But its real purpose is to try and bring some kind of coherence to a complex story and thus to create the hindsight analysis which can help us use the National Archive of Educational Computing as a storehouse for insightful & inventive design, deployment and application for the future of learning with technology.

If you want to help this venture, please sign up to support the archive or even better, tell your story.

The ephemeral TreeHouse Gallery in Regents Park London provided a magical venue for an enjoyable discussion on new forms of teacher CPD. Initiated through Twitter by Drew Buddie who facilitated the meeting, which attracted myself, Leon Cych (who broadcast it on TwitCam), John Davitt, Merlin John, Anthony Evans, Dave Smith, Bill Gibbon, Andy Broomfield, Will and Daren Forsyth.

We got excited about TeachMeets, punchy presentations (whilst acknowledging the scope for lengthier, compelling presentations), Twitter and Blogs and the value of global networking. But we couldn’t tackle the challenge of recognition for such learning - could it be that informal learning should be left alone and valued for its own sake? Perhaps its value is in developing risk-free peer-learning, light reflection and seeds for the adoption of new practices - formal learning undertaken for rigour, recognition and career progression will always benefit from such experience.

All-in-all a valuable moment to pause for thought before tackling the new academic year (and a chance to see how a hobbit might feel in Lothlorien .

In the sixth act, ‘Act VI: The act of learning’ Mark Pilgrim quotes from the Kindle Terms of service (still accurate at the time of writing this blog entry):

Termination Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice from Amazon if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Software and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Service or to Digital Content without notice to you and without refund of any fees.

Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service

Suppose I was the kind of modern, 21st century learner who augmented their memory with notes and annotations on electronic devices such as the Kindle?

Suppose I was the kind of professional who carried their digital notes to work to augment my performance in real-life work situations?

Both of these augmentations would be out of my control if I subscribe to Amazon’s conditions and slip up – even if I did not stray from their compliance, their recent act could be tantamount to a lobotomy…

Regardless of my rights, my augmented mind is being controlled…

UPDATE 31st July 2009

A student is suing for loss of learning - from the lawsuit:

“28. As part of his studies of “1984,” Mr. Gawronski had made copious notes in the book. After Amazon remotely deleted “1984,” those notes were rendered useless because they no longer referenced the relevant parts of the book. The notes are still accessible on the Kindle device in a file separate from the deleted book, but are of no value. For example, a note such as “remember this paragraph for your thesis” is useless if it does not actually a reference a specific paragraph. By deleting “1984” from Mr. Gawronski’s Kindle 2, this is the position in which Amazon left him. Mr. Gawronski now needs to recreate all of his studies.”

IEC houses three major projects:
• the JISC Innovation Support Centre for Educational Technology & Interoperability Studies (CETIS);
• the Inter-Disciplinary Inquiry-Based Learning project creating innovative higher degree frameworks (IDIBL);
• the TenCompetence European research project developing a lifelong competence development infrastructure for Europe;

I work on the IDIBL project with Stephen Powell and Mark Johnson - an enormous pleasure to refine and improve the Ultraversity model we created in Ultralab at Anglia Ruskin University in 2003 and which is still running. The model is of work-focussed action inquiry as a means to learning, supported by colleagues, online community, facilitators and experts.

After IEC’s success in the recent Research Assessment Exercise, we are able to ramp up our activity in this area and are looking to extend our research group in IEC to focus on the following topics:
• systematic institutional transformation;
• organisational improvement;
• inquiry-based learning;
• learning with technology;
• interoperability and standards;
• learning design;
• assessment and portfolios;
• lifelong competencies.

Key features of the learning experience for new members of the research group are:
• improvement in current work context as the focus for study which enables work full time and study full time;
• completion of Masters in 15 months, PhD in three years;
• study online with no need for attendance;
• learning together as an online community with access to IEC experts;
• assessment to fit creative and work expertise.

A competitive bursary scheme for PhD will help lower the costs for successful applicants.
If you feel that you fit the bill, then we would be delighted to to discuss further - mail me at r.millwood [at] bolton.ac.uk or call me on +44 779 055 8641

“The DCSF will say there is a fair procedure in place for schools who feel the way we do- they have 42 days to produce an Alternative Business Procurement Case that the business experts in their Local Authority will have had 18 months to work on (in our case 107 pages long).”

and he continues to say –

“This is a trick, there is no way any school can show economy of scale (even though I actually have the figures to prove we can- it won’t be accepted, it’s sacrilege to suggest it) or show ‘transference of risk’ (we don’t talk about transferring the risks of educating our children elsewhere, we talk about professionals taking responsibility in house- isn’t this a lesson from the credit crunch?)”

It’s hard not to sympathise, but I wonder: can schools like Paul’s club together across the UK and share the burden?

Isn’t this an excellent opportunity for open source procurement thinking?

As us often the cases at such events the most value to be gained is from the surrounding off topic discussions and in one such conversation with someone from Cambridge University I was struggling with the comments that a big challenge for Cambridge was that they “lose too many students”.

