Game changers in the Training Zone

This week, ahead of my speech at the Learning Technologies Conference I recorded a 10 minute podcast interview for the Training Zone. You can listen by clicking on the embedded link below. If the link below doesn't work for you, try this one. My interview is at 18.45 in the podcast. To give you a taste of what was discussed, here is some of what I said in an excerpt from the transcript:

Q: What are the big technological developments we can expect to see implemented in 2013?

Steve: I think there are several that we have to look at as changing practice. I'm talking about disruptive technologies, things that will change probably forever - irrevocably - what we do in the workplace and in learning in particular. So for instance, one of the big developments I'm seeing happening right now is the move from keyboards and mice to touch screens and maybe even non-touch technologies.

One of the examples I've seen recently at the CES - the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas - it was reported that there was a new touch screen device which goes 'lumpy' when you want to put a keyboard up on it. The keyboard actually appears but it's through crystallisation within the screen. The keys are actually surrounded by raised areas so that people with visual impairment for instance can use the touch screen tablet. So there are really practical developments coming out which I think are going to improve working conditions for lots of people with visual impairment.

But I think for all of us touch screen technology is already revolutionising the way we do things. Some people say that you will never see the death of the computer keyboard, but I'm not so sure. I think that in a few years time maybe our grandchildren are going to sit on our knees and say 'did you really have to touch a computer to make it work?' So I think touch screens and non-touch technologies, things like the Xbox 360 Kinect, technology with a depth camera and an infra red camera, I think is going to change forever the way we interact with technology. We are going very quickly towards the Tom Cruise Minority Report data manipulation.

I think another big development is going to be larger screens, flatter screens, in fact screens that are flexible. Screens that you can stick onto any surface so that you can make the whole of the wall of your office or your workplace into a television screen which doubles up as a computer screen and for data manipulation. And I think this is coming, I think it is going to be quicker than we think as well, these are some of the developments we are looking at.

I think ultimately, the biggest game changer which has been going on for some time now, is mobile learning. Using your own personal devices to access learning, access peer groups, access social networking, access the ability to create and share content, anywhere and everywhere. As we're talking I'm watching citizen journalism going on, on the television in front of me. This London helicopter crash that has happened. Most of the pictures the BBC are actually presenting at the moment are from people who were on the scene at the time with their mobile devices. I think we're going to see that impact a whole lot more. Those are some of the trends I see happening.  

The TrainingZone podcast - January by Trainingzone on Mixcloud

Game changers in the Training Zone by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Learning on the move

It was nice to be invited to present a session for Sheffield Hallam University on mobile learning earlier today. The university has quite a strong research group in this area, and my talk, presented online via Adobe Connect had to be on point. Mobile learning is going to be very big indeed. One report suggests that as many as 8 out of every 10 people now having access to some form of mobile communication device. Whatever source you trust, mobile device use is high and rising, leading to the conclusion that mobile learning is clearly an area of development that will  have a massive impact on society in the coming months and years.

Where to start with a subject such as mobile learning? I decided that rather than merely cover practical issues (the 'how to do mobile' approach), I would try to take a more challenging approach, and explore social, pedagogical and psychological theories that relate to mobile technology, and present some of the issues that mLearning practitioners are currently facing. I used several images I have recently captured to illustrate the presentation, including the one above of the free Xbox 360 Kinect areas at Prague Airport, Czech Republic. I predict we will see more of this in public places.  It's interesting, because what we see here is a form of mobile learning without a mobile device. I suggested that mobile learning doesn't necessarily rely on carrying a device around with you, although it is the norm. Perhaps we need to reconceptualise our idea of what mobile learning is really all about.

There are many social implications of mLearning, some of which I covered in my presentation (slides below). I cited Puro (2002) who declared: 'The mobile phone ... is a new kind of stage where the mobile information society is acted out'. This echoes Goffman's (1967) drama theory where individuals manage their impressions in a kind of performance in social contexts. Puro's perspective is that the mobile phone evokes performances from users, but what is in question is the extent to which these performers manage their impression, and how much of this management is conscious effort. Fortunati (2002) speaks of the alienation and isolation that sometimes comes from mobile phone use, and comments that some isolation can be self-imposed, particularly when 'defending the space within which one would like to isolate one's voice'. Anyone who has sat next to someone loudly talking on their mobile phone in a confined space will see the truth, and Puro's expression that - 'the social distance on the mobile stage is small, but the emotional bond may be weak. [The] mobile phone ... may increase contact, but also increase loneliness' - will resonate with many.

Digital Futures: Innovations in Mobile Learning

View more PowerPoint from Steve Wheeler

There is no denying that at its heart much good learning has a social component. Earlier today in a meeting with one of our training staff, I argued that e-learning needs a social learning element. I suggested that he consider introducing some social media tools into the mix, so that the somewhat 'flat' two dimensional rote learning normally presented was bolstered by some deeper thinking supported by discussion, the creation of content and critical engagement with learning. I believe that mobile devices can help to achieve this mix of content and context based learning.

I explored the question of whether txting is 'dumbing down' language and causing problems. Does SMS text (the unorthodox spelling, or 'squeeze text' imposed by a limit of 160 characters) cause informal language to spill over into formal contexts? David Crystal (2008) says it doesn't. His argument is that in most cases, young people know the differences between communication modes, and that the ethos of language has changed with the introduction of new communication technologies, to the extent that there are now lots of acceptable versions of English. In effect, habitual use of a variety of tools (Facebook, Twitter, SMS, MS Messenger, YouTube, etc) is ensuring that this current generation is more versatile in literacy skills than any previous generation.

Finally, I discussed some of the practicalities of establishing mLearning strategies at an institutional level. There are many constraints, including small screens (a problem for those who require larger screens due to visual impairment or different expectations), bandwidth and connectivity problems, problems integrating mobile devices into institutional VLEs, and compatibility issues across multiple devices. A great article covering these and other issues by Edudemic is entitled How to develop your own mobile learning tools. Each institution has to decide on what basis (if any) it will implement mLearning strategies, which include the need to improve quality of delivery, widening access and participation, and tapping into the huge potential of mobile devices to maximise the study time that is available to each student.

References

Crystal, D. (2008) Txting: The gr8 db8. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fortunati, L. (2002) Italy: Stereotypes, true and false. In J. E. Katz and M. Aakhus (Eds.) Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Provate Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goffman, E. (1967) Interaction Ritual. New York: Doubleday.

Puro, J-P. (2002) Finland: A Mobile Culture. In J. E. Katz and M. Aakhus (Eds.) Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Provate Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Photo by Steve Wheeler


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

Net worth of the iPad

Much interest was shown in yesterday's post iPad or iFad? It focused on whether schools should provide iPads for all their students. In the UK several schools are already doing this, and all have received great criticism from pressure groups who claim that it is an expensive gimmick. All down through the history of technology, as each new tool is introduced, there are those who will resist and complain, usually without any real evidence to justify their complaints. The main objection against one iPad per child projects is that there is little evidence to show that the new devices actually improve learning gain. The schools counter this argument by saying that with projects in their infancy it does take time to set up research and gather data, interpret it and discover whether an affect is in evidence.

The discussion on iPad or iFad was very interesting and thought provoking and I would like to express my thanks to all those who participated. The gist of the discussion centred not so much on the technology (and rightly so) but more on the pedagogy. You can follow it for yourself here, but generally, those participating agreed that if a new technology such as the iPad is introduced into the classroom it will only be effective if the the teaching and learning changes to harness the power of that technology. Too often we have seen new technologies placed into the classroom, and then used in exactly the same way as the old technology they are meant to replace. This video shows what not to do with an iPad:

One school I featured in yesterday's post was Mounts Bay Academy, near Penzance, Cornwall. Mounts Bay is one of the secondary schools in the UK that has adopted one iPad per child, and at the cost of over half a million pounds, has been the target for a lot of flak from groups such as the Tax Payers Alliance. Sara Davey, head teacher of Mounts Bay was yesterday interviewed on BBC radio, and reported an initial set of results from their school-wide iPad project as follows:

In a recent student survey 90% of Mounts Bay students agreed that iPads were very useful for their learning, especially in Science, English, Religious Education and History.  They reported that they made personal learning gains by working faster and getting more done. The students found the iPads very useful for their research and homework and they liked the fact that it is inclusive with a personal device for every student. Teachers observed that there were gains in Literacy learning, with communication now excellent between staff and students and improving greatly with between the school and parents.  There is a report on the website of a visit by teachers from nearby schools Penrice and Callington yesterday with comments, and an iPad showcase section. Data collected by the school indicate that Year 11 achievement looked very promising this year with a possible 10% increase in students gaining 5 GCSEs (including English and Mathematics).

As Sara Davey herself warns, these results cannot and should not be solely attributed to the introduction of the iPads. Yet it is significant that students have reported that they revise earlier because they are more interested in studying using the iPads than they are using text books.

Image courtesy of Fotocommunity

Net worth of the iPad by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Digital learning futures

Digital Learning Futures

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler

As I write this blog post, the above slideshow has received almost 18,000 views in just 48 hours since it was posted up onto Slideshare. These slides accompanied my presentation during the Learning Technologies conference and exhibition held at London's Olympia on 25-26 January. I was pleasantly surprised by the huge turnout to hear me speak, and grateful to Don Taylor and his team for inviting me to speak at this excellent event.

During my talk, I discussed a number of possible scenarios that might result when wholesale adoption of digital technologies occurs in education and training. I touched on personal learning networks, mobile technologies, games and gamification, the use of social media in learning, the role of user generated content, the phenomenon of ubiquitous connection, and technological convergence. The latter in particular is a trend that is allowing us to use web-enabled television, dual view screens, and in the near future will enable a merging between e-mail and social media. I also discussed pedagogical issues such as deep and surface learning, creative thinking and the transformation of knowledge consumption. As a nod to the possible futures we might see, I discussed the development of semantic web technologies (Web 3.0 and Web x.0), touch screen tablets, non-touch technologies and smart objects, as well as the potential of Open Educational Resources, open learning and open scholarship to support a global democratisation of learning.

I'm immensely gratified to think that so many more people outside the auditorium at Learning Technologies are now downloading and viewing these ideas. My audience has been extended beyond the walls of the event to a global classroom through the amazing power of social media. Here's to all the possible futures of learning!


Digital learning futures by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The future is not here ... yet

I seem to be spending a lot of time lately travelling around talking about 'the future'. Does this make me a futurologist or some kind of prophet? No - I'm just one more person who wants to know what might influence my professional life and my students' learning over the next year or two. We are all interested in the future, more or less. But trying to predict the future is not something I would recommend, because no-one really knows what tomorrow will bring. If we did, most of us probably wouldn't dare stepping outside our homes. Well, here's me in an interview with a German Human Resources magazine, in the run up to a keynote speech I'm giving in Cologne, Germany in September. I speculate on what I see happening around me now, and how the trends might evolve in the coming months....

You have been working in learning technology for over 35 years. Does the evolution of learning still hold surprises for you?

Oh yes. It never ever ceases to amaze me. Every day I am surprised because new things are coming to me and I discover new technologies or I learn about new software. The important thing for me has always been to find out what is coming next, because I want to be prepared, not just to know about it myself, but also to tell other people what is ‘just around the corner’ and how you can use it.

What has been the biggest surprise in the last years?

The biggest surprise for me so far has been social media: it is the biggest thing in the last ten years to hit the world of learning technology. Everybody can connect with everybody else now anywhere in the world. You can literally tap into any community of practice that you are interested in and find people who are very clever and knowledgeable and get almost instant answers from them.

Do you see this change as some kind of revolution in learning?

I go along with the opinion that it always has been an evolution but not a revolution. We are all building on to the previous work of other people as in the expression “standing on the shoulders of giants”. The first technology for me was always language. And since those days we have learned to turn communication into other forms – first the telegraph, then the telephone, radio and television, mobile phones and then the internet – they are all versions of language and ways of sharing our ideas with each other.

You already mentioned social media as one of the most important technologies that have changed learning. Which other technologies are there, that have had a similar impact?

Probably one of the biggest innovations has been the mobile phone. The ability to talk or send texts to anybody in the world – that was important. But with smart mobile phones there are so many new applications available now. Together with social media those two innovations are transforming the way we work and learn.

You predict in your blog that the future of learning apart from being social and mobile will be open. Can you illustrate this prediction?

Open learning and open scholarship are important to me because to be open is to be honest – and there are still too many people hiding behind walls, saying things that they don’t mean or can’t prove. For me, knowledge is like love: You can give it away as much as you like but you still get to keep it. Why should we charge people for information that they really need to survive? Brian Lamb, who is a Canadian academic and a friend of mine, recently said: “With this economic crisis that we are in now and the global problems that we are experiencing it seems perverse and wrong to hoard the knowledge and only give it to people who can pay for it”. So therefore openness in all its forms has to be the way forward. Open learning is also a second chance for people who have failed in school to get a qualification later in life, which is exactly what I did: I left school with nothing and I went to the UK Open University when I was in my thirties and got my first degree.

There are also other things like open access to knowledge, which more and more journals are providing for free, and there is open scholarship: As open scholars, I and others like me share our knowledge and our concepts for free: all of my blog posts are free and so are my slideshows, photos and videos.

And do you get a response from the people who read your content?

Oh yes. And I can also learn from them. Open scholarship means that as an academic I open myself up to criticism. People can actually point out to me what I may have missed out on or what mistakes I may have made. In effect, open learning in all of its forms becomes a reciprocal arrangement: it’s a mutual giving and receiving – all for free.

Do you think that learners already use those new technologies with all their possibilities?

Yes, it’s becoming a huge movement in the world. You see, social media is a leveler: everybody has an equal voice to say what they believe and to argue and discuss with each other. You send your thoughts around the world and people respond very quickly. I had conversations this morning with people in Australia, in New Zealand, Canada, all over Europe, and Malaysia. This would never have been possible without the internet and social media services like Twitter and Facebook.

Will learners need new skills to use these new technologies?

I think “skills” is probably not the correct word to use, I prefer to call them literacies. Literacies are skills, but they are more than that, because literacy means the ability to engage with your culture more deeply. Students – and teachers as well – will need to learn a lot of new literacies as these technologies become more pervasive in society. They will need for instance what is called “transliteracy”, which is the ability to present yourself and your ideas across multiple platforms and to switch very quickly between them without losing quality of content. The new literacies are also going to involve skills like the ability to be wise to the fact that not all content on the internet is correct, accurate or up to date.

What do these developments mean for trainers and how do they adapt to these changes?

Some trainers find it hard to keep up because they think it is too fast and too complicated for them to understand. But any teacher or trainer can exploit the power and the potential of these technologies. Most of them are free and easy to use and there is a definite pedagogy underpinning the use of these technologies. They just have to be aware that there are privacy and identity issues, issues of safety and content management. I urge every teacher and trainer to try these technologies out in a safe environment to see how they work and what they can do for their learners.

Can we apply this also to corporate learning: Do companies use these technologies and how?

Oh yes. I can give you an example: Just recently I was speaking at a conference in London. 450 people attended from all the major companies, from banks, manufacturing companies, the police, the military and government departments. Many of these 450 people were doing something new with technology and wanted to hear all about the latest digital media and technologies. I think that it is a growing trend that corporate trainers are tapping into the power of these media.

And do companies support the use of these technologies by their employees?

Well, corporate barriers are a problem – for instance when the management says you are not allowed to use Facebook because it’s against the company policy. I say to them, if you ban Facebook, you are losing one of the biggest opportunities to gain social credibility and social traction that you are going to have: the power of social media to connect people professionally as well as personally. The ability to tap into a professional network is one of the most valuable things that any employee can have. So do not turn your backs on social media in the workplace. Rather than block it, facilitate it in a way that it becomes a benefit to both your employees and your company.

You once said that learning transcends the boundaries of the classroom. Do you see problems when professionals, for example specialists in a certain field, connect with others from different companies?

Companies obviously want to protect their secrets, they have to – to a certain extent – because if they don’t, their rivals will come in and steal their ideas and capitalise on them. But there are ways of sharing information, there are also ways of marketing where messages become viral, enabling you to exploit the power and potential of social media, to sell your ideas to people. You see, all of my content is licensed under creative commons, which means that it can be shared and repurposed under the same license with which I have licensed it. Sometimes people translate my blog posts into other languages, and this way I get a huge audience which I would otherwise not have had. This is what companies have to see: They may wish to protect some things, but they may also wish to open up their ideas to sharing, to gain more credibility, more effective marketing and more efficient promotion of their ideas and products.

Do you think that people need rules for the use of social media in the company?

I don’t think that rules work anymore. Governments have tried to impose rules, they have tried to block Wikileaks for instance and failed notoriously, because the internet is far too big for one government or one organization to control. Many companies will have rules, but if they find that these rules are actually causing them damage, they will have to revise them and make them more flexible.

In Germany HR professionals have to face the demographic change. Are the new learning technologies just a new way to learn for digital natives or also for older people?

I don’t believe that younger people are more adept in using technology just because they were born after 1980 and I don’t want to categorize people this way. In my view, it is all about context rather than about age. What matters is what uses you see for the technology and then there is a willingness to learn to use it. These technologies are for everybody to use, demographics such as age don’t really matter that much.

How far are all these changes we talked about international phenomena?

In one sense there are huge differentials between how people use technology to learn to connect with each other, to communicate, to do commerce or business. If you go to Singapore, there is a population of people who are very much immersed in technologies, because it is one of the most wired – or wireless – countries in the world. You can’t compare that to Gambia in Western Africa, a very small nation where they don’t even have electricity for most of their country. But in other ways everybody is in the same boat, because everybody wants to learn, everyone wants to have a good life. The needs, aspirations and hopes are the same, but our opportunities are not the same. The future is unevenly distributed, which means that the future is not here yet.

Interview by Bettina Wallbrecht and Stefanie Hornung


Image source


The future is not here ... yet by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Semantic technologies and learning

The January special issue of Interactive Learning Environments is out right now. Our guest editors have done a great job drawing together 5 excellent papers under the banner of 'Semantic Technologies for Multimedia Enhanced Learning Environments' and for Learning with 'e's readers, here is the editorial in full, with excellent summaries of all the papers by our special issue editors Marco Bertini, Vladan Devedzic, Dragan Gasevic and Carlo Torniai:

Widely available learning material is recognized as a key asset that enables aggregation, provisioning, retrieval, reusability, adaptation, and personalization of educational content. Besides being able to author, publish, discover, and use high-quality learning objects, it is equally important to use multimedia-rich learning objects. Many domains require very advanced content, where different concepts and processes require the use of multimedia (e.g. image, sound, and video) to provide students with a better understanding of concepts under study. This inevitably sets new requirements in multimedia-enhanced learning environments for the advanced representation and creation of learning metadata. The goal is not only to have a richer representation of learning content but it is also important to consider multimedia learning objects in various learning situations where interaction and collaboration are required features. For example, interaction needs to be improved across all the six dimensions of the well-known interactivity triangle with the three main participating nodes of interaction - instructors, students, and content (Anderson & Garrison, 1998). Yet, students are also content creators. This is nicely facilitated by Social Web technologies (e.g. blogs and wikis), which better enable learning environments to support principles of social constructivism. While today user-created multimedia content is a commodity in learning environments, we need to have pedagogical strategies to show how to make the best use of the available technologies. Creative solutions are needed and new perspectives are more than welcome. Just as we can expect learners to easily create and publish multimedia content, we should also facilitate interaction between learners, their peers and educators through multimodal channels of communication and help new users benefit from the experience of previous users of multimedia learning content. Spector (2009) of Google Inc. refers to this phenomenon as “fluidity among the modalities,” where many new modalities will come in addition to the more frequently used ones - text, video, voice, and image.

Scope of the special issue

This special issue analyzes how semantic technologies can be leveraged to address some of the above-mentioned challenges of multimedia-rich learning environments. To perform this analysis, it is first important to define the concept of semantic technologies. Traditionally, the Semantic Web is associated with semantic technologies (Gaevi, Jovanovi, & Devedi, 2007). Ontologies, as the backbone of the Semantic Web defining formally and explicitly represented shared domain conceptualization, are the main way for representing and sharing metadata. Current research in learning technologies has shown that in learning environments Semantic Web technologies can integrate data about learning objects, learning activities and learners captured from various e-Learning systems and tools. Due to the intensive use of Web 2.0 techniques (e.g. collaborative tagging, social networking, mash-ups, and wikis), lightweight representation of semantics and metadata is used in the form of folksonomies, user comments, and ratings. Despite the initial perception that Web 2.0 opposes the Semantic Web, these two efforts are being jointly used to create a common space of semantic technologies (Hendler, 2009). Therefore, semantically enhanced metadata for learning multimedia cannot be considered without the social and interaction context, in which learning constantly happens (Jovanovi, Gaevi, Torniai, Bateman, & Hatala, 2009). Metadata is used to facilitate the discovery and sharing of learning multimedia objects and metadata created through the interaction of learners and educators among themselves and with the learning content.

This special issue solicited papers focused on the use of semantic technologies in multimedia-enhanced learning environments. In this call, we were especially interested in publishing research reports and lessons learned in the following research tasks:

• Ontologies and semantic annotations for multimedia learning objects.


• Collaborative tagging and folksonomies for multimedia learning objects.


• Semantic social networking in multimedia-based learning environments.


• Semantic technologies for enabling pedagogical theories in multimedia-enhanced learning environments.


• Semantic-enhanced learning designs in multimedia-enhanced learning.


• Semantic technologies for personalization and adaptation of multimedia-enhanced learning.


• Semantic-rich service-oriented architectures for multimedia learning environments.


• Semantic multimedia content for (collaborative) mobile learning.

Selected papers

After an enthusiastic response to the open call for papers, followed by a rigorous peer-review process, we are pleased to present five papers addressing some of the indentified research topics. While it would be unrealistic to expect a complete coverage of all research topics due to their vast scope, the paper selection reflects thoroughly the state-of-the-art in this area and some promising research results. More importantly, we can also see many needs for future research, which will hopefully be addressed in the years to come.

In the paper entitled “Automatic generation of tests from domain and multimedia ontologies,” Andreas Papasalouros, Konstantinos Kotis and Konstantinos Kanaris look at the problem of automated generation of quizzes for assessment from domain knowledge. The authors recognized that currently there are many approaches allowing for generating and analyzing tests, but they all rely on text-based content. However, in many different areas, it is important to include multimedia content into the questions asked in quizzes. In their approach, the authors make use of ontologies to represent knowledge of a domain at hand. The domain ontologies are then used together with multimedia annotation ontologies to annotate multimedia learning objects. On top of such annotated multimedia, the authors propose several different strategies for generation of multiple choice questions, where the assessment of students' answers is making use of ontology-based reasoning (i.e. subsumption). Besides applications on text-based content, the authors also demonstrate how their approach can be used for images and argue that the approach can easily be applied to other types of multimedia content. With the use of a prototypical implementation of the proposed approach, the results obtained in the evaluation demonstrate some very promising practical prospects.

Semantic annotation of multimedia learning objects is the topic addressed in the paper entitled “Semantic annotation of video fragments as learning objects: a case study with YouTube videos and the Gene Ontology” by Elena Garca-Barriocanal, Miguel-Angel Sicilia, Salvador Sanchez-Alonso and Miltiadis Lytras. The authors focus their effort on user-generated content (in particular videos posted on YouTube) that can be used as learning material. The need for effective ways to annotate this content is addressed by an annotation tool based on domain ontologies. The generated metadata are then used as a filter for selecting relevant parts of annotated clips as learning objects.

Another paper also focuses on collaborative annotation of multimedia learning content - “A collaborative multimedia annotation tool for enhancing knowledge sharing in CSCL,” by Stephen J.H. Yang, Jia Zhang, Addison Y.S. Su and Jeffrey J.P. Tsai. The authors investigate various annotation techniques (e.g. comments or tags) as instruments helping students develop their critical thinking skills through collaborative learning. In particular, they proposed an architecture based on the use of semantic technologies (for conceptual modelling of collaborative annotations) and web services (for distributed collection and flexible integration of shared annotations). By developing a novel learning environment for collaborative e-Learning and knowledge sharing, using a personalized annotation management system (PAMS 2.0), the authors extensively evaluated the implications of their architecture and approach in a course involving 94 junior university students. The analysis of the collected data indicates that the proposed approach to knowledge sharing helps learners better comprehend their readings and stimulate them ask engaging questions to be discussed with their peers.

The role that semantic technologies can play in reusing and sharing learning resources is well depicted by A. Yessad, C. Faron Zucker, R. Dieng-Kuntz and M.T. Laskri. In their paper entitled “Ontology-based semantic relatedness for detecting the relevance of learning resources,” they describe a novel approach to the computation of the semantic relevance of learning resources to a learning context of a learner. The idea is to compute the relevance between conceptual annotations for the learning resource (built using its role in the learning process and its learning topics) and the concept of interest to the learner. The proposed method offers promising results compared to both semantic measure of similarity and experts ratings.

While it is important to discover some parts of multimedia content, it is also equally important to validate the quality and relevance of the learning content to be used by a learner. In the paper “Constraint modeling for curriculum planning and validation,” Matteo Baldoni, Cristina Baroglio, Ingo Brunkhorst, Nicola Henze, Elisa Marengo and Viviana Patti recognize in authoring of personalized curricula, a gap between learners' traits (e.g. background knowledge or various cognitive traits) and curricula that educational institutions may offer. To address this research challenge, the authors propose a constraint-based technique based on the use of ontologies, model checking principles, and temporal logic to validate whether personal curricula being proposed for each individual learner satisfy the learner's personal traits. The prototypical implementation of the Personal Reader system for education allowed the authors to evaluate their proposed method and to report on some important lessons learned.

Image source by Taylor & Francis

A marriage made in Heaven?

Some readers of this blog may recall that I presented a keynote speech for the 'Let's Talk About Txt' conference organised by Txttools Ltd, at the University of Bath earlier this year. It's an excellent, small conference series that attracts delegates from both the public and private sectors of education and training, and is always well attended. My last talk was entitled: 'Everything you always wanted to know about txt but were afraid to ask', and is available in slideshow format at this link.

Well, I am delighted that I have been invited back again to keynote another of their conferences, this time at the University of Leeds, on November 16. Let's talk about txt 7 will be held at Bodington Hall, on the University of Leeds campus - details here. I must have done something right last time then. Below is the title and abstract of my keynote:

Combining Mobile Tools and Social Media: A Marriage Made in Heaven?

In the last decade we have witnessed an exponential rise in the use of participatory media on the web. Tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and social networking sites are flourishing, and boasting huge numbers of adherents. Alongside this rise in the use of social, participatory media we see an almost ubiquitous use of mobile telephones. Even in the developing nations of the world, the use of mobile phones is widespread and impressive. The advent of smart phones has raised the stakes even further affording developers major opportunities to create applications that will dramatically impact upon the daily lives of millions of subscribers across the globe. This presentation will examine these trends and will pose several questions: What happens when we combine the power of these two sets of tools? What happens when learners hold the power of the web in their hands? How will such possibilities impact upon education and training? What will be the new skills teachers and students will need to acquire to exploit the full potential of mobile social media? The answer of course, is that we don’t yet know all the answers, but we are beginning to find out, as research is conducted into for example, the mobile blogging (moblogging), mobile learning (m-learning), geo-caching, augmented reality and handheld teleconferencing. Such combinations of visual and textual media will advance learning and teaching in all sectors into a new phase, potentially changing irrevocably our conceptions about what it means to ‘learn’, the nature of knowledge, and the long established division between the roles of teachers and learners.


A marriage made in Heaven? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Going geographical

I remember a quote from Ed Horowitz: 'if you are not on the Internet, you are history'. I had an answer: 'If you are on the Internet, you are geography.' I was playing with words, but a message emerged from it - we can connect with others from all over the world using social media, and if you build it, they will come. The number of visits to this blog has risen dramatically over the last year or so. The month of July saw more than 10,000 visits. See what I mean? I've gone geographical.

Now it all comes home to roost. On September 2, I will be keynoting the Innovative Learning Spaces session track for the Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference in London. I'm very pleased to have been invited, because although I am not a geographer, geography was always one of my favourite topics in school, and is a social science to which I have great affinity. I keep dozens of back copies of the National Geographic journal at home and I'm an avid viewer of the National Geographic channel. I used to love reading about intrepid explorers of the likes of David Livingstone, Mungo Park and Robert Falcon Scott. I'm grateful then to Professor Derek France (Chester University) for inviting me to speak at such a prestigious event and excited to be able to attend. Here are the title and abstract of my presentation:

New Spaces, New Pedagogies: Harnessing the Power of Social Media in Education

A rapid emergence of social media – the so called ‘Web 2.0’ – has opened up new opportunities for participatory learning in all sectors of education. Students now have the capability to create and share their own content through blogs, wikis, video- and photo-sharing services such as YouTube and Flickr. They can easily connect into and maintain contact with multiple communities of interest, gaining access to experts using social networking tools such as Myspace and Facebook. They can organise their own resources through free and easy to use tagging and social filtering tools. In this presentation I will argue that this rapid rise of user generated content is blurring boundaries between novice and expert, and challenging the traditional notions of knowledge, ownership, privacy and identity. In tandem with this, the proliferation of personal devices such as iPods and smart mobile phones is enabling students to move beyond the boundaries of the classroom into ‘any time, any place’ learning. In the light of these developments I shall explore new teacher roles, examine new learner expectations and explore some of the new learning territories that are emerging beyond the walls of the institution. I will offer some examples of how Web 2.0 tools have already been harnessed to support professional mentoring and to promote deeper engagement in learning through collaboration and reflection. I will discuss the concept of the personal learning environment and its potential to enrich student experiences. I shall speculate on the potential impact of emerging technologies such as augmented reality and touch screens and their potential in shaping the future of education.

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

Getting there ....by degrees

In December last year, the UK's very own Prince of Darkness, Lord Mandelson, declared that 2 year degrees would be the future of higher education. The Business Secretary ordered a 'shift away' from traditional three-year degrees, despite warnings that shorter degree programmes might dilute academic standards. His reasoning is that 2 year degrees would free up more spaces for undergraduate study across all disciplines, and ultimately, there would be less expenditure, and less student debt. All well and good. But to deliver the so called 'fast track' degrees, universities will need to work smarter than ever before, and will need to adopt better flexible learning methods. This is where learning technologies will come to the fore.

We are holding the first UK national conference here at the University of Plymouth, on June 18th (which just happens to be the anniversary of the infamous Battle of Waterloo - I don't know why I pointed that out - may be an omen) where keynote speeches, workshops and other activities will highlight what universities will need to do to ensure standards are maintained whilst adapting to fast track degree delivery. Among the speakers at this free event will be Professor John Traxler (Wolverhampton University) who will talk about: 'Mobile Learning vs Fast Learning: On the Same Track?' and Mark Stubbs (Head of Learning and Research technologies at Manchester Metropolitan University). It should be a great day - and if you are in the region and free on that day, you may want to attend. Remember - it's a free event. Go to the conference website to register.

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A moving experience

Whilst reading David Crystal's book 'Txting: the gr8 db8' yesterday, I came across the txting expression 'a3' which apparently means 'anytime, anywhere, anyplace'. It sounds like the strapline for a glitzy advert from the 1980s for Martini - 'anytime, anyplace, anywhere, there's a wonderful world you can share'. In other words, you can totally get off your face anywhere and at anytime, so just go for it. Whilst the glamourisation of hard liquor and drunkenness is not something I'm likely to espouse (No, really? - Ed), I can appreciate the sentiments of the 'a3' notion when it comes to learning. In particular, technology mediated learning has never been so 'a3' as it is right now. Smart mobile technology, touch screens, context aware systems and fast access to the Internet are just a few of the features that are drawing us ever closer to the holy grail of ubiquitous learning (u-learning).

But why on earth do we need a3 learning? Is it because we are all so busy that learning has to occur on the move, or in shifting contexts? Is it due to our increasingly nomadic lifestyles? Is it perhaps because learning informally is becoming more and more vital in our everyday lives, and must become more achievable beyond the bounds of the traditional institution? I believe it is all of these ... the context of learning is changing because our lifestyles are changing.

Several years ago I adapted the work of the late Professor Dan Coldeway (I had the pleasure to meet him on one solitary occasion when I was invited to speak at his university in South Dakota in 2002). Dan's quadrant model of 'same time, different place' contexts was quite simple, but very useful in visualising all the possible combinations of locations and times in which learning could take place. I mapped a variety of tools and technologies over this model, and it allowed me some thinking space to help me to see all of the possibilities of technology mediated learning. I called it the martini model. That was over a decade ago. Time has moved on and so has the technology. And so, I might add, have our expectations. We now carry extremly powerful little devices in our pockets which we can use to access information, communicate and discover, while on the move. Although a3 learning is not fully with us yet, due to constraints in bandwidth, patchy provision, variable cost and some human factors, it is on its way, and it won't be long, I predict, before students will be able to experience seamless, transparent learning that does not vary in quality, wherever they are, and at whatever time of the day or night. It shouldn't matter where we are or what the time it. We should be able to access the same resources wherever and whenever we are. Equivalent experiences should produce equivalent outcomes. Think I'm wrong? I'm waiting for your comments...

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Barking at ants

On Wednesday 3rd February I gave a presentation to staff at the University of Brighton, on an invite from my old mate Asher Rospigliosi. His blog on learning using the Internet is worth a read. Below is the abstract of my presentation to staff in the Brighton Business School:

New Pedagogies for the Digital Age

The rapid emergence of new, participative and social media in higher education has caused teachers to question what they have previously believed about university teaching. Students also have different expectations when they arrive on the university campus. The proliferation of handheld and mobile devices, smart phones, ubiquitous computing and broadband networked technologies, interactive whiteboards, touch screen and wireless technologies is bewildering, and on the back of these developments, many academics also find it difficult to come to terms with the new digital cultures and values their students bring to the lecture room. In this presentation I will explore these tensions, discuss the potential and actual applications of new technologies, and examine how they are changing and challenging our traditional notions of pedagogy. I will speculate on how the digital age is causing us to reappraise and re-examine our own personal and professional values, and approaches to the business of learning and teaching. I will offer some simple, practical examples of how to integrate new social media into formal learning contexts and provide some insight into these processes from my own reflections on professional practice in teacher education.

Here is my slideshow:

New Pedagogies For The Digital Age

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

It has been a long time since I was in Brighton. When I was last in Brighton I was an undergraduate student of psychology. I studied at Lancaster House, the cognitive science centre of the University of Sussex. I remember vividly visiting the funfair on the end of Brighton Pier one evening, and took a ride on the waltzers. I had just enjoyed a rather large dinner at a local Tex-mex. It wasn't a smart thing to do. Spicy food, cider and fast whirling things is not a very comfortable combination. The inevitable happened. I experienced a technicolour yawn - I won't go into any more details. I managed to avoid barking at ants again by steering clear of all the fast whirling things when I was there this time.

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Web 2.0 and the defence of the realm

I enjoyed an excellent day out over at HMS Raleigh yesterday where I gave the opening keynote speech for the Tri-service DMLS (Defence Maritime Logistics School) Advanced Learning Technologies Symposium. I spoke on the subject of 'Learning 2.0 in a Military Context' and my slide show is available here.

All of the British armed forces were represented, and at one point I felt as though I was in some war movie giving a briefing before some secret mission, there were so many uniforms in front of me - "we attack at dawn!" Some had scrambled egg all over their hats and fruit salad on their shirts. These weren't decorations or medals - they were just messy eaters.

Other speakers at the event included our very own James Clay (Gloucestershire College) who addressed the issues of using mobile technologies for learning, and Professor Bob Stone (University of Birmingham) who spoke on serious games. Bob showed an impressive array of 3D virtual games and simulations and spoke on the effects of immersive technologies. He wasn't very keen on cumbersome headsets and other peripherals though, and demonstrated that learners could become immersed in gaming through simple screen, joystick and mouse technologies. His demonstration of Subsafe - a 3D simulation of a Trafalgar class nuclear submarine was stunning. I could tell you about it but then I'd have to kill you.

My own discussion with those present centred upon the tension between the chaos and democracy of Web 2.0 and the structure and discipline required in defence training. There was an interesting panel session also at the end of the day, where we talked about how trainers could convince their managers to adopt and implement new and emerging technologies within highly traditional training environments. The evening concluded with a splendid dinner in the Officer's mess - happy days. My thanks to Lt Stefan Gershater and the HMS Raleigh service personnel for organising such a good event and for inviting me to participate.

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On the Horizon

The 2009 Horizon Report, the annual report on the state of play of learning technology, predicts that there will be three key horizons of important development in the near future. In the executive summary the report authors suggest there are six technology groups we should watch:

In the first adoption horizon we find mobiles and cloud computing, both of which are already well established on many campuses — and still more organizations have plans in place to make use of these technologies in the coming months. Institutions at the leading edge of technology adoption are also already applying the two clusters of technologies we have placed on the mid-term horizon, geo-everything and the personal web. All four topics on the first two horizons are already in common use in other sectors, including entertainment, commerce, and the world of work. The two technologies placed on the far-term horizon, semantic-aware applications and smart objects, are not yet commonly found in an educational context, although research is being conducted in both areas and the rate of development seems to indicate that these topics are well worth watching.


