Next Monday we break new ground with our Sounds of the Bazaar radio show. We are producing a special issue of Emerging Sound of the Bazaar entitled ‘Into the Dragons Den’.  The programme is a fly on the wall special following the progress of a Dragons Den session organised by the Jisc Emerge project. What’s it all about? Emerge supports a range of projects funded by the Jisc Users and Innovation programme. The projects are mainly focused on developing social software for use in education. Part of the support process has been through a four stage development model. As part of that model, at different times during the project development, project developers get invited to a session where they are quizzed by ‘Dragons’ on the progress of their project.

The Dragons Den session featured on Sounds of the Bazaar is the Preview project which is developing and piloting models for Problem Based Learning in Second Life. Maggie Savin-Baden will represent the project. Paul Bailey and Chris Fowler wil be the dragons. It is going to be great fun.

The programme, whih will last about 45 minutes, goes out at 19.00 UK time, 20.00 Central European Time. To listen to the programme just go to http://radio.jiscemerge.org.uk/Emerge.m3u in your browser. The stream should open in your MP3 player of choice. And if you’d like to chat during the programme Crsitina Costa will be in the chat room at http://tinyurl.com/soundschat. Just add your name in the text field (leaving the password field blank) and chat away.

I reallly like this work by Ambjörn Naeve called A greed upon reality - the real (e)state of the economic system. The screenshot is taken from his Conzilla (www.conzilla.org) systems model, although sadly I can’t get it to open on my Mac.

The work, Ambjörn says, is mainly based on the New(tonian) economics provided by Lisa H. Newton: Permission to Steal - Revealing the Roots of Corporate Scandal.

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/publicphilosophy/newton/default.asp

Firstly, many thanks to Martin Weller and A J Cann for your kind nominations for Pontydysgu for best group blog for this years Edublog 2008 awards. Much appreciated here at Pontydysgu Towers.

We also greatly appreciated Martins comment: “they’re Welsh, they like edupunk, they do a crazy internet radio show and have challenging posts. What more do you want?.”

And now on to our nominations (although we may come back with more in different categories later this week). For best individual blog we nominate ictology by Ismael Peña-López. Just watch that man’s live blogging. Awesome.

Our best resource sharing site nomination goes to Zaidlearn - just look at this list of 90 posts about learning tools.

And here is our nomination for best educational use of audio. This goes to Andreas Auwarter and all the students who work on the wonderful Bildung im Dialog website. With limited resources, Andreas uses podcasts to teach students from all disciplines storytelling, media, production and much more. OK - it is in German. But it would be great if the Edublog awards could acknowledge the work being done in other languages than English.

There have been a number of reports in the wake of the failure of public services to prevent the tragic death of child in London. The story below from the Guardian looks at the impact of the introduction of Management Information Services in social services in the UK. What it reveals is that professional workers are forced to spend increasing amounts of time completing tick box tracking report forms on computers. The result is not increased efficiency and effectivenesss but a failure to sharing information with those that need it. The MIS becmes the centre of attention, not the task - in this case the protecion of vulnerable children.

This is not limited to social wok. Studies we have carried out in the eduction sphere reveal the same tendency. Professional wokers are being diverted away from what they see as their job in the requirement to fill in tracking reports on ill designed Management Information Systems. The inormation held by the MIS is seen as primarily for tracking and funding pruposes. raher than helping with the work. Littlle attention is paid to how an MIS might assist in developing and maturing knowledge. Natural knowledge sharing and development processes, through dialogue and networking are left behind. Often staff develop their own informal systems, to exchange the knowledge that they need, in parallel to official procedures.

We need to review the purpose of such systems. Do we develop systems to help professional wokrers in their job or merely to collect infomation? What is the purpose of the information being collected? Who is it for and why? How can we design systems based on the abilities of ‘knowledge workers’, rather than relying on the number crunching outputs of the machine? And what approaches are need to the design of such human oriented systems? These are not just academic questions, as the report below tragically reveals.

I have been working with Cristina Costa to write a review paper on Personal Learning and Working Environments. The paper is now avaiable online on the Research section of this web site.

This review paper part of a series of papers commissioned by the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick under the title of ‘Beyond Current Horizons – Working and Employment Challenge’. In turn, in forms part of a larger programme of work under the banner of Beyond Current Horizons that is being managed by FutureLab on behalf of the UK Department for Schools, Children and Families. The brief was to cover:

• The main trends and issues in the area concerned;


• Any possible discontinuities looking forward to 2025 and beyond;


• Uncertainties and any big tensions;


• Conclusions on what the key issues will be in the future and initial reflections on any general implications for education.

