Author Archive
a European Conference
Organised by the Bazaar project and IVLOS, the Institute of Education of Utrecht University
Download the conference flyer here
14 December 2007, Utrecht, the Netherlands
9:30 - 16:00, Boothzaal, Utrecht University Library on the University Campus de Uithof, Heidelberglaan 3
Conference Objectives
- To provide a space for participant-driven discussion and debate
- To promote critical enquiry and discourse
- To allow for the presentation of ideas in progress
- To provide access to peer expertise and opinion
Main Themes
These five main themes are based on key and emergent issues identified by Bazaar
- Hey Dude, Where’s my Data? On data security, privacy and sustainability
- Social Software, Tools and Content Creation
- OERs and the Culture of Sharing
- Interoperability and Metadata and OERs
- PLEs, ePortfolio’s and Informal Learning
Workshops and Round Tables
Social networking services & social search – led by Josie Fraser, EdTechUK, UK
THINKing and UNDERSTANDing the internet – led by Helen Keegan, Salford University, UK
Building an infrastructure for lifelong competence development – led by Wolgang Greller, Open University, NL
Developing Open Educational Resources – led by Marco Kalz, Open University, NL
The use of wikis and open architecture spaces to promote a culture of sharing – led by Steve Wheeler, University of Plymouth, UK
Creating and sharing Open Educational resources – led by Veronika Hornung, Salzburg Research, AT
Personal Learning Environments – led by Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu, UK
How can we use IMS Learning Design? – led by Raymond Elferink, RayCom BV, NL
The future of Learning Management Systems – led by Geoge Bekiaridis, Ergon KEK, GR
Conference format
The major aim of the conference is to promote dialogue and exchange between ‘experts’, researchers, developers, practitioners and learners. We are particularly keen that learners and junior researchers are given an opportunity to discuss and exchange their ideas. We aim that the content of the sessions is driven and created by the participants rather than the traditional ‘presentation and five minutes questions’ format with content determined in advance by a single organiser, or a small group of organisers.
How will the format work?
The conference will start with a short scoping session. The main space will be for participants.
How the conference works is up to you!
To make the most out of the space available for the conference, the room will be divided into the following six areas, that can be dynamically allocated to one of the conference themes and to one of the following approaches:
- Round table area (1) - for open discussion, meetings, project presentations, requests for comments and so on. This area is a useful space for those in the community that are already progressing with ideas and projects and research to spend face-2-face time discussing and formulating ways forward. This is your space. Feel free to use it as you wish.
- Discourse space (2-5) - we outline here four different kinds of activities that you might like to try:
- The Ten Minute Slot -Ten minute presentations of work and ideas in progress, to be followed by ten minute discussion.
- Critical Enquiry - Present an idea for a project, a software tool etc. and be prepared for a critique from our expert panel (made up of other participants).
- Ask an Expert - Request that someone else introduces on a topic you wish to learn something about.
- Discussion Circle - Introduce a discussion in a maximum of three minutes, each participant gets two minutes to contribute.
- … anything else you would like to do
- Poster time (6) - one area will be available for posters with another ten minute slot for you to explain your poster.
We will leave free spaces for ideas to be presented. If you have ideas already, it would be great if you could send us a short note suggesting the thing you would like to do or present at the conference. We will then add it to the conference web space to be launched shortly as part of the main Bazaar website www.bazaar.org.
The conference is free. Coffee and lunch will be provided for all participants. If you are interested in attending, please register in advance by sending an e-mail to Raymond Elferink - raymond@raycom.com
When registering, please provide us with the following information:
Name:
Organisation:
E-mail:
Website:
- I would like to run a Round Table / Ten Minute Slot / Critical Enquiry session
- I would like to present an idea in a Discussion Circle / Poster Session
- I would like to present a question to an Expert
- I would like to lurk at the conference and might decide to participate there and then
My topic will be:
November 2nd, 2007
To give everybody the opportunity to Show that you Share, Bazaar has created a set of seven pins depicting the Creative Commons pictograms, the Bazaar logo and the Sounds of the Bazaar podcast logo.
