“To understand the dominating role played by technics in modern civilization, one must explore in detail the preliminary period of ideological and social preparation. Not merely must one explain the existence of the new mechanical instruments: one must explain the culture that was ready to use them and profit by them so extensively.”

Lewis Mumford (1934) in Technics and Civilization

[Sebastian Fiedler]

Kalamaja district, Tallinn

[Sebastian Fiedler]

Shot taken on Insel Schütt in Old Town Nürnberg

[Sebastian Fiedler]

Forest near Kalchreuth, Franconia

Henkersteg, Nürnberg

[Sebastian Fiedler]

OST ’12 Open and Social Technologies for Networked Learning
30.July – 3.August 2012
Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

Conference Sponsored by IFIP WG 3.4

In 2011, Tallinn (Estonia) is the European Cultural Capital. In 2012,
Tallinn will host an IFIP open conference on “Open and Social
Technologies for Networked Learning”. Sponsored by IFIP Working Group
3.4 (Professional Education), the conference is jointly organized by
Tallinn University and University of Tampere (Finland).

Confirmed keynotes by Stefanie Lindstaedt (Graz University of
Technology, Austria) and Jari Multisilta (University of Helsinki,
Finland).

Open and Social Technologies play an increasingly important role in
many educational settings. Social technologies are naturally entering
primary, secondary and higher education where they blur the boundaries
between formal and informal learning. Social technologies also enter
the workplaces where they connect learners and bridge the boundaries
between individual learning and organizational knowledge processes.
Not only do these technologies connect learners independent of place
and time, they have also been found to exert emergent properties. For
example, wikis or social tagging environments are increasingly used
for collaborative knowledge construction where new knowledge emerges
from a large scale interaction of individuals. These properties and
their impact on individual, group and organizational learning have
only started to be researched…

[via conference website]

Submission deadline has been extended to March 12, 2012.

[Sebastian Fiedler]

“First, it is always worthwhile to insist that people explain the words they have chosen to describe what they are doing, so that their purposes may be evaluated. Second, many people who use the word “science” do so in the hope that its prestige will attach to their work. Americans are peculiarly afflicted with science-adoration, which is why we must endure such abominations as the oxymorons Christian Science, Creation Science, Scientology, Policy Science, Decision Science, and Administrative Science, as well as Behavioral and Social Science. And third, when the study of human conduct is classified as science, there is a tendency to limit the kinds of inquiries that may be made: counters and “empiricists”- that is, pseudo-scientists- are apt to deprive others of the right to proceed in alternative ways, for example, by denying them tenure. The result is, of course, that they impoverish all of us and make it difficult for people with ideas to be heard.”

Neil Postman (1988) in Concentious Objections