can get yourself a free account (just Google it) then create a screen, load a picture, publish it and (subject to the permissions you have created) anyone can text a message or load an image (from phone or lap top which will appear on your screen. It’s a bit like Twittering in Cinemascope…
You can go to http://wiffiti.com/screens/12568 and add your own message to the screen above in real time through your browser or just Text @wif12568 + your message to 87884.
I like….
20 things you could use Wiffys for….
(is good because you have permanent record, and you can take questions in any order or group questions together to reply)
“will the person who put that great poster up on m-learning come and find Jen Hughes cos she’s really interested in a chat”
“Jen Hughes is outside the main door having a cigarette – will Graham come and find me”
“Jen Hughes is desperate to borrow a Mac adaptor for the projector”
“How many of you agree that….”
It’s anonymous so can increase confidence in contributing
You can run a brainstorm over an extended period not just for 10 mins in the classroom.
“one thing you liked about today’s lesson and one thing you didn’t”
It’s just like big screen public Twittering so wiffys are like tweets with attitude
“Post a photo by the end of the day representing ‘learning’ and vote on the best ones”
Tell a story, get kids to write their own endings….or build up a story from scratch. I’m currently loving the idea of non-sequential narrative ie synchronous rather than linear stories. Wiffiti is excellent as the posts fade in and out and are backgrounded and foregrounded constantly. Also helps kids get used to writing for web pages rater than ‘essays’.
“One key point from today’s lesson
“Post up an emoticon that tells me how you felt about school today”
“Tell me one thing you remember from the 60s or your favourite sporting moment”
(it has to be the Scott Gibbs try at Wembley when Wales beat England 32-31 in injury time)
“We are going to make a collection of screens on shapes / colours etc. This week use your phones to take pics of things which have 4 sides /red things etc”
“Use your computers to find some images of food that gives you energy and post them up”
On any subject under the sun – text anecdotes / memories, pictures – how about something easy like ‘our village’ to start off.
“If I were prime minister I would….”
Oops – almost forgot Graham’s contribution, which I really liked
Some of you may remember that in May I posted an order form for the EU Taccle project handbook on e-Learning – snappily entitled “Teachers Aids on Creating Content for Learning Environments.” Don’t be put off by the title – in my mind this is the best practical handbook I have seen yet about using Web @.0 and social software for teaching and learning. For those of you who did pre-order paper copies they should be with you shortly, although we may have to reduce some of the numbers on bulk orders. for those of you who did not order a copy – do not despair. the handbook is now available for free download from the Taccle site (although you will have to register on the site first). The handbook is available in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian and German languages! It is also licensed under a Creative Commons licence and you are free to adapt and remix the materials if you so wish. If you need any more persuasion before rushing to download your copy, the following excerpt is from the foreword.
“Information and Communication Technologies are being increasingly used to create richer learning environments. In all sectors of education from primary schools to adult education, in schools for pupils with special education needs and in colleges and universities, technologies are being used across the curriculum to enhance students’ experiences.
However, technology is not enough. The creation of high quality content is essential if the potential of ‘e-learning’ is to be realised in a way that stimulates and fosters Life Long Learning. It is important to train teachers how to design and develop their own content and generate learning materials that can help their own students and
can also be freely exchanged with others.
The European Commission Comenius programme funded Taccle project aims through training teachers to create e-learning materials and raising their awareness of e-learning in general, to help establish a culture of innovation in the schools in which they work.
This handbook has been produced by the Taccle project partners in five different European countries. It has been written by teachers for teachers and caters for those with only basic computer skills and limited technical support.
The handbook is geared to the needs of the classroom teacher but teacher trainers, ICT support staff and resource centre staff may find it useful too! It provides both practical support for
teachers who want a ‘hands on experience and also help and information for teachers who just want to find out about e-learning.
The handbook is designed to provide practical support for teachers to:
If you do not understand some of these terms do not worry. The handbook provides friendly step by step guidance about how to do it and explains the different terms along the way.
