Setting a President

So my good friend Morten Flate Paulsen has been duly elected the 100th president of EDEN (Surely some mistake here? - Ed) and takes over the office from Alan Tait with immediate effect. I'm sure Morten will do an excellent job, because coming from Viking stock, he will take no nonsense from anyone. Actually, joking aside, Morten is one of the nicest guys you could ever expect to meet, quietly spoken, but extremely intelligent, well qualified, hugely popular and a very good looking guy as well. OK, I'm creeping here, because I gather there are some Presidential bodygaurd jobs going and I love to wear the shades and hover my hand meaningfully over the inside pocket of my jacket, you know what I mean? (You'll be lucky - Ed).

I know Morten has some great ideas about how to advance the cause of EDEN, because I have been discussing them with him during the time we have been at the conference here in Valencia. He has already asked me for my views on how we can improve communication across the network of over 1200 members. I know he is keen on exploring for example, how the EDEN Network of Academics and Professionals (NAP) social networking tool on Elgg can be better used now that it has been launched. Alan Tait did a great job as the 99th President of EDEN (Look, stop this nonsense now - Ed) and we are all grateful to him for steering us this far, and for raising the international profile of EDEN. Now Morten has taken over, I am sure the forward momentum will continue, and I hope to be an outrider in his motercade - I have the shades, the earpiece and the dark suit ready to go (Right, that's it. He's not the President of the United States, Steve. So stop this right now, or I'm telling your Mum - Ed).

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Setting a president by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 International License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Live blogging

We have had a very interesting Day 1 here at the 19th EDEN Conference. We have all had a lot of fun, enjoyed some interesting and thought provoking sessions, and a lot of time has been spent networking with new colleagues and old, throughout a day when the sun has shone, and new light has been thrown on our collective understanding of distance education and e-learning. EDEN is that kind of event, where anyone from any country, whether knowledgeable or novice, can get together and share ideas in a non-threatening and very relaxed manner. Today we did exactly that around white clad tables in the middle of a long marquee, just outside the conference venue. On the menu were many varieties of canapes, and finger buffet items, as well as the excellent Valencia paella, which is a rich golden colour and contains large prawns and/or chicken. I could really get used to this, you know...

Someone complained that when they got to the marquee, all the paella was gone. I know. I ate it. Not all of it you understand, but you know what they say - the early bird catches the worm (er, I'm not for one minute suggesting there may have been vermiform creatures in the paella - it's just a figure of speech). By the way, the image above is one taken of me while I was deeply absorbed in live blogging during one of the keynote speeches this morning. I had to sit near the front of the stage to recharge my laptop batteries at one point. Next to me is an Elluminate team member who is live streaming the event.

The day started off when I encountered one George Siemens following me up the pathway across the extremely large and extensive campus that is our host institution here in Valencia. He had spotted my EDEN Conference bag and asked if we knew the way to the venue. Follow me, I said and I'll take you there. Then we each realised who the other was. I enjoyed several conversations with him today. It was a priviledge to talk to George and to many other hugely knowledgeable and influential members of the worldwide e-learning community. I met Martin Bean (Vice Chancellor of the Open University), after Alan Tait had introduced us. He remembered me from a chance meeting we had at ALT-C in Manchester last year. He must meet hundreds of people, but Mr Bean (I'm sorry I can't resist) has that kind of mind - he remembers everyone.

I also met several old friends I had never met face to face before. I know them all from Twitter of course. Ricardo Torres Kompen (Spain) and Sebastien Fiedler (Germany) are just two. There are so many others just too numerous to mention here. We've had some engaging conversations today. There have been thought provoking presentations. There have been some Aha! moments of enlightenment. Marci Powell gave us one soundbite to remember when she said we should be preparing students for their future, not giving them our past. Another memorable quote was from Martin Bean who remarked that our collective challenge must be to now transform information into meaningful knowledge. He also argued that we do not have enough resources to construct enough school and university buildings to satisfy all the demands for education. Technology supported distance education he claimed, was the way forward. It was exactly what the audience of 400+ delegates had come to hear.

Then George Siemens took the stage and gave us a breakneck speed tour of his connectivist ideas and how we might transform education into something that would influence the lives of students positively. He made some bold but much needed statements about conventional course provision, and its failure to tap into the needs of a new generation of learners who are firmly located within a world of digital media. It's not about knowledge acquisition anymore, he said, it's now about making useful connections - and that is the future of education.

Tomorrow now beckons, with more keynote speeches, dozens of workshops, poster sessions and paper presentations. Day 2 will be capped off with the Conference Dinner, where we will no doubt once again each connect with new and interesting colleagues whom we may well forge long lasting working relationships with. Here's to networking!

