ePortfolio in Europe – starting a cooperation network
Just recently we have started a Call for a European Consortium “European ePortfolio Network”. Our aim is to establish a network of actors involved in the design and implementation of ePortfolio policies, technologies and practice. As we would like to submit a proposal to the European Comission (3-year project), we are looking for both consortium partners and associate partners wishing to work with us on developing the European network and making European ePortfolio initiatives more visible, especially in terms of comparative national reports.
Here are some preliminary ideas on how we would like to make it happen:
Year 1: ePortfolio European inventory
Y1 is mainly focused on gathering intelligence on past, current and future ePortfolio and ePortfolio-related initiatives. The outcome of this collection of data will result in an interactive database/wiki that will facilitate the retrieval, aggregation, comparison and update of information related to ePortfolios. Making visible ePortfolio initiatives should result in the emergence of informal networks that will be formalised Y2.
Year 2: National and Thematic Reports
Based on the information gathered Y1, Y2 is mainly focused on the publication of national and thematic reports on the state of the art of ePortfolio practice and technologies, green and white papers. The publication of national reports, green and white papers will be organised through public consultation with all ePortfolio actors and should result in the creation of national/regional/sectoral/thematic networks, or their reinforcement where they exist. National reports will be published in national languages with executive reports in English, while thematic reports will be published in English with executive reports in national languages.
Year 3: Self-Sustainable European Network
Based on national and thematic reports, a number of public initiatives will be held: meetings, workshops seminars, conferences, plugfests etc. These events will be the opportunity to establish collaboration across actors to discuss further and implement the visions and ideas contained in the national reports, green and white papers. At the end of Y3 Europortfolio should become fully self-sustainable through the revenue generated by its activities (workshops, conferences, projects) and membership fees (individuals, organisations) collected by national chapters.
The initial summary of the proposal is accessible at http://tinyurl.com/7ddhs73. If you are interested to join as a partner or associated partner, you are invited to provide details using an online form accessible at: http://tinyurl.com/7hrxghs. Responses will be used to update the Summary and to invite partners to join as Partner or Associate Partner.
Your ideas, feedback and support on making a European ePortfolio Network happen are very welcome!*
Ilona Buchem (Beuth University, Germany) and Serge Ravet (ADPIOS, France)
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*We look forward to your comments, emails or as entries in the online form: http://tinyurl.com/7hrxghs
Digital Games for Empowerment & Inclusion
I have been inited to the expert workshop on Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion” taking place in Seville, 23-24 January 2012. This workshop is part of the “Digital Games for Empowerment & Inclusion” (DGEI) programme, which is initiated and run by the European Commission’s Information Society Unit of the JRC-IPTS and DG INFSO ICT for Inclusion Unit. The programme started with the analysis of the State of Play of Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion, which aim is to:
“(…) to define key (technological, research, policy, industry/market, social, economic) opportunities and challenges of putting Digital Games at the service of empowerment and social inclusion purposes, and to gather evidence of impact in this domain.”
The aim of the forthcoming DGEI Expert Workshop in Seville is to:
“(…) discuss lessons learned, key drivers, opportunities and limitations of different approaches, practice and policy initiatives already in place, as well as to define the main issues to be addressed taking stock of existing knowledge and results from the field.”
I am really honored to be part of the DGEI programme and to be able to present some good/best practice “Made in Germany” and worldwide.
My goal is to collect good practice examples on how digital games can support empowerment and inclusion of groups at risk of social inclusion in three major areas, i.e.:
- Adult literacy with focus on improving mastery of reading and writing
- Participation with focus on social participaton of young people
- Employability with focus on changing unemployment/precarious work situation
I will be very greatful to all of you for hints of good practice related to digital games in these three domains. What I am looking for are especially evaluation outcomes or any other evidence that digital game projects can support social inclusion.
Thank you for your comments on that!
PLE Conference 2012
Call for Papers for the PLE Conference 2012 is online! Just follow this link: http://pleconf.org/call-for-papers/:
The conference organisers welcome 1200 word extended abstracts for full papers or 700 words for short papers, posters and doctoral consortium panel participation (please check important dates). Submissions for other types of presentation, such as Pecha Kucha, workshops, symposia, demonstrations and installations are also encouraged (please be patient and wait for a separate call on that).
