I’m really looking forward to the PLE Conference 11-13 July 2012. The conference continues to innovate in many ways. Organisationally we’ve expanded the conference to two locations, Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia and Universidade de Aveiro in Portugal, spreading the opportunity for sharing scholarship around the PLN and PLE topics and effectively making this a blended conference. How neat! (Of course, one of the venue organisers for Melbourne is yours truly  so I’m a little bias…;-))

The two locations have a joint Call for Papers out with the closing date for abstracts on 16 March 2012, and the deadline for final papers on 13 May 2012. I’m hoping to encourage you all to write an abstract, submit it and join us!

So why should you go to the PLE Conference?

I was very lucky to attend the first PLE Conference in Barcelona and some firsts are simply things which cannot be guaranteed for subsequent events. This first iteration was a veritable who’s who of networked learning with Alec Couros, Steve Wheeler, Graham Atwell, Ilona Buchem and many others in the field attending. Besides the excitement of this, it being the first conference, it also meant that much of the PLE work presented, was completely new to the other attendees. So it was like finding a treasure trove of PLE/PLN research. Also Ricardo Torres Kompen was just the best venue organiser/host, his attention to detail and calmness without peer.

So what are elements of the PLE Conference that continue to make it THE event for any networked scholar/educator to attend? Well some of us “PLE goers” have shared our experiences and reasons on this Corkboard for you to read. But I thought I would expand on my reasons below, using some of the artefacts I collected in 2010.

1. Connecting with those you are already connected with

I’m a Twitter evangelist, and an enthousiastic Facebook user. I love communicating with social media because they allow me to connect with like-minded people, people who intersect my interest niche. And I love it whenever I meet these people in real life (so much so that I’ve got a So you’re real after all! set on Flickr). Not because of the coincidence, nor the look-who-I-met factor, but because thanks to social media filtering, it is always an intense and very enjoyable occasion to meet one of these connections. We have so much to say and share with each other, and can build so much on each other’s ideas in a very short time, fueling our interests and thinking until we meet again. All of the people at the PLE Conference are of this variety. Alec Couros touches on this too in the interview I did with him.

It’s been really neat that people who have been connected over years, you yourself included, someone I haven’t had a chance to meet … Actually, you build a sense of friendship over a long time… and when you actually get to meet each other,… you can get right to the sort-of deep conversations. Because these deep conversations have been going on for a long time. That’s really the difference with the dry academic sterile type conference…When you come to a place, you can actually just get to the matter, get to the content that you’re looking for. I think that’s really quite powerful. – Alec Couros

2. This is a growing field!

Personal learning environments, personal learning networks, networked learning. It’s all very new but maturing rapidly. In his video interview Graham talks about 5 or 6 years old and PLE scholarship needing some space to come of age.

Sometimes, the discourse and the dialogue … around PLEs tends to gets lost in the big conferences, and especially tends to get lost behind educational technology, and I don’t see PLEs as being primarily about educational technology. – Graham Atwell

3. Now in the Southern Hemisphere!

@catspyjamasnz and @colwar at #ple_bcn

In 2010 Colin Warren and I (pictured here) were 2 out of maybe 6 Asia-Pacific participants. Most of the research presented was conducted in Europe, in the European context, with European funding models, in European higher education institutions. Of course, Asian, Pacific, Australian and New Zealand organisations work in different contexts, with different funding models, different education systems, policies, cultural differences, geographical differences, etc. So our uses, considerations and views of PLEs, PLNs and personalized learning will be different too. Having the PLE Conference in Melbourne, allows more people outside Europe to contribute to the body of work.

4. Anything goes

If you’re tired of traditional paper presentations, would like to try a different approach, a PLE Conference is the ideal place to mix it up . In her video interview, co-organiser of the 2010 conference Cristina Costa says:

We wanted to challenge how conferences have been done for decades.

