A Fragile Trust

At the 6th International Integrity and Plagiarism conference last month there was an interesting juxtaposition of talks, some technology-related, but most not. In particular, the keynote sessions provided an array of ideas that I intend to follow up on.

Teddi Fishman (left) in conversation with Samatha Grant

On the last day of the conference, the programme opened with a keynote from Samantha Grant, a filmmaker based in San Francisco, who has made the feature length documentary A Fragile Trust, based on the serial plagiarist Jayson Blair, a journalist at the New York Times. The case, when it was discovered in 2003, was such a scandal that it brought down 2 NYT editors. The documentary features interviews with Blair, as well as with other journalists and editors who were caught up in the story.

During her keynote, Samantha played a number of clips from the film, which gave a great insight into the approach she has taken, and raises plenty of questions about ethics in journalism. I now am very keen to watch the full-length version, which may be coming to Netflix in the future.

At the very least, this documentary should be required viewing for all students of journalism. As part of the overall project, the company has also developed an online game Decisions on Deadline for journalism students, to teach ethical decision making. Lesson plans to accompany the game are coming soon.

But I think there are lessons to be learned for all of us involved in academic integrity when watching this film. The short clip below describes a scenario we are all familiar with.

I'm making a transition from the world of journalism to the world of academic, where some students use exactly the same approach as Blair. This points to a culture where we permit (perhaps even encourage) academic dishonesty. If the system does not have integrity, how can we expect it of our students?

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Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference 2014

A few weeks ago I attended the Blackboard Teaching and Learning Conference, which took place at University College Dublin. Both David Hopkins (day1, day2 and day3) and Sheila MacNeill (here and here) have already blogged about the event. I know I'm quite late, but I thought I'd get a few thoughts down before I forget altogether.

This was the first Blackboard Europe event that I have attended in some time. In general, I find the Durham Blackboard Users' Conference more useful and better value. This year I decided to go, for a couple of reasons:

• It took place in University College Dublin (where I studied Science as an undergrad many years ago), which made travelling so much easier. Also, I could stay with my Mum and have a little quality time with her.
• I had been encouraged to submit a proposal on our Explore project with Mosaic, which was accepted. So I was able to present with my two (undergraduate student) co-presenters, Fionn Delahunty and Darren Kelly. More on this soon. Take a look at our prezi for an idea of the project.
• It was a good opportunity to network and connect with other Blackboard customers from across Europe, and also to hear from Blackboard about where the products are going. It was really good to catch up with friends, and especially to meet twitter buddy @sheilmcn for the first time.

So, what were my takeaways? New product developments, new customer focus and a few things to think about over the next couple of months.

What's new and what's in the roadmap?

The latest Learn release (known as the April Release) contains some features that will be of immediate use to us. On day 1 of the conference, Jim Chalex spoke about the new Delegated Marking feature, which will support the common activities of double and blind marking, where an instructor can also reconcile grades and feedback over a number of markers. A lead instructor can enable delegated marking for an assessment, and choose markers from list. He/she will then have an overview of marking as it progresses.

Even more exciting, the April release finally includes a Student Preview feature. This is something that our Blackboard instructors ask about constantly, particularly when it comes to assessment and grading. I've written a short overview, including the Blackboard Quick Hit Video, over on our Blackboard blog.

Further down the line, included in the product roadmap, is the improved user interface, using responsive design. From the demos and screenshots, this looks very nice, and will definitely enhance the user experience.

Looking at Blackboard Collaborate, I was certainly happy to hear that the Irish character problem (experienced when trying to use the Irish characters á and ú) will soon be fixed. While it doesn't affect many people, the impact is significant for those it does. Even better is the news that, sometime in the future, Collaborate will be completely browser-based, and users will no longer have to download java files.

A new version of the Collaborate app (version 2.0) will be launched sometime in the summer. Version 3.0, some time away, will include moderator controls.

