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Sebastian H.D. Fiedler The book “Reusing open resources: Learning in open networks for work, life and education” edited by Allison Littlejohn and Chris Pegler just got published. This is what the Publisher Routledge has to say about it:

Every day, learners use and reuse open, digital resources for learning. Reusing Open Resources offers a vision of the potential of these open, online resources to support learning. The book follows on from Reusing Online Resources: A Sustainable Approach to E-learning. At that time focus was on the creation, release and reuse of digital learning resources modeled on educational materials. Since then the open release of resources and data has become mainstream, rather than specialist, changing societal expectations around resource reuse. Social and professional learning networks are now routine places for the exchange of online knowledge resources that are shared, manipulated and reused in new ways, opening opportunities for new models of business, research and learning.

The goal of this book is to extend the debate of how open, online resources might support learning across diverse contexts. Twenty-four distinguished experts from nine countries distributed across Europe and North America contribute empirical evidence and ideas. Collectively they provide a vision of the potential of open, online resources to support learning across everyday contexts of education, work and life.

My own contribution titled “Open-sourcing personal learning” (pp. 43-56) became chapter 3 of this newly released addition to the “Advancing technology-enhanced learning” series at Routledge.

Many thanks to Allison and Chris for an outstanding managing and editing job!

Sebastian H.D. Fiedler Allison Littlejohn and Chris Pegler have managed to put together a Special Issue of the Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) – edited by Ann Jones and Martin Weller – that features a selection of chapters from the book “Reusing Open Resources: Learning in Open Networks for Work, Life and Education” that will be published by Routledge in July 2014.

I am quite happy that my own contribution titled “Open-sourcing” personal learning has made it into the selection for JIME and is thus now also available to a wider public under an open access license. Here is the abstract of my text:

This article offers a critical reflection on the contemporary Open Educational Resource (OER) movement, its unquestioned investment in a collective ‘content fetish’ and an educational ‘problem description’ that focuses on issues of scarcity, access, and availability of quality materials. It also argues that OER proponents fail to take notice of historically new forms of learning activity emerging within the unfolding digital transformation of our global society. The article reviews some descriptive accounts of such learning activity and suggests that ‘networked autodidaxy’ in particular can provide inspiration for the critical review of our ideas regarding open resources and practices in education.

The final book will feature 12 chapters altogether… and a foreword from George Siemens.

Sebastian H.D. Fiedler Our text “Personal learning environments: A conceptual landscape revisited” (pdf) has just been published as part of eLearning PapersIssue 35 Personal Learning Environments. The issue was edited by Ilona Buchem (Beuth University of Applied Sciences, Berlin) and Tapio Koskinen (Aalto University, Helsinki).

This paper reports on a renewed attempt to review and synthesise a substantial amount of research and development literature on Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) published in recent years. Earlier comprehensive review efforts (Buchem, Attwell, & Torres, 2011; Fiedler & Väljataga, 2011) had attested considerable conceptual differences within the research community. If and how these differences have qualitatively changed since 2010, is the focus of an ongoing literature review project. While the project is still work in progress, some provisional findings and insights are reported and discussed.

References:

Buchem, I., Attwell, G., & Torres, R. (2011), Understanding personal learning environments: Literature review and synthesis through the Activity Theory lens. PLE Conference 2011.
http://journal.webscience.org/658/1/PLE_SOU_Paper_Buchem_Attwell_Torress.doc

Fiedler, S.H.D., & Väljataga, T. (2013). Personal learning environments: A conceptual landscape revisited. eLearning Papers (35), 1-16.
http://openeducationeuropa.eu/sites/default/files/asset/In-depth_35_2.pdf

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.

Sebastian H.D. Fiedler I have just learned that the Technology-enhanced professional learning: Processes, practices, and tools is going into production. This book is edited by Professor Allison Littlejohn and Dr. Anoush Margaryan from the Caledonian Academy at Glasgow Caledonian University, UK, and published by Routledge. I contributed commentary chapter 5 and co-authored chapter 10 with Dr. Terje Väljataga.

Technology-Enhanced Professional Learning addresses the need for continuous workplace learning that derives from the emergence of new, specialized, and constantly changing work practices. While continuous learning is fundamental to enabling individuals to function in and productively shape contemporary workplaces, digital technology is increasingly central to productive workplace practice. By examining the intersection of human learning processes, emergent work practices, and patterns of use of digital technology to support learning and work, this edited collection brings the disparate fields of professional learning and technology-enhanced learning together to advance theory and practice in both realms.

[via Routledge Website]

Congratulations to Allison, Anoush and their team for getting this publishing project together. Well done!

Sebastian Fiedler 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.

[Sebastian Fiedler]

Sebastian Fiedler 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.

[Sebastian Fiedler]