No need to tell you all that these are collectors items!
The pins are rapidly becoming mighty populair throughout Europe; read this testimony by Dutch edublogger Pierre Gorissen: http://www.gorissen.info/Pierre/item/2007/3/29/the-bazaar
If you think you too need a set of pins, please let us now why…
April 15th, 2007
Amongst other activities, the Bazaar project is organising a series of seminars on key and emergent issues in Open Source and Open Content for learning.
These seminars intend to be explorative and participative events and to raise issues for future policy and funding by the European Commission and national Member States.
The first of the seminars – entitled ‘Hey Dude, Where’s my Data?‘ was held in Barcelona in October 2006.
We would like to invite you to the second of the seminars – ‘Social software and web 2: a challenge to the future of schooling?‘ The seminar will be held in Athens on Friday 27 April 2007 (venue to be announced), hosted by Ergon KEK, and will take place between 10:30 and 17:00.
Download the flyer in pdf: Flyer Bazaar Seminar Athens 2007
Seminar Theme: Social software and web 2: a challenge to the future of schooling?
In a recent blog post Rita Kop says: “There is currently a vast array of communications options available on the Internet. Especially young people have grasped the potential offered to them by blogs, web pages and increasingly personal spaces such as ‘My Space’ and ‘youtube’ to make links with like minded people and to invite comments and messages to their postings. The speed in which communities are being formed has surprised most observers. Participants in these developments, though, take them for granted as expressing themselves to the wider world has increasingly become part of their life style.
The education world has not grasped yet the revolution that is taking place outside the class room. The discrepancy in the way technology is being used inside and outside the class room seems to be growing.
The availability of blog and web authoring tools and their ease of use have made that a vast number of people are now engaged in interacting on the Internet. It has created a huge leap forward in moving people on from being consumers to becoming producers of information.
As educators know, the pace of change within institutions is a lot slower than outside the brick walls, which raises questions about the ability of formal education institutions to keep engaged the generation that lives in a technology saturated world and has grown up with technology.”
Personal Learning Environments
At the same time researchers have begun to explore the idea of Personal Learning environments or PLEs. Rather than access a single learning application or a walled institutional learning area, the idea of a PLE is that learners can configure different services and tools to develop their own learning environment, bringing together informal learning from the home, the workplace as well as more formal provision by education institutions. The PLE is controlled by the learner and as well as offering an environment for accessing different information and knowledge allows access to web based publishing and other opportunities for creating content and expressing and exchanging ideas.
The idea behind the PLE is to harness the power and potential of social software and web 2.0 applications for learning.
As Graham Attwell has pointed out PLEs may be a seriously disruptive development, challenging the present model of schooling. The seminar is intended to examine the changing ways in which we are using technology for learning, to look at the potential of Personal Learning Environments and to discuss the implications for the future of our education systems.
This could include (but is not limited to) the following issues:
- Young people are increasingly using social networking sites and social software applications - but are they learning?
- What do the new uses of technology for learning imply for pedagogy and the future role of teachers?
- What is the role of school in the future when more and more learning takes place over the internet?
- How can technology supported informal learning be recognised?
- How disruptive are the new technologies to the education system - is it just a bubble?
- How can Personal Learning Environments be reconciled with the social nature of learning?
- What are the implications of technology supported learning and PLEs for social equity within education?
- What sort of technological infrastructure should the education system be providing for learning?
- If content is increasingly created by teachers and learners and is open for access, how will we guarantee quality?
- Does increasing learner control and autonomy spell the end of centralised curricula?
- Hey dude, where’s my data?
Attending
We would like all participants to prepare a position paper prior to the event.
The paper should be no more than 2 pages A4 and should contain the following type of information:
- Your name and your affiliation (company, university, etc)
- An overview of how you see the current situation regarding the theme of the seminar
- What you see as the key issues at stake and the obstacles to progress
- Your initial thoughts on what needs to be done
- Your initial recommendations, if you have any, for possible actions by the European Commission or national governments in terms of policy and/or actions to be funded
- Web links to reports, studies or other information you feel is worth referencing
We regret no funding is available for travel and accommodation. However we are happy to say we will provide lunch for all those attending!
