The reviews have been released for the Alt-C2009 conference. I has two proposals for the conference. I was slightly irritated by the rejection of the workshop proposal I submitted along with Steven Warburton on Digital Identities. It was not, clear, said the reviewer, what would be the outcome for the participant. Hm…seemed clear enough to me. The workshop would allow them to explore their own digital identity and to consider the implications for tecahing and learning. Does that sound clear enough to you? One of the problems, I feel, is that workshops are very different to conference paper or symposium presentations. Or they should be. And all to often standard confernce submission forms do not take this into account, neither do reviewers. And do reviewers really understand how to structure a workshop? Anyway enough of the moaning.

I am very happy that the sceond proposal, submitted by James Clay along with Steve Wheeler (hi Steve – good to see you are up and twottering again) was successful. This one is entiltled “The VLE is Dead”.

The abstract goes like this. The future success of e-learning depends on appropriate selection o
tools and services. This symposium will propose that the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) as an institutional tool is dead, no more, defunct, expired.

The first panel member will argue that many VLEs are not fit for purpose, and masquerade as solutions for the management of online learning. Some are little more than glorified e-mail systems. Others are overpriced aggregations of web tools that can be obtained for
free on the web.

The second member of the panel believes that the VLE is dead and that the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is the solution to the needs of diverse learners. PLEs provide opportunities that go beyond the VLE, offering users the ability to develop their own spaces in which to reflect on their learning.?

The third panel member, an advocate of web 2.0, however believes that the VLE is not yet dead as a concept, but can be the starting point of a learning journey involving multiple tools.

The fourth panel member argues for the concept of the institutional VLE as essentially sound. His position is that VLEs provide a stable, reliable, self-contained and safe environment in which all teaching and learning activities can be conducted.

Should be lots of fun.

And of course along with AltC goes FAlt09 – the Alt conference fringe. As last year FAlt will be organising a particpatory, open and creative fringe to the conference. If you have ideas just mosey along to the FAlt wiki and no doubt something will start happening there soon.

I’m in Karlsruhe in Germany at a three and a half day meeting of the European Mature project. The project is ambitious and brings together many partners from different countries. It also brings tother knowledge managements pecialists and computer scientits as well as eductional technicans. I can’t say I awlays understand what is being talked about – at the moment the talk about core ontologies for interlinking a knowledge bus and semantic wiki is a little over my head.

The MATURE project is examining knowledge maturing processes and developing and testing technology based tools to support those processes. The project is based on the idea that the agility of organizations has become the critical success factor for economic competitiveness. Agility requires that companies and their employees together learn and develop their competencies efficiently in order to improve productivity of knowledge work. Failures of organisation-driven approaches to technology-enhanced learning and the success of community-driven approaches in the spirit of Web 2.0 have shown that for that agility we need to leverage the intrinsic motivation of employees to engage in collaborative learning activities, and combine it with a new form of organisational support. 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.

One of the key outcomes of the MATURE project is to develop and test a Personal Learning and Maturing Environment (PLME), embedded into the working environment, enabling and encouraging the individual to engage in maturing activities within communities (both established and newly formed) and beyond. Whilst the idea of knowledge maturing is a little difficult to work with, the idea that a Personal Learning Environment (and learning) can be embedded in evereyday work processes greatly interests me.

Thsi is a lits of what we think the PLME shoudl be able to do:

1. The PLME needs to support interchange and discourses with both formal and informal networks as well as the emergence of these in order to support sociofact maturing. These networks may form part of a wider organisational learning and knowledge maturing environment.
2. The PLME should facilitate users in supporting the learning of others as a significant form of skills and knowledge development.
3. The PLME should provide functionality to facilitate communities in developing collaboratively the tools, documents, routines, vocabulary and symbols that can carry the accumulated knowledge of the community.
4. The PLME needs to support active and dynamic knowledge development processes through the socialization, externalization, combination and internalization of knowledge
5. The PLME should support information and knowledge workers in the requirement to use different sources to obtain current and accurate information, to extracting and extrapolate key data and to interpret and manipulating that data in order to provide a service.
6. The PLME should allow for the collection of loosely coupled tools, both to provide flexibility for the different needs of different contexts and communities and also to facilitate agile development to respond to needs as a when they emerge.

