The Pontydysgu Polish language Paradygmat blog has undergone a facelift. Two young researchers – Ilona Buchem and Joanna Wild have launched Paradygmat 2.0. Ilona and Joanna got to know each other through the first incarnation of Paradygmat! Joanna commented on Ilona’s blogposts and they soon discovered that there is much they have in common. Ilona works as a researcher in Berlin (research project Mediencommunity 2.0)  in the area of e-learning 2.0 and learning with social media in online communities. She is interested in how Web 2.0 tools can be used to enable more learner-driven, personalized, socially connected, work embedded and sustainable learning. Joanna works at the Centre for Social Innovation – ZSI in Vienna. Her scientific focus is on pedagogical issues of technology-enhanced learning for education and training, especially on aspects related to systematic planning for learning, use of Personal Learning Environments in formal and informal learning settings, and support planning for the acquisition of rich professional competences and literacies including abilities for self-regulation, collaboration, and networked learning.

Their collaboration is a good example of how Social Media can bring people together! Ilona & Joanna have started their first series of blogposts in Polish with the topic of Personal Learning Environments. They have introduced this topic with definitions of theories and best practice discussions about applications in education and experiment with new formats of blogging in duet, such as interviews, dialogs and collaborative writing. They then want to go on and discover other interesting issues about how Social Media changes education. Their goal is to connect with the Polish-speaking research community and sparkle some innovative ideas about the future of education.

In October this year we are organising a one week course in Belgium. The tutors will be Graham Attwell and Jenny Hughes are tutors on a one week course being held in Belgium in October on the use of Web 2.0 and social software for learning. It course intended to be learner centred and hands on, developing and building on participants existing and future practice in this area.

The course costs 1300 Euro (675 Euro for full board accommodation plus 625 Euro for tuition and course materials). However for both participation fee and travel expenses to Belgium, participants from Europe can request a grant from the European Commission Life Long Learnming programme National Agency in your country, which will cover all costs.

You can find the address of your national agency here. You can also find out more details about the course on the Socrates course database – address to follow shortly. The deadline for applications is 30 April.

For more information contact Jens Vermeersch Tel.: +32 2 7909598 jens [dot] vermeersch [at] g-o [dot] be or register your interest on this Google form.

The 6th Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning will take place from Monday, 7th June 2010 to Friday 11th June 2010in Ohrid, Macedonia..
The summer school aims to encourage participants to adopt a critical stance in thinking about the role of technologies in providing opportunities for learners and the potential of these opportunities in terms of learning. Work will centre on three research “Grand Challenges”:

• Connecting learners
• Orchestrating learning
• Contextualising learning environments.

According to the Summer School web site “The summer school provides a learning environment where participants get opportunities to: develop their research skills; increase their knowledge base; collaborate with others in their own and complementary research areas; engage in debate; have access to experts in the field; and discuss their own work.

The call for participation can be found on the web site and the application deadline has been extended to April 9. Grants are available for post graduate students wishing to take part.

The deadline for s submissions for the PLE conference being held in Barcelona on 8 and  9 July this year is fast approaching was last Friday March 26. I am delighted to say we received 53 submissions – well in excess of our expectations.

Nevertheless we have decided to provide a two week extension for submissions. The first reason is that we had a number of people approach us asking for a little more time. In addition although the response to the call for papers is excellent we would like to encourage more workshop, demonstration and post proposals.

Full details can be found on the PLE conference website.

The deadline for submissions for the PLE conference being held in Barcelona on 8 and  9 July this year is fast approaching. Abstracts should be submitted by March 26. Full derails can be found on the PLE conference website.

The PLE Conference is intended to produce a space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experience and research around the development and implementation of PLEs including the design of environments, sociological and educational issues and their effectiveness and desirability as (informal) learning spaces.

Whilst the conference includes a traditional research paper strand, the conference organisers also encourage proposals for sessions in different formats including workshops, posters, debates, cafe sessions, hands on sessions and demonstrations. The conference will also provide opportunities for unconferencing events, including the provision of spaces for informal meetings and discussions.

As well as the face to face sessions, the conference will be supported by a variety of different online spaces.

Selected papers will be published by the International Virtual and Personal Learning Environments Journal.”

We were recently approached by an organisation looking to develop a project on webquests. did we have any experience of using, web quests they wanted to know. And where could they find documentation of our work? As in so many things, we have been working on webquests but have never properly documented it. In particular we have been looking at how to enhance webquests through the sue of social software and Web 2.0 tools. And the subject of webquests is one of the main research topics for Pontydysgu blogger Maria Perifanou. So working with Maria we have developed a  wiki page on webquests. It includes presentations, examples and references. Some of the material is in English, some in Italian.