Finally, the Blackboard Mobile app is also being developed, to be more consistent with Learn. Hopefully this includes features for instructors.

New Customer Focus

On day 1, just before Stephen Heppell gave his wonderful keynote, Matthew Small welcomed us to the conference. He said that the conference was about sharing best practices and advised us to take time to get to know the team, and to give feedback. This appears to signal a new approach by Blackboard, which was backed up during Jay Bhatt's session later that day.

Although I was uncomfortable with some of the language used ("student as customer/consumer", "content delivery", "countrification") there was definitely a sense that the company is interested in becoming a partner, rather than simply a provider of products. Jay spoke about wanting to offer solutions, rather than just a suite of products.

Over the three days, there was also a feeling that Blackboard staff wanted to talk with us, to find out about our experiences and to get feedback on the products and how we are using them.

User Experiences

During the conference I went to a number of talks from people using Blackboard products to do various things. Among my highlights were:

Transforming Science Higher Education into Active, Blended and Online Learning: a presentation of 3 case studies from Aarhus University. Based on the SAMR model for technology integration, they demonstrated 3 levels of transformation: augmentation, modification and redefinition of courses.

Mobile in the Field: Adel Gordon from the University of Northampton spoke about an award-winning project using mobile technology to enhance the experience of students of Geography in fieldwork. I'm really pleased that Adel will be joining us for the CELT Galway Symposium next month, when she will be talking about this particular project.

Using Blackboard to create an open, online course: Rob Farmer and Kate Littlemore (also from Northampton) spoke about the development of an open online course, entitled Study Skills for Academic Success. From a 100% face-to-face course, this was developed over about 18 months to a fully online version. The MOOC version of the course started on 5th May and can be found at northampton.coursesites.com.

Successfully Delivering Large Scale Online Summative Assessments: Ashley Wright from Newcastle University gave a very comprehensive overview of how Blackboard can be used for summative assessments. For more about OLAF (Online Assessment and Feedback) see the OLAF FAQ blog.

So, overall, a useful event, and a good opportunity to connect. UCD was a great venue and it was lovely to be back again. Although the weather wasn't great, the view from the O'Reilly Hall across the lake to the Library was stunning, and brought back some great memories.


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International Turnitin User Group Meeting

The International Turnitin User Group meeting took place on Monday 16th July at the Sage in Gateshead, just before the start of the 5th International Plagiarism Conference. This was a great opportunity to meet with Turnitin representatives as well as other Turnitin users, to compare experiences and find out about the product roadmap.

After a welcome from Will Murray (VP International), Christian Storm (CTO) gave an update on recent developments and current research in the Turnitin suite.

It's clear that there has been a shift in focus from plagiarism detection towards supporting assessment and feedback, with a view to improving student outcomes. Turnitin aims to be the complete solution for improving student writing and the best-in-class solution for grading. It seems that the company has really been listening to its customers, and my impression is that future directions are very positive and exciting.

Recent developments include voice based grading (which I haven't played with yet), fewer noisy matches and false positives, translated plagiarism (e.g. via google translate) and support for left to right languages (e.g. Arabic). Current research is looking at more advanced phrase exlusion, so that particular phrases (perhaps specific to the discipline, or "boilerplate" text) can be excluded from reports by assignment, or forever. Turnitin is also working on stylometrics, which can identify changes in writing style, to help address the problem of ghost writing.

On the integration side, Turnitin has been working on new APIs, meaning new integrations for Moodle and Blackboard. Different roles and views are also being considered, to facilitate double marking or read-only access. It was stressed that each institution has different workflows, which are a challenge to defining roles.

During the Q&A session there was lively discussion involving plans for globalisation of the product and adding more languages (must get Irish on the list); legal defensibility of decisions arising from originality reports; support for more varied filetypes and assessment types; PeerMark lite, allowing peer review earlier in the workflow; communication with customers about new product features (still not ideal); customer involvement in beta testing; improved workflow for anonymous marking; and bulk download of originality reports for archival purposes. And all this before coffee!