After some time and as the conversation progressed it became apparent that this wasn’t a reference to a problem of retention but to one of not recruiting some of the the brightest and best students who were leaking away to the competition, Oxford, Harvard, etc.

The irony of the conversation wouldn’t be lost on anyone working in a recruiting university.

I’ve got the book “Soft Systems Methodology in Action”, Checkland & Scholes, and have to say that it immediately strikes me as being a very useful method by which to analyse and help think about change. Below is one of the sketches out of the book. Click on the image for a bigger version.

SSM

 Of course, there’s loads to it and I won’t get through a sliver of it in the module but I’ll be making a number of further posts over the coming days - looking at the elements useful (and feasible) to my needs as regards completing the Organisational Improvement module.

What I’m currently stuck on is answering the question around Organisational Improvement (been thinking too, would that be better being termed “change”?)…when the organisation in question operates with such a high level of autonomy that the boundary and relationship between individual and organisation is blurred to be almost indistinct.

In this picture you have individuals that operate their own personal fiefdoms, of sorts, and are incredibly resistant to new organisational ideas. Or at least that is my perception of it. I’ve talked to 2 assistant directors - bear in mind that these are people on the management side of the organisation - about my view of things, and I get 2 completely different viewpoints back. Not differing flavours of the same vision…different visions.

So where I think I’m going to target suddenly shifts and I wonder, “how the hell can I approach the issue of organisational improvement when I’m stumped for identifying a unified organisation in the first place!??”.

Anyway…

Thinking about Module 2 - “Organisational Improvement”. I’ve talked to Scott Wilson and Oleg Liber about the processes involved specifically when it came to making changes to CETIS’s operations.

My thinking is to go about this in the following way:

1. Visualise the organisational context and highlight areas in which the organisation could be “improved”, using that wonderful Management Cybernetics tool; the VSM (Viable System Model)
   
2. Focus on an area and look at methods used to instigate change - the one I’m focusing on now is Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) and the CATWOE analysis method

That’s basically how I’ll approach the first parts of the module. I will blog shortly on both these points.

(This is the logo of TeacherNet UK - a project to revitalise CPD for teachers by using online community and the internet from 1996-2000, after which it became the name of the governments’ website to provide unified information for teachers.)

This seminar lead by Professor Marilyn Leask at Brunel University, feels like a revisit of the work we did over ten years ago when the internet was fresh.

The question is how to best exploit technology to enhance continuing professional development for teachers? I have five minutes to answer…

… and of course the easy way out is to pose two further questions:

What is it about Facebook?

Facebook is highly successful in maintaining vibrant relationships between people, which leads me to ask:

1. Is it a successful online community or is it a social network?
2. How is it achieving this without facilitation?

I think it’s a tool which permits both online community and social network and there is a need to reconsider these terms and their meaning. Its success perhaps derives from these four things (amongst others):

• simple ownership and participation, the ability to make your own space and express creativity by putting your own material in it;
• automated gossip, the reporting of other user’s activity;
• some control over privacy and membership in hands of the user including identifying relationships with others;
• a route for creative developers to extend the system.

Such features continue to be innovated and prevent us from settling on a specification - we need a platform able to change without confusing participants.

How should we conceptualise CPD?

I have been working at the University of Bolton in the Institute for Educational Cybernetics to build an undergraduate and masters degree framework, the Inter-Disciplinary Inquiry-Based Learning project (IDIBL), which permits any professional practice to be explored in the workplace and online. In devising this framework, we tried hard to leave the subject discipline to be determined by context and to focus on inquiry discipline. Nevertheless there remained a problem of how to form viable online communities to study in this way, and our solution was themes.

In the world of teacher CPD, I argue that a multi-professional theme such as ‘Every Child Matters’ would form the basis for such a theme. In this kind of CPD, masters study is undertaken together with the social worker, health professional, special needs expert and police in order to gain a rounded understanding of a learner-centred improvement in practice.

Thus I would applaud the GTCE for considering action inquiry a central process in the Teacher Learning Academy, but extend that thinking to include a broader online community of the professionals that surround the challenge society faces in transforming schooling. And, benefit from the know-how in higher education of action research methodology and the opportunity for peer evaluation at a high level of rigour.

Friends John Davitt and Tom Smith, to say nothing of Dave Verwer, build a delightful application for the iPhone - and now anyone can get it in the iPhone store…

…and better still, you can shout about what you did in the face of its provocation!

This TeachMeet was brave enough to throw the rules up in the air and try a new plan - and mostly it worked! I enjoyed the way the break-outs gave more intimate discussion and flexibility, but I missed the quickfire and serendipitous action of the random speaker. Most of all there was a mature relationship with commercial sponsors who were very much present, but respectfully supportive - thanks to all of them.

There were great talks from Drew, Tom and Ollie and others I didn’t hear, but I also loved the Max’s ‘next thing coming’ talk with augmented reality, Blue Peter style. As ever with Teachmeet there was a mix of old-timers (I mean you Penny) and newcomers (Edith) and enthusiasm in buckets.

