A new presentation on Learning and Knowledge Maturing - you can either watch the presentation or download the audio version.

Later we will introduce them to you.

It features impressions and short Interviews from the ongoing conference.

The audio material is in english and german language.

This edition is a special feature on podcasting. Our interview is with Andreas Auwaerter from the University of Koblenz. Andreas and his student crew are running the Sounds of the Bazaar operations here in Berlin.

And then we go on to three short features on podcasting in education by the presenters of a conference session here on poadcasting.

Web site of the month features - you’ve guessed it two great web sites about podcasting. Longer sleeve notes to follow - first lets get this edition on the air.

For those who are not familiar with these pins: to stimulate the sharing and reuse of content, the Bazaar project supports Creative Commons and came up with the idea to wear pins to Show that we Share to conferences, seminars, our Show-me days and every other (non-)Bazaar event. Pinning the ones we find important on our rugsacks and jackets makes showing that we share an everyday thing. And we wear them proudly.

The new Bazaar Pins set:

The ol’ set has now really become a collectors item. The new set will be available at the Bazaar Stand at the Online Educa in Berlin, Germany, next week (November 28-30, 2007).

Every attendee to the free Bazaar Conference on December 14 2007 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, will receive their own Bazaar Pins set, to Show that they Share. For more information on the Bazaar conference, see: Networks, Communities & Learning: Show that you Share!.

We hope to see you there, we hope to see you wear.

This issue features a round table discussion with Jaan Netzow, from IBM Germany, Gareth Greenwood, IBM UK, and Bert de Coutere, IBM Belgium. All are involved in one way or another with the development, sales and support of software for collaboration - particularly in the workplace. Can IBM applications replace Facebook as a ‘managed social network?’ Should managers have the right to change employees’ personal profiles. All this and more in this round table.

The Sound of the Bazaar interview is with Rebecca Stromeyer. Rebecca has been involved with organising Online Educa Berlin since the start - in 1994. In the interview she tells of the origins of the conference and talks about what she enjoys about it all.

Website of the Month features the European Collaboration for Innovation project. And - this is a little embarassing - just at the moment we don’t have the url for the project to hand. But if you do want the url please visit us again when we have updated this page.

As ever thanks to Dirk Stieglitz - from stray hints in emails I gather that I made a mess of recording this issue and he had a bit of a technical struggle. And thanks to Beate Kleessen from ICWE for help in planning SoB this autumn and to Agnes Breitkopf from IBM for setting up the round table

First up is my introduction to the show, where I tell you about the fabulous up coming Bazaar conference.

This is followed by Graham Attwell’s periodic rant. This months rant is about the tyranny of assessment and I look at alternatives based on Assessment for learning as opposed to the assessment of learning. If you enjoy this and would like to hear more you can watch my video on E-learning 2.0 and Quality.
Our interview is with Jay Cross who talks about informal learning. Jay’s web site describes him as a “champion of informal learning, web 2.0, and systems thinking. He puts breakthrough business results ahead of business as usual. His calling is to change the world by helping people improve their performance on the job and satisfaction in life.” In the interview he talks about what he means by informal learning, the difference between training and learning, what organisations can do to promote informal learning and how education systems might change in the future.
Ulf Daniel Ehlers tells us about his idea for Science without Borders. Ulf is an Assistant Professor of Business Information Systems, at the University of Duisberg-Essen in Germany. He is Coordinator of the European Foundation for Quality in e-Learning and coordinator of the European Quality Observatory.

One of his main research interests is education for sustainable development and in this interview he talks about how we can facilitate researchers from different countries working together

Blog site features Ismael Pena Lopez’s brilliant ICTlogy blog. Talking about his blog he says:

• this site serves my purposes of keeping all my knowledge under control
• having all content open, it helps interesting people coming by
• having all content open makes me findable not by myself, by thanks to the content gathered around me
• interesting people leave their tracks behind them, tracks I can explore and find them, their institutions, their resources
• the more you know, and share it, the more these issues repeat along time… and the more you can reach new people to learn more and more.

Claire Belisle talks about her research on information and digital media. Claire Bélisle est ingénieure de recherche CNRS en sciences humaines et sociales. Elle a un doctorat en psychologie cognitive, et un diplôme en formation en ligne. Ces centres d’intérêt en recherche sont la navigation et les méta-compétences des formateurs, enseignants et chercheurs dans l’intégration des technologies de l’information et de la communication en éducation et en recherche. Elle pilote actuellement des travaux sur le livre électronique et sur les corpus numériques, en se focalisant sur la navigation dans les hypermédias, le travail collaboratif et la lecture numérique.

But don’t worry if your French isn’t too good - the interview is in English!

Finally I talk us out of this issue. Phew - that is a lot. I know the full edition is long. But the music is just brilliant. As ever many thanks to Dirk Stieglitz who produced this issue.

