On learning as by-product
“Dialogue like nirvana, like happiness, like love, like learning cannot be achieved by the direct desire to have a dialogue, to have nirvana, to have happiness, to have love, to have learning. In this sense, a dialogue, nirvana, happiness, and learning (and teaching) are not goal-directed activities. They cannot be designed… However, on the other hand, certain actions can increase possibility for engaging in dialogue, experiencing nirvana, love, learning and teaching. Similarly, some circumstances make dialogue, nirvana, love, learning, teaching more difficult, although never impossible. Thus, activity and design be used for promoting these phenomena as their by-products.”
Eugene Matusov (2009) in Journey into Dialogic Pedagogy
4th ICTs and Society-Conference 2012 – May 2-4, 2012 – Uppsala, Sweden
This conference provides a forum for the discussion of how to critically study social media and their relevance for critique, democracy, politics and philosophy in 21st century information society.
We are living in times of global capitalist crisis. In this situation, we are witnessing a return of critique in the form of a surging interest in critical theories (such as the critical political economy of Karl Marx, critical theory, etc) and revolutions, rebellions, and political movements against neoliberalism that are reactions to the commodification and instrumentalization of everything. On the one hand there are overdrawn claims that social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, mobile Internet, etc) have caused rebellions and uproars in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, which brings up the question to which extent these are claims are ideological or not. On the other hand, the question arises what actual role social media play in contemporary capitalism, power structures, crisis, rebellions, uproar, revolutions, the strengthening of the commons, and the potential creation of participatory democracy. The commodification of everything has resulted also in a commodification of the communication commons, including Internet communication that is today largely commercial in character. The question is how to make sense of a world in crisis, how a different future can look like, and how we can create Internet commons and a commons-based participatory democracy…
The deadline for the submission of abstract is February 29, 2012.
ICL 2012 conference – September 26-28, 2012 – Villach, Austria
This interdisciplinary conference aims to focus on the exchange of relevant trends and research results as well as the presentation of practical experiences gained while developing and testing elements of interactive collaborative learning. Therefore pilot projects, applications and products will also be welcome…
Deadline for submissions is April 23, 2012.
ECER 2012 conference – September 18-20, 2012 – Cadiz, Spain
EERA, European Educational Research Association and the University of Cadiz, Spain, invite Educational Researchers to participate in and to submit proposals for the European Conference on Educational Research 2012.
The conference theme “The Need for Educational Research to Champion Freedom, Education and Development for All” will provide a focus for the keynote addresses and for other invited events. It may also be taken as a reference within the conference sessions organised by the EERA networks. However, proposals for contributions are welcome from all fields of educational research.Participants are invited to hand in up to two abstracts for papers, posters, workshops, round tables and symposia. All proposals must be handed in electronically via the online submission form. PhD students and emerging researchers are especially invited to participate in the Emerging Researchers’ Conference by submitting proposals to the Emerging Researchers’ Group…
[via email]
The deadline for submissions is 01 February 2012. Review results are expected by 01 April 2012.
INTED 2012 conference – March 5-7, 2012 – Valencia, Spain
INTED2012 will be an International Forum for those who wish to present their projects and innovations, having also the opportunity to discuss the main aspects and the latest results in the field of Education and Research.
The general aim of the conference is to promote international collaboration in Education and Research in all educational fields and disciplines. The attendance of more than 700 delegates from 70 different countries is expected…
The deadline for submitting abstracts is November 24th, 2011.
On the commoditisation of instruction
With the commoditization of instruction, teachers are drawn into a production process designed for the efficient creation of instructional commodities, and hence become subject to all the pressures that have befallen production workers in other industries undergoing rapid technological transformation from above. In this context faculty have much more in common with the historic plight of other skilled workers than they care to acknowlege. Like these others, their activity is being restructured, via the technology, in order to reduce their autonomy, independence, and control over their work and to place workplace knowledge and control as much as possible into the hands of the administration. As in other in other industries, the technology is being deployed by management primarily to discipline, de-skill, and displace labor.
David F. Noble (1998) in Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education.
On convivial work
The conditions for convivial work are structural arrangements that make possible the just distribution of unprecedented power. A postindustrial society must and can be so constructed that no one person’s ability to express him- or herself in work will require as a condition the enforced labor or the enforced learning or the enforced consumption of another.
Ivan Illich (1975) in Tools for conviviality
Personal Learning Environments: Concept or Technology?
Our paper “Personal Learning Environments: Concept or Technology?” was finally published in the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments (IJVPLE).
This paper reviews and critiques how the notion of PLEs has been conceptualised and discussed in literature so far. It interprets the variability of its interpretations and conceptualisations as the expression of a fundamental contradiction between patterns of activity and digital instrumentation in formal education on one hand, and individual experimentation and experience within the digital realm on the other. It is suggested to place this contradiction in the larger socio-historic context of an ongoing media transformation. Thus, the paper argues against the prevalent tendency to base the conceptualisation of PLEs almost exclusively on Web 2.0 technologies that are currently available or emerging, while underlying patterns of control and responsibility often remain untouched. Instead, it proposes to scrutinise these patterns and to focus educational efforts on supporting adult learners to model their learning activities and potential (personal learning) environments while exploring the digital realm.
Reference: Fiedler, S. H. D., & Väljataga, T. (2011). Personal learning environments: Concept or technology? International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 2(4), 1-11.
On the industrialisation and commodification of science
“But science itself has been industrialized and commodified. It is increasingly organized into large research centers with intricate division of labor. Research operates with costly complex primary instruments, but secondary instruments (models and theories) seem to fall into a myriad of
disconnected micro-theories. The objects of science appear in the form of separate ‘problems’ or ‘tasks’ given from outside. Above all, science is tendentially reduced to its immediate products or resu lts possessingexchange value in the ‘science market’ and being essentially known or fixed in advance (as ‘customer’s orders’ or promises from the researchers).”Yrjö Engeström (1987) in Learning by Expanding
On integrity of the individual
“When I was born, humanity was 95 per cent illiterate. Since I’ve been born, the population has doubled and that total population is now 65 per cent literate. That’s a gain of 130-fold of the literacy. When humanity is primarily illiterate, it needs leaders to understand and get the information and deal with it. When we are at the point where the majority of humans them-selves are literate, able to get the information, we’re in an entirely new relationship to Universe. We are at the point where the integrity of the individual counts and not what the political leadership or the religious leadership says to do.”
R. Buckminster Fuller, Excerpt from an interview on February 26, 1983