Having done CEME, can we do the top of Canary Wharf next time? Can’t think of anything else they’ll want it for…

Next will be my calendar, all very depressing on many levels:^(

You can also download an A3 PDF poster of it.

Adrian Mitchell has died;
Boo!
Adrian asked to be lied
to
About Vietnam, I cried
Hoo!
A priapic puppy made me laugh
And kittens,
two
Feeling daft through and
through
But mostly, I miss him

Cloud Computing (or my preferred term, Utility Computing) is probably my main area of interest right now - I think mobile technology is a close second though. The issue of educational institutions moving away from providing masses of storage, email services, expensive applications, etc. and toward a hosted setup is something I can see happening…just not sure when.

The topic is starting to get talked about more and more though and, unsurprisingly, it can lead to a bit of a mess of ideas. Cloud Computing, SaaS (Software as a Service), Shared Services, Outsourcing…it can - and does - seem to be getting lumped together in one box and I think that’s down to audience perhaps. When I think of this area I’m not thinking about payroll systems and other administrative areas but the interface between institution and student. Institutions creating email accounts for students and then having to setup and maintain the servers. Same goes for data storage…as students take increasing advantage of images, audio and video just how much of a hole does that burn into an institution’s budget when it comes to having the space for it all? Does a student care where their data is physically stored or their email is provided from? Should they? All questions that will be addressed over the coming months as part of the CETIS Working Group.

So, to the title of this post - I came upon (in a roundabout way, as you do in the Blogosphere) this rather helpful overview of the current Cloud offerings of ‘The Big 3′ on the blog of a guy called Scott Watermasysk. In it Scott gives a high-level comparison of the services in the Cloud that are being offered by Amazon, Google and Microsoft and his personal take on these.

I think for those people that are starting to look at this area and fancy an easily digestible introduction to what the current state of play is (not exhaustive, no, but a start) then this blog post ticks the box. Then all we have to do is dig further down to include the operators outside of these 3 and tease out the issues specific to education…dead easy!

Scott’s blog post is at http://simpable.com/software/cloud-options/ ]]> cloud computing http://www.stephenp.net/2008/12/08/most-adults-feel-exams-failed-to-gauge-real-ability/ Most adults feel exams failed to gauge real ability:77 per cent of adults believe that exam results should not be used to judge their suitability for jobs (Via Education Guardian). The overwhelming majority of adults believe school exams do not reflect their true abilities or predict their future success, according to a new report published today. As [...] http://www.stephenp.net/?p=371 Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:48:55 -0800

Most adults feel exams failed to gauge real ability:77 per cent of adults believe that exam results should not be used to judge their suitability for jobs

(Via Education Guardian).

The overwhelming majority of adults believe school exams do not reflect their true abilities or predict their future success, according to a new report published today. As many as 77 per cent feel that formal testing fails to measure their real intelligence, yet the exam results are used to scrutinise them through their academic careers and when applying for jobs.

They would be right wouldn’t they?

Amid reports accusing schools of ‘teaching to test’, the CIEA said the survey pointed to the need for a more well-rounded form of assessment.

And who could argue with this?:^)

Anyway, I get to the section on Cognitive Theories and Learning Styles and found that whole area very interesting indeed as it - even more so than the others - was clearly a topic I could turn on myself and ask, “what kind of learner am I?”, again, something I’ve never really taken the time to sit back and consider.

I read a little about Kolb’s ideas and the axis of learning and while the diagram in the TES pullout was a little more basic than the one below it was immediately clear to me that I exist in the top part of the layout - Feeling, Watching, Doing - or Accommodating & Diverging Learners.

Kolb's Learning Styles

Straight after that the piece touched on Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Now, ok, I’m only just coming to this and know nothing about it but my immediate feeling was one of acceptance - it made sense to me. I’ve always considered myself quite a visual person - I used to be heavily into films and now I’m a budding (if I do say so myself) amateur photographer. I’ve always been heavily affected by aesthetics, visual stimulii and even the level of ambient lighting in a room when attempting to relax. I’m not so good with concentrating on thinking solutions through logically and I consider myself pretty poor at articulating things verbally.

I followed a couple of given links to basic tests that would outline who I am when it comes to this and got the following diagrams back…

My learning style

The results seem to tell me what I’d already thought but never knew there was a theory and lovely graph to display it in - heavily visual and prefers working in groups than alone. What it has also done though is made me reflect on my outputs, my assessment patches for the first module.

Unsurprisingly, my first idea for LO1 - Locating where I am in the field - was a ‘graphical representation’ of JISC World and where CETIS, and thus myself, sits in that.

However, what about the others? It seems I’ve just automatically promised reports when I may well be better off finding another way.

My learning style - another view

So…another rambling blog post (apologies once again!)…but as amateur as it is I suppose it can still be considered a piece of learning and - for me - a valuable one as it means I’ve taken my first steps to understanding the deeper levels of the field in which I work, rather than solely focusing on shiny, exciting technology without any *real* grasp of why and how the technology can drive education in new and innovative ways. Of course it now means I have yet another area of interest to read up on…and the days don’t get any longer

It’s illuminating when an organisation such as the BBC takes the trouble to explain its efforts to deal with the flood of expression that has risen in a Web 2.0 world.