Of course it might seem a little strange and old fashioned producing a printed handbook about the use of new technologies. But, as Jenny Hughes says in her introduction to the handbook, we felt that the very teachers for whom this book is written are probably the group least likely to use or feel confident about using web-based materials. A book is comfortable and familiar and that is exactly how we would like teachers to feel about e-learning.
Technologies are changing very fast. When we originally applied for a grant from the European Commission, we anticipated the main focus of the handbook would be the use of Learning Management Systems – systems that help to organize and administer learning programs for students and store and organize learning materials. At the time, this seemed to be the most important technology for creating and managing content. But since then , we have seen an explosion in the use of social networking applications like blogs and wikis, as part of what has been called Web 2.0. These are tools which make it very easy for people to create and publish their own content in different forms – text, pictures, audio and video.
These technologies make it easy not just for teachers, but for students to produce materials themselves and are increasingly being used in the classroom mixing traditional teaching methods with some e-learning methods in what is called Blended Learning.
Therefore, we have shifted the main focus of the handbook to provide a hands on guide to the use of such tools in the classroom.”
Last Wednesday I was honoured to speak (via skype) at the launch of the New Media School in Bucharest. The launch took place in the Modern Art Museum who are a partner in the project. The New Media School is a fascinating initiative by the students union to promote social and collaborative learning. For me the most encouraging thing is how they plan to use social media for teaching and learning. Anyway, whilst we were waiting for the start of the meeting, I made a short interview with Gabi Solomon and Vlas Atansui who have been two of the prime movers behind the project. Congratulations to them and everyone else associated with this project. Below is a text Gabi sent me about the project.
New Media School
What?
The New Media School project is an initiative to support a community of practice of young students, responsible with communication in their organizations. The members of the community will be chosen for their interest and passion for web 2.0 and communication, and for the willingness to develop their skills in this regard. Their learning experiences, as far as the project is concerned, start with the real-life challenges they encounter while trying to develop communication and dialogue within and outside the organization, and ends with the changes they manage to implement while interacting with the New Media School community. Along the way, the project will facilitate a learning environment both on-line and offline, making use of a variety of tools like: wikis, a google group, googledocs, a social platform, twitter.
The project aims to empower 30 students who study in Bucharest to create multimedia content about their projects and their organizations and to promote it using new media tools in experimental/inovative ways. Our assumption is that today’s literacy goes beyond being able to read and write. Nowadays it’s all about being able to effectively communicate your ideas by crafting powerful messages using text, sound, music, image and graphics and then promoting your message using web2.0 platforms. We are also interested in better engaging students in the conversation about education by helping them to deliver high impact messages about the way they are learning and the learning opportunities that they value.
How?
For the next month we planned three meetings:
• the launching meeting (where we will have a discussion about the project and a “get-to-know” session for the members)
• a Web 2.0 workshop (where we will explain the tools we want to use and what you can achieve by using them)
• a video workshop (where we will have an expert on social campaigns talking about the concept of a video, how you film, how you cut a short movie)
Working in small teams over the course of the project, the participants will develop the skills needed for shooting, editing and publishing video clips related to their projects, their organization, education, non-formal and informal learning. In addition to the hands-on approach the participants will explore, together with trainers and guests (bloggers, communication experts, video editors and directors) new practical ways of delivering their mesages to other young people and to the world. They will be encouraged to link up with other educational initiatives – which include anything, from campaigns, conferences, trainings, other youth projects etc. – and use their new media skills to promote these types of non-formal education. The content produced will be also published on the project website and promoted on-line through the use of social media and established on-line publications.
The project is both a learning experiment in the innovative use of digital technologies as a form of self-expression, as well as a contribution to the creation of a free online resource of content generated by the learners themselves.
Which methods we plan to use?
Sharing Meetings
We believe that the motivation for learning comes firstly from our real needs and desires. During these meetings, the members will share their experiences and the challenges they’ve met in the organizations, looking up new ways of solving them and integrating their individual experiences in a broader context.
Training
The community will also grow with the help of experts who have a lot of knowledge about this domain and are willing to share it with us. We will invite trainers to facilitate the process of learning and by doing this we will add value to the process of sharing and collaborative learning.