> For more on the Conference and Call for Papers you can also visit the Pontydysgu website.
This year the PLE Conference will be held simultaneously in Aveiro, Portugal (Universidade de Aveiro) and Melbourne, Australia (Deakin University)! Bringing together PLE communites from two different parts of the world is really exciting! As we are brainsorming for come creative solutions – your ideas on how to enhance interaction are very welcome!
The conference will take place from July 11th to 13th 2012 – so mark your calendar!
We are also currently working on two special editions for the DER and IJVPLE journal. As the reviewing process is already under way, selected submissions from the PLE Conference 2011 will be published in one of both journals soon.As we will keep on working on the programme in the next weeks, it’s best to keep in touch via Twitter – hashtag #PLEConf - and to visit the official website – http://pleconf.org - for updates.
For publication of selected papers from the PLE Conference 2010 check the special edition of Digital Education Review on Personal Learning Environments.
Let’s keep the ball rolling!
Gamification in Education 2012
the application of concepts and techniques from games to other areas of activity.
“With the current state of school budgets, teachers interested in gamification can’t depend on state funding to provide their class with the technology needed for video games. No matter how good a system, any gamification platform that relies on technology is sadly out of reach for many classrooms. We need a method for teachers to implement game mechanics into their classroom without adding to the financial burden. Any other solution, no matter how engaging, isn’t scalable.”
“Quest to Learn has purposely responded not only to the growing evidence that digital media and games offer powerful models for reconsidering how and where young people learn, but also to the belief that access for all students to these opportunities is critical.”
Learning today happens everywhere, not just in the classroom. But it’s often difficult to get recognition for skills and achievements that happen outside of school. Mozilla’s Open Badges project is working to solve that problem, making it easy for anyone to issue, earn and display badges across the web — through a shared infrastructure that’s free and open to all.
“Gamification, by contrast, doesn’t rely on internal motivation. Instead, it’s using the oldest tricks in the book: providing instantaneous feedback, egging on the competition, and rewarding even tiny steps of progress. Gamification assumes that the player isn’t especially motivated — at least at the beginning — and then provides barrels of incentives to ramp up that motivation.”
- Gabe Zichermann author of the book “Gamification by design“
- Jane McGonigal author of the book “Reality is broken”
- Jon Radoff author of the book “Game On”
- Sebastian Deterding running the “Gamification Research Network“
Hope you find this useful too …
Web 2.0 and Expansive Learning – A Case Study
While curating Online Educa Berlin on Storify, I completly forgot to write a blog entry on my own presentation titled:
“Web 2.0 and Expansive Learning: Shifts in Learning Culture? Case Study ‘Minerva’”
The case study I presented comes from the research project “Mediencommunity 2.0″, where a user nicknamed “Minerva” moderated a group of over 400 learners preparing collaboratively for a final exam at the end of dual vocational education. What I was interested to find out in this study was what motivated Minerva to devote her time beside her school and work duties to design learning tasks, help others find solutions and moderate the whole process of learning together in a distributed, virtual learning group.
I based my qualitative research on the theory of expansive learing. Here is a short intro from my extended abstract I submitted to Online Educa 2011:
“Expansive Learning is part of the subject-scientific theory of learning, which views learning as a socio-cultural activity underlying human development. Expansive learning, which is closely related to the activity theory (Engeström, 2001), refers to learning directed towards extending current action and control possibilities of a subject. The counter-concept “defensive learning” within this theory, relates to learning motivated by the intention to avoid negative effects such as punishment or social sanctions (Holzkap, 1993). Learning is likely to be expansive when a person wants to understand or achieve something but cannot due to limitations in understanding or capabilities. In this case a person experiences a discrepancy between current and intended state. This discrepancy arises from subjective interests which motivate the person to want to act in order to overcome the experienced discrepancy. In this case the person becomes a “center of intentionality”, being driven by own reasons and meanings. Learning is then likely to be defensive when a person is not driven by own interests but feels forced to take action to escape negative consequences, such as poor grades. This type of learning is not sustainable and often results in feelings of powerlessness, stress or fear. Holzkamp (1993) argues that both education and research do not pay enough attention to subjective reasons to learn and thus do not foster expansive learning sufficiently. He postulates a radical person-oriented approach, focusing on learners as intentional subjects rather than objects of teaching and research.”
