Community really is the curriculum

I'm in Tallinn, one of the most beautiful of the old Hanseatic cities dotted along the Baltic coast. It is the capital of Estonia, a small country with a population of around 1.3 million, 400,000 of whom live in Tallinn. In Estonia, runs the publicity, free wifi access is a human right, and it certainly seems to be true. No matter where I have been today throughout the city, I have been able to get free access to the internet on my iPod Touch. It's such a refreshing change from the pinch penny airports and city centres I usually frequent. Estonia is also famous as the home of Skype, which although now a Microsoft acquisition, was funded by Tallinn boy Niklas Zennström. Skype still operates out of Tartu, Estonia's second largest city in the south of the country. What a fitting place then, to hold an e-Learning Conference.

And that's why I'm here. I'm in Tallinn to give the opening keynote for the Estonian e-Learning Conference which takes place over 3 days in the city. I spent a great afternoon meeting with Sebastian Fiedler who just happened to be paying a fleeting visit to Tallinn, and emailed me for a meet up. This all happened because of Facebook and Twitter - tools the e-learning community uses with exceptional effect across the globe to keep in touch and share ideas. We had a great time over a few drinks discussing many of the burning issues surrounding digital media and learning, and we both left having learnt something new from each other. Later this evening I enjoyed the company of Stephen Downes and Allison Littlejohn, who have also been invited to keynote the Tallinn Conference. Again we all learnt a lot from each other in conversation around the dinner table.

On the walk back to the hotel I got into a conversation with Stephen and inevitably the talk turned to open access publishing, a subject that is close to both our hearts. I don't publish much in conventional journals anymore, and neither admitted Stephen, does he. He actually made a profound comment about this. The e-Learning community is very small, and those of us in it tend to cross paths frequently he pointed out. Perhaps that's why, he said that many of us don't need to publish that much anymore. Most of our ideas come out in conversation, whether face to face or online. And that I guess, pretty much sums it up. Community really is the curriculum these days.

I'm looking forward to the next two days here in Estonia. There are some interesting papers in the programme. Some of these will be live streamed, so if you want to watch those presentations over the next two days, go to the Estonian eLearning Conference website for further details.

Image by Steve Wheeler


Community really is the curriculum by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Running a MOOC

Over at the University of Brighton, Peps McCrea is currently blogging about MOOCs (Massively Online Open Courses) and is speculating how they might influence the future of Higher Education. Having taken part in a MOOC run by Stephen Downes and George Siemens a couple of years ago (as a speaker not a student), I can say that it was a very enjoyable experience. I was grilled by Stephen for a sustained period of time about my ideas on Personal Learning Environments, and in true gladiator style, I enjoyed the cut and thrust of my live, widely distributed debate.

I have also presented recently at one of Steve Hargardon's live Elluminate global webinars, and have to say that the experience was very similar to the MOOC. You present your ideas, including slides and audio connection, live to a massive group of participants that span the globe, and then you discuss those ideas for a while. I know that there is more to a MOOC than participating in live webinars. MOOCs also host online discussion, solo and group activities and other learning activities designed to promote critical discourse, reflective actions and discursive learning.

Everyone who participates enjoys the experience, and everyone goes away with more questions than they arrived with. That's learning. That's connectivism too, according to Siemens and Downes. And connectivism is one of the major underpinning theories of the MOOC. It's not so much what you know that matters anymore, but who you can connect to and learn from that is the key principle of learning in a digital age.

That is both the strength and the weakness of the MOOC. You see, you can connect to anyone, anywhere, at any time to learn from each other. But you can also miss those connections, if certain people decline to join in. MOOCs are also at their most successful when there is a critical mass of participants. So what if you gave a party and no-one came? A sparsely populated MOOC is just .... well..... an OOC, isn't it? There is also a debate about whether connectivism is actually a bona fide theory - it has attracted its fair share of critics. Peps is asking whether MOOCs will take off in the UK. Well, in one sense they already have because many people from the UK have already taken part in previous MOOCs. If it comes down to the location of the MOOC, there is none - the MOOC is location agnostic. I actually presented my MOOC talk from a classroom in the Cork Institute of Technology in Ireland. If the question relates to whether British academics and specialists will begin to write, organise and deliver MOOCs, that's another question entirely. Here are some more questions: Is there actually a need for more MOOCs? How much preparation work goes into setting one up? Will individuals in the UK step in to set up and deliver their own MOOCs, or is this going to be the preserve of academic institutions? The question of open, free of cost participation in a MOOC is a given. But what about those who wish to receive some tangible form of accreditation at the end of the programme? Who provides that?

Good luck to anyone who decides to set up and deliver a MOOC this side of the Atlantic. And as to the future of the MOOC? I suppose we shall just have to wait and see...

