Learning with 'e's

Digital pervasion and loss of identity

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:42:00 +0000

This is a continuation of yesterday's post entitled: Always connected.

“We are all digital now” claims Paul Longley of University College London, in a research report (BBC News, 2006). In so doing, he identifies a global digital tribe. Taking into account the fact that much of the world’s population is more than a day’s walking distance from a fixed line telephone, and even allowing for the growing trend toward mobile phone usage in developing countries, or the paucity of computers in the third world, Longley’s claim could be considered contentious. However, where applied to western industrialised nations, it musters some credibility. There is none the less a need to acknowledge the digital divides that are perpetuated wherever technology is applied. Interestingly, Longley’s claim may hold some truth when contextualised in a world where cable and satellite television channels proliferate, digital mobile communication becomes ever more pervasive, surveillance of civil movement and activity is automated, and where digital identification of individuals, commodities and services is becoming common place. The location of a global digital tribe within this landscape is a feature of interest for this chapter.

Longley’s research team identified digital tribes by their socio-economic activities and by the manner in which they used information and communication technologies. Yet there are more subtle distinctions that can be made, particularly at the perceptual and motivational levels of analysis.

There is an argument that due to the process of globalisation, national boundaries (and therefore tribal boundaries) have been eroded to the point that we are amalgamating into a homogenous mass of humanity, and where the last vestiges of tribal identity are vanishing. In essence, the forces of globalisation have amalgamated us all into one tribe. We are living in a ‘corporate age’ runs the argument, in which all of our decisions are being dictated by ‘those who have the real power’. Therefore, wherever I travel, I can find the same fast food outlets, and the same familiar chain stores where I can purchase clothing and footwear I will be comfortable wearing. I can blend into the background because I am wearing a similar style of clothing to the hundreds of other people milling around in the high street, and I will not be conspicuous, because I am eating the same food and drinking from an identical soft drink can as the natives. Have I therefore blended in to such an extent into the local culture that I lose my identity? No, my individual identity remains intact, whilst my individualism is subsumed into the social melange within which I am located. Identity and individualism are not synonymous, even though there are obvious commonalities. The identity argument may break down when it is applied to the formation of a single ‘digital tribe’, but clearly there are many personal identities represented within the tribe. It is quite possible then, that there is in fact one ‘digital tribe’ in the broadest sense of its meaning, but there are many sub-sets of this large digital tribe – what we can term ‘virtual clans’.

Tomorrow: Virtual Clans

Always connected

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:20:00 +0000

This is a continuation of yesterday's post entitled: The digital tribe and the network nation.

It was Howard Rheingold (2002) who coined the term ‘smart mobs’ (a play on the word 'mobile' or mobile phone) to describe individuals who work collectively and intelligently toward a mutual goal without necessarily having met. Unlike their more feral counterparts, smart mobs tend to act intelligently and with a purpose. They are distributed beings (Curtis, 2004), carrying devices that have immense computing power and telecommunication capability, enabling them to collaborate in ways which were previously inconceivable. The immediacy of their communicative ability and the ubiquity and persistence of their engagement (they are always connected) within the smart mob enable them to perform collective feats of imagination, co-operation, trading and the exploitation of aggregative mind power, beyond anything humankind has ever achieved up to this point in its history. This may appear to read as a eulogy, but in reality smart mobs are the vanguard of an influential social movement that will gather pace over the next few years and will ultimately radically change the face of education.

Smart mobs can act for the public good, for example where drivers use their mobile phones to inform a local radio station of a road traffic accident. They can also act concertedly for more nefarious purposes, such as tram or bus passengers who text their ticketless friends to warn them of the location of ticket inspectors. Some smart mob activities may be pointless to all but those who participate in the action. In recent years, a new social phenomenon has been observed, particularly in urban areas. Known as ‘flash mobs’, they are large groups of people who suddenly gather in a public place, perform some meaningless activity for a period of time, and then just as quickly disappear. The T-Mobile dance was an example of this phenomenon and there are many more examples. Flash mobs are almost always co-ordinated by one or more individuals through mass SMS texting, e-mails or other electronic message transmission methods. Technology directed flash mobs have occasionally gathered for political purposes at times of civil unrest in Romania and China, but generally their purpose is ill defined. Flash mobs have been explained as a classic example of the innate need for people to belong to a group, be privy to inside knowledge, and be able to participate in what is ‘happening’.

Rheingold also identifies a ‘thumb tribe’ which consists predominantly of those younger members of society who appear to be constantly connected to the rest of their tribe and who use ‘one thumb signalling’ via text to communicate. They belong to the larger tribe of the ‘always connected’ who are identifiable by their apparent dependency on mobile telecommunication technologies. They are clearly identified not only by the means through which they communicate, but also by the manner in which this communication is constructed, i.e their vocabulary. SMS text is constrained by a single message limit of 160 characters. To save money, txters have developed a reduced form of language made up of letters, numbers and symbols. Known as ‘squeeze text’ (Carrington, 2005) this clannish form of language changes the morphology of the language being used, with little or no loss of its semantics for those who are members of the clan. For those outside the clan however, txting can present a bewildering conundrum.

Tomorrow: Digital pervasion and loss of identity

References

Carrington, V. (2005) Txting: The end of civilisation (again?) Cambridge Journal of Education. 35 (2), 161-175.
Curtis, M. (2004) Distraction: Being human in a digital world. London: Futuretext.
Rheingold, H. (2002) Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.

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The digital tribe and the network nation

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:13:00 +0000

This is a continuation from yesterday's blogpost entitled: Digital Tribal Identity

I will argue here that within the present information age, where digital communication technologies have fractured the tyranny of distance beyond repair, and where computers have become pervasive and ubiquitous, identification through digital mediation has become the new cultural capital (Bordieu & Passeron, 1990). Cultural capital is the set of ‘invisible bonds that tie a community together’ (Curtis, 2004, p 72) without which societal cohesiveness begins to unravel. It is this ‘social glue’ - such mutual understandings and exchanges that occur on a daily basis – that holds together the basic building blocks of social life in which people simply ‘look out for each other’. In the real life community, people work hard to sustain such mutual exchange, and its value is instilled in them from an early age. This results in the transmission of the culture from generation to generation.