I am a big fan of Mr. Downes. Usually I agree with what he says. But I think Stephen has called this one wrongly. In a comment in OL Daily on my post on last weeks open seminar on Edupunk Stephen says:

“In the 1980s, punk was replaced with what became known as New Wave. New Wave was a lot like punk, except that the artists were so dirty, untrustworthy, and disreputable. It represented, to many, the co-opetion [sic] of this movement. So when I read “Martin is seeking to open up the VLE and apply the ideas of edupunk in an institutional context [and not as] as subversive or a challenge to the establishment but rather as a way of enhancing the teaching and learning environment,” I want to call it N-Ed Wave or some such thing. Talking Heads. Human League. Soft Cell. Oh gawd. Say it ain’t so.”

I am not convinced about the movement from punk to New Wave. But as I said in my original article, we need to establish edupunk as having a meaning in its own right. The music analogy is getting stretched and has limited further purchase.

But coming back to Stephen’s comments about what Martin Ebner is doing, I disagree. Edupunk is about doing it yourself, about opening up educational technology to the users. And that can take many forms of activity. In a previous Evolve seminar on Personal Learning environments. In a CETIS presentation on Personal Learning and Web 2.0, Scott Wilson acknowledged the challenges posed by Web 2.0 to institutions. They could he siad, ignore, co-opt through embracing and extending or could invert though contributing and extending. Institutions should move:

• From hosting to consultancy (HE no longer an ISP or corporate IT provider)
• From closed to open ethos: on content, systems, processes
• Adding value to the Internet, not duplicating functionality with added control mechanisms

Individuals could contribute:

• Our information – data, research, publications, content via open web APIs
• Our expertise
• Our offerings and products
• Our role as facilitators, guides, and trusted source

Martin Ebner is working within Graz University to contribute and extend the use of Web 2.0 for learning . And for me that is certainly within the Edupunk ‘tradition’. In a great post entitled ‘Learning to Love the term Edupunk‘, Frances Bell says she realises that that she has “missed a dimension that Chris Sessums captures in his response to a blog post on a previous Edupunk sessions

“Edupunk embodies this notion of educators as artists, those who intentionally trace and explore traditional boundaries and human expression. The edupunk meme signifies more than just a tart phrase pasted on the media landscape. To truly understand its meaning, you have to live it.”

That is really important, to capture the creative outlets that an edupunk approach offers to teachers and other learners.  I am prepared to live it, and am privileged to work with students in higher education who are negotiating challenging boundaries in learning, work and society.”

Jim Groom has also been posting a series of articles showing how the edupunk idea can be practised in education.

The disucssions on edupunk have the potential to evolve a new idea and vision of education and of the uses to technology for learning. That means not just talking but acting. Acting in collbaoration, acting as individual researchers and acting within institutions. As Frances Bell says: “Edupunk is only the beginning.”

I am speaking at the Plymouth elearning conference on 23 and 24 April. Steve Wheeler asked me to produce a summary of my presentation for the conference publication.

This was a problem. Firstly, I am bad at writing summaries. Secondly, I never know quite what I will say until I say it. But finally I have sat down and written it. I quite like it. I think it provides a summary of the different ideas around which we are centring our work at Pontydysgu.

Social software, personal learning environment and the future of education

The presentation  will look at the impact of recent developments in social software and the possible impact on education.

The origins of the word curricula, coming from the Latin word    ‘currere’ – a running race, a course or career can be contrasted to the origins of the word learning coming from the old Gothic word ‘Gleis’, meaning to tack, to follow and to find a path, the Gothic ‘leis’ which means to know and the the old English ‘learnien’ – to get knowledge.

Our education systems and institutions have been based around the original idea of curriculum, with winners and losers, the
same starting point and same finish point for all participants and with progression being seen as
a straight line between the two. Above all our educational institutions have been developed around the idea of homogeneity.

Such an idea of homogeneity was reinforced by the first industrial revolutions which led to the expansion of a schooling system to develop the skills needed by the workforce in a production economy.