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:

1. 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.
2. Discourse space (2-5) - we outline here four different kinds of activities that you might like to try:
   1. The Ten Minute Slot -Ten minute presentations of work and ideas in progress, to be followed by ten minute discussion.
   2. 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).
   3. Ask an Expert - Request that someone else introduces on a topic you wish to learn something about.
   4. Discussion Circle - Introduce a discussion in a maximum of three minutes, each participant gets two minutes to contribute.
   5. … anything else you would like to do
3. 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:

Taking this into account, the APADIS project has initially explored learning technologies to foster group activities instead of individual ones, and strengthen specific social relationships. Social Web 2.0 technologies can play a key role in that.

At the Ágora School of Adult People in La Verneda-St. Martí (Barcelona, Spain), which is based on participation, in fact we have built:

• A virtual gallery based on Yahoo! Flickr, an online photo sharing system, that allows the elderly students to store and browse previously downloaded pictures and to share them with their friends at the school, and with grandchildren and adult children at home, online.
• A blog based on WordPress which enables the elderly to work collaboratively with other students on the same or different projects online.

Both technologies enable old people to demonstrate their ability to use computers to their social circles (namely, their grandchildren who are a source of motivation and adult children, who can play a negative role) by using the Web, which we have found to be one of the most relevant indicators of digital literacy amongst the social networks of elderly people. These technologies also support online group-related educational activities, which are much closer to the elderly than those individually-centred activities fostered by traditional learning methodologies.

More information:

What is APADIS? APADIS is a project funded by the Spanish IMSERSO intended to design and develop an online virtual learning environment using open source technologies that meet the educational needs of elderly people in both online and traditional learning. APADIS builds upon ABE Campus, an online campus for Adult Basic Education, open source (http://www.basicampus.net/), currently being used in a broad array of courses at Âgora. The project is coordinated by CREA, http://www.pcb.ub.es/crea

The paper accepted for publication at the ACM Crossroads, Meeting some educational needs of elderly people in ICT: Two exploratory case studies. by Sergio Sayago, Patricia Santos, Maite Gonzalez, Miriam Arenas, and Laura Lopez, provides more detailed information and analysis. Contact Sergio Sayago at his e-mail address at upf dot es.

Sergio Sayago, Josep Blat and Toni Navarrete. Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain)

Sunday, I go to Lisbon where I am taking part in a panel discussion at the e-Learning Lisboa Conference. And Tuesday evening I move on to Barcelona where I am speaking at the UOC UNESCO Chair in eLearning IV International Seminar being organised by the Open University of Catalonia.

Early Friday morning I travel back up north to the European e-Portfolio conference at Maastricht where - together with Serge Revet - I am organising a workshop on Personal and Organisational Learning Environments.

Then a couple of days break. On October 24th and 25th I will be speaking at a meeting on ‘Trainers in Europe’ in Leiden, The Netherlands.

Will try and make as much of the papers, slides and the rest available here. In truth its not all new - quite a bit of stuff will be remixed - though with some new takes I hope. So for each event i will try to put up a post providing links to different resources about the presentation - if only for those new to this blog.

In the meantime, if any of you are attending any of these events and would like to meet up for a beer, just drop me a line.

Despite the name it is a good project - a lot of thoughtful contributions.

I particularly liked the contribution from Minna Lakkala from the University of Helsinki who talked about the pedagogical design of technology enhanced collective e-learning. She referred to the sociolodical and epistomological infratstructures necessary for content sharing.

And - by serendipity - whilst listening to Minna a couple of emails arrived on the Becta list talking about cultures of sharing.

The first was from John Potter who said: “In a strand recently about web 2.0 it became apparent that in a culture where league tables are no longer published there are greater opportunities for sharing and innovation. Ewan McIntosh and the experience in Scotland seems to bear this out. Having schools in competition publicly in this way seems to inhibit all sorts of potentially useful collaboration and innovation. Tricia’s story seems to bear this out. Perhaps this and other pressures on teachers within the system really do make it difficult to share and to innovate and to examine what it means to be a teacher or a learner in 2007. ”

Nick Morgan suggested the additional factors regarding a willingness of share learning materials in Scotland:

“Professional shyness - many teachers arent confident enough of the quality of the resources they produce, and are happy to use their produce but reluctant to share it publically and thereby invite critical comment.

Earning - A minority of teachers are at the other end of the spectrum, so confident about their own product that they won’t share it without payment being involved.

Copyright - uncertainty about who owns the rights on the resources, or an instruction from their authority employers not to distribute. A common view: If a resource is produced on local authority equipment and in employers time, ‘it’ belongs to the authority and some authorities don’t see why they should let anyone else use those resources for free.”

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