For the digital community, such tribal identification operates at least within the social and individual levels, but may be inherently more complex, transcending age, ethnicity, gender and other social divisions such as disability. Paradoxically, it is largely the individual figures within this equation who act in concert to perpetuate the social cohesion of the tribe. Even stranger in the digital age, such exchanges are conducted regularly through one or more mediating technologies.

The anthropologist Erving Goffman suggested that the performance of the self is a social act designed to regulate the impression one presents to others. Goffman’s notion of impression management in public spaces evokes the construction of the self simultaneously in the mind of the individual and in the collective mind of the audience (Goffman, 1959). We see ourselves reflected in the eyes of the other, and adjust our behaviour to conform and remain accepted by those with whom we choose to identify (Cooley, 1902).

Rheingold (2002) applies this ‘theory of being’ to the use of short message service (SMS) texting by young people – who they send texts to, and receive them from, defines an element of their social identity, as constructed by themselves in relation to the others in their SMS circle of communication. Such small friendship circles may be physical, or virtual, or a combination of both, but for the individual, this may matter little, but remains very much an essence of his or her identity as a tribal member. The content of the text message may also be secondary to the fact that the message has been sent, and the perception that the sender has been ‘thinking about you’. Such management of impression is projected through the technology to show the sender in a ‘best light’ to others.

Tomorrow: Always connected

References

Bordieu, P. and Passeron, J-C. (1990) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage Publications.
Cooley, C. H. (1902) Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner.
Curtis, M. (2004) Distraction: Being human in a digital world. London: Futuretext.
Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Rheingold, H. (2002) Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.

Digital tribal identity

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 17:58:00 +0000

Earlier this year I published an edited volume entitled 'Connected Minds, Emerging Cultures' which was a compendium of papers written by leading theorists and practitioners in the field of learning technology. Over the next few days I will present an abridged, bite size series of exerpts from one of my chapters which was entitled: 'Digital Tribes, Virtual Clans'. I hope you enjoy it and look forward to reading your comments.

Tribes use common culture to construct group identity and will employ dialects as a shared but often exclusive form of communication. The dialect of the London East End for example, is peppered with rhyming slang, whereas just a few hundred miles away, the Geordie dialect of the North East of England is heavy with accent and vocabulary that have survived from the incursions of the Norsemen several centuries before. Such linguistic devices, although deriving from different roots, both serve to exclude outsiders who attempt to enter into the circle. Thus the shared symbolism of the slang or dialect tacitly protects the tribal culture and secures its social exclusivity for its members. Communication, including speech, clothing and actions all serve to signal our cultural identities and group membership (Pahl & Rowsell, 2006). Cultural transmission is the communication of ideas. According to Dawkins (1976) key actions and thinking patterns of members of a culture are influenced by a contagious patterns of information known as ‘memes’. Memes carry no specific rules, but in effect are adopted and shared around by the tribe as a means of perpetuating that culture.

The smaller elements with the tribe, which we call clans, also employ shared symbolism. Each clan for example, has its totem, a symbol that represents it and distinguishes it from other, possibly rival clans. In primitive clans, the totem was often a representation of an animal or tree. Durkheim suggests it is easier for clan members to project their feelings of awe toward a totem than toward something that is as complex as the clan itself (Haralambos & Holborn, 1995). For digital tribes and virtual clans, the totem – the traditional rallying point for all tribal activity – is patently the world wide web. Not only are these digital spaces objects of intense interest and rallying points for the clans, they also act as transmitters of units of cultural knowledge. Several authors have argued that digital technologies and electronic networks provide perhaps the best environment for the transmission of memes (Blackmore 1999; Adar, Zhang, Adamic & Lukose, 2004). Such new literary practices of communication (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006) rely heavily on shared spaces, shared symbolism and the viral nature of the social web.

Weber originally suggested that culture should be construed as a ‘web of significance’ that was spun by the individuals who comprised the culture (Weber, 1947). Significantly, the increasing role the World Wide Web plays in the shaping of modern tribal culture causes Weber’s notion to resonate. Until recent technological innovation, people with common tribal identity lived in geographically specific locations, and considered areas of land to be their sole territory. Such territories are now being eroded due to the emergence of new digital tribes who occupy spaces located within cyberspace – a virtual space that transgresses all traditional, social and political boundaries.

Tomorrow: The digital tribe and the network nation

Related posts

When two edu-tribes go to war (Peter Ford)
Hoe verbind jij je met andere mensen op internet? (Wilfred Rubens)

References

Adar, E., Zhang, L., Adamic, L. and Lukose, R. (2004) Implicit Structure and Dynamics of Blogspace. Cited in Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2006) New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Classroom Learning. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Blackmore, S. (1999) The Meme Machine. Cited in Lankshear, C. and Knobel, M. (2006) New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Classroom Learning. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1976) The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haralambos, M. and Holborn, M. (1995) Sociology: Themes and Perspectives (4th Edition). London: Harper Collins.
Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (2006) Literacy and Education: Understanding the new literacy studies in the classroom. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.
Weber, M. (1947) The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation. New York: The Free Press.

Smart talk

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:44:00 +0000

I'm an invited speaker at the Learning Technologies Conference at London's Olympia in January. It promises to be quite an interesting two days in the capital with keynotes from Lord David Puttnam (remember Chariots of Fire?) and Stephen Heppell, as well as a host of other social media experts including my Twitter buddies Jane Hart, Donald Clark, Barry Sampson and Mark Oehlert.

My own presentation is scheduled for Day two, where I will tackle the subject of 'New Smart Devices for Learning'. Here's the blurb from the conference website:

Smart phones are now proving themselves for learning, but what happens next with smart devices? Join Steve Wheeler as he explores how existing technologies such as GPS, cameras, light-weight projection and bar code scanning can be combined with new software to extraordinary effect. In the next few years, individual's interactions with the world, and how they learn in it, may be transformed. Steve will explore:

Augmented reality: the short-cut to information
The power of smart devices combined with semantic search
Wearable learning devices - pipe dream or practical reality?
Devices already altering how people learn: from Kindle to the TouchTable
The challenge for L&D: adopt and understand now, or play catch up later

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Hanging in there

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:50:00 +0000

Socrates once said: 'I cannot teach anyone anything, all I can do is make them think'. And then there was Andrew Carnegie who said: 'People who can't motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.' Some teachers struggle to motivate their students, and some students find it hard to concentrate for long enough to learn anything. So what is this slippery, elusive thing we call motivation? We certainly need it to do anything, anything at all. But where does motivation to learn come from and how can we capture it?

