More great places, awesome people

In my last post I recalled some of the great places I went to this year and some of the awesome people I met. Continuing my review of the year, here are my top five places and some more great people of 2011.

5. Mombasa, Kenya. As a part of the International Federation for Information Processing event calendar (IFIP Education Committee) I was invited to keynote a conference in Mombasa in August. I have heard so much about Kenya, but had never been to East Africa before this excursion. I arrived tired after two flights totaling almost 10 hours, and stepped out into the sauna. Mombasa is south of the equator, and in August is supposed to be in winter, but at 28 degrees with 90 percent humidity, you could have fooled me. Mombasa is an island city of almost 1 million souls, and is surrounded by water, so I went equipped with malaria tablets and insect repellent, and believe me, they were needed. And yet, in spite of the personal discomfort, I found the city to be charming, colourful, fascinating. We were warned that there was always a chance of trouble with a huge number of refugees entering the country just to the north of us, and because Somali pirates were operating along the coast, kidnapping and hijacking were real threats. We noticed that there were armed guards outside our hotel, and also guards on every floor inside the hotel. The Kalashnikov rifles were a dead give-away. I still managed to take a tuk-tuk into the old part of Mombasa though, and with my old friend Torsten Brinda, where we wandered around virtually unmolested, taking in the sights, sounds and aromas of authentic Mombasa. The experience of Kenya was made deeply poignant for me when I talked to these young people (pictured) outside some school gates during one of our visits. Some of them are too young to go to school, so they hang around outside gazing in each day, waiting for the time when they will be able to go to school to hopefully better their own lives and those of their families. Full story in Out of Africa.

4. Dublin, Ireland. I had the privilege of visiting the fair city of Dublin twice in 2011, the first time to keynote the 14th Irish National IT Training Conference in April, and the second time in June to speak at the Annual EDEN Conference. On both occasions, I met President Mary McAleese, and got to shake her hand. Ireland is a great country (I have Irish ancestory which helps) and Dublin is a fun city to spend some time in, especially when it's with my old friends Graham Attwell, Deborah Arnold, Philip Wilkinson-Blake, Mark Brown, Eileen Brennan-Freeman and Sally Reynolds, and new friends including Eamon McAteer and John Heffernan. Both trips to Dublin were memorable, not just because of the great experiences of attending two major conferences, but also because of the welcome the city gives, and here's a tip: Temple Bar and the Guinness Factory are a must for any visitors to the city. Full story in Feel the burn and EDEN comes of age.

3. Barcelona, Spain. I always enjoy my visits to Barcelona. It is quite simply one of the most attractive cities you can imagine and in terms of its eclectic and outrageous architecture, it is second to none. The influence of Gaudi, Picasso, Miro and a host of other avant garde artists is evident wherever you turn, and the opportunities to sample the culture and atmosphere of this iconic city are endless. On this occasion, in October, with the weather mild and bearable (I was last in Barcelona in July 2010 when the temperature was extreme) I was invited to keynote the Open University of Barcelona's 8th international conference on teacher training. I had the pleasure of meeting and spending time with Doug Thomas, who with John Seely-Brown, co-authored the book 'A new culture of learning', and also had dinner with legendary author Manuel Castells. It was wonderful talking to these great thinkers, and hoping that at least some of their wisdom and intelligence might rub off on to me! Full story in Slightly dangerous and In the same boat.

2. Wellington, New Zealand. This was my first visit to New Zealand's capital city, 'the coolest little capital in the world,' courtesy of Massey University's Mark Brown. I was invited by Mark to keynote two conferences for the university, and then to stay over in Wellington for the weekend before providing the international keynote for the Tertiary Education Summit. During the weekend I met up with old friends Jo Fothergill and Jedd Bartlett and met Karen Melhuish for the first time down at the offices of Core Ed. Wellington is packed full of things to do and places to see, including the spectacular harbour, Mount Victoria, and of course the Wellywood movie industry scene (Miramar district is where the famous Weta Workshop is located). Going on the Movie tour and visiting some of the location sites for the filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was one of the most memorable experiences of my time in New Zealand. In doing so I reflected on the art of film making to the extent that I eventually wrote this piece on attention to detail. I was also delighted to meet Dermot Donnelly on the tour, and I hope to keep in touch with him, given that we are both deeply involved in research into social media in teacher education. The national museum at Te Papa was just across the road from my hotel, so I spent a fun afternoon in there soaking up the kiwi culture and learning more about the history of the islands. Full story of my New Zealand lecture tour in Aotearoa.

