Web what dot ohh

It has been very interesting to be at this conference (On-line Educa Berlin). It is especially encouraging to learn how academic actors introduce web 2.0 as part of formal learning. Whatever we think of web 2.0 as a concept, these applications will now reach the students, packaged and channelled through a VLE or just as loose pieces of functionality in a PLE. I’ve heard many here at the conference talking about integrating (even commercial) VLE’s with OSS and freely available web 2.0 applications to allow personalisation of the students’ learning environments. I like this. Encouraging development!

Another reflection, we have some very stimulating win-win projects with developing countries, many of whom actually are making a giant leap frog in developing technology enhanced learning. These collaborations are great ways to develop our own skills while also getting a new perspective on the e-learning domain. It is somewhat hard to find a single entry point in Sweden for those kind of collaborations, finding the most relevant resources to participate in the projects. This blog is a good example of the variety on competences that exists. I would encourage more Swedish partners to participate in these (our) kind of international collaborations.

/Lars Glimbert, Project manager, Stockholm University

(glimmen@dsv.su.se)

 

Collaborative Strategies!

First of all: great presentation at the Online Educa! Highly Interactive, very innovative. Congratulations!

And now a general comment: It’s good to see that Sweden has such a large amount of agencies promoting the development of digital learning. All the questions that you raised in your short films are absolutely important and are crucial to the further development of the education system. So are the projects and initiaves that you presented.

Nevertheless, I think that the particular acitivities of the agencies should be linked together - maybe on a national level, creating a joint movement for the enhancement of digital education. There are many opportunities of working together - sharing competences, content, experiences or even running systems, platforms, content development together -  as far as all agencies seem to have similar goals and (to some extend) similar ”customers”.

Organisations like JISC (UK), SURF (Netherlands) and even small german joint ventures (http://www.mmkh.de) have shown: there are many synergetic effects which can be exploited!  But: Collaborative activities, not only in the field of IT modernization, need a joint strategies and goals. And it sometimes takes a lot of time to define those joint visions. Maybe your joint presentation at the Online Educa can be starting point for such a long term and institutionalized collaboration…

Best Wishes!

Martin Vogel

Multimedia Kontor Hamburg gGmbH (http//:www.mmkh.de)

m.vogel@mmkh.de  

 

How do we capture the next generation´s ideas on learning?

We interviewed Gilly Salmon, professor of E-Learning and Learning Technologies at the University of Leicester about how we can capture the next generation´s ideas on learning.

Gilly Salmon is experimenting with this, but of course, she hasn´t got the final answer yet … But she is telling us a little bit about it in this film.

How do you think we can capture the next generation´s ideas on learning?

 

Net-based learning needs to involve decision makers

I’ve been to many conferences about net-based learning and have created a wide contact network thanks to them. I come home every time with new ideas, good examples and countless links to interesting projects. The discussions are valuable and inspiring.

However, it’s not so easy to put these good ideas into practice back home. The people who make the decisions seldom if ever attend these conferences and are not convinced of the advantages of flexible learning. Issues that seem self-evident at the conference are far from so when you sit down to talk to heads of departments about where they should invest their often limited resources next year.

Net-based learning at many universities is still a grass-roots movement with teachers and IT developers working often with project money. Few institutions have integrated this into their core activities though there are I’m sure some excellent exceptions.

The question is how do we get the real decision makers to attend this type of conference so that they can hear how much good work is going on and realise that we have to move from pioneer status to mainstream? It would be interesting to know how many university principals and heads of faculty are present in Berlin just now.

 

The future of digital learning …

We asked David Kernohan from JISC eLearning, UK about his opinion of digital learning in the future. He thinks the future of elearning is going to be based around particular applications and networks. And he also talks about a flow between institutions and different methods of learning.

Do you agree with him?

 

interesting!

iI Like this chair because it gives you the opportunity of individual learning. The idea is good but it is neccessary to make choices about this and to make it more interactive. #Good luck!

Lucz Buddelmeijer

Hogeschool van Amsterdam

 

new wine in new bags?

The  speed with which we are running behind new technololgies to experiment with them worries me sometimes. We are not even sure whether we are effective in our teaching and learning using technologies that are as old as the blackboard (and I mean here the good old chalky business not the one with capital B). I don’t want to say that the blackboard is the right technology but …

 Are educators just followers of fashion and technologies, are teachers also not guides? As long as we haven’t fully mastered the language of the new media, we should remain careful.

m vanbuel

 

What about the balance of power?

Will future teaching enviroments change the balance of power?

No, not really, says Bas Cordewener from Surf Foundation, Nederland. But he thinks that the ways we act are going to be less structured in the future.

Hear him speak and tell us what do you think? Will future teaching enviroments change the balance of power?

 

Good old Web 2.0

I get a feeling that we often apprehend technology as developing faster that it actually does. The Web 2.0 phenomena is an interesting example of this. When Web 2.0 suddenly appeared, as it seemed out of nowhere, there was actually nothing sudden or even new about it. Web 2.0 is in fact mainly based on “old” technology.

The picture of the Web 2.0 technology cloud illustrates this  quite well.

What had changed was actually our conceptions of how technology can be used and how different (regarded individually rather simple) technologies can be combined to produce an added value. In fact, this has been a rather slow process that suddenly hit the critical hype-mass and became Web 2.0 with the people.

 

Communities are important for education, but…

I agree with Irma Mänty and others that virtual communities and collaboration is very important for education. At the same time I think that there is a impending risk that we will soon have a situation where people are getting fed-up with communities. Partly for the same reasons that LMSs doesn’t work (they are to isolated), but also for integrity reasons. One get quite terrified when reading the agreements that users (unknowingly?) signs to get access to some communities. These agreements would not even be legal in some countries!

I think that we have an ethical dilema when we expect students to become members in those communities (a practise that is geting increasingly common) in order to participate in our courses. Especially since neither students nor the teachers are usually aware of the contents of those agreements - and even less about potential consequences.