One of our Atlantis University team, Tillman Swinke, recently published a blog post called 'This time it's personal' where he deals with the subject of motivation in relation to informal learning. He remarks that learning always starts at the personal level (correct) and argues that therefore, informal forms of learning should assume more importance. Tillman then goes on to describe some of the most motivational ways to learn (e.g. my girlfriend only speaks Chinese, therefore I am motivated to learn to speak Chinese). He argues that informal learning has both intrinsic (self motivated) and extrinsic (externally imposed demands) motivation. I tend to agree but will maintain that informal learning is more reliant upon an individual's intrinsic motivation than it is by any external pressures. In other words, we learn because we are interested. When we move into the more formal aspects of learning, there the extrinsic motivation begins to be applied through a need to achieve good grades, complete successful projects and avoid falling behind your peers. The trick is to maintain an intrinsic motivation that is just as strong as if one were still learning informally.

This is one reason, I think, why personal learning environments (which tend to heavily represent informal learning approaches and are intrinsically motivated) are assuming an ever increasing importance in education. For it is within the PLE that students can truly pursue their own interests, motivate themselves to learn and generally capitalise on their personal talents and skills. It is the PLE that enables learners to transcend the often stifling nature of the institutional VLE to make their own creative choices about tool selection and formation of digital presence and identity. Now that's interesting....

Intrinsic & extrinsic motivation and informal learning (DPhil Stuff)

What's in it for me? (Social eLearning)

There's no LMS in my PLE (Shelley Gibb @mollybob)

Are you listing?

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:31:00 +0000

I'm not entirely certain what people will use the new Twitter lists service for, but I can of course speak for myself. Personally, I intend to use it as a kind of filtering tool, so that I can click on my specific list and hopefully see tweets that are grouped around a particular community of interest of practice.

In creating this app, Twitter are merely doing what other services have already done quite successfully, including TweepML and Listorious. The only difference is that Twitter has integrated this into the side bar of its own home page, so that you can see all the Twitter lists you have yourself created, and click on them to quickly access your lists. At the moment, Twitter is polling those it has selected to test out the Beta version of the app. The results of the poll show that 17% intend to use it to find and follow other like-minded people. To find out more and receive updates live from Twitter, you should follow Nick Kallen who is @nk

Some will complain that Twitter lists are elitist. Others will welcome them with open arms, pick up the ball and start running with it. Most I suspect will shrug their shoulders and say - so what? Until of course, they spot that they are included in other people's lists, and perhaps their following is increasing. Twitter lists I predict, will consolidate many people's following numbers, and coalesce communities of interest together in a more coherent and usable way. We shall see if I'm right. In the meantime, here's an excellent video showing how to use Twitter Lists.

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Doing the research

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:24:00 +0000

I have just been through an extremely busy two weeks, with seemingly endless bus, taxi and car journeys, 10 air flights and I don't know how many miles travelled. In 17 days I have been to Cork, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Heidelburg, Darmstadt, Weinheim, Worms, London and Leeds.

Thankfully, my trekking is over (at least for a while) and I can now sit back and reflect on what I have learnt from my 'research'....

Experimental research: Firstly, I have discovered that students enjoy wine tasting, but don't know how to do it properly (spit not swallow) and I have gathered the empirical evidence to support this hypothesis. The photos of our trip to a vineyard and the bumpy ride around the countryside on tractors (made in 1941), belching fumes (the tractors not the students) and towing wooden carts equipped with tables and copious samples of wine, constitute the raw data which I am currently scrutinizing. The participants (n=24) were divided into two groups - a control group (those who drank alcohol) and an experimental group (those who drank even more alcohol and can't actually remember what they did). A caveat applies to this experimental design however. Students should never be allowed to drive tractors, because they tend to crash them and cause varying amounts of collateral damage. There is also a confounding variable of alcohol intake which proportionately influences this effect (Worms, Germany).

Social research: The research done naturalistically on the streets of Cork is worth a mention. The Irish are wonderfully friendly people who will do just about anything to help you out. So many times we were asked if we needed help, often we received it without asking, and once or twice we got help when we didn't need it at all. The taxi drivers were a real hoot, and the teachers in the school we visited were extremely dedicated professionals. Ireland's education system appears to be in good hands (Duglas and Cork, Ireland).

Experiential research. Feed enough 3 course dinners to a bunch of students and eventually they will get 'fed up' with it. That was the finding of the gastronomic reseach I conducted. Toward the end of the second week one of my student participants said he never wanted to see another 3 course dinner in his life. The Atlantis Project became known as 'Fatlantis' as we were all overfed each night due to the more than generous funding of 'Herr Oberst' Udo Bleimann (Ireland and Germany).

Cultural research: There is more fun to be had in Barcelona than you can shake a stick at. Making paella in a workshop restaurant, and then eating it. Strolling down Las Ramblas and gazing at the amazing architecture as you follow the footsteps of Antonio Gaudi, Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro - these are great memories of three days spent there this month. The summit meeting produced some challenging action points which will be published later in a respectable journal (Barcelona, Spain).

Corporate research: We visited SAP AG which was an excellent place to hang out for a few hours - it felt more like a university campus than a software company. It's one of the top multi-national software development companies and was recently voted one of the best places to work. The interviews we conducted with the Human Resources and Training personnel supported this as a viable claim. We could see why, and it was all I could do to prevent two of my group from absconding there and then (Walldorf, near Heidelburg, Germany).

