http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/open-learning-is-here-where-nex

First we had open educational resources. This was a step forward but the resources were variable in quality, hard to find and were often tied to courses which made them hard to use for self study. Those issues haven’t gone away but improvements in search technologies and a wider general conciousness about the value of self publishing open resources means it is increasingly easy to find what you want.

And now we are witnessing an explosion in open learning. Of course there are the big publicity happenings like the CCK08 Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)  organised by Stephen Downes and George Siemans on connectivism.

But more important is the flowering of opportunties for learning from many, many diverse sources. One of the best things about Twitter is it opens access to many events going on and opportunities to partiucpate at a distance. Last week I dropped in on a TeachMeet session being organised as part of the Scottish Learning Festival. Someone had ’shouted it out” in Twitter, I followed the link and ended up in a broadcast over the UK Open Universities free Flashmeeting service. There was about twenty or so of us particpating online. Whilst the quality of the video sometimes left something to be desired (and I was stuggling to follow Glaswegian accents) this was more than made up for by the quality and humour in the online chat.

Yesterday morning I recieved this in my email: “You have a live session today with cristinacost on ‘Connecting Online : Sharing Life’s Experiences’. The session will start at 10:00 AM W. Europe Standard Time and is 60 minutes long.”  This is a free course being organised in the WizIQ environment. Sadly I am bogged down in administration and had no time to go. But over the last year there has been an explosion of such open courses and seminars. We are organising one such series oursleves through the Jisc Evolve project.

And this morning Cristina Costa showed me her online bookclub “Living Literature though Exploration.” This more than anything impresses me as to how we have moved towards real open learning through Web 2.0 tools (in this case as simplle as a shared blog and some bookmarks.

However there remain a number of issues.

The last barrier to open learning - and a very complex one - is that of accreditation. Whilst I am sceptical about the Connectivism MOOC, it is raising a number of central questions about open learning, not least that of accreditation. Under the Connectivism course model, only 34 (I think) sdtudents are offically enrolled for accreditation and therefore pay fees. Their fees pay for the costs of the course which is open and free to everyone else. As part of this they get feedback form tutors on course assignments and accreditation at the end of the course. How important is this for learning? And would it be possible for a student to develop a portfolio based on particpation in the course and then claim accreditation elsewhere? Are we moving to a model where learning is open but institutions have a major role in accrediting that learning (presumably through a portfolio model)? Can we develop a concept of open accreditation? And what would that mean?

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/have-you-got-something-to-say-a

Every month we are running Sounds of the Bazaar ‘Emerging Mondays’ - a topical live internet radio show combining the best of radio, live chat and occasionally some extravagant social activity inside Second Life. The aim is to bring lively commentary and debate on topical issues to the start of each month.

Upcoming

27th October 2008: Emerging Mondays: the Digital Identity show

‘What is digital identity?’

So what does digital identity mean to you? Do you care? As more of our lives, from personal to professional activities, find their way online how do we cope with managing our fractured and distributed digital presence. Can we ever keep ‘personal’ separate from ‘professional’ when tools and services mash-up our online identities in ways that are beyond our control? What does this mean for the development of new literacies and new services that seek to put our identities back within our grasp.

With interviews, music, strong opinion, poetry, our very own edupunk granny Leila and more. LIVE.

Have you got soemthing to say about identities. Would you liek to come on th programme through a skype or telephone link-up. In depth interviews or just two minute vox spots are all welcome. Tell us a story or read a poem. If you are interested just drop  me an email - graham10 [@] mac.com.

We will be broadcasting *LIVE* from 1800 - 1900 UK time, 1900 - 2000 Central European Time. Links to the programme url and chatroom to follow.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/open-learning-the-debate-contin

Continuing the open learning debate….I greatly like this diagramme by George Siemens. I think there is much of merit here. Very happpy to see acknowledgemnt of the importance of self publishing (as opposed to academic reporsitories). However there are a few things missed out.

Firstly if we take congniscence of Jenny Hughes’ defintion of learning as ‘to find and follow a track’ as counterposed to curriculum  from the latin ‘currere’, which means to run or race and ‘curriculum’ as race or racecourse, then instotutions and teacher have an important role in assisting learners in developing their own learning pathways.