Thanks to Tom van Aardt, Communities Editor, BBC Future Media & Technology, for blogging their experiences here - Strictly Message Board: What Happened

“Eventually, I decided to close the Strictly Come Dancing board at 22:00 so the moderators could work through the backlog of messages.”

He doesn’t mention the hours that the reader can sink into reading such commentary in the search for insight, a phenomenon I have recently experienced whenever trying to make sense of high definition television or keeping up with reaction to Obama’s election!

I have been reading the report ‘On-line Innovation in Higher Education‘ submitted by Sir Ron Cooke to John Denham recently and I’m not impressed.

It seems to be but a variation on the ‘content is king’ theme and, by its own standards, seems to miss many points.

The title of this blog ‘Content is muck’ is intended to disparage this approach and at the same time recognise the importance of high quality, accessible content as a fertiliser for the growth of knowledge amongst learners.

Probably most critical is the following:

“2.5 The education and research sectors are not short of strategies but a visionary thrust across the UK is lacking.” p8

So where in this document is a vision outlined - where is it to come from? I (and many others) would be happy to offer one! But seriously, this is the moment and little here is visionary.

These further quotations from the document raised a range of issues:

“1.1 [..] We lag behind in generating and making available high quality modern learning and teaching
resources. [..]” p3

The difficulty I have with this is the way in which we go about catching up. We should be careful not to spend too much money on material which becomes out-of-date within a year, is specific to particular courses, contexts and levels or fails to enhance the creative rôle for the learner in developing their own knowledge.

“3.15 [..] diagram [..] showing areas where students are currently pushed beyond their comfort zones.[..]” p12

The diagram referred to shows some ICT tasks in a grid with four quadrants - the top left shows tasks which are ‘”Familiar” / “Not comfortable using” and includes “Using social networks such as Facebook as a formal part of the course”, but the task “Using existing online social networks to discuss work” is shown in the bottom right quadrant “Unfamiliar” / “Comfortable with using” - how can this be, what do they mean? Sadly the document lets us down here, with no reference to a source, unlike the bulk of the work. A report of this significance needs to be of the highest quality of it is to be convincing.

“3.19 [..] iv. where students tend to learn almost entirely at a distance (e.g. The Open University and the student base the UK e-university aimed for) high quality, purpose written, online materials and high quality online support services are essential;” p13

I agree in part, but what does “tend to learn almost entirely as a distance” mean? Is it not the case that learning materials and support for face-to-face learning should be of similar standard? The unspoken assumption is that learning at a distance is solitary and thus the materials and support must compensate for the lack of ‘learning conversation’ - this is simply not the case in the modern social web.

We have had extensive experience over five years of fully online provision in the Ultraversity project where “purpose written, online materials” have been minimal. This has led to no lack of quality, as the guidance and support is generated through dialogue shared by a cohort of students - the online community of inquiry. Authoritative sources, journals and textbooks including key professional documents, are available widely on the internet and can be engaged with rigorously, critcially and comprehensively. This way of organising learning is most effective in that it also sets up the student for further lifelong learning.

“3.28 [..] The e-university was ahead of its time but the UK can learn from its mistakes and it is not too late to try again to address the demand for virtual, largely on-line education in the UK and
elsewhere. [..]“ p15

I think not - the e-university did not take a visionary nor innovative approach in my view and was not at all ahead of its time, but tried to take old approaches into new technology with minimal account of growing evidence of the efficacy of new models of online learning.

For the sake of my tax bill please lets not try again without considerably more care and wisdom!

Jamie Tuplin, Stan Owers, Mick Waters and Pete Williamson - presenters at the Owers Lecture 2008

The Guardian reports “Oxbridge to accept engineering diploma” - welcome news to learners and their teachers pioneering the Engineering Diploma in Barking & Dagenham schools. This timely announcement comes a week after another stimulating and informative Owers Lecture presented by Jamie Tuplin and Pete Williamson, and an excellent commentary in response from Mick Waters, Director of Curriculum at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. This fourth Owers lecture, organised by Core Education UK, was once again held at Oracle UK’s offices in Moorgate, London on November 12th, thanks to Oracle’s ever-supportive Chris Binns who is champion for Oracle’s altruistic ventures Think.Com and ThinkQuest in the UK.

Jamie Tuplin, who leads the diploma developments Barking & Dagenham Local Authority and Pete Williamson, Head of Design Technology at the Warren School (and Learning Line Lead for Engineering for the authority), reported their experiences & issues of Engineering Diploma implementation in the first three months.

The question put to the audience was ‘Can Diplomas Cure the ‘English Disease’?’ and Mick Waters’ response, designed to provoke further debate, was to outline several diseases, all of which needed attention! In the end we had to stop, but discussion was strong and all participants were hungry for more.

