Abstract

Learning and Web Technologies in Evolution:
Creativity and Catharsis in Blogging

Weblogs, or "blogs" are online journals, usually characterized by short posts in reverse chronological order. In ongoing research on blogging, I have noticed a connection between creativity and catharsis. In several very different blogs investigated in the research, including a poetry community blog, an American presidential primary campaign blog, a legal blog, and a student teacher blog, creative output seems related to emotional release. In this talk I discuss various forms of creativity for which blogs provide a "habitation", including poems, new forms of political organizing, and legal reasoning. I attempt to analyze why blogs provide a dwelling for such creativity, examining the technical affordances of blogging software, the blog as a particular kind of literary genre, and the social expectations of blog audiences. If blogs promote creativity, as I believe they do, can such creativity can be brought more fully into mainstream educational practice? If so, would this be a good thing? I discuss the scientific problems of engaging concepts such as "catharsis", and the problems of avoiding such concepts, without which analysis may be sterile.

Abstract

Ubiquitous wireless networked computing and 'convergence', are not only buzzwords, but are already dramatically redefining social and educational relationships in a deeply 'disruptive' manner. They are redefining our traditional educational processes, norms and roles. For example, is it rude and detrimental to learning, not to listen to a tutor when they are presenting, or to be checking what they are saying is 'true' on the Internet as they are speaking, or to be discussing it wirelessly with your peers live during the lecture or lesson? At a strikingly practical level these technologies are also challenging our traditional concepts of space and time and indeed our self image(s), and those we have of our social, educational and working communities.

This presentation explores these issues, illustrating, demonstrating and exploring some of the relevant technologies and their implications. One additional role of this presentation is to introduce the facilities at the conference for delegates to use and experiment with, during the conference. These include Internet-based instant communication (using IRC) and a live weblogging publishing system.

Abstract

The technology underpinning the Internet and the Web will continue to evolve rapidly. An ever increasing range and quantity of mobile devices will be connected to each other and to an expanding infrastructure. This will lead to a more nomadic style of living and working and a very diverse range of digital content. We will become both authors and readers of multimedia - from images to movies to soundscapes - and participants in experiences which combine the physical and virtual worlds. The construction of the devices and their supporting infrastructure poses new challenges in technology and interface design - and in the organisation, management and use of huge quantities of information flowing between billions of devices. But the greatest challenges are in education and learning: how can we enable people to discover and exploit the full potential of these new technologies?

Abstract

E-learning in the Knowledge Economy: the right context for innovation

Teachers and lecturers need support for the range and depth of innovation we need if we are to transform education through e-learning. The paper will discuss the extent to which we have a genuine knowledge economy within the education system, and what kinds of structures and technologies would provide better support to the continual innovation in teaching practitioner knowledge we now need.

Abstract

Does it do what it says on the tin?

Gilly Salmon invites you to take a fresh look at 4 technologies available to us to support and develop educational objectives, considerwhat might underlie their purposes and explore their fitness in the service of teaching and learning in the first part of the 21st Century.
Questions to explore:

• Can we call a spade a spade?
• Are bad workman blaming their tools?
• Have you a key to a new box for me?

Abstract

Can technology learn from the learners themselves?

The idea that technology can learn from and adapt to the learners themselves, is increasingly being proposed in various forms: Personalised eLearning, Contextualised eLearning, eLearning 'just for you'. ELearning technology is emerging which claims to be capable of customising educational strategy, dynamically composing educational resource/content, reshaping presentations and user interfaces, and adapting communication & collaboration tools, to suit the individual learner or groups of learners. A typical problem addressed by such systems has been the 'one size fits all’ delivery of elearning content, which can lead to various problems including lack of relevance, motivation (intrinsic), inflexibility, lack of choice of learning strategy etc. In Personalised eLearning the learning experience can be adapted to several aspects of the learning e.g. current goals, expertise, learning history, learning style or physical context (access device availabilities and capabilities, connection quality, mobility etc).

A second aspect of such adaptivity is the promise of much greater reusability of resources across different audiences and potentially different curricula.

In this discussion we shall explore the capabilities, limitations and possible implications of this form of eLearning. Some questions we may address include:

• Is this really going to benefit the learner or is it just more clever marketing?
• What new flexibilities and potentials does this offer the learner and tutor?
• What sort of strategies can be used to harness such adaptive behaviour whilst maintaining the overall curricula objectives and integrity?
• Is this yet-more-complexity?
• What is the difference between this and the old 'intelligent tutoring system' (which had very limited impact elearning practice)?
• Can this really be done in budget, on time and without a team of dedicated software engineers?
• Is this approach limited to ‘content delivery’ or can it be used more imaginatively?
• Group adaptivity versus individual personalisation?