A second important  role is that of assessment. But to understand this we need to decouple assessment from acceditation. If we design assessment as a learning process and move from assessemnt of learning to asssessement for learning this could become an integral part of the process of finding and developing learning pathways. This is not so utopian. Serendipitously. The Times newpaper today published an article about innovative assessment in UK universities. The struggle, though, as with self and peer assessment is in assessment having to match accreditation procedures. Without this link, we could open up all jinds of new forms of assessment.

A final point on accreditation. Many learners do not want or require accreditation. Indeed it is the formal accreditation procedures which deters them for signing up for a learning programme. And as Antnio Fini, talking about the home made certificate he got from the OpenEd2007 course, says: “all my connections, blog posts, comments, collective works, presentations, articles related to that experience, are still out there as tangible proofs of this learning. So I could equally put the OpenEd course in my CV and could ask to my supervisor to evaluate all that activity for credit in my PhD, also without that piece of paper!”

Why not put the learners in charge of accreditation. Lets leave it to them to decide how they wish to show what and how they have learned - albeit with support. I once co-ran a course with Jenny Hughes where we offered the particpants their certificate at the start of the courese. They refused! But it did raise the issue of why they were doing the course and how they valued learning. And that is an issue we need to bring to the fore.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/teachers-nerdyness-and-tech/

Jenny Hughes has had a hard week editing a handbook for teachers on technology. The stress is begining to show. Whilst waiting for partners from the Taccle project (who are producing the handbook) to arrive, she twittered to me this reflection on teachers and nerdyness on an open skype channel :). And teachers - we love you really. LOL

“teachers get nerdy about who sits where in staff room

17:56

and nerdy about cardigans

17:56

and potted plants on the window sill

17:56

and using a ruler to do their register

17:56

and not lending anyone their red pen

17:57

and sandwiches in tupperware containers

17:57

and the Daily Mail

17:58

and whether its morally justified in going on strike when the future of the world is in their hand

17:58

and keeping peppermints in their desk

17:59

and seeig if they can make their suply of sugar paper last longer than anyone else

17:59

and nature tables

18:00

and box pleated skirts

18:00

(thats just the men)

18:00

and having special things for de-icing their windows

18:01

and posting a list of Rules of the Staff Room on the wall

18:02

which always starts with the milk and biscuit buying rota

18:02

and ends with a warning about not leaving dirty cups

18:02

which is underlined 3 times

18:03

with too many exclamation marks

18:03

but computers, I assure you, they are not nerdy about

18:05

Mind you (because Im bored sitting in hotel waiting for foreigners) teachers do have some techy skills

18:09

they are very good with shoe lace technology

18:12

have built in sensors and rapid response programmes for spotting the kid who is going to throw up or piss themselves

18:13

some of us were shit hot on the ballistics of board rubbers

18:14

(you have to be able to get  them to land wood side down on the desk to give kid nasty noisy fright or felt side down to leave them spluttering and coughing in a cloud of chalk dust. Its a high level skill)

18:18

they are competent at every sort of print technology from Caxton, through spirit copiers, Bandas, Roneos and Gestetners with or without wax stencils and including John Bull printing outfits. You can assess competence by seeing how big the pink, purple or green stain on their fingers is.

18:20

the older ones    can still tune the wireless in to Music and Movement (with Daphne Oxenford)

18:22

and some of them can even fit together those plastic shapes that make geodesic domes. The others stuff them in the back of the cupboard and hope the kids don’t find them

18:23

they are really good at measuring the length of the playground with a push along wheely thing and they check it every year just to make sure

18:24

and best of all they have pencil sharpeners whith a handle you turn on their desks. They are awesome.

18:25

so not entirely techno deficient

18:27

it’s just those com…comt…compu things

18:27

on line again tomorrow

18:29

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/a-month-of-meetings/

last week was spent with my head in a bunch of spreadsheets doing the Pontydysgu accounts.