Collaborative workshops
Sometimes we can learn something only by doing. The workshops we plan are learning events, where we learn by experimenting together communication techniques, where we develop challenges and we obtain unexpected results.
Social experiences
We learn best from and with our friends. We will include in the New Media School experience Time for knowing each other, for relaxing and having fun together. We like watching movies, seeing a theater play, cooking together or playing sports.
Access to mentoring and coaching experiences
Each and everyone of us enjoys meeting special persons, who are able to inspire and guide us, who help us find our own path and answer our questions. We invite those people to join our community and help us in the process of learning.
Learning log
Learning is something that we experience all the time, not only in the classroom or in training workshops. Sometimes we have no time to process the lessons learned from our experiences and that leaves room for forgetting. We will encourage the use of a learning log or of an individual portfolio for all our members. For example, they can use a blog where they would write about their experiences, they would reflect upon them, so they would enhance the learning process and they will have the record of their achievements
Blended learning
Usually, the answers that we find during our meetings spark new other questions. Because of that we will keep these ideas and questions alive after the meetings, on an online platform made of many social and collaborative tools.
We have been writing a lot about ideas on how mobile devices, and particularly phones might be used to support learning. But most of this work has been from a somewhat theoretical angle. Now Jenny Hughes has written a great guest blog on the practical work she has been doing on the use of mobiles in schools.
“I’ve been working with (primary and secondary teachers) on e-learning in the classroom – particularly the use of web 2.0 applications – as the roll out and dissemination of the TACCLE project. Part of this has been looking at the use of mobile phones as learning tools in schools.
There seems to be a lot of debate around the technology, the theoretical perspectives, the social dimension and so on but just at the moment the ‘doing’ is engaging me far more than the research. And as I’m always the first to complain about the practitioner – researcher divide, I thought maybe we should contribute by sharing some stuff we are experimenting with in the classroom.
What follows is some of the output from teachers. Firstly there has been a debate around the feasibility of using mobile telephones in schools; teachers from schools that have banned them outright, teachers from schools where they are allowed and teachers who are actually using them for learning generated a list of For-and-Against arguments. Secondly, there are some practical suggestions for using mobile devices (mainly phones), tried and tested and either contributed by teachers or trialed on the TACCLE course.
Arguments against allowing mobile phones in schools – for learning or social purposes
About using phones as learning tools –
Arguments in favour of allowing them and using them for learning
(We excluded I-Phones, Blackberries etc as teachers in this area said most pupils do not have them) –
Practical ideas for using phones for learning that teachers tried out
(NB these are ideas generated by teachers working in a formal learning environment. We are aware of the huge potential of mobile devices for informal learning but this was not in our brief!)
Firstly, a few ideas about using the phone itself – rather than using it as a communication device.
We tried making up jingles for a particular topic, key dates for a history test, a poem to be learned for a literature test, a foreign language phrase and lists of chemical elements in a particular group in the Periodic Table!
Some more general applications:
Plans for future events
Thanks Mr Belshaw http://teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk for these great ideas – he should be on everyone’s RSS together with his blog http://dougbelshaw.com/blog .”
On Friday, I wrote up a report based on notes from a focus group which i led on the possible uses of technology for supporting Careers Guidance, Advice and counselling. The session was with a group of young people, aged between 12 and 16 and forms part of a project in which I am participating.
There was little of surprise in most of the findings. All the participants used mobile devices (phones) for voice and text and half of them to access the internet. Most had at least one games console, all had access to he internet and home.
It was interesting to note that all had unmonitored access to the internet at home, yet in general supported restrictions on access at school, because they feared unregulated surfing would distract them for learning.
For on-line careers advice they all just used Google to find out details of different jobs. None accessed official careers services on-line. And they were sceptical about an extension of on-line services. They were very quick to say that any such services should not be at the cost of existing face to face service provision. That seems to be a problem to me. They instantly associated any extension of on-line services with cut backs in face to face provision. In other words, innovation is seen as a move to reduce services. Perhaps this is not surprising if you look at what has happened with industries like banks. But it is troubling that such young people should be so cynical.
