ICL 2012 Conference

 

From 26 to 28 September, I attended 15th int. conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning  (#ICL2012) in Villach, Austria. I presented a paper about content aggregation in a PLE and serendipity in online networks. Here are my presentation slides on Slideshare: 

ICL 2012 from Mohsen Saadatmand

I enjoyed Steve Wheeler’s keynote and here are the slides:

Learning 3.0 and the Smart eXtended Web from Steve Wheeler

The conference program is available here and the proceedings will be available in IEEE Explore 

The PLE Conference 2011 in Southampton

The second conference on Personal Learning Environments (PLE), The PLE Confrence 2011, was held from 11-13  July 2011 at the University of Southampton, UK. The first PLE conference was last year in Barcelona.
For this year's conference I had an accepted abstract which unfortunately I couldn't make it to attend and I missed this opportunity.  Nevertheless, I followed it online both from Live-casting of the keynotes and sessions, and from twitter stream: #PLE_SOU.
 Paulo Simoes has aggregated all resources and presentations again here as he did in Ed-Media11. Here is the link: http://www.scoop.it/t/the-ple/

My plan for conferences this year!

 This year I am planning to participate in one (or two) of the following conferences.

- ED-MEDIA 2011;World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications, June 27-July 1, 2011 in Lisbon, Portugal. Deadline for submission is April 12th. We will have a paper with my colleagues about blended learning and using wikis in higher education. Two keynotes of the conference : Alec Couros  and Erik Duval  will be speaking about interesting topics of today's learning; openness and networked learning. This conference I will attend for sure and looking froward to seeing Alec and Erik and other keynote speakers' contributions. There will be a doctoral consortium in this conference which I am interested to attend.

But between the two conferences below, I may attend just one . I'd like to participate in both but it depends on the situation then!  I am now preparing my proposals for both of them which is focused on self-directed learning, personalization of learning and personal learning environments.

- 6th European Conference on Technology- Enhanced Learning  ( EC-TEL 2011), 21-23 September 2011 in Palermo Italy. Proposal deadline is April 4th. The conference theme for this year is " Towards Ubiquitous Learning" with two keynotes talking about issues related to emerging technologies and ubiquitous learning.. There will be some workshops and also a doctoral consortium in the conference.


        - PLE Conference , conference on Personal Learning Environments (PLE), 11-13 July 2011, Southampton, UK. Deadline for submission is now extended until April10th. This conference is a good venue for my research and good themes related to PLE where I can also meet some researchers in this area.

CCK11’s week six on PLEs & PLNs

The topic of week six of CCK11 was about personal learning environments and networks which is very relevant to my research. The facilitators’ live session on Elluminate on Friday 25.2.2011 was a great discussion on the topic with valuable contributions from the participants. The session was started with a question about the definition of PLE from the point of view of participants and what is unique in PLE? As shown below, there were different thoughts on the definition of PLE:

Source:CCK11

Some people just refer to a single application as their PLE like Twitter connections or iGoogle which seems to be more tool-oriented but, some other see PLE as a combination of different tools, services, resources and connections in the process of learning.  One person believed that PLE concept is a result of Web 2.0 evolution and if the internet did not move that way to more participatory direction, perhaps we wouldn’t talk today about PLE! Downes mentioned that PLEs are not just for collecting and aggregating resources and materials but rather pull all learner needs to PLEs then, remix, repurpose and create new artifacts and share them with the community. PLEs are where a lot of learning happens by all those processes.

Another big concern which Siemens posed was what problems PLEs can solve?  This is really an important question? Can PLEs approach be a pedagogical model of education to the needs of current network era in contrast to the classroom-based model? The screenshot below of the discussion whiteboard shows what participants think of PLE in this regard. It can be realized that PLE approach has values for lifelong and informal learning and the ways the learner can organize and personalize learning. 

Source: CCK11

Here in the course page of week 6 , there are some good readings for pondering about PLEs and PLNs. Also here is the Elluminate recording from the session and the MP3 file. 

PLENK2010; Fostering Open and Networked Learning!

 picture source: Global Education

    Formally, the PLENK2010 ( Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge) which was kind of massive open online course (MOOC) finished last week but, informally it will be continuing through the networks of the participants which have been created during the course across various latforms.                     

    PLENK2010 covered various topics and issues from learning theories (e.g. comparing connectivism with other learning theories such as constructivism and cognitivism), PLE & PLN, self-directed informal learning, the role of educator in open education, the issues concerning the learner’s autonomy in open learning and many more relevant topics. 

   There was a ground for all participants with different learning styles and preferences to find out their ways in the context of this course in which, how they can learn, how to interact with others; just to be a lurker and stalking what is happening there or being an active participant to benefit from collaboration with other people in the course, creating and sharing the contents and being engaged in various forms to enrich the learning experiences. 

    For me, the MOOCs I have attended this autumn ( PLENK2010 & eci831) were exciting and very insightful. I enjoyed them and learned a lot as a participant and I got so many insights for my research on open education and networked learning. It was a great opportunity to encourage and keep me motivated to create and develop my PLE, also joining so many open online learning networks (OLNs) which have great potential for enhancing connectivity and networking in today’s connected world. 

   The big issue which makes me pondering is that: what these kinds of open online course add to education and learning?  What are the values of open education and networked social learning which challenge the structure of formal learning? And how the conventional formal education systems could cope with the needs of self-directed informal learning? Undoubtedly, these challenges are resulted from the evolutionary advancement of new social media and collaborative technologies which provide the infrastructure for putting more value on open education and informal social learning. 

Constructivist and Connectivist Learning and Knowledge

In #PLENK2010 (Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge), one of the topics of discussion in Elluminate live session was about the distinct between Constructivism and Connectivism learning and knowledge.

George Siemens and Stephen Downes, the developers of Connectivism, discussed some issues there. A 15 minutes audio clip excerpt from that conversation is available here.

Further details about 'what is Connectivism?' and 'what Connectivism is not'  in Downes' website.

By D'Arcy Norman

Viplav Baxi, one of the #PLENK2010 participants,  in his blog has a post discussing  Connectivist and Constructivist PLEs. There, he discusses that is the PLE ( Personal Learning Environment) a connectivist construct or a constructivist construct? Or both? Or neither, just influenced by many theories? It could be worthwhile to consider two interpretations :

1. PLEs are some combination of constructivist as well as connectivist ideas/principles, or
2. There exist two unique types of PLEs – constructivist and connectivist.