1. Melbourne, Australia. This year, the city that has left the best impression has to be Melbourne. I really don't have enough room here to do justice to the seven days I spent in this cosmopolitan, wonderfully laid-back Australian city. Hooking up again with old friends John Sandler, Colin Warren and Joyce Seitzinger really helped to cement my welcome, and meeting new friends such as Mark Smithers and Dave Cummings added to the sheer enjoyment of the city. I was in town to keynote the inaugural technology for teaching and learning summit at the famous Rendezvous hotel, and was glad to share the spotlight with AUT's Thomas Cochrane with whom I spent some down time chatting about mobile learning and life in general. Thanks to all who looked after me so well in #Melb - it was a great pleasure, and very comforting to be in the company of such good friends, so far away from home. My time in Melbourne reached its zenith in a great tweetup gathering down on the riverside underneath St Kilda Bridge where Stephen Heppell and Claire Brooks joined us for drinks, and I was delighted to spend some time talking to Shelley Gibb, Jenny Ashby and Pam Kamande. The Melbourne skyline at night is spectacular, as under floodlights is the iconic Flinders Street Railway station. There is much to see and do in Melbourne; Victoria Market is bustling and colourful, the sporting scene is well represented with multiple world class stadia (including the MCG and Rod Laver Arena) on the edge of the city, and I spent an excellent day out with Joyce and Mark at the Victorian State Museum, learning much about the history of science fiction film making. Full story in The Melbourne set.


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Talking to camera

I seem to be doing a lot of interviews lately, many of which are on video. No-one ever warned me that I would be doing video interviews when I first became a teacher. No-one came up to me and offered me media presentation training like they do for politicians. I have never been briefed on what to do when standing (or sitting) in front of a camera. I have had to learn all about it by trial and error. Error more than trial actually. I can now tell you what a noddy is (no, it's not a Toytown character) and what a cut-away does (best not to ask, really). It has very much been informal training on the job, and I'm sure I've screwed up now and then. Yet my most recent video interviews seem to be watchable, and I appear to be reasonably coherent and not talking too much gibberish. I'm now at the point where I don't care anymore if someone comes up to me and asks for a video interview. I'll do a talk to camera at the drop of a hat. That actually helps when people suddenly walk up to me and shove a mobile phone into my face and ask for an impromptu interview. Talking to camera doesn't make me sweat or tremble like it used to when back in 1992 I did my first ever TV studio interview. Back then, I remember feeling physically sick, and spending a lot of time prior to broadcast in the toilet (yes, the TV interview was a live broadcast and there was no room for error .... scary).

My time spent later working for the RATIO telematics project from 1996-1998 gave me plenty of opportunities to sit on the other side of the microphone, and I suppose was a kind of on the fly media training. I had to learn fast. I even had my own Training Hour show once each week, which went out live by satellite to the whole of Europe. It helped me to think on my feet and cope with most situations (dead air with guests clamming up and not speaking, technical problems such as failed phone-ins, mouse droppings on the carpet, etc....)



When James Clay invited me at the recent ALT-C event in Leeds to sit in as an interviewer, and converse with guests for the live webstreaming ALT-C Live Beta TV programme, it all came back to me. I would have no more than a minute or two to find out a little about them and formulate a few questions and then it was straight in with the live streaming interview. It felt quite natural to do the intro direct to camera, and then turn to the guest and try to get some interesting snippets of insight from them. John Traxler was probably the best to interview because I only had to ask him one or two questions and then he was off, talking twenty to the dozen until we eventually hauled him out of the studio kicking and screaming (OK, I exaggerate, but John did most of the work for me). Above is a brief, unscripted one minute elevator pitch interview I did for my own university, about some of the research I'm currently engaged in. And below is an on the spot interview I did while over in Dublin at the EDEN Conference in June. There are several more in the pipeline that will appear on the web in the next week or so that were recorded in Lisbon and Cologne recently. I'm getting to be an old pro at this video lark now. I even managed to video myself smashing a can of baked beans down onto my finger to make a point for a student group. Look, don't ask - just click on the video link and watch it for yourself. That's the kind of stuff I get up to in the classroom when there's a camera to perform in front of.




Talking to camera by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Everyone has one

Everyone has one - a personal learning environment, that is. Just look around when you are next sat on a bus or train, and you will see people sat listening with earbuds or using their mobile phones. Some will be reading books, or Kindles. Others will be discussing current affairs with their friends, or reading newspapers. It's quite simple. We all learn. We all use tools to help us learn. Personal learning environments or PLEs, are the collection of tools (not just online) that enable us to connect, create and share content with our own communities of interest and practice. Mine will be different to yours, because my choices and preferences about what and how I learn are different to yours. And what you choose to use personalises your learning, making it uniquely yours.


Today at the Personal Learning Environment conference in Southampton, delegates debated whether students actually have the competency to build their own PLEs. A Twitter discussion ensued, but ultimately, I think the wrong question was asked. Why should we question whether students have the competency to build their own PLEs, when in fact most learners already have their own PLE structure of tools sorted out when they arrive at university. As they gain more knowledge of their subject, broaden their personal learning networks and gain access to more content, so they modify their PLE to accommodate all the necessary storage, tagging and co-creation of content that ensues. Graham Attwell, in a recent keynote at the EDEN Dublin conference, made the profound statement that 'competency' is a socially and culturally constructed concept that has many interpretations. So the question is problematic on at least two levels. It depends on what you mean by competency.