We had also agreed that we would produce such a paper to inform the work of the European Union Mature project which is looking at knowldge maturing and developing Personal and Organisational Learning and Management Environments.

It is a longish paper and covers such issues as:

• new ways of learning using Web 2.0 schools


• deschooling society


• workbased learning and the social shaping of work and technology


• organisational networks and communities of practice


• Personal Learning Emvironments


• the future of universties


• informal learning


• knowledge development and sharing

We were given a wide brief to look at what might happen up to 2025 and what developments we thought were likely and what were desireable. We have used the opportunity to think a little more freely than is often possible within the scope of traditional academic papers.

Annotate this paper

We would be very interested in your views on the ideas in this paper. We invite you to use Diigo tools to annotae the paper. If you have not used Diigo before for annotating and leaving comments here is a short introductory video. We invite you also to join the Diigo e-learning 2.0 group and to share your bookmarks through the group.

But we knw some people still prefer paper publications. So you can download an Open Office and a PDF version of the paper below.

workandlearning - PDF vesrion

workandlearning - Open Office version

Photo: Yeweni

As promised a new podcast in our Sounds of the Bazaar series. Dr Jile and Mr. Tian from the Institute of Vocational and Adult Education in Bejing dropped in yesterday to talk about technology enhanced learning.

I couldn’t miss the opportunity to get them in front of the microphone. And it is truly an interesting talk. Many thanks to both of them,

Intro and extro music New Generation by  ‘Souled Out‘

I had a fascinating meeting with two representatives of a Bejing school district last night. They are in Bremen as part of a European programme which including other things is developing a programme for the Continuing Professional Development of vocational teachers in the city.

They came to visit us to discuss e-learning and how the use of new technologies might help in their project.

The big issue that emerged was that of the scale of they challenge they face. Most of the teachers in vocational schools have received no pedagogic training at all, gong straight from university to become a teacher. Because of pressures on the system, the CPD programme is being organised out of school hoursd. Attendance is voluntary. And the teachers are keen. A recent seminar held on a Sunday attracted more than 800 particpants! The biggest issue is that there are not enough resources to organise a tradtional CPD programme. There are simply too many teachers who want to participate and not enough trainers. And that is when we started thinking about Massively Open On-line Courses (MOOCs). The infrastructure and access to networks and computers is relatively good in Bejing. Teachers are open to new ideas. Could we organise a programme that combined face to face events with on-line provision open to all who wished to attend? How could support be organised? What kind of platforms and tools would be required?

I started out as a sceptic about MOOCs but the meeting last night has changed my thinking.

If you are interested in hearing more about the project, we recorded a quick podcast with the Chinese colleagues and we will try to get this online in the next couple of days.

Lsy week I helped organise the on-line conference on the training of teachers and trainers. And thanks to hard work from Dirk Stieglitz and cristina Costa the proceedings of the conference are now all on line on the Network of Trainers in Europe website. It is well worth checking out the web site and especially looking at the online exhibition which accompanied the conference.

We have been doing an online surevy to help in the evaluation of the conference and I will post some of the results this weekend.

In the meantime, if you missed the conference here is your second chance to see what happened.

5 November 2008

Theme: The changing role of trainers in learning

Morning sessions (for Elluminate sessions click here) featuring:

• Professor Alan Brown, Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick
  
  
  
  • Employees supporting the learning, training and development of other employees while working in groups: examples drawn from aerospace, health and accountancy (mp3, ppt, paper)
  
  
  
  

• George Roberts, Oxford Brooks University, UK
  
  
  
  • Education, training and employment (mp3, ppt)
  
  
  
  

• Barry Nyhan, Ireland
  
  
  
  • Lifelong learning and the role of trainers (mp3, ppt, paper)
  
  
  
  


• Lorna Unwin, Professor Alan Felstead and Nick Jewson, Professor Alison Fuller
  
  
  
  • Can anyone be a trainer?: towards a more embedded role for vocational trainers (ppt)
    
    
  
  
  
  

Theme: Support for the professional development of trainers

Afternoon sessions (for Elluminate sessions click here) featuring:

• Seija Mahlamäki-Kultanen and Anita Eskola-Kronqvist, HAMK, Finland
  
  
  
  • New Innovations into trainers’ training: Documenting and analyzing work processes with digital photos (mp3, ppt)
  
