Thanks for the memories

There is an old saying that you shouldn't look back when you are ploughing a field. Hmmm.... It's a good job that I'm not ploughing a field then, isn't it...? So at the top end of the year I can look back on 2007 with some fondness and think, wow, how good a year was that? So here are just a few of my highlights:

Best conference of the year: Without doubt it would have to be Online Educa Berlin, where I learnt so much, heard so many good papers and keynotes, and met so many great people. Second prize is shared by ALT-C (Nottingham) and Bazaar (Utrecht).

Best keynote of the year: Had to be that of Teemu Arina, the Finnish wunderkind, who regaled us with his clear thinking and prescience at EDEN in Naples.

Best device of the year: The iPhone of course - a gadget that I am not getting tired of.... and I've had it for almost a week now!

Best new buddy for the year: Well, I have made several new friends, all of whom I met this year, and all of whom I am now working with/collaborating with in some way. So let's see ... Marco Kalz (met him at ICL in Austria), Helen Keegan (on a bus going to the Eden conference, Italy), Gorg Mallia (ICICTE Heraklion and cartoonist extraordinaire), David Guralnick (ICL Austria), Graham Attwell (ALT-C Nottingham and all over the place ever since!), Josie Fraser (ALT-C Nottingham), Piers MacLean (ICICTE) and Cristina Costa (ALT-C Nottingham) all spring to my mind as people who have enhanced my year and given me much food for thought and a lot of laughter.

Flop of the year: Had to be ICODL in Athens, which proved to be a bit of a disappointment in many ways.

City of the year: Stockholm was great (for one night only) in April, Utrecht was great to wander around in the dark, and Frankfurt was ace (in October), but the prize for this year has to go to..... Bella Napoli!

Best food: Again, sorry all you other cities - you did your best, but it's Napoli that has the best food and restaurants.

Best experience of the year: Speaking to almost 300 people on the topic of Second Life at Online Educa in November. Large screen technology and safety in numbers comes to mind (there were 6 of us on the panel). Second prize goes to the visit I made with my mate Palitha Edirisingha to Pompeii in June, just prior to the opening reception at the EDEN conference.

Funniest event of the year: The ALT-C social event at Jongluers Comedy Club in Nottingham. We laughed until we got thrown out. Second prize goes to the farce of a speech by Andrew Keen at Online Educa. Never heard such crap.

Best group of the year: The prize goes to the Bazaar bunch who are the most intellectually stimulating group of people I have come across. That's us pictured above. Glad to know you all guys! (And Freefolio is a cool idea! - Thanks)

Presents of mind

So we're only two sleeps from Christmas day, and already I know what I'm getting. My darling wife has only gone out and bought me an iPhone, hasn't she!? I can't wait to get my grubby little mitts on it to see exactly what it can do and whether it will live up to all the hype(rbole). Someone has published a book about the iPhone, calling it the 'best little gadget ever made'. Well, we shall see, but when I tried one on in the shop, it fit me like a glove, and I was instantly hooked. (Sorry about the mixed metaphors, but hey - it's Christmas!)

There are several interesting blogs out there that focus solely on gadgets, including Ngadgeti, the Gadget Blog and probably the most eclectic - Engadget. Each provides its own style of review, and some may be fronts for commercial outfits, but it's only when you get your hands on the device that you know for certain how good it is. So give me a few days to wade through all the gift wrappings, tinsel and re-runs of the Great Escape, and I will let you know. Have a happy Christmas and try not to overindulge!

Flickring about

I've been playing around with Flickr during my holiday, and I'm quite impressed at how quickly you can upload images, tag them, geomap them (locate photos on a map to show where they were taken) and publicise them to all and sundry. In just three days of being a Flickr member, I have posted 27 photos, received 50 views and about half a dozen comments, all very positive, about my artistic expertise and skills in photogenic composition (here's one I made earlier - know where it is anyone??). If you want to see some more, you go to my photo collection and have a look. This is all very encouraging and affirmative stuff, and must be a key reason why Flickr is so addictive. Flickrites are just so darn nice!

Anyway, it got me thinking about all the teaching and learning posibilities of Flickr and other photo-sharing/social networking services. A big selling point is the fact that the discussion centres upon an object - in this case an image - which could be any kind of learning object. Another useful feature is that there is the facility to 'favourite' an image - this counts as a kind of polling or voting function - another useful learning tool.

Now I've got the hang of it, I'm busying my little mind on how I can possibly harness the potential of Flickr (and Picasa, and others) to enhance my teaching sessions, and enable students to become more creative in their learning endeavours.

Windmills on the mind

The dust has settled over the Bazaar 'Show that You Share' conference held this week at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, and it's all been a bit of a whirl, so now I have some time to reflect, here are some of my thoughts on the proceedings:

On the theme of social software, managing digital identities is a concern, with personal content on the web being both an asset and a liability. Copyright is an issue, and not many people understand the notion of creative commons. The question was posed: do students know the possible consequences of posting for example, images of themselves in compromising contexts on FaceBook? (for this read 'drunk and disorderly'). Anything can now be in the 'public domain' in seconds with pervasive mobile technologies around to capture the moment. How much do we own our digital self?

The second theme was 'Hey dude, where's my data?' Someone remarked that there are complex and comprehensive privacy and copyright rules in the user agreements in most social networking systems, but no-one ever reads them. We simply tick the box to say we have and then ignore them. Decentralised storage of data in open content systems makes it sometimes difficult to locate the data at a later stage. The delegates decided that current legislation in most countries is not adequate to deal with the new uses of digital technology that are emerging.

Theme three was Open Education Resources. It was agreed that new skills are required on the part of teachers and students to be able to use them to their full potential. However, institutional structures (or even strictures?) hinder rather than advance learning and a culture of sharing, due mainly to direct competition between universities competing for the same market.

