Cooking in Catalonia

So here is the evidence you need. It's a picture of the langoustine and mussels paella I helped create for the hungry 30 or so participants of the 2nd Open Edtech Summit in Barcelona earlier this week. We were all invited to a workshop in the evening where we cooked our own 3 course Catalonian dinner.

This paella was one I made as a member of a small group which included Mark Bullen and others. We had a great time cooking it, and an even better time eating it afterwards. Other dishes created included the traditional potato and onion Spanish omelette and a cold tomato soup served with garlic and herbs. The entire meal was accompanied by a large amount of Spanish red wine, which of course was essential to keep the cooks on track during the preparation phase.


But we had also been cooking up some ideas for the future university right through the day. In four groups, we discussed a number of ideas about what the future university might look like and what recommendations we might make as a group of e-learning and open education experts from around the world. We posted almost 50 recommendations from which as a group we then voted for the 8 most important. Four that stood out for me all focus on Web 2.0 and personal technologies:

1) Annote, index and share rich media content.

2) Move to a paradigm of mobiles as personal learning environments

3) Enabled cultures of sharing

4) Extend multiple digital literacies.

These were the action points the group reached a consensus on as some of the most important general points most universities should consider as important. Others included the recommendation that the future universities base their award of credentials on outcomes rather than 'seat time' and that we should encourage risk taking leadership. The sound bite of the day (and there were many) was that 'teaching is a push technology, whilst mentoring is a pull technology'.

There are obviously many implications from this short list, and over the next few months you will see plenty emerging from the full list which has been captured as a result of the summit meeting. We will publish a document similar to the Open Edtech Summit document published in 2008: What does it mean to be educated in the 21st Century?

Africa goes mobile

The invited participants at Open Ed Tech enjoyed a very interesting opening Tech Talk yesterday from a young researcher based at Strathmore Research Centre in Nairobi, Kenya. Jessica Colaço is the principal researcher at Strathmore Research and Consultancy Centre (SRCC) and is a Mobile Technology Evangelist. Earlier this year, the magazine 'Business Daily' named her as one of the top 40, under 40 years of age women in Kenya's business scene. She has already spoken at prestigious events such as TED, is extremely good at presenting her case and convinced us that Africa is moving forward rapidly with mobile technology as they aim for wideranging social change. There are 370 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa so it´s a fertile ground.

Jessica told those of us present on the campus of the Open University of Catalonia about a number of innovative projects she has been involved in, including M-PESA (Pensa is Swahili for money) which enables users to exchange money without the need to either go to a bank or hold an account. Tangaza is a voice based transmission service - you can update your Facebook or Twitter status through voice recordings on your mobile phone. Several other recently created apps were also demonstrated, including fish tracking devices and other tools designed to help people gain information on the move about education, health and agriculture. M-Kulima for example, can enable farmers to store and retrieve information about milk sales prices and purchase dates, where previously they would have had to try to remember each transaction.

There is also M-Guide for tourists. Take a photo of an unfamiliar bird or animal in the game reserve and your mobile phone sends the picture to a server. The server sends back via SMS a description of the animal - there are some obvious educational applications to that one.

There was much discussion following from Jessica´s Tech Talk. One of the most insightful comments was that perhaps, because Africans have been largely passed over by the first few waves of technology, they are now only just beginning to be creative with their first computing device - their mobile phones - and therefore seeing opportunities to innovate which the Western industrialised nations cannot see. Open Edtech continues today.

Image source

Digital futures

I'm off to the beautiful city of Barcelona tomorrow afternoon to participate in this year's Open Ed Tech Summit. It's the second in the meet ups, which draw around 40 international open learning and distance education experts from around the world. I documented Open Ed Tech 2008 post-event on this blog (See Muy Caliente). This year's event will be an intensive 48 hours of discussions and social events, all organised by the Open University of Catalonia. If it's anything like last year, we are all in for a stimulating, tiring but extremely enjoyable time together. The brief for Open Ed Tech 2009, written by Larry Johnson of the New Media Consortium is as follows:

The Scenario: Creating the University of the Future

You have been invited to serve on an international panel of experts advising the rector of a new university that will be established in the developing country of Futurolandia. Your invitation issues from the Ministry of Education and indicates that you are part of a handpicked team — a team that is meeting in person today to perform its task.

This university is meant to be the first of its kind, and will be established free from preconceptions or official constraints about how it will operate. Its mandate is to provide an excellent education in an environment of open access, built on four key ideas:

1. Access to high-quality education should be available to all, and open content is a key part of providing such access.

2. Informal learning and mentoring are effective and well-proven approaches to engaging with youth and stimulating critical thought.

3. Personalized learning is critical to student success, but will require learning standards that allow students to continue their learning where ever life takes them.

4. Tools such as digital video, mobile devices, social media, and the global network all have important roles in learning and should be available to all learners.

The rector has been asked to prepare a proposal addressing how the university will achieve this vision, and sees these ideas as core requirements for the institution she wishes to create. As part of the international expert panel, your task is to assist the rector by identifying ways to support each of the four requirements, examining the pros and cons of each proposed strategy, and presenting a summary of your team's recommendations to the rector, point by point.