Somebody raised a question about a dashboard for policy makers - which might allow access to orginiality reports to support benchmarking for individual teachers, departments or even institutions. There was a collective intake of breath at this point. Turnitin executives hastened to reassure that this was not a likely development, and that it would require a huge a amount of data. However, there has been a focus on improved analytics, for students, staff and administrators.

The Product Roadmap
After the coffee break, Steve Golik (VP Product Management) gave us some updates on the product roadmap, repeating the vision of the company To be the world's more innovative and effective technology for improving students' written work.

One welcome development is the GradeMark interactive tutorial, which allows instructors to practice and get used to the functionality of GradeMark without worrying about live student work.

The new Instructor Dashboard is currently being rolled out, providing a more modern entry point and easier navigation. Unfortunately this is not yet available via integrations, but the interface looks clean and user-friendly.

On the horizon are common core rubrics, which will make the sharing of rubrics easier. Also, digital receipts will be accessible within the system, by both instructors and students, improving traceability. There will be more flexible grading and marking, including support for letter grades and decimal points.

Grading on an iPad
In the last 6 months I've been working with a number of academic staff to use of GradeMark to support electronic assessment and feedback for students. One barrier to this has been that the full functionality of GradeMark doesn't work on an iPad.

Perhaps the most exciting development is the new GradeMark iPad app, due for release in January 2013. Steve gave a demo of the current version, which looks very promising. This will be an instructor focussed, grading application, giving full support for grading, voice comments, text comments, access to rubrics, on-paper marking and with originality as a layer. An instructor can grade offline; the app will synch back to the web when the iPad has a suitable connection.

I tried to get a photo of the demo as it was happening, but the screen was just too bright for my camera to focus.

More on What's New with Turnitin is available online and by following @TurnitinProduct on twitter.

That, more or less, brought the User Group meeting to a close, in time for the start of the International Plagiarism Conference, but it was not the end of discussions about Turnitin. I'll blog about the conference in the next couple of days.

Cath Ellis has already written a number of blog posts on the event:

• iParadigms Focus Group
• 5th International Plagiarism Conference: Day 1 Keynotes
• 5th International Plagiarism Conference: Day 1 Sessions and Workshops
• 5th International Plagiarism Conference: Day 2 Keynotes

(I'm beginning to suspect she is WonderWoman)


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International Plagiarism Conference

This afternoon I am UK-bound again, this time to Newcastle, for the 5th International Plagiarism Conference. Having been to two previous events, I'm looking forward to catching up with some old friends and meeting some new ones. I will miss Jo Badge @jobadge, who has moved on to new challenges.

Although not strictly learning technologies, I will post my thoughts on the conference, and will certainly be tweeting from the event - the hashtag is #5ipc. Day 1, Monday, incorporates the Turnitin User Group meeting, and I'm looking forward to hearing about the roadmap for this product.

So, do follow me on twitter for updates. And if you are going to be at the conference, let me know so that we can meet up.

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Learning about Digital Literacies at EdTech 2012

The last couple of weeks have been busy, between the EdTech 2012 conference organised by ILTA, our own CELT conference, and then a presentation to the WRSLAI event last week. I haven't had time to think!

So, before my memories fade completely, I'll write a couple of blog posts about all these events. I'm starting with the keynote speakers at EdTech 2012, compiled from my notes and tweets, using storify.




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NDLR Fest 2012 and Local Innovation Projects

Tweet I see from today's NDLR newsletter that Minister Seán Sherlock will launch the 2012 NDLR Fest in Croke Park on 2nd May. Of course, Seán Sherlock is infamous for signing the Irish copyright amendment (also known as the Irish SOPA) into law last month, without public consultation and despite more than 80,000 signatures on an online petition (stopsopaireland). It will certainly be interesting to hear his views on the notion of people collaborating and sharing freely their digital learning resources.