Other conclusions included the comment that metatagging when used outside of a community of practice or interest may make no sense to anyone else. New methods of metatagging are needed to ensure cross-operability of platforms, and portability of digital objects between sites. Great conference - pity it's the swansong for the Bazaar project, as the funding has now ended.

Small, but perfectly formed

I'm just back this evening from 'The Networks, Communities and Learning: Show that you Share' conference hosted at the University of Utrecht, Holland by the Bazaar Network. It was for me, an excellent experience, and well worth the effort to attend, even though I got lost in Utrecht and wandered around trying to find my hotel in freezing temperatures for over 30 minutes when the bus driver dropped me off 2 stops away from my destination! It truly was 'show that you share' when a Dutch car-park attendant helped me to find a taxi, and offered to share his coffee with me. All I can say is: "Dank u wel, Mijnheer!"

So, along with 40 or so other delegates, I participated in Bazaar's final conference - a small and intimate event. The sessions focused on subjects such as Personal Learning Environments, Open Education Resources, Metatagging and Interoperability, and Data Security - all explored by experts and students alike. For those who stayed to the end, a fullsome summary was given by several of the delegates, who had participated in round tables and workshops from myself, as well as Helen Keegan (University of Salford, UK), Josie Fraser (EdTechUK), Wolfgang Greller (Open University, NL), Veronica Hornung (University of Salzberg, AT) and Marco Kalz (Open University, NL).

Tomorrow, when I have had more time to reflect, I will write a summary of all the key points that emerged from this final Bazaar event. In the meantime though, there are some useful summaries already up online, including Pierre Gorrison's blog (in Dutch) and in English, and some great Flickr photos that captured the whole day, from Helen Keegan and Wytze Koopal.

The Digital Classroom

I'm thrilled that my new book will be published this side of Christmas. Entitled 'The Digital Classroom: Harnessing Technology for the Future', it will be published by Routledge (David Fulton) next week, and it's something I have been working on with my co-author professor Peter John, for the last year and a bit. We actually wrote it last summer, but due to pressure of work and a change of job for Peter, things have lagged a little and the publication was delayed. Peter has now taken up the post of Vice-Chancellor at Thames Valley University.

Here's the blurb from the book for those who are interested: "Based on a major research project (the InterActive Project), this book explores and illustrates how digital technologies can transform learning across the curriculum. Using a wide range of educational settings - primary, secondary, school and home - it will help practitioners think about, plan and execute effective learning in their classrooms and beyond. It will show teachers how they can 'harness technology for the future' by covering important topics such as: personalised learning; using ICT for pupils with special needs personal; use of ICT and home-school links designing; and, 'digital' classrooms. By weaving 'evidence based practice' into each chapter, the book will provide extensive guidance, practical advice and insights into working in the 'digital classroom' for all primary and secondary school teachers."

We are looking forward with this volume, tracking trends in learning technology, particularly within the compulsory education sector, and there are sections on social software, interactive whiteboards and extended classrooms so it should appeal to a wide readership. If you read it and have any comments to make on it, please let me know via a comment on this blog. It would be great to hear from you, good, indifferent, or bad....!

An eventful month ahead...

I'm very pleased to be so busy at the moment. It keeps me off the streets but on the road. There are several events that I have been invited to participate in over the next month or so, starting with an online event hosted by Yale University tomorrow night. It's a webcast for edubloggers only, in which a new online initiative is being launched. Main speaker will be Professor Diana Kleiner, Deputy Provost at Yale.

On Thursday I fly out to the University of Utrecht to lead a workshop for Bazaar's 'Show that you Share' Networks conference. Other speakers include Marco Kalz, Helen Keegan, Graham Attwell and Josie Fraser.

In January, I will be speaking at a number of events including the HEA hosted e-Learning Symposium at the University of Southampton - Jon Dron will also present; an 'Ask the Experts' online event for the University of Staffordshire, which also features Dave Foord; and last but not least, a paper presentation for the BETT show at Olympia in London. Then I'm going to lie down in a darkened room with a damp towel over my head, Ricky Hatton style...

Caledonian Academy blog

One of the best and most comprehensive series of reports I have come across about this year's Online Educa Berlin conference can be found at the Caledonian Academy blog. Written by staff at Glasgow Caledonian University, previous contributions have been contributed by the likes of Colin Milligan, Allison Littlejohn, Kathy Trinder and their colleagues. The most recent postings contain some analytical and perhaps even forensic accounts of the parallel sessions, workshops and keynotes at Educa courtesy of blogger Anoush Margaryan. Well done folks - good reading!

Buzz words for 2007

Running under the title of Schott's Alamanac, the Times newspaper today carries an article about all of the new buzz words that have supposedly been introduced in 2007 and suggests that these are the words that will define the year. Many of them are technology words already familar to Edubloggers and some are irritatingly unfamilar.... shall we?

• Podslurping: Illicit copying of data to a portable storage device (e.g. iPod)
• e-Thugs: Online cyber bullies
• Lifecasting: Webcasting all your life's activities 24/7
• iSlavery: Apple's attempts to lock iPhone users into one network provider
• Macolyte: Someone who worships at the altar of all things Apple
• Network promiscuity: Tendency by social networkers to spread their membership across FaceBook, MySpace, Bebo, etc... (See also FaceHooked, an addiction to FaceBook; Face vs Space, war for supremacy between FaceBook and MySpace; FaceBlocking, where companies ban employees from accessing social sites at work)
• GoogTube: Offspring of the marriage between Google and YouTube
• Flog: A fake blog run by a company or marketing agency posing as a real-life consumer
• Upgrage: Upgrade rage experienced by all those installing Windows Vista
• Exergaming: Unlkely combination of exercise and gaming (Wii all need it)
• Cyber-vetting: Use of the web to assess the (inter)NET REP(utation) of potential employees
• UGC: User generated content
• Blogola: Fees (or bribes) paid to bloggers for favourable comments (Never had any offered...)
• Digerati: Elite members of online communities and computer industry
• Meganiche: The theory that because of the vastness of the Internet, even obscure items or content can receive massive exposure and publicity

Well fancy that. Any of the above resonate with you? Some of it sure does with me. But some of them go back a few years, so although they may now define 2007, some may actually also define the first few years of this century, I think.

