Slightly dangerous

Barcelona is the most dangerous city in Europe. That is the assessment of well known author and TV producer Manuel Castells who resides in the city for part of each year. As I dined with him and his wife Emma last night at the upmarket La Camarga restaurant, he told me they had recently been attacked and robbed near to their home. Two burly men in leather jackets roared up on motorcycles and accosted them. Emma's bag was stolen, and Manuel, in the struggle to protect her, was thrown violently to the ground and suffered injuries for which he is still being treated. There is not a single visitor to the city they know, Manuel told me, who has not been the victim of some crime. Fortunately, this is one form of education that I have not personally experienced.

Barcelona does have a rather edgy, slightly dangerous ambience. The outrageous building designs, a mixture of gothic splendour and outre modern designs are an architectural student's dream, the whole ensemble is due largely to Gaudian proclivities and Barcelona has long been a magnet to draw avant garde designers from around the world. OK, enough of the French words. Every where you go in the city, there is a feast for the eyes. Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, which has been under construction for over 120 years, is bedecked with cranes, and still over 15 years away from completion. Yet it remains an iconic representation of the city, and is a stunning spectacle either day or night.

Today at the 8th International Seminar on Teacher Training, hosted by the Universidad Oberta de Catalunya, we heard presentations from a number of academics and practitioners about how they are transforming and enhancing learning experiences through the use of technology. Douglas Thomas (Annenburg School of Communication and Journalism, at the University of Southern California) gave a masterful keynote on the theme 'Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change'. Drawing largely on his book A New Culture of Learning (co-authored with John Seely-Brown), Thomas talked at length about the issues we are confronting in our quest to provide learning that is relevant, up to date and effective within a rapidly changing world. His indictment of schools resonated. "Children have a sense of wonderment about learning and discovery, and it takes schools about 12 years to beat this out of them", he remarked. Much of what Douglas Thomas said about how to tackle change and transform the educational system is summarised very succinctly by Ismael de Pena Lopez on his blog ICTology.

Other presentations that were well received yesterday included Peter Baptist, whose stunning infographics and animations showed us how to open up a world of fascination for numbers and mathematics. If we applied this to other supposedly dull subjects he suggested, education would be transformed. You can read more about Peter's work here on the SINUS project site and a full summary of his presentation by Ismael de Pena Lopez here. It was all slightly dangerous stuff, but in a good way.


Image source


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

Identity play

I have just spent a very interesting two hours with members of staff and researchers of the Open University of Catalonia today here in beautiful Barcelona. Tomorrow I will be giving the opening keynote at the 8th International Seminar on Teacher Training, but as a precursor, I was invited to meet some of the OUC team. And so I sat and talked in a relaxed but thoughtful atmosphere with some impressive young academics earlier today. We discussed a lot of issues related to distance education and technology mediated learning, including digital identity, social media and open scholarship. Many of the ensuing discussion and questions kept me on my toes, and provoked us all to reconsider our roles as educators in the digital age. It was digital identity though, that most of the group were interested in, and kept returning to talk about.

One of the things the group wanted to discuss was this blog and the way I use it to not only disseminate my ideas, but also as a tool for research. We talked about taking risks, and playing with digital identity. Do we present ourselves differently online to real space? What do we share on the web and what should we keep private? We analysed why I had posted yesterdays story about my Silver Wedding Anniversary, and what were the potential issues with such a public performance of a personal celebration. Someone also wanted to know why I displayed badges on my blog. I responded that it is a measure of peer esteem, which may help some readers to determine whether a site is trustworthy or not. Alternatively, I display them because I am grateful to my own academic community for the way they continue to support this blog (and others) by continually returning to read more. When they vote for my blog as one of the best (and competition is very stiff now, with many excellent e-learning blogs out there), then I feel my work and effort has been worth something.

So, when I returned to my hotel just now and found another award badge waiting for me to display on my blog - this time from the e-Learning Council - it was a welcome addition to the peer reviews I have already received. Thank you to everyone who voted to place me among such an illustrious company. Here's the full list of the top ten (it's actually a top 11).

1. Jane Hart
2. Elliott Masie
3. Cathy Moore
4. (tie) Harold Jarche
4. (tie) Jane Bozarth
5. Steve Wheeler
6. Tom Kuhlmann and Dave Anderson
7. Clark Quinn
8. Clive Shepherd
9. David Kelly
10. Tony Karrer

Perhaps the display of these badges adds something to my digital identity? Who knows...


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