The business world seems to be embracing utility computing and SaaS and I guess the issues facing educational institutions are going to fall under the same headings; privacy, reliability, security, etc…just with a different flavour. Also there’s the legal issues to consider. Of course, again, businesses will address this too as with any data I suppose but I would imagine education being a public service under the watchful eye of the government will give a twist to the issue.

Oh and I am looking at the topic at an institutional level, rather than a consumer (teacher/student) level. The two distinctions need to be made I think and I pretty much decided early on that the ‘bigger picture’ of the institute as customer/provider would have the most meat on it.

So, my early thinking is that the CETIS Working Group around this will consist of IS people and others that have a role in institutional policy when it comes to technology and services. I have a handful of names in mind - hopefully I’ll get to talk to some of them at next week’s CETIS conference in Birmingham. As for the output of the WG (one of the remits of the working groups is to produce a clear, tangible output)…much as I have a bit of a phobia about the word “report”, that’s what it will be. Let’s call it a “Discussion Paper” for now though shall we.

The things I am reading at the moment are:

“The Big Switch” by Nicholas Carr

Nicholas’ own blog at www.roughtype.com

The O’Reilly blog, this article and those that link off from it… http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/web-20-and-cloud-computing.html

Some articles in national broadsheets:

The Independent

and

The Economist

AND!!….yet to tackle as; a) it looks big, and b) I want to formulate an overall picture of the area in general before diving into the specifics of the topic related to education…

The Tower & The Cloud

Now then…when are they going to introduce 8 day weeks??

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Richard and I did a uvac-idibl-presentation slot that wnt down well, lots of commanality with the Middlesex Work-based learning approach as described by Alan Durrant Head of Work Based Learning, School of Arts & Education.

The biggest impression that I am taking away is of the development of a two tier market growing up. Numerous examples of large employers working with Universities to develop bespoke courses - lots of resource required for this not to mention the challenge of curriculum set in aspic.

I suppose it takes us back to one of the core ideas behind Ultraversity & now IDIBL and that is trusting in the ability of the learner to negotiate the curriculum (focus of their inquiry) with the University in line with their needs and the needs of their employer.

Perhaps this is the clear blue water between us and other work-based approaches:
- one is high overhead negotiations with individual employers for particular groups of workers developing a prescribed curriculum that matches exactly what an employer defines;
- the other is a generically defined process curriculum that allows for personalisation through the design of individual inquiries focused on improving work-practice.

Thanks to it supporting Firefox and Safari (Opera anyone?), Office Web Applications will also run on Linux and the iPhone. Let’s face it, they had little choice really did they. Given their fear of Google they really have to entice people away from Google Docs and placing proprietary restrictions on the applications wouldn’t really have been a good starting place now would it!

On that point though, Microsoft still hasn’t stated whether there will be a free version, although it’s been said that the apps will be part of ‘Office Live’ which will come in both free and subscription flavours…so I think it’s fairly safe to assume that there will be a free-to-use option.

Apparently they also won’t be forcing Silverlight on users, its rival to Adobe Flash. Microsoft’s Sarah Perez, claimed on her blog that, “Silverlight is not required. Using Silverlight will enhance the user experience, resulting in
sharper images and improved rendering. Also, the Office Live Workspace
has integrated Silverlight technology into the multi-file upload
function for a better experience.”

So…interesting stuff. Now we have to wait for the technical preview.

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Universities should offer ‘pick and mix’ degrees, says report:

- build up qualifications from modules taken at different times in several universities
- make it easier to switch between full-time and part-time study, possibly by making students pay for each module they complete rather than a whole programme of study
- the curriculum they offer must become more flexible and treat part-time students more fairly
- The system as it is at the moment does not give proper credit to people who do part of a degree
- Ramsden recommends more general undergraduate degrees, such as those in the US and Australia, that would help graduates “contribute to the world of the future” rather than prepare them for academia

UK universities should take online lead:

“UK universities should push to become world leaders in online higher education, ministers will say tomorrow, despite the failure of the UK e-University four years ago.

The universities secretary, John Denham, is likely to call not for a revival of the UKeU, which collapsed in 2004, but to develop a “global Open University in the UK”.”

That seems like an ambitious proposal, however when you read more detail…

“But it lags behind in generating and making available high-quality modern online learning and teaching resources.

The report by Prof Sir Ron Cooke, chairman of the UK universities’ Joint Information Systems Committee, suggests creating centres of expertise in educational technology and e-teaching through clusters of institutions, with comprehensive staff and student training.

Learning resources should be grouped together, coordinated nationally and provided freely, he will say.”

I can’t help but think that it is another naive proposal to spend money (through Sir Ron’s JISC of course) and see no reason why it would work better than the UK e-University, the 74 CETLs, or the Lifelong Learning Networks at making a significant positive sector wide impact.

I thought that the false division between those working in “educational technology and e-teaching” and ‘other’ teaching was a thing of the past. Instead, this proposal appears to further entrench an unhelpful divide rather than see learners as having diverse and changing needs that can’t be pigeonholed simply to meet the world views of others.