We will of course publish our results in due course, just as we did for our 2008 Summit: What does it mean to be educated in the 21st Century? (pdf file)

What a Corker

I'm just back from a lively 5 days in Cork where we (the Atlantis Project team) have been involved in the first of two weeks of intensive study. And it has been quite intensive, with research workshops, seminars and project work from morning through to late afternoon, followed by social events around the city and beyond. I stayed at the wonderful Fernroyd House B & B where I was looked after very well indeed (Thanks Tony). For a group of computer specialists there were students with some interesting and relevant names such as Peter Google, Gareth Excell and Herr Flickr (OK.... I made the last one up, but the other two are real). The Irish are such wonderfully warm and friendly people, and we have all made some great new friends whilst there. We have been on several field trips, including a visit to the astounding high tech astrophysics centre and simulation basin at Black Rock Castle Observatory, near Kinsale (pictured above).

Yesterday I took my 9 education students on a visit to St Columba's National Primary School, in Dughlas, just outside Cork (picture below). In the 90 minutes or so we spent at the school, we saw a number of innovative practices which involved technologies such as interactive white boards. Every classroom has one - the result of determined fund raising within the community. We were all very impressed with the dedication of the staff (particularly those who were teaching the special needs children) and their innovative practices. The children were engaged and enthusiastic and were clearly enjoying their studies. Our thanks go to Coleen and the rest of the team for taking the time out to show us around and answer all our questions.

From the school, I went directly to University College Cork, and walked in to the oak panelled room followed by my entourage of 5 students. I introduced them as my 'research assistants', but I couldn't keep a straight face. I did a dry run using the 'It's personal' slides, which I was to use later for the PLE/PLN online symposium. The 50 or so academic staff present seemed to enjoy my presentation and there ensued a lively discussion/ Q and A session. My thanks to Rob Cosgrave for the unexpected invitation, which arose from his reading of my blog and realising I was in Cork this week.

The evening Elluminate session for the PLE/PLN online symposium, organised by Stephen Downes, George Siemens and Rita Kop, was a different affair entirely. It took place at the Atlantis base in Cork Institute of Technology. I had a few difficulties setting up the system and then uploading my slides, but the technology eventually worked in time for my presentation, and Stephen, who moderated, was in good form. The 30 or so German and Polish students and colleagues from the Atlantis project, who watched as my local audience couldn't grasp much of the conversation due to the audio quality, but generally they all found the presentation stimulating and some discussion followed after the online session had closed.

We have had a corking good time, and it's not over yet. I'm back in the UK until Sunday when I fly down to Barcelona for the Open EdTech Summit meeting, before flying up to Frankfurt on Wednesday where I rejoin the Atlantis team for week 2 of the intensive programme. If it's as productive and enjoyable as Cork was, I will be very happy indeed... and all the travel will be worth it. Even the Ryan Air part.

Muy Caliente

The weather this week may have been cooler than I have experienced during my previous visits to Spain (usually I'm there in the summer when the sun is a raging demon in a brazen sky) but the company was 'hot and cooking'. It was a priviledge to rub shoulders with some extremely smart and knowledgeable people drawn from diverse backgrounds. The Open University of Catalonia staff (Eva de Lera and Albert Sangra in particular should be singled out) pulled off an amazing logisitical feat to bring almost 40 people together in one place for the Open EdTech Summit this week. We met up at the well appointed Hotel Catedral, deep in the atmospheric gothic quarter of Barcelona, and attendance was by invitation. The attendance/contributor list reads like a 'who's who' of innovators and champions of open learning.

Although we spent less than 48 hours together, the experience was intense, and the outcomes will no doubt be far reaching. Our task was to divide into four groups of around 8 members, and each tackle a set of issues which would ultimately produce 5 good ideas, and another 5 'interesting' (read crazy) ideas which would inform the future of open learning, open technology and open content.

Memorable moments for me included working alongside people like Paul Kirschner (Open University of the Netherlands) Paul West (Commonwealth of Learning, Canada) and Debby Knotts (University of New Mexico) as we grappled with innovative ideas and argued over concepts and theories of e-learning. I bumped into Brian Lamb for the first time and we shared a rant on Edupunk over a few jars. There was also an informal on the hoof chat with Neil Selwyn (Insititute of Education) as we passed through the old roman walled area of Barcelona under a full moon. I enjoyed intelligent and sometimes hilarious conversations with the likes of Sugata Mitra (University of Newcastle), Mark Bullen (University of British Columbia, Canada) and Vijay Kumar (MIT) - who gave everyone of us a free copy of his Opening Up Education book. Ishmael Pena and Tom Caswell were new contacts who I am certain I will continue to maintain contact with, even if it's only on Twitter.

I will leave the summarising of the event to Ismael Pena (Open University of Catalonia) as he is far more eloquent (and probably more concise) than me. His summary can be found on his ICTlogy blog. Oh, and of course, there is now a Twemes site which holds a growing set of images captured during those 48 hours, and other artefacts of the event for all to enjoy. If there is another event planned for next year, I aim to be there, believe me.