It took us some time to unearth a copy of Maria’s popular presentation at last years Thoughfest event. But we finally found it and are happy to feature it on this page.

If anyone would like to add to the wiki please email us and we will give you permissions.

We would like to welcome Ilona Buchem to Pontydysgu blogs. Ilona’s Polish language blog is called ‘Paradygmat’. Paradygmat, she explains, “means paradigm and I hope that the Latin origin makes this word sound familiar to a broader audience.

Based on the approach of Thomas Kuhn, the term paradigm can be seen as a set of practices, such as methods of observation and interpretation, that define a scientific discipline during a particular period of time. A paradigm shift may occur when shortcomings of the basic assumptions in the prevailing paradigm build up and can no longer be ignored. The existing paradigm is enlarged and frontiers of knowledge and methods are pushed forward. In this sense paradigm shift refers to a major change in certain thought-patterns. So the idea is write and discuss about changes and trends in educational sciences and education research with the focus on ICT-based learning and Social Media.

I would like to focus on how educational sciences are shifting towards so-called “post-normal science” with more openness, interdisciplinarity, exchange, debating, incorporating multiple viewpoints, stronger interactions with practice etc.”

We hope you will enjoy reading and engaging with Ilona’s ideas. Whilst many of you may not read Polish, we have provided a link to Google translate on the blog page.

Ok – nothing dramatic. But we are slowly adding to the functionality and features on Wales Wide Web.

Firstly we have updated our PB wiki – accessible through the badge on the right hand side of this page. We are using the wiki to record both work in progress about different themes and ideas and about projects we are working on. We hope the wiki will prove especially useful for those wanting access to source materials around particular topics.

We have also used the Goggle API to provide access to Google translate fort those unable to read Maria’s blog in Greek language. OK – Google translate isn’t perfect. But it does provide a good overview of her blog articles in different languages.

Jo is working at adding easy access to academic papers produced by members of the Pontydysgu team. We set out to do this once before using the BIBTEX standard through CiteULike, However, in practice this turned out too unwieldy. After a lot of thought we have decided to use Scribd. We are planning to embed them on the publications page of the site. In the meantime if you can’t wait you can search for Graham Attwell on Scribd (more papers to go up in the next few days).

And, finally, we are embarking on a long overdue redesign of our projects pages. Pontydysgu takes part in many projects. Our previous page design was not really fit for purpose and we are redesigning the pages, dividing the projects into current and completed past work.

If you have suggestions for how we can further improve the site please do leave us a message.

We live in a multi cultural and multilingual community. Yet all too often, educational technologists tend to assume the world speaks just English. Witness the Edublog awards whcih as far as I can remember featured just one non English language blog.

We are hoping to develop Pontydysgu blogs as a forum for innovative and exciting thinking over the next year. And we hope to reflect the diversity fo the community we live in. to that end we are delighted to welcome Maria Perifanou to Pontydysgu blogs. Her blog – appropriately named Dialogos – will be in Greek language, although she will write the occasional English language entry.

Its that time of the year again and its the ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN conference on 2-4 December. Over 2000 educational technologists in one conference. Presentations, demonstrations, exhibitions, parties and more. Can’t afford the conference fee? Can’t get away from the classroom? Don’t worry – we will be there to bring you three special live interent radio programmes from Sounds of the Bazaar. We will be doing our very best to bring you the views of leadings peakers, refelctions on the latest trends and of course we will be speaking to particpants.

The programmes will go out at the following times:

• Wednesday  2 December 1600 – 1640 Central European time, 1500 – 1540 UK
• Thursday 3 December 1100 – 11.40 Central European time, 1000 – 1040 UK
• Friday 4 December 1100 – 11.40 Central European time, 1000 – 1040 UK

To listen to the programmes go to http://radio.jiscemerge.org.uk:80/Emerge.m3u This will open the LIVE radio stream in your MP3 player of choice. And Cristina Costa will be waiting in our chatroom – address  to be abbounced for your ideas and comments.

If you do have the good luck to be at Educa Online Berlin, then come and join in. We will be broadcasting from next to the main bar (where else!). And we would like to invite all our friends – new and old – to meet up with us on Wednesday 2nd in the bar of the SORAT Hotel Ambassador Berlin (Bayreuther Straße 42) – just ten minutes from the conference centre – map here.

Are you interested in the potential of LIVE internet radio? Would you like to find out how we produce the programme? Want to know more about our equipment? Would you like to start your own channel sharing our bandwidth? Or would you be interested in working with us on a project? Then come and join us in the main bar of the Hotel Intercontinental (the conference venue) at 1900 on Thursday 3 December. We’d love to meet you.