And they did:

• In 2010 Crowdvine was used for pre-conference communication and connection building and people were posting to it even 6 months before the conference dates.
• The 2010 Twitter hashtag #PLE_BCN was coined and correctly promoted by the organisers, creating a vibrant Twitter stream which became a community of itself. That hashtag is still alive today, co-habiting with this year’s hashtag #PLEConf.
• The unKeynote of 2010 was a collaboration between Alec Couros and Graham Atwell, crowdsourcing ideas on topics and formats via Google Docs and encouraging in-room and external participation during the unKeynote
• Why should a conference be closed? Most of the 2010 sessions were streamed live from Citilab, sharing research findings and thinking straightaway, and encouraging participation, questions and comments via Twitter from inside and outside the conference. It widened the conversation and was greatly appreciated by many, although when @evilsue got involved things turned a little messy .
• The introduction of Pecha Kucha sessions allowed many participants the opportunity to present
• In 2010 (and continuing in 2011) Ilona Buchem set up The PLE Media contest, a way for participants to present their PLE work or thoughts in a 3 minute video/animation, leading to such little gems as this one describing the PLE tools in place at the TU Graz.

The conference organisers are using the successes above to inspire this year’s event, but we also have a call out for you to put your thinking caps on and devise other presentation options. Your imagination will be the limit…

5. Creativity is rewarded (and very much appreciated)

As you can see from some of the examples I gave above, creativity is rewarded and appreciated at a PLE Conference. In fact, it starts right as you walk in the door and create your own badge (or put on the one you made earlier). After all, what is more personal than how you introduce yourself to others?

And this theme of personalization and creativity runs through the whole conference. Whereas traditional conferences leave behind only a few torn paper posters, crumpled standard badges and a thick book of proceedings (most of the time only available to attendees and those who pay for access), the PLE Conference leaves in its wake a trail of open artefacts, like a rich twitter archive, YouTube and Vimeo videos, blog posts by the participants, Flickr photos documenting the event, creative slidedecks on Slideshare, and collectively taken notes in Google Docs. We look forward to seeing where you take it this year…

6. You can be on your iPhone and not be rude

@anetq at #ple_bcn

And last but not least, at a PLE Conference, everyone is like you. We are all committed to monitoring our streams, to finding those juicy tidbits, to sharing what we hear, to publicly posing our questions or comments. And so it is perfectly all right for you to whip out your iPhone, smartphone, iPad or whatever device of your choice, in the middle of a conversation. In fact, we encourage it. After all, you’re amplifying and sharing what we’re all learning about PLEs, aren’t you?

See you all in July!

Well this is the first day at the eLearn 2011 conference in Hawaii. It’s a large conference with a very full program. So I thought I’d set up a CoverItLive event to try to capture as much as I can. It’s capturing tweets with the hashtag #elearnconf and #elearn11.

 

• The iPad: Enhancing Learning and Teaching in the Digital Age « 21st Century Learning

  The Australian Taxation Office has said that the iPad, and equivalent e-readers or tablets, are deemed to be equivalent to a laptop and it will attract a 50 per cent education rebate. This will make iPads popular with schools.

  tags: ipad teaching 21stcenturylearning australia eittilt apple ubiquitous learning e-learning edtech

• YouTube – University of Auckland – Virtual Medical Centre

  Second Life Tour led project :
  Scott Diener, Ph.D.
  Associate Director, IT Services
  Academic and Collaborative Technologies
  The University of Auckland

  tags: secondlife example e-learning eittilt edtech medical nursing hospital

• YouTube – Virtual Health Inspector, a food safety education game in the Second Life virtual world

  Find the food safety hazards in a virtual commercial kitchen! This is an educational pilot project of the eXtension Food Safety Community of Practice.

  tags: secondlife kitchen hospitality example e-learning edtech eittilt

• Info

  What is GeoGebra?
  GeoGebra is free and multi-platform dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that joins geometry, algebra, tables, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package. It has received several educational software awards in Europe and the USA.