Research into the spiritual domain: If you want to put the fear of God into your students, tell them they are going to be unreasonably charged by Ryan Air for overweight suitcases > 15 KG. They are observed to discard all sorts of stuff including toiletries, bottles of beer and hairdryers so they don't have to pay extra out of their meagre student grants. The study revealed that Ryan Air are not to be trusted though - the hidden charges they impose are ludicrous and they lack any consistency in their policies (Frankfurt Hahn Airport).

Research into e-Learning: Web 2.0 tools are being used for teaching in the physical sciences, and they are experiencing similar problems and successes as we have seen in teacher training. My keynote to the HEA Physical Sciences Centre conference at Leeds Metropolitan University was well received. I talked about some of the educational principles that underpin the use of wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools and there was much animated discussion.

And finally, some autobiographical narrative: I'm very tired, and I am losing my voice (blame the laryngitis fairy), and yet I'm strangely satisfied by the entire experience. I've learnt a lot, and all the travel, onerous though I found it, was worth it in the end. And the sleeping animal in the picture? That's me, that is.

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Cooking in Catalonia

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:50:00 +0000

So here is the evidence you need. It's a picture of the langoustine and mussels paella I helped create for the hungry 30 or so participants of the 2nd Open Edtech Summit in Barcelona earlier this week. We were all invited to a workshop in the evening where we cooked our own 3 course Catalonian dinner.

This paella was one I made as a member of a small group which included Mark Bullen and others. We had a great time cooking it, and an even better time eating it afterwards. Other dishes created included the traditional potato and onion Spanish omelette and a cold tomato soup served with garlic and herbs. The entire meal was accompanied by a large amount of Spanish red wine, which of course was essential to keep the cooks on track during the preparation phase.

But we had also been cooking up some ideas for the future university right through the day. In four groups, we discussed a number of ideas about what the future university might look like and what recommendations we might make as a group of e-learning and open education experts from around the world. We posted almost 50 recommendations from which as a group we then voted for the 8 most important. Four that stood out for me all focus on Web 2.0 and personal technologies:

1) Annote, index and share rich media content.

2) Move to a paradigm of mobiles as personal learning environments

3) Enabled cultures of sharing

4) Extend multiple digital literacies.

These were the action points the group reached a consensus on as some of the most important general points most universities should consider as important. Others included the recommendation that the future universities base their award of credentials on outcomes rather than 'seat time' and that we should encourage risk taking leadership. The sound bite of the day (and there were many) was that 'teaching is a push technology, whilst mentoring is a pull technology'.

There are obviously many implications from this short list, and over the next few months you will see plenty emerging from the full list which has been captured as a result of the summit meeting. We will publish a document similar to the Open Edtech Summit document published in 2008: What does it mean to be educated in the 21st Century?

Africa goes mobile

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:47:00 +0000

The invited participants at Open Ed Tech enjoyed a very interesting opening Tech Talk yesterday from a young researcher based at Strathmore Research Centre in Nairobi, Kenya. Jessica Colaço is the principal researcher at Strathmore Research and Consultancy Centre (SRCC) and is a Mobile Technology Evangelist. Earlier this year, the magazine 'Business Daily' named her as one of the top 40, under 40 years of age women in Kenya's business scene. She has already spoken at prestigious events such as TED, is extremely good at presenting her case and convinced us that Africa is moving forward rapidly with mobile technology as they aim for wideranging social change. There are 370 million mobile phone subscribers in Africa so it´s a fertile ground.

Jessica told those of us present on the campus of the Open University of Catalonia about a number of innovative projects she has been involved in, including M-PESA (Pensa is Swahili for money) which enables users to exchange money without the need to either go to a bank or hold an account. Tangaza is a voice based transmission service - you can update your Facebook or Twitter status through voice recordings on your mobile phone. Several other recently created apps were also demonstrated, including fish tracking devices and other tools designed to help people gain information on the move about education, health and agriculture. M-Kulima for example, can enable farmers to store and retrieve information about milk sales prices and purchase dates, where previously they would have had to try to remember each transaction.

There is also M-Guide for tourists. Take a photo of an unfamiliar bird or animal in the game reserve and your mobile phone sends the picture to a server. The server sends back via SMS a description of the animal - there are some obvious educational applications to that one.

There was much discussion following from Jessica´s Tech Talk. One of the most insightful comments was that perhaps, because Africans have been largely passed over by the first few waves of technology, they are now only just beginning to be creative with their first computing device - their mobile phones - and therefore seeing opportunities to innovate which the Western industrialised nations cannot see. Open Edtech continues today.

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Digital futures

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:17:00 +0000

I'm off to the beautiful city of Barcelona tomorrow afternoon to participate in this year's Open Ed Tech Summit. It's the second in the meet ups, which draw around 40 international open learning and distance education experts from around the world. I documented Open Ed Tech 2008 post-event on this blog (See Muy Caliente). This year's event will be an intensive 48 hours of discussions and social events, all organised by the Open University of Catalonia. If it's anything like last year, we are all in for a stimulating, tiring but extremely enjoyable time together. The brief for Open Ed Tech 2009, written by Larry Johnson of the New Media Consortium is as follows:

The Scenario: Creating the University of the Future

You have been invited to serve on an international panel of experts advising the rector of a new university that will be established in the developing country of Futurolandia. Your invitation issues from the Ministry of Education and indicates that you are part of a handpicked team — a team that is meeting in person today to perform its task.

This university is meant to be the first of its kind, and will be established free from preconceptions or official constraints about how it will operate. Its mandate is to provide an excellent education in an environment of open access, built on four key ideas:

1. Access to high-quality education should be available to all, and open content is a key part of providing such access.

2. Informal learning and mentoring are effective and well-proven approaches to engaging with youth and stimulating critical thought.

3. Personalized learning is critical to student success, but will require learning standards that allow students to continue their learning where ever life takes them.

4. Tools such as digital video, mobile devices, social media, and the global network all have important roles in learning and should be available to all learners.

The rector has been asked to prepare a proposal addressing how the university will achieve this vision, and sees these ideas as core requirements for the institution she wishes to create. As part of the international expert panel, your task is to assist the rector by identifying ways to support each of the four requirements, examining the pros and cons of each proposed strategy, and presenting a summary of your team's recommendations to the rector, point by point.