Clark is not Keen

I'm back home from Online Educa Berlin, and it's time to reflect. Germany was a lot of fun, cold, festive and ... well, Germany. I'm left wondering though who this woman is everyone keeps talking about - anyone know anything about Alice Klar...?

Anyway. In comparison to all the other conferences on elearning and ICT I have been to this year, Educa just has to be the best. It had everything - an excellent environment for relaxing, thinking, discussing and networking (the Hotel Intercontinental on Budapesterstrasse must be one of the best and most expensive venues for a European elearning event), great social events, and an excellent line up of sessions. With over 2000 delegates at this year's event, it was also packed with diversity, both culturally and in terms of alternative perspectives. The content in most of the sessions was stimulating, challenging and in some cases absolutely inspirational.

I'm referring in particular to a keynote session on the final day of Educa, presented by Donald Clark (above), who was articulate, humorous, and at times, deeply profound in his analysis of the process of learning. He began by debunking many of the established and commonly accepted learning theories espoused by the likes of Benjamin Bloom (Taxonomy), Robert Gagne (Stages model) and Abraham Maslow (Hierarchy of needs). Maslow's model is particularly popular in the corporate training sector, said Clark, because most people like to put pyramids on their PowerPoint slides. Glib, perhaps, but also inherently true when faced with the oversimplification of Maslow's model. (Don't forget that Carl Rogers onces stated that we don't have to work our way through all of Maslow's hierarchy - some people can self-actualise instantly). Clark also launched into learning style theories by the likes of Kolb and Honey & Mumford.

By far the most delicious experience for the audience however, was Donald Clark's response to the earlier keynote by enfant terrible Andrew Keen. How the two differ in their approach! We should all feel insulted, said Clark, by Keen's dismissal of bloggers and wikepedians as merely 'monkeys with typewriters'. There were audible gasps when he labelled Keen 'an idiot', but I think the gasps were of admiration rather than surprise or outrage. Donald Clark was simply articulating what many people were thinking. 14 years olds have as much right to post internet opinions as Harvard professors, we heard him say. And social software is not about making money, but about liberating learners to contribute their own content to the mix.

But... 'get a grip, Andrew!' was perhaps the most apposite soundbite of the day...

Second Life at Educa

Second Life is much in evidence at Online Educa Berlin this year, much as I expected. Not only was our panel session - along with Helen Keegan, Graham Attwell, Steven Warburton, David White and Dai Griffith - very well attended with almost 300 delegates present in Potsdam I - but yesterday, an inspiring keynote by Sian Bayne, of the University of Edinburgh, demonstrated clearly to all those present how SL could be successfully deployed to create purposeful and open virtual learning spaces for Higher Education. Bayne was eloquent in her description of the process, highlighted many of the pedagogical issues that had emerged from creation of the space, and even demonstrated a live in-world visit.

Other sessions have also featured Second Life and have focused on other Multi-User Virtual Learning Environments - World of Warcraft has been featured, and the delegates here are under no allusion that MUVEs and other 3-D Virtual worlds are going to be hot agenda items for future e-learning conferences. Our little team are certainly planning some more jaunts into this field and will be preparing papers for other events in the coming year.

Chalk and cheese

The dialogue is hotting up here at Online Educa Berlin. Yesterday there was a clash of opinion between two of the keynote speakers. Andrew Keen, author of the infamous anti-Web 2.0 book Cult of the Amateur, failed to make many friends with his somewhat embittered attack on bloggers, Wikipedia and user generated content. As I have said before on this blog, there is irony in his statement that user generated content is simply a whole load of monkeys with typewriters - he publicised his own blog during his talk. Looking distinctly nervous prior to his presentation, once up on his hind legs, he launched into a diantribe against 14 year olds whose opinions are valued equally well as Harvard professors. He urged delegates to determine the difference between opinion and established truth - whatever that is. Andrew was clearly here to sell his book - he shamelessly mentioned it no fewer than a dozen times during his half hour speech, and immediately left for a book signing session.

By complete contrast, Graham Attwell, who stepped in at the last minute to replace a keynote speaker who failed to turn up, launched a blistering attack on the perspective of Andrew Keen. Self proclaimed as Andrew Keen,s nightmare, Attwell argued that the wisdom of the crowd is exactly that - knowledge that can be trusted because so may individuals are involved in the process of editing and strengthening the content on Wikipedia and that there are expert blogs out there that are trustworthy. If we fail to capitalise on Web 2.0, said Attwell, then we would miss a huge opportunity to transform learning and bring it screaming into the 21st Century.

I will leave you to decide who you think is the chalk, and who is the cheese....

Ich bin ein Berliner

I love Berlin, and cannot believe it has taken me so long to come back here. It is truly magical at and around Christmas time, with many of the trees in the streets lit up with lights. I am at Online Educa and have just witnessed one of the best keynotes I have ever seen. Let me attempt to encapsulate some of the content from the first session.

The first keynote was presented by Professor Sugata Mitra, seen above left, who is an Indian national who now works at the University of Newcastle. He reported on a 5 year long and ongoing project to place computers in Indian villages. He set up videocameras to record children as they interacted with the computer and each other, in what has been dubbed the Hole in the Wall project. Amazingly, he showed evidence that not only do the children teach themselves to use the computers, they also learned English as a result of their use of browsers such as Google. To cap it all, he amazed the 2000 plus delegates with the question - does language matter... and showed evidence that not only had the children learnt to speak English - they had also learned complex and difficuly concepts such as genetics, and could answer questions when prompted.

