Peak practice

I have made it up over the Alps by train into the sleepy Austrian town of Villach, where we hold the annual Interactive Computer Aided Learning Conference (ICL). The train had the old style compartments, and I managed to blag an entire compartment to myself. We are in the Karenthia part of southern Austria, on the Italian/Slovenian border, and it's all very pretty, with the grandeur of the mountain peaks all around us, and the ponderous river Drau meandering slowly by.

Every year the ICL conference seems to be veering more toward e-learning and away from computer science, which I think is a good thing. We need to concentrate more on the learning and less on the technology - more on the pedagogy and less on 'this is the technology and this is what it does'. There are some excellent special tracks at the conference this year. At this conference, thanks to the good offices of Martin Ebner and Sandra Schaeffert, we have a complete stream of papers on mashups in e-learning, and I'm looking forward to hearing some of them. There is also a section dedicated to e-portfolios and Personal Learning Environments this year, which is a welcome addition to the conference programme. Serge Ravet is heading up that special track. I will try to get to some of the sessions and report back on what is being talked about. The full conference schedule is up on line.

My own session today is a 3 hour marathon on microblogging, and in particular, Twitter and its use in teaching and learning. I have 52 delegates signed up for it, and although it's supposed to be a pre-conference workshop, it's in the mainstream programme - the first time this has happened I think. As usual, I will try to report as much as I can from this event, and keep you posted on all the important issues being discussed.

What are you doing?

Do you use Twitter regularly? I'm presenting a workshop on Twitter at the ALT-C conference at the University of Manchester later this month and will repeat the workshop at the end of September during the ICL Conference in Villach, Austria. The workshops are mainly for beginners, but those who are more practiced in using Twitter are also welcome. I have been using Twitter both professionally and personally over the last two years and have blogged about it periodically. See for example my Teaching with Twitter post from January this year where I offer ten uses of Twitter in the classroom and my views on the semantic qualities of the microblogging tool: Is Twitter the Semantic Web?

One of the things I'm keen to find out about is how people are using Twitter for a) teaching and learning and b) for their own personal networking. I'm therefore seeking for Twitter users to respond to some questions in the comments box below this post. The best responses will be used as examples of people's use during the workshops, and you will get full credit for your contributions (unless of course you shoose to remain anonymous).

The questions are: How do you use Twitter in formal learning contexts? How do you use Twitter for personal networking? What do you feel Twitter is most useful for? What do you think are the main disadvantages of Twitter? Thanks!

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Mountains, microblogging and mashups

One of the papers I will be presenting in September is entitled: "Learning Space Mash-up: Toward a Collaborative Personal Learning Environment". It will be presented in the special track on Mashups and Education at this year's Interactive Computer Aided Learning Conference, which as usual, is held in the beautiful Alpine town of Villach, in Austria. Nestled in the mountains in the silubrious Holiday Inn Congress Centre, the conference is a stimulating and enjoyable event which attracts around 600 delegates attending each year. Last year, our post conference social event was an unforgettable day trip to Venice.

There are many ideas I will be trying to convey in my paper. Firstly, I will be arguing that Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) will be the way forward for future distributed/blended learning. Secondly, I will want to reinforce the idea that PLEs, which are developed by individuals rather than through institutes, can be optimised through mashups - combinations and aggregations of tools and services that suit the individuals approach to learning. Thirdly, I will revisit the idea that mashup PLEs will rival and perhaps ultimately supplant the institutional Learning Management System (LMS) or VLE. I will outline and expand upon my reasons for this belief based on some of my recent blog posts. These include Monkey Business, Changing the Architecture (about the future of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 services) and The Emperor's New Clothes? I also want to emphasise the power of collaborative working and interpersonal communication within PLEs - something that has been largely ignored in the quest for personalised learning spaces.

I will also be co-presenting a 90 minute workshop on Microblogging at the conference with my good friend and colleague Dr Tara Alexander and I'm also chairing the posters and demonstrations streams, so it will be a busy event for me. If you're there in Villach for ICL 2009, say hello!

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