The introduction of social software allows the exploration of different  learning pathways, and learning through exploring, wandering and funding the way.  Social networking tools allow learners to make connections, to  take individual choices about the direction of their learning within personal learning networks. Learning is based on bricolage – on making creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are to hand, regardless of their original purpose.

Teachers and trainers have a new role as mentors and guides to scaffold and support learning.

In terms of the future development of educational technology we need tools to help explore pathways, develop connections and to take control of own learning. This is turn requires a greater degree of engagement between developers, educational technologists and practitioners.

Education systems need greater flexibility to provide learners with their own space, to work at their own speed and at their own level, to define their own knowledge areas and make their own connections. Institutions can take the first steps in this by unlocking their resources and opening up their VLEs, by providing more and different ways of accessing services and by focusing IT support on services rather than systems.

The emergence of the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is an important  step in this respect. PLEs can provide tools to help learners make and sustain connections, to help learners organise, scaffold and take responsibility for their learning and to manage and handle learning content. PLEs can also provide tools for recording and representing and sharing the learning ‘bricolage’
.

The emergence of new patterns and forms of learning based on social software provide a great opportunity to extend learning opportunities and to embed learning in every day work and living. At the same time it poses a challenge to educations systems and institutions who no longer have a monopoly on knowledge development and transmission.

In this video Jisc Emerge Project co-ordinator, George Roberts, explains the ideas behind the Emerge project and discusses how to facilitate online communities of practice.

As a member of the project team I have greatly enjoyed being involved with Emerge. However,there is an English language saying: “All good things come to an end.” And sadly the JISC Emerge project has come to the end of its funding period.

In the abstract of a forthcoming publication we explain “The Emerge project aimed to support the development of a sustainable community of practice (CoP) in the area of emerging technologies for education. This comprised individuals, groups and funded projects whose focus was around the use of social tools and services for enhancing learning and teaching. The Emerge project team developed a range of existing social software tools and practices to facilitate the needs of the emerging CoP. Seven critical phases of activity were identified during the life-cycle of the Emerge project and the CoP that grew around the JISC Users and Innovation programme. Each of these phases, from initial engagement to building for sustainability, required different support mechanisms and approaches. In response, the Emerge team adopted an agile approach to community support – adapting the tools, services and activities that were offered over time to meet emerging community needs. Our conclusions suggest that it is possible to identify a range of benefits and likely outcomes to deploying social networking and social media tools to scaffold community emergence. However, the form and patterns of interaction that develop across a community over time cannot be approached prescriptively. There is a need to be sensitive to the dynamic and changing needs of the community and its’ processes and meet the changing demands for meaningful social and collaborative spaces. This impacts on the type and form of the tools and services that need to be made available to the community. Deploying an iterative and agile model to scaffold the community is a key factor to active participation by its membership and the successful development of community identities. In this way it is possible to define and support a community centre which anchors distributed practice in a manageable and accessible way.”

For now, the Emerge project web site has been suspended, although public posts may still be searched and accessed. A new Emerge Reports site also provides access to the products of the project. As George Roberts says in an email to Emerge site members “One key message from our analysis is that a community has many modes of participation. It would be a mistake to assume that the presence of a website indicates either the presence or absence of a community. There is a network of people who have been very active in creating the Users and Innovation Programme and the Emerge community. This network of people persists. Discussions are ongoing concerning how this network might make its presence visible on the Internet or if a site similar to this one might be required.”

My personal view is that there is a space for such a network or community presence, based on the exchange of practice in Technology Enhanced Learning. How such a presence can be facilitated, governed and resourced is another issue.

In the meantime, my thanks to George and all the other members of the team what have made working on the Emerge project so interesting and enjoyable.

Also many thanks to Dirk for a magic editing job on this video.

This is my favourite site of this year. In fact I could see me wasting so much time on blip.fm that i have limited my access to after seven in the evening (may have to fit kid proof software to reinforce my will).

For the initiated what is blip.fm? It is a site which allows you to search for music, play music and share it through a 150 character message. Integration with twitter means what you are playing is automatically posted to your twitter friends (although there is an easy override if you feel embarrassed about your musical tastes. You can follow people and their music appears on your home page. And friends can send you ‘props’ as an acknowledgement of a track they like, which you can in turn pass on to others. That’s about it.