More to follow as time and space allow, but for now, goodnight from a very chilly and festive Berlin!

Making a MUVE

If it's Wednesday, it must be Berlin. I'm off in a few hours to catch that old orange and white bird again, this time to the heart of Germany, to speak at Online Educa Berlin. It's been over 8 years since I last spoke at Educa, when I gave a live demonstration of the then fairly new web streaming kit that multimedia company PictureTel had introduced. I did a live video link to London and spoke about the pedagogical potential of the system. On a wing and a prayer, the whole session went perfectly - and delegates crammed into the room to see it and ask questions. And of course, streaming media and videoconferencing are now a part of the fabric of many education institutions.

Online Educa is a much bigger affair now than it was in 1999, and most probably the largest e-learning event in Europe. I'm on a specialist invited panel with Graham Attwell, Steve Warburton, Helen Keegan and David White, all of whom are probably a lot more expert than I in the ways of Second Life. But, I will give it my best shot, and tell those assembled about our sexual health education and public information SIM. We will of course, be talking about whether MUVEs (Multi-User Virtual Environments), like previous innovations, will one day become common place in education. Time now to make a MUVE...

A greek tragedy

I'm afraid for me ICODL has been a bit of a damp squib. Greece brought the world the marathon, tragedy and democracy. This conference has all three.

Let's start with the venue - an interesting one. The 'Multicenter Appollon' does just what it says on the tin. It's an old refurbished factory deep in the heart of an industrial suburb of Pireaus. The taxi driver was confused - didn't know where it was, and circled around endless narrow backstreets hanging with washing and riddled with alley cats, navigating hair-raisingly around double parked cars, and narrowly avoiding pedestrians. Eventually he drew us up outside a large square two storey building. 'Here!' he gabbled in fluent English (better than my Greek... 'afta!'). We paid him and walked straight into a Post Office. Hmmm ... more confusion. 'Round the back' we were told, we would find the exhibition and conference centre. We walked into an area of controlled chaos and found ourselves at the registration desk for the conference venue, in amongst about 300 ancient sculptures on plinths, and dozens of paintings hanging from the walls.

The conference eventually started. Its title: 'Forms of Democracy in Education: Open Access and Distance Education' was promising, but that's where it ended. The first 2 keynotes and most of the welcomes were delivered in speed Greek. Then Alan Tait (UK Open University), followed by Michael Moore (Penn State University), gave a couple of retrospectives on distance education. Michael also talked about his new museum of the history of distance education which he has established in Second Life. 'There's not a lot there at the moment' he declared, but more would be added he promised. Presumably when distance education gets some more history in.... Call me cynical, but although I think retrospectives are OK in small doses (I have one of my own for Tim's sake), I would rather look forward to what is happening now in, dare I say it - e-learning - than gaze at the covers of old books that were published 20 years ago. I like Alan and Michael a lot, and greatly respect their vast experience and achievements, but tragically, their keynote speeches both failed to grasp the opportunity to spell out a new agenda of democracy and freedom in learning.

Paul Clark (UK Open University) gave a speech that was more in keeping with current events in e-learning, and he opened the debate on social software and its potential to transform educational experiences. Democratic forms of learning are premised on openness and freedom of speech - wikis and blogs and other Web 2.0 software have it in spades. The rest of the conference, I'm afraid, was organised badly with sessions going on from 0900-2015 each day (a real marathon), the content was generally very poorly presented, and throughout most of the 14 papers I listened to on the first day, I was left with a single question... so what? Over two thirds of the papers were in Greek, and the rest were in broken English. I eventually lost heart. My own paper was scheduled in a session of 6 papers starting at 1830. 'It's the graveyard slot' moaned my co-presenter Mark Townsend. He was right. Needless to say, very few people were still around at this time, as most had gone off to get their souvlaki and chips.

To cap it all - and here, non-smokers will cringe - the whole place was continually filled with a fug of cigarette smoke - there was no designated smoking area in the centre, because smoking was allowed just about anywhere. Not a breath of fresh air for an asthmatic (me) but party time for all the chain smokers on the delegate list.

I will go back to Athens again one day, but it won't be for ICODL.

Greece monkey

I'd forgotton just how chaotic Athens is! It has been 19 years, 6 months and 14 days (approximately) since my last vist here, and they still haven't repaired that old building on top of the rock. There are cars everywhere, double and even triple parked, and they come at you from all angles, complete with hordes of mopeds that sound like a demented swarm of wasps. Packs of dogs (friendly mostly) roam the streets or kip out on the sidewalk, and people just step over them. There are unguarded potholes and excavations everywhere you walk, so you need to keep your wits about you, and your nostrils are continually assailed with several aromas all at one time.

I'm staying in the Port of Pireaus (pronounced 'Pirry Ass' by the locals and they should know) and the weather is clear, blue skied and about 18-20 degrees - very pleasant after 6 degrees at Gatwick yesterday. It's like a British summer (remember those?) I love the Mediterranean style of life - old boys sat out in ricketty chairs playing with their worry beads, ornate wrought iron roadside barriers, the trees heavy with oranges, greenery down every street I walk, and the laissez faire attitude of everyone - 'no problem'....

I'm here to speak at the ICODL conference (on Open and Distance Learning), which opens tomorrow in some strange part of Athens that no-one seems to know the location of. My colleague Mark Townsend from the University of Plymouth will be flying out to join me tonight, and there's safety in numbers. The hotel clerk last night was very surly, didn't crack a smile, and ignored most of my questions. There's going to be a battle! Going off now to spy out the best and most rustic tavernas... Κύριε ἐλέησον!