Oh and yes, they were not keen on the idea of careers advice via Facebook. That is our space, they said.
For the last two days I have been moderating at the second on-line international confernce on innovation in training Practice. the conference, organised by the EU funded Network of Trainers in Europe, took place on the Elluminate platform and attracted some 70 participants from twenty or so countries.
The conference was seen as an experiment: whilst on-line conferences are becoming more common in the educational technology community, they are rare in wider professional areas like teaching and training. For many who attended it was their first experience of such an event and despite the occasional bandwidth glitch, most seemed happy with the event.
In contrast to the first conference, held last November and largely organised and moderated by Pontydysgu, other members of the network took an active role in organising this years conference and also moderated the different sessions. This was exemplified by the second day bilingual session from Spain, with a link up with a live audience from Madrid.
There were four main themes for the conference:
In his presentation on Creativity as a starting point of Innovation process, Stanislav Nemerzitski, from Estonia expored the idea of innovation and what it means within our society. Individual creativity, he said, was linked to societal ideas of innovation.
throughout the conference, presenters provided exampales of innovation. What made this conference special for me was the strong focus on practice, rather than systems. however, most of the examples were based on projects or initiatives, giving rise to the question of how such innovation could be sustained and how it could be mainstreamed through institutions. One presenter, Anna Grabner from Austria suggested that it was through conferences such as this that innovations in practice could be shared and thus transferred and adopted to new working situations. She saw processes of institutional change as coming from a boottom up direction, based on innovatory practice.
The conference once more highlighted the importance of teachers and trainers. Not only were more and more people involved in training as some part of their work practice, but the roles of trainers were becoming broader and in many cases involved some degree of specialisation. This poses questions about the initial training of teachers and trainers and about opportunities for professional development.
Although the first afternoon of the conference was devoted to innovation in the use of Information and communication technology, the theme of technology and learning ran through the conference. It seemed apparent that the use of technology is now impacting on training practice – particularly through social networking and Web 2.0 technologies.
In parallel many contributions focused on the move towards more work based learning. Work based learning was often being driven by the rate of change in products and processes and in work organisation. Within such a focus informal learning was also receiving more attention. However, work based learning also required attention to be paid to the design of work and of the workplace in order to facilitate learning.
The role of research was another ongoing point of discussion. Research was seen as important in theorising innovation in practice in order to allow their sustainability and transfer. This required new tools to help practitioners and researchers gain a deeper understanding of processes and outcomes of innovation.
In terms of the skills and knowledge required by trainers pedagogic skills (in tecahing and learning) and a knowledge of the labour market were highlighted. many of the presentations highlighted the need for professional development and the training of trainers, especially in the area of new technology. this raises the issue of who such professional development can be organised. it was suggested that networking is important in this regard through the development of Personal Learning Networks. Indeed going further, it might be that involvement in innovation and projects might be the basis for Professional Development. In her keynote presentation, Lilia Efimova from the Netherlands looked at how blogging could support reflection and learning. Reflection in innovation could possibly provide support for teachers and trainers to take part in further innovation, thus developing an ecology of sustainable innovation in practice.
If you missed the confernce and would like to catch up on the sessions, the first day recordings are already available on the Network of Trainers in Europe website. And the slides from the seventeen presentations can be found on the slideshare embed at the top of this post. Check them out – there is some good stuff there.
The
I have been invited to particpate in a workshop on ‘Technology Enhanced Learning in the context of technological, societal and cultural transformation‘, being sponsored by the EU funded Stellar Network of Excellence at Garnisch in Germany at teh start of December. I am contributing to a session on Work Based Learning and have written a short position paper on the subject, a draft of which is reproduced below. I have to say I am very much impressed with the work of the London Mobile Learning Group and my paper attempts to look at the idea we have developed for a Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment (WOMBLE) through the Mature-IP project in the light of their framework for a socio-cultural ecology for mobile learning.
