Community platform @ OU-UK

Tony Hirst wrote a blog post about the British Open University's new initiative to foster a sense of community amongst its stakeholders, an initiative called Platform.


Platform is a Drupal-based community site that brings together News, Blogs, Forums, Study-related Issues and some more informal stuff like games, competitions, etc. After the info, some comments - off the top of my head:

• Platform is open for anyone to join - you needn't be a student, staff member or alumnus to register. This is positive, because it allows others to get a bit of a feel for what's going on On-campus.
  
• The standard open blogging function in Drupal has been switched off for registered users, thus limiting the interaction possibilities. Users can, however, submit content to the site or participate in forum discussions, but both types of user-content are moderated by site supervisors. This has the effect that the site feels very much like a student bar, where the institution sets the rules and hands out the drinks, and users are only allowed to choose at which table they want to sit..
  

• The added value of registering on the site is that you can rate, tag and comment on stuff that appears on the site. These user actions are not pre-moderated (they appear immediately after posting them), but they are probably scanned by the site supervisors anyway. This adds a nice touch, but - to stay within the metaphor.
  
• Currently, the link with the institution's virtual learning environment is non-existing, nor is there a clear link to the institutional website. As such, the community site feels a bit like an 'in-between' place to be. And not really integrated to form a 'single user-experience'.
  

In short, Platform is a promising initiative that is quite relevant in the light of my own work. For instance:

• In allowing rating, annotation and tagging - RAT, for short - Platform has achieved one of the goals of the OUNL's goals in setting up new user-centered services.We also want to offer rating, annotation and tagging of items. We are not entirely certain of which items we want to open up to user feedback. The OU-UK has chosen to allow feedback on 'safe' items on the platform, and not items on their institutional homepage or in the virtual learning environment.
• Our ideas of integrating the community aspects of the OUNL in an integrated personal workplace would bring together the formal and informal communication related to the student/stakeholder in one single place. We intend to minimise the barrier between the learning environment and the community environment, which will hopefully enhance the user experience of the OUNL as an integrated campus.
• Finally, our idea of the personal workplace for all stakeholders starts from the main assumption that the user is in charge, and not the institution. We will be offering different information and interaction services in an integrated environment, but the user will be in control.
  

It would be interesting to be kept up-to-date on the usage of Platform, the success criteria that the OU has set itself and the future plans. Anybody?

The Big Ask - Cyberpower for the environment?

As a dedicated environmentalist, I hope that actions such as The Big Ask (UK - BE) may help to wake (especially our Belgian) politicians up, and get them to act.
Can you imagine that no politician was willing to participate in a radio debate this morning to answer some of Nic Balthazar's questions, while they spent hours debating the non-endorsement of three French-speaking mayors in Brussels? Setting priorities straight?


Why does this message appear in a blog about educational technology?

1. The Obama campaign illustrated the power of viral campaigns on the Web to mobilise voters. I wonder whether education might benefit from this mobilising potential?
2. Can the use of web technology support more environmentally-friendly education? Is distance education a sustainable alternative?
   
3. CELSTEC - my department at the OUNL, formerly known as OTEC - is performing an experiment on distance working. For instance, can the use of technology prevent me from having to drive 130 km every day to work - and still allow me to get the same results in my work?

But most of all, because I strongly support the initiative, and want to contribute to it through my blog.

Flock2.0 - A powerful social web browser

Thanks to Henry, I got (re-)acquainted with Flock, the social web browser. I installed it yesterday, and played around with it a bit. Here are some thoughts.

People browser
I linked the "Friend feeds" from my social networks to it (Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace), so now I get automatic updates of all my friends updates'. I am missing LinkedIn, but also the more local networks, such as Netlog or Hyves, and there does not seem to be a way to add people feeds from non-supported services (yet).



Media browser
Next, I added the my Flickr, Picasa and YouTube accounts, and all the media feeds from these sources are centralised in a media bar at the top (or bottom) of the browser. This means any channels you subscribe to, or new additions from your friends. And you can view media either by opening the media bar, or as a widget on your startup screen.








Feed reader
Next, I exported all my Netvibes feeds to an OPML file, and imported it into Flock. Of course, this is an offline feedreader - as opposed to Netvibes - but it is nice to have all these functions combined in one tool. Moreover, it allows me to read all new feeds in one single page (a feature that Netvibes does not support yet).





Blog editor
A very neat feature is the platform-independent blog editor (which I am using while writing this post). Flock allows you to add your weblog accounts, and then provides a simple editor for writing a post. When you are finished writing a post, you can choose which blog to post it to. However, when I tried to actually publish the post, nothing happened.




A bonus is that it automatically uploads any illustrations or images to your online photo account (in my case on Flickr).



All in all, a very positive experience, if some of the minor flaws are fixed.