The old and the new

I'm flying out to Athens this afternoon in a big orange and white bird, to attend the International Conference on Open and Distance Learning (ICODL) which is being hosted by the Hellenic Open University and the University of Cyprus. Keynote speakers include Michael Moore, Alan Tait and Paul Clark, all veterans of the Distance Education model of learning. It may turn out to be a clash of the old and the new.

The conference blurb states:
'Distance education is one of the most talked-about topics today in higher education and corporate training. This conference, which will provide the latest information on distance education programs, processes, packages, and protocols, is geared to both experienced professionals and interested newcomers to distance education and online learning who hail from a variety of work sectors, including higher education, continuing education, business, government, professional associations, and nonprofit organizations'.

Well, I'm not so sure that distance education is still a viable term, with so much blurring of the boundaries between home, work and school. Is there any 'distance' worth talking about any more? Technologies are becoming ever more personal, pervasive and ubiquitous, and a great deal more transparent, and I'm wondering how long we will continue to talk about a paradigm which may have seen its day. Never the less, I'm going with an open mind, to hear what people are saying, to see if there is anything new in 'distance education'. I'm also presenting my own paper on e-learning to support nomadic forms of learning where students enjoy the same quality of provision, screen topography and equivalency of support, wherever and whenever they are. Will report from the conference when I get the chance.

Trains and planes ...

I'm off up to Birmingham tomorrow, to meet with the rest of the Programme Committee for ALT-C 2008. Next year's ALT Conference will take place between 9-11 September at the University of Leeds. It's already shaping up to be a good conference, with keynote speakers including:

• David Cavallo, Chief Learning Architect for One Laptop per Child, and Head of the Future of Learning Research Group at MIT Media Lab;
• Dr Itiel Dror, Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Southampton;
• Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health, Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and Director of the Gapminder Foundation.

You can download a flyer for the conference here. Tomorrow, we will begin to choose the theme speakers for the event, and go through the protocols for reviewing papers, workshops, etc. I hope the train ride back home will be more comfortable than last year - got back to Plymouth, collapsed with chest pains and ended up in hospital! (Between you and me, I think the buffet car may have had something to do with it....).

I had to take a month off work, which I couldn't afford to do this time... I'm off to speak at ICODL in Athens on Wednesday where I will meet up again with my old friend Michael Moore, and when I'm back from that conference, I have a day off (which I will need to spend in Oxford, on the ALT-J Editorial Board meeting). The very next day I'm flying out to Berlin to speak at Online Educa. Too much flying about. I'm tired just thinking about it.

Mind your language

Never ceases to amaze me how the web can be searched to unearth all sorts of curios. I recently discovered several reviews of my scribblings in other languages, but there always seem to be words that don't translate. Here's a Finnish review of the paper I presented at the EDEN conference in June:

Steve Wheeler kuvasi tulevaisuuden opiskelua käsitteellä ”Nomadic Learning”, missä opiskelija vaeltaa digitaalisissa maailmoissa kehittäen omaa osaamistaan vapaasti saatavien resurssien avulla yhdessä toisten opiskelijoiden kanssa. Käytössä ovat Web 2.0:n sosiaaliset työkalut, jotka mahdollistavat rikkaan ja dynaamisen oppimisympäristön. Yliopisto-opiskelijoilta kerätyn palautteen perusteella Wiki-työkalu edellytti tavallista tarkempaa kirjoittamista, kriittistä tietoisuutta ja vahvaa keskittymistä opiskeluun. Siksi työkalu koettiin varsin vaativana ja toisten tekstin muokkaaminen nähtiin usein ongelmallisena.

I was also amazed to see that my blog from yesterday was translated into German and up on the web within a few minutes of me posting mine. It's translated as:

Lernen mit ' e: Veröffentlicht... und unzerdrückt (Learning with 'e's: Published ... and unjammed)

...and my final sentence on what my avatar is doing when I'm not in SL goes:

'Erhält mich denkend..., was meinen Avatara tun in SL tut, wenn ich nicht dort bin, ihn in der Überprüfung zu halten??' (Avatara hmm? well, ich weiss nicht...)

A recent paper I co-wrote for a Brazilian Medical journal was translated from English into Portuguese and the title now reads: 'A cultura colaborativa e a creatividade destrutiva da web 2.0: aplicativos para o ensino da medicina'. Well... I'll take their word for it, but they might be laughing at me behind my back and it could all be a load of rubbish...

One of the best things I found on the Web when I first started out was Alta Vista's Babel Fish online language translator. I know it has since been surpassed by a number of other web tools, and it often wasn't grammatically accurate, but it still made me think of Star Trek and the universal translator device. Be great to have one of those, so that I could at least understand the computer techies here at my university. Also interesting to think that 87 per cent of web pages in the known universe are in English (or an American version of it).

Now who's going to translate this blog entry?

Published ...and unjammed

Very pleased to see that our article on Second Life for medical education has finally been published today in Health Information and Libraries Journal. Seductively entitled 'Second Life: An overview of the potential of 3-D virtual worlds in medical and health education', it was co-written with Maged Kamel Boulos (my mate from the Faculty of Health and Social Work, here at the University of Plymouth) and one of our graduated students Lee Hetherington, whose VNEC (Virtual Neurological Education Centre) project features heavily in the article. We also discuss the learning and teaching potential of SL and how it can be harnessed by medical and health educators (and indeed any other teachers) who want to give it a bash. One thing we didn't mention in the paper is our Second Life sexual health project, which is going from strength to strength, but was born too late to feature. That project will be discussed in future papers - (promise).

I hadn't expected the paper to be published until next month, but that's the beauty of online publishing, as I said in my previous blog 'publish and be jammed'.

