Archive for November, 2009
Getting ready for another trip downunder
I am in the middle of my preparations for another longish trip to New Zealand and Australia. Tonight’s heavy rain here in Nürnberg makes the prospect of diving into spring and early summer in the Southern Hemisphere even more attractive. And… I do need a break and re-charge my batteries again. I can feel that.
This time I am renting out both my apartments in Nürnberg and Vienna. Quite a hassle … but also an interesting exercise. It kind of forces me to sort through my stuff and see how quickly and painlessly I can tuck away my belongings and leave my home-bases to someone else. Economically this all makes perfect sense, of course. Rents are currently my biggest cost item… so, finding someone else to move in while I am gone allows me to set up a pretty decent travel budget.
The overall trip will be kicked off by attending ASCILITE 2009 in Auckland. Followed by a two-week car trip exploring the Northland region. Around Christmas a hop over to Sydney will bring about a reunion with Anne and Stephen Bartlett-Bragg (its about time guys!)… and hopefully some fireworks in Sydney harbour. Then, some trip in South-Eastern Australia, before flying from Sydney to Christchurch to start off on another car/camping trip in the upper parts of South Island. Possibly some hiking in the Abel Tasman national park. Finally, a flight to Auckland… and then from there back into the Bavarian winter.
International Symposium on Collaborative Learning and Argumentation (ICLA 2010)
The symposium seeks to gather together people involved in recent research and theoretical issues of the research on collaborative learning and argumentation-based learning. In the symposium presentations these two major research areas may be approached from several perspectives including, but not limited to, the following aspects:
- Collaborative argumentation
- Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL)
- Collaboration in various educational settings and contexts
- Multiple methodological approaches, including both qualitative and quantitative methodologies for studying collaboration
- Different pedagogical designs (e.g. scripts, structured interaction, tasks sequences)
The program of the symposium consists of keynote lectures, paper presentations and panel discussions. The symposium is co-organized by the Finnish Institute for Educational Research and the Department of Educational Sciences, at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
The ICLA 2010 symposium takes place from March 25 to 26, 2010 at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Abstracts can be submitted until January 18, 2010.
Looks like an excellent opportunity for going up to Finland again. Hope this does not overlap with the STELLAR project first year review meeting.
JTEL Winter School on Advanced Learning Technologies 2010
The JTEL Winter School brings interdisciplinary doctoral researchers together in order to provide intense research training and to foster cross-domain collaboration. The event will engage participants in high-level courses and workshops with leading scientists. These workshops and lectures focus on theoretical, methodological, educational, and technological issues of relevance to TEL research, providing space for interaction, group work, and informal discussions. Doctoral students will also be expected to present their own research for constructive feedback from other participants of the Winter School.
Deadline for applications: 14 December 2010
[via TELeurope Website]
The winter school will take place Feb 1-6, 2010 in Innsbruck, Austria. Interested parties should have a look at the call for participation (pdf) and the draft weekplan (pdf). The JTEL Winter School is part of the “Doctoral School” activities within the “Building next generation research capacity” theme of the STELLAR Network of Excellence project.
Panel discussion: The most needed social innovations of the 21st century
The most needed social innovations of the 21st century
The ZSI is organising a pannel discussion on “The most needed social innovations of the 21st century” together with the faculty of social sciences at the Vienna University on Monday, 30th of Novermber, 2009, 18:00 – 20:00.
High representatives of organisations dealing with social innovations from various continents will discuss the development, support and diffusion of social innovations.
The event is part of the European year of creativity and innovation. For more information on the event click here.
This public panel discussion will take place in English. The following scholars have confirmed their participation:
Dekan Univ.-Prof Dr. Rudolf Richter, Universität Wien (Intro)
Brenton Caffin, The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI), Adelaide
Kriss Deiglmeier, Center for Social innovation (CSI), Stanford University, Graduate School of Business
Hans-Werner Franz, TU Dortmund – professor for Social Innovation
Josef Hochgerner, ZSI – Zentrum für Soziale Innovation, Vienna
Louise Pulford, Young Foundation (coordinator of the SIX/Social Innovation Exchange)
Tonya Surman, Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), Toronto
Diogo Vasconcelos, CISCO und member of the Barroso workgroup on Social Innovation
ASCILITE 2009 here we come
Time is flying… and all of a sudden the trip downunder is just around the corner. The recent cold that put me into bed for a few days certainly added to the feeling that I am running late now with preparing and organising things accordingly. Oh, well…
On the other hand there is a growing feeling of excitement to actually go down to New Zealand (and possibly Australia) again. The trip will start off with attending the ASCILITE 2009 conference in Auckland where I will run a symposium titled “Cascading Change: The role of social software and social media in educational intervention and transformation” with Rob Fitzgerald, George Siemens … and others.
