The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,200 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
As the guest editor of the first Special Issue of eLearning Papers on Personal Learning Environments with best papers from the PLE Conference 2013: Learning and Diversity in the Cities of the Future / 10-12 July 2013 Berlin & Melbourne, I am glad to announce that the whole Special Issue and the single articles are available online and can be downloaded as open access under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeWorks 3.0 Unported License here:
http://openeducationeuropa.eu/en/paper/personal-learning-environments
Here is the list of articles:
Thank you to all authors and to the editorial team of eLearning Papers for swift collaboration on this Special Issue!
The international Wikimedia Diversity Conference 2013 organised by Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. tool place this weekend – 9th/10th November 2013 – in a great location – GLS Campus – in Prenzlauer Berg quarter in Berlin. You can follow the Tweets with the hashtag: #DivCon.
The Diversity Conference was dedicated to promoting diversity in the Wikipedia community. The two key goals were:
I was honoured to open the conference with the first presentation in which I focused on the findings from our German diversity project called “Wikipedia Diversity”.
You can find my slides on SlideShare:
and the notes taken by participants in Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/openinnovation
Also me and the great activist Netha Hussain from India, have organised a workshop on designing diversity. It turned out to be a great, collaborative session in which all participants presented their current diversity-promoting activities, identified current problems and underrepresented groups and worked together on possible solutions. We took a broad look at diversity, encompassing not only gender issues, but also geo-diversity, language-diversity as well as occupational and educational diversity as sub-dimensions of the socio-demographic diversity of Wikipedians.
You can view the etherpad notes on this one here: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/design-diversity
It was a great event with many dedicated and like-minded people who want to contribute to change and promote diversity. It was great to be part of the event and get inspired by the many great diversity-enhancing activities from around the globe.
I am really looking forward to new projects and collaborations in 2014!!!
As the guest editor of the Special Issue of eLearning Papers on Personal Learning Environments, I would like to invite you to participate in our open Call for Papers (Deadline, September 29th, 2013). eLearning Papers is an Open Access publication series and part of the elearningeuropa.info portal – an initiative of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and Culture, aiming to transform education through technology. The open Call for Papers runs parallel to the submission process of papers which were submitted to The PLE Conference 2013 Berlin/Melbourne and selected as best papers for the Special Issue. I am looking forward to all submissions and the Special Issue on Personal Learning Environments which will be published at the end of October!
For more information please visit:
http://elearningeuropa.info/en/elearning_papers/call_for_papers?
L3T is an open access book on learning and teaching with new technologies. The L3T project is run by Sandra Schoen & Martin Ebner and the L3T book is an open access book written in German and published under the Creative-Commons-Licence CC-BY SA. It is a great idea and beacon project in many respects. Here are some reasons why:
I have had a privilege of contributing to this exciting project in its first edition in 2011 and the second edition in 2013. The second edition of L3T was written by 250 authors and completed just a few weeks ago, resulting in a textbook with 59 chapters on a wide range of topics related to technology-enhanced learning (TEL) (see all chapters here).
The 2013 edition includes among others the updated collaborative chapter on blogging and microblogging in education and my new chapter on digital diversity and divide, which I am looking forward to extending in the future editions of the L3T book. Therefore, it would be great to receive your opinions and recommendations for extending the current version of these chapters. Please just drop me a line – thanks.
This year I was honoured to act as the General Chair of the 4th international PLE Conference, which took place 10-12 July 2013 in Berlin at Beuth University of Applied Sciences with a parallel event in Melbourne at Monash University.
The PLE Conference is dedicated to Personal Learning Environment and is an international scientific conference taking place annually, each time in a different city. Following the successful events in Barcelona in Spain 2010, in Southampton, UK in 2011, Aveiro, Portugal and Melbourne, Australia in 2012, the 4th International PLE Conference 2013 was held in Berlin, Germany and in Melbourne, Australia. The aim of the PLE Conference 2013 is to create a space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experiences and research around the development and implementation of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) – including the design of environments and the sociological and educational issues that they raise.
This year, the special theme for the conference was learning and diversity in cities of the future. The focus was on how to design Personal Learning Environments in order to support diversity, cross-boundary learning and interdisciplinary transformation of urban spaces as part of highly interconnected social and technological infrastructures of smart cities. As in smart urban spaces, people, organisations and objects become interconnected by means of new technologies and media, innovative, sustainable and inclusive solutions for connected learning become crucial not only in terms of emerging technologies but first and foremost in terms of (i) human knowledge and skills, (ii) diverse and inclusive communities, as well as (iii) learning and knowledge networks.
In search for an intelligent exploitation of networked urban infrastructures for learning and the extension of the current understanding of Personal Learning Environments, the PLE’13 Call for Papers looked for concepts, scenarios, technologies, frameworks as well as educational approaches for constructing PLEs to support learning in smart urban spaces. We are currently working on the Conference Proceedings and the Special Issues – the Special Issue of eLearning Papers (Issue 34) and in the Special Issue of the Journal of Literacy and Technology (JLT) – which will include best papers from the PLE Conference 2013. The publications are scheduled mid September.
I would like to take this opportunity and thank all of you who supported this year’s conference as a member of the Organising Committee and/or as a member of the Scientific Committee! It has been a great experience and the success of this year’s conference would not be possible without you!!!
We will soon have the recordings of the sessions featured at BeuthBox campus TV. For the time being have a look at the pictures from the conference on Flickr, e.g. here + here + here + here + here + here + here + here + here + here – and have a look at the latest updates including links to slides on SlideShare in our PLE2013 Facebook group.
How time flies. It is already in October 2012 that the report on Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion (DGEI) was published by the European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute of Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS). As participant in the DGEI expert workshop and contributor to the “State of Play” in Germany, I am proud to have been part of this initiative.
You can find the final report exploring the potential impact of digital games for empowerment of groups at risk of social and economic exclusion here.
If you are interested in the individual reports on the current state of the art in European countries, including Germany, have a look at DGEI D1 Annex 3 titled “Multi-initiative and policy-focused cases of the support for and use of Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion”.
There you will also find my contribution:
Buchem, Ilona (2012). A Report on State of Play on Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion in Germany: Overview of the Policy Context. In: James Stewart (ed.) Multi-initiative and policy-focused cases of the support for and use of Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion. Exploring the Potential Impact of Digital Games for Empowerment of Groups at Risk of Social and Economic Exclusion: Opportunities, Challenges and Possible Actions: Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion (DGEI). European Union, JRC-IPTS, 2012. Link.
For more information about the study and policy on Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion visit the DGEI website of the European Commission, Joint Research Center, Information Society Unit.
The IQ Netzwerk (IQ Network/IQ = Integration through Qualification) is a national network of federal networks in Germany established with the aim of fostering integration of migrants by improving access to information and education, providing consultation on recognising prior education and new qualification programms, including vocational training and higher education.
Our project at Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin titled “Credit Points” is part of the IQ Network Berlin. It is the first project in IQ Network Berlin addressing highly qualified migrants who already completed a higher education programme outside of Germany. The project is dedicated to designing and delivering a student-centered, technology-enhanced qualification and mentoring programme suited to the needs of each individual participant. The aim is to supplement prior qualifications acquired abroad with qualifications provided and recognised in higher education in Germany in order to enhance opportunities on the local labour market and thus foster socio-economic inclusion. As Beuth University is has a strong focus on engineering and technology-related fields, our programme especially addresses alumni with degrees in technical fields, who intend to work in Germany.
The key idea of “Credit Points” is to design and provide individual study programs based on prior qualifications, individual career plans and current family/work situation. As our programme is designed and delivered for the first time in 2013 and 2014, we will be able to cater for 20 personons in this pilot phase. The participants will study for two semesters (winter semester 2013/2014 and summer semester 2014) and obtain a certificate issued by the Beuth University.
We are currently looking for candidates who can apply to the programme via our online system – Online Survey. Alumni with a technical diploma acquired abroad can apply until the end of June 2013. Who is eligible? Migrants who already completed a higher education programme outside of Germany, already have a degree in a technical field, such as engineering, architecture, urbal design, live in Germany and have a sufficient commad of the German language (C1 level/EQF).
Following the online application, we will invite selected candidates to individual consultations, which will take place at Beuth University. Based on these consultations, an individual study plan will be designed for each participant and will include a unique combination of modules with an individual overall workload which will enable students to aquire an individual amount of credit points (ECTS). The modules will encompass technology-enhanced, distance learning modules combined with face-to-face meetings, career-related mentoring, German and English language coaching and short in-company practice in one of the enterprises in the Berlin/Brandenburg region.
The participants will be documenting their achievements in their individual, digital portfolios – ePortfolios, which can be used as part of the job application after completing the programme. The ePortfolio will enable each student to present their special competencies aquired in the programme and present their unique expertise encompassing prior and current qualifications.
One of the central questions in our project Wikipedia-Diversity is the question about the relationship between diversity and quality. As far as diversity is concerned we mean the socio-demographic diversity of Wikipedia editors. In the first year of the project in 2013 we are focusing on gender-diversity and will be looking at other types of socio-demographic diversity, e.g. age and cultural background as a follow-up. As far as quality is concerned we mean the quality of the process of knowledge production and the quality of the product of knowledge production in the Wikipedia.
We have recently conducted a number of interviews with Wikipedia editors asking them a number of questions, including:
“Do you think that the low number of female editors in Wikipedia (approx. 10%) has an effect on the quality of Wikipedia? What is the evidence?”
Some of the key effects of socio-demographic named by the interviewees were:
Today, at Open Sunday organised by Wikipedia Deutschland, we held a workshop as a follow-up to these interviews.
Here is the presentation from workshop we did today at Wikimedia Deutschland/Open Sunday:
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been recently gaining a lot of attention and publicity. We have seen different MOOC models evolve based on different underpinnings and motivations (e.g. cMOOC vs.xMOOC) and different stakeholders earmarking their positions in the MOOC universe (e.g. higher education, non profit, for profit and venture capital). The MOOC idea seems to be becoming part of the new global learning culture with pioneer projects from Canada & USA spurring related initiatives in other parts of the world (e.g. #OPCO12 or #MMC13 in Germany). The MOOC Production Fellowship contest initiated in Berlin (Germany), follows this international trend:
“The contest seeks to identify ten innovative concepts for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Fellows will receive funding as well as assistance with course production. Stifterverband and iversity hope to raise awareness for the tremendous potential of digital technology in education and seek to activate a process of creative adaptation within the academic community.”
To me this seems be a great opportunity to embed the MOOC idea in existing university structures, at the same time opening doors to participants from around the world and bringing together students, practitioners and experts. I have invited colleagues from Sweden – Rick Middel (University of Gothenburg) and Bert-Ola Bergstrand (Socialt Capital Forum NGO) to join forces in a cross-national collaboration dedicated to Digital Economy and Social Innovation, in this way combining expertise to create a transdisciplinary MOOC.
The “Digital Economy and Social Innovation” MOOC addresses several topics, among others:
Our collaboration is based on the “bridging concept”, i.e. bridging between (i) learning contexts (especially between formal learning in higher education and informal learning in global networks); (ii) learning input (especially between theoretical input coming from university professors and input from the field coming from social innovation practitioners); (iii) course participants (enhancing interaction between higher education professors and students and practitioners to get involved in social innovation in digital economy).
You can find out more about our MOOC idea on the submission page. If you like it, give us your “vote”. As the contest is based on the public voting, the courses with most votes “win”. Thank you for supporting us!
Here is our intro video:
Medien-Didaktik 2.0 