I have several other e-learning articles on the boil, but it will be a long time before some of them see the light of day, as they will probably be published on printed paper and take an absolute age to appear... Ah well, I guess if there's a world wide power outage, people will still be able to read the articles ... if they are in daylight. Gets me thinking ... what does my avatar do in SL when I'm not there to keep him in check??

At the bleeding edge

Came across an interesting blog on mobile technologies today, called Learn on-the-go. Whilst the title of the blog might be a little twee - (I had disturbing visions of someone reading a book on the toilet) - the content is pretty good, with a review of Marc Prensky's keynote address at the recent Handheld Learning 2007 conference held in London. Whilst not entirely glowing about Prensky's 'Keeping up with change' speech, even labelling him as 'obselete' at one point, this blog writer has some interesting things to say about mobile learning, change management and technology in general...

Here's a top quote from the blog:

'While slower, less progressive educators may still be comfortably exploring e-learning on learning management systems or off CD-ROMs (or, indeed, still doing chalk-and-talk), educators investigating mobile learning are very much at the cutting edge of educational innovation, along with other educators investigating other areas such as the use of social web tools for education, and the use of virtual worlds as learning environments.'

Well, yes, I agree - change is always with us, and shift happens. And I have to nod in agreement that the bleeding edge of learning technology is found in the study of ambient forms of learning, along with 3-D virtual worlds and social networking tools. I'll be bookmarking this blog and paying a return visit or two.

Not a peep

It was nice to get a mention in this week's Times Higher Education Supplement. The THES has a regular tongue-in-cheek section called Peep's Diary, which reports on all things quirky, humorous and slightly 'out of left field'. This week it chose my recent blog entry 'Crossed Lines' about US teachers using FaceBook and the potential for 'dodgy' scenarios to develop. Well, there's a lot in the press about FaceBook and other social networking tools these past few days, and not all of it is positive. It's a shame the spotlight has been turned onto the negative aspects of FaceBook. Y'see, I still think there must be some constructive ways to use FB and other social tools directly to support learning and teaching - but no-one has yet reported any uses directly to any of my online questionnaires. I would love to hear from teachers or faculty about their experiences, good or bad. If I'm proved wrong about FaceBook, you won't hear a peep from me...

News at blogspeed

This just in from WebProNews....

'Old media is epitomized by no news source more than the Associated Press. Literally thousands of journalists are employed around the world to bring current event coverage to readers of thousands of newspapers and their online sites. In the pre-Internet days the AP had little competition beyond a few other news syndicators like Reuters and UPI. The AP's world has now changed forever with the advent of blogs and news aggregation sites. Blogs are the new "AP" journalists and aggregation services which started with NewsLinx.com in 1996 and which now include Google News, Topix, Techmeme, WebProWire and the new Blogrunner have made the AP much less relevant.

'There are now tens of thousands of bloggers around the world providing coverage and analysis of current events too! It comes down to why pay when you can get the news for free. The AP is scrambling to remain needed in this fast paced up to the second blog news world. As reported and analyzed by WebProNews, the AP is suing Moreover for of all things... linking to AP stories. Does the AP not realize that winning this suit would result in less readers of their stories? The old news order is dead, the AP will have to adapt or die.'

News ends.......................?

A moving experience

My life is in boxes. Just like a Likert scale questionnaire. I am moving today from a communal office space into a basement office on another part of the campus. My soon to be ex-office is piled high with packing cases containing everything I need to survive a day in the office (and some things I don't need, but have kept anyway, just in case). The move is good and also bad. It's good because there will be less distractions but it's bad because I won't be able to mingle with colleagues as easily. It's a fine line, but social networking is delivering the same problems online. How many FaceBook, Bebo, MySpace, Flickr or (perish the thought) SagaZone (for the over 50s) accounts should I have? How many is it feasible to maintain? How do I stop social networking taking over my life? And why the hell am I writing this blog when I should be packing? (**call it a displacement activity**)

So at the moment my life is in boxes. Some of them are cardboard, others are made out of electrons viewed through flat screen technology. By the end of the week, most of the cardboard boxes will have been unpacked. It will be an infinitely harder job to unpack the electronic ones...

mLearn 2008 set to tag delegates

Around 40 of my colleagues enjoyed an excellent research seminar last week presented by John Traxler who is Reader in Mobile Learning Technologies at the University of Wolverhampton. He spoke about the current and future uses of mobile and handheld technologies and the future of m-learning. There were many positive comments, and John also mentioned next year's conference on m-learning which he is chairing. This week I received full details of what appears to be a very exciting and innovative conference - mLearn 2008. It links in with the Handheld Learning 2008 conference the following week in London, and delegates can purchase joint attendance. Here are the themes for mLearn 2008...

• mobile learning, mobile knowledge, mobile societies: covering discourse, identity, knowledge and learning with pervasive, ubiquitous, mobile technologies;
• social, individual and cultural aspects of mobile learning
• devices, systems, technology and standards: convergence, diversity, frontiers, trends
• mobile learning landscape: work-based, informal, subject-specific, context-aware, social
• mobile learning for all: inclusion, assistivity, scalability, embedding, participation, evaluation, evidence, assessment

As part of mLearn's registration pack, delegates will be given an ‘active’ ID badge and asked to choose one or both of the broadcast technologies available in order to allow automatic detection of the delegates throughout the conference. A benefit of this will be to record the sessions that they have attended and to automatically generate a blog as well as transmit relevant information to delegate devices. The blog can then be accessed post conference to review the individual experiences of the delegate. This technology will be carried over to the evening sessions, with the full cooperation of all venues involved. Sounds like fun.