As usual, not all colleagues who contributed to the original proposal will finally make it to the event. However, I think this will be an interesting session… even with a smaller group of contributors. More on this in the next few days…
Learning and expanding with activity theory
…is the title of the book that recently arrived in my mailbox. Unfortunately, Amazon had packed it so sloppily that it looks like somebody has driven a truck over it. Damned.
The book holds a recent collection of contributions to the Helsinki flavour of Activity Theory, edited by Annalisa Sannino, Harry Danies, and Kris Gutierrez (2009). Since I have spent a good part of last summer studying a wide selection of works in this area, it seems an appropriate extension of my growing literature collection in this area.
While I have high respect for some core notions, perspectives, and the general approach promoted by this school of thought, I still struggle with some of the conceptual fuzziness that one encounters in the available literature.
I guess I will start my reading with Yrjö Engeström’s chapter titled “The future of Activity Theory: A Rough Draft” to get an idea where he sees things going at the moment…
The changing dynamics of scientific collaborations
The confluence of two major trends in scientific research is leading to an upheaval in standard scientific practice and collaborative technologies. A new generation of scientists, working in large-scale collaborations, is repurposing social software for use in collaborative science. Existing social tools such as chat, IM, and FriendFind are being adopted and modified for use as group problem-solving facilities. At the same time, exponentially greater and more complex datasets are being generated at a rate that is challenging the limits of current hardware, software, and human cognitive capability. A concerted effort to create software that will support new scientific practices and handle this data tsunami is redefining the collaboratory and represents a new frontier for computer supported cooperative work.
This follow-on event to a similarly themed workshop at CHI 2009 is intended to foster community among researchers and practitioners from multiple disciplines interested in the changing dynamics of scientific collaborations.
This workshop is part of the CSCW 2010 conference that will take place on February 6-10, 2010, in Savannah, Georgia, USA.
Position papers of 2-4 pages need to be submitted until November 20, 2009.
Too bad that I will be downunder at the time of the conference. Savannah is a pretty place… and I sure wouldn’t mind to re-visit Georgia again.
Open 2009 Symposium in Helsinki… and the role of cheating
Yesterday I followed the last panel discussion of the Open 2009 Symposium at the Media Lab of the University of Art and Design Helsinki. They had set up a very decent video stream for the event and a Qaiku based back-channel. The panel focused on “openness” in the healthcare sector. I wasn’t quite sure what to make out of the discussion. While I was listening they never touched the role of insurance companies and the almighty pharma industry in the health sector… and how they most likely oppose any movement towards open data, owndership of records, and so forth. From my perspective, many of these discussions on “openness” and “transparency” often remain strangely detached from questions of power. Altogether, I still regret a bit that I had no time to follow more of this overall event.
Too bad, for example, that I missed the keynote by Yrjö Engeström titled “The Educational Value of Learning by Cheating” on Thursday morning. I think I have only recently read a paper of Engeström where he discussed the (cognitive) advantages of having prepared “cheating” material for oneself. Actually, the “Schulmuseum” in Nürnberg currently runs an exhibition titled “Bloß nicht erwischen lassen! Spickzettel – die verborgene Seite der Schule” that displays over 1000 artefacts prepared for “cheating” in school around the world. I think the psychological role of creating these instruments is highly underestimated.
[Website of Schulmuseum Nürnberg]
In the meantime, down in Bari at the ECEL 2009 conference there were some folks hopping around trying to sell their anti-”plagirasim” software and services. For many reasons, I find the way this “topic” is mostly treated in higher education as incredibly boring, one-sided, and somewhat pathetic…
Whose problem is it really if an adult learner chooses to copy and paste only… ?
Supporting students to self-direct intentional learning projects with social media
The paper “Supporting students to self-direct intentional learning projects with social media” by Terje Väljataga (Centre for Educational Technology at Tallinn University, Estonia) and myself was published only recently as part of the special issue on “Technology Support for Self-Organized Learners” in the Journal of Educational Technology & Society (JFETS).
JFETS is an open access journal. The full paper can be downloaded here.
Reference: Väljataga, T., & Fiedler, S. (2009). Supporting students to self-direct intentional learning projects with social media. Educational Technology & Society, 12 (3), 58–69.
Seblogging again…
After a suprisingly long moratorium it feels about right to start this practice again…
Heck, it really has been a while!
Search
Recent Posts
- The CAL Conference 2011 – Learning Futures: Education, Technology & Sustainability – April 13-15 2011, Manchester, UK
- CSCL 2010 conference – July 4 to 8, 2011 – Hong Kong, China
- Self-regulated learning in technology enhanced learning environments: problems and promises
- Global Learn Asia Pacific 2011 -March 28 to April 1 – Melbourne, Australia
- Working on “Modeling the personal adult learner: the concept of PLE re-interpreted”