  tags: maths moodle lms edtech physics tools

• Blackboard Guide for Tutors – eLearning Blog Dont Waste Your Time

  A while ago I posted about a guide to Moodle that Joyce Seitzinger had created – “Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers“, and I am pleased to say it was well received and gained quite a lot of re-tweets and hits, both on my website and even more importantly on Joyce’s. At the time I said I was working on a version (copy?) for Blackboard and I am pleased to say I have completed the first draft.
  Source / Read more: Blackboard Guide for Tutors – eLearning Blog Dont Waste Your Time http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/elearning/blackboard-guide-for-tutors/#ixzz1LBhsbwCB Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike

  tags: moodle moodletoolguide blackboard lms e-learning edtech davidhopkins staffdevelopment

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Tomorrow I’m doing a show ‘n tell presentation at our institution about Blended Learning. I will demonstrate some courses, resources and learning approaches we have designed and developed at EIT. I’ll also show some work from other institutions. And then I’m keen to make my audience go: Wow! Show a few high-end examples, courses, resources or learning approaches, that show just what’s possible.

Currently I’m thinking about TED Talks, showcasing the sheer awesomeness of content already out there and available:

Or maybe my own favourite teaching & learning tool, Twitter, as demonstrated in the Twitter Experiment at UT, Dallas, Texas.

Or perhaps all I do is show them one slide. With an iPad on it…

What would you show? What is currently leading your list for the epitome of #edtech?

• MOOCH: Moodle.org Open Community Hub

  The Moodle.org Open Community Hub contains courses from all over the world.

  tags: moodle tools community hub courses example teaching education lms edtech

• The PLE Conference 2011 | 11-13th July 2011, Southampton.

  Key insights and understanding of what makes a PLE, from personal experience, through individual analysis and with thoughtful speculations on the future directions of this important field. Each of our four keynotes will offer a slightly different perspective on Personal Learning Environments and each guarantees to ensure that their sessions attain the high level of interactions and audience engagement which was established with the first conference in Barcelona.

  tags: ple conference PLE_SOU pln ple_bcn networkedlearning edtech

• imoot 2011

  tags: moodle edtech eittilt 2011 moot imoot conference

• 2 Minute Moodles on Vimeo

  This is a collection of 2 Minute Moodles – an attempt to simplify and show how to use a range of Moodle features to a busy teacher.
  The tutorials try not to assume too much previous knowledge and are presented for the pragmatical and not necessarily tech-savy users (Moodle purists please excuse). They are a bit like that product I got the pun from – something quick and simple to get you going.

  tags: moodle tutorial howto Vimeo e-learning edtech staffdevelopment eittilt

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

It’s December 3rd and that means I’m getting my Edublog Award nominations in just in the nick of time. I was tickled pink when both Mark Drechsler and Michael Verhaart nominated my Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers post. It’s a neat feeling to be recognised by peers and I felt I should take some time to pay it forward.

So without further ado…

Best individual blog

Well, let’s start with one of the hardest categories. Being a terrible blogger myself, I’m constantly amazed by the consistently high output, both in volume and quality, of bloggers like David Hopkins, Mark Drechsler, Alec Couros, George Couros, Danah Boyd, to name just a few. I just read and learn and thank all of you edubloggers out there for so generously sharing your insights & learning.

My nomination goes to: Steve Wheeler‘s Learning with E’s.

I was lucky enough to meet Steve twice this year, once in Spain and once in New Zealand. We had some great conversations and it made me realise how much his blog is a constantly updated reflection of his thinking. So I get to still enjoy his side of the conversation from 12 timezones away

Best individual tweeter

Ok, so maybe there aren’t any easy categories in the Edublog Awards. Again, I follow and am astounded by so many Twitter folk who make me think, learn, laugh & occasionally spray coffee across my screen in a most unladylike fashion. Yeah, you know who you are: @easegill, @teachernz, @daveymelb, @moodleman, @evilsue, @gsyoung, @markdrechsler, @courosa, @timbuckteeth, @sleslie, @dianefriis, @kaz19, and all you others…

