Fortnightly Mailing

Clayton Wright's vast listing of conferences with a learning technology component

Here is the 22nd edition of Clayton Wright's amazing conference list [1 MB DOC]. There are over 650 events listed, mostly concentrated between January and June 2010, but with some confirmed events running through into 2011.

Tim Berners-Lee - 12 minute video interview in the Economist

This link should open a pop-up with a 12 minute video of an Economist Magazine interview with Tim Berners-Lee about building the web. The interview provides Berners Lee's perspectives on the work of the World Wide Web Consortium, which he heads, about the semantic web, which he believes is on its way, and about the crucial importance of net neutrality (the principle that data on the Internet should be treated equally irrespective of whose it is, and whether or not the carrier has a commercial interest in the content formed by the data).

There are nearly 300 other audio, video, and multimedia resources here on the Economist web site.

US National Survey of Student Engagement

[With thanks to Ray Schroeder]

The well organised and informative 2009 National Survey of Student Engagement [50 pages, 20 MB PDF] report is produced by Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research in cooperation with the Indiana University Center for Survey Research. The report aims to provide data to colleges and universities to "assess and improve undergraduate education, inform state accountability and accreditation efforts, and facilitate national and sector benchmarking efforts". This year's report has a two page section (go to pages 19 and 20) about Teaching and Learning Technologies, including a tantalising but all-too-briefly explained table (below, with its rubric) "Relationship Between Technology and Engagement, Deep Learning, and Gains".

"How Do These New Technologies Relate to Student Learning and Engagement?

Course management and interactive technologies were positively related to student engagement, self-reported learning outcomes, and deep approaches to learning (Table 7). Course management technology was most strongly related to student-faculty interaction and self-reported gains in personal and social development. It is possible that the use of this type of organizational technology encourages contact among classmates as well as between students and their instructors. Interactive technologies corresponded most strongly with students’ self-reported gains and the supportive campus environment benchmark. Students who use interactive technologies are also more likely to say their campus environment is supportive and contributes to their knowledge, skills, and personal development."

We must ..... a call to action to create the university of the future

Here are five tasks prioritised las month at a "create the university of the future" meeting sponsored by the Open University of Catalonia and the US based and led New Media Consortium, and attended by "forty leaders in open education and technology" Barcelona. Source [140 kB PDF], with thanks to Phil Candy.

EDUCAUSE - 7 things you should know about Google Wave

Via Stephen Downes, here is a link to a new EDUCAUSE outline: 7 things you should know about Google Wave - [380 kB PDF - two pages]. Given that Wave is only in its early stage of roll-out, EDUCAUSE is taking a gamble asserting much about it. And when you read in the guide that "answers to questions about who in higher education is likely to find value in it and how exactly they will use it remain speculative" you realise that publication is possibly premature. (I have some spare Wave invitations which I am happy to share.)

Venki Ramakrishnan discusses the ribosome, and why measures of "impact" should not be used when assessing the quality of fundamental research

Venki Ramakrishnan was one of the people who won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for deducing the structure of the ribosome, the protein macro-molecular machine that takes the genetic information in DNA using RNA to create protein. This seven minute video is a set of snippets with Ramakrishnan's talking about his work (and the ribosome). He concludes with a convincing critique of the approach currently favoured by government that which research gets funded should by decided in part by its economic impact. Ramakrishnan (and many others) believe that knowledge should be pursued for its own sake: and that economic impact follows.

Digital Inclusion: an unusual opportunity to help develop a critique of current digital inclusion research, policy, and practice

Digital Inclusion is a contested term and I think the ESRC/EPSRC funded Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Programme¹ is onto a good thing with this Digital Inclusion Commentary Site.

Why?

1. The site is implemented in Comment Press (a variant of Wordpress) that allows users to comment on a complex document at the level of individual paragraphs. [Explanation]
2. The site is open to the world.
3. The aim of the document that is in the process of being written is to influence future research relating to digital inclusion.

By the look of the first two chapters, the work is going to be thorough and free of the glibness that sometimes infects discussion about digital inclusion. Excerpt from the introduction:

"This is an area of the Digital Inclusion that we have created to facilitate the creation of an online document that reviews and critiques current digital inclusion research, policy and practice: with a particular focus on drawing out potential implications for future digital inclusion research. This document, when completed will have a stand-alone life of its own, but it will also form the foundation of a separate publication towards the end of the TEL programme that highlights ways in which each of the TEL projects has (or has the potential to have) made a contribution to advancing our understanding or practice in relation to digital inclusion."

¹ Disclosure. I am a member of the TEL Programme's Advisory Group; at one point I made a point to Jane Seale (the principal author of the two chapters to date) about the suitability of Comment Press as a platform for this kind of thing. So I have an interest in this project being a success.

Being mighty: how mortals can make learning technology projects that cause real impact - a talk by Jonathan Drori

Jonathan Drori puts his finger on why so many pilot projects never get beyond the pilot stage in this invited speaker session on 9 September at ALT-C 2009 (running time 32 minutes). (Here also is a link to a page with all the videos from ALT-C 2009.)

Jaw-dropping: a talk about "lightweight learning" by Sugata Mitra at Google's London office

Source: Infonomia

Updated: added extra bullet-point from Sugata Mitra - 11/10/2009; dates clarified - 25/10/2009.

Last Monday I had the pleasure of hearing Sugata Mitra give a jaw-dropping talk about his "Hole in the wall experiments", at a 157 Group / Becta event at Google's London office that I had had a bit part in organising. (Becta is the UK Government's agency to promote and support the effective use of ICT in education, and singled out on Thursday 7 October by David Cameron, in his pre-election speech to the Conservative Party Conference. The 157 Group is a group of England's big and most successful further education colleges.)

The BBC giving airtime to the British National Party is a form of appeasement

[Written 22/10/2009. Updated 30/10/2009.]

Standing on repugnant policies, Hitler's National Socialist Party was initially successful in democratic elections. In power it implemented these policies, through deportations, and eventually through the "final solution".

My grandmother was gassed in Auschwitz. My grandfather and great grandmother perished in Terezin. For all my life the Nazi Holocaust, and the political developments that preceded it, have been in the background for me.

So I felt physically winded to read the BBC's chief political advisor Ric Bailey's statement that the decision to invite BNP leader Nick Griffin onto Question Time was "based on the party's success in June's European elections, at which it won more than 940,000 votes and two seats".

Had the BBC's reasoning been that it wished to discredit the BNP and negate its influence, then I could have understood its logic, though I'd have disagreed with its decision.

But by its stance the BBC appeases racism: it publicises and makes respectable the BNP's ideas; it ignores the distress and fear that the BNP evokes amongst those it targets; it grants the BNP valuable exposure. Whilst I hope that David Dimbelby, and the panel in Question Time will expose Griffin, and reduce his standing, it is not mainly amongst the viewers of Question Time that the BNP's policies hold sway: so the net effect of the BBC's decision will be to boost Griffin and his party's popularity.

Since when was that supposed to be the purpose of the BBC?

Added 30/10/2009. This letter by Paul Rees appeared in the Independent Newspaper on 26 October. He makes my point far more effectively than I ever could.