As I said previously, I’d been stuck for an idea on where to target my action inquiry and I did feel at the time that I was shoehorning the idea of the technical report into fitting the requirements of the learning objective. Yes, it fit, but I wasn’t really fired up by the idea…and I want to be when it comes to this course and the whole idea of having it feed off my work and vice versa.

So…last week I was in a CETIS meeting, at which we were looking at our workplanning for the coming year. Now, thus far CETIS has really revolved around its Special Interest Groups - the SIGs. These exist in domains and were born from - primarily - the interoperabilty specs of IMS…so the Educational Content SIG was heavily involved with IMS Content Packaging, Assessment in IMS QTI (Question & Test Interoperability), Metadata in…well, you get the picture.

Nowadays though there is so much crossover between domains (not to mention the fact there’s so much more to be involved in than IMS) that the traditional “4 SIG meetings a year” needed an overhaul. So what’s happening next is that CETIS will host 12 broader/cross-domain meetings per year (don’t think that’s an imposed restriction though), while specific problems and issues that arise along the way will be addressed by specialist Working Groups - short term groups that have a clear output in mind at the start and work towards that (The SIGs are ongoing communities rather than groups that are targeted to address a specific issue and produce a tangible output addressing it).

I’ve been tasked with creating a WG which will look at the area of Cloud Computing and Software as a Service (SaaS) and how this rapidly developing issue impacts on education…or, more to the point, IT in educational institutions. Now this is something that I am getting fired up about as I find it infinitely more interesting than the thought of writing a short report on what some projects have been up to (sorry JISC!).

So, what will I have to do? Well…get up to speed with where we’re at with the Cloud for a start. Have a look at how industry is addressing the same questions. Decide what the output of the group will be (advice? guidance? future gazing?). Basically I’m going to be looking at the why, the who and the what….and that will be my work on this module. I’m then hoping that the actual life of the WG could feed into a future module…so I could really shape things around the whole lifespan of a WG - from inception to final conclusions.

Now then…where to start…

“

Universities review plagiarism policies to catch Facebook cheats:

Universities are reviewing their plagiarism policies to clamp down on students who use Facebook to cheat.

Plagiarism experts have warned universities and colleges to be aware of students copying from each other when discussing coursework on social networking sites.

Gill Rowell, from the consultancy Plagiarism Advice, said universities needed to rework their plagiarism policies with “internet working in mind” but insisted institutions were taking cheating seriously enough.

The warning comes after almost one in two Cambridge University students in a poll of 1,000 admitted to cheating in their studies.

Student newspaper, Varsity, found 49% of undergraduates who anonymously took part in their poll confessed to passing off other people’s work as their own.

One anonymous student said: “Sometimes, when I am really fed up, I Google the essay title, copy and throw everything on to a blank word document and jiggle the order a bit. They usually end up being the best essays.”

Just 5% of the students admitted they had been caught.

“It is a depressing set of statistics,” Robert Foley, a professor in Biological Anthropology at King’s College, Cambridge, said.

University plagiarism experts will discuss cheating with Universities UK, the umbrella group for vice-chancellors, on November 19.”

‘

Critically evaluate professional requirements for my chosen field of practice in relation to my skill set and experience and my organisation’s priorities for development.

The key is identifying a piece of work that is on my plate right now that can be analysed and reflected on. This works better if it’s a ‘contained’ piece of work, something that fits into the timeframe of the module itself. I was a little stuck for exactly what to do here until I had a good chat with Stephen, the course leader, and we identified a report I have to write for JISC on the Cross Institutional Support for Lifelong Learning Programme…Phase I. I know what you’re thinking…you’re thinking, “Where was the person who thinks up the snappy acronyms on this one!??”. Yep, I hear you.

Now, I’ll let you into a little secret (but keep it between us, eh!)…I haven’t written a ‘Technical Report’ before. So in that respect it’ll be a perfect vehicle for analysing and reflecting on my approach. Also for developing a small-scale action inquiry around tackling the issue. What are the aims of the report? The expectations? How are they usually compiled and how does that suit me and my way of thinking and working?

However, I find myself questioning how well it ‘fits’ certain aspects of the course. Will applying this learning objective to this piece of work lead to a clear outline of how I can improve something about my organisation - in the quote above it talks of my organisations priorities for development…I’m not sure what those are! - OR…is it, at this stage, simply about me? Improving the way I approach a piece of work like this. Getting me to look at the job and then actually plan it with more analytical thinking, more reflection on my practice.

I think it is but, hey, this is all new to me. Of course that means that - at the moment - I feel like I’m talking in circles.

So my plan is to lock onto what the report should really be. What needs to be in there and why and how best to gather and report that data. What’s interesting is that this ties to LO1 - not just identifying my own role though, but that of CETIS as an organisation itself. We were born from the world of standards and (to me) were very much about IMS…Content Packaging, Metadata, QTI, etc. I’ve tended to think we’ve moved away somewhat from this over the years but I think my perception of who we are has been a skewed one. We are still about open standards and developing and nurturing the use and implementation of them…so that’s where I need to start.