If you are interested in this case study, have a look at the presentation emedded below.
I am also planning a more in-depth publication in Englisch and in German. Just have to look for the right journal to publish. Any hints?
Online Educa Berlin 2011 – curated & storified
Online Educa Berlin 2011 was grrrrrr
reat as ever. I have soaked so many impressions again that it is just impossible to write a single blog post about it. That’s why I have just started to curate a topic – Online Educa 2011 – on Storify.
Below is the link to some of the most valuable resources that I would just like to keep for me and share with others. Hope you will find it useful:
Online Educa Berlin 2011 on Storify curated by @mediendidaktik
@bbetts re-tweeted during OEB11: RT @Bilsen: One of the biggest challenges will not be anymore about content development but rather how to organise the curation proces #OEB11
Yep.
I have just managed to sort things out for the pre-conference and the first conference day. I will be adding other information on the last day soon. Stay tuned!
BTW: When using Storify for curating this topic I have noticed some shortcomings of this tool, such as:
- I can’t tag entries and show tags in a cloud
- The editor is very weak
- People can’t comment or add own content to my story
- Some URLs won’t show
- There are too few sources to choose from (e.g. SlideShare is missing)
- The Tweets can be traced back only 1-2 days behind
Maybe you could recommend another curation/storytelling tool to me that outperforms storify in these points? Thanx for comments!
Social Learning #solea11
Mein Beitrag zu #Solea11 ist ein wenig verspätet und dennoch möchte ich noch zu der spannenden Diskussion im Rahmen der Blogparade #Solea11 beitragen. Ich habe mich sehr gefreut als ich über diese Initiative erfahren habe und hoffe, dass die Organisatoren und die Autoren viele interessante Erkenntnisse daraus gewonnen haben. Vielen Dank an Cornelie Picht für die Einladung.
Soweit die kurze Einführung. Nun meine Position zum Thema „Social Learning“:
Social Learning ist ein vielschichtiger Begriff und kann m.E. im weiteren und im engeren Sinne betrachtet werden. Im weiteren Sinne bedeutet Social Learning das gemeinsame Lernen in Gruppen, Netzwerken, Communities. Sicherlich haben Menschen seit je her gemeinsam mit anderen gelernt. Dass soziales Lernen bei unterschiedlich organisierten und industrialisierten Gemeinschaften die Grundlage des Lernens darstellt, wissen wir u.a. aus der ethnographischen Forschung (z.B. die Arbeiten von Lave und Wenger). Auch aus der entwicklungspsychologischen Perspektive wurde mehrmals die Rolle des sozialen Lernens für die Entwicklung des Menschen, vor allem in den ersten Monaten/Jahren des Lebens, betont (z.B. die Arbeiten von Donald Winnicott). Soziales Lernen steht im Zentrum u.a. sozialkognitivistischer (u.a. Bandura) und sozialkonstruktivistischer (u.a. Vygotsky) Ansätze. Dass sich mehrere Wissenschaftler und Disziplinen mit sozialem Lernen schon länger beschäftigen bedeutet jedoch nicht, dass wir bereits alles über soziales Lernen wissen oder dass „soziales Lernen nichts Besonderes“ wäre. Ganz im Gegenteil: Wie die neuste Forschung in sozialen Neurowissenschaften, z.B. zur sozialen Kognition, zeigt, bleibt soziales Lernen ein spannendes Thema, bei dem es noch viel zu entdecken gibt (hier möchte ich vor allem die Arbeiten von António Damásio erwähnen).
Social Learning im engeren Sinne gibt dann es mehrmals. Dieser Begriff wird für verschiedene Lernformen in unterschiedlichen Kontexten verwendet. Hier drei ausgewählte Beispiele: Im Bereich der sozialen Arbeit wird der Begriff „Social Learning“ als Synonym für das Lernen durch soziales Engagement verwendet. In diesem Kontext wird soziales Lernen vor allem als Grundlage und/oder Ergebnis von „Service Learning“, „Civic Engagement“, „Citizen Participation“ und „Community Empowerment“ verstanden. Soziales Lernen als Begriff gibt es auch im Kontext des organisationalen Lernens. Insbesondere im Bezug auf das Konzept der „lernenden Organisation“ wird soziales Lernen als kollektives Lernen, kollektive Reflexion, Organisationsintelligenz und Organisationsgedächtnis aus Perspektive der Organisationsentwicklung diskutiert. Und dann gibt es auch den Begriff „Social Learning“ im Kontext von E-Learning vor allem E-Learning 2.0. Und auf diesen Anwendungskontext läuft die Diskussion bei #solea11 hinaus.
Was ist also das Besondere am Social Learning im Kontext von E-Learning 2.0? Ich möchte gerne hier zwei folgende Punkte erwähnen:
Lernen durch soziale Vernetzung: Im Gegensatz zu den vorherigen E-Learning-Ansätzen, die man vereinfacht als „E-Learning 1.0“ bezeichnen könnte, gibt es mit dem Aufkommen von Social Media/Web 2.0 eine Tendenz dazu, Lernen als Ergebnis der sozialen Vernetzung zu betrachten. Um den Unterschied mal plakativ darzustellen: während das Augenmerk beim E-Learning 1.0 darauf ausgerichtet war, die Inhalte und Lernwege intelligent zu strukturieren, so dass die Lernenden möglichst effizient ein von „Experten“ festgelegtes Soll erreichen, steht beim E-Learning 2.0 vor allem die Förderung der Vielfalt der Zugänge zum Lernen über die Verknüpfungen im sozialen Netzwerk im Vordergrund. Dabei wird die Rolle der Emergenz, die sich aus den Eigendynamiken der sozialen Beziehungen ergibt, betont. Das „Soll“ wird nicht zwingend vorgegeben. Lernergebnisse entstehen dank der sozialen Vernetzung.
Lernen als soziale Vernetzung: Im E-Learning 2.0 wird das Lernen nicht nur als Ergebnis sondern auch als Prozess der sozialen Vernetzung angesehen. Das Erstellen von Inhalten in einem Netzwerk/einer Community, das gegenseitige Kommentieren von Beiträgen in Blogs, das gemeinsame Erstellen von Inhaltsstrukturen in Wikis werden bereits als wertvolle Lernprozesse angesehen. Zugespitzt gesagt: Während beim E-Learning 1.0 die Lernenden alleine vor dem Rechner WBTs bearbeitet haben, lernt man beim E-Learning 2.0 durch Austausch mit anderen Menschen in Social Media.
Eine spannende Entwicklung zu Social Learning sehe ich auch in der Übertragung der Prinzipien von E-Learning 2.0 auf die herkömmlichen Bildungsszenarien, z.B. in der Hochschullehre. Hier gibt es mehrere Versuche (oft mit einem Experiment-Charakter), die Prinzipien von Kollaboration, Offenheit und Mitbestimmung durch den Einsatz von Web 2.0 in klassischen Settings zu integrieren. Social Learning wird dann sowohl in „internen“ Gruppen, z.B. unter Studierenden, aber auch über die klassischen Grenzen hinaus, z.B. mit „externen“ Experten, Studierenden, praktiziert. „Social“ könnte dann als Ausdehnung der sozialen Vernetzungen und die Einbettung in einem breiteren sozialen Kontext verstanden werden. Zusätzlich können Lernende das Curriculum mit-/bestimmen, angefangen mit den Lernzielen, über Prozesse, Inhalte, Medien bis hin zu Lernergebnissen. Zum anderen werden emergente Entwicklungen als Chance und nicht unbedingt als Störfaktor betrachtet. Neue Bedürfnisse, Fragen, Ansichten, die im Prozess entstehen, werden zu einem integralen Teil einer Lehr-/Lernsituation. Hier könnte „Social“ als Mitbestimmung und Partizipation aufgefasst werden.
Im Prinzip ist der Begriff „Social Learning“ so vielschichtig wie vielschichtig das Wort „Social“ ist. Dazu kommt natürlich noch die Frage was sich unter dem Begriff „Learning“ verbirgt, aber an dieser Stelle mache ich schon Schluss 
L3T: Collaboration and Open Access
Do you know the #L3T book? Yesterday, Christian Lehr and me, as co-authors of the prize-winning Open Access textbook L3T, represented the L3T project at the SuMa Awards 2011 ceremony. L3T project is one of the four innovative projects related to digital knowledge awarded this year. L3T is a great example of how collaboration and open access principles can be applied to creating textbooks. Also it is a great example of how two people – Martin Ebner & Sandra Schön – can take a a bold idea like this forward with their engagement and enthusiasm – working completly in a honorary capacity!
I am very proud to be a contributor to this book. All L3T chapters are open access and can be used in schools, universities etc. If you like a particular chapter and you think it is useful, you can become a “godparent” of this chapter and support it with a charitable donation. Just click on the image below to see the the list of all chapters:
Let me just mention the other three prize-winning projects which are also wonderful examples of initiatives created by people for the people:
- Liquid Democracy – http://liquidfeedback.org
- Was hab’ ich – http://washabich.de
- Praktikumsplatz-Datenbank – http://sbl-koeln.lima-city.de/
Here you can also view the presentation from the SuMa Awards ceremony on SlideShare.
Netnography
Netnography is ethnographic research adapted to field studies on the Internet. I have been doing this type of research for over two years now in the Mediencommunity 2.0 project and I did not know the name for it! Again it was the serendipity of the social media that helped me discover the netnography research methodology. Originally developed by Robert Kozinets, netnography seems to have been used especially in online marketing research. Netnography as ethnographic research in the online environment has focused on online communities for providing consumer insight.
However, it is a very broad research programme, encompassing a myriad of qualitative and quantitative methods of ethnographic research, which can be also adjusted and applied to the socio-pedagogical context of learning and collaboration in online communities. One of the recent netnographic studies for example focuses on studying “cyber cultures“.
What I like about the netnographic approach is that it takes a holistic view on online communities, focuses on the study of cultures emerging on the Internet, is flexibly adaptable to research interests and employs multiple methods for triangulation.
Kozintes, V. Robert (2009): Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online. Sage Publications.
PLEs extended
The full paper of your PLE_SOU submission for the PLE Conference in Southampton 2011 is finally online.
Here is the full title:
Buchem, Ilona and Attwell, Graham and Torres, Ricardo (2011) Understanding Personal Learning Environments: Literature review and synthesis through the Activity Theory lens. pp. 1-33. In: Proceedings of the The PLE Conference 2011, 10th – 12th July 2011, Southampton, UK.
You can find the full paper here: http://journal.webscience.org/658/
Here is our abstract:
“This paper represents a scientific analysis of a broad range of publications surrounding the field of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). Personal Learning Environments can be viewed as a concept related to the use of technology for learning focusing on the appropriation of tools and resources by the learner. Capturing the individual activity, or how the learner uses technology to support learning, lies at the heart of the PLE concept. The central research question guiding this review was: What are the characteristic, distinguishing features of Personal Learning Environments? This paper argues that PLEs can be viewed as complex activity systems and analysed using the Activity Theory framework to describe their key elements and the relationships between them. Activity Theory provides a framework of six interrelated components: subject, object, tools, rules, community and division of labour. In referencing over 100 publications, encompassing conference papers, reports, reviews, and blog articles, this paper takes an activity-theory perspective to deconstruct the way central aspects related to PLEs are addressed in different publications. The aim of this study is to create a better understanding of PLEs and to develop a knowledge base to inform further research and effective practice. The literature review presented in this paper takes a broader view on PLEs recognising that research in this field stems from different scientific communities and follows different perspectives.”
We put the list of publications we used for the literature review into PB Wiki. By doing this we follow the goal of extending this list collaboratively and creating a public repository of PLE publications.
The original selection of publications can be found here: Original list of PLE Publications
We would like to enourage everyone to extended this original list and in this way create a public repository of publications related to Personal Learning Environments.
If you would like to add a publication to this public repository, please name a reference as a comment to the following page: PLEP Recommendations.
Thank you all for your contributions and comments!
