We are currently developing a new Masters in Learning Innovation, which we hope to launch in September 2012. Here is a brief overview of it. Students taking the Masters in Learning Innovation will obtain a thorough critical overview of the use of technologies to support learning across formal and informal learning contexts. The programme will be designed to enable the students to be critically reflective of their readings, communication and collaboration online, as well as provide practical experience in the use of a range of technologies. It will provide ample opportunities for them to apply the knowledge gained from the programme to their own professional practice and environment.  Students will examine case studies of learning innovation to help them to situate and contexualise the use of technologies in their own setting. The programme will take students through the full spectrum of technology-enhanced learning. The modules included are:   Technology-Enhanced Learning - which will provide an overview of new technologies and how they can be used to support different pedagogical approaches. This will include social and participatory media, Open Educational Resources, learning spaces, use of virtual worlds, and mobile learning, Learning Design - which will provide an overview of the state of the art in learning design research, including a review of learning design tools and resources. Research methodologies - this will provide students with a good grounding in relevant qualitative and quantitative research methods, as well as commonly used methodological approaches adopted. Case studies of innovation - this will enable the students to explore the use of technologies in different contexts, including different disciplines and sectors. Dissertation module - students will carry out and write up a project in learning innovation. The uniqueness of the Masters is that it is underpinned by a state of the art learning design methodology and the adoption of open practices to address the key challenges of 21st Century learning, harnessing the potential of new technologies. This builds on the strong track record of the course team in these research areas. Completion of the programme will equip the students with mechanisms to enable changes in their own practices and those of their colleagues. They will have had the opportunity to explore how they can act as change agents, as well as supporting radical innovation in the design and the delivery of programmes. We think this is going to be a really exciting course, giving students lots of hands on exposure to different technologies, enabling them to reflect on the relevance to their own practice. So if this is something you are interested in get in touch with us and we can tell you more!  

Picture from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sari-coche/4457749167/lightbox/ Heard yesterday that the abstract I submitted for the HE Academy conference was rejected… so thought I might at least blog it! Authors: me, Alex Moseley, Nichola Hayes, Denise Sweeney, Alejandro Armellini and Jon Gunnell Abstract The presentation aims to give an overview of an extensive survey being undertaken at the University of Leicester on the current uses and future plans for the use of our Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Blackboard, as part of our upgrade to Blackboard 9.1. Outline Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are an established part of institutions’ core infrastructure. A number of benefits are evident: they offer a consistent/accessible environment for learners, they include tools to support communication and collaboration (such as forums, blogs and wikis), they provide a safe ‘nursery slope’ for academics to explore how they can use technologies to support their teaching, and they incorporate assessment and monitoring tools to enable them to evaluate learner progress. In addition, they can be used in conjunction with free Web tools to augment the core functionality offered by the VLE.   However, despite the evident benefits that VLEs offer, overall they are not being used to support learning extensively. Much use is little more than using the VLE as a content repository or what Oliver (2001) refers to as ‘Web page turning’. Academics lack the necessary digital literacy skills (Jenkins 2006) needed to make effective use of technologies, and see the VLE as additional work, rather than an integrated part of the learning experience. Furthermore, in research-intensive institutions there is a tension between teaching and research.   Leicester is currently in the process of upgrading to BlackBoard 9.1. We see this as an opportunity to help tackle the problems outlined above and as a mechanism for providing academics with the support they need to use the VLE more effectively. Essentially, we are using the VLE as a ‘Trojan horse’ to encourage staff to rethink their learning and teaching methods for the modern, online, student experience. As part of this work, we are undertaking an extensive survey of how academics and learners across the university are using the VLE. This will give us a rich picture of the ways in which it is being used (highlighting good practice), as well as insights into associated support issues. We are also finding out to what extent other technologies are being used by them. The survey consists of an online questionnaire, focus groups with both teachers and learners, and a series of interviews with key departmental pictures. We have the survey results and have started the process of carrying out the focus groups and interviews to be completed in Febuary 2012.   The presentation will report the findings and describe how we using these to improve support to academics in the run up to the roll out to 9.1. It relates to the ‘supporting staff to deliver student learning experiences of a lifetime’ theme. Relevance to the audience Effective use of technologies, and in particular VLEs, is a key concern for practitioners and policy makers in education. The presentation will be of interest to delegates as it articulates the strategy currently being adopted by the University of Leicester. The presentation will give a rich picture of the current use of the VLE, as well as a description of our future plans for increasing the use of technologies across the university. Engaging the audience The session will be a mixture of a presentation and audience participation. Delegates will be invited to share the approaches they are adopting to increase the use of technologies in their own institutions, as well as reflecting back on the findings and the approach Leicester is adopting. How the paper links to HEA work The paper relates strongly to the conference themes and also to the HEA’s work in terms of promoting the use of technologies more effectively. It is also a good example of adopting an empirically based approach to transforming practice, whereby the survey results are directly feeding into actual practice and promoting of the use of technologies across the university. References Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide, NYU Press.             Oliver, R. and J. Herrington (2001). Teaching and learning online: a beginners guide to e-learning and e-teaching in Higher Education. Perth, Edith Cowan University.                