My current worst nightmare (which still occurs – usually when I’m tired) is that our web-based email system logs me out after a certain period. So I write a long carefully considered email and click send with a deep sense of satisfaction at having got it off my chest, only for the thing to disappear. My language is colourful at such moments!

Like Pavlov’s dog, I now send long emails with trepidation! I try to remind myself to copy the text I have written (or write it first in Word), or to log-in to the email just as I’m about to send. But even now I forget!

Anyone else care to share their worst technological nightmares??

This surely isn’t a great deterrent, considering the potential damage to the reputation of its students…

The business of training looks troubled to me - a new credit-crunch to come?

I’ve not been helped by illness and whatnot which has taken me out of the game for a bit but also I find myself struggling to feel confident about having a grip on what’s required. I see my fellow student researchers who have many years on me in their roles, discussing looking at standards bodies and suchlike…mapping their targets on the learning contracts and I think to myself, “Jeez…am I so out of touch with what I do?”. Having said that, that is part of the aim of the module I guess…it’s just that at times like this I’m reminded of how ’simple’ my take on things is. I’m not used to being analytical in this way - which is ironic as I am so very much like that in my life outside work!

Anyway…hopefully it’s just a slow start and I’ll quickly claw my way into it and pick up the pace. However, I also think the actual communication side of things is a….hmmm…I can’t really think of the word. It’s an itch. Yes, that’s what it is. An itch at the back of my mind.

So far everything is taking place through 2 avenues - the Course Blog and Google Docs. The trouble I’m having with the blog side of delivery is that the ensuing conversations are scattered across multiple threads…comments to comments to posts. To me it’s starting to quickly feel scattered. Fractured is perhaps a better description though. This is heightened when you’re reading these snippets of discussion through an RSS reader too I feel. As I write this I’m having a Skype chat with Stefano and I’ve used the term, “thinned out”. That’s how things feel at the moment…stretched, fractured, scattered, thinned out. Hmmm…the realities of online learning hit home.

So what’s the work around? Or is it simply a case of me having to adjust my management and whole approach to tackling the course. Inquiry based learning means lots of discussion, yes? If so then getting the balance and feel of the communication is key as I need to feel part of it. I need to feel that I’m actually in a conversation, rather than just picking up separate but connected threads and having to make do with feeling that I’m having one overall conversation in several different places at the same time.

Hopefully this is valuable feedback for the course designers though at the least.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Two weeks into the semester proper the 7 student researchers recruited for the first cohort are all engaging with the first module.

Forced to work outside of the UoB learning platforms (administrative issues), we have concentrated our communications around our Wordpress.com site and Google Docs for formal support (negotiation of learning contracts), with the more informal aspects catered for by blog aggregation through YahooPipes, synchronous text chats & oral communication through skype, and some exploration of twitter and a beta beta IEC Statusometer (developed by Sam) - there are probably also things happening that I don’t know about.

Next week we will finally start our Hotseat with Oleg Liber and that will also use wordpress.com.

Thus far there is no compelling reason to use institutional technology at all. A little more thought on my part on setting-up of the wordpress blogs would, however, have enhanced the experience for student researchers. For example, choosing at the point of making posts visible to allow comments or not as we currently have too many places where these can be left - turning this function off retrospectively hides comments already made.

Another issue is that of privacy as the model of learning we have developed requires the discussion of work issues that it may not be suitable to be aired publicly, but again with a little more thought up-front this could easily be catered for.

I’ve made this video introduction to some of the technologies of the Masters in Learning Technology…

This is a video of my experiences using the IDIBL Learning with Technology Masters…

The JISC SPLICE project has 6 months left, and my thoughts are turning to Realistic Evaluation. I want to use Pawson and Tilley’s evaluation methodology to think about the impact that SPLICE has really had, what the mechanisms are, and how it might be sustained. A lot of thinking has gone into Viable Systems Modelling for learners, teachers, and other project stakeholders, and I’m also mapping patterns of communication in the project. We’ve got a great story to tell, since particularly in Harlech, there have been some great evolving stories of inter-disciplinary cooperation!

I’m going to get into the habit of doing a very brief video blog of my thoughts on the Masters in Learning with Techology. Here’s my first attempt… (and by the way, it was Friday morning when I did this, not Thursday as I said… I put it down to nerves!!)

Thinking further about learning design, I’m intrigued by the idea of teaching as a process of activity design where both teachers and learners tranform themselves. This distinguishes between the different roles of teachers and learners in a new way. The teacher is not the ‘eternal rock’ of knowledge whose job it is to impart that knowledge, neither is the learner a ’sponge’ to soak it up. Instead, the teacher is the designer of activity into which each accepts a role, and through which each may expect to be transformed.
Through such a scheme we can acknowledge the subjectivity of knowledge, and get away from teachers being ‘right’ and learners being (initially at least) ‘wrong’. Moreover, disagreements may reveal themselves through the activity and be embraced by all parties.
So perhaps there’s some guidance to be given to teachers which derives directly from the LD debate.
1. Don’t impart information.
2. Think of how your knowledge might be changed by engaging in activity with your learners.
3. Then design the activity for their and your transformation.