My nomination goes to: @marksmithers

Mark’s use of Twitter manages a wonderful balance between finding & sharing useful resources, insightful comments and questions about education technology strategy in higher education and a delightfully wicked social commentary. (Apparently life on the Epping line in Melbourne and in an Australian higher education institution would make good fodder for a sitcom). His high level of retweets is a testament that I’m not the only one to think so. But even if it wasn’t for that, I think his lone gunman Twitter action at several traditional teaching & learning conferences with little to no social media activity, earns him this award. The backchannel-of-one at the National Teaching & Learning Forum, using the tag #nltf10 was inspired.

Lone gunman action at #nltf10

Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion

This is going to have to be a series of tweets from a conference, as I think that is when Twitter is at its strongest: when a large group of specialists have an extended but concentrated conversation on a common area of interest. I participated in #converge10 and in #mootnz10 and enjoyed from afar #oeb10 and #mootau10

My nomination goes to: #ple_bcn

The inaugural PLE Conference was held in Barcelona in July 2010 and thanks to the organisation a lively Twitter channel had been active for several months prior to that. During the conference, the excellent wireless provision at the Citilab and the high quality video streaming of presentations, meant the Twitter channel facilitated a rich conversation between the PLE Conference attendees and a large international audience, dotted with images, video clips and other artefacts. The very interesting thing about this conference and hashtag is that it created a community. Even after several months, attendees are still using the tag to communicate with each other, directing tweets at that particular audience. Well done #PLE_BCN organising committee!

Best educational wiki

Only one wiki came to mind for me here, and that’s because I’ve been watching its development from up close. My colleague Michael Verhaart (@virtualmv) began a Mediawiki late 2009 to aggregate the content for all of the Computing courses he delivers at EIT Hawke’s Bay. One year on, it’s amazing to see how much it has grown, and as Michael tried to embed different modules, modifications & media, it has given us many an engrossing morning coffee chat, where other colleagues do their best to politely ignore the geek-talk in the corner.

So my nomination goes to: The VirtualMV Wiki

To paraphrase Sally Fields: I love you, I really love you…

The Edublog Awards have a category Best Use of a PLN. I wish there was one for best PLN because then all of you: tweeps, bloggers, commentators, Moodle community members, Flickr contacts, Facebook friends, wiki collaborators, Yammer users, YouTube stars and other colleagues that I interact with and learn from everyday, and I couldn’t mention you all here, would go home with a statue – or at least a few thousand pixels in the shape of a digital badge.

Gidday! I’d love your help in explaining the use of a Personal Learning Network (PLN) for an educator – whether you’re a teacher, librarian, manager or educational technologist.

What is this project about?

This project started in 2009 when we combined our annual e-learning conference eFest with the recently established teaching & learning conference. One of the themes was the changing role of the teacher in the 21st century and us education technologists were eager to show that e-learning is all about teaching & learning, just with technology & access to the web. Of course this can be daunting, overwhelming, scary, uncomfortable, risky…. So we wanted to let educators new to these exciting possibilities, know that they’re not alone. That others have gone before them and are willing to help. Besides introducing the audience to various existing communities of practice out there (like Classroom2.0), I also introduced the Personal Learning Network concept to them.

This project was inspired by Alan Levine’s Amazing Stories of Openness for #OpenEd09, but my project is on a much smaller scale.

So here at #converge10, I’m asking you to answer the question: “What does my PLN mean to me?” and share your thoughts in a short video/animation/slidecast, about 2-3 minutes. If you work in education, I’d love to hear from you – teachers, librarians, educational technologists and managers. Feel free to answer as you will. However if you get stuck, here are some suggestions to include (use these as guidelines only – remember this has got to be personal!!!):

• Who you are, where you are & what you do
• How your PLN has affected your own learning?
• How your PLN has affected your practice?
• Something really neat you learned through your PLN recently
• Which tools you use in your PLN?
• How you use technology in your teaching or educational practice
• How you’re adapting your teaching or practice for the 21st century?
• Your most ‘fruitful’ connection made through your PLN
• Any words of encouragement for educators new to this 21st century, ‘techie’ way of teaching & learning

After you’ve posted your video/animation/slidecast somewhere on the web, please also embed it on the What My PLN Means – wiki here. And send me (@catspyjamasnz) a tweet to let me know – include the hashtag #mypln. That way I can thank you.