We will of course publish our results in due course, just as we did for our 2008 Summit: What does it mean to be educated in the 21st Century? (pdf file)

What a Corker

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:04:00 +0000

I'm just back from a lively 5 days in Cork where we (the Atlantis Project team) have been involved in the first of two weeks of intensive study. And it has been quite intensive, with research workshops, seminars and project work from morning through to late afternoon, followed by social events around the city and beyond. I stayed at the wonderful Fernroyd House B & B where I was looked after very well indeed (Thanks Tony). For a group of computer specialists there were students with some interesting and relevant names such as Peter Google, Gareth Excell and Herr Flickr (OK.... I made the last one up, but the other two are real). The Irish are such wonderfully warm and friendly people, and we have all made some great new friends whilst there. We have been on several field trips, including a visit to the astounding high tech astrophysics centre and simulation basin at Black Rock Castle Observatory, near Kinsale (pictured above).

Yesterday I took my 9 education students on a visit to St Columba's National Primary School, in Dughlas, just outside Cork (picture below). In the 90 minutes or so we spent at the school, we saw a number of innovative practices which involved technologies such as interactive white boards. Every classroom has one - the result of determined fund raising within the community. We were all very impressed with the dedication of the staff (particularly those who were teaching the special needs children) and their innovative practices. The children were engaged and enthusiastic and were clearly enjoying their studies. Our thanks go to Coleen and the rest of the team for taking the time out to show us around and answer all our questions.

From the school, I went directly to University College Cork, and walked in to the oak panelled room followed by my entourage of 5 students. I introduced them as my 'research assistants', but I couldn't keep a straight face. I did a dry run using the 'It's personal' slides, which I was to use later for the PLE/PLN online symposium. The 50 or so academic staff present seemed to enjoy my presentation and there ensued a lively discussion/ Q and A session. My thanks to Rob Cosgrave for the unexpected invitation, which arose from his reading of my blog and realising I was in Cork this week.

The evening Elluminate session for the PLE/PLN online symposium, organised by Stephen Downes, George Siemens and Rita Kop, was a different affair entirely. It took place at the Atlantis base in Cork Institute of Technology. I had a few difficulties setting up the system and then uploading my slides, but the technology eventually worked in time for my presentation, and Stephen, who moderated, was in good form. The 30 or so German and Polish students and colleagues from the Atlantis project, who watched as my local audience couldn't grasp much of the conversation due to the audio quality, but generally they all found the presentation stimulating and some discussion followed after the online session had closed.

We have had a corking good time, and it's not over yet. I'm back in the UK until Sunday when I fly down to Barcelona for the Open EdTech Summit meeting, before flying up to Frankfurt on Wednesday where I rejoin the Atlantis team for week 2 of the intensive programme. If it's as productive and enjoyable as Cork was, I will be very happy indeed... and all the travel will be worth it. Even the Ryan Air part.

It’s Personal: Learning Spaces, Learning Webs

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:10:00 +0000

It’s Personal: Learning Spaces, Learning Webs

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

My slides for the upcoming PLE/PLN Online Symposium hosted by the University of Manitoba are now available for viewing above. In 'It's Personal: Learning Spaces, Learning Webs', I attempt to compare and contrast a number of learning philosophies, and define some of the (un)boundaries of informal and self organised learning - the fertile ground within which personal learning approaches flourish. Above is the scary baby from the cover slide: I will present this slide show with live commentary on Thursday from the Cork Institute of Technology over the Elluminate platform. I'm looking forward to hearing comments from those who are interested in this fascinating area of learning development.

Put a Cork in it

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:58:00 +0000

I spend too much time travelling around it seems. And tomorrow I'm packing my bags and walking through the metal detectors once again. This time I'm flying out to the Emerald Isle, accompanied by 9 (yes 9) of my third year student teachers. We will be taking part in a two week Intensive Programme of study which will start at the Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland and finish the following week at Fachhochschule Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, in Germany.

During the next two weeks, my students, together with their counterparts from Germany, Ireland and Poland, will discuss how best to develop and use new learning technologies and collaborative software to support learning and teaching. The group's collaborative content management project (CoCoMa) is one of Atlantis' recent successes and there are other developments in the pipeline. The Atlantis project, which is a rolling Erasmus student mobility project has funded travel for the last 3 years. It enabled more than 30 (yes 30) undergraduate and PhD students and staff to attend this year's Plymouth e-Learning Conference, where the Atlantis project members presented 14 (yes 14) peer reviewed research papers. They truly are an innovative and prolific bunch of young people and it is both a pleasure and a challenge to work with them. Above is a picture of me addressing the group at an evening meal. To my right is Professor Udo Bleimann, who is the chief architect of the project.

So from tomorrow we will be based in Cork, and then over the weekend the group will transplant itself to Darmstadt via the good services of Ryan Air. Over the 14 (yes 14) days of the Intensive Programme, the group will attend lectures and demonstrations, give seminars, discuss their projects and participate in a number of cultural visits. My students will visit one or two (yes 1 .... or 2) schools to see how primary school teachers in other countries manage their classrooms and use their technology.

For the rest of the academic year the group co-operate through a combination of Web based tools and video conferencing sessions. I hope they all behave themselves...

Textual harassment

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:11:00 +0000

I was interviewed recently on the back of a blog post I wrote on cyberbullying entitled Bully 4 U and the straw poll survey I conducted. The Evening Herald, a newspaper based in South West England features my interview in an article entitled: 'Tormentors who use technology'. Here's my full interview with commentary by reporter Cherie Gordon:

The traditional figure of the playground bully is a well-known sight for countless children. Over the past few years, however, a new type of bully has left the school corridors and entered the World Wide Web. Family computers have been hacked into by cyber bullies who attack their victims not face to face, but via internet chatrooms, network sites and online messaging.

"Bullying of any kind is destructive and can ruin lives, but cyber bullying may be the most insidious form," said Steve Wheeler, a senior lecturer in education and ICT. "Children can escape from the school playground bully, but they find it harder to escape from the bully who invades their home, their desktop, their mind. Cyber bullying isn't going to replace traditional bullying; it will take it to a whole new dimension."