But this week I’m on the road. tomorrow and Thursday Pontydysgu is organising an international seminar in Newport, Wales on the Training of Trainers in Europe. And Thurdsay night I am off to Braga for a conference on web 2.0, social software and learning. Saturday I am presenting at Bar Camp Berlin through a video tie up from Braga. Then a quick flight to Bremen and on Sunday I am off to Glasgow for a meeting with Careers Scotland. Tuesday night I will be in Maidstone, Kent for a meeting on e-Portfolios. Back to Bremen for three days, then Barcelona. The following week is Seville and perhaps London. Phew. But the real point is that if our paths are crossing I would love to meet up with any of you. Just send me an email saying where you will be.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/what-does-a-personal-learning-e

I’m doing two presentations on Personal Learning Environments this week - one in Braga in Portugal and one on line at Bar Camp Berlin. Regular readers will know these are not my first presentations on PLEs. And lately I have been concerned that the debate has been stalling a little. We have been very good at saying what a PLE is not - it is not an instititional learning system etc. but rather hazy on just what it is. So that is the theme of the all brand new - new words, new pictures presentation. I will release the slides in Friday and try to get an audio version out in next two weeks. One of the points which I am at pains to make is that a PLE is not just a technical infrastruture - indeed it is possible to imanagine a PLE which involves not computers what so ever. Anyway here is a picture Jenny Hughes drew for me of her PLE>

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/500000-laptops-for-schools-in-p

it has been a busy week. From Thursday to Saturday I was in Braga speaking at a conference for teachers on Web 2.0 technologies for learning. About 250 teachers turned up and worked until eight in the evening. I greatly enjoyed myself (fabulous hospitality) and was impressed by the level of commitment. I also greatly enjoyed the chance ot chat with George Siemens who was also presenting at the conference. More later this week on some of the ideas we discussed.

Back to Portugal. According to Reuters “Portugal’s Socialist government began the roll-out on Tuesday of 500,000 ultra-cheap laptops for school children in a programme that could be extended to Venezuela, the government said.

“The government’s educational technology plan aims to make Portugal one of the top five most technologically advanced countries in Europe,” it said.

Portugal has some of the lowest school achievement levels in western Europe and Socrates has made boosting education a key priority. The government hopes the Magellan project will raise computer access at schools to two students per computer by 2010, up from five this year.

While the computer will be assembled in Portugal by a company called JP Sa Couto, it is based on Intel’s Classmate PC, a cheap computer that has been adopted in various formats in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has visited Portugal several times in the past year and is due in Lisbon later this week, has said the Magellan could also be used in Venezuelan schools.”

I was aprticually impresed at the conference with ideas for using computers with younger children. But of coures there are worries. I have no doubt that the kids will know how to use teh computers. But there needs to be a big programme of professional development to ensure the teachers udnerstand how to use teh computers for learning if the full value of the programmee is to be realsied.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/not-a-data-projector-in-sight/

Before travelling to Portugal I helped run a two day workshop on policies and practice in the training of teachers and trainers. The workshop, sponsored by the European Commission brought togther researchers and practitgioners form five different countries. And we ran it as a real workshop. The participants themselves produced the materials. And not a powerpoint in site. It was like a breath of fresh air to be talking, working, developing and sharing ideas. Sometimes I wonder if the ease of use of tools such as Powerpoint have made us lazy and worse has stifled creativity and particpation.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/jm-coetzee-on-open-accreditatio

Last week I write that with the emergence of open learning in the form of freely available courses, seminars and events on the internet, and with the increasing availability of open educational resources, open accreditation is the final frontier.

This week I will be writing a series of blog pots on accreditation. But first up an excellent quote from J,M Coetzee in his novel ‘Diary of a Bad Year’. Just substitute ‘open online networks for ‘peoples homes’

“In the days when Poland was under communist rule, there were dissidents who conducted night classes in their homes, running seminars on writers and philosophers excluded from the official canon (for example, Plato). No money changed hands though there may have been other forms of payment. if the spirit of the university is to survive, something along these lines may have to come into being in countries where tertiary eduction has been wholly subordinated to business principles. In other words the real university may have to move into peoples homes and grant degrees for which the sole backing will be the names of the scholars who sign the certificates.”