Just been having a discussion about Learning Design… one of many many discussions on this topic. Is it any good? is it too complicated? Will anyone use it? What does it mean? etc.. The problems come when we think about real teachers instead of ‘ideal’ teachers. Real teachers come in so many shapes and sizes. Some are into planning in a big way. Others aren’t. Some just walk into a classroom and ‘do their stuff’ with very little evidence of planning… It’s much more improvisational.

So what’s the issue? Certainly, the design of courses is becoming an important issue… we have a new material environment in software, and just as the material environment of the classroom is often designed, or re-arranged by teachers in the hope of stimulating learning, so the design on the software environment will similarly need to be manipulated.. but perhaps only in the hope of stimulating learning. Just it wasn’t intended that the primary class use their carefully placed bean-bags as missiles, so many unintended (and disastrous) consequences of software designs will emerge – and it will work differently for different teachers.

Beneath all this are deeper issues about intention, design and planning.. and what it is that is intended. A useful analogy is with music. A musical score is a very precise set of instructions as to how a group of musicians should organise themselves to produce an intended result. There is a tight-coupling between the intention and the notation. However, some contemporary composers, uncomfortable with this for various reasons, have experimented by mixing specific notation with sections where improvisation by the players is necessary. Here, of course, there is no control over what the eventual sound is. But the intention is not for a specific sound, but for a particular experience, or dynamic. And even by loosening the controls, there is still a clear intention in the act of ‘loosening’ … the intention that people free themselves… let it all ‘hang out’. There is, in other words, still an element of design in the most liberating forms (or non-forms).

Instructional delivery is not unlike the tightly-coupled notation-intention model, and most teaching is still in this domain. There is an activity, but that activity is to execute the score (or the lesson plan). For some it will succeed, for others it won’t. Well-planned constructivist schemes are not unlike this.. like the carefully-designed learning space, the intention is that a sequence of activities take place. In reality, they may or they may not. But what of improvisation, the absense of planning? So much teaching is in effect improvisational – particularly the 1-1 conversation. There is a process of acting (speaking), and finding, planning next steps, then acting more, etc. Can learning design accomodate this dynamic process? One way of approaching this question is to consider whether there is an intention behind such improvisatory teaching. Perhaps it’s simply “to have fun in the context of …”

If the intention of a learning process is not to ‘learn x’ but to ‘have fun in the context of x’ then the improvisatory teacher can be accomodated within a ‘design context’. Moreover, there may be designs for ‘having fun in the context of ..’ And perhaps most important is the idea that rather than focus on transferring information through executing a precise ’score’, teacher and learner co-develop through a series of activities designed by the ‘teacher’. This focus of Learning Design may change the way we think about teaching and learning altogether. In other words, a teachers might design an activity with their learners to transform themselves.

This was the best hour or so I’ve spent on YouTube…. about YouTube.

It helped me to see development and change happening in YouTube usage and to feel that there is still a way to go to be mature as a population online, but what an exciting journey?

Much more insightful debate at the Digital Ethnography blog.

This conference is taking place on Wednesday with about 50 folk - I know many others would have liked to come, but this is only a start and there’ll be more. For those unable to be there, there will be plenty of reporting to come, and you can download the conference pack and archive leaflet right here.

More importantly, if you have a story to contribute about your experiences with educational computing over the last four decades, contribute it in the stories section of the National Archive of Educational Computing website and if you want to do more, fill in the form in the support section.

The JISC Regional Centre South West recorded and webcast my closing keynote to their conference using Adobe Connect and you can find the recording here. Thanks to Melanie Roberts at JISC RSC SW for managing the slides & chat and to her colleague who filmed and recorded sound so expertly. It was interesting to go back over the transcript from the four remote participants and see what worked (and not) for them - movies seem to be a bit of a problem, a shame since I had taken the trouble to transcribe and dynamically subtitle some of them using Quicktime text tracks - how does that get routed out to Adobe Connect?

The Learning Through Enquiry Alliance conference at Sheffield University is a breath of fresh air - practitioner led, but research oriented, but above all a sense of camaraderie with many others struggling with the ideas we have been exploring for the last five years.

A ‘world café’ exercise to break the ice led to my re-draft of an action inquiry model on the tablecloth, adding my latest concern for ‘feeling’ based on my interest in John Heron’s work. I have added a ‘FEEL’ aspect - feeling the need to improve, feelng curiosity which relate to Heron’s ideas of zest and interest around delight. We have for a long time talked about exhibiton as a mode of assessment - I have clarified in this diagram by adding the word ‘celebrate’, that this is as important to feeling as it is to knowledge and communication.

The PLE has been around for some time as a label for the use of social software, web services, aggregation, etc in education. But what about teachers? With such a transformed ‘learning’ environment, how is the teaching environment transformed?

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