Image source by SpoiltCat

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

Web x.0 and beyond

I'm amazed and delighted at the huge response to my slideshow Web 3.0: The Way Forward? which started out as a brief analysis of current thinking on how the web might be extended beyond social tools into a more smart and responsive personal environment for learning. Before long it was an invited presentation given to a small gathering of enthusiastic teachers at a Vital Meet seminar. As I write this post, just 4 days after posting it up onto Slideshare, the slide set has already received 5,500 views and has been embedded into at least 20 other blogs and websites. Web 3.0 is clearly a topic that catches the imagination of many people in education and beyond. I like Stephen Downes' comments on my use of the term Web x.0 in the diagram adapted from Nova Spivak:

"The idea of Web X is that it combines web 2.0 (social web) and web 3.0 (semantic web) to create what I have called .... the semantic social web. But it's more than just that, because it takes these and moves them off the web and into your hand. And more than just that, because it's the web of data, the geoweb, augmented media, the 3D web, and more. The eXtended web - the web, extended from the internet, into your life".

This was an acknowledgement of a trend I had tried to highlight in my slideshow - that intelligent content and tools can now be operated from your mobile phone while you are on the move. I believe we will see this trend continue, with geomashups and augmented reality applications becoming more common place, enabling learners to navigate not only content on the web, but their actual, physical environments too.

George Siemens also weighed in with a response:

"The development of the semantic web, linked data, and open data, coupled with location-awareness, recommender systems, augmented reality, data overlays, and similar developments is having a dramatic impact on how people interact with information and each other".

He also is particularly focused on how these tools can be used to improve learning.

So it's not only Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 we need to consider, but extensions beyond these into a truly integrated, fully responsive and entirely personalised learning environment that fits into the palm of your hand. This is my vision for the future, but as I continually warn - predicting the future can be hazardous. I wrote about this problem in a recent post entitled 'Seeing the future'. The U.S. Mayor who in 1880 announced that one day every town in America would have a telephone was right, but also so far wide of the mark, it's almost laughable. So when people ask me when we will see all of these tools being used for learning, I simply smile and say - "we'll see". We know the tools exist (see: The Future is the Web) we just don't know when they will become economically viable enough for institutions to begin investing in them wholesale. Perhaps they never will. Perhaps it will be down to individual learners to purchase their own devices and applications. Perhaps this will be another aspect of the 'do it yourself' personal learning environment ethos we are all talking about.

Web x.0 and beyond by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

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.

PLEs join us online

I'm an invited speaker for the online PLE/PLN Symposium that has been organised by George Siemens and Stephen Downes for next week. I will be working in the Cork Institute of Technology in Ireland, and will be speaking via the Elluminate platform, next Thursday (15th October) at around 1600 BST. I'm looking forward to talking about my own concept of personal learning environments and personal webs in my talk which is entitled: 'It's Personal'. I will post my slides later on slideshare, but in the meantime here's a taste of what's to come taken from the symposium website:

A symposium will be held from October 13th till October 16th 2009 on Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). The interest in Personal Learning Environments has grown with the emergence of Web2.0 technologies. Learning technologists can see how PLEs can help learners to organize their own personal learning, rather than that formal education institutions control the technologies that are being used and the way in which they are being used. Speakers will include developers and researchers of PLEs. All events will be hosted in Elluminate and recorded for archives. A discussion forum will be hosted in Moodle for asynchronous interactions.

Other speakers include George and Stephen, along with Josie Fraser, Rita Kop, Mark van Harmelen, Scott Wilson and Graham Attwell. The full list and schedule are available on the symposium website. I hope you are able to join us for all, or at least some of the talks which I am sure will be thought provoking and stimulating.

Through a glass... darkly

Just read a superb blog post from Stephen Downes who I reckon has been polishing his crystal ball. He usually has his finger on the pulse where technology trends are concerned. Called 'What not to build' and hosted by his Half an Hour blog site, this post is likely to be a strong contender for 'Most Influential Blog Post' in the 2009 Edublog Awards and we're still only in the first week of January. Although it's a lengthy blog, and takes some ploughing through, 'What not to build' is well worth the effort, because Downes has successfully identified all the stuff you would waste your time building, because it's either been done to death, or us financially unviable. He then takes on to some of the current technological 'fads' (he includes the iPhone here!!), before moving on to the really edgy stuff that is 'out there' that will make someone a millionaire if they can pull it off.

Context aware systems, location dependent devices, surface technologies, personal health systems, distributed systems and cloud computing are all in there, and all expounded upon with insight and seasoned with common sense. Probably the best bit for me is Stephen's last section which identifies the 'dead' technologies. Although these (paper, transport, telephones, TV and radio) are fairly controversial, he ends by qualifying his choices in his commentary on what the world may look like in the next decade or so. Well ... through a glass darkly ... we shall see whether he's right.

(As a side note, Stephen is courageous. He is obviously not screening his reader comments, because it looks like the blog has already been spammed).

Splendid bloggers

I was surprised and delighted to hear I had been nominated in two categories for this year's Edublog Awards - the 'Eddies'. I'm not sure exactly how this works, but apparently people post their nominations on their own blogs and fill out a form. These are then collated and posted onto the Edublogger Award site, after which there is a short period of voting and then the winners for each category are announced. There are 16 categories in total, including one for lifetime achievement.

I have been nominated for the best individual blog Eddie, along with several very notable bloggers including Ishmael Pena's ICTlogy blog, Sarah Stewart's Sarah's Musings, Kim Cofino's Always Learning and Newly Ancient (which has now ceased blogging I'm told).