  
  
  

• Prof. Eduardo Figueira, University of Évora Portugal
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • Developing competence for trainers in Portugal (mp3, ppt)
  
  
  
  

• Simone Kirpal, University f Bremen, Germany
  
  
  
  • The Eurotrainer network survey (mp3, ppt)
  
  
  
  

• Eileen Luebcke, Pontydysgu, Germany
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • A framework for continuing professional development of trainers (mp3, ppt)
  
  
  
  

• Summary of the first day By Graham Attwell (mp3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

6 November 2008

Theme: E-learning for trainers

Morning sessions (for Elluminate sessions click here) featuring:

• Cristina Costa, University of Salford / Pontydysgu, UK
  
  
  
  • Using social software tools for supporting the online training of trainers (mp3, ppt)
  
  
  
  

• Doris Beer, Lohberger Unternehmerinnenzentrum e.V., Germany
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • e-learning for medical healthcare assisstants in Germany (mp3, ppt)
  
  
  
  

• John Pallister, Wolsingham School, UK
  
  
  
  • The ePortfolio process, supporting the Trainer and Training (mp3, ppt)
  
  
  
  

• Vance Stevens, Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi
  
  
  
  • Teacher professional development in groups, communities, and networks (mp3, ppt)
  
  
  
  

Afternoon sessions (for Elluminate sessions click here) featuring:

• Carla Arena & Mary Hillis, USA and Japan
  
  
  
  • Professional Development in Online Circles of Learning (mp3, ppt, wiki)
  
  
  
  

• Anne Fox, CV2, Denmark
  
  
  
  • VITAE – introducing 21st century skills through mentoring (mp3, ppt)
  
  
  
  

• Regina Lamscheck Nielsen, DEL, Denmark
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • TrainerGuide – made in Denmark (mp3, ppt)
  
  
  
  

• Linda Castañeda, University of Murcia, Spain
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • On-line Collaboration to teach and learn with each other (mp3, ppt, wiki)
  
  
  
  

Last weeks Emerging Mondays seminar was on the topic of MOOCs and Open Course Models. The speaker was Dave Cormier from the University of Prince Edward Island.

Dave spoke about his experiences, so far, of the CCK MOOC on Connectivism and Connected Knowledge, the technological platforms being used to support participants, the tensions that exist within the course design and the peer support models that are being embraced.  Dave’s introduction led to a wide ranging discussion including the nature and furture of courses and communities, issues of scale, how to support learners, open accreditation and the future of open education - and …Humpty Dumpty and Alice in Wonderland!

If you missed the session - or would like to hear it again - we are providing you with three different versions. You can watch a replay of the event in Elluminate. This provides you with access to the sidebar chat discussion as well as to the audio.

Or - if you are short of time you can listen to an MP3 podcast of Dave’s introduction.

Or you can listen to the full session inline or on your MP3 player.

This is the link to the Elluminate version.

Some time ago I wrote a post entitled ‘Hairdressing, Serious Games and Learning‘. It was not because I knew anything about it but because I was live blogging a conference presentation. Frederic Aunis who works for L’Oriel presented a game they had developed for teaching business skills to hairdressers. t was a good presnentation and a good game. The problem is that he game is owned by L’Oriel and access is retsricted to those with a  contract to the company.

The post is - somehwat embrarrsingly, one of the most popular I have ever written. Yet, I am afraid, it gives no help to those who are hitting it - presumably becauase they are searching for games to help them in teaching hairdressers.

I don’t know a lot about hairdressing but I have gleamed a little from research colleagues at the University of Warwick. Hairdressng is a very polular vocational training course. In part it is a course chosen by those who do not know what to do. But in part it is because people envisage owning and running their own business. The sad factor is most do not make it and whilst hairdressing businesses can be very profitable the reality fo rmany emloyees is lng hours and low pay (OK - if you don’t agree please feel free ot comment!). And whilst most trainees take well to the practical elements of the course, they struggle more with the theort - especially science - and have little interest in learninga bout how to run a business.

Hence the idea of a game. And according to Frederic it works. But, back to the problem. We need open source games which can be used by all. I am not a hairdresser or a games designer. But I know a little about both. The European Lifelng Learning programme is now on call. Is there anyone interested in a project to design an open souce game for teaching hairdrssers about running a business. I am looking for hairdressers, hairdressing teachers and trainers and educational games deisgners. Just leave a comment or email me if you would be interested in such a project.