The NDLR Fest, now in its 6th year, is a nice event to attend. The community is friendly and open and there is a great buzz generated. The aim of the event, according to the NDLR conference website, is to showcase the wide array of free technology enhanced learning that has been generated across all subject disciplines in the Irish HE sector as well as celebrating the cooperative and collaborative process in which these resources have been developed, used and reused.

You can sign up for this one-day, free event by going to the registration page. 

This year, as well as hearing about the 12 Learning Innovation Community Support projects (LInCS),  we are also looking forward to showcasing six Local Innovation Projects (LIPs) from NUI Galway that received NDLR funding in 2011.

Our call for NDLR funded LIPs for 2012 closed two weeks ago. This year the applications for LIPs were competitive, with 14 innovative proposals being submitted for funding.  Due to budgetary constraints we have only been able to fund a total of 7 projects. A full list of the successful applicants is now on our website.

Call for Papers: EdTech 2012

EdTech 2012, on the theme of Digital Literacies, will take place from May 31st to June 1st, at NUI Maynooth.

This year's keynotes will include Lesley Gourlay @lesleygourlay (who is external examiner on our Learning Technologies module here at NUIG), Martin Oliver, Doug Belshaw @dajbelshaw and Martha Rotter @martharotter.

The call for abstracts is now open, and submissions are welcomed, before 30 March, on the following themes:

• Teaching digital literacies
• The student experience 
• Learning resources - collaborative and social
• Creativity and learning design
• Online practitioner competencies 
• Assessing digital competencies
• Sustainable models of innovation
• Technology-supported assessment approaches

More details about the conference are on the ILTA website.

Check out Lesley Gourlay's keynote at the CELT/NAIRTL conference last year at NUI, Galway, on the topic of The tyranny of participation? Critically exploring notions of student engagement.

The #nairtl11 backchannel

Last week we hosted the joint Galway Symposium/NAIRTL conference at NUIG, with the title Engaging Minds: Active learning, participation and collaboration in Higher education. Iain has already blogged about the event and the recordings of the keynotes will be available in the near future.

As part of the local organisation, and having participated in a number of very active conference backchannels in the last year (for example #pelc11), we wanted to ensure an active twitter experience. This was particularly important because one of our keynotes, Derek Bruff from Vanderbilt University, has already written about Encouraging a Conference Backchannel on Twitter.

The strategy we used was based on Derek’s guide. Here’s what we did:

Hashtag: obviously, nothing can happen without a hashtag. It has to be short and easily remembered. With a joint conference, this can be tricky! So, I just proposed using #nairtl11, which was accepted, and it worked a treat! We started using this a couple of weeks before the conference, to build up awareness. We also made sure it was included on the conference programme, so nobody could be in doubt.

Twitter Team: About a week before the conference, I assembled my twitter team. This included a number of people who I know are active on twitter and have participated in backchannels before. Their role was to “keep the backchannel going” and to encourage others to join in. Recruits were @catherinecronin, @marloft, @kellycoate, @thecosmicfrog. We also let @iainmacl join in, though it took him a few attempts to get the hashtag right! A couple of days before the event, I pointed them to Derek’s Instructions to the Twitter Team

Twitter Display: During down time at the conference, before keynotes and at breaks, we displayed the twitter stream in the main venue and in the breakout rooms. We used Visible Tweets, and the rotation animation style, which I’d seen used at #pecl11 to great effect. This display had a number of positive effects:

• It alerted participants to the existence of the backchannel and encouraged them to take part;
• It illustrated the participation of people who were not at the conference at all, but were engaging with our reports;
• It ensured that those tweeting were being polite, knowing that what they said could be projected in big letters on screen.