Musing about the emergence of the cyber trend on his online blog, Mr Wheeler reports the findings of a poll he carried out, questioning other childcare professionals on the issues surrounding bullying.

"On my blog I was talking about keeping children safe on the internet," said the 52-year-old. "I asked what people thought the greatest danger for children was on social networking sites like Bebo and Facebook. There were several options to choose from including cyber bullying. The majority of those who answered – 36 per cent – thought cyber bullying was going to be the most obvious threat. It is very interesting that for over one in three it is the most important."

Bullying has always been a curse for some youngsters but now, with the internet's ability to reach into a victim's home, at any time, adults are also becoming targets. "I haven't had any experience of cyber bullying myself but I know colleagues who have," said Mr Wheeler. "I know of situations where people's careers have been virtually destroyed by it. I heard of a situation recently about a teacher in a school who experienced this. He was very respected and worked in a secondary school and the police came to arrest him. He said, 'What's the problem?' and they said two of his female colleagues claimed that he'd been sending them text messages asking them to sit in front of a webcam and take their clothes off. It emerged that two of the lads in his class had hijacked his SMS and sent these messages, just because they didn't like him. You can imagine the shock and horror and bad feelings in the staff room, even though he was innocent. Reputations can be damaged. It's quite insidious because it's anonymous."

PLEs join us online

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:01:00 +0000

I'm an invited speaker for the online PLE/PLN Symposium that has been organised by George Siemens and Stephen Downes for next week. I will be working in the Cork Institute of Technology in Ireland, and will be speaking via the Elluminate platform, next Thursday (15th October) at around 1600 BST. I'm looking forward to talking about my own concept of personal learning environments and personal webs in my talk which is entitled: 'It's Personal'. I will post my slides later on slideshare, but in the meantime here's a taste of what's to come taken from the symposium website:

A symposium will be held from October 13th till October 16th 2009 on Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). The interest in Personal Learning Environments has grown with the emergence of Web2.0 technologies. Learning technologists can see how PLEs can help learners to organize their own personal learning, rather than that formal education institutions control the technologies that are being used and the way in which they are being used. Speakers will include developers and researchers of PLEs. All events will be hosted in Elluminate and recorded for archives. A discussion forum will be hosted in Moodle for asynchronous interactions.

Other speakers include George and Stephen, along with Josie Fraser, Rita Kop, Mark van Harmelen, Scott Wilson and Graham Attwell. The full list and schedule are available on the symposium website. I hope you are able to join us for all, or at least some of the talks which I am sure will be thought provoking and stimulating.

Hand holding

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:08:00 +0000

As you will have seen from my previous posts, I spent 3 days in London this week, attending the HandHeld Learning Conference. I had some money in my research budget so I decided to avoid the numb bum syndrome this year, and fly up from Plymouth to London. I arrived at London City Airport at around 0930 where we landed in the rain. The Dockyards Light Railway took me to Bank and having looked at the map, I decided to walk the rest of the way to Chiswell Street. I wish I hadn't. No sooner had I emerged from the underground and turned a corner than a fine member of the London Transport drove by in his double decker bus and swamped me by driving through a puddle. It was my Bridget Jones moment, and for a second, I imagined myself wearing a white dress (Steady on now - Ed). I jest of course - I don't cross dress. I can't even cross the road. No, seriously, I was furious and called the bus driver a very rude name. He didn't hear me. Nobody else took any notice either. People walked by quickly with their heads bowed against the weather. Well, I told myself, this is London. And so I dragged myself onwards....

The walk up Moorgate, dodging the rain and the puddles and the maniac bus drivers, and on into City Road seemed interminable. At Moorgate tube station I did happen across a great fast food counter that served some of the largest vegetable samosas I have ever encountered (and at £1 each, superb value). Breakfast done, and wiping the crumbs from my face I finally wended my weary way, slightly damp and steaming, into the Handheld Learning venue - the Brewery. The gentleman in the bowler hat and top coat who meets and greets you outside in the cobbled courtyard is an excellent bloke - he is one of the best features of the Handheld Learning Conference - always cheerful and always willing to assist.

Inside, many people were already milling around in reception, where I was presented with a bag with my programme and a theme park style wrist band to wear. Wot no name badges? Nope. You are expected to introduce yourselves properly.

And introduce ourselves we did. It was great to meet up with so many Twitter people (Tweeple) whom I have got to know over the last year or so, and have enjoyed conversing with. This list is not exhaustive, but it gives you an idea, as I bumped into Simon Finch, Michelle Gallen, Drew Buddie, Ollie Bray, Leon Cych and Dughall McCormick - all of whom you should follow immediately, because they are jolly decent blokes (and I include Michelle in the blokedom of blogging). It was also good to mix it up again with Dave Sugden, Lilian Soon, Stuart Smith and the ever-present James Clay, all of whom put on a great show for the fringe events - HHECKL. I also got to speak to Donald Clark, James Paul Gee, David Cavallo and Zenna Atkins, all of whom were featured speakers at the event.

The talks I attended at HHL were generally very well presented (unlike this blog - Ed). I make a special mention to John Traxler here, whose talk on the role of student owned devices was excellent. The food was sophisticated although a long time coming, the drinks were overpriced, the entertainment from the band at the awards ceremony was excellent, and the wifi service superb. Not bad at all really.

Getting back to London City Airport through the rush hour traffic, and in the pouring rain (which never seemed to cease during my 3 days in London) proved to be a bit of a nightmare, but I wasn't going to risk the long walk back down to Bank and another Bridget Jones moment. My bowler hatted friend assisted, with umbrella in hand, risking life and limb to plunge himself into the fast moving traffic, hailing me a taxi. My taxi driver then did a stirling job veering in and out of the back-up traffic, to make sure I didn't miss my flight. Of course, I rewarded him appropriately.

So here's to next year's event - if it's anything like HHL2009, we are in for another treat.

The Atkins diet

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:51:00 +0000

Zenna Atkins is a particularly influential figure in the world of British education, yet her personal learning journey has been chequered. It was refreshing then to see her give the opening keynote at this year's Handheld Learning conference, in London.