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/open-accreditation-a-model/

Can we develop an Open Accreditation system.  What would we be looking for. In this post Jenny Hughes looks at criteria for a robust and effective cccreditation system.

An accreditation system depends on the robustness of the assessment system on which it is based.

Imagine you were in a shop that sold accreditation / assessment systems ‘off-the-peg” – what would criteria would you use if you went in to buy one?

Reliability

Reliability is a measure of consistency. A robust assessment system should be reliable; that is, it should be based on an assesssment process that yields the same results irrespective of who is conducting it or the environmental conditions under which it is taking place. Intra-tester reliability simply means that if the same asessor is assessing performance his or her judgement should be consistent and not influenced by, for example, another learner they might have just assessed or whether they feel unwell or just in a bad mood! Inter-tester reliability means that if two different assessors were given exactly the same questions, data collection tools, output data and so on, their conclusions should also be the same. Extra-tester reliability means that the assessor’s conclusions should not be influenced by extraneous circumstances, which should have no bearing on the assessment object.

Validity

Validity is a measure of ‘appropriateness’ or ‘fitness for purpose’. There are three sorts of validity. Face validity implies a match between what is being assessed or tested and how that is being done. For example, if you are assessing how well someone can bake a cake or drive a car then you would probably want them to actually do it rather than write an essay about it! Content validity means that what you are testing is actually relevant, meaningful and appropriate and there is a match between what the learner is setting out to do and what is being assessed. If an assessment system has predictive validity it means that the results are still likely to hold true even under conditions that are different from the test conditions. For example, performance assessment of airline pilots who are trained to cope with emergency situations on a simulator must be very high on predictive validity.

Replicability

Ideally an assessment should be carried out and documented in a way which is transparent and which allows the assessment to be replicated by others to achieve the same outcomes. Some ‘subjectivist’ approaches to assessment would disagree, however.

Transferability

Although each assessment should be designed around a particular piece of learning, a good assessment  system is one which could be adapted for similar  situations or could be extended easily to new activities. That is, if your situation evolves and changes over a period of time in response to need, it would be useful if you didn’t have to rethink your entire assessment system. Transferability is about the shelf-life of the assessment and also about maximising its usefulness

Credibility

People actually have to believe in yourassessment! It needs to be authentic, honest, transparent and ethical. If you have even one group of stakeholders questioning the rigour of the assessment process or doubting the results or challenging the validity of the conclusions, the assessment loses credibility and is not worth doing.

Practicality

This means simply that however sophisticated and technically sound the assessment is, if it takes too much of people’s time or costs too much or is cumbersome to use or the products are inappropriate then it is not a good assessment system !

Comparability

Although an assessment system should be customised to meet the needs of particular learning events, a good assessment system should also take into account the wider assessment ‘environment’ in which the learning is located. For example, if you are working in an environment where assessment is normally carried out by particular people (e.g teachers, lecturers) in a particular institution (e.g school or university) where ‘criteria reference assessment is the norm, then if you undertake a radically different type of assessment you may find that your audience will be less receptive and your results less acceptable. Similarly, if the learning that is being assessed is part of a wider system and everyone else is using a different system then this could mean that your input is ignored simply because it is too difficult to integrate.

Also, if you are trying to compare performance from one year to the next or compare learning outcomes with other people, then this needs to be taken into account.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/open-learning-events/

Pontydysgu is pleased to be involved with a series of Open Learning Events this autumn. Here is a quick run down of some of them. And you are all invited to particpate.

Sound of the Bazaar Emerging Mondays - Live Internet radio

27th October 2008

‘What is digital identity?’

So what does digital identity mean to you? Do you care? As more of our lives, from personal to professional activities, find their way online how do we cope with managing our fractured and distributed digital presence. Can we ever keep ‘personal’ separate from ‘professional’ when tools and services mash-up our online identities in ways that are beyond our control? What does this mean for the development of new literacies and new services that seek to put our identities back within our grasp.With live interviews, music, strong opinion, poetry, our very own edupunk granny Leila and more. We will be broadcasting *LIVE* from 1800 - 1900 UK time, (check your local time here: http://tinyurl.com/4jk76t ).