The backchannel conversation was very effective, with over 800 tweets generated, mostly over the two days of the conference. As well as tweeting what was happening and key points being made, there was a rich conversation going on as well. We got a good following from outside the conference location, including colleagues in DIT who couldn’t attend because of exam board meetings (@muireannok, @m_crehan) as well as contributions from tweeters outside Ireland, including the UK, USA, Canada and New Zealand.

I used the Archivist to analyse the #nairtl11 tweets. It gives some pretty graphs to show, for example, tweet volume over time and top tweeters.

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Irish Human Computer Interaction 2009 Conference

Interested in Human Computer Interaction research?

The annual two-day Irish conference, called I-HCI 2009, will be held at Trinity College Dublin on the 17th and 18th of September. Some of the papers and presentations of interest will include research on online communities, and evaluation methods suitable for study in home, workplace and mobile settings. Check out their website on http://www.i-hci.org/

EdTech 2009 Conference Review

We all had a great 10th anniversary EdTech conference experience at the National College of Ireland on May 20-22. The programme was action-packed with 50 papers presented by Irish and international researchers and practitioners around the theme '2020 Vision: Changing Learning Futures Through Technology'.

Keynote speakers included Niall Sclater of the Open University; Theresa Hagan of HMH; and Richard Katz, Vice President of Educause. A really interesting feature of the conference was the use of Twitter, especially in the closing panel session where conference Tweets were visible throughout the open floor discussion.
Other highlights included the pre-conference launch of the NCI NELL usability lab by Leo Casey, and the presentation of inaugural Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning to the TCD outreach programme 'A Bridge to College'.

NUIG had a high profile presence at the conference with 5 practitioner and 1 research papers featuring in the programme. Well done Sinead Hahessey, Michael Campion, Mary Dempsey and Elaine Wallace for flying the flag for NUIG.

CELT staff were highly involved in the organisation of the conference with Michelle Tooher sitting on the ILTA Working Group, while Fiona Concannon and Paul Gormley served on the EdTech 2009 Organising Committee. I was also delighted to be voted in as the Chair of the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) for the forthcoming year.

...and Sharon Flynn got voted the Twit of the conference - for non-Twitterers, this is a compliment!

Digital Cre8or Day - Part 2

As a follow-up/refresher, Tony Hall, Kevin Davison and Jim Lenaghan organised a 'Digital Cre8or Day' for Tuesday April 7th in the AiPLE Room, School of Education at NUI Galway. The theme of the day was 'Digital Storytelling', and offered an opportunity to revisit the skills of the December session in developing a digital narrative using video, animation etc.

Kevin gave an illuminating introduction, pointing to some international examples where the storytelling process has had a positive effect. Firstly, in New Zealand, within a project called Photovoice, it has been used to elicit stories of youth groups. Secondly, Kevin also discussed an example of the Canadian film, Atanarjuat, produced by a small community of now expert filmakers and actors in Inuktitut. These were just two of the numerous examples presented.

The School of Education at NUI Galway, also have a youtube channel set up with examples of their students work in developing multimedia narratives... One example is Fred's Volcano Adventure, but no doubt more will appear in this space soon.

The day's event enabled us to get stuck into i Can Animate, iMovie and Garageband to look at storyboarding, shooting and editing of short stop frame animations, with a view to considering it's adoption in educational contexts. Some of us in CELT had the opportunity to attend- many thanks for the invitation!

DrupalCamp Galway '09

Just finished a second day at DrupalCamp Galway 09... what an amazing event! Two days of intensive learning, work and a lot of fun! Getting the chance to work with a team of coders, template designers, graphic artists and the Galway based charity, Zikomo, was truly amazing. In the space of one single day, an incredible Drupal site for Zikomo has been developed from scratch which they will now use to communicate about their ongoing projects in Malawi, and that fieldworkers can update with developments and events as they arise.

Of course, I should mention our rival group Rural Science Association who also had a hardworking team, racing the clock to get a similar set of requirements met- proving what is possible when a very brainy group of web developers get together for fun!