The question that should have been asked was: Do students have the necessary skills to apply their informal PLEs in formal learning contexts? In other words, do they have the ability to use the loose aggregation of Web 2.0 tools (iGoogle, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube etc) to help them to engage more deeply with their learning? Do they have the prerequisite skills to apply these tools in a manner that gives them an advantage in their course of study? When I was an undergraduate, I used all kinds of tricks to short cut my study and buy me time. These included getting my hands on next year's course materials from previous students, and finding out what the assessment questions were likely to be when I finally sat them. It worked, and I emerged with a first class honours degree. Doesn't work for everyone, and that's why university staff should not attempt to impose tools onto students. Each student certainly has the competency to build their own PLEs and to decide what their tools and preferences for learning are. They are experts in them, after all.

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” - Dr Suess.

Image source by Denise Parker


Everyone has one by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

EDEN comes of age

Today saw the start of the 20th Annual EDEN (European Distance and E-learning Network) Conference, which is being held on the campus of the University College Dublin. The day dawned bright and sunny, although somewhat cool, and 425 delegates from 40 countries made their way over to the O'Reilly Hall to hear keynote speeches from Sir John Daniel (20 years of Distance Education in the Garden of EDEN: Good News and Bad News) and Dennis Pamlin (Information, Knowledge and Wisdom in the 21st Century) and a special address from the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. Although the first two speakers were excellent, and provided thought provoking, challenging and inspirational value to the conference, it was the speech from Mary McAleese that took many by surprise. I don't know what the delegates expected but I can guess. So many previous politicians who have addressed specialised conferences tend to present in a sanitised style that is polished but devoid of any real substance. This is because their speeches are written for them by functionaries who know very little about the subject they are addressing. But Mary McAleese is different to the average politician. She actually knows her stuff, because unbeknownst to the majority of delegates, she has an impressive academic pedigree, and is an afficionado of digital technologies in learning. I knew this already of course, having witnessed a speech she gave two months ago to a group of ICT professionals in the Dublin Convention Centre. She introduced herself as a 'fading president', but if anything, she sparkled.

For at least 20 minutes, she held her audience spellbound as she recounted a history of learning technology and applauded EDEN for its massive contribution to our understanding of the digital incursions into education through the years. Technology gives education reach, she argued, urging us to drill down deeper into the future to make it a better place for people to learn. We need to open up spaces and possibilities, she said, and this was no pious, political platitude, because she honestly believes that learning should be open and accessible for all. Using technology, she argued, creates flexible learning environments which meet learner needs whatever their space or pace. She left the platform to sustained applause, and made it her business to deviate from her prepared pathway to shake hands with several of the delegates seated to the left of main stage, starting with yours truly. She is a visionary and charismatic in equal measure, and I wonder if the Irish people realise how fortunate they have been over the last few years to have her at the helm, particularly during such a trying economic climate. It was a great manner in which to celebrate EDEN's 20th year, and an excellent and highly appropriate way to kick off the annual conference. NB: Unfortunately there are no photographs available of the Presidential address, because for security reasons, we were not allowed to take pictures. However, you can watch the video on demand of the session by going to the EDEN website

EDEN comes of age by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Open for use?

Open for use?

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

Above are my slides for today's keynote at the EDEN Research Workshop here in Budapest. I'm talking about open educational resources and open scholarship (a form of open educational practice), as well as the power of social media to give every learner a voice. I want to challenge some of the deep seated ideas such as pay wall publishing and closed knowledge systems that are so redolent of the Ivory Tower reputation academia has nurtured over the past few centuries. Nuff said.

Open for use? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

It's not really learning anymore

The final keynote of this morning's first plenary session at the EDEN Research Workshop in Budapest featured the Open University's Grainne Conole, who in her own inimitable style, crammed so much content into just 30 minutes of fast paced presentation, I found it difficult to take down any meaninful notes. It wasn't her fault though - it was rather a distinct lack of wifi connectivity and technology failure on my part that made me resort for the first time in ages to taking notes with - shock horror - a pen and paper! Well, at least I discovered that I can still write with a pen, albeit a lot slower than I remember doing when I was an undergrad. It's like riding a bike, apparently you never forget - but you do slow down with age. I still wish I could have typed down the notes though - it would probably have done Grainne a little more justice for a great speech. But, here goes:

Grainne talked about educational policy in relation to research, teacher practices and learner responses, and this triumvirate of outcomes can reveal a whole host of influences, including a clash of local culture versus global hegemony. Here she listed a host of learning theories, and linked them to existing pedagogies before weaving them into recent high profile e-learning projects. She cited the abject failure of Google Wave, and suggested that it was the shortfall between how the software could be used (its potential affordances) and the actual perception of its usefulness by users that did for it.