Going Dutch

I have been invited to speak at the Networks, Communities and Learning Conference Bazaar at the University of Utrecht, in Holland on December 14th. Bazaar is a European funded project which seeks to support the development of a community around Open Source Software for education and open content development or Open Educational Resources. Bazaar has organised a series of 'Show Me' days around Europe, and this is the latest one. The subtitle to the Bazaar event is 'show that you share' and it looks like being a very interesting event. My own session is entitled: 'Use of wikis to promote a culture of sharing', whilst other invited speakers in the international lineup include:

Graham Attwell, Organiser (Personal learning environments) - pictured above left in contemplative mood, Josie Fraser, UK (Social networking services and social search), Helen Keegan, UK (THINKing and UNDERSTANDing the internet), Marco Kalz, Holland (Developing open educational resources), Veronika Hornung, Austria (Creating and sharing open educational resources) and George Bekiaridis, Greece (The future of leaning management systems).

Graham, Helen and I will be meeting up at Online Educa Berlin two weeks before this event, to present a join panel session on the educational uses of Second Life.

High level talks

I'm sat in an office on the top floor (18th) of the Attenborough Building, here in the heart of the University of Leicester. There are spectacular views over the city from up here, or there would be if I could see past the scaffolding and netting that is covering most of the building. Leicester is suffering from the same syndrome as many other universities throughout the UK at the moment. It seems that every university I visit is in the process of being rebuilt, refurbished or repurposed. The University of Plymouth is probably the university with the most building at the moment. Millions have been spent in the last 2 years to create buildings on the main campus so that we can 'pull our horns in' and close down all our external sites. Anyway, back to Leicester...

I'm here as guest speaker for the Beyond Distance Research Alliance - an influential group of academics and professionals from several UK universities who meet to discuss research around e-learning, distance education and learning technology - the group is led by Professor Gilly Salmon. She will be at the talk, as will Professor David Hawkridge, whose work I read during my teacher training days. In my seminar today I will be presenting some recent research I have been doing with my team on wikis as collaborative learning spaces. I've also promised to briefly discuss Second Life as a 3D wiki - but I won't give too much away, as I'm saving the best for Online Educa in Berlin next month. I don't think I have ever given a talk at so rarified an altitude, although my trip to the skyscarpers of Frankfurt a few days ago gave me some useful training...

Second Life in Education

A really useful wiki has just been brought to my attention (thanks to George Roberts and Stephen Downes - who are as ever vigilant). It's called Second Life in Education, is managed by Jo Kay (avatar pictured) and Sean Fitzgerald and does exactly what it says on the tin - it provides a fairly comprehensive list of projects that have an education or training focus in Second Life. I say 'fairly comprehensive', because it's not exhaustive of course - the University of Plymouth Sexual Health SIM isn't featured yet, but I hope it soon will be. I have just posted a message to the wiki discussion board attaching the URL for the project blog.

FaceBook and Second Life to wed

It seems like a marriage made in heaven (or at least fantasy world).... Earlier this week a message popped up in my FaceBook notification section telling me that a new app had been created that enables FB users to communicate using their Second Life avatars.


"Fire Centaur from English Village has released a facebook application for Second Life called: Second Life Link. Using this application, you can: Create a Second Life account if you don't already have one, display your SL online status, share your favourite/ virtual home location with your friends, and see your friends online status's! Check it out at: http://apps.facebook.com/second-life/" runs the message.

The sender of the message warns that there may be 'some bugs' and other issues in the app, but that we are all invited to help to iron them out. Bugs. Issues. Ironing. I don't know. Sounds too much like home to me, but I will check it out when I get a little tinkering time.... If you have already installed it, let us know how you got on.

Crossed lines

Some professor over in the states has just blogged about his (or her) reservations about colleagues using FaceBook. In the anonymous blog, revealingly called Rate Your Students, (bit of a give away..??) s/he asks rhetorically: 'Is anyone else creeped out by profs who spend as much time on Facebook as our students?' I say rhetorically, because s/he doesn't appear to have any facility for readers to feed comments back. The blog post, titled 'Who's FaceBook for?' goes on to tell readers how deeply disturbed s/he is: 'My colleague across the hall is always talking about events he reads about on Facebook, knows the nicknames of most of his students, and posts a ton of personal info about himself on his own page.' Well, fancy that, but it could be worse I reckon - he could be on Bebo.

The anonymous blogger continues.... 'He showed me a long list of his "friends," all students, and on his Facebook "wall," dozens of students had left him messages like: "Prof. Dude, how's it hanging?" and "Yo, Proffy, wot that smile on yo face?!?!?"I've never heard a single untoward thing about him - and this is a very gossipy place - but it still seems odd to me.' Well, perhaps this tells our blogger something about the power of social networking. It certainly tells me something about online identity and how some academics relate to their students. Oh, and isn't that last statement just a little gossipy?

Our anonymous and visibly shrinking academic in a state signs off ominously with: 'Is Facebook one of those lines that faculty shouldn't be crossing?' I guess it all depends on how you view your students, doesn't it...? The same professor seems to spend a lot of time on blogs though - s/he has 47 posts for October already... 38 more than me.

Sounds bazaar

I am featured on a podcast this month which is hosted by one of the busiest men in e-learning: Graham Attwell. It's called Sounds of the Bazaar and it looks like it's been going for a while, because this is edition number 14. The podcast lasts approximately one hour and is reminiscent of a vox pop radio show. My interview is about 7 minutes long, and is one I did with Graham about the University of Plymouth's Sexual Health SIM in Second Life while we were at the ICL conference in Austria last month. You can even hear the coffee machines in the background...

There are some interesting features from other speakers on this podcast, including interviews with Stephen Downes and Ruth Rominger and reports from conferences. Graham does a good job as host of the show, and draws you into the content with his easy going, westcountry burr. Have a listen - the entire contents are also featured on the British Institute BILD site. Graham and I will also be speaking on a specialist panel called 'No Life in Second Life?' at Online Educa Berlin next month. With us will be Dai Griffiths, David White, Helen Keegan and Steven Warburton. Hope you can make it...