1. A socio-cultural ecology for learning
In his paper, The socio-cultural ecological approach to mobile learning: an overview, Norbert Pachler characterises current changes in the world from a perspective on mobile learning as “akin to social, cultural, media related, technological and semiotic transformation”. The world around us, he says, is “marked by fluidity, provisionality and instability, where responsibilities for meaning making as well as others such as risk-taking have been transferred from the state and institutions to the individual, who has become a consumer of services provided by a global market”. The paper, based on conceptual and theoretical work being undertaken by the London Mobile Learning group, proposes a socio-cultural ecology for learning, based on the “new possibilities for the relationship between learning in and across formal and formal contexts, between the classroom and other sites of learning.” Such an ecology is based on the interplay between agency, cultural practices and structures.
In this short discussion paper, we will consider the possibilities for such an ecology in the context of work-based learning. In particular, we will examine work being undertaken through the EU funded Mature-IP project to research and develop the use of a Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment (Womble) to support learning and knowledge maturing within organisations.
2. Work-based Learning and Technology
Although it is hard to find reliable quantitative data, it would appear that there has been a steady increase in work-based learning in most countries. This may be due to a number of reasons: probably foremost in this is the pressures for lifelong learning die to technological change and changing products, work processes and occupational profiles. Work-based learning is seen as more efficient and effective and facilitates situated learning. The move towards work-based learning has been accompanied in many countries by a revival in apprenticeship training. It has also been accompanied by a spread of the training function (Attwell and Baumgartl (eds.), 2008), with increasing numbers of workers taking some responsibility for training as part of their job.
The move towards increased work-based training has also been accompanied by the widespread us of Technology Enhanced Learning, at least in larger companies. However, this has not been unproblematic. Technology Enhanced Learning may be very effective where the work processes themselves involve the use of computers. It is also possible to develop advanced simulations of work processes; however such applications are complex and expensive to develop. More commonly, in the classical sense of the dual system, formal Technology Enhanced Learning has been used to support the theoretical side of vocational learning, with practical learning taking place through work-based practice (with greater or lesser face to face support). Given economies of scale, Technology Enhanced Learning has made most impact in vocational learning in those areas with a broad occupational application such as management, sales and ICT. In a previous paper I suggested that the development of technology for learning has been shaped by an educational paradigm, based on an industrial model of schooling developed to meet the needs and forms of a particular phase of capitalist and industrial development and that this paradigm is now becoming dysfunctional. Friesen and Hug 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.
Research suggests there has been little take up of formal Technology Enhanced Learning in the Small and Medium Enterprises which comprise the greatest growth area in many economies (Attwell (ed.), 2004). However the research, undertaken through an EU funded project into the use of ICT for learning in Small and Medium Enterprises, found the widespread everyday use of internet technologies for informal learning, utilizing a wide range of business and social software applications. This finding is confirmed by a recent study on the adoption of social networking in the workplace and Enterprise 2.0 (Oliver Young G (2009). The study found almost two-thirds of those responding (65%) said that social networks had increased either their efficiency at work, or the efficiency of their colleagues. 63% of respondents who said that using them had enabled them to do something that they hadn’t been able to do before
Of course such studies beg the question of the nature and purpose of the use of social software in the workplace. The findings of the ICT and SME project, which was based on 106 case studies in six European countries focused on the use of technologies for informal learning. The study suggested that although social software was used for information seeking and for social and communication purposes it was also being widely used for informal learning. In such a context:
However, it is important to note that the technology was not being used for formal learning, nor in the most part was it for following a traditionally curriculum or academic body of knowledge.
Instead business applications and social and networking software were being used to develop what has been described as Work Process Knowledge (Boreham, N. Samurçay, R. and Fischer, M. 2002).