Abstract

Sex, Drugs and New Interactive Services

Creating New Services for a Networked World

Suddenly the word 'interactive' is everywhere. Why should people [educators,broadcasters and advertisers] be so interested in interactivity? What are the opportunities and pitfalls in developing new interactive services? What can we learn from the gamut of compelling human experiences that we can apply to new services that we want people to engage with, enjoy and encourage their friends to use? Jonathan Drori, Director of the government's new Culture Online project will give his personal (and possibly controversial) views of what's good and what's hopeless with plenty of practical tips to make and manage a new service or business that is exciting and desirable rather than earnest and dull. This will be an interactive session, with the possibility to win chocolate. Public humiliation will not figure.

Abstract

Web Technologies in Evolution: a Context for Learning Cultures

Long before the Web existed hypertext visionaries and researchers foresaw a richly inter-linked world that allowed authors and readers alike to move easily between related items of information in a global network: many were excited by the idea that such environments could be used to support learning. The Web provided the infrastructure to enable those ideas to become reality but in some ways is far more limited than many of its antecedents. Links, the fundamental building blocks of any hypertext system, are still difficult to author and maintain. Associative, personalised links, which formed the basis of Vannevar Bush's off-cited article "As We May Think", are largely missing from both the theory and the practice of building Web sites, and it is left to search engines to fill the gaps. However, the development of the Semantic Web promises to provide a much richer environment for exploring these ideas, and in particular how they might provide a context for learning. This talk will consider how the Web is used today to support learning, and will look forward to the potential for more sophisticated Web-based learning environments in the future as the Semantic Web evolves.

Abstract

Semantic Webs for Learning.

Augmenting web pages with semantic contents, i.e., building a ‘Semantic Web’, promises a number of benefits for web users in general and learners in particular. Semantic technologies will make it possible to reason about the Web as if it was one extended knowledge base, thus offering increased precision when accessing information and the ability to locate information distributed across different web pages. Moreover, it will become possible to develop a range of additional educational semantic web services, such as interpretation or sense-making, structure-visualization, support for argumentation, novel forms of content customization, novel mechanisms for aggregating learning material, etc.

In my presentation I will first describe what semantic web is about and then illustrate a number of scenarios showing how semantic web technology can be harnessed to provide a much richer ‘web experience’ than what currently provided by web browsers and static web pages. In particular the ideas presented in these scenarios will be grounded on some of the work currently being carried out at the Knowledge Media Institute on semantic web browsing (Magpie) and on new forms of scholarly publishing (ScholOnto).The Magpie tool makes it possible to dynamically associate services with items found in web pages, on the basis of an underlying ontology. Thus, Magpie can be used to provide access (via a contextual menu) to complementary sources of knowledge, which can be used in contextualizing and interpreting the information found in a Web page.The ScholOnto project is building a prototype infrastructure to support the task of making scholarly claims about the significance of research documents. 'Claims' are made by making connections between ideas. The connections are grounded in a discourse/argumentation ontology, which supports innovative services for navigating, visualizing and analysing the network as it grows. Such a tool could be used in educational settings to allow students to develop easily a model of the current dialectics in a particular area of research.

Of course, the semantic web, like any other attempt at formalizing knowledge, carries a risk: to simplify what is complex, to impoverish what is rich. This is also a potential risk with some of the current work on learning objects. For this reason it is important not to lose focus of what the technology should be about: it should support users in making connections, engaging in critical analysis, locating the right knowledge and navigating and making sense of alternative teaching narratives. If used correctly, this technology could provide a quantum leap in the level of support available to students. If not, it will become yet another tool supporting reductionist approaches to learning and teaching.

Abstract

Requirements for a sustainable Learning object environment

There is no question that one of the major opportunities offered by the Web is vastly increased access to content. However this has brought with it a number of problems. Whereas paper based publication has evolved a range of effective mechanisms and standards over time – the structure of text books, mechanisms for review and publication, delivery methods – online publication is struggling to develop its own mechanisms, that do not restrict the benefits of access, but do provide confidence in its validity. In particular, traditional educational structures, processes and roles are well harmonised with the technology of printed materials – teachers and learners know how to work with books and libraries, and how to use them to support their purposes; institutions know how to acquire and pay for them.

This is not the case with online materials. Almost every aspect of online publication is problematic; although it is very simple to write and publish on the Web, describing content (metadata tagging), finding material, aggregating and disaggregating materials, reviewing, and rewarding authors are all areas that still need attention. There is no doubt that recent work in defining and developing a learning object approach addresses some issues, in particular making reusability more likely. The development of learning content interoperability specifications for metadata and content packaging directly address the searching and aggregation/disaggregation issue. If these specifications are widely adopted, then content will be able to run in different learning environments, preserving materials as environments evolve.

Despite this, major problems remain. What is the motivation for lecturers to make their resources available to others by tagging them with metadata? What is the role of information professionals (librarians) in this online world? Does eLearning require a restructuring of job roles? Who are the players in the learning object economy, and what will their roles be? How will it achieve sustainability?

This paper will discuss possible scenarios for a learning object economy, and examine the implications for the structure of educational institutions processes and roles.