Fame at last

Wow - I'm famous! No sooner have I set foot back on dear old British soil than I have an airport named after me! At least, this is the story from a blog about product branding called NameWire. I discovered it was linked to my blog through Technorati. Not sure what I have done to be so honoured, but I am there, listed among such illustrious names as John F Kennedy, John Lennon, Charles De Gaulle and Ronald Reagan. See mum - I told you I would be famous one day - and here's me in a moody Clark Gable pose just for good measure. Some might say, more like Mr Bean. Who cares - I'm famous now...! (Seriously, the great thing about this link is that it is rated 127 on Technorati at the moment, so my own Technorati blog rating has already benefited).

I guess the simple answer to this conundrum is that whoever put the blog up, must have read my blog about the ALT-C conceived Hood 2.0 community (and the Midlands airport named after Robin Hood) and has misread the contents. Anyway, nice to know Hood 2.0 is responsible for elevating me into the stratospheric realms of celebrity. I'm off now down to the studio to get a new set of publicity photos taken.

It's i-JIM ... but not as we know it

A new online journal - The "International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies" (i-JIM) has just been published at: http://www.i-jim.org .... I've just had a glance over the contents and there is some interesting reading in there. Prime mover behind this new resource is Michael Auer, whom I had the pleasure to meet and talk to at the recent ICL conference in Villach Austria. Here's the table of contents...

• Web-based Context-Aware m-Learning Architecture (Eisa Basaeed, Jawad Berri, Jamal Zemerly, Rachid Benlamri)
• Contextual Mobile Learning: A Step Further to Mastering Professional Appliances (Bertrand T David, Rene Chalon, Olivier Champalle, Guillaume Masserey, Chuantao Yin)
• An Approach to Ad-hoc Messaging Networks Using Time Shifted Propagation (Christoph Fuchß, Stefan Stieglitz, Oliver Hillmann, Christoph Lattemann)
• Evaluation Methods on Usability of M-Learning Environments (Teresa Magal-Royo, G. Peris-Fajarnes, I. Tortajada Montanana, B. Defez Garcia)
• Mobile e-learning course scenario model on PDA (Jeanne Schreurs)
• Potentials and Challenges of Mobile Media in Museums (Daniel Wessel, Eva Mayr)
• Factors that may contribute to the establishment of mobile learning in institutions: Results from a Survey (Olaf Zawacki-Richter, Tom Brown, Rhena Delport)

Sausages and mash(up)

I'm sat here at the University of Applied Social Sciences, in Darmstadt, Germany, (land of the sausage - we sampled some great ones last night!) surrounded by bright young things - around 30 post-graduate students from Germany, Poland, UK, Ireland and Latvia, all studying at Masters or PhD level in computer science. Leading this event for the European Union funded Atlantis University project is Professor Udo Bleimann, who is for want of any better word - 'dynamic'. Udo seems to be able to generate innovative e-learning and computer based projects on the fly, and is a real 'ideas man'. Udo works as a consultant for the University of Plymouth, is a member of the Information Security and Network Research Group here, and he has graciously invited me out to observe what goes on in their face to face meetings. The essence of Atlantis is 'learn your own way' - and the University provides a flexible and blended (extended blended actually) approach which also incoporates collaborative project based learning.

For their project, one of the groups of bright young things has come up with an idea they have called Wiki ++. I ask politely what the "++" stands for, and they show me... it is an extended open architecture in which several versions of a wiki page exist simultaneously, so there is potential for endless mash-up, ? multiple versioning and possibility of editing beyond text into other media (hmmmm...). I need to find out more about how this will develop, and at first glance, it appears to be an overcomplication of a simple idea. However, I am open to how it might contribute towards better collaborativel learning in online environments, and will watch as it develops....

England to win!

Well, I'm off on my travels yet again today, this time to the Fachhochschule Darmstadt, University of Applied Sciences, Germany. I'm involved in a transnational project called the Atlantis University Project, which connects students studying computer science in Germany, the UK, Ireland and other European countries. I'm going to act as a research mentor and provide some guidance for the project researchers. Not back 'til Sunday night, so I will probably miss the crunch match between France and England in the Rugby Union World Cup. I'm not sure how much the Germans are interested in men playing games with strange shaped balls, but I may be able to find it on a TV somewhere - maybe try an Irish pub.... Never mind, I will be there in spirit... Allez les Ros Bifs!

...while the iron is hot

We're in the sixth day of the UK mail strike, and I have to say I don't feel at all affected by it. If this had happened five years ago I might have. Now though, I am becoming less and less dependent on the paper based mail system, with much of my communication done electronically. I was throwing out stuff from my office a couple of days ago, and came across a sheaf of paper memos from about 10 years ago. I can't believe I actually used to write memos on a wordprocessor, and then churn them out onto paper, before posting them through the internal mail! I even used to take photocopies of the memos and punch them with little holes so I could keep them in a file!! How sad is that?

One thing I do get through the post all the time is junk mail - usually letters addressed 'to the occupant' - 'cos the sender is a bulk mailer and can't be asked to find out who actually lives in which house. These go straight into the green recycling bin. Those that are addressed to me from credit card companies trying to sign me up get a different treatment. I take the contents out, write 'PLEASE REMOVE ME FROM YOUR MAILING LIST' all over the application form, and send the lot, glossy flyers and all, back to the sender in their pretty little pre-paid envelopes. They then have the pleasure of paying for two mail shots to discover that I'm not interested. It works. I don't hear from the toe-rags again.

I wish it was as simple with e-mail spam. I would love to be able to get my hands on a program that sends spam messages back to the little *********s (like a million times). No such luck (unless anyone knows of something?). The strike will be over soon, and then I will be back to shredding and green binning all the junk mail cascading through my mail box. And of course, weeding the garden of my e-mail box on a regular basis to prevent myself from being completely overgrown...