The concept of Work Process Knowledge emphasises the relevance of practice in the workplace and is related to concepts of competence and qualification that stress the idea that learning processes not only include cognitive, but also affective, personal and social factors. They include the relevance of such non-cognitive and affective-social factors for the acquisition and use of work process knowledge in practical action. Work often takes place, and is carried out, in different circumstances and contexts. Therefore, it is necessary for the individual to acquire and demonstrate a certain capacity to reflect and act on the task (system) and the wider work environment in order to adapt, act and shape it. Such competence is captured in the notion of “developmental competence” (Ellstroem PE, 1997) and includes ‘the idea of social shaping of work and technology as a principle of vocational education and training’ (Heidegger, G., Rauner F., 1997). Work process knowledge embraces ‘developmental competence’, the developmental perspective emphasising that individuals have the capacity to reflect and act upon the environment and thereby forming or shaping it. In using technologies to develop such work process knowledge, individuals are also shaping or appropriating technologies, often developed or designed for different purposes, for social learning.
3. Knowledge Maturing, Personal Learning Environments and Wombles
MATURE is a large-scale integrating project (IP), co-funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). It runs from April 2008 to March 2012. The Mature-IP aims to research, develop and test Personal Learning and Maturing Environments (PLME) and Organisational Learning and Maturing Environments (OLME) in promote the agility of organisations. Agility requires that companies and their employees together and mutually dependently learn and develop their competencies efficiently in order to improve productivity of knowledge work. The aim is to leverage the intrinsic motivation of employees to engage in collaborative learning activities, and combine it with a new form of organisational guidance. For that purpose, MATURE conceives individual learning processes to be interlinked (the output of a learning process is input to others) in a knowledge-maturing process in which knowledge changes in nature. This knowledge can take the form of classical content in varying degrees of maturity, but also involves tasks and processes or semantic structures. The goal of MATURE is to understand this maturing process better, based on empirical studies, and to build tools and services to reduce maturing barriers.
The Mature-IP project has undertaken a series of studies looking at learning and knowledge maturing processes within organisations. Based on this work, in year 2 of the project, it is undertaking a series of five Design Projects, developing and testing prototypes of technology based applications to support knowledge maturing within these organisations. One of these projects, the Work Oriented MoBile Learning Environment (Womble), is designed to enable workers to appropriate the mobile phone as a Personal Learning Maturing Environment (PLME) and to support contextualised Work-based Learning, problem-solving, interaction and knowledge maturing via a user owned, mobile PLE.
The design study/demonstrator includes support for structured learning dialogue frameworks, with a social software ‘substrate’ and multi- user / multi-media spaces that will provide workers with the ability to collaborate with co-workers. At the most basic level, Womble services will, for example, allow workers to tag fellow work colleagues (contacts); when a problem arises this service will enable collaborative problem solving. At a more advanced stage a ‘lite’ dialogue game service will be linked to the tagging of personal competencies to scaffold workers in their active collaboration and ‘on the spot’ problem solving.
4. The Womble and a socio-cultural ecology for learning
The conceptual framework proposed by Norbert Pachler and the London Mobile Learning Group (LMLG) proposes a non-hierarchal model based on the interaction between agency, cultural practices and structures. In the penultimate section of this discussion document, we examine how the deign of the Womble matches the framework proposed by the LMLG.
4.1 Agency
Agency is seen by Pachler as “the capacity to deal with and to impact on socio cultural structures and established cultural practices” and “to construct one’s life-world and to use media for meaning making…..”
The aim of the Womble is to develop a “participatory culture” in the workplace including ludic forms of problem solving, identity construction, multitasking, “distributed cognition,” and “transmedial navigation” (Jenkins at al, 2006). It is designed to scaffold developmental competence through sense and meaning making in a shared communicative environment, though exploring, questioning and transcending traditional work structures. Situatedness and proximity are key to such an exploration, the ability to seek, capture store, question and reflect on information, in day to day practice. This the use of the Womble for meaning making goes beyond the exploration of formal bodies of expert knowledge to question manifestations of cultural practice within communities.