Atkins is actually more of a 'mum' than she is the chair of OfSTED. At least this is how she portrays herself, and she laces her narrative with school from a parent's perspective, rather than sticking to the standard mantra that emanates from many government appointees. She has also been hailed by the press as 'a failed student who is now in charge of inspecting schools'. Zenna Atkins focused on the consumer power that has emerged around Web 2.0 services. It is both disconcerting and liberating she said, that patients often know more about their condition than their GPs, due to trawling around on Google. It will only be a short time, she warned, before a similar situation arises in schools. Teachers are often lagging behind when it comes to good use of learning technologies, but worse, they can no longer aford to represent themselves as the sole arbiters of knowledge.

Atkins cited an incident where her son streamed a live video of his classroom to her at home using his mobile phone. She was appalled to see a small riot raging unchecked in the classroom, whilst the teacher sat doing nothing, with his feet up on the desk. Incensed she phoned the school and alerted them to the impending disaster, and a senior member of staff was summoned. The lookout posted at the door told the teacher and when the senior staff member entered, all was calm and business-like. The school denied anything untoward had happened, and took disciplinary action against her son. Atkins was able to show the senior staff member evidence that her son was 'telling the truth', but her point is challenging... The power is now in the hands of the parents, regardless of whether schools ban mobile devices or not. The entire educational system is being challenged when parents are able to eavesdrop into classrooms using the technology that is currently available. What will happen when this becomes common practice? Good question.

Read also an excellent summary of the rest of Zenna Atkins' speech (by Terry Freedman).

All in hand

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:06:00 +0000

I have just returned from another excellent Handheld Learning conference in London. Because it was a conference focused on handheld technologies, I promised I would do an experiment and see if I could survive for three days without a laptop, and using only my newly acquired iPod Touch. Well, I survived, and some things worked, whilst other things were a little more problematic (the wifi service was second to none, by the way - congratulations to Graham Brown-Martin - pictured - and his team for this).

For example, I was able to Tweet live from the event, firstly with the standard Twitter application on my Safari web browser. A bright young thing then introduced me to EchoFon which I downloaded for free from the iPod App Store. This made my life a lot easier, and I was able to see more clearly what I was tweeting, who was responding to me, and I could also more easily reply, DM and RT other people's tweets. EchoFon used to be known as TwitterFon, and it's designed for mobile phone use, so it was ideal for the task.

Less easy was updating my blog which I found quite difficult. For some reason, Safari would not allow me to modify text once it was saved on Blogger. Not sure why that was, but James Clay showed me how to e-mail direct to my blog, including the posting of images as attachments, which I will try when I can pluck up enough courage.

I was also able to respond to e-mails until someone sent me 13 MB of pictures which clogged my university e-mail inbox, and then I couldn't send or receive anything. I would normally save the pictures onto my laptop, but of course, with only my iPod Touch this wasn't possible. Unless, of course, someone out there knows differently.

My hashtagging wasn't being picked up by the conference feed or Twitter either - someone told me that Echofon has some problems here, but I think there may be a more deep seated problem than that, and I'm sure someone out there has a solution...?

It was an interesting experiment to conduct, and I will do it again for other conferences. It was wonderful to not have to lug my laptop across airport lounges and drag it across London. Oh, what liberty, but at a small price of reduced functionality. More from the conference when I get some time to reflect and post my comments.

Karaoke culture

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:38:00 +0000

Handheld Learning 2009 has been special for a number of reasons, some of which I have already blogged about. But the opening keynote speeches this year, and one person in particular, took the proverbial biscuit. Malcolm McLaren is best known for his instigation of the punk movement in the UK in the 70s - the embodiment of anarchy, and is notorious as the manager of the iconic punk band the Sex Pistols. To invite him to speak at an event about mobile technologies in education would seem to be a little anachronistic, but speak he did, and he had a tremendous impact.

McLaren labels himself as an artist, which indeed if you examine his early history, is true. But he would be better labelled here as an agent provocateur - someone brought in to stir up emotion and cause a reaction. And that is exactly what he did. Looking more like an affable granfather than the angry man of punk, he took to the stage dressed in grey slacks, shirt and tie, and a comfortable wooley pullover. Gone were the wild corskscrew red locks, and the outlandish presence - it was almost as though he had assumed his place within the establishment. But nothing could be farther from the truth from the moment he opened his mouth and began to speak.

McLaren talked critically about the culture of Britain today - in his own words, often laced with profanity, it is a mediocre Karaoke culture - one in which there is no responsibility, and one in which reality shows hold sway, and instant success can be had for no real effort. This, he said was how the Blair government had functioned, and his remark about the inanity of Cool Brittania as a failed marketing ploy gained some audience approval. The instant gratification of the Karaoke culture, he suggested, was a huge problem for educators who are trying to instil a sense of achievement (even if it is a failure) into young minds.

His speech was at times rambling and self-absorbed as he reminisced over his time as a trainee wine taster, art student, musician and designer and eventually as instigator of the punk movement through his shop 'Sex', and his formation of the Sex Pistols. McLaren's ventures into the music and movie industries, and more recently, his full circle to return to his roots as an 'artist' have ensured he has been influential in all he has done, even though he is a self confessed educational failure. He has often been influential for the wrong reasons, and he admits that his forays into punk were calculated to destroy the comfortable complacency of middle class England and to challenge and undermine many of its social structures. He is a true anarchist in many ways, but is also perversely a part of the establishment, whether he accepts it or not. He has adopted the conventional, but without him, the present music and fashion industries may never have become what they are. Yes, the education system may have failed him utterly, but within his own account of his formative years, it is easy to spot how he also failed himself. He acknowledges this, but argues that failure in itself is not always a bad thing, and that the journey to discover oneself is sometimes more important. It was only when he became a student of art, he admitted, that he found his true identity.

McLaren had started his speech by admitting he knew very little about learning technologies. His parting comment though was telling, and resonated with many of his audience, even though many had been polarised. 'Don't becomes slaves to technology', he warned, 'see it for what it is. Use it as a tool, but don't become dependent upon it'.