If you are interested in attending please email Graham Attwell, who will be coordinating this event for the Bazaar project: graham10@mac.com
For more information about the Bazaar project: http://www.bazaar.org
February 25th, 2007
It has already been a month ago since I attended the EU eLearning conference and presented at the EU consultation at the Lifelong Learning Institute Dipoli in Helsinki, Finland. During summer months time simply flyes by!
As project coordinator I gave a presentation about our ambitions and aims of the Bazaar project. I received a lot of enthusiastic responses to my presentation and our project. It would be great if the Bazaar website as a community portal for all kinds of learners, teachers and other facilitators in the field of elearning is seen as a useful place for people to get connected.
On the EU consultation meeting and the EU elearning conference itself, interesting and lively discussions were held about the use of internet and computers for learning and the place where ‘learning’ happens. What struck me was that a lot of the discussion still seems to boil down to whether or not the computer will ever replace the teacher!
And I thought we were already past this…
But it’s important. We cannot discuss the role of computers in learning if we don’t want to discuss the role of teachers.
I had an interesting discussion with a man who said that the use of computers in the classroom should be as small as possible, because children should learn from ‘the real world’.
The real world? The real world! My ‘real’ world has computers in it. The role of computers in the real world is growing faster than ever and I strongly believe that we cannot learn to understand the real world of today if we don’t learn to understand computers.
The real world is filled with computers, but just because you can’t see them, that doesn’t mean they’re not there…
The creators of this website (http://www.realworld.org/) are clearly very concerned about the use of computers for learning, but between the lines I read a fear for the inevitable. Of course ‘computers can gobble up time’, just like watching television and reading books, but we recognize those timegobblers as part of the real world.
I bet that a great majority of people would rather see their children spending a rainy day by reading a book, than by chatting and socialising with their friends on MSN.
I think that the young learners of today, who grow up with access to computers, broadband, new technology understand the real world better than some of their teachers. Maybe it’s time for the teachers to be replaced by learners…
August 27th, 2006
Sean Mehan (http://www.weblogs.uhi.ac.uk/sm00sm/?p=229 and http://www.weblogs.uhi.ac.uk/sm00sm/?p=228) posts an interesting analysis on the Blackboard patent application.
This is just one of many examples that illustrate the problems with software patents (more: http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/). It is a perfect example of how software patents threaten independent innovative software design and technology enhanced learning.
Need more examples? Look at this: http://webshop.ffii.org/
It also shows how an abstract legal decision can have deep (and irreversible) impact on a very personal level. What would happen if other VLE’s, LMS’s and other learning systems have to pay license fees to Blackboard? That would probably kill 80% of them and it would leave the other 20% crippled.
That would surely kill innovation in this area, the same way as we have seen in other area’s where the market is overshadowed by one major monopolist.
I’m sure that the Lisbon Agenda and the commissions Lifelong Learning policy are not helped by this.
I would like to refer to the petition on http://flosse.dicole.org/?item=don-t-allow-software-patents-to-threaten-technology-enhanced-learning-in-europe that was signed by over 500 concerned people. (http://flosse.dicole.org/petition/)
August 2nd, 2006
Just got back from EU eLearning Conference 2006 in Helsinki, Finland. (http://www.elearning2006.fi/)
Keywords for the next year: Innovation, innovation, innovation.
And we got some culture, which I will hereby make into the Bazaars first Vidcast. Enjoy!
Fins Singing [2:02m]:
Play Now |
Play in Popup |
Download (439)
July 6th, 2006
Today The Bazaar launches new functionality to all Stalls. We have implemented a new component for organising online meetings.
The new component has the following functionality:
- Simple meeting scheduler
- Allow access to all Bazaar members or your Stall members only
- High performance chat-service
- Seperate notepad for writing notes during the meeting
- Clear meeting transscripts in html and txt
Stall-holders: To add ‘online meetings’ to your Stall, create a new page using the ‘chatbox’ template.
Bazaar-members: You can testdrive ‘online meetings’ in the Demo Stall.
June 1st, 2006