John Naughton, Professor of Public Understanding at the Open University gave a talk at Leicester University on the 22nd February, summarizing some of his ideas from his new book - What you really need to know about the Internet - From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg. His talk is summarized here. We have seen a shift in terms of the Internet, a transition from the exotic (weird) to the mundane. The Internet is now taken for granted and infiltrates all aspects of our lives. The result is that we are dependant on a network that (almost) no one understands. When did this change happen and why? There are a number of consequences: ·      Clueless law making ·      Hood winked users ·      Informed bewilderment - Castells (We are awash with data and don’t know what it means) ·      Comprehensive surveillance ·      Vapourisation of privacy What can we do about it? We need to develop (at the least) a round appreciation of the Internet. John referenced George Miller’s paper from the fifties on the notion of 7 plus or minus 2, i.e. cognitively in short terms memory we can only hold this many chunks of information at any one idea. John took this idea and based his thoughts on the Internet and its implications around a small number of big ideas. 1.     Take the long view We have seen a transformation of communication as a result of the use of the Internet. We tend to focus too much on the short terms trends, impact of fb, e-books etcc. Whereas we need to take a longer view and realise that the impact of emergent technologies is likely to be more transformative and disruptive that we can imagine. Think back to before the Internet - could anyone have predicted its emergent and how it would infiltrate all aspects of our lives? In 1455 Gutenberg created a communication revolution with the development of the printing press, we are now, with the Internet, in the middle of another communication revolution. However, because we are in the middle of this revolution, we can’t conceive or imagine how radical it is and the extent to which it will transform our practice. 2.    The Web is not the Net There is a common misconception that the Web and the Internet are synonymous, they are not. The Internet is the underlying infrastructure, the Web just one application. John drew on a railway metaphor, i.e. the tracks and signals of the railway are equivalent to the Internet, whereas the trains are one application, like the Web. John argued that the Internet is more important than anyone application that runs on it 3.    For the Internet, disruption is a feature, not a bug There are a number of architectural principles: i) there is no central ownership with the Internet, ii) the Internet is neutral towards the applications that run on it.  The result is an explosion of ‘permissionless innovation’, i.e there are endless possibilities and innovations. It is a global machine for springing surprises. John wrote a book in the mid-nineties about the history of the Internet and how it was developed. It’s a great read and gives a real flavour of the people involved. He referred back to this in his talk. He said that the Internet was development because Tim Berners-Lee had a bad memory! He wanted to create a system to be able to easily access his files and date. The result was the Web and the rest is history. Hence the Web is an example of a disruptive technology. Arguably everything we do now is shaped and affected by the web. The second example of a distruptive technology John cited is Napster, a site which provided digitized music in the web. Within, 18 months it had 80 million users and almost all music that has ever been created was available from the site. Clearly however there were copyright issues and eventually it was shut down. However it is interesting to see how sites like Napster and the power of the web for distributing materials has changed the nature of the music industry, music publishing houses are being seriously affected. For example Radiohead made one of their albums available on the web and said that people could choose to download it for free or pay a donation. Interestingly many did pay for the album, introducing a new business model for buying content. An unpleasant example of a distruptive innovation is the rise of malware or malicious software, which can invade computers piggy backing on commonly used programmes like Microsoft word. Second order surprises include Wikipedia and Facebook, which has 850 million users, of which about 50% check the site everyday. 4.   Think ecology not just economics Application of economics is not appropriate in a web-world dominated by abundance. John used the analogy of shifting fro a dessert to a rich biodiverse rainforest. The ecological metaphor is a useful metaphor or analytical framework for describing both the diversity of the activities occurring on the web, as well as the evolving dynamics of different tools. 5.   Complexity is the new reality The web provides an order of magnitude of complexity. Properties include: dense interconnectivity, highly dynamic, open, non-linear, extraordinary behavourial diversity and intrinsically unpredictable. Ashley’s law of requisite variety is in effect and its implications. For a system to be viable it has to be able to handle the complexity of the environment. 6.  The network is now the computer In particular with the emergence of cloud computing the network is now the computer. Increasingly we use cloud-based tools and store data on the net rather than our computer. There are implications of this, for: users, the environment (cloud computer requires huge, energy hungry server farms, mainstream business, privacy, security and freedom. 7.  The web is evolving We pages are not static, they are made up on the fly. Arguably there is a web geology consisting of: Web 1.0 (1991-2003), Web 2.0 (2004-present), Web 3.0 (2012?), Web 4.0 (?). 8. Copyright and copyleft Our intellectual property regime no longer makes any sense. Analogue copyright is about different, degenerative, costly, and hard to disseminate, whereas digital copyright is perfect, easy, cheap, and easy to disseminate. Our IP was development in an analogue era, we are trying to apply it to a world dominated by a technology for which copying is an integral and essential part. Copying in the digital era is equivalent to breathing for animal life, i.e you can’t have one without the other. Our current regime of copyright is unsustainable, it can’t go on. 9.    Orwell vs. Huxley - bookends of our future? John concluded by reflecting on the future and whether it will be an Orwellian or Huxleyian vision. Where is all this taking us? Is it the end of the techno-Utopia, i.e the fantasy that the internet would change everything for the better. Orwell feared that we would be destroyed by the things that we fear - examples might include Government surveillance, i.e. the power to monitor everything that you do on the net. Huxley argued that it is easier to control people by making them happy rather that through fear. Are we controlled by our love and addiction to technologies? Reflections We need to stop extrapolating from the short term and take a longer term view. There are lessons to be learnt from the impact of previous disruptive technologies - the impact of reading for example, reading is a learnt skill, and arguably it changes the way we think. It took 15-20 years to fine a business model for the radio. We are seeing similarly patterns now with the net and new business models are emerging. Will the same happen with the net, are we cognitively different now because of the net? Alternatively is Google making us stupid? (Nicolas Carr). 

So I am currently writing an application for the HE Academy National Teaching Fellowship (NTF) Scheme. You need to write 5000 words against three criteria: i) Individual excellence: enhancing and transforming the student experience, ii)  raising the profile of excellence and iii) developing excellence. The first is all about how you have enhanced you students’ learning experience, the second about how you have enabled and supported others and the third about your own personal reflection and development. It’s been a really hard thing to write, but on reflection it has been useful. It is good sometimes to take stock of where you are and what you believe in. For me I think my main motivation is a desire to help others improve their teaching practice and enable them to create engaging learning experiences for their students. This is very much at the heart of the learning design research I have been doing. I find it very motivating when workshops go well and people say that they find the resources and activities that I have developed useful. My first draft read very much like a CV - I worked here, I did this. But my mentor at the University gave me really useful feedback. In particular she said stop writing as you and write as if you are your mother lol! I completely restructured the application as a result and in particular focussed around four key phases of technology development: multimedia, the emergence of the internet, new approaches to promoting the use of technologies, and OER and social and participatory media. It has been interesting to look back and to reflect on the work I have done in each of these areas and to see how my ideas have developed over time. I don’t know if I will be successful, but its been a useful exercise nonetheless. 

Conole elearning summit View more PowerPoint from Grainne Conole I gave a talk at the e-learning summit in Sydney a couple of weeks ago. It is somewhat of a commercial conference, so quite different from the usual ones I talk at, but it was good to meet up with a number of friends and catch up.  Mark Brown from Massey University gave a nice talk about how to choose a Learning Management System (LMS). He gave some good tips and described the process they went through at Massey. Despite many thinking that the LMS is dead, I don’t think it is, I think institutions will continue to support LMS certainly in the short to medium term. It is interesting to see how they have moved from being a peripheral innovation to core systems and I think students now expect and have a right to have their course materials available online. However, as our own survey of the use of Blackboard showed recently, most use of the LMS is still basically using it as a content repository, There is  little evidence of use to support more innovative pedagogies and in particular communication and collaboration. At Leicester we are currently developing design templates to enable teachers to think more creatively about how to use the LMS. 

I have been rethinking the framework we developed back in 2004 (Conole, Dyke et al. 2004).The framework maps three dimensions of learning: formal to informal learning, learning individually to learning in a social context, and learning through information to learning through experience.  In the original paper we considered non-reflective to reflective learning instead of learning informally or in a formal context. The framework can be used to map the realization of different pedagogical approaches through technologies in a particular context. So inquiry-based learning can be realised through use of Google by an individual or in a social context through use of Twitter.  I think it provides a useful conceptual tool to clarify how different pedagogies map to different facets of learning and helps consider which technologies are most appropriate in different contexts. The following presentation visualises the framework and gives examples of how it can be used. Thoughts welcome on this! Pedagogies map View more PowerPoint from Grainne Conole   References  Conole, G., M. Dyke, et al. (2004). "Mapping pedagogy and tools for effective learning design." Computers and Education 43(1-2): 17-33.                

Next week we are running our annual Follow the Sun conference entitled ‘Futures for Knowledge’. This is a 48-hour online conference starting with a series of presentations in Australia, then moving to the UK and finishing in Canada. We have a really exciting line up of presentations by key international experts. The focus is on the challenges facing different disciples, as well as ways in which technologies might address these. Keynote speakers include Wendy Hall,  Alistair Blair, Mike Petterson and John Fothergill from the UK. There are four speakers from Australia and four from Canada. A full list of the presenters can be found here. The programme is available here. You can also submit an e-poster. The conference is free so please consider registering; we already have nearly 600 people signed up! 

