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...

October 4 and all that

Today is a momentous day. I was just a four month old baby at the time, but my cradle was rocked, I can tell you. You see, today is the 50th anniversary of the day the space race started. Some might cynically say it was at the expense of the human race. Maybe, but when the USSR (remember them - they did a world tour in the 1960's) launched the world's first artificial satellite - Sputnik - we entered into a new era of telecommunications which eventually evolved into a vast global network that now enables us to receive live television pictures from virtually anywhere in the world. Without satellites there would be no GPS, no iridium satellite mobile telephony and no whole host of other things we have since discovered we 'can't do without'. Google Earth is a classic example of satellite imagery in action.

I have dedicated an entire page of my eLearning @ Plymouth website to satellite communications if you care to take a look. I spent a considerable time in the 90's working on a project where we regularly used live digital satellite television to deliver distance education to a large reception area covering most of Western Europe. We still have a satellite research centre at the University of Plymouth. You could say that satellites have played a big part in my life.

October 4th is momentous for me for another reason. Today is my 21st wedding anniversary. I'm off now to buy some flowers....

The Downes side

Reading Stephen Downes' blog Stephen's Web yesterday caused me to think more deeply about the nature of blogging. Stephen very kindly makes links to three of my recent blog postings from the ICL Conference in Villach, Austria. But Stephen my friend, I think you missed the point.

Here's a quote from him, er, quoting me.... "Summaries could be more informative and less, um, colourful ("two papers that shone out like diamonds in the mud in an afternoon of mediocrity")."

Hmmm... my first response is that it's my blog and I can use whatever poetic licence I like to convey my thoughts. But it goes deeper than this. Words are powerful, and often, metaphors can provide a lot more meaning than mere description. There are other conference blogs that are more informative. Go read those. Those who regulalry read this blog, I hope, have gotten used to my 'colourful' language and 'tongue in cheek' approach, and realise that this is the style these postings will take. It's a happy situation, I think you will agree... that blogs are not all the same, and that bloggers should use any devices they want to, to get their messages across. It would be a pretty boring blogosphere otherwise!

Thanks though, Stephen, for remarking that my links to the presenters were useful. It's certainly driven more readers to my site over the last few days. Oh, and I really like your 'colourful' picture on FaceBook! Cheers mate.