EdTechUK

SocialTech round up

Image: 'Interactive Color Wall @ Wired Nextfest 2006' by Adam Arroyo

I've switched blogging over to SocialTech. You can sign up for the feed, check out the site sidebar for email subscription, or browse the recent posts:

13 Jan 2007: 5 things meme

"slightly depressed that out of the 5, 3 demonstrate my geeky-to-the-core credentials, 1 relates to my hippy upbringing, and 1 is inexplicable, even to me."

9 Jan 2007: Guardian profiles the 2006 Edublog Awards

"There are increasingly examples of whole institutional use of social software, the campus wide implementation of Elgg at the University of Brighton is a great illustration of cutting-edge practice happening in UK education."

7 Jan 2007: e-Safety, ongoing

"However much evidence and experience we have of the importance of technology (particularly social software and user generated content sites and tools) for formal and informal learning, citizenship and participation ('voice and choice'), for creativity and innovation, DOPA pointed up the retrograde potential of one well placed moral panic."

3 Jan 2007: Placeblogger

"A placeblog is an act of sustained attention to a particular place over time
It can be done by one person, a defined group of people, or in a way that’s open to community contribution
It’s not a newspaper, though it may contain random acts of journalism
It’s about the lived experience of a place"

New Year New Direction

Happy New Year!

This has been another interesting year for me, I’ve had a lot of fun and I’m pleased with what I’ve been able to achieve working over at AoC NILTA.

This year I’ve been able to concentrate on promoting the appropriate use of open source solutions, using weblogs and social technologies in education, making sure UGC is on the table when it comes to personalisation, thinking about e-portfolios in terms of learner-ownership and control, accessibility and data transferability, and championing digital literacy over censorship.

I also ran the UK’s first edublogging conference, and managed the third international Edublog Awards, as well as managing a pretty hectic commute. I had a lot of fun professionally this year – particularly at ALT-C 2007, and I’ve enjoyed the whole PLE debate so far. 

I’ve had a great time at AoC NILTA and I’m pleased with the work I was able to do while I was there – in particular the DOPA response (Which was well received by the Safe Use of the Internet Steering Committee) and the personalisation paper (which the QIA are looking at applying to the new resources for the National Teaching and Learning Change Programme, and are circulating to programme managers to raise awareness of how e-learning can be used to fulfil the personalisation agenda and to inform the development of new resources).

I learnt a lot this year, and couldn’t have hoped for a friendlier, more effective and kick-ass team than Sally-Anne Saull, Rebecca Dean and Judith Hylton. I‘m really going to miss everyone over at AoC and very much hope I get to work with them again at some point in the not-to-distant future. I left at the end of December and managed not to blub too much.

For the present I’m working independently, and you can find my consultancy site over at josiefraser.com. I also thought it would be timely to set up a new blog, SocialTech, to celebrate my change in circumstances, and get my personal blogging back on track. I’m expecting it to be a reasonably eclectic mix of social and educational technology news but who knows? EdTechUK is going to be put to bed so you can try switching your reader to this feed for a while and see if you like it or find it useful.

I started my first contract today, working for Childnet International on a DfES contract to provide guidance for UK schools on preventing and responding to cyberbullying (you can read the press release after the jump, please do drop me a line if you're working in the area). I’m really proud to have such an important and interesting piece of work to be getting started with, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what else 2007 brings. 

And the winners of the 2006 international Edublog Awards are...

And the Winners of the 2006 Edublog Awards are:

Best Audio and/or Visual Blog:

absolutely intercultural! Anne Fox (Denmark), Laurent Borgmann (Germany)

Best Group Blog:

Polar Science 2006 YES I Can! Science team, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada Diane Hammond, Susan Stiff, and Dr. Tom Stiff (Canada)

Best Individual Blog:

Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog Christopher D. Sessums (USA)

Most Influential Post, Resource or Presentation:

K12 Online Conference 2006 Darren Kuropatwa (Canada), Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach (USA),  Wes Fryer (USA)

Best Library/ Librarian Blog:

Hey Jude Judy O’Connell (Australia)

Best Newcomer: (joint winners)

Ed Tech Journeys Pete Reilly (USA) tilt! Paz Peña (Chile)

Best Research Paper:

Nancy White: Blogs and Community Nancy White (USA)

Best Teacher Blog:

Have Fun with English! 2 Teresa Almeida d’Eça (Portugal)

Best Undergraduate Blog:

CILASS Student Blog University of Sheffield Student Ambassadors of the Centre for Inquiry-based Learning In the Arts and Social Sciences (England)

Best Wiki:

Flat Classroom Project Vicki Davis (USA), Julie Lindsay (Bangladesh)

Edublog Star Award (Convenors choice):

Duck Diaries Barbara Cohen (USA)

A well deserved congratulations to the winners – and my huge thanks to everyone who took the time to nominate and vote, and to everyone producing all the fantastic blogs, podcasts, videos, wikis, images and everything else out there – it’s great to be a part of such a creative and innovative community!