A further aspect of agency is the ability to shape the form of the Womble as a user configurable and open set of tools. Wild, Mödritscher and Sigurdarson (2008)suggest that “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.” They go on to say: “Considering the learning environment not only a condition for but also an outcome of learning, moves the learning environment further away from being a monolithic platform which is personalisable or customisable by learners (‘easy to use’) and heading towards providing an open set of learning tools, an unrestricted number of actors, and an open corpus of artefacts, either pre-existing or created by the learning process – freely combinable and utilisable by learners within their learning activities (‘easy to develop’). ”
4.2 Cultural Practices
By cultural practices, Pachler, refers to “routines in stable situations both in terms of media use on everyday life as well as the pedagogical practices around teaching and learning in the context of educational institutions.” He points out that the multimodality of mobile and media technologies names: them more difficult to map onto traditional curricula and puts pressure on established canons.”
One key idea behind the Womble is that Personal Learning Environments are owned by the user.But at the same time, the Womble tools are designed to make it easy to for users to configure their environment.
Critically, the pedagogy, if it can be described as such is based on shared practice with learners themselves actively developing learning materials and sharing them through reflection on their context. Whilst such materials might be said to be micro learning materials, the semantic aggregation of those materials, together with advanced search capabilities should provide a holistic organisational learning base. As such the Womble is designed to support , the recognition of context as a key factor in work related and social learning processes. Cook (2009) proposes that new digital media can be regarded as cultural resources for learning and can enable the bringing together of the informal learning contexts in the world outside the institution, or in this case the organisation, with those processes and contexts that are valued inside the intuitions. Cook also suggests that informal learning in social networks is not enabling the “critical, creative and reflective learning that we value in formal education.” Instead he argues for the scaffolding of learning in a new context for learning through learning activities that take place outside formal institutions and on platforms, such as the Womble, that are selected or configured by learners. Such ‘episodic learning’ is based on Vygotskys idea of ‘zones of proximal development’. However, we would agree with Pachler, that in the need for a departure from the terminology associated with Vygostsky’s work. Rather than viewing developmental zones as mainly temporal within a life course, they should be seen as situative contexts within work practice, which both allow the production of user generated content in response to such a situation and reflection on content generated by other users in such situations.
In this context digital artefacts can assist in sense making through the process of bricolage (Levi Strauss, 1966) The concept of bricolage refers to the rearrangement and juxtaposition of previously unconnected signifying objects to produce new meanings in fresh contexts. Bricolage involves a process of resignification by which cultural signs with established meanings are re-organised into new codes of meaning.
This approach to work-based learning through the use mobile devices and services such as the Womble is the relation between work-based activities and personal lives. This goes beyond worklife balance, or even digital identities. It involves agreed and shared understandings of what activities and digital practices are acceptable in work time and work spaces, ethical considerations especially in with regard to work practice involving clients and how private use of social media impacts on work relations.
4.3 Socio cultural and technological structures
Of course critical to such an approach to situated learning, is the ability to utilize mobile devices within work situations. However for this to take place requires more than just the appropriation of user owned technologies (indeed our initial studies suggest resistance to user owned mobile devices being used for work purposes unless funded by the employer. More important is the expropriation of work processes and technologies used for monitoring and recording work processes as the basis for learning. Indeed one aim of the mature project is to overcome the divide between the use of technologies of learning and for knowledge management. Without the ability to transcend these technologies sit is unlikely that the Womble or any other PLE based applications will gain traction and usage. The use of such a learning and knowledge sharing platform has to take place without imposing a substantial additional work and attention burden on the user.
5. Organisational and developmental learning
The use of mobile devices to support situated work-based learning is base don the idea that appropriation of both technologies and processes will lead to the formation of developmental competences based on intrinsic motivation. Barry Nyhan (Nyhan et al, 2003) states “one of the keys to promoting learning organisations is to organise work in such a way that it is promotes human development. In other words it is about building workplace environments in which people are motivated to think for themselves so that through their everyday work experiences, they develop new competences and gain new understanding and insights. Thus, people are learning from their work – they are learning as they work.”
He goes on to say: “This entails building organisations in which people have what can be termed‘ developmental work tasks’. These are challenging tasks that ‘compel’ people to stretch their potential and muster up new resources to manage demanding situations. In carrying out ‘developmental work tasks’ people are ‘developing themselves’ and are thus engaged in what can be termed ‘developmental learning’.”