Your task

1. Think about your PLN/PLE and what it means to you. Work together with a partner if it helps. You can then record each other

2. Record your video/screencast. You can do this alone, but probably handier in a pair. Use Flip videos which you can borrow from me, or any iPhones, Flip Videos, digital camera’s etc you’ve got on you.

3. Upload your video to YouTube. Use a title like this: What My PLN Means To Me – @twittername or real name – #converge10.

4. Add the link on What My PLN Means To Me wiki

5. Send me a tweet @catspyjamasnz with a link so that I can thank you, moltas gracies con petons (thanks v much with kisses )

Why participate in this project?

• For you individually, it’s good practice to reflect on your PLN/PLE
• For our PLE/PLN community, these videos can act as resources, evidence showing this new personal learning in action
• For teachers new to technology, these videos can act as encouragement
• A cross-section of these videos, will be mixed together to create an overview resource
• The videos will be harvested for themes & ideas to prompt further research into the PLN/PLE concept

Thanks for your help, Converge 10 people! Good on ya, mates!

Here’s my video about what my PLN means to me.

Hola! I’d love your help in explaining the use of a Personal Learning Network (PLN) for an educator – whether you’re a teacher, librarian, manager or educational technologist.

What is this project about?

This project started last year when we combined our annual e-learning conference eFest with the recently established teaching & learning conference. One of the themes was the changing role of the teacher in the 21st century and us education technologists were eager to show that e-learning is all about teaching & learning, just with technology & access to the web. Of course this can be daunting, overwhelming, scary, uncomfortable, risky…. So we wanted to let educators new to these exciting possibilities, know that they’re not alone. That others have gone before them and are willing to help. Besides introducing the audience to various existing communities of practice out there (like Classroom2.0), I also introduced the Personal Learning Network concept to them.

This project was inspired by Alan Levine’s Amazing Stories of Openness for #OpenEd09, but my project is on a much smaller scale.

I’m asking you to answer the question: “What does my PLN mean to me?” and share your thoughts in a short video/animation/slidecast, about 2-3 minutes. If you work in education, I’d love to hear from you – teachers, librarians, educational technologists and managers. Feel free to answer as you will. However if you get stuck, here are some suggestions to include (use these as guidelines only – remember this has got to be personal!!!):

• Who you are, where you are & what you do
• How your PLN has affected your own learning?
• How your PLN has affected your practice?
• Something really neat you learned through your PLN recently
• Which tools you use in your PLN?
• How you use technology in your teaching or educational practice
• How you’re adapting your teaching or practice for the 21st century?
• Your most ‘fruitful’ connection made through your PLN
• Any words of encouragement for educators new to this 21st century, ‘techie’ way of teaching & learning

After you’ve posted your video/animation/slidecast somewhere on the web, please also embed it on the What My PLN Means – wiki here. And send me (@catspyjamasnz) a tweet to let me know – include the hashtag #mypln. That way I can thank you.

Your task

1. Think about your PLN/PLE and what it means to you. Work together in group of 3-5 to have brief discussion about this.

2. Record your video/screencast. You can do this alone, but probably handier in a group. Use Flip videos available (3), the iMacs provided by Citilab, your own recording devices (iPhones, Flips, digital camera’s) or…. go to the professional Citilab recording studio where Jordi will be operating the professional equipment!

3. Upload your video to YouTube. Use a title like this: What My PLN Means To Me – @twittername or real name – #PLE_BCN.

4. Link on What My PLN Means To Me wiki

5. Send me a tweet @catspyjamasnz with a link so that I can thank you, moltas gracies con petons (thanks v much with kisses )

Why participate in this project?