Image credit: Eva Suba

Live blogging by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 International License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Many encounters

I had a very busy, and slightly bizarre day today filled with encounters. Started the morning off having breakfast with Informal Learning guru Jay Cross in the lounge of the K-West hotel, in Kensington, West London. On the way back to get my bags along the gloomy, strangely lit corridors of the hotel, I encountered one of the Jedward twins. Don't ask me which one it was, they both look and sound exactly the same to me. His big hair, glowing in the gloom like a strangely luminescent toilet brush, gave me a bit of a funny turn, I can tell you.

Made it across to Olympia 2 with Jay with the good offices of a friendly taxi driver, and met up with Donald H Taylor and his team. The one day Learning Skills Group conference (#lsg10uk) this year attracted 450 delegates, mainly from the corporate training sector. I bumped into several Twitter buddies face to face for the first time, including Karyn Romeis and Phil Green, and others I had met before including Barry Sampson and Jane Hart. I sadly missed Jay Cross's keynote, because I had to travel across town to Oxford Circus to meet up with Ali Hughes and Derek Wenmoth (Core Ed team) who wanted to discuss the content of my upcoming keynote in Christchurch for the uLearn Conference in October. I spent a very pleasant hour with them both in Caffe Nero, before we all had to depart for our next meetings.

Back again at Olympia, I enjoyed a pleasant buffet lunch and a chat with a number of delegates, before doing my own workshop session entitled: Collaborative and Co-operative Learning: The How and the Why, in which I covered a whole range of ideas with about 85 delegates on competition, collaboration and cooperation (I used the analogy of the London marathon for this), creativity, Web 2.0 tools (I demonstrated the wisdom of crowds, folksonomies and social tagging through a number of 'get out of your seat' activities which seemed to go down well) and problem based learning. As usual, there was not enough time toget through all the materials I had planned, and then it was a quick dash by taxi, across London and down to West Sussex, where I managed to get my Gatwick flight to Valencia.

On the plane I encountered my old friend Paul Clarke and his wife, who are also here in the Barcelo Hotel in Valencia for the EDEN Conference (the picture above is of the stunningly designed centre for arts and sciences complex, which is just across the road from the hotel). We arrived together (I have shared taxi cabs with Jay Cross and Paul Clarke on the same day and in two separate European cities - how about that?) and then in the hotel lobby as we were checking in, along came Michael Moore to greet us. I also bumped into Morten Flate Paulsen in a cafe this evening.

Tomorrow is the reception evening for the 3 day EDEN Conference which I will be reporting on in this blog. Stay tuned - or whatever they say, in this web enabled world...

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Many encounters by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 International License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Hooked

The furore over the 'Net Generation' and the controversy surrounding Marc Prensky's Digital Natives theory prompted me to write a poem about gaming addiction that I actually performed at an ALT-C Conference. If for some perverse reason you ever want to repeat the performance, you need to dress up in a hoodie, and the crotch of your jeans needs to be hanging around your knees so that your boxer shorts are fully exposed (if you are indeed wearing any at all). You also need to strike a pose that is reminiscent of an old man suffering from constipation, and rap the words out loud and proud in a slightly nasal Estuary accent while flinging your hands around. Have fun. Er.... I know I did.

Hooked

I’m a digital immigrant, me
And the digital natives will be
Forever a stigma
Wrapped up in enigma
And shrouded in deep mystery

When he got his Nintendo DS
My son very quickly impressed
He linked with his buddies
And soon the young hoodies
Were wirelessly hooked (more or less)

Over time, his Nintendo obsession
Dragged us down to the depths of depression
Each attempt to suggest
A change or a rest
Was met with a wave of aggression

A Dad-imposed mandatory ban
Merely caused him to ‘go underground’
Soon we had to agree
The Nintendo would need to be
Surgically removed from his hand

I decided to check the Nintendo
And I slowly worked up to crescendo
Then it hooked me as well
And I soon looked like hell
I won’t even try to pretend-o

The brain training software was great
And I found myself staying up late
But I’ve now had my fill
And feel over the hill
With a brain age of 78

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Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Catching the mood

The current issue (June) of The Psychologist features an interesting article on research into the affective affordances of social networks. Social networks in the widest sense have been around since the dawn of civilisation, but with the advent of online social networks such as Facebook, and the vast populations of users who participate in interaction worldwide, social networks now take on a whole new dimension, and there is plenty of potential for research into their effects.

The current article (Totterdell et al, 2009) speculates that online social networks may enable those who are connected together with very wide groups of 'friends' to transfer feelings across their networks. So, for example, if one member's close relative dies, and she shares that sad news to her social network, many of her Facebook friends might feel a personal sense of loss and may even join in the mourning, even though they may not have known the person who has died. According to the article, it's not just emotions (such as anger or fear) that could be propogated through social media, but also general moods (gloominess, calm) and more enduring states such as feelings of well-being and happiness can also be transmitted and caught by other members of a social group.