Why does it work so well? Partly because it features an attractive interface, it works every time and it is a very short learning curve. But above all because it enables something we all like to do – to play music and share it with our friends. And it makes that just a little bit easier. I have spent many happy evenings sharing utube and Last.fm tracks over skype. But this is just so much better. And why am i going on about it? Not i assure you because i am looking for more listeners – although if you want to check out my cool grooves my user name is GrahamAttwell.

Over the past few weeks i have been restling with use cases and requirements for a Personal Learning and Maturing Environment (and in the enxt two days I will try to tell you want differentiates a PLME form a PLE). But it seems to me that blip.fm shows the way forward in helping people do something they want to do in a social environemnt. When we can design sowfatre for learning as good as this we will be making progress.

NB many thanks to CosmoCat and MariaPerif for encouraging my new career as a DJ!

Another great edition of Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE from Loughborough. This show was broadcast from the Jisc Users and Innovations programme Next Generation Technologies in Practice Conference.

The show was presented by Graham Attwell and Josie Fraser.

It features George Roberts talking about the development of the JISC Emerge community, about building sustainable communities of practice in general and about Open Space technologies.

George is followed by Mark Van Harmelen talking with Graham Attwell about Personal Learning Environments. Mark reflects on the stage of development of PLEs and whether or not it is possible to prescribe the use of an institutional PLE. He goes on to describe the so called Manchester PLE that he is developing with support from the Users and Innovation programme.

Nicola Whitton and Rosie Jones talk to Josie Fraser about the potential of Augmented Reality Games for enhanced learning based on their work for Jisc on the Argosi project.

And Bob Rotherham from the Sounds Good project talks about the use of audio and MP3 recordings for giving feedback to students on their work.

Many thanks to everyone who helped out with the programme, including Steven Warburton who hosted the chatroom, Joe Roso who acted as producer and Dirk Stieglitz for sorting out the technical set up.

Music is by the Drunk Souls from the On Verra Plus Tard album from the Craetive Commons supported Jamendo web site.

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The March edition of Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar will be broadcast live tomorrow, Tuesday 10 March, at 18.00 UK time, 1900 Central European Time.

This is a Sounds Special – being broadcast live from the Jisc Next Generation Technologies in Practice conference in Loughbrough, UK. The programme will be co-presented by Graham Attwell and Josie Fraser and will feature live interviews with George Roberts on Open Space Technology, Mark van Harmelen on Personal Learning Environments, Nicola Whitton and Rosie Jones on the potential of Alternate Reality Games for enhancing teaching and Bob Rotheram on Supporting learning using audio feedback.

You can listen to Sounds of the Bazaar live by going to http://tinyurl.com/6df6ar in your browser. The url should open your MP3 player of choice. And if you would like to join in the fun, Steven Warburton will be in our chatroom at http://tinyurl.com/sounds08.

Just add your name – no password required

We hope you can join us tomorrow

Last week I took part in a fairly impassioned Flash meeting debate about the use of the European Qualification Framework for the training of teachers and trainers. Opinions varied greatly between those who saw the EQF as a useful tool for promoting new qualifications for teachers and trainers to those who saw it as a barrier in this field.

Firstly, for non European readers, it may be useful to recapitulate what the EF is all about. The European Qualifications Framework (EQF), says the European Commission,  “acts as a translation device to make national qualifications more readable across Europe, promoting workers’ and learners’ mobility between countries and facilitating their lifelong learning.” The primary users of the EQF are seen as being bodies in charge of national and/or sectoral qualification
systems and frameworks. The idea is that once they have related their respective systems to the EQF, the EQF will help individuals, employers and education and training providers compare individual qualifications from different countries and education and training systems.

To achieve this the European Commission has designed a framework of eight different levels. Each of the 8 levels is defined by a set of descriptors indicating the learning outcomes expressed as knowledge, skills and outcomes relevant to qualifications at that level.