John Mac reminded me of Laurillard’s conversational framework (Laurillard 2002). There is a nice interactive map of it available here. There is also a nice video describing the framework and how it works in practice. The framework essentially articulates the dialogic exchange between a teacher and a learner and how each one internalized the conversation before acting on it in the context of their role in the learning process; i.e. the learner in terms of their learning and the teacher in terms of understanding what the learner is doing.  It focuses on Laurillard’s five media types: Narrative - print, web resources, TV, video, etc. Interactive - hypermedia and web resources Communicative - audio and video conferencing, student collaboration, etc. Adaptive - simulations and interactive tutorials Productive - microworlds, etc. References Laurillard, D. (2002). Rethinking university teaching, London: Routledge                 

Today I attended a writing workshop in Oxford as part of our production of the second edition of ‘Rethinking pedagogy for a digital age’ (Beetham and Sharpe 2007).  Whereas my chapter in the first edition focused on the DialogPlus learning design tool mainly, in the second edition my chapter will be a review of learning design visualisation tools and pedagogical planners. The plan in today’s session was to collaboratively write the final chapter for the book. Rhona Sharpe and Helen Beetham led the session, also present were Chris Jones and Chris Pegler from the OU, Liz Masterman from Oxford University and Sara De Freitas from Coventry University. We began the day by brainstorming what we thought were the key themes and future challenges for learning and in particular designing for learning. We then worked in pairs, each pair taking one of the emergent themes: Learner design contexts Openness Designing at different levels of progression. Chris Pegler and I worked on the openness theme. We then spent about 40 minutes working on this. It was an interesting process. Chris typed and I talked and it was interesting to see how our ideas co-developed. We then regrouped and discussed the drafts. It was amazing to see how much everyone had written! After lunch we worked on a number of trends and challenges facing the future of learning, I focused on the nature and implications of connectivity. Finally, we each envisioned a future scenario, considering what would be the nature and implications of our chosen theme - should it be fully realised. I will blog about each of the three writings in future blogs. It was a creative and productive process; just having to knuckle down and write in a timed session (almost like an exam) was a useful way of getting ideas down on paper. The mixture of individual, pair and group work was very effective. A version of the chapter is also publically available and the wider community has been invited to contribute. These additions will be combined with the drafts we have produced and Rhona and Helen will then have the hard task of trying to develop a coherent narrative. I think this is a lovely example of working openly and I am sure that the final product will be all the better as a result. References Beetham, H. and R. Sharpe (2007). Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital age: Designing and Delivering E-Learning, London: Routledge              

As part of our collaborative writing day yesterday, Chris Pegler and I worked on the concept of openness and it’s implications for designing for learning. In particular we considered the question: What would be the implications of adopting open practices on all aspects of education? We did our notes as a table and felt that there are many implications of adopting open practices in education. We considered openness in terms of the following aspects of creating and supporting learning interventions:       Resources       Activities       Learning pathways       Support       Accreditation For each we considered examples of open practices, along with identification of issues or key messages from these. In each case there is evidence of a spectrum of open practices. For example in terms of resources there are a range from closed, course-based resources to completely open Open Educational Resources (OER). FACETS OF LEARNING EXAMPLES ISSUES/EXPERIENCES Resources OER (courseware to component) (Pegler) iTunesU Khan Academy Open practice (OPAL) Blends. Showcase/Shop window and marketing for conventional courses (tasters). Sharing work in progress for comment - LORO, HUMBOX etc. Activities MOOCs, pedagogical patterns (McAndrew and Goodyear) Walled garden and open boundaries within conventional course activities. Scale of MOOCs - retention issue. Variety of routes through and forms of learning input (how much learner influence on design is there). Siemens/Downes - choice of tech is open (PLE and portability). Rhizomatic learning (Cormier), organic and contextualised. Chance and choice. Can also be highly structured (Stanford AI). Learning Pathways Scaffolded (conventional) to flexible (e.g. SocialLearn) Learning analytics Bussu (language learning site) - learning pathway based on assessment of needs. Learners can drown in the choice. Pedagogy of abundance.  Recommender systems - learner and buying  (Amazon, If you liked this) Support Social networks Facebook examples from AI Stanford providing local (cultural) support - satellite support for core programme. Twitter. Supporting entry to education (e.g. Bridge to Success). Cloudworks. Blog comments. Serendipitous to structured. Accreditation OERu, P2P, badges Will the standard forms of accreditation still be relevant in the future?  Shift from knowledge to skills and competencies to meet changing needs. Demonstration?  See badges (Wiley course). Formal, non-formal, informal variants.    

Another blog post about the ‘Rethinking pedagogy’ writing workshop. In this post I consider what the future of learning would look like if the affordances of networked technologies were fully embraced. The post centres on the question: What would a scenario of the future look like where the potential benefits and affordances of connectivity were fully exploited for learning? Essentially we would be in a position of an evolving ecology of learners co-constructing and applying their understanding to address complex and tricky real-life challenges. At a meta-level the collective understanding of the network would be greater than the sum of the individual parts. Residues of learning would reside in the network, leaving a digital learning trail of evolved understanding. A truly rhizomatic learning network,(Cormier 2011) horizontal, evolving, networked and intelligent; constantly adapting to its environment and capitalising on the expertise of both Actants and Non-Actants in the network;(Latour 2005) i.e. learning would distributed being humans and tools, forming a meta distributed cognition.(Salomon 1993) By its nature it would be adaptive, able to respond to changing contexts.   Learners could tap into the network as and when they needed. Formal educational roles (such as teacher and student) would no longer have resonance. Each individual would adopt different roles in different scenarios, asking for help as a learner in one context, providing expertise as a teacher in another. Participation would be as important as acquisition.(Sfard 1998) Participants in the network would also co-designers, helping to evolve and shape the network. References Cormier, D. (2011). Rhizomatic learning - why we teach? Dave’s education blog: education, post-structuralism and the rise of the machines. http://davecormier.com/edblog/2011/11/05/rhizomatic-learning-why-learn/. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory, Oxford University Press, USA. Salomon, G., Ed. (1993). Distributed cognitions - pyschological and educational considerations. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.            Sfard, A. (1998). "On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one." Educational researcher 27(2): 4.              

A fundamental characteristic of digital technologies is that they are networked and connected, providing users, tools and resources with a plethora of ways to interact. This connectivity is immense, forming in a sense a global neural network of information, dialogue and exchange, arguably we now have the capacity on a global scale to achieve Salomon’s notion of distributed cognition (Salomon 1993). The potential of such a vast, intelligent network for learning is clear; offering a plethora of ways in which learners and teachers can access and interact with information, and to communicate and collaborate. Nonetheless, the sheer complexity of the network also brings challenges. Despite the fact that arguably anything an individual wants to learn is available somewhere on the net, accessing a particular resource of relevance may be challenging to say the least. Furthermore, developing an appropriate digital identity online is a particular digital literacy skills learners and teachers need to develop. Being part of this network of others, means information can travel globally instantaneously. Learners and teachers need to make informed choices about how they communicate and need to recognise that what they are saying may go beyond their known bounded community. Think for example of the power of the Twitter network. One tweet sent to 3, 000 followers, may then be retweeted beyond that community to thousands of others. Table 1 lists some of the benefits and disadvantages of connectivity in terms of the implications for learning Table 1: The implications of learning in a connected environment Benefits Disadvantages Global Loss of individual identity Multiple forms of communication Loss of individual voice Multiple forms of representation Need for new sense making skills Interconnected, horizontal, no hierarchical structure Complex, no clear simple or correct route through Instantaneous Danger of superficiality Rich mechanisms for shared discourse Danger of convergent memes dominating Cultural diverse Danger of cultural hegemony Diversity of offerings, the long tail Fragmentation The recent experience and evaluation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) gives us some insights into the implications of learning in a global, connected environment. The number of learners who sign up for these courses is impressive (many thousands), the numbers who complete are much less so and indeed there is a marked downturn in participation as the courses progress. The ‘course organisers’ state that learners can participate with the course in a range of ways and that there is no standard learning pathway through. Therefore they can contribute to discussion forums or wikis, post comments on social networks, publish blog posts and comment on the blog posts of others. The organisers argue that this is a truly emancipatory style of learning, enabling each individual to cerate their own Personal Learning Environment.  There is no single route through a MOOC, they are horizontal, distributed and evolving by nature, offering a mechanism for supporting Rhizomatic Learning (Cormier 2008; Cormier 2011). The scale of the course means that participants can communicate with learners on a global scale. The design of MOOCs is learner centred, with no central teaching role. Evaluation of participants’ experience of these courses is mixed. Whilst many value the concept and joined partly out of curiosity to see what interaction in such an open and connected learning network would be like, many quickly became disillusioned, finding it difficult to keep up. The sheer scale of MOOCs (which arguably have no beginning and no end) is considered bewildering for many, and it is all too easy to get lost or confused by the plethora of resources and communication channels. Recognising that learning now takes place in this rich dynamic ecology of technologies is a fundamental challenge facing educators and in particular has implications for how learning is designed for in this context. How can we take account of the affordances of technologies in terms of their connectivity? How can we design to take account of the fact that the learning context is constantly changing and evolving, with new connections being made, and certain learning pathways being foregrounded over others? How do we miminise the risks associated with a connected environment? How do we avoid some of the pitfalls outlined above, such as: loss of individuality or voice, fragmentation, superficiality, convergence of thought, and cultural hegemony? Finally, how can we design given the sheer complexity, is design in any meaningful way possible? References Cormier, D. (2008). Rhizomatic Education : Community as Curriculum. Dave’s educational blog: education, post structuralism and the rise of the machines. Cormier, D. (2011). Rhizomatic learning - why we teach? Dave’s education blog: education, post-structuralism and the rise of the machines.         Salomon, G., Ed. (1993). Distributed cognitions - pyschological and educational considerations. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.                

