conference
CSEDU 2011 – Int’l Conf. on Computer Supported Education – 6.-9. May, 2011 – Noordwijkerhout, NL
CSEDU 2011 (International Conference on Computer Supported Education) has an open call for papers, whose deadline is on September 30, 2010. We hope you can participate in this prestigious conference by submitting a paper reflecting your current research.
The conference is sponsored by INSTICC and held in cooperation with the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC). CSEDU will be held in Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands next year, on May 6-9, 2011.
CSEDU aims at becoming a yearly meeting place for presenting and discussing new educational environments, best practices and case studies on innovative technology-based learning strategies, institutional policies on computer supported education including open and distance education, using computers. In particular, the Web is currently a preferred medium for distance learning and the learning practice in this context is usually referred to as e-learning. CSEDU 2011 is expected to give an overview of the state of the art as well as upcoming trends, and to promote discussion about the pedagogical potential of new learning and educational technologies in the academic and corporate world.
The conference program will include a number of Keynote Lectures delivered by distinguished world-class researchers. Their names will be announced soon at the conference website (http://www.csedu.org).
Submitted papers will be subject to a double-blind review process. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings, under an ISBN reference, on paper and on CD-ROM support. The proceedings will be indexed by several major international indexers, including INSPEC, DBLP and we are awaiting the confirmation of indexation by Thomson Reuters Conference Proceedings Citation Index and EI.
Best paper awards will be given during the conference closing session.
All published papers will be also available at the SciTePress’ Digital Library (http://www.scitepress.org/DigitalLibrary/).Workshops and special sessions are also invited. If you wish to propose workshop or a special session, for example based on the results of a specific research project, please contact the secretariat. Workshop chairs and Special Session chairs will benefit from logistics support and other types of support, including secretariat and financial support, to facilitate the development of a valid idea.
Please check further details at the CSEDU conference website (http://www.csedu.org/). There you will find detailed information about the conference structure and its main topic areas. This conference is co-located with WEBIST 2011 (7th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies – http://www.webist.org/).
[via email]
Regular paper submission is open until September 30., 2010. Author should be notified until January 06, 2011.
FISCAR 2010 conference: Perspectives on social creativity, designing and activity
Nordic ISCAR and FISCAR welcome researchers and students from all around the world to its 2010 conference in Helsinki, on the 23-25 of May. The conference is dedicated to examining human creative activities. The conference theme is “Perspectives on social creativity, designing and activity”. We conceive of design as a field of knowledge and activity concerned with the creation of artifacts. Creative activities operate with diverse modes of knowing and representations. Creativity is a social quality that involves communication and community formation. Creative activities and design are needed when humans transform their circumstances by developing new technologies and institutions. Creation of the new relies on cultural mediation and historically accumulated resources. Activity theory and socio-cultural approaches offer fresh perspectives on these themes. The conference aims at bringing together diverse points of view and disciplinary orientations to discuss social creativity, design and activity… [FISCAR 2010 Website]
Unfortunately, I only discovered this event after the deadline for proposals had already been passed. I still would like to go. After all, the preliminary programme (pdf) of this conference features a nice selection of prominent proponents of contemporary activity theory in education, human-computer interaction, and organisational development. Since last summer I must have studied about 50 to 70 papers related to Cultural and Activity Research. It is about time to meet some of the people in this area in person. Oh, well… I am not sure if I can still pull this off. We shall see…
Open Ed 2010
The Open Education Conference has been described as “the annual reunion of the open education family.” Each year the conference serves as the world’s premiere venue for research related to open education, while simultaneously creating the most friendly and energetic atmosphere you’ll find at any academic conference.
November 2-4, 2010, the seventh annual Open Education Conference moves to Barcelona for its first convening outside of North America! The 2010 conference venue is CosmoCaixa, designated Europe’s best science museum in 2006.
The conference theme for 2010 is OER: Impact and Sustainability.
Keynote speakers for 2010 include Brenda Gourley, former Vice Chancellor of The Open University, Great Britain; Erik Duval, Professor of Computer Science at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium; and Raquel Xalabarder, Director of Learning Resources at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain… [Open Ed 2010 Website]
Today is the last day you can send in your proposals. Details are outlined in the call for papers.
E-Learning 2010 conference in Freiburg, Germany – July 26-31, 2010 (second call)
The IADIS e-Learning 2010 conference aims to address the main issues of concern within e-Learning. This
conference covers both technical as well as the non-technical aspects of e-Learning… [E-Learning 2010 conference Website]
Short and full papers can be submitted until May 31. Details can be found in the call for papers.
E-Learning 2010 in Freiburg, Germany – July 26-31, 2010
The IADIS e-Learning 2010 conference aims to address the main issues of concern within e-Learning. This
conference covers both technical as well as the non-technical aspects of e-Learning… [E-Learning 2010 conference Website]
Short and full papers can be submitted until March 15. Details can be found in the call for papers.