Next year I’d like to have category leaders manage each category – if you’re interested please drop me a line. It’s just too big an administrative task for one person – especially at this time of year!

Head over to the Awards site to see all the finalists.

Only 4 voting days left!

Unbelievably, there are only 4 more voting days for you to show your support for the international Edublog Awards 2006 finalists. So if you haven’t already, please do vote, and make sure you show your support for all the hard work educators have put into make the internet a more interesting, creative, informative and though-provoking place this year.

I’ve been so busy with the day job and with putting together the event this year that it seems like everyone has scooped me on it.

Keen to add our own flavour to the heap of seasonal festivities, Edublogland is currently caught up the annual voting frenzy which traditionally (well, it’s the third one – that’s about 30 in internet years right?) proceeds the online Award Winners party. Why not come along? It will be open house over at edtechtalk.com/chat from around 13:55GMT, this Sunday, 17 December 2006. There will be various listening options for your aural pleasure, with Skypecast and talkshoe links available from the EdTechTalk Edublogs Award page.

Once again the smooth talking Jeff Lebow and yr own unidentifiably accented Josie Fraser will host Edublogland's favorite holiday show, with Dave Cormier rounding up the years highlights.

I will also be announcing the winner of the first Conveners Choice award for the edublog I loved most of all this year – one that didn’t make it onto the nominee list but firmly deserves wider recognition. And that’s all I’m saying for now.

Jeff promises to improve the Worldbridges help pages before the weekend.

Are your nominations in yet?

Only a week left to make sure that your favourite blogs, bloggers and projects are nominated for the third international Edublog Awards!

Please do help spread the word – huge thanks to everyone who has posted about them so far. Nominations have been flooding in – again – many thanks for taking the time to make such a valuable contribution - and the shortlist will be announced on the 2nd December. Nominations call and procedure here.

Open Source at the Commons

I recently put together a response to Becta's Learning Platform Specifications. Stuart Yates commented at the time that:

"The central issue, of course, is that the BECTA model of spending IT money is centred on paying a commercial company for licences, hardware, training, support and installation, and because of previous bad experiences these commercial companies are required to be of a certain size and age. This doesn't sit well with open source projects, whose focus is on small groups, communities and informal consortia."

I got this related call through today, which I'm happy to pass on here:

"John Pugh MP has tabled an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons entitled Software in Education, number 179.  Please write to, or email, your MP within the next week with a request that he or she add their name to this motion:

"That this House congratulates the Open University and other schools, colleges and universities for utilising free and open source software to deliver cost-effective educational benefit not just for their own institutions but also the wider community; and expresses concern that Becta and the Department for Education and Skills, through the use of outdated purchasing frameworks, are effectively denying schools the option of benefiting from both free and open source and the value and experience small and medium ICT companies could bring to the schools market."

This is a huge opportunity to put FLOSS on our politicians agenda, and the issue is precisely where we want the DfES to take action. Please let Ian Roberts know about your letters. Iain is co-ordinating this effort on behalf of the Open Schools Alliance."

EdTech - humor back hopefully

It’s strange, but the public face of EdTech continues to belie the hideous truth: that we do actually have a sense of humour. In fact, as anyone who has worked at the chalk-face (there I go giving away my considerable age again) will tell you, it’s an absolute necessity to function over any meaningful period of time in the field, let alone to have some impact and to drive ‘stuff’ (the technical term) forward.

Weirdly, since the infamous Leon Lighips last chuckled over the Blackboard takeover, there’s been no one about laughing in the face of EdTech righteousness – surely not a good sign. In fact, in the current political climate, a cause for some concern – is EdTech on the cards for the next US liberation? Should we be preparing for the confirmation of the constituents of the Axis of EdTech Evil?

Ah well. Here are team Elgg letting us know that what ever we do, we’re still accountable to ridicule.

RSS etc feeds here. 

Edublog Awards 2006: nominations open

If you blog about education, why not contribute to this years fabulous international Edublog Awards by nominating your favourite edubloggers in this years categories? Nominations are open from now until the end of November. You can also really help spread the word by posting about the awards on your own blog.