  So our Follow the Sun conference has now finished; 48 hours over three continents! We had an amazing set of keynote speakers, great discussions and participation in the chat room. Thanks to everyone for the contributions and hope you enjoyed the conference as much as we did. It was interesting participating via BDRA head quarters with others in the room, although a little disconcerting hearing people speak live and then slightly delayed online. BB collaborate worked really well and a special huge thanks to Simon Kear for providing excellent technical support and ensuring everything worked smoothly. Thanks also to all those in BDRA who helped with moderating etc (Ale, Pal, Jai, Gabi, Ming, Terese, Paul, Brenda). Thanks also to our colleagues in Oz and Canada for their contributions. I think this year’s focus on challenges in different disciplines and a focus on the future of learning was great and worked really well. Recordings of all the sessions are available from the conference website. Soooo ideas for a focus for next year’s conference?

I have just received in the post a copy of a book that I have a chapter in with Giota and Rebecca on Cloudworks (Alevizou, Galley et al. 2012). It is a work up of a paper we presented at the Networked Learning conference in 2010. Giota gets most of the credit for this, she added some really insightful theoretical perspectives to analyse the interactions we have been seeing in our social networking site Cloudworks. Also mentioned in the chapter is the Community Indicators framework that Rebecca has developed, following a detailed review of the literature on communities in online spaces. This was part of a symposium on learning design, here is an overview of the symposium: The goal of this symposium is to bring together experts in learning design and pedagogical patterns research to exchange their current views on learning design as well as their experiences in evaluating the application of their proposed approaches in practice. Four papers are included, which between them they cover different aspects of the following three themes: i) Approaches to visualising and representing design patterns, ii) Computational representation of enacted patterns and iii) Analyses of emerging enacted patterns. In particular we are interested in exploring how can designs be represented, shared and discussed, and how they might be used and by whom. The first paper acts as a position paper in relation to the remaining four. It provides an overview of different types of design representations and demonstrates how these can be used in different contexts. The second explores design aspects around creativity and collaboration. Collaborative design is also picked up in the third paper, but in the context of pedagogical patterns. The final paper looks at issues to do with sharing and discussing designs and puts forward a number of theoretical frameworks for understanding new emergent practices in web 2.0 spaces. The symposium will use the content of the papers as a basis for exploring the three themes and will attempt to draw out new insights into addressing these questions. Modern networked learning environments have the potential to enhance significantly the student learning experience; offering new ways in which they can communicate and interact with each other and with their tutors. However, the sheer variety of new technologies available now is bewildering. Those tasked with designing learning experiences need new forms of guidance to take advantage of the affordances of new technologies and to make pedagogically informed design decisions. The learning design and pedagogical patterns research fields that have emerged in recent years are attempting to provide solutions to these issues. Learning design research is concerned with articulating and representing the design process and providing tools and methods to help designers in their design process (Lockyer et al., 2008). Pedagogical patterns research is concerned with elicited empirically derived good practice and representing that within a standard format according to the underlying pedagogical pattern principles (Retalis and Goodyear, forthcoming). This series of papers provides a snapshot of current thinking in these fields. The symposium will aim to draw out some common synergies across these fields. These fields are related, but distinct from instructional design research (Spector et al., 2008; Reigeluth et al. 2009); learning design because of its emphasis on the holistic design process and its alignment to a socio-cultural perspective and pedagogical patterns in terms of its derivation from Alexander’s work in Architecture. Designing effective technology-enhanced learning environments in an efficient and affordable way is a demanding task, which requires creativity and a significant amount of expertise [Goodyear, 2002]. On the one hand, people new to e-learning design need advice from experts, experienced peers, and users so as to avoid investing a large amount of resources in ‘re-inventing the wheel’ or in creating solutions that may be educationally ineffective. On the other hand practitioners, instructional designers and content experts need to effectively collaborate for the joint development of learning designs thus leading to an increase of the quality of e-learning provision across Europe. Currently, several initiatives have been set up and a lot of attempts have been made in order to explore conceptualizations of learning designs such as IMS LD, educational modelling languages like EML, learning flow design patterns, pedagogical patterns and of course visual tools for creating learning designs. The learning design research community faces a big challenge: to find powerful ways of providing structured, teacher-friendly, formalized and visual representations of learning designs. The paper is available online from the Open University’s research repository.  References Alevizou, P., R. Galley, et al. (2012). Collectivity, performance and self-representation: analysing Cloudworks as a public space for networked learning and self-reflection. Exploring the theory, pedagogy and practice of networked learning. L. Dirckinck-Holmfeld, V. Hodgson and D. McConnell. New York, Springer: 75 - 98.    

OK! OK! I know I am mad…. but I am thinking of doing another edited book. I’d like to adopt a really open approach to this making draft versions of chapters available for others to comment on. Rhona Sharpe and Helen Beetham have adopted this with their second edition of the ‘Rethinking pedagogies’ book and have made the draft conclusion chapter openly available on Google Docs. So here are my very initial thoughts on content. What are your thoughts on this? Are there any areas that I am missing? Now I just need a catchy title and to get the people I have in mind to agree to be involved in this 1.     Introduction and context   Overview of openness  Open resources  Open courses Open accreditation  Open scholarship  Open research   Overview of practices           Learner experiences        Teacher practices  Digital literacies       Learning design        Pedagogical patterns        Learning spaces  Overview of technologies        Social and participatory media Virtual Learning Environments Mobiles Gesture and ubiquitous technologies  Virtual worlds  Games  Overview of theory and methodology  Socio-cultural perspectives  Virtual ethnography Learning analytics  Actor Network Theory Overview of pedagogies  Associative and e-books Connectivism Rhizomatic learning  Constructivist learning Socially situated learning Assessment Inquiry-based learning Design-Based Research Conclusion 

It’s good to see JIME has been revitalised. Latest issue focuses on Open Educational Resources (OER) and includes a nice introductory piece on the nature of openness by Martin Weller. However, I think it is a shame that JIME hasn’t gone more ‘open’. When it was originally conceived it adopted a totally open review process. Authors knew who the reviewers of their papers were and could engage in a dialogue with them. I found this process very enlightening and felt the papers that went through this process were much stronger as a result. So come on JIME guys, be a bit adventurous! Go truly open! 