The authors further claim that the social ties don't even need to be very strong for this to occur. They cite a number of research studies including some in which feelings and emotions have been transferred between people through two identified psychological processes. The first is a cognitive inferential mechanism, where thinking and reflection is involved, and then there is something known as primitive emotional contagion - where subconsciously, we mimic the emotions and postures of those we are interacting with, especially if we wish to convey friendship. As I read this section, I thought of the 'postural echoing' I observe when I'm in the shopping mall, or waiting in the departure lounge. People sat or standing together tend to echo their partners postures, in an unconscious display of affinity (as in the pictures above).

If the speculation is correct, and we behave similarly in virtual worlds as we do in real life, online social networking is probably a great deal more powerful than many of us think - and can possibly transmit strong emotions and cause large movements of mood effects across populations. The more we are connected, the more we may be affected.

Reference: Totterdell, P., Niven, K. and Holman, D. (2010) Our Emotional Neighbourhoods. The Psychologist, 23 (6), 474-477.

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Catching the mood by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 International License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Movements for change

The learning technology landscape is changing and many questions are being asked. Why should teachers give away their resources, and why should they share their hard work with other teachers? What is Creative Commons and how does it work? What is open scholarship and what does it have to offer me? Will the 'giants' in the publishing world take notice of the Open Educational Resource movement? How did Web 2.0 come about? How do movements for change emerge and gain impetus? Does change come best from a top-down or a bottom-up approach? And where can we find the useful open educational resources we need?

I gave my responses to these and many other questions during a 30 minute interview today with Alastair Creelman (Linneuniversitet, Sweden) on Adobe Connect. We discuss the future of organisations like Becta, and how universities like my own institution are planning for the future of education supported through new learning technologies, and open educational resources. We cover issues such as language, intellectual property and ownership in our half hour conversation. Even my teenage son puts in a cameo appearance! The link to the interview is here, and I would be interested in your comments on what was discussed. Alastair is doing an entire series of interviews with internatioanl experts in the area of open educational resources, and I think his interviews should be more widely publicised.

And my soundbite from the interview: 'Knowledge is like love. You give it away, but you still keep it...'

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Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Wild west show

I learn a lot from taking part in international projects, and I am currently involved in several which are occupying my mind. By far the largest project I was involved in though, was a $90 million Star Schools Project in South Dakota - the Digital Dakota Network - in 2001-2003. It all started when I was invited in July 2000, all expenses paid, to make a trip across the pond as a guest of the then Governor of South Dakota, the Hon. Bill Janklow. I arrived in the small sleepy, state capital of Pierre (pronounced peer) and booked into the local Ramada Hotel. Pierre sits straddling the Missouri river, and is therefore in two time zones. When the bars shut east of the river, you walk over the bridge and into a bar on the west of the river, and get an extra hours drinking in (if you like that sort of thing, that is).

I was driven by my hosts to the Capitol building and ushered into the Governor's conclave where I gave a speech to a gathering of around 100 guests, many of whom were either working in the government or were school superintendents. My talk, about the current state of distance education, was well received because the entire Star Schools Project the state was about to embark upon was premised on distance learning. Every school in the state (and their libraries, colleges and universities too) were being cabled up with broadband, and equipped with full motion video conferencing, digital satellite reception - the whole nine yards. I later met up again with Bill Janklow over breakfast in Washington D.C. in April 2001. He was just about to go off to the White House to meet up with President George 'Dubya' Bush, but said he needed a few minutes with me to talk over a proposition. He offered me a job as his 'Digital Network' Ambassador, along with a house, schooling for my 3 kids and a job for my wife, if I would up sticks for two years and join him. It was a tempting offer, but I had to refuse due to a number of intractible issues. We compromised, and I later joined his team as the part-time lead evaluator for the project. Over the next two years I jetted back and forth across the Atlantic, gathering data, meeting and working with my team of researchers (pictured above), conducting interviews, collating data and generally trying to make sense of all that we were learning about this vast, sweeping, state-wide project. At the time the Digital Dakota Network was the largest distance education project of its kind, and we had a great opportunuty to discover how learning would be affected by the new technology. However, it was often the anecdotes rather than the hard data that were the most illuminating...

I heard one story that I would like to share here. It says a lot about the human condition, and a lot more about the impact of teachers on the young mind. In fact it follows on from yesterday's blog post. Janklow was a clever guy, and to cut costs, he enlisted the help of a number of residents of the state penitentiary, who he sent out in supervised road gangs to wire up the schools across the state. In one school, one of the convicts, dressed in the obligatory orange overalls, was up a step ladder, running cables through the ceiling of a classroom. A young lad walked in, saw the prisoner, and asked him. 'Mister, what did you do to be sent to prison?' The convict looked down as the little boy and with a straight face said: 'I didn't listen to my teacher...'

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Wild west show by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 International License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.