General feelings on the Online Educa Conference in Berlin

I finally have found some time to get to cleaning up my blog and clearing up some old concepts I still had lying around.
To start off, some almost ancient history: My general feelings on the Online Educa conference. To start off, I was a little disappointed: I did not hear a lot of new things and I still feel the concept doesn't work: Four presentations in one session is a lousy concept. Usually 1 is worth while, 1 is a waste of time and two are usually not all that interesting or relevant. It was definitely worth while meeting up with the many Dutch at the conference. As so often I mainly gained inspiration through conversations rather than presentations.

And in an attempt to overlook a few developments and giving each their spot on Gartner's Hype Cycle:
- Podcasting is well and truly over its hype peak
- Web2.0 is here to stay, but it is over its hype peak
- Virtual worlds is running up to its hype peak
- Institutions are becoming more realistic about Services approach
- The general feeling regarding VLEs is 'agnostic'. Believing in one VLE is out of fashion
- Theories and technologies applicable to Informal Learning are still being applied to formal teaching situations (without judging whether they really work).

Virtual Worlds - some valuable findings to take home

Yesterday I visited a session on Virtual Worlds. It did not seem really exciting at the time, but after having had some time to digest, there were some points I would like to jot down for my own memory.
- Sun Microsystems is developing a virtual world which will be called Wonderland.
- Surprisingly Second Life has been used for language learning. I guess that the exchange of language was mainly in text and not the spoken word, but it was not discussed further.
- People are expecting Web2.0 to be followed by Web3D, I am not sure I agree at this point in time...
- They gave the sensible advise: Only use 3D when it really adds value to learning and teaching, otherwise it is a pain. A mix (hybrid model) is much more likely using 3D tools in certain tasks and other tools in others. For example combining the use of Xing.com and Second life.
- An important step will be adding content and integrating other media in the virtual environment.
It will become truly personal if your avatar's expressions are fed by input from your webcam. This will make avatars a lot more lively and make the virtual world much more real. This feature will surely be available in the future. (With special thanks to inspiration from a business proposal in the Dragon's Den programme on the Beeb.)
- 'Just building a stadium (ed: in a virtual world) is not enough. You have to organise it's use'.
- Perhaps a smaller and more straightforward meeting place than Second Life can be offered by Qwaq.

As a clear example of the use of Second Life they suggested training oil-rig staff on escape routes during emergencies. It certainly seems to extremely suited to this use. Running around on an oil rig with virtual fires all around is a lot safer than in real life.

Moodle in distance ed

Eric Clarke, with a lovely Irish accent, from the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin delivered a session on the use of Moodle (and how much it costs to run). Yes, for all those out there still going after Open Source because it is free: Sorry to disappoint you, but there are enough other costs in keeping a VLE up and running. He gives a lovely description: 'What are we really going on about: is it all about lawsuits and : 'My VLE is bigger than yours' or is about teaching and learning?

The use of Moodle is a great success, but he gave us the warning: do take third party support, network and servers into account (180K euros and that's without the costs of user support.) The problems they are now facing are ironically their heavy reliance on Moodle, and the large amount of materials and tools on offer which confuse students without structure.

Podcasts, why bother?

In the final session here at Online Educa today I was surprised to see that in the three presentations universities are focussing on pod- and especially vodcasting rather than streaming video. The true benefit in my eyes lies in offering materials which can be listened to or watched on the move. On the other hand, it might be a better target to let students to create streaming material which can be shared.
Some of the speakers had taken this into account. Especially the example from the Geography department (impala)attracted my attention: giving students pod- and voldcasts to take with them on fieldwork seems a very suitable application.
An other advantage is that students can relatively easily contribute materials. This has been used to allow citizens to join in various debates in Europe. And now its time for a drink :-)

E-learning for kids, worldwide learning content for kids

An interesting note at the end of one of the sessions is the e-learning for kids initiative. The aim is to develop courseware for for children aged 5 to 12 years worldwide. This connects nicely with the one laptop per child initiative. Noticeably this does not appear to be webbased but they have chosen to run materials locally.

Thoughts on the broad VLE, from VTE to open groupspace

Conference lunches are a great place to develop ideas. Here at Online Educa Berlin I had a lunch with Robert Jan Simons and Wilfred Rubens and we discussed the demands on a VLE at Utrecht University. My position is that we need a broad solution, as offered at Wageningen University. On the one end a classic VLE for teacher use (I suppose you could even describe it as a Virtual Teaching Environment, a VTE) which offers teachers the control they need to offer instruction. On the other end we need an open groupware environment which will offer students the room to learn, accumulate and share knowledge. Which of these extremes you wish to use depends on the pedaogical model in use in the course. In fact I know courses in which both models are used in the same course but at different points in time. Through api's (webparts building blocks, etc) the classic VTE/VLE and the groupware environment can be connected. Additional external web2.0 tools could also be integrated in this groupware environment which offer connections to the outside world. This is essential in creating an open environment for knowledge sharing.

Andrew Keen's keynote: is Web2.0 the cult of the amateurs?

Andrew starts off his keynote that there is nothing wrong with technology as such. He argues that the ideas behind the Web2.0 however are a danger to the distribution of wisdom. The wisdom produced in Web2.0 is the wisdom of the crowds. He claims that Google lets users decide what wisdom is. I do certainly not agree on this point: What is shown in Google is certainly not neccessarily wisdom.
He goes on by complaining that Wikipedia entries are just as long on irrelevant subjects as on subjects he finds interesting. This makes me wonder whether I would interested in whatever he finds interesting.
The challenge is how to select which information is correct. Students must be trained in medialiteracy, knowing what is correct in the media. This is not a new call, in fact there are teachers training first year students in this skill.

He argues Harvard professors should be busy publishing on the internet. On the other hand this is already possible, so what is his point...
In his retoric internet is a place with its own dynamics, although technology did not receive this dubious honouw. Though the content on the internet is nothing more than contribution by individuals. Would it not be better to focus on the indivivuals and the social processes between individuals when constructing knowledge?

iKids rather than eKids

The final comments of Patricia Ceysens' keynote were the most interesting. She claims her children will not be eKids but rather iKids.
These iKids have individual needs, however they need to learn in a social context. They want to be interactive. Futhermore they live in a culture of images. They must learn 'Interculturality' as this is a necessity in this age of cultural conflicts. It connected nicely with the ideas on the Net-generation and the Einstein generation.

Hole in the wall in real life

It was quite suitable, after all the buzz on the hole in the wall project, to hear Professor Sugata Mitra speak on technology and the application of ICT in education. After a keynote on the envoy of the minister on implementation of ICT in ed in Ghana, Sugata defended a very different appraoch. Rather than working on teachers and ICT facilities, Sugata argues that children are capable of learning on their own. They are capable of learning the basic ICT skill of browsing the internet. Children may be able to learn a language on their own, if they want to! Children in the south of India even managed to learn Biotechnology, being triggered to learn on their own, rather than being taught. Put these computers in public spaces rather than in the classroom. Children used their networks to extend their learning.
The final hypothesis: Can children complete the schooling on their own! still remains unanswered.