  Before the beginning of the Networked Learning conference, I attended a Doctoral studies workshop. It consisted of two parts: a series of short presentations by the students on their research interests and where they were with their work, followed by one-to-one mentoring sessions. I really enjoyed the workshop and it was very interesting to hear the rich and varied range of topics being explored. I found the one-to-one sessions very stimulating and hope that the students found it useful too. Here are some notes on the presentations that I listened to. Brenda Kaulebeck - Concept of connections in online learning environment Concept of networked individualism. Move from individual, independent autonomous learning to social and networked learning. Tensions between community and individual learning. Focus on scholarship. Digital scholarship (Weller, 2012) Focus on what the designers are thinking about and relationship to connectivism, community etc. Knowles, fielding. Short term dialogues over a few days and then longer engagement in e-communities. Participated in a MOOC last semester, didn’t see it as social, much more as individual. Read Barry Wellman - about developing a Personal Network, rather than being part of a community. Concept: Self-directed (Knowles, Tough and Shapiro), collaborative (Wenger) and personal network. Similar to Dron and Anderson’s work on groups, networks and collectives. Granovetter 1973 strong and weak ties.  Chris Jone’s Networked learning - a relational approach (2008). What does the tie itself mean in reality Marquerite Koole - a social constructionist approach to phenomenographic analysis of identity positioning in networked learning Identify positioning thresholds - comes from Meyer and Lands work, notion of threshold crossings, preliminal and liminal experiences, subliminal and post-liminal.  What makes you stop and think about who you are, this is relational in terms of how we are in relation to others. Vygotsky cycle, Gothman, etc. Some of the old literature revisited. People introduce themselves initially by location and institutions and what they know (that becomes who they are). Research questions what kind of troublesome experiences leads doctoral students to trigger changes in their identity and various. Looking for variation of experiences. Categories of experiences. Using discourse analysis and semi-structured interviews. Threshold crossings: stages of liminality. Potter 1996 Gee 2012 were used as the basis of coding. Jane Costello What are the different ways of experiencing online learning community sustainment in HE? What are the participants’ perceptions of guest lecturers’ impact on - sustainment of online learning communities, group activity, enhancements of learning experience, social presence, active engagement, reflectivity in learning How are these perceptions experienced? What are guest lectures’ roles in learner engagement in online learning communities in HE? Asking questions of students, instructor and guest. Analysis Akerlind (2008) four stages: contrast, generalization, separation and fusion. Got about 18/19 students, 5 guests and 2 instructors. Another case this spring which will be fully online. Doing three cases. Michelle Harrison - Evaluating learning activities ID team (6-8) developing distance delivery moving to an online paced-cohort model. Have been able to add a lot more collaborative activities. Develop some guiding principles to improve practice and promote and share/dialogue about our designs. Pilot a learner feedback questionnaire tool and reflect on how this data can be used refined and then incorporated into an evaluative process. Action research approach - participants ID, students and faculty. Research framework - design (perceptions of design), analysis (looking at our learning designs) and evaluation (getting feedback). Design - practices and process; Analysis - current activities, Evaluation - activities. Data collection: ID/faculty - workshops, wikis, survey and faculty input to student survey, Students - pilot survey, 189 delivered, 14 courses, 52 responses, Likert and open-ended questions. Asked students questions about their experiences of independent activities and interactive activities. Didn’t think interactive activities were a good use of their time, although they did like it. Model for change: process, outcomes and practice = praxis Practice-oriented inquiry - Yanchar and Gabbitas, 2010 Building activity templates, embed learner surveys into courses, focus on sharing within the course development teams. What level is the design at?  It’s at course level. What is the relationship between how the course is designed and the teacher teaching? A course can be well designed but badly delivered. As designers we need to be more explicit in terms of what we want them to do with our designs! Jeffery Keefer - Navigating liminality  - experience of being a doctoral student Turners’ work on liminality. Experiences of doctoral students who study at a distance. Specifically those who have problems along the way, liminal periods. Students undergoing change periods. Kiley 2009 Learning journey as multi-dimensional, involving ontological, epistemological, emotional and professional development along with cognitive shifts in understanding. Wisker et al. 2010 Learning journey/rite of passage Purpose to look at experience of doctoral students. Using narrative inquiry - want to understand the story that people are sharing. Constructing identity through storytelling Clandinin and Connelly 2000 Riessman 2008. Storytelling through conversation and dialogue. Found participants through social media. ANT lens Fenwick 2010, Fenwick and Edwards 2010 Fox 2005 Oliver 2011. Preliminary findings Feelings of isolation led to challenges articulating and processing liminal experiences. Liminal experiences were so strong they were relived during an interview. Distance is contested and problematised. Maria Cutajar - Networked learning experience of students in transition to HE - what how and why? Professional practice and thesis project relationship Cohort of ca 70 students (2011-2013), 8 week networked learning course - Basic Computing Principles targeting first year students. Aims: investigating their experience of networked learning Advance NL as a learning approach into the pre-university educational sector. What different NL experiences do they have and make? How do they perceive others as contributors of their learning in NL? Experiences: disconnected, strategic experience, and connected experience. Moira Hunter - Researchscapes in virtual worlds: unpacking researchers’ conceptualization of spatial semiotics Focus on Virtual Worlds and what are they and 3D technologies - Like Secondlife and OpenSim. Not interested in what has been done in the past on identity, design, learning spaces. Interested in the researchers’ path and progress within their own research. From first perception and understanding of this space and how that changes as they work through their research process. Talking about a space that is highly visual. Researcher comes to it with their own understanding and interpretation of the space. Perspectives of research process. See a building in different ways depending on how we come to it. Meaning making of spaces. Terms are not clear - Virtual Worlds, spaces, etc. Do not consider a moodle space as a VW.  Some look at the VW as a container. Whereas actually might it be more appropriate to adopt a more open perspective as others factors will impact on what happens within the space, your socio-cultural background will have an influence. Expansive learning theory, spatial semiotics and phenomenography. What criteria are considered in selecting the space of inquiry by the researchers? How are these selected boundaries transformed if at all in the process of the studies? How, if at all, has the shifting of boundaries enhance the research outcomes?

Tara Fenwich and Judi Marshall did a nice keynote at the Networked Learning Conference. I must admit the talk was a little out of my comfort zone, but in a good and challenging way. Judi raised some thought provoking issues about sustainability and challenged us in the networked learning community to take more account of the challenges facing the planet in terms of climate change. Tara drew on sociomaterial research, which I think has huge potential and application in our field. Lots to ponder over in the coming months. I think it was brave of the conference organisers to include keynotes from outside the field, we need more of this kind of thing.