One statement Grainne made will stand out, and should be repeated to all undergraduate students. Acquiring knowledge and recalling it, she said, is no longer adequate - it's not really learning anymore. Anyone can copy and paste from Wikipedia and construct an essay (and I daresay pay for pre-written essays on just about any subject under the sun if they wish to get into wholesale plagiarism). Teachers, she argued, are not fully exploring the full potential and power of learning technologies in the classroom, or indeed outside of it. They perceive a lack of time, lack of skills and few rewards as the key barriers to adoption of new technology for learning. She recommended that we all need to choose between two models: the belief based (implicit) model and the design based (explicit) model.

It's not really learning any more by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Branching out

Gilly Salmon opened the EDEN Research Workshop in Budapest this morning with a keynote entitled 'The tree of Learning: Nurturing the Growth. In it she used her now very well known drawing of a tree with its branches bathed in 'Techno-shine', representative of her argument that all education, whatever it's hue, is now dependent upon and influenced by technology of some kind or another. I guess this is true for the Western industrialised nations of the world, but in Africa and parts of Asia, the shine has a little farther to go to reach their branches. But I digress slightly. Gilly traced the history of education from it's roots to it's new shoots - and in doing so reminded us all that although we have a rich history of pedagogy, some of the branches are falling away, and others are growing in surprising directions. Her metaphor extended to the evolutionary theory of Darwin, and a prediction that some of the unfit practices would not survive. But how to nurture the new growth necessary to keep education healthy? 'The longer you have been in education' she argued, 'the more difficult it will be to shift resources and energy into new ways of teaching and learning.'

There's nothing special about web based learning (and in particular distance and open learning) she argued. They're normal now and anyone who is in education, she said, must use technology. This of course opens up an entire area for discussion - what of the digital divides we still see in society? What about those who cannot or will not engage with new technology in education - will they simply fall away like dead branches on Gilly's proverbial tree of learning? Or will they need to be cut away? Her parting shot was interesting: Quoting John Richardson she pointed out that when it comes to the future, there are 3 types of people: there are those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened. I guess regardless of what happens though, the tree will continue to grow - it just depends on how fast, in what direction, and how much fertiliser is required.


Branching out by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Through the keyhole

The Apostle Paul once wrote that he could see things 'through a glass, darkly'. He was trying, I feel, to capture what it felt like to see things, but without complete clarity. And I know what he meant, because this week, when I should have been over in Gdansk to speak at the European Distance and E-learning Network (EDEN) Conference, I am sat at home recuperating after keyhole surgery. As I have previously written, EDEN is one of my favourite annual events, and I have attended at least 7 over the last 10 years or so. It is a delightful meeting place for e-learning professionals and academics, and although the quality of the presentations can be something of a curate's egg at times, a certain honesty and resilience pervade the proceedings. The settings are always grand, and the company is erudite and entertaining. It is quite a melting pot of ideas, and a number of notable trans-national collaborations have been spawned there over the years.

But I have to follow the event remotely, from my sitting room, using participatory media this year. I am following the conference blog which I am happy to see is this year carrying some interesting video clips that people have thoughtfully posted up. These give a sense of participation - almost a social presence, without actually being there. But it is all a little like looking through the keyhole (if I can use that term in two different ways in the same post). You aren't there, and what you can see and apprehend is limited due to the distance and lack of presence. The media can ameloriate some of the barriers, but it also imposes constraints.

Twitter may be the best participatory media as a conference backchannel, and I have previously eulogised over its affordances in this area. I feel that it has more immediacy than blogging even with video clips embedded. This is because it provides a constant stream of snapshots (some of which really are snapshots thanks to Twitpic et al) and you can respond in kind, and enjoy almost synchronous dialogue even though you are not physically present. Also, the limit of 140 characters encourages accuracy .... so brevity forces clarity. We worked this well at the recent Plymouth e-Learning Conference, trending in at number 3 at one point due to the high volume of tweets. Many people who couldn't attend reported that it was the next best thing to being there. Twitter provided quite a large keyhole to look through, in fact.

Image source

2008 Milestones Retro

The end of each year is an ideal time to reflect upon personal progress and look back at the milestones, the achievements, the events that have made the year. It's a time to consolidate, to be thankful, and in the act of looking back, to also look forward to what the new year might bring. It's a time to make plans in the light of past successes (and failures) and to celebrate and take stock. Here are my top ten milestones of 2008.

The no 10. achievement of the year is presenting papers in one year at each of what I consider to be the four most influential e-learning conferences in Europe. EDEN (Lisbon, Portugal), ALT-C (Leeds, England), ICL (Villach, Austria) and Online Educa (Berlin, Germany). I attended all of these and another dozen or so conferences this year, and have met some incredibly smart and passionate academics and professionals, all of whom have inspired me to push forward myself to extend the boundaries of e-learning. I'm very grateful to all of them for their enthusiasm and energy.