• For you individually, it’s good practice to reflect on your PLN/PLE
• For our PLE/PLN community, these videos can act as resources, evidence showing this new personal learning in action
• For teachers new to technology, these videos can act as encouragement
• A cross-section of these videos, will be mixed together to create an overview resource
• The videos will be harvested for themes & ideas to prompt further research into the PLN/PLE concept

Thanks for your help, PLN_BCN people! Moltas gracies!

Here’s my video about what my PLN means to me.

A few weeks ago, I ran an online facilitation workshop with a group of teachers & their managers. Together they run a programme that is taught entirely online. As part of this, a draft of some online course protocols was on the table. Most of these had to do with the updating & editing of the courses, but one of the protocols had to do with teaching the courses. It proposed that teachers should use the Course Announcements forum (a News forum in Moodle, our LMS) at least once a week. In the past, some courses (certainly not all, don’t want you to get the wrong idea…) had underused the Course Announcements (and other forums). A rather heated discussion followed this proposal.

The opponents to this protocol seemed to have 2 main objections:

1. They didn’t like to be dictated in when and how they should contact their students,

2. They felt that one course announcement a week would be too invasive, as the students would receive these as an email in their inbox, adding to their “information overload”.

I find that drawing a parallel with the on-campus  situation is always helpful. In this case…

1. We are all used to teachers being timetabled in, to be in a set classroom, at a set time, to teach a set group of students for on-campus classes. This is a ‘protocol’ that teachers accept and in fact, expect. Surely this new expectation to send a course announcement, in a set environment (the Course Announcements forum), at a set time (once a week) to a set group of students (the online students) is not unduly different from the on-campus expectation?

2.  We find it perfectly acceptable to ask students to leave their home, arrange child care or time off work, drive 2-10 kms to our campus, find a parking space, then walk across campus to be in a set room at a set time and sit there for 2-4 hours in a row. But an email in their inbox is too much of an imposition?

I believe that in an online class, communications should happen in a steady stream, flowing freely & flexibly, whether through forums, chat rooms, wikis, blogs or other means, as participants, teachers & students together, come to grips with the topics. I’ve seen the differences in courses I’ve taught. When I’m communicating in a steady stream, so do the students. In cases where I flagged as I got too busy with other commitments, the entire course dynamics sagged like a soufflé when the oven door is opened. I’ve learned from this and now see a weekly email/forum post as an opening shot, rather than a bridge too far. Am I overly optimistic?

Of course it will take a while for all of us to get used to working in these new environments, but I’d like to echo Tomaz Lasic’s thoughts: “The sooner educators move beyond the point of fear & awe of Moodle [or any other tech] and see it as a tool just like a pen, desk, whiteboard, book etc. the sooner they will be used better and more frequently to reach the pedagogical goals”. Just try to picture the Course Announcements forum as that place at the front of the class where you usually stand or sit to communicate with your students.

I love serendipitous learning. This week I followed the ASCILITE Conference held in Auckland on Twitter (am still kicking myself for not being there). There’s many thoughts, links & ideas I need to follow up on with regards to education technology in higher education. But what I love about  the powered up information exchange between people who share a passion that builds around an event like this, is the accidental or perhaps offhand tips that get shared that otherwise you’d never find out about.

An example of this today was a Twitter exchange between James Clay & Mark Smithers. Although they were discussing the role of IT departments in higher education, in passing James suggested that Mark install WPTouch for WordPress so his blog would render better on an iPhone.

I hadn’t optimised my blog yet so decided to install WPTouch as well. It took me about 5 seconds to install and it makes my site look just shiny on the iPhone. Thanks James!

Over the next few months I will be testing an iPhone for work. They’ve asked me to make a project out of it, so I’ll blog about issues & opportunities I encounter in iPhone use here. This is now my first post for this project – check!