To access the programme just click on this link or go to

http://icecast.commedia.org.uk:8000/emerge.mp3.m3u

This should open in your favourite MP3 player. There will also be a written chatroom running simultaneously in the background, which you can join through this link http://tinyurl.com/soundschat - no password needed – just type your name in the box)

How do I participate?

Have an opinion or want to comment? Then drop us a line by email to graham10@mac.com or come and join us live in the chatroom where we will be discussing the contents of the show.

EVOLVE Open Seminar Series

3 November 2008 at 1800 pm UK time, 1900 CET (Check your time zone here: http://tinyurl.com/4p4sk4 )

Guest Speaker: Dave Cormier

Topic and Presentation Blurb coming soon here http://www.evolvecommunity.org

Training the Trainers Online Conference

5 and 6 November 2008

Pontydysgu is happy to be supporting the first (as far as we know) on-line international conference on the training of trainers taking place on the 5 and 6 November 2008. The conference is for all those interested in the training and professional development of teachers and trainers. This includes teachers, trainers, tutors, researchers, managers and policy makers and other interested individuals.

The conference will take place through the internet using the Elluminate conference tool. We hope this will not only reduce the carbon footprint of our activities, but will allow wide participation by those who might not be able to travel.

The conference will be organised around four themes:

• Theme 1 - The changing role of trainers in learning


• Theme 2: E-learning for trainers


• Theme 3: Work-based learning


• Theme 4: Support for the professional development of trainers

You can find full details including a prelimary programme and details of speakers on the conference web page http://www.trainersineurope.org/conference . Attendance is free but we would ask you to register in advance http://tinyurl.com/3l7tts . You are also welcome to contribute to the conference on-line exhibition http://www.trainersineurope.org/conference/exhibition

Thought Fest 2008

12 and 13 December 2008

A totally unConference event !!!! in Manchester / University of Salford.

ThoughtFest 08 (Twemes: #TFest08) is a two-day event being organized by Pontydysgu with the support of the JISC Evolve network and the European Mature-IP project. The event will bring together researchers in Technology Enhanced Learning in an open forum to debate the current issues surrounding educational technologies and discuss how and where research impacts on practice and where practice drives research.

Full details on the Thought Fest  and how you can get involved can be accessed here: http://tinyurl.com/4q7hcf

Deadline for  submissions is 26th October 2008

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/the-banking-crisis-ends-the-myt

I am surprised how little attention edubloggers have been paying to the collapse of the banking system and the ensuing credit crunch. Education does not exist in a vacuum, still less educational policy.

So what does it all mean for education. Well one pretty obvious thing is that if different governments can afford to spend this much money on bailing out bankrupt banks, why has so little been spent on education globally. Imagine the effect of such mindbogglingly huge sums of money on education in less developed countries. Every child in the world could have a laptop with money to spare. However - there is no point in dreaming - banks will always be nearer the heart of lawmakers than education.

The short term effects of the banking crisis for education could be quite grim. In any recession training is one of the first things to be cut by companies. And obviously there is likely to be a squeeze on public expenditure in the coming years to finance the loans to the banks.

On the other hand the ideological fall out from the crisis coudl be extremely beneficial. I see education as likely to undergo profound - perhaps paradamatic - change in the next ten years with a change from homogeneous central curriculum determined classroom learning to individual learning pathways. I am enthusiastic about such change. But the danger whch has always concerned me has been the threat of privatisation. Depsite a history of publically finded and goverend education in Europe, we have seen the slow development of a private university sector in many European countries. And thw UK government has pursued an agenda of creeping privatisation through so called public-private partnerships and the encourgement of privately funded and goevrened trust schools. Ideologically they have encouraged the myth that business people know better how to run schools than do teachers or the local community. Industry has been handed control of vocational currcicula.

That myth has now been blown sky high. Bankers are now a subject of derision rather than respect and rightly so. These are not the kind of people anyone would trust to run our schools. And I suspect that the companies so keen to invest in trust schools may now be forced to focus on their core business - rather than interfering in something they know nothing about. Furthermore, the banking crisis has restored the repsectability of public ownership. And rightly so - education should be owned by the community and free to learners. What we should now do is start to fight back and exmaine different models of community governance. Models which allow a community to shape the learning opportunities and the curricula to meet the needs of that community. Models that can extend access and opportunity for learning for all.