The problem is that it doesn’t work. For the moment I will ignore the more epistemological issues related to the definition of knowledge kills and competences. The biggest problem for me relates to levels. The Framework has mixed a series of different indicators to derive the levels. Some of the indicators are based on academic attainment. For instance the descriptor for knowledge at Level 8 states (can) “demonstrate substantial authority, innovation, autonomy, scholarly
and professional integrity and sustained commitment to the development of new ideas or processes at the forefront of work or study contexts including research.” Some are based on levels of responsibility and autonomy in work roles.  Level 4 talks of the ability to “supervise the routine work of others, taking some responsibility for the evaluation and improvement of work or study activities.” Others are based the complexity of the work being undertaken. Level four skills says: :advanced skills, demonstrating mastery and innovation, required to solve complex and unpredictable
problems in a specialised field of work or study.” Yet others are based on quite abstract ideas of knowledge. Level six knowledge comprises of “advanced knowledge of a field of work or study, involving a critical understanding of theories and principles.”

One of the biggest problems is the framework attempts to bring together applied knowledge and skills within a work process, work roles as expressed by responsibility and knowledge as expressed through academic achievement. And of course it is impossible to equate these, still less to derive a hierarchical table of progression and value. It is easy to pick holes: why for instance is “exercise management and supervision in contexts of work or study activities where there is unpredictable change” level 5, whilst having a “critical awareness of knowledge issues in a field and at the interface between different fields.”

There would appear to be a serie sof unspoken and implicit value judgements related both to the value of academic versus vocational and applied learning and to different roles within the workplace. There also seems to be an attempt to deal with work organisation with teamwork being written in as a high level function. Of course it maybe, but then again in particualr contexts teamwortk may not be so important. In some jobs, the ability for autonomous work may be important, in others not so. And how can we translate between such abilities, competences or whatever they are called and qualifications.

I do not think it is possible to design such a frameworks, nor do I think that levels are a useful concept, especially given the hierarchical structures of this and other similar frameworks. Why should one particular competence or skill be valued over another. Even more important is the idea of hierarchical progression. Lest this be thought to be merely an academic question, the UK government has already withdrawn funding support for those wishing to progress from one qualification to another at the same EQF related level.

one of teh aims of the Frameowrk is to promote Lifelong Learning. But an individual may not wish ot advance their learning in the social forms envisaged by the Framework. There is an assumption for instance that a teacher or trainer will progress towards being a manager, as represented in the higer levels within the EQF. But many teachers and trainers that I have talked to actually want to improve their practice as tecahers or trainers. Or they many wish to move ‘sideways’ – to learn more about working with particular groups or to undertake work as a counsellor for instance. The implicit progression routes inherent in the Frameowkr do not necessarily represent the way we work and learn. far better nore me is the idea of Learning Pathways. Learning pathways can represent a progression in our learning based on the context of our life and our work and based on individual interest and motivation. Our Learning Pathway may at times go upwards, downwards or sideways in the table of skills, competnces and knowledge as representd in the Framework. Such an idea of Learning Pathways is contiguous with the idea of Perosnal Learning Environments and of teh idea of more self directed learning. Of course it is useful to have a framework to assist in selecting progression routes and for counselling, guidance and support. But lets abolish the taxonomy of levels and start representing learning opportunties as what they are, rather than a somewhat oddly derived taxonomy trying to make things fit neatly which do not and embodying implict social values.

Last week I made a presentation at an Evolve Open on-line seminar about Personal Learning Environments. The seminar was very well attended, with a great presentation on e-Portfolios by Sigi Jacob and a lively debate.

As ever I promised I would post my slides on Slideshare. Trouble is I promise and don’t always do. There are two main reasons. The first is the struggle to make sure I acknowledge all sources – especially the photos. And the second is that my slides do not really make sense without audio. They are designed as an extra and complementary channel of communication. I see little reason to write on a slide and then read it out verbatim. Rather they illustrate what I am talking about. And thus on their own they make little sense. Of course I could record my presentation live and add that soundtrack to the slides. But I find that live presentations do not necessarily work as a recording. In general I think recordings – or slidecasts should be short and preferably under ten minutes. This mean re-recording the sound track and then syncing with the slides. It is not difficult but it takes time.

Anyway I have kept my promise and I hope you find it worthwhile.