French Polishers

We are in the second day here at the Polish Virtual Universities Conference in Warsaw. Ronan Chabauty (FIED – Federation Interuniversitaire d’Enseignment a Distance: A French Distance Teaching Organisation) talked about France’s national conceptualisation of distance education, which is the one the French Education ministry has approved for funding. His keynote involved discussion of the old quadrant model of ‘same time, different place, etc’. He espouses two classic typologies, one of which is the competence model of enriched learning through technology, whilst the other takes a location dependent position of ‘reduced face to face’ and ‘quasi non-existent face to face’. I'm not sure what he meant by this, as there was no time for elaboration. However, I think this essentially means that distance teaching for the French is an alternative means to face to face and as Ronan said, 'has to be distinguishable from face to face teaching'. A little 'old school' I thought and perhaps not acknowledging some of the new technologies that are reducing conceptions of what distance actually is. I had to get up on my hind legs and I ask him what his position was then, on the blended approaches that are so prevalent in the UK? He replied that students who are away from the campus receive the 'enriched learning through technology' delivery - not so much a distinction then, as an alternative method of delivery. Students are changing and we need to change our delivery methods, he said, which first involves changing the minds of colleagues. A perennial problem which I think affects all institutions.

Ronan concluded his talk by saying that in France (and also most other places) there is still a great amount of work to do to ensure that anyone and everyone can study from wherever they are located and therefore participate fully in lifelong learning.

Oh, and by the way, the photo above is one I took last night as the sun was setting on the old Stare Miesto (old city) of Warsaw.

Pole position

It’s the first day of the Polish Virtual Universities conference here in Warsaw and I must admit I’m feeling a little lost. I opened the conference with the first keynote of this three day event, and then it was all downhill from there in. The audience was disturbingly quiet, but I’m told that this is the way they listen to speakers. They applauded heartily at the end of my speech, but no-one dared to ask a question. It’s a different culture, a different reaction, so get over it Steve.

There are 140 delegates registered for the conference and 136 of them are Polish. So naturally the entire conference is also in Polish, and I don’t understand a word of it of course. At other conferences there is usually an interpreter, but I am the only Brit here, so I shouldn’t expect anything else should I? OK, there are also a couple of other keynote speakers from France (Ronan Chabauty) and Spain (Albert Sangra) and they will also present in English, but apart from that, nada. There are over 70 papers and posters due to be presented here, and also 8 keynotes. I have managed to decipher some of the paper headings, which include podcasting, blended learning, e-portfolios, wikis, 3-D storytelling, Second Life, and several others have Web 2.0 in their title.

Oh how I wish I could hear them, or at least be able to read them in English.