My no 9. achievement for 2008 was an invitation for me to edit the proceedings for the ICT and Learning for the Net Generation IFIP conference which was held in Kuala Lumpur in July this year. Working with so many excellent and well known researchers and writers was stimulating and rewarding, and the finished product, complete with ISBN will be a part of the archive of accumulated knowledge in the field of computer based learning.

At no. 8 was a personal honour for me - an invitation to participate in the inaugral Open EduTech Summit which was held in Barcelona in October. Being numbered as one of 40 worldwide experts on open learning and distance education, was indeed an honour for me, particularly when the complete list of those invited is reviewed. I was fortunate to meet with and work alongside some real luminaries in the field such as Mark Bullen, Vijay Kumar and Sugata Mitra.

My no. 7 this year represents another personal honour. This month I was delighted to hear I had been nominated in two categories of the Twitter 'Shorty' Awards - the #education and #nonprofit categories. I don't stand a cat's chance of winning but just being nominated for one award, let alone two, is humbling - but shows that there are people out there who value what I write when I am on Twitter. Whatever the outcome of the awards, I will continue to be a twit for the forseeable future!

No. 6 was the news in September of my promotion within the Faculty of Education to co-ordinate all Education Development and Technology Mediated Learning activities, here at the University of Plymouth. I already convene the University's e-learning research network, but this role now gives me the opportunities to explore new and emerging technologies and how they can be applied to support and enhance learning across an entire faculty. I also now chair the Faculty of Education's Information Technology Committee.

At no 5. is the imminent publication of my fourth book, an edited volume entitled 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures', which will be in the bookstores for the first week of 2009. The cover of the book can be seen (above) for the very first time. This book is the second I have published with the US based Information Age publishing house, and my fourth on e-learning to date. It is an achievement for me on a number of levels, including the honour of working with great writers such as Howard Rheingold, John Traxler and Palitha Edirisingha.

At no. 4 was a very recent achievement. I was delighted to be nominated in 2 categories in the prestigious Edublog Awards (the 'Eddies') - best individual blog and most influential blog post. When I look at the competition for these awards, I realise that there is little chance of me winning, but as I have already said, the nomination means a great deal to me personally and professionally. I try to write blog posts that are both entertaining and informative.

At no. 3 is my election as chair of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 3.6 on distance education. I was honoured and thrilled to be elected to lead this reputable and highly respected group of researchers and academics. I hope I live up to expectations of the group to contribute toward IFIP's continued success.

At no. 2, I was very pleased to be invited to take over the editorship of a very highly respected journal, Interactive Learning Environments, after serving as Book Reviews editor for two years. I am daunted but excited at the prospect of steering the journal over the next few years, but I have an excellent team of associate editors and a stirling editorial board behind me to help me to ensure that ILE continues its success story.

At no. 1, and my most valued achievement of 2008, is my award of a lifetime EDEN fellowship. I was notified of the award earlier in the year and had to keep it fairly quiet until it was presented at the annual EDEN conference in Lisbon, in June. As one of the awarding committee remarked to me later, 'Someone can be president of EDEN for a short time, but a fellowship is for life'.

It has certainly been a very busy and rewarding year, with plenty of great events to remember, wonderful people to recall meeting for the first time, and excellent things to reflect upon. Here's to a successful and fulfilling year for all of us in 2009! Happy New Year everyone!

Going for the hat trick

This year I'm going for the hat trick - speaking at the three most prestigious e-learning conferences in Europe (in my opinion at least, so don't go writing in). It will be the first time I have submitted and had papers accepted for EDEN (Lisbon), ALT-C (Leeds) and Online Educa (Berlin) all in the same year, so I'm quite pleased.

To celebrate this, I am posting my PowerPoint presentations from these conferences and others up on Slideshare just in case anyone wants to view them again. The EDEN presentation, on blogging as a teacher mentoring tool, and the ALT-C presentation, on my 5 stage wiki activities model are both up already. The Online Educa (Berlin) conference presentation will be posted nearer the date (mainly because I haven't created it yet). Also up are presentations I did in Salzburg for Edumedia, and my Edupunk presentation for F-ALT, which has already posted 200 views (That's me in the picture above, at F-ALT - a great action picture taken by Josie Fraser).

I hope my ramblings and jottings are useful to somebody out there.

Fame again please

Well, they covered the story two weeks ago in one of the local rags. You know, local boy does good on the world stage. I am of course referring to the fellowship awarded to me by EDEN last month in Lisbon. So I get a call last night to say - do you know your picture is in the paper tonight? My first reaction was - you hum it, I'll play it.

