Next Recent Changes Camp in New Zealand

Greetings from the last day of of Recent Changes Camp 2011: Canberra at the University of Canberra. The last topic of conversation was were the next event would be and what would be the theme. Suggested was the topic of "research" in New Zealand in mid 2011. One possible area which will be interested is the NZ Ministry of Education and Webstock.

Also what was discussed was another event for Australia. The consensus was to stick with education themed events for Canberra and new themes elsewhere, such as art in conjunction with This is Not Art in Newcastle.

What struck me was that there were people from several nations in the room discussing the use of Wikis, when the subtext was differences in culture. Perhaps that should be made the explicit discussions of scope for different cultures online.

Also there was discussion of the next Wikimedia Australia conference proposed for Adelaide. This would have formal academic double blind reviewed papers. An interesting aspect of this is how the wiki ethos can be melded with formal academic publishing practices. As an example, it is usually a condition for submitting papers for a conference that they have not previously been published and can be blind reviewed, which could preclude preparation of the paper using a public wiki. It would be interesting to see how the traditional formal review process which is built into packages such as OJS could be combined with a Wiki.

Bruce Declaration on Education

Greetings from the last day of of Recent Changes Camp 2011: Canberra at the University of Canberra. Yesterday we discussed "Wikis for Open Education", including in a podcast. Day three was to be about coming up with proposals "Bruce Declaration on Education". The idea was to produce a statement of principles on education, which could encompass how technologies such as wikis could be used, but not limited to the mechanics of how that is done.

The declaration is intended to inform current government inquiries into education and into the NBN. Policies, programs and funding could then be provided to have services directly to students, resources for teachers and for educational institutions.

There is a vigorous discussion taking place over formal and informational education, the role of teachers and institutions. As a former bureaucrat, I wanted to start from existing formal statements, such as Article 26 on the right to education of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (General Assembly of the United Nations, December 10, 1948). This is heavily loaded with decades of political baggage, but the original principles are very relevant to the application of Internet to education:

Article 26

• (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
• (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
• (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

The process used was also interesting. We sat in the open area of the UoC "Teaching Space" using a video projector and Meeting Words and Wikiversity for group preparation of a document. Each of us sitting on the leather lunge chairs could use WiFi on our netbooks and tablets. Text entered into MeetingWords by anyone was immediately avialable to everyone and displayed on the wall screen. This text was tidied up and then pasted to the Wikiversity. This worked well but was an exhausting process and we could not keep this up for more than about 20 minutes.

We started to get stuck at the point of proposing concrete projects. Here is my wish list:

• v-ALTC: In my view there is scope for putting in programs to replace the Australian Learning and Teaching Council which the Prime Minister cancelled last week. There could be a grass roots online version of ALTC, based on the approach taken by EdNA. I suggest a modest $10M over ten years.
• v-Schools: The example of upper secondary schools in the ACT aalso providing vocational education and community facilities such as libraries could be emulated. I suggest $1B over ten years to set up new and remodelled educational facilities in Australia.
  

Anyone interested is welcome to join in the process.

Wikis for Open Education

Greetings from the second day of Recent Changes Camp 2011: Canberra at the University of Canberra. This afternoon's second session on "Wikis for Open Education" is being podcast by "Talking VTE".

Wikipedia defines Open education as ".. a collective term that refers to educational organisations that seek to eliminate barriers to entry". The barriers can be formal academic admission requirements. Open University UK and Athabasca University in Canada are given as examples. E-learning is commonly used for this (a version of my Green ICT Strategies course is offered by Athabasca).

Leigh Blackall suggested using the term "open networked education" so I did a search for this and found "Workshop for Australian education policy" which is described as "An experiment in pulling the materials together to work on open networked education policy...".

Mentioned in discussion was the "Khan Academy", a not-for-profit US based educational body. Perhaps another to mention is the Lalit Kala Akademi (Kala National Academy of Arts India).

It seems to me that Montessori approach to school design can be applied across the educational school, vocational and university sectors.

The discussion then got onto the professionalism and certification of teaching. I don't see this as a bad thing. A technology based society needs competnet people to keep things working. Despite romantic notions of the apprentice learning at the feet of the master, teaching is a skill which needs to be learnt.

Wikis for Vocational Education

Greetings from the second day of Recent Changes Camp 2011: Canberra at the University of Canberra. This afternoon's session on "Wikis for Vocational Education" is being podcast by "Talking VTE". Leigh Blackall mentioned Making the Invisible Hand Visible. The Case for Dