Be open

In Lord of the Rings, the wizard Gandalf deliberated and wrestled long and hard to open the doors to the mines of Moria. In the story of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves, the mouth of the cave was opened by uttering the phrase iftaḥ ya simsim - 'Open Sesame'. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ healed a deaf girl by uttering the word 'Ephratha' - meaning 'be opened'. All through our history and popular culture we hear stories about difficult problems or barriers being solved or overcome. There are many, many problems in the world, some of which are impossible to solve. Others appear to be impossible to solve until someone comes up with a solution, and then we all say - ah yes, I can see the answer now. 

One problem we face in the 21st Century is how to educate everyone. If we believe education is a fundamental human right, then we go all out to provide good, affordable, accessible opportunities to learn the important things we will need to survive in an uncertain world. And yet, 500 million children remain outside of education because they cannot afford to attend. We have enough money to make it happen. But it stays the same old problem. In the speech below, which I gave at the Solstice Conference in June 2012 at Edge Hill University, I argue that we need to be more open about our content and tools, ownership of learning, intellectual property and even the very practices we participate in on a daily basis - open scholarship if you will. I talk about Creative Commons, open source software, open access journals, open educational resources, community led initiatives such as MOOCs and the whole idea about being open and sharing your learning. These ideas may not fully address the problem of how to educate everyone, but at least we will make a start by making learning more accessible.

Knowledge is like love. You can give it away as much as you like, but you never lose it. The more we give away our knowledge, the more we are educating our world. So be open. You know you want to.





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

Grand residence

The annual conference of the European Foundation for Quality in e-Learning did not disappoint. From the grand location of the conference at the Marquês de Pombal Palace, to the eclectic and fast moving conference papers, workshops and demonstrations, there was plenty to see and do during the two day Efquel Innovation Forum. A palace is defined as a 'grand residence', and this week the grand men and women of e-learning from all over Europe and farther afield took residence here to discuss, explore, expound and celebrate. The beautiful town of Oieras is a wonderful location for any event, and if you like good weather, sumptuous green surroundings and good food (seefood is the speciality) then I am sure you would agree. It is no wonder then that the Efquel crew return again and again to hold their conference in this picturesque Lisbon suburb. Morning keynotes from Wayne Mackintosh (see Wayne's World) and Asha Kanwar (Commonwealth of Learning) set the scene, leaving delegates with visions of free worldwide access to learning, thoughts of openness and inspiration from accounts of education initiatives in developing countries.

A welter of discussions, workshops and presentations followed, focusing on the accreditation, certification and internationalisation of learning followed, with subjects including open models, self evaluation, quality aspects for virtual schools, all before lunchtime. After lunch, it was business as usual with more sessions on topics such as how to integrate informal and open learning into higher education, the use of quality labels for e-learning and the benefits and limitations of academic gaming. The evening was closed off by a thought provoking keynote by Yves Punie, who address the challenges and opportunities for certification and assessment in future learning scenarios. Day one ended with a great al fresco evening in the grounds of the Palais, with live music and a short award ceremony.

My own keynote on digital learning futures started off day 2 of the forum, where I addressed some of the possible scenarios we see emerging in education, including open education practices, mobile learning, personalised learning, social media networking contexts and the use of augmented and mixed reality. As with all the sessions, there was a lively discussion, and this continued after the coffee break in other parallel sessions. I recall one brief discussion where one of the delegates, a journalist and self confessed e-learning non-expert, made the error of saying within my earshot that academic blogs were a poor substitute for peer reviewed traditional publishing. Talk about red rags and bulls. There was no blood on the carpet, but there could well have been. To say this view is misinformed would be an understatement. There are many blogs I would read in place of closed journal content. Blogging is more immediate (some traditional journals take many months to publish papers, which by then are well out of date) which also means it is timely and up to date. Blogging also enables immediate dialogue which means that readers can join in and discuss directly with the author. Blogging is also peer reviewed, but by multiple reviewers, not just two. Open and public forms of discourse need to be encouraged, not disparaged by ill-informed assumptions. This kind of debate that is the essence of what Efquel stands for, and I am grateful to have been invited to participate in this years event. My thanks go to the Efquel crew, and not least to Ulf-Daniel Ehlers, the conference chair, for allowing me to join in with a very memorable and inspirational event.


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

21st Century Learning

No one talks about the Millennium anymore, which as I've said a thousand times before, is perhaps a good thing. Once it was 'millennium this', and 'millennium that', and we all got a little sick of it. But the turning of the century was significant if only as an artificial, psychological transition from the 'old' to the 'new'. In the first few years of this new century we have made some tremendous advances in social media use, mobile technology and telecommunication. Educators are putting these tools to use, and the relentless advance of technology seems to be inspiring teachers everywhere to innovate and create new ways of teaching. But as I was at pains to emphasise during one of my talks this week, learning remains the same. We learn because we have to, but we also learn because we want to. The tools are there simply to support, enhance and extend the opportunities to learn.

A report landed on my desktop yesterday, courtesy of my good friends at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona. Entitled 'What does it mean to be educated in the 21st Century?', the report captures the intensely creative two days some of us spent together in Barcelona last November. The name check was impressive: Vijay Kumar, Sugata Mitra, Brian Lamb, Paul Kirschner, Neil Selwyn, Mark Bullen, Debby Knotts, Paul West, Albert Sangra, Ismael Pena, David Wiley.... In fact, many of the people whose work I had been reading seemed to be present at the Open Ed Tech Summit. Some interesting, and perhaps far-reaching ideas were generated and articulated at the event during our discussion session, and these are now presented for you to read. We don't know what will be the final outcome from this report, but we will all be meeting again in Barcelona in October this year, to continue our discussions around how we think education will shape up in the coming years. As ever, your comments on this report are most welcome.

In the pictures: Paul Kirschner, Paul West, Debby Knotts, Brian Lamb and Steve Wheeler

2008 Milestones Retro

The end of each year is an ideal time to reflect upon personal progress and look back at the milestones, the achievements, the events that have made the year. It's a time to consolidate, to be thankful, and in the act of looking back, to also look forward to what the new year might bring. It's a time to make plans in the light of past successes (and failures) and to celebrate and take stock. Here are my top ten milestones of 2008.

The no 10. achievement of the year is presenting papers in one year at each of what I consider to be the four most influential e-learning conferences in Europe. EDEN (Lisbon, Portugal), ALT-C (Leeds, England), ICL (Villach, Austria) and Online Educa (Berlin, Germany). I attended all of these and another dozen or so conferences this year, and have met some incredibly smart and passionate academics and professionals, all of whom have inspired me to push forward myself to extend the boundaries of e-learning. I'm very grateful to all of them for their enthusiasm and energy.

My no 9. achievement for 2008 was an invitation for me to edit the proceedings for the ICT and Learning for the Net Generation IFIP conference which was held in Kuala Lumpur in July this year. Working with so many excellent and well known researchers and writers was stimulating and rewarding, and the finished product, complete with ISBN will be a part of the archive of accumulated knowledge in the field of computer based learning.

At no. 8 was a personal honour for me - an invitation to participate in the inaugral Open EduTech Summit which was held in Barcelona in October. Being numbered as one of 40 worldwide experts on open learning and distance education, was indeed an honour for me, particularly when the complete list of those invited is reviewed. I was fortunate to meet with and work alongside some real luminaries in the field such as Mark Bullen, Vijay Kumar and Sugata Mitra.

My no. 7 this year represents another personal honour. This month I was delighted to hear I had been nominated in two categories of the Twitter 'Shorty' Awards - the #education and #nonprofit categories. I don't stand a cat's chance of winning but just being nominated for one award, let alone two, is humbling - but shows that there are people out there who value what I write when I am on Twitter. Whatever the outcome of the awards, I will continue to be a twit for the forseeable future!

No. 6 was the news in September of my promotion within the Faculty of Education to co-ordinate all Education Development and Technology Mediated Learning activities, here at the University of Plymouth. I already convene the University's e-learning research network, but this role now gives me the opportunities to explore new and emerging technologies and how they can be applied to support and enhance learning across an entire faculty. I also now chair the Faculty of Education's Information Technology Committee.

At no 5. is the imminent publication of my fourth book, an edited volume entitled 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures', which will be in the bookstores for the first week of 2009. The cover of the book can be seen (above) for the very first time. This book is the second I have published with the US based Information Age publishing house, and my fourth on e-learning to date. It is an achievement for me on a number of levels, including the honour of working with great writers such as Howard Rheingold, John Traxler and Palitha Edirisingha.

At no. 4 was a very recent achievement. I was delighted to be nominated in 2 categories in the prestigious Edublog Awards (the 'Eddies') - best individual blog and most influential blog post. When I look at the competition for these awards, I realise that there is little chance of me winning, but as I have already said, the nomination means a great deal to me personally and professionally. I try to write blog posts that are both entertaining and informative.

At no. 3 is my election as chair of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 3.6 on distance education. I was honoured and thrilled to be elected to lead this reputable and highly respected group of researchers and academics. I hope I live up to expectations of the group to contribute toward IFIP's continued success.

At no. 2, I was very pleased to be invited to take over the editorship of a very highly respected journal, Interactive Learning Environments, after serving as Book Reviews editor for two years. I am daunted but excited at the prospect of steering the journal over the next few years, but I have an excellent team of associate editors and a stirling editorial board behind me to help me to ensure that ILE continues its success story.

At no. 1, and my most valued achievement of 2008, is my award of a lifetime EDEN fellowship. I was notified of the award earlier in the year and had to keep it fairly quiet until it was presented at the annual EDEN conference in Lisbon, in June. As one of the awarding committee remarked to me later, 'Someone can be president of EDEN for a short time, but a fellowship is for life'.

It has certainly been a very busy and rewarding year, with plenty of great events to remember, wonderful people to recall meeting for the first time, and excellent things to reflect upon. Here's to a successful and fulfilling year for all of us in 2009! Happy New Year everyone!