Nice presentation at the Networked Learning conference by Riina Vuorikari and Yves Punie and others. Here are my notes from the session. Digital natives is a problematic term. Learning networks for professional development Learning analytics in a teachers’ social network Teacher collaboration in the context of networked learning - current eTwinning perspectives and future perspectives Supporting teachers’ networked learning skills for more online engagement Contexts European Schoolnet - created in 1997 based in Brussels network of 30 EU ministries of education eTwinning - community for schools in Europe, started 2005 Portal for teachers in Europe 133088 active members, inspiring teachers and professional development and tools for collaboration and rewards Bruer et al 2009 School collaboration Projects can be of any kind and length Spreading a positive virus called pedagogical innovation Those not connected don’t get the virus and are not collaborating with others ETwinning reach = number of eTwinners/number of teachers ca. 160, 000 schools On average 2.64% of EU teachers are eTwinners Countries have very big differences big community in Estonia whereas very low in Germany Can map to Rogers diffusion of innovation curve still mainly innovators and early adopters Tellnet project - to better understand how social learning networks can support teachers’ competence building Methods: longitudinal studies using authentic eTwinning data, SNA, visualization techniques, scenario forecasting exercises TALIS< OECD, 2009 Teachers’ co-operation teachers working together: a statistical factor analysis. Two types of activity: exchange and coordination and deeper collaboration Can drill down and find out the nature of these two types of activities. Social capital Burt 1992 Human capital ability to perform tasks, Social capital social environment surrounding individual Social capital as a property of individuals - position in SN that are ore efficient in performing tasks (ie local structures) and groups - structure of members betwork that makes the group functions more efficient Used SNA metrics and a development model The performance of teachers and projects recognized by quality labels Network structure of projects and position of teachers - identified via networks created by several communication mechanisms (message, project collaboration, blog) Two forms of social capital - structural holes vs. closure Structural holes nodes are positioned at the interface between groups, informational advantages access to information from different parts of the network, from novel ideas by combining information from different groups, control the communication between groups Closure - nodes are embedded in tightly knit groups, more trust and security within coherent communities Coleman 1990 - Social capital - individual and groups deriving benefits from social relationships, network structural property - either structural hole or closure At what stage is the members’ network of a given group? How does it relate to the performance of the group? Can trace stages of development: born, bonding, emergence to interdisciplinary, Hierarchical and focused.  Pham et al. 2011 Density: fraction of actual edges in the network Global clustering coefficient Maximum betweenness: highest betweenness of nodes Largest connected component: fraction of nodes in largest connected component IPTS research: Significant change in what, how where and when we learn

Terry Anderson and Jon Dron gave an excellent and highly entertaining keynote at the Networked Learning conference this week. They focused on their concept of the four generations of Distance Education pedagogies. They describe this work in more detail in a special issue of IRRODL on connectivism. Here are my notes from the session. Agenda The nature of technologies and pedagogies Reviewing generations of DE and pedagogy Aligning them with groups, sets and nets (Dron and Anderson, 2007) Case study using Athabasca’s landing ELGG installation Here are the slides for Jon and Terry’s session It’s hardly easy to be softly hard: freedom and control in learning spaces View more presentations from jondron Overview Generations of distance learning pedagogies (open/closes, hard/soft) Instructivist - self-paced, individual study, etc. Social constructivist - groups, classes, etc. Connectivist -  networks, MOOCs, etc Holist - sets and collectives   P1. The next generation learning evolves form and with past generations P2. Different structures/pedagogies/technologies wth different affordance and degrees of hardness affect our use. McClunan Learning as a Dance (Anderson 2008) Technologies set the beat and the timing, pedagogy defines the moves. Technologies The orchestration of phenomena to some use (Arthur, 2009). Assemblies of hard and soft components. Technologies exist in relation to get other. Technologies are assemblies. Pedagogies are among the soft components of all learning technologies. A pen can be used for an infinite number of pedagogies. Writing and reading are technologies, as is language. Technologies Soft Hard The adjacent possible Flexibility and freedom Creativity Orchestration of phenomena by humans Path dependencies Freedom from error Uniformity Orchestration of phenomena embedded The different is the degree of human involvement. Soft is hard (its difficult), Hard is easy.  Soft technologies enable us to be creative. Behavioural/Cognitive Pedagogies - Instructivist Tell ‘em what your going to tell ‘em. Tell ‘em and tell ‘em what you told them - Direct Instruction movement (ISD). Enhanced by the cognitive revolution - chunking, cognitive load, working memory, multiple representations, split-attention effect, variability effect, Sorden 2005 - multi-media effect. Greeno, Collins and Resnick, 1996 Behaviorist /Cognitive thinking - knowledge as a thing, context free, can be transmitted, logically coherent, readily defined through closed systems with discernable relationships between input and output Technologies - videos, lectures, text books, video and audio broadcast, course packages. Knewton - continous adpativity Social focus of ist generation - individual learner Instructivist freedoms - subject, delegability (choosing to choose), technology, approach (how - pedagogy process), sociability, pace, time and location. M. Paulsen Future of 1st generation OERU, limitless, very low cost content, challenges of accreditation, The (forever?) just around the corner, ‘learner adaptation’ technologies. The great courses content, interactive MIT courses, value of courses is dropping. Give aways - Issues in Distance Education series - http://aupress.ca Seven books available. Second generation DE - social constructivist pedagogy Continuum conversation with the external world and tis artefacts with oneself and with other learners and teachers Groups as the social unit of SC pedagogy Why groups? Students who learner in small groups demonstrate greater academic achievement Springer Stanne and Donovan 1999 p. 42 Problems with groups: Restriction in time, space , pace and relationship, not open, Confined by the leaders expectation, usually isolated from the authentic world of practice, low tolerance of differences, Bron 2005 Group think, Cousin and Deepwell 2005, Poor preparation for LLL beyond the course, unscalable. Group model - membership and exclusion, closed, Hierarchies of control, focus on collaboration and shared purpose, teachers - guides. Freedoms for control of learning are different Trusts both opens and constrains. Typically a structure process. But: opportunities for negotiation of control, shifting boundaries, diversity valorized, big issue - getting it just right for everyone (assessment?) Third generation - connectivist pedagogy Learning is building capacity. Emergent, distributed and diverse, chaotic, fragmented, non-sequential and contexualised. Connected knowledge. Barth 2004. Knowledge is defined by its creation through activities - accessing information, evaluation, filtering, conveying ides. Burt 2005 Brockerage and closure. Networks celebrate and stimulate cognitive diversity. Arises when have diff types of info and knowledge perspectives, diff ways of viewing the world, diff ways of categorizing a problem, heuristics yielding diff ways of solving problems Fisher 2009 Technologies - networks, bottom-up, open, inclusive, focus on individual and connections, teachers - role models and co-travelers, change.mooc.ca People who live in the intersection of social worlds are at greater risk of having good ideas’ (Burt) The network is not an analogy of how we think, it is how we think Siemens Much more connectivist freedoms MOOCs aren’t courses, they are opportunities for learning, learner has a lot of individual freedom and control Limitless assembly, limitless choice, limitless dialogue, but too soft. Connectivism is the pedagogy of infinity But do learning networks really work? Network ghost towns, build it and they may come or not Weinberger’s new book ‘Too big to know’ Fear of open spaces, Internet is what you get when everyone is a curator and everything is linked. Very disruptive. Lost is social space! Choice! = control Its not just about networks Set model Cooperation, anonymity, focus on filtering and selection, hashtag is about sets, tags and categorization, teachers: analysers, curators and publishers, analytics, collectives. Pinterest. Nets (MOOCs, blogs, LinkedIn, social networks), groups (classes, LMS, tutorial groups) and sets (Wikipedia, twitter, pinterest, google search) are different 4th generation of learning pedagogy Reducing choices to only those choices that learners want or need to make. People need to make meaningful choices. 1st - 4th generation from closed to open, from hard to soft! Holist freedoms have a high degree of control over the different aspects of learning. How holist? Plenty, openness (resources, people), soft and malleable systems, feedback loops, stigmery, social navigations, sociability, adaptive hypermedia, collaborative filtering, learning and process analytics, hard when wanted, soft when not, Structure and infrastructure. The collective - emergent structure, individual behaviour. Etc. The Matthew effect the richer get richer, following the wrong trails, cold start problems, context separation, mob stupidity. Testing these theories out at Athabasca. The landing platform - ELGG. It’s a walled garden. A private space for AU but has windows. User controlled creative space, Boutique social system. Networking, blogging, photos, microblogging, polls calendars, groups, etc., differentiating and merging world from school, form fun. ! It’s a soft space. It malleable space. Multiple rationales. Have nets, sets and groups within this landing platform. Popular activities - blogs, files, wire posts, bookmarks, discussion topics, wiki, photo page. It’s not a product it’s a process. Tara Fenwick - opening up small spaces within what exists. Current user bas 3250 users (out of 42000 people). References Dron, J. and T. Anderson (2007). Collectives, networks and groups in social software for e-Learning. Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education Quebec. Retrieved Feb. 16: 2008.      