Authenticity vs Karaoke (Terry Freedman)

Malcolm McLaren and Education (Nick Kind)

Military-erotic wine-tasting education (mrjorgen Flickr video)

Edupunk won't go away... (Pontydysgu)

Web 2.0 and the defence of the realm

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:02:00 +0000

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.

Image source

Digital Culture and Education

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:49:00 +0000

I was recently invited to join the editorial board of a new and exciting open access journal called Digital Culture and Education. In the words of the journal editors Christopher Walsh and Thomas Apperly: "This new journal is concerned with the changing demands of education and the especially central role of digital culture in preparing students for labor in the context of the ‘knowledge economy’. DCE is a new international, peer-reviewed scholarly journal focusing on research in areas of digital culture which are relevant for education." The editorial board of DCE includes some of my old friends such as Chris Abbott and Victoria Carrington, as well as some of those whose writing I have found extremely engaging, including James Paul Gee, Julian Sefton-Green, Michelle Knobel and Gunther Kress. I'm truly honoured to be listed alongside such luminaries of the digital age.

In their first editorial, Apperly and Walsh provide readers with a clear idea of what they can expect from the journal: "Digital culture has transformed many fundamental parts of our working, public and personal lives in terms of how we communicate and consume, create knowledge and learn and even how we understand politics. The scale and speed at which digital culture has become imbricated in everyday life is unprecedented. Its impact on politics, aesthetics, identity, art, culture, society, and particularly education is thoroughly deictic. In response, we founded DCE to provide a forum for dialogue around the educational, economic, political, cultural, social, historic, legal or otherwise relevant aspects of living in a society increasingly dominated by digital communication and media. DCE is interested in work and scholarship theorizing identity, globalization, development, sustainability, wellbeing, subjectivities, networks, new media, gaming, multimodality, literacies, entrepreneurship and related issues. The journal provides an interactive scholarly context for the uptake of new technologies alongside the emergence of digital culture and its impact on teaching, learning and research across institutional and non-institutional contexts. We are committed to publishing print and digital work that takes a critical approach to the issues raised by the increasing importance of new technologies in all facets of society; in particular, research that examines the uneven uptake of technology, and perspectives on new media that emphasize its materiality, production, or environmental impact."

Well there you have it. An exciting new peer reviewed journal which has engaging and leading edge content for teachers and researchers of the digital age .... and all of it is open access. I hope you enjoy reading it, and perhaps you will also consider contributing in the future.

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See you in Brisbane

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:16:00 +0000

Announcing an event that some will find irresistable...

We're holding the IFIP World Computer Congress at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from 20th to 23rd September, 2010. Each time it is held, the WCC event attracts expert presenters and thousands of delegates from around the globe. The congress combines content from commercial, industry, associations, and research sectors and so offers an extraordinary opportunity for showcasing and discovering innovative and leading ideas and approaches. The research, partner conference and industry content will be presented in eight unifying streams, which will host 18 world class IFIP Conferences and will partner with local and regional conferences in each stream. As well as the conferences and content, delegates at the World Computer Congress 2010 will be able to attend the Expo, enjoy technical tours of local research and commercial technology innovators and gain industry leading certifications and network with international peers and experts.

Papers are invited on your answers to questions including:

What do you consider to be the key competencies of the knowledge society?
How do you think key competencies could be attained through formal, non-formal or informal learning?
How do you envisage assessment of such competencies to raise learners’ efficacy and the acknowledgement of society?

The conference provides educationalists with an international forum where ideas, practical educational experiences, research and project-oriented work can be presented and discussed in a professional way in relation to the conference themes.

I hope to see you in Brisbane next September!

Image source

Peak practice

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:36:00 +0000

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

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

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

Ljoving Ljubljana

s.wheeler@plymouth.ac.uk (Steve Wheeler) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:46:00 +0000

Yes, it's that city I can never spell or pronounce properly, but it's been great fun here in Ljubljana and I'm ljoving it. I stopped off here and spent the night in a town centre hotel to break my long journey, up for the Interactive Computer Aided Learning Conference in Villach, Austria. The bus ride into town from the airport is absolutely stunning, with miles of swaying golden cornfields, high sloping Alpine cottages and the ubiquitous purple mountains in the distance - and with the sun shining and the temperature a balmy 26 degrees, I am in heaven.

My hotel is modern, and I have a 'premium' room - which means the drinks are complimentary, and I have my own balcony overlooking the river, with an excellent view of Ljubljana castle. I enjoy a relaxing shower and change - it's so nice to get out of my travel clothes after 15 hours of bus, taxi, bus, plane, queues for immigration and passport control, being shoved, pushed and half-throttled by the silver brigade as I try to retrieve my bag from the carousel. (What is the name for worrying about whether your luggage has arrived with you? 'Baggonising'), and then finally another bus before reaching my destination. I don't bother trying to purchase a train ticket for tomorrow. That can be done in the morning. In my hotel room I have flawless, fast internet access and I catch up with about 70 e-mails and delete more than half because they're spam. Deep joy.

Time to venture out. A slow, gentle stroll down to the river and a few stops to sample the local fayre are a great start to the evening. The Union beer is very nice, and the food is great too. I choose steak and potato done Slovenian style, complete with red peppers and other stuff I can't even begin to identify. But it looks great and tastes great too. Ljubljana appears to be quite a 'young' city - most of those who emerged as the night fell were twenty-somethings, and many of them were speeding around on bicycles, and descending in hordes to drink the city dry. Cycling drunks? Just keep your wits about you as you cross the street...

There is plenty of live music, and as someone with rock in the blood, I am drawn inexhorably, wherever I find myself, to the places where the music makes yer ears bleed. I find a live rock stage right in the middle of the town to finish of the evening in style.

I don't know the name of the band, who were obviously Slovenian, but this three-piece were clearly fans of Jimi Hendrix, and stylishly performed - nay replicated, many of his old tracks, including Purple Haze, Foxy Lady, Hey Joe and All Along the Watchtower. The small crowd were very appreciative, even though most of them culd have been no more than 25 years old. Great stuff and a nice way to pass an hour in a foreign city, and so, with my ears ringing, I slope off to find my hotel and prepare for the Alpine train ride in the morning...