But when I looked, there I was in full colour with a big headline in the Evening Herald. I didn't expect them to run the story again, but they have, this time with a photo. There is some journalese of course - 'Globetrotting academic', 'Lecturer nets fellowship', etc. Then there follows some editorial about what the jorunalist thinks e-learning is and how I can keep students away from lecturers through the use of technology. As if I would do such a thing... It's all the newspaper cliches I can't stand. But, I guess, all publicity is good publicity, at the end of the day, if you know what I mean.

Over my shoulder

It's time for me to reflect on the conference, and looking back over my shoulder, but what will I remember?

Firstly of course, there is the city itself.... what could be said that hasn't already been said? Complex, colourful, aromatic, noisy, spectacular, manic, steeped in culture, ultra-modernity, ancient and bold. All of these describe beautiful Lisbon, but none of them can quite encapsulate its unique atmosphere. I vow to return one day.

Secondly, there were the people. I have renewned some old friendships this week, and made some very good new friends too. All of the following I shared taxis, trams, buses and metro cars with: We spent time together talking seriously about e-learning, our families and homelives, life, the universe, everything. We also spend a lot of time laughing and joking, simply having fun, letting our hair down in the evenings. These guys helped make EDEN 2008 so memorable.

I met Dianne Conrad (Athabasca University, Canada) on the first day at breakfast - Gila Kurtz (Bar Ilan University Israel - pictured with me above on the first day of the conference) introduced us, and I'm glad she did. Dianne has a lot of energy and is committed to excellence in e-learning. It was a pleasure to spend some time with her. I also met Dirk Schneckenberg (Rennes, France) at the same breakfast meeting, and spent a great deal of time with him and his colleague Ulf-Daniel Ehlers (University of Duisberg-Essen - and a well deserved recipient of the EDEN Fellow award this year). We will definitely collaborate together on some projects in the near future. We have already agreed it. Finally, there was another new friend, Mirjam Hauck (UK Open University). She was my 'partner in crime' on the EDEN blog - in fact Mirjam had the idea originally to set up a blog for the conference - I am sure we will be doing the same thing again next year, but bigger and better - wait and see! It was a rare pleasure to spend time in such inspiring surroundings with such smart and passionate people. Thank you, all of you!

Finally there was the conference itself - not always what one expects it to be, but always a pleasure and an experience to remember. The papers were sometimes surprising, sometimes disappointing, sometimes inspiring. All shades of academia (and sometimes none) were represented at the conference in the paper sessions, but it was often the informal netwokring that once again proved its worth at EDEN. Shamefully, I managed to turned up late for my own session, due to a miscalculation with the time (I was struggling with the conference blog and the wireless connections at the time). No harm intended, but I managed to put one presenter's little nose out of joint I hear, but .... we all got our 20 minutes, so no damage done I hope!

To all who made the conference and the social events memorable, my grateful thanks. Here's the next year in Gdansk!

Interaction, impact .... and irony

Well, it's all over bar the shouting (which will happen during the post luch Annual General Meeting of EDEN - look, I'm only joking,OK??) The foyer downstairs is bare and few people remain. It's a little like Second Life (Now I am being serious)

The social web has had a huge impact on the way we see the world of education, and business. In his keynote today, David White from the EU commission used the analogy of Amazon.Com which encourages online book reviews. He says this has changed the business model for book selling, and that education needs to undergo a similar transformation so that the needs of lifelong learners and e-learning in particular can be addressed. He doesn’t know a great deal about e-learning but he does know a little about the lumbering edifice that is Europe. Europe consists of its people and the task in the European Union (and supposedly its governments) is to create the space, provide the instruments and give the support that liberates and sustains social and individual talents that make us all human. Europe has within it a wealth of culture and a creativity of spirit that is second to none and the challenge here is similar to those working within e-learning and distance education on a global basis. Our aim must be to encourage and support every individual as they realise their self potential so as to enable them to collectively contribute toward the common good. This was certainly Euro-centric and rejoiced in the unity of the continent and its potential to participate on the world stage. Delivering this speech directly in the wake of Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon treaty yesterday, took some courage. It is rich indeed, and as his speech was actually given in Lisbon, with David hailing from Ireland, it certainly has a delicious irony.

Marci Powell, who has replaced John Flores as the new president of the United States Distance Learning Association, examined the interface between academia and industry. USDLA did a survey of 431 human resource directors in the USA. She concludes that the future workforce is here, now, but it is ill-prepared. The 3 R’s are not enough - a new digital literacy is needed, and there is also a new set of interactive skills (in what I will call the 4 ‘C’s) – collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and communication that is required. The problem is that the technologies children will work with probably haven’t even been invented yet, and we need to prepare them for this. This is an impossible task. The impact of Globalisation on jobs is severe, and competition is fierce. E-learning has created an open field of opportunity where the traditional catchment areas of student populations have been eroded. State funding is gradually draining away for universities, so the established institutions will need to be creative and innovative to survive. This will involve clear and open negotiation with the corporations to discover what new skills and knowledge they require us to deliver. This is the task set before distance educators. One of the answers is to connect people of all cultures through the global meeting place – the Internet.

These were at times controversial and thought provoking speeches, which reveal the complex problems of living and learning in a connected world. David White may have misjudged the mood o the conference. Marci Powell on the other hand tapped into our expectations. More problems were offered than solutions, but the EDEN crowd are pragmatists and didn’t really expect to have any real answers delivered on a plate. It may be a brave new world we inhabit with many problems to address, some of which appear to be intractable. New learning cultures are emerging which bring with them new sets of problems we didn’t anticipate. Education is not cheap to deliver, and e-learning is only a part of the solution. Yet it is a necessity for global well-being. If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance...

Hot tools, hot topics

Entitled ‘Technological Culture: Web 2.0 tools and social media’, this was the last parallel paper session before the final plenary event at EDEN – day 3. The session should have been less well attended than previous ones, because traditionally most people begin to leave for the airport around this time. It’s difficult with last day sessions – often known as the ‘graveyard’ slot. Most of the presenters also had to dash away early to catch their flights. Yet there was a very healthy turnout, with an almost full room which is a testament to the fact that Web 2.0 is a red hot topic at this conference.

The first paper with the somewhat impenetrable title ‘Web 2.0 environment with workflow language’ – was presented Pritt Tammets from Tallinn University, Estonia. He talked about visual language and visual thinking which tap into the intuitive and emotional learning. Tammets’ aim was to develop a suite of visual language tools that could integrate into Web 2.0 applications such as wikis. This is a tool for designers, but became a little too complicated, he reported. Results were mixed and the system didn’t work for large scale delivery.

The second paper in the session was also focused on the use of wikis to support the learning of English as a foreign language. Igor Balaban (University of Zagreb, Croatia) borrowed Gilly Salmon’s ‘e-tivities’ concept to characterise student engagement with wiki tools. Wikis are good for interaction, collaboration and to share content with a wider audience he said, but in second language learning they are considered less useful. The EngWiki project aimed to discover how they could be optimised so his team developed a taxonomy of wiki activities (a bit of an anachronism perhaps when the chaotic and folksonomic nature of wikis is considered) to support the learning. Igor presented some very interesting wiki activities such as analogies, vocabulary trees, narratives and role playing. The results were very positive showing that students engaged more actively with the course. I will definitely be in touch to discuss their research.

The third paper, ‘A wiki as an intercultural learning environment’ was the result of collaborative research between Spanish and Australian universities. Presented by Guzman Mancho (Alcala University, Spain) the project highlighted problems with learning English through technology. Making two different semester structures coincide between the Spanish and Australian universities, assimilating the culture of the other university and overcoming lack of funding were all issues addressed. Collaborative editing was required so an ‘institution free’ wiki – MediaWiki – was selected. Students practiced collaborative writing in English which had very useful outcomes, with most producing useful content and completing the course successfully. However, there was lack of interaction between students, difficulty in assessing the degree of intercultural ties and many students lacked experience in wiki use.

The final paper, entitled ‘Disrupting the technological culture’, was presented by Stella Porto of the University of Maryland, USA. She focused on staff support (the majority are part-time professors) to train their online tutors. Social software tools are overwhelming in number and scope, but applications are becoming friendlier and can be used to build communities. Scalability was an issue – providing training and support for 2500 teaching staff was difficult. Many teachers had no technical background and some were technophobic (not recommended for online tutors). The university is now trying to bring the open social tools under their control (happening in many other universities probably because they are scared of being left behind in the technological flow) which challenges the question of ownership of content (e.g. e-portfolios) access to materials (e.g. e-portolios), and interoperability across platforms (e.g. e-portfolios!). When we are using social software, who needs protection?

Hot tools and hot topics, yes. But so many questions yet unanswered...

Blogging mad

We are blogging like mad things here at the EDEN conference in Lisbon. It's one of the best e-learning conferences in Europe, and we have around 550 delegates here from all over the world. It is certainly the place to catch up with all the bright minds in e-learning, as well as rubbing shoulders with some of the great and good. There are somewhere in the region of a dozen official EDEN bloggers who will document the proceedings online, and the first posts are already up on the official blog. So it's official then....

Any way, watch this space and we will keep you informed of the conference proceedings as they happen, with some nice pictures to capture the scenes and keep you entertained. Mirjam Hauck (Open University of the UK) has done a stirling job getting us all together, and keeping us in line. Must be like herding cats.

Above is a nice picture of us having a meal out last night in the Bairro Alto area in central Lisbon. Mirjam is on the right, and also pictured are some Dutch and German delegates. The picture was taken by a sudden waiter...

Trail blazers

The EDEN Conference in Lisbon this year runs like a Who’s Who in of Distance Education and so it should. EDEN is one of the largest of its kind and everyone seems to flock here each year to rub shoulders with the good and the great. OK, so I’m waxing a little lyrical, but last night I had conversations with some long serving distance educators and what many would consider pioneers in the field, and it is a little humbling to think how much they did to lay the foundations of what has become a huge global force in education.