I am doing a seminar at Plymouth University on the 18th April. I thought it might be fun to adopt a crowdsourcing approach to gathering material for the event. I would of course acknowledge all contributions. Don’t know how this will work but thought it might be fun as an experiment. The topic is digital liteacies and creativity. So…. Contributions here please!

I was supposed to be doing a keynote at the ALDinHE conference in Leeds last week, but stupidly managed to double book myself. Luckily they got Helen Beetham as a replacement. By way of apology I have created a slidecast of the talk that I would have given. There is also an article to accompany the talk in the ALDinHE journal.  Conole al din_he View another webinar from Grainne Conole

The blog post is a work up of a talk I gave in the School of Education at Plymouth University on the 18th April 2012.  Conole plymouth View more PowerPoint from Grainne Conole Jenkins (2009) lists eleven digital literacies which he argues are needed to be part of what he terms today’s participatory culture. They are: play, collective intelligence, judgment, transmedia navigation, networking, negotiation, distributed intelligence, multitasking, appropriation, simulation and performance. I would add a twelfth, creativity. This list demonstrates the complex way in which we interact in digital networks and represents the set of skills we need to be able to harness and appropriate the affordances (Gibson 1979; Conole and Dyke 2004) of social and participatory media. Together these digital literacies enable us to find and manage information and to communicate and collaborate with others. These media offer rich multimedia representations and there are a plethora of ways in which we can interact and connect with others. The statistics associated with social media are truly profound as this short YouTube video demonstrates.[1] The figures are truly staggering; for example if facebook was a country it would be the third largest in the world. Clearly social and participatory media have significant potential to foster new approaches to learning, teaching and research, however to be used effectively we, as learners, teachers and researchers, need to develop a complex new set of digital literacy skills. Technologies have transformed everything we do; from the way we find information to the ways in which we connect with others. Arguably anything we want to know or learn is available somewhere on the net. As John Naughton argues, disruption is a feature of the net, not a bug (Naughton 2012).  New technologies have a unique set of characteristics: networked, distributed, peer reviewed and open, they are complex, dynamic and evolving - we co-evolve with the technologies, appropriating them into our everyday practice. Your network and who you connect with defines you.  A number of useful reports give summaries of these new technologies and their implications for education, for example the NSF-commissioned report on Cyberlearning (Borgeman, Abelson et al. 2008), a review of Web 2.0 tools in HE (Conole and Alevizou 2010) and more recently the IPTS report on digital competences (Ala-Mutka 2012). Digital competence is defined as: The confident, critical and creative use of ICT to achieve goals related to work, employability, learning, leisure, inclusion and/or participation in society (Ala-Mutka, 2012:1). The IPTS report describes how new technologies are being used for work, leisure and communication, arguing that the network is the key.  It also recognizes that new technologies are more participatory, promoting more open practices. However it also states that the digital divide (Norris 2001; Warschauer 2004) is still present - arguably narrower, but deeper. What are the implications of not being part of the net, when increasingly more and more information is only available online? The report outlines a digital competency framework, consisting of three aspects: information skills and knowledge, advanced skills and knowledge and attitudes. These can be broken down into the following components: Operational skills and knowledge - referring to the technical aspects of digital tools, such as using a mouse or manipulating particular tools. Medium-related skills and knowledge - referring to understanding how to purposefully and safely use specific media.  Communication and collaboration - referring to the ability to effectively express and communicate, as well as understanding the potential and limitations of different media. Information management - referring to navigating the wealth of information available online and making informed judgments about which resources are appropriate in different contexts. Learning and problem solving - referring to acquisition of the skills needed to harness digital tools for learning, working and problem solving. Meaningful participation - referring to the ability to find and participate in digital activities, either individually or in collaboration with others. Intercultural and collaborative attitude - referring to the ability to be culturally sensitive and able to participate with others from different cultures in an appropriate manner. Critical attitude - referring to the ability to critically reflect on the quality and provenance of things they find on the net. Creative attitude - referring to the ability to adopt creative practices in harnessing technologies for learning, work and leisure activities, encouraging open and participatory approaches. Responsible attitude - referring to the need to be aware of the visibility and potential consequences of one’s own digital activities. Autonomous attitude - referring to the fact that the internet is not structured and has no rules or monitoring. Each individual needs to be clear of their own objectives and find and choose appropriate tools and resources to meet these objectives. The report also lists the benefits in terms of: social, health, economic, civic, cultural and societal. Although it also points out that there are a number of implications/risks, in terms of: personal safety and privacy, the need to act responsibly, ethically and legally, understanding the nature of digital media and issues associated with inequalities. It is interesting to reflect on how each of us are using these technologies and which are core to our daily practice. Beyond email and general use of the web, there as a number of core tools I now use on a regular basis. I have been blogging now since 2007.[2] Blogging has become an important part of my professional practice. I blog about ideas in development, reports on conferences and project meetings, pointers to interesting research and articles and draft publications. Blogging now sits as a step towards completed publications such as articles or books, and is a good way of working up ideas and getting comments from the wider research community. I use Endnote to manage references and have now built up a comprehensive library of references. Diigo  and ScoopIt are useful as a means of keeping track of interesting links on the web. In terms of social networking I am an active user of Twitter with more than 4,000 followers. I also use facebook extensively, the later for more social interactions and the former for more professional activities. Clearly such tools have enormous potential, but not everyone is comfortable with blogging or participating in social networks. Indeed many have very strong views against these technologies, arguing that they are trivial and raise a host of ethical and privacy issues. A body of research has emerged in recent years around the competences and skills needed to effectively use and interact with new technologies. Terms such as digital literacies, information literacies, 21st Century literacies have been used; each with subtle nuances and different foci (Jenkins, 2009; Goodfellow and Lea, 2007l Lankshear and Knobel, 2006). Literacies can be seen as a continuum from instrumental skills to productive competence and efficiency. Lankshear and Knobel (2006) adopt a ocio-cultural view of digital literacy and argue that they are the set of social practices and meaning making associated with interacting with digital tools. Fundamentally the central issue is about the literacies needed to communicate with others and make sense of information (and more specifically how to do this in a digital context). Returning now to Jenkins list of digital literacies, I will now expand on some of the terms and demonstrate how they are realised through use of digital technologies. The web is complex and vast, transmedia navigation is a key skill needed to be able to navigate this terrain. Arguably any information we want is available on the web, but finding appropriate resources and tools and evaluating their relevance is non-trivial. A good example of this is how learners are interacting in a new form of open and free courses, termed MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Developed by Siemens and Downes  MOOCs have now been running for four years or so. Anyone can participate in these courses, which are organized into chunks of materials and resources around particular topics over a number of months. Thousands sign up to participate in these courses, although the number that complete them and get any form of accreditation is much larger. Evaluation of users’ perceptions of these MOOCs indicates that many get lost easily and find participation far from satisfying. The sheer size and complexity of MOOCs is overwhelming; with each learner having to define their own personal learning environment and learning pathway through the course. Distributed cognition was defined by Saloman in the nineties (Salomon 1993). In essence this refers to the fact that our cognition is distributed between ours brains and our digital environment. We increasingly use a range of information management tools to collate and aggregate relevant resources, we harness our social networks in terms of getting answers to queries and participating in ongoing discourses and shared co-construction of knowledge. We are no longer isolated individuals, but part of a global distributed network of others and tools. Anyone who has seen children interacting with technologies, will agree that play is an essential digital literacies. Children don’t reach for a manual when