The main purpose of the awards is to demonstrate the huge variety of excellent practice going on across the world, to provide a showcase site for everyone interested using social software to support informal or formal education, and to have some fun along the way. If you aren't familiar with the awards, check out 2005's amazing roll-call. I’m really looking forward to seeing this years short-list!

This year there are ten categories:

• Best audio and/or visual blog

• Best group blog

• Best individual blog

• Most influential post, resource or presentation

• Best library/librarian blog

• Best newcomer

• Best research paper on social software within learning and teaching

• Best teacher blog

• Best undergraduate blog

• Best wiki use

Head over to the awards blog for all the info.

Closed systems are dead, announces OU Vice Chancellor

Last Wednesday I went to the launch event for OpenLearn, a £5.65m project funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. OpenLearn aims to make 5,000 hours of Open University course content available online, free of charge by April 2008. 

After the release of materials by MIT, It’s fantastic to be able to report that a British institution is able to see and realize the value of openly accessible materials. Vice Chancellor Professor Brenda Gourley’s opening speech highlighted the importance of open standards and open education, outlining "...the trend towards the all-access economy (open access, open source etc), closed systems are dead; open is the new standard. This site is open, free to use by anybody and subject only to Creative Commons licensing protocols."

Professor Gourley also drew a neat comparison to the previous pioneering work undertaken by the Open University in partnership with the BBC to the current XML based initiative. I grew up watching bearded men explain particle physics on a Sunday morning, and later stayed up far too late fascinated by the wonderful Stuart Hall. So far I haven’t studied formally with the OU, but I’ve certainly benefited, along with many millions of other people, from their output and their commitment to social justice and education for all.  The transcript/film of Professor Gourley’s speech isn’t up yet - I’ll link as soon as.

I also got to say hi (after my nine year old son had finished with him) to Lawrence Lessig, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Creative Commons, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the School's Center for Internet and Society. All OpenLearn materials are free for use under a flexible Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons copyright license. Prof Lessig delivered a brief keynote, as did Bill Rammell, UK Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education.

Check out the OpenLearn site for currently available materials and the LabSpace site (not sure what the joined finger sign means, presuming its nothing too rude), a community and meeting space I’ll write more about once I’ve had a chance to look around.

Personalisation

Personalisation has emerged as a key concept in the UK government’s vision for public service sector reform, and facilitating personalisation in seen as crucial to the ongoing development of state provision. Charles Leadbeater has compellingly argued that meaningful personalisation implies not just a choice of services for citizens to decide between (which school or hospital to receive the services of) but the active participation of citizens in designing services; in determining what those services deliver, and how. While personalisation seems to designed to directly address and compensate for social inequalities, both choice and the more radical approach of participation raise serious questions about the extent to which personalisation excludes the already disadvantaged.

Anyone who has heard me talk recently will know that what personalisation means, how we define it, and how we recognise planning and provision which account for it, is something that I'm thinking a lot about right now.  Personalisation is the broader context currently informing UK discussion around e-portfolios, Personal Learning Environments, as well as broader educational provision. As such, how we understand it has the potential to empower or exclude learners. Tomorrow I'll be posting AoC NILTA's position statement over at my work blog, it's up! but I'm keen to point out here what I think is the key to the approach we're talking, which is a clear definition of the component parts of personalisation - the identifiable (but also intertwined) elements by which we can understand how we are facilitating personalisation or not.

This approach is hardly radical and won't come as a big surprise to anyone working in the field. My starting point is Point 27 of the recently released UK FE White Paper which calls for “Increasing personalisation so that individual needs and circumstances are built into the design and delivery of education and training”. I'd argue that it is precisely this kind of misguided assurance - that the scope of individual needs and circumstances can be anticipated to the extent that they can be built in to provision and delivered to learners - that leads to exclusionary practice.

Josie Fraser, AoC NILTA October 2006 (click to view larger version)

Currently, when we look at approaches within education, we can see that the discussion is predominately focused on adaptive personalisation (Ferguson, Schmoller, Smith 2004) (for example registration, tracking, identity management) and customisation (Ferguson, Schmoller, Smith 2004) (choice between predetermined elements of provision). While I'm not dismissing the importance of both of these elements, at all, I would say that a discussion of personalisation that stops at customisation is not good enough. What we also have to factor in, if we are serious about supporting their learning and teaching experiences and recognising their differences, needs and preferences is the acknowledgment of and opportunity for dynamic personalisation to take it's place.