I have also been nominated for the most influential blog post of the year for my Edupunk rant 'Monkey Business', which has received much attention in the form of responses, supplementary blog posts and even a live panel discussion which has since been podcast on James Clay's e-learning stuff. I am in competition here with the likes of Stephen Downes' mammoth post entitled 'The future of e-learning: Ten Years on' (which is actually more like several books chapters) and Jim Groom's 'The Glass Bees' post - also about Edupunk. I don't stand a chance against these guys to be perfectly frank, but it is very gratifying to be cited in the same company as all these splendid bloggers.

So get in there dear blog reader, and vote for your favourites at the Edublog Awards site! (You know you want to!)

Over the hills and far away

I'm sitting here watching as the sun sets over the Alps, in beautiful Villach, Austria. The peaks are glistening, and the bell in the church is tolling. So, I vill here my German practice: 'Der gipfel des Berges funkelt im Abendsonenschein'. There, that impressed the pants off you didn't it? I can tell. It's from the poem Lorelei - the only German I remember from secondary school. All the rest was learned afterwards, in conversation with chattering Teutonic chappies.

I travelled up this morning by train from Ljubljana, after a restful night, and have ensconced myself at the Holiday Inn. I'm here to attend and present at ICL 2008, the annual bash organised by Michael Auer and the Karenthia Institute here on the river Drau. It really is a sweet little town with plenty of places to eat out and countryside to explore. Not that I will be doing too much of that. It will be busy here at ICL.

The programme looks interesting, and over just three days, there is a lot to cram in. There are no less than 10 keynotes (in fact there are eleven if you count the keynote panel in the last session on Friday). There are sessions on the semantic web, knowledge management, adaptive and intuitive learning environments (work it out for yourself), e-portfolios, collaborative learning, mobile learning environments and applications, and they've thrown in the kitchen sink for good measure. And what excitement! There is a social programme extra - on Saturday they are taking us all down to Venice for the day - how many other conferences can boast such a treat, eh?

I wrote last year in this blog that there were only a few sessions that 'shone out like diamonds in the mud' and was castigated by Stephen Downes for my poetic licence. Well that's all water under the bridge now, and this is a clean sheet, so I'm putting my best foot forward and will be avoiding cliches like the plague. I'm in room 501, just in case anyone wants to send me up a free pair of Levi's or something - and here's a clue... for anyone taking part in tomorrow's little fun quiz during my pre-conference workshop on Web 2.0: (whispers) 501 also happens to be the highest first class individual cricket score record held by one Brian Lara. Don't say I didn't help you out there. (end of whispering)

Oh, and one final quirky little point - here's the picture to prove it.... The elevators here are designed by a company called Schindler - so that makes it Schindler's lift.

Thinking around corners

Edupunk is anti-establishment apparently, and is a response to the corporate and institutional efforts to contain education. It is about destroying the boundaries of our oh so comfortable education systems. It is about wresting control from central authority and liberating the learner. Edupunk is certainly about using tools and services that are outside of the institution, beyond the walled garden, so to speak. I have been doing that for a while, with wikis, blogs and the like, circumventing the university portal. So I certainly support this movement, if that's what it is. As I write this I am listening to Graham Attwell's Emerging Mondays podcast, where he is in converstion with Jim Groom (dubbed the 'poster boy' for Edupunk, whatever that means).

I was a punk the first time around, in 80s Britain (to be honest I was probably more new-wave actually, because punk was essentially late 70s - I played in a band that was fast, loud and furious, and we stood against the mainstream culture of the time). I still have the punk attitude, to be frank - that rebellious streak - and it has carried through into my professional life, so perhaps I am one of them there edupunks. I am against the sterile, meaningless Managed Learning Environments (read BlackBoard, SharePoint and yes, even Moodle) that universities and colleges push which are purpose built to maintain strict control. They constrain the use of materials, and ensure that only bona fide students are allowed in. The students don't like them, and only use them because they have to. Anything an MLE can do, the social web can do just as well, if not better.... oh, and did I mention, usually for free. I'm really thinking about my students and what's best for them.

And that is my version of Edupunk, so I'm glad Jim Groom coined the phrase. When you have a mysterious illness, it is often a relief to be diagnosed, so that you put a name to your illness. The same applies to my 'condition' - I often swim against the mainstream, and try to find ways to subvert 'accepted practice' and I like to 'think around corners'. So it is nice to find a word that describes my condition. Whether 'Edupunk' will survive as a movement or will be strangled at birth remains to be seen. But at least now I know that there are others out there who think the same as me.

There is a tension between the Web 2.0 culture and Higher Education control mindsets and it is difficult to know how this can, or will be resolved. The bottom line is this - the MLE is dead, and the corpse needs to be removed before it stinks the place out. Trouble is, the university managers don't know it's dead, but they know it cost a lot of money, so there it remains, quietly rotting away.

Check out more on Edupunk on Stephen Downes blog, here at Professors go edupunk, and also in the Wikipedia pages.

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.

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...

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.