This notion of developmental competences and learning, using mobile devices and environments such as the Womble, would appear as a way of building on the conceptual framework for a social cultural ecological approach advanced by the London Mobile Learning group.
6. Questions
References
Attwell G and Baumgartl B. (ed.), 2008, Creating Learning Spaces:Training and Professional Development for Trainers, Vienna, Navreme
Attwell G.(ed) 2007, Searching, Lurking and the Zone of Proximal Development, e-learning in Small and Medium enterprises in Europe, Vienna, Navreme
Boreham, N. Samurçay, R. and Fischer, M. (2002) Work Process Knowledge, Routledge
Boushel M, Fawcett M, Selwyn J. (2000), Focus on Early Childhood: Principles and Realities, Blackwell Publishing
Cook, J. (2009), Scaffolding the Mobile wave, Presnetation at the Jisc Institutional Impact programme online meeting, 09/07/09, http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook/cook-1697245?src=embed, accessed 10 July 2009
Ellstroem P. E. (1997) The many meanings of occupational competence and qualifications, In Brown, A (ed.) Promoting Vocational Education and Training: European Perspectives,University of Tampere Press, Tampere
Friesen N and Hug T (2009), The Mediatic Turn: Exploring Concepts for Media Pedagogy
Heidegger, G., Rauner F. (1997): Vocational Education in Need of Reform, Institut Technik und Bildung, Bremen
Jenkins, H., Purushotoma, R., Clinton, K.A., Weigel, M., and Robison, A. J. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. White paper co-written for the MacArthur Foundation. Accessed July 14, 2008 from: http://www.projectnml.org/files/working/NMLWhitePaper.pdf
Levi Strauss C. (1966). The savage mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [first published in 1962]
McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Nyhan, B et al (2003). Facing up to the learning organisation challenge. Vol. I. Thessaloniki, CEDEFOP,
Oliver Young G (2009), Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 to 2013, Forrester
Pachler (forthcoming) The Socio-cultural approach to mobile learning: an overview
Wild F. Mödritscher F. and Sigurdarson S., (2008), Designing for Change: Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments, elearning papers, http://www.elearningeuropa.info/out/?doc_id=15055&rsr_id=15972, accessed 2 September, 2008
Cyborg patented?
Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a “conversational chatbot of a specific person” created from images, recordings, participation in social networks, emails, letters, etc., coupled with the possible generation of a 2D or 3D model of the person.
Racial bias in algorithms
From the UK Open Data Institute’s Week in Data newsletter
This week, Twitter apologised for racial bias within its image-cropping algorithm. The feature is designed to automatically crop images to highlight focal points – including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isn’t the only platform struggling with its algorithm – YouTube has also announced plans to bring back higher levels of human moderation for removing content, after its AI-centred approach resulted in over-censorship, with videos being removed at far higher rates than with human moderators.
Gap between rich and poor university students widest for 12 years
Via The Canary.
The gap between poor students and their more affluent peers attending university has widened to its largest point for 12 years, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).
Better-off pupils are significantly more likely to go to university than their more disadvantaged peers. And the gap between the two groups – 18.8 percentage points – is the widest it’s been since 2006/07.
The latest statistics show that 26.3% of pupils eligible for FSMs went on to university in 2018/19, compared with 45.1% of those who did not receive free meals. Only 12.7% of white British males who were eligible for FSMs went to university by the age of 19. The progression rate has fallen slightly for the first time since 2011/12, according to the DfE analysis.
Quality Training
From Raconteur. A recent report by global learning consultancy Kineo examined the learning intentions of 8,000 employees across 13 different industries. It found a huge gap between the quality of training offered and the needs of employees. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they , with only 16 per cent of employees finding the learning programmes offered by their employers effective.
Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
Join our Sounds of the Bazaar Facebook goup. Just click on the logo above.
We will be at Online Educa Berlin 2015. See the info above. The stream URL to play in your application is Stream URL or go to our new stream webpage here SoB Stream Page.