This is much in keeping with the views of many leading experts in the fields of e-learning and m-learning, so it comes as no surprise. I even suggested something very similar in my recent blog post entitled e-Learning 3.0. What is important though, is that we appear to be moving more quickly toward the use of personal web type learning environments, where the use of mobile, handheld and semantically enabled 'smart' technologies will play an increasingly important role in all sectors of education. We will now wait to see 'when', not 'if', these applications become mainstream in education.


Johnson, L., Levine, A., & Smith, R. (2009). The 2009 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.


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Mobi Mundi on a Wednesdi

Well it is certainly a mobile world, but unfortunately not for me this morning. My iPhone battery is dead as a dodo and I have just spent the best part of an hour running the battery down on my laptop trying to get my wifi connection to work. It's Wednesday and the final day here at Handheld Learning 2008. We have been Flickring and Tweeting the conference on Twemes since the outset - take a look at the fun we have been having! I have just enjoyed sitting in the research strand on mobile technologies listening to three presentations. Mark Kramer from Salzburg, Austria was first up and talked about the future of learning using mobile devices. I like the way Maek draws on his day-to-day experiences and encounters to illustrate the key points he makes. He is doing a lot of ethnographic research and captures these human encounters as digital artefacts on video and audio devices, with live streaming to the web.

A South African perspective was offered by Adele Botha of Meraka Institute. Adele talked about the pervasiveness and ubiquity of mobile telephony in South Africa and outlined some of the key uses of the technology in education.

The main thrust of her presentation was to examine the new digital literacies such as 'mobiquette' that are required by learners and practitioners in the new digital mobile age of learning.


The final presentation was by David Cameron (yes that one - not the other one), who is based at Charles Sturt University in Australia. David spoke on the subject of how mobile media in the classroom can and do transform the educational experiences of young children. He presented some useful examples of how he and his colleagues use the technologies in drama based learning. An excellent session with plenty of time for questions and discussion, although the silubrious but elusive venue - The London Barbican Centre - was a little too difficult to find for those who may have stayed up a little late last night.

Plymouth Rocks

Well, now that the dust has settled on this year's Plymouth e-learning Conference, it is time to reflect. The verdict was that Plymouth rocks! It seems from the many positive comments we received that it has been a great success. 80 delegates attended the event today, to hear Professor Mark Stiles give a keynote on the tensions between institutional and student control over learning. Over 25 papers, demonstrations and workshops were also presented (Jackie Sitters, above, presents a paper on wikis in higher education), featuring Second Life, blogs, wikis, webcasting, handheld and mobile technologies, and there were lunchtine demonstrations by BlackBoard and our own home grown Leatning Technologist team. The latter was something of a triumph, because the LT team were able to present a neat version of the Nintendo Wii surface hack, which impressed a lot of those present.

Left is a picture of the final plenary where Ray Jones (University of Plymouth), Helen Keegan (University of Salford), Mark Stiles (University of Staffordshire) and I took part in a panel session. We answered questions from the delegates on the semantic web, plagiarism, sustainability and the future of e-learning, as well as revisiting issues such as ownership and control, formal vs informal learning and transparent vs opaque technologies. We are already planning next year's event which will take place over two days, on 23-24 April 2009. There will be at least two keynote speakers, a social event and conference dinner. Some photos from the day are available for viewing on Flickr.

At the bleeding edge

Came across an interesting blog on mobile technologies today, called Learn on-the-go. Whilst the title of the blog might be a little twee - (I had disturbing visions of someone reading a book on the toilet) - the content is pretty good, with a review of Marc Prensky's keynote address at the recent Handheld Learning 2007 conference held in London. Whilst not entirely glowing about Prensky's 'Keeping up with change' speech, even labelling him as 'obselete' at one point, this blog writer has some interesting things to say about mobile learning, change management and technology in general...

Here's a top quote from the blog:

'While slower, less progressive educators may still be comfortably exploring e-learning on learning management systems or off CD-ROMs (or, indeed, still doing chalk-and-talk), educators investigating mobile learning are very much at the cutting edge of educational innovation, along with other educators investigating other areas such as the use of social web tools for education, and the use of virtual worlds as learning environments.'

Well, yes, I agree - change is always with us, and shift happens. And I have to nod in agreement that the bleeding edge of learning technology is found in the study of ambient forms of learning, along with 3-D virtual worlds and social networking tools. I'll be bookmarking this blog and paying a return visit or two.

Top 7 topics at this year's ALT-C

In preparation for the forthcoming ALT-C 2007 conference, I glanced over the content of papers, posters, workshops and symposia on offer. It interested me to see that some key topics have emerged as the front runners for discussion. A quick trawl of titles and keywords revealed these top 7 favourite topics:

e-Learning 31
Web 2.0 Social Software 25
VLEs 24
Blogs 20
Mobile learning 19
Social networking 18
Wikis 16

No surprises really.... There are also a number of other papers dealing with accessibility, e-assessment, student perceptions, and various learning applications use such as VOIP, videoconferencing 3-D virtual worlds, podcasting, mini-games, e-portfolios, and of course ‘learning objects’ (whatever they are…) Even GPS and Interactive Whiteboards have a small presence. I was also interested to note that there are only 6 papers featuring the term ‘distance learning’ (although several more imply it) – but ..... could this be a sign of the decline of this old term? Has distance education now been overhauled in the glittering world of learning technology? We shall see….