Tony Bates is here, and tells me he celebrates 70 years on this planet next year. Michael Moore is here, taking a sabbatical in the UK this coming autumn, before his final year at Penn State. I met them both for the first time at a conference in Turkey in 1997, and didn’t know who either of them were. I do now. Got their books, collected the handshakes.

Desmond Keegan is on the list of delegates and so is Torstein Rekkedal, who picked up a Senior EDEN Fellow award at the reception event. Alan Tait presides over the EDEN family in his perpetually genial mode. I also met Lani Gunawardena for the first time, over from New Mexico to take part, and look forward to hearing her keynote address later this week. There are others here who would probably love to be mentioned in the same blog as these uber-professionals. But I won’t. There is a subtle shuffling for position from some of the younger pretenders, but the simple fact is, most of the above people were in distance education before it was called distance education, and most of them grappled with connecting remote learners when there was little to choose from but correspondence courses and audio conferencing.

With the advent of Web 2.0, mobile phones and wireless technologies, their theories and exploits may seem a little dusty and out of date. But make no mistake, without their dedication and prescience, we would not be in the healthy position we are in now with virtual universities, e-learning and any-time, any-where education. So raise a glass to the trail blazers of distance education. I’m glad I met them. Oh, and the picture above is one I took over the parapet at St George's Castle yesterday. It's a view across the north of the city. Wish you were here?

The silos start to tumble....

There will be a special blog for the EDEN conference this week in Lisbon, and I will be contributing toward the content. I'm actually quite looking forward to the conference this year, as it promises to be memorable for all the right reasons. The city itself is new to me - I have never visited Portugal, and have heard a lot of good things about Lisbon. The conference themes are also appetising, with e-portfolios, open libraries, cultural contexts for e-learning, digital literacy and e-inclusion all making an appearance. The one that really gets my attention though is entitled 'breaking down the sectoral silos'. I have visions of midnight raids on unsuspecting farms and torrents of grain falling down from monstrously huge (and protected) storage areas. The question for consideration is 'what impact has Web 2.0 had on institutionalised learning and training'. Well ... there's the death of the Learning Management System to start with. It's the end of the walled garden folks. The impact of Web 2.0 has just begun and SHIFT HAPPENS. In the words of my teenage kids... It's MASSIVE man!! (you have to point your fingers in all directions as you say this, for adolescent emphasis I'm told).

By far the best part of the event for me at least, will be to attend the opening reception to pick up my fellowship award from EDEN in recognition of my contribution to e-learning in Europe. So I would just like to thank my wife, my three children, my hamster, the vicar of our local church, our local pub 'The Pig and Piston', the ceiling, the walls, the.... etc....etc...

EDEN on the Tagus

This year's EDEN (European Distance and Elearning Network) conference looks like being a real blast. It will be in Lisbon, Portugal, in the middle of June. Last week, I was informed that my paper had been accepted (I will be talking about blogs, would you believe?) and so this week I booked my hotel. Today the message below was sent from EDEN to all delegates, and it looks very appetising...

"The Conference Dinner online booking will open on 13 May. You can reserve places for this special event by using the above booking link and completing the form. The dinner will be held on 13 June, Lisbon's celebratory day of St. Antonio, as well as the date when our host Universidade Aberta will be 20 years old. On this truly festive occasion, the magnificent Estufa Real Restaurant will offer a rich, typical dinner with Portuguese dishes, drinks and Fado music in the heart of the 18th century Ajuda Botanical Gardens, overlooking the Tagus river".

Hope to see as many of you as possible at EDEN this year. Comment in the box below if you are attending!

Elluminating experience

Just enjoyed an interesting half hour testing out the Elluminate Live! platform in preparation for a panel session I will be doing with Helen Keegan (Salford University) and Nicholas Breakwell (Hibernia College, Dublin) for the Sloan Consortium International Symposium entitled 'Emerging Technology Applications for Online Learning'. It will be held on 7-9 May and hosted by Pheonix University, Arizona. The moderator for the session will be Gary Morrison, and my invite to present at the panel is a legacy of last year's EDEN conference in Naples. I spoke then on wikis and social network tools and how they can be used to support nomadic learners. They must have liked it because Gary Morrison wrote about it and then got in touch. Looking forward to it... By the way, I will be speaking at this year's EDEN 2008 conference in Lisbon too - on using blogs for mentoring of student teachers. If you haven't been to one, it's well worth the trip if only for the networking opportunities (people not computers, obviously).

Just started a new e-learning blog on JISC Emerge ('JISC Community Presence') too, which will be an experience. I have many friends already established on this platform, so it's a very nice opportunity to be able to join them all. A lot of this content will be mirrored there in the future. Oh, and vice versa.

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?