PLE Conference in Barcelona, July 8-9, 2010
Personal Learning Environments (PLE) include the tools, communities, and services that constitute the individual educational platforms learners use to direct their own learning and pursue educational goals. The idea of the PLE represents a shift away from the model in which students consume information through independent channels such as the library, a textbook, or an LMS, moving instead to a model where students draw connections from a growing matrix of resources that they select and organize. Because they emphasize relationships, PLEs can promote authentic learning by incorporating expert feedback into learning activities and resources. A PLE also puts students in charge of their own learning processes, challenging them to reflect on the tools and resources that help them learn best. By design, a PLE is created from self-direction, and therefore the responsibility for organization—and thereby for learning—rests with the learner. (7 things you should know about Personal Learning Environments, Educause 2009).
The PLE Conference is intended to produce a space for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experience and research around the development and implementation of PLEs including the design of environments, sociological and educational issues and their effectiveness and desirability as (informal) learning spaces.
Whilst the conference includes a traditional research paper strand, we also encourage proposals for sessions in different formats including workshops, posters, debates, cafe sessions, hands on sessions and demonstrations. There will be a Spanish strand, so contributions in Spanish are also welcome!
We will also provide opportunities for unconferencing events, including the provision of spaces for informal meetings and discussions. Although the main conference takes place on 8th and 9th of July, there will be an informal launch event (with wine and tapas!) on the evening of Wednesday 7th.
As well as the face to face sessions, the conference will be supported by a variety of different online spaces. You can join the YouTube group for the PLE conference at
http://www.youtube.com/group/PLE2010CONF. The YouTube group will also be used for the Mediacast Contest: a celebration of User Generated Content with awards for the best three mediacast productions on Personal Learning Environments.Selected papers will be published by the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments.
Proposals can be submitted until March 26th, 2010. Notification of acceptance is scheduled for April 30th.
Some thoughts on the Cascading Change (CaCha09) symposium at ASCILITE09
On Monday, December 7. we carried out our Cascading Change symposium at the 26th ASCILITE conference in Auckland, New Zealand. For various reasons the original group of nine contributors was cut down to four who actually made it to Auckland. While I certainly would have liked to meet all the folks who had committed to the proposal, I think we would have been (even more) in trouble with the time-slot of 60 min that we had been allocated. Even if you get nine contributors to limit their air-time to 5 min statements (which already is a hard job) you end up covering 45 min. An open, conversational format is simply not possible in such a time frame.
So, even with the four remaining contributors we covered about 30 to 35 min with a few words of general welcome and introduction and a series of short impulse presentations of about 5 min each, before we could even open up to the larger plenum. We had agreed upon this format in a lively, preparatory conversation on Sunday afternoon before the actual conference kicked off. In fact, I think we should have brought that conversation on stage… but more to that later.
Altogether, our slightly eclectic individual statements/presentations apparently worked as a conversation opener. There was clearly interest in the over-arching theme and present ASCILITErs were eager to chime in an voice their opinions. However, when things just started to get somewhat interesting we already had to wrap up the session and disperse the convention. I found this extremely unfortunate. So, in retrospect I should have never accepted the reduction of the original 90 min time-slot by the planners of the overall conference programme. On the contrary, I think I should have demanded two hours as a minimum to tackle a demanding topic in a conversational format with a (potentially) large group of people.
For me this is not a mere matter of delivering a good performance for an audience. I actually want to hear other voices and opinions on a particular theme and not only broadcast what I have already thought through and then finish that off with a little harmless question and answer ping-pong. The latter seems to be considered the height of audience participation in academic conferences these days.
This brings me to the physical space. The theme of ASCILITE09 apparently was “Same places, different spaces”. Unfortunately, our symposium was placed in an enormous, theatre-style lecture hall that can certainly be qualified as yet another example of the “same spaces” (as usual) that one generally encounters in educational conferences. No matter what you do in such a space… it does not create an egalitarian, conversational flow. There are some actors on stage… and there are spectators. Our attempt to compensate a little by dragging in some chairs from the coffee break area didn’t show much effect, I suppose. It only ensured that the contributors moved at least away from the central podium. An appropriate “space” is just another aspect that I simply should not (and hopefully won’t) compromise about. A symposium simply requires “different spaces” than a good old lecture hall… no matter how fancy and well equipped it is.
I had a few conversations with George Siemens and Rob Fitzgerald during the remaining conference days on the symposium, the presentation formats encountered, and the general failure to create real, genuine dialogue within the actual conference programmes… and not only during the breaks and social get-togethers. In the case of a symposium I am willing to do away with any kind of impulse presentations. I can easily imagine to simply start with a conversation among a group of informed peers on stage… that gradually draws in more and more participants. It would provide a hyperlink-cloud around the individual contributors to get an idea of where they are coming from, and possible end with recommendations on further readings… plus some form of mediated conversation and exchange beyond the event. No presentations, no lecture halls, no 60 min time-slots. Stay tuned… I will try this somewhere sometimes in 2010.
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…
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Recent Posts
- Working on “Modeling the personal adult learner: the concept of PLE re-interpreted”
- CSEDU 2011 – Int’l Conf. on Computer Supported Education – 6.-9. May, 2011 – Noordwijkerhout, NL
- Job offer: International project management and research
- FISCAR 2010 conference: Perspectives on social creativity, designing and activity
- Open Ed 2010
