Nellie Deutsch :: Blog

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/05/frankensteining-with-mupples-a-

There are so many conferences at them moment it is hard to know what to go to. But this workshop is on a theme close to my heart and I have agreed to join the programme committee. Here is an abridged version of the call for papers.

“A change in perspective can be certified in the recent years to technology-enhanced learning research and development: More and more learning applications on the web are putting the learner centre stage, not the organisation. They empower learners with capabilities to customize and even construct their own personal learning environments (PLEs).

These PLEs typically consist of distributed web-applications and services that support system-spanning collaborative and  individual learning activities in formal as well as informal settings.

Technologically speaking, this shift manifests in a learning web where information is distributed across sites and activities can easily encompass the use of a greater number of pages and services offered through web-based learning applications. Mash-ups, the ‘frankensteining’ of software artefacts and data, have emerged to be the software development approach for these long-tail and perpetual-beta  niche markets. Core technologies facilitating this paradigm  shift are Ajax, javascript-based widget-collections, and

microformats that help to glue together public web APIs in individual applications.

In a wide range of European IST-funded research projects such as iCamp, LTfLL, LUISA, Palette, and TENcompetence a rising passion for these technologies can be identified.

This workshop therefore serves as a forum to bring together  researchers and developers from these projects and an open public that have an interest in understanding and engineering  mash-up personal learning environments (MUPPLEs).”

Can you resist a MUPPLE? Want to find out more? See http://mupple08.icamp.eu for more details.

TOPICS OF INTEREST (but not limited to):

* Architectures:

e.g. from cross-domain java scripting

up to to embedding of pedagogy

* Learning Models:

e.g. Activity Models, Environment

Design Models, including their theoretical bases

* Learning Services:

e.g. Concepts and Demonstrators for recombinable

learning services

* Authoring:

e.g. editors, user-interfaces for mash-up creation,

drag&drop mash-up creation, in-place editing

* Data formats:

e.g. microformats, new data models for

fragmented data such as streaming data, recombination models

needed to establish data interoperability

* User Interfaces:

Concepts, Metaphors, Workflows

* Mash-Up Strategies:

cooperative, value-chain oriented, master

and slave

* Development Methodologies: for building and sustaining communities

and services, including analyses of success factors, constraints,

characteristics of user uptake including long-tail requirements

engineering and software development

Digam de vossa justiça

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/05/they-are-locking-away-our-histo

I am a big fan of radio. As regular readers will know I think it is the coming media And my favourite station is BBC Radio 4. For variety, production values, imagination and innovation, radio doen’t come better. Sometimes I listen live but mostly I listen on the web based iPlayer. The iPlayer makes programmes available for up to a week after they have been broadcast.

Yesterday I listened to “Will you still love me tomorrow.” This was a brilliant history / social commentary on the girl groups of the late 1950s and 1960s. It is a fascinating programme telling not only of the influence of these groups on the evolution of music and especially the influence of the girl groups on the Beatles, but of the social impact in terms of identities. For the first time women talked directly of their feelings and sexuality. And many of the women were black at a time when in the USA black musicians still were restricted by the colour bar. At a time when music in the USA tended to be dominated by local bands with different musicians producing cover versions of the same song in different states, the girl bands achieved national (and international) status.

This was a great history programme, exploring a subject which has previosuly been forgotten. It has the power to inform our thinking of the past and of the future of culture and society. But in a few days it will be gone, removed from the iPlayer and consigned to an unaccessable archive. This is ridiculous. It is as if a book was published and placed in libraries - only for all copies to be withdrawn after a week.

It is not only the BBC’s fault. They, as much as anyone else, are the victims of the stupid copyright laws. But surely the BBC can do more to support open access. Yes - I know that it is perfectly possible to record programmes - if you are prepared to break the law and have a little bit of knowhow (I have recorded this programme). But may people do not know how to do this and anyway may not stumble on the programme during the one week window of availability.

Surely something can be done. It is not just a question of open educational reources - this is our history which is being locked away.

NB Don’t forget to listen while the programme is still available.

http://knowmansland.com/learningpath/?p=110

As my dearest friend Carla Arena mentioned in her today’s comment to one of my posts, I too need a “share button” that connects my brain to my blog and which I can push every time I think I have anything relevant to say. Maybe more relevant to me than to others, but hey…that [...]

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/05/big-bureaucratic-pictures-or-bo

Pekka Kamarainen has written an interesting series of blog posts looking at European research in Vocational Education and Training and focusing the ‘European dimension’, ‘interdisciplinarity’ and ‘innovation.’

In his post on innovation ne draws attention to the limited  development in the use of technology for vocational education and training. I think he is right in saying one of the problems is the European Commission obsession with big pictures. It seems to me there is little focus on what is actually happening about teaching and learning - and especially on how learners are using technology and how we might help them. Projects funded by the EU tend to focus on yet more digitalisation of learning materials, yet more on-line handbooks and endless projects on introducing VLEs.

Truly innovative projects tend to be lost in the dross. And the European Commission’s obsession with administration has blinded them to the need to create communities to share innovation.

Furthermore the structures of the programmes have effectively excluded enterprise participation. Whilst VET research is important, so too is the involvement of teachers and trainers - practitioners - in the processes of development. All too often European projects are comprised of reseachers talking about teaching and training but with little or no experience of practice.

I do not  know how we can overcome these problems. I have little faith in the European Commission. The best practices seem to have come from bottom up networks - for instance by language teachers - which can survive the episodic nature of funding support and who share a passion for what they are doing.

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/05/here-is-the-problem/

One of my standard lines in presentations on Web 2.0 is that as young people increasingly use the internet to learn, to communicate and to create, education systems and institutions are at best bewildered and at worst downright hostile to such activities.

It could not better be illustrated than by a recent post to the Becta ICT Research list serve:

“Can researchers point out how to stop students/pupils using hand-held devices in the classroom ? Recent THES article on texting while there’s a lecturer speaking point to this being perceived as “mildly rude” - Even on a one-to-one situation nobody seems to have any problems with ring-tones, etc.

Is there a pro-educator device, like the mosquito, that we can switch on to block cell phones/blackberries/iphones ?”

It seems that half the time institutions and teachers bemoan the lack of access to technologies - and then spend the other half working out how to block learners from using their own devices and applications for communicating and sharing knowledge!

http://theconnectedclassroom.blogspot.com/2008/05/take-one.html

http://knowmansland.com/learningpath/?p=109

Before I just rush to the next meeting I just wanted to quickly update you about the challenge.
I have been following the comment challenge and engaging as much as I can. I set up the CoComment as suggested. I have even created a small tutorial which you can find here. I hope it helps.
I [...]

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/05/mcluhan-the-man-who-invented-th

I spent an evening last week with Jenny Hughes gathering together a selection of videos for the front page slot on this site for the next six or so weeks. And we have some great videos for you. If you have any ideas of a video we should feature please email me or leave a comment. But please do watch this one. As Jenny says”If Berners Lee invented the enabling technology, this was the guy who invented the idea!”

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/05/communication-channels/

I like this from Cristina Costa who uses Skype in much the same way as I do: “We could create a skype chat log ( this is a feature quite unknown by skype users, but this has become the main communication channel of a  group of webcasters I belong to, and it is incredible how the chat has grown and how we have bonded together. Apart from our blogs we keep this skype written chat open and include new people every time someone asks to join us. It is basically an ongoing IM conversation – every time someone has a question, an idea, etc they just type something in that chat log and the others will automatically receive it when they come online. In other words, what it allows us is to engage in a mix of real time and asynchronous communication).”