Such a change could be far more important than the short term funding implications of the crisis.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/emerging-mondays-live-inetrent-

The next edition of our monthly Emerging Mondays Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE internet radio takes place next Monday 27 October at 1800 UK time, 1900 Central European Time. The programme will last for about an hour.

The theme of the programme is Digital Identities. The programme notes are included below in this email.

Guests include:

Steve Warburton - Kings College London on the Eduserve sponsored Rhizomes Identities project

Lars Heineman - Bremen University on cultural and vocational identities

Andy Powell - Eduserve

David White - Oxford University on identities in Second Life

Jenny Hughes - Pontydysgu - on how young children develop digital identities

Helen Keegan - Salford University on how audio and video students develop their owen line presence

Eileen Luebcke - Bremen University on culture and identities

Jenny Bimrose - University of Warwick - what is the role of careers guidance in developing identities

Plus our regular music and poetry spots, Cyber Gran Leila and surprise guest spots.

How can you take part? You can just sit back and enjoy the show by going to http://icecast.commedia.org.uk:8000/emerge.mp3.m3u in your browser. This will open the LIVE radio stream in our MP3 player of choice.

If you are feeling more active you can come on the show by phone or through skype. Just email or skype Graham Attwell - graham10@mac.com and we will bring you in. Or follow the show in our chatroom - http://tinyurl.com/soundschat (no account needed) where Cristina Costa will be hosting.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/is-instructional-design-dead/

Martin Lindner raises some important issues in a recent blog post.

“Even “e-Learning 2.0″ still seems to be discussed primarily from the perspective of institutions or organisations.

But the Web 2.0 obviously is “user-centered”. Every This was the starting point for discussing “PLEs” (Personal Learning Environments) as opposed to LMSs (Learning Management Systems) and VLEs (VirtualLearinng Environments) that has been led by Scott Wilson, Leigh Blackall, Stephen Downes and many others in 2005.

The main point has been nailed by Leigh in his notorious “Die LMS Die! You too PLE!” blog post:

‘So while I whole heartedly agree with the PLE and Scott’s reasoning for rejecting the LMS/VLE, I can’t say I’m with them on their alternative. In my view, the VLE, LMS and PLE are the same. A suggestion that the Internet, and informal networked learning are not enough. That people still need to come to school to learn. That people need to distinguish learning from life, that people need to download and install an application that will solve their learning needs.’

The ultimate learning environment is “the Web” itself. But the Web consitss of a applications which trigger designed user experiences. That is the question: Is there room left for instructional design of any kind in a Web environment? And how can we help mainstream users with low “Web literacy” to exploit the new possibilities for their personal empowerment?”

I have to say I worry when I hear people talking about PLE applications. But Martin makes the point himself in asking how we can help users to exploiy the new possibilities - although in my view it is not just users with ‘low web literacy’ but all users. for this we need tools though I have longa sked whether they should be regarded as social tools rather than learning tools. And learners need support in developing their own Personal Learning Environment to make teh computer do what they want it to do for learning. Also we need to open out learnibg resources to ensure that they can be utlised within a PLE.

Is instructional design dead? It depends I suppose on just what you mean by instructional design. Yes n teh narrow meaning fo the learning objects debates and in the heavily sequenced teacher contrlled applications. But no if we are talking about designing materials to help people learn. Its just that more and more people are involved daily in instructional design and most of them without training themselves. Just witness the floursihing of videos on You Tube designed to show us how to do something!

One fnal comment. Martin says “The ultimate learning environment is “the Web” itself.” No Martin, the ultimate learning environment is the world around us - which of coures includes the web. But it also includes people, books and our (physical) workining environment. One big challenge for the future is hwo to ensure such an environment is rich with learning possibilities.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/teaching-or-learning/

I am at a workshop on Learning 2.0: The impact of Web 2.0 Innovations on Education and Training organised by the Institute of Prospective Technology Studies in Seville.