Mobile learning - part 1

In the framework of the OUNL project on new educational services, Henry (co-project leader) and I have started to buy some mobile devices to try and experience issues with mobile learning. Within the project we have a track on technology and trend watch, namely. The first device was delivered to us on Monday, the HTC Touch Diamond smart phone, with a Vodafone voice and data price plan, including mobile broadband.

It's a very nice-looking and slick device with quite some functionality (running on Windows Mobile 6.1), but the interface reacts in a very slow way, which often leads to unwanted results.

It took about 3 hours to get started with the device. We have mainly looked at its connectivity.

• Wifi at the office is problematic. It keeps asking for my credentials, even after I have selected "remember password" innumerable times. Maybe I am too far away from the access point? Henry does not seem to have the problem 4 offices down the hall.
• Wifi at home is very easy.
• 3G mobile data was not functioning. Turned out that the Access Point was office.vodafone.nl, instead of the pre-installed live.vodafone.com. Thanks to the ICT support staff for the solution.
• Active Sync was not as straightforward as indicated in the manual. Already had to un- and re-install the application on my laptop. Now it seems to work again, except for the direct sync with Exchange server at the office. Probably a security issue.

I already installed two applications:

• Mobipocket reader was a piece of cake, as it started from the laptop version of the application. I did not have to actively download anything, just had to get the HTC to sync with Mobipocket reader, and that took care of the install for me. Neat!
• Skype for Windows Mobile. I first tried to install from the laptop, but I got the message to shutdown all other apps, which I didn't want to do, so I downloaded the .cab-version and installed it from the device itself. We tested Skype on the HTC, but found the connection quality not very satisfactory. On a wifi connection, there was quite some delay. On the 3G Mobile connection, the sound was distorted and the conversation frequently interrupted.
• Want to try an app such as FlashMeeting, one of these days.
  

More updates to follow ...

Increasing need for lifelong learning

My main task - since a couple of months - has been to manage a strategic OUNL project that aims at designing, developing and prototyping technical support services for lifelong learning in the Dutch-speaking market. The OUNL is positioning itself more and more as the Lifelong Learning University of the Netherlands, and a number of initiatives have been started to achieve this aim.
The main scenario we foresee for the future is that people will want to have support for

• constantly updating their competences,
  
• upgrading their competences (new job demands, new position), or
  
• acquiring new competences (different career path, different job).
  

Today I stumbled across a European report that gives support for this claim: Cedefop: Future skills need in Europe. The report summary states:

Between 2006 and 2015, Europe will gain 12.5 million additional jobs at the highest qualification level and 9.5 million at the medium level (especially vocational qualifications). But jobs for workers with low qualifications will decline by 8.5 million. Even jobs for unskilled manual workers are demanding more qualifications, while skilled manual workers will increasingly need medium-level qualifications.

This has serious implications for employment. A shrinking population implies a continuing need to replace workers, even in declining sectors and occupations. But with skill requirements increasing dramatically, the new workers will need higher qualifications to perform “the same job”.

A discussion meeting with some external stakeholders from the Limburg region last week supported the case for the OUNL. These organisations are actually "begging" for an independent and reputed institution such as the OUNL to assist them in assessing and developing the competences and qualifications of the regional workforce, especially with regard to workforce mobility.
There is a clear need in society for a lifelong learning infrastructure, but it seems to me that the initiatives are still rather fragmented, and that educational institutions are trying to pick up the challenge, but are not ready for it yet.

Briefly back to Flanders...

Last week was the start-up of a new project at the Katholieke Hogeschool Limburg - one of my previous employers. The project is called "Open Hogeschool - een antwoord op vraaggestuurd leren van werknemers" and aims at developing blended learning approaches and suitable educational materials for postgraduate education aimed at professionals with a professional bachelor's or master's degree (alumni of so-called hogescholen - polytechnics). The OUNL - represented by Marlies and myself - act as academic coaches to the project. It is a three-year project, driven by the small research group [ed+ict], headed by Valère Awouters.
There are some interesting initiatives being developed in Flanders within the field of digital didactics. The EliseLeren course - which I have co-ordinated for some time - will possibly be continued through a number of new initiatives.

• DIVA vzw. has founded TOLL-NET, which is specifically targeted at supporting teachers in adult education, and may take over the EliseLeren course for that specific target group.
• A number of higher education institutions - notably Katho, Universiteit Gent, and PHLimburg - seem to have maintained their interest in continuing EliseLeren for the higher education audiences. We'll be having a meeting on this in the near future.
• AVNet - KULeuven is investigating the possibility of starting a spin-off course specifically about multimedia and the use of audio/video in education.

Moreover, there are concrete plans for a full-fletched post-graduate course (20 ECTS) on digital didactics, starting in September 2008. I hope to be able to be involved in some of these initiatives, in an advisory function of some kind. Let's see what happens.