Also in attendance was Addison Berry from Lullabot who produce great "how to" videos and documentation on using Drupal, which is invaluable to newbies to this open source CMS.

Thanks to Stella Power, Alan Burke, Heather James, and Stephane Corlosquet for organising a fantastic event- and to the sixty people who showed up to make it happen!

Calling Irish Innovators: The Jenn Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning

If you are or know innovative teaching and learning individuals or teams (this can be either academic or student-based) then consider applying for the inaugural Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning.

Jenn Burke was a leading teaching and learning innovator and highly regarded friend of the Irish Learning Technology community who sadly passed away in June 2007. This award has been established by DCU and the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) to recognise and reward innovative practice in Irish teaching and learning and reflects Jenn's vibrancy, energy, creativity and passion for learning.

The award is about innovative ideas put into practice. The person or persons should be nominated on the basis of an innovative idea that is effective in supporting learning. The innovative idea needs to have been put into practice and have worked with a group of learners.

The submission process is novel. No portfolios required for this award! Original, innovative and creative submissions are required. This could be a short video, audio or multi-media submission. A maximum of 10 minutes is allowed for the judges to review each submission. Those shortlisted will be invited to a Dragons' Den-type presentation forum. Sounds like fun!

The winner will receive a specially commissioned pieces of artwork which will reside in the award winner's institution for one year, and a prize that will be retained by the award winner.

More information from the award website, but be warned...the closing date is Friday February 13th. Good luck innovators!

EdTech 2009 - Call for Papers Open

The Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) has announced that their 10th annual educational technology users' conference - EdTech 2009 - will take place at the National College of Ireland (Dublin) on May 21-22.

This year's conference theme is appropriately titled '2020 Vision: Changing Learning Futures Through Technology' to reflect this milestone.

The EdTech conference brings together a range of educational technology researchers and practitioners, and is always an enjoyable and informative occasion. This year's keynote speakers are:

• Richard Katz, Vice-President of EDUCAUSE
• Fiona O'Carroll, Senior Vice-President of HMH (formerly Riverdeep)
• Neil Sclater, Director of Learning Innovation at the Open University

The EdTech 20009 call for papers is now open for practitioner, research and postgraduate strands via the conference submission portal.

Digital Cre8tors!

For the past two days, some of us in CELT have been attending a "Train the Trainer" session for the Digital Creator Award, facilitated by Ciaran McCormack (IADT),(who is also the the Creative Director of the FIS project) and his colleague, Chris. We covered all aspects of creatively using digital media using devices such as mobile phones, cameras, computers, webcams, etc. It was a fun and engaging workshop, where we all got the chance to create, edit and enhance photos, music, movies and animations. Thanks to Dr. Tony Hall in the Education Department at NUI Galway for the invitation... we'll definitely be hearing more about this in the future!

Online Educa wrap up

Well, the official photographer has uploaded most of his photos but more materials including summaries and video-clips will no doubt emerge in the fullness of time of the successful Online Educa 2009 event in Berlin.  

If you look very closely in the background of some of these shots you will notice my presence - so I was there, hence the travel expenses claim! 

NDLR Symposium

Last Tuesday, 2nd December, I attended the second annual NDLR (National Digital Learning Repository) Symposium. The NDLR is a project involving all HEA funded Higher Education Institutions in Ireland and is now moving from a 4-year pilot phase through a transition phase to a full service. According to the NDLR website:

The NDLR project is establishing a framework to enable development and sharing of digital learning resources between the seven Universities of Ireland and the Institutes of Technology.

The event last week was a celebration of the work being carried out within the communities of practice associated with the NDLR. All the sessions were recorded, and the recordings are all freely available online.

For me, the most interesting talk of the day was from Dr. Ahrash N Bissell, Executive Director, ccLearn, Creative Commons. Ahrash spoke about the ideal of a global pool of educational resources, offered openly to use and re-use. He discussed the legal, technical and social barriers to such a global repository and proposed that Creative Commons can provide support in two out of three of these areas. His full presentation can be viewed online.

Co-incidentally, via Stephen Downes, the Indira Gandhi National Open University, one of the largest Universities in the World, has opened its vast repository of materials. The materials are under copyright to the IGNOU, making it somewhat restrictive, and users must register, although registration is free.

Final report from Online Educa

Phew...marathon end to the conference as I chaired a couple of sessions on the last afternoon. All that and the journey back made it tricky to update the blog, so apologies for the delay. I also, put away the recorder and left the podcasting to the official service this year once it got started. No point in trying to nab many of the same people for interview, even when I did get the chance.

There were lots of interesting conversations taking place about issues around higher education pedagogy and not just the technologies. Indeed, the role of the teacher and expectations of students were key themes. Some interesting comments from participants working in a number of universities that had undertaken local surveys included: (a) whilst most new students have a PC (usually a laptop, with the % ownership in the UK, for example, being 95%) many of them don't plan on carrying it around with them everywhere even when their university provides near-ubiquitous wifi - so there's still a demand for the provision of well-equipped, open access computer labs; (b) whilst many students are well aware of a range of technologies and have been exposed to them in school or in their social lives, that awareness shouldn't be interpreted as meaning high levels of confidence; (c) whilst they have used word-processors and spreadsheets to some extent in their schooling prior to university, presentation software such as PowerPoint which is used extensively at university is not something that many students have actually used before; (d) there are mixed views on  the merits of using social networking software, with most students prefering to keep personal lives quite separate from their formal education.

Anyway, that's a quick summary of the remaining points. The official website will in due course be populated by summaries, photos and other materials, whilst the attention of the organisers will now focus on next year's event! 

Official podcast

The conference, this year is running its own 'official' podcast  with interviews with various participants. Have a look/listen here: http://www.icwe.net/oeb_blog/wordpress/

Opening keynotes

Well the first session is just over.  Michael Wesch gave an excellent presentation and his style of delivery is very pleasant, gentle but authoritative. He gave a similar overview to his talk to the Library of Congress earlier in the year, but with a little diversion into his parallel work on the cultural and social anthropology of remote communities in Papua New Guinea, showing how the advent of literacy and a national census has impacted on daily lives, including the physical realignment of houses, the adoption of personal names, etc, reinforcing the old Marshal McLuhan truisms about media shaping society. The implications for learning, or rather the opportunities to focus on the key aspect of moving students from being knowledgable to being knowledge-able were the focal points of his message. The issue of 'serious play' and the strength of weak ties in networking were brought out in the following presentation by Prof. Norbert Bolz of the Berlin University of Technology who spoke on the transition from knowledge management to identity management.

The session was concluded by the usual ad from Roger Larson, the boss of Fronter, a Norwegian VLE supplier and also a 'platinum sponsor' of the conference. At this stage, many who had heard the 'ad' before turned to their laptops and mobile devices, exactly as Andrew Wesch had described students in lectures!  One of the issues, for such a tech-savvy and new media group as this is that the Fronter slides and screen grabs looked so dull and unimaginative in style (not that any learning management system looks fascinating these days - how quickly they have become part of the basic infrastructure/furniture and how few people have hangups over particular products - the debate has moved on as more and more users and institutions become somewhat platform-agnostic, which in itself is an interesting development). 

One point made though was important and that was to stress that openness and the 'web 2.0' freedoms are fine in principle but in practice when you are dealing with students formally enrolled in programmes, especially those still at school (a big market for Fronter's products) then personal confidentiality is not only vitally important but also a legal requirement, so there still by necessity need to be those 'data silos' which protect the individual and which store the educational products, reports and signs of progress, feedback and development of individual students and school pupils.

Anyway, time for a quick coffee before the next session...

photo (CC) by wrubens at flickr, oeb2008