They have done a lot of work. however, I feel that in focusing on the use of technology for learning within the existing educational organisations they miss the main issues. How do we bring together informal learning and learning from formal sources? How do people not enrolled on courses use technologies for learning? How do we transform institutions? How can we empower learners to structure their own learning? How can we open up educational resources - materials but not just resources - to the wider community.

How also can we develop research designs and methodologies to address these issues?

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/are-we-hung-up-with-systems-app

As always it is the extra curricula activities which are the highpoint of conferences. And i don’t just mean in the bar. I had an interesting lunchtime conversation with Martin Owen where we were talking about the problems with the classificatory systems being put forward for analysing a database of practice examples developed for the IPTS study on the impact of Web 2.) innovations on education and training in Europe.

One issue we discussed is the continued use of systems approaches for defining research design and analysis. All too often findings which do not fit into a pre-defined system are just viewed as ‘noise’ and therefore ignored. But it may be in that noise that cannot be analysed in a systems driven approach that the real issues lie. It is how learners are using social software that is critical to me and not how the system adapts or more often rejects the use of such software.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/what-technologies-change-people

There are some interesting issues kicking around at the IPTS workshop on the impact of Web 2.0 innovations on Education and Training in Europe.

there are plenty of examples of innovative practice. But there is little example of any findamental change at either a systems level or even at the level of the institution. This raises a whole series of questions:

• is it possible to change pedagogic processes and improve opportunities for learning through the use of social software within the present system?


• or as Roberto has just said what is the disruptive technology which can spark such chnage in peoples lives.

It may be that such change will not origin within the education system but will happen from human interactions in the wider communities through different ‘value propostions’ - through ideas, approaches and technologies which add value to people lives.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/the-web-is-the-platform/

I am still at the IPTS seminar on Learning 2.0 in Seville. Much of interest and I wil write a few more blogs on this. But  one issue, which has just come up, is this of platforms. The director of IPTS has asked us what platforms we see being used in the future.

And we have said - we know the platform. It is called the World Wide Web. I think that is very important. We do not need more and more platforms. We do need control over our own data and the ability to be able to develop and use that data.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/10/more-about-learning-20/

Another post on the IPTS seminar on Learning 2.0 in Seville. This workshop was interesting becuase it brought togther researchers and practitioners from all over Europe. And, somewhat to my surpise, there was a fair degree of consensus. We agreed social software provided many opportunties for creating, raher than passively consuming learning. We agreed that learnng opportunities were being developed outside the classroom. We even agreed that the locus of control was switching from institutions to the learners and that this might well be a good thing. We agreed we were moving towards individual learning pathways and that learners needed to be supported to finding their pathways.

We agreed that the context of learning was important. Mobile learning would become increasingly important with the development of context sensitive devices.

But there were also limits to the consensus. Whilst there appeared agreement on new roles for teachers, no-one was sure what that role was?

Much of the discussion centred on the scaffolding of learning. How much support did leaners need and how much of that support would come from teachers?

Neither were participants agreed on the future role of institutions. More critically, was Learning 2.0 something which happened outside the school, and had only a limited impact on institutional practice, or did it pose a fundamental challenge for the future of schooling?

There was even greater disagreement over curriculum. Should there be a curriculum for basic skill and knowledge that everyone should learn? Did learners need a basic grounding in their subject before theyc oudl develop their own learning pathways? Who should define such a curriculum? What was the role of ‘experts’ and who were they anyway?

And perhaps the greatest disagreement was over assessment and accreditation. Many of us felt that we needed to move towards community based formative assessment. Employers, we said, would be more interested in what people were able to do than formal certicates. Others, pointing to occupations such as doctors and plumbers felt there should be some form of standards against which people should be assessed and accredited.

A final comment on the form of the project. Although the work is about Learning 2.0 the present form of the work is decidedly Research 1.0. This research is important enough that it needs to be opened out to the community. It seems a wiki is being d veloped and when it is up I will blog here about it. In the meantime here are some of the photos of the flip charts used for brainstorming around different issues at the workshop. I will pass on any comments on this post to the project organisers.