starting to use a new tool, they simply start to interact and explore, learning through playing. This active, learner-centred approach is a key facet of new technologies and increasingly the interfaces of new tools are intuitive and self-explanatory. Play can be mapped to particular pedagogical approaches such as role-play and problem solving. A nice example comes from the SWIFT project,[3] which has developed a virtual Genetics laboratory in SecondLife. To orientate new users to the environment there is a maze that the users walk through, there are various activities they complete along the way and by the end of the maze they are equipped with the basic skills needed to interact in the environment. They can then enter and interact with the Genetics laboratory, playing with instruments, taking measurements and learning basic laboratory techniques. Networking is also a key characteristic of new technologies; the nature of your network and how you use it defines who you are in digital space. A network is only meaningful if you are connected to those with shared interests. Furthermore, it is important to give as well as take, active participation is expected. Within each social network we interact with others in a variety of ways. With both facebook and Twitter, I have a number of ‘onion layers’ of those I interact with; there is an inner core of friends and followers who I interact with on a regular basis and then a set of layers of users I interact with less and less, and finally those that follow me, but that I don’t follow. Collective intelligence refers to the ability to be able to work with others to solve a problem or aggregate a set of resources. A good example of harnessing the distributed collective intelligence of the network is the work being done as part of the iSpot project,[4] on promoting scientific awareness. It is an online site where users can share and discuss sightings of fauna and flora around the UK.   The site is an excellent example of collective intelligence (Lévy 1997) and harnessing the power of the masses, as it enables the capture of sightings of flora and fauna from around the country on changes in patterns of nature that can then feed into ongoing research activities. Once registered, a user can add an observation to the Website, suggest an identification, or see if anyone else can identify the species. Users can also contribute to existing observations and there is a forum to stimulate debate. Despite the overall look and feel of the site being focussed on ‘fun’, it feeds directly into real research activities and also enables users to transfer their informal learning/interests into more formal educational offerings if they wish. Evaluation of the use of the site indicates that it is increasing general interest in science and is also resulting in users then signing up for more formal courses (Clow and Makriyannis 2011). The data collected on the site is being used by scientists and is providing them with a rich understanding of the changing ecology across the UK. Galaxy Zoo[5] is a similar initiative. The general public are invited to help astronomy researchers to categorise and chart the galaxy, using thousands of images derived from the Hubble Space Telescope Archive.   Performance is about how you present yourself on the web and the ways in which you interact with others. We each need to find our own digital identity and voice. Some choose to adopt a very professional stance, others are more light hearted. We each need to decide the degree to which we want to adopt open practices; what we share with others and the extent to which we share our experiences and activities. I have a very open approach to the way in which I interact with others online, I share my ideas and thoughts as I go, pass on interesting ideas and references received from other, ask queries of the network, as well as providing useful feedback to others. For researchers social and participatory media offer a rich set of ways in which we can communicate and discuss our research outputs. They extend the reach of the audience; a paper in a closed journal might at best be read by a handful of readers, in contrast a blog post can be virally communicated to thousands in a nano second. There are now a number of new tools emerging that can provide some indication of an individual’s research impact. For example Google Citation Indicator gives the H factor for an individual, along with a ranked listing of their most cited papers. It is evident to me that these kinds of tools will be used increasingly within institutions in terms of promotion and at a national level in terms of things like research assessment exercises. Whether you like it or not, your digital footprint is there and is being monitored.   In addition to Jenkin’s list of digital literacies I would add creativity as an important skill in harnesses the potential of new technologies. Creativity derives from the Latin word, ‘crea’, which means to create or make something. It is about creating something new (either a physical artefact or a concept) that is both novel and valuable. It is about the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, partners, and relationships, and create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods and interpretations. I would argue that it is an essential skill to deal with today’s complex, fast and changing society. Technologies offer a wealth of ways to foster creativity; they provide a range of ways for us to communicate and collaborate with others. There are four aspects to creativity: ·        Process: mechanisms needed for creative thinking ·        Product: measuring creativity in people ·        Person: general intellectual habits (openness, ideas of ideation, autonomy, expertise, exploratory and behavioural) ·        Place: best circumstances to enable creativity to flourish.   There are five stages of creativity: ·        Preparation: identifying the problem ·        Incubation: internalisation of the problem ·        Intimation: getting a feeling for a solution ·        Illumination: creativity burst forth ·        Verification: idea is consciously verified, elaborated and applied   Wall (2009) argues that creativity is the new technology: I think that the 21st century will be a century of creativity in the same way that the 20th was of technology. Much of the creativity, interestingly enough, will be based on the tools provided by technology, especially tools that allow us to create, collaborate and communicate.   Along with the eleven digital literacies identified by Jenkins, creativity enables learners to connect and co-constructive meaning in rich authentic environments. iCreaNet (http://www.imv.au.dk/icreanet/) is a global research network of educational researchers focusing on support for development of creative skills in higher educational contexts. Fundamental to the work of the group is seeing ICT resources and environments as crucial means of providing the flexibility and diversity necessary to facilitate creative development and to bring education up to speed with the way that citizens of the earth learn and enhance themselves in the contexts of their daily lives in the 21st century. Conclusion This post has explored the types of digital literacies that are needed by learners, teachers and researchers to exploit the potential of new technologies and to enable them to connect and communicate in a plethora of ways. The digital literacies needed are far more participatory and interactive, the distributed network of others that we connect with is as important as the way in which we access and use information on the Internet. We each need to identify our own digital voice and identity, how we want to be perceived and how we want to interact with others. Used effectively social and participatory media offer a powerful means of us communicating and developing our ideas. References Ala-Mutka, K. (2012). Mapping digital competence: towards a conceptual understanding. IPTS report. Saville. Borgeman, C., H. Abelson, et al. (2008). Fostering learning in the networked world: the cyberlearning opportunity and challenge, Report of the NSF task force on cyberlearning. Clow, D. and E. Makriyannis (2011). iSpot analysed: participatoiry learning and reputation. 1st learning analytics and knowledge conference, Banff, Canada. Conole, G. and P. Alevizou (2010) "Review of the use(s) of Web 2.0 in Higher Education." Conole, G. and M. Dyke (2004). "What are the affordances of information and communication technologies?" ALT-J 12(2): 113-124 %U http://oro.open.ac.uk/6981/. Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associated. Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century, Mit Pr. Lankshear, C. and M. Knobel (2006). "Digital literacies: Policy, pedagogy and research considerations for education." Nordic Journal of digital literacy 1(1): 226. Lévy, P. (1997). Collective intelligence: Mankind’s emerging world in cyberspace, Perseus Books Cambridge, MA, USA. Naughton, J. (2012). From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, what you really need to know  about the internet. Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the Internet worldwide, Cambridge Univ Pr. Salomon, G., Ed. (1993). Distributed cognitions - pyschological and educational considerations. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Wall, R. (2009). "Creativity is the new technology." Zen and the art of being rob http://robwall.ca/2009/03/10/creativity-is-the-new-technology/. Warschauer, M. (2004). Technology and social inclusion: Rethinking the digital divide, the MIT Press.     [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eUeL3n7fDs   [2] http://e4innovation.com   [3] http://www2.le.ac.uk/projects/swift/   [4] http://ispot.org.uk   [5] http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

This is an update of my previous post on our 7Cs of learning design framework. We have now trialled aspects of this with three different groups: teachers in South Africa via a two-week online workshop - through a range of synchronous and asynchronous activities, in a face-to-face workshop with colleagues in Leicester on our new Masters programme and yesterday with teachers in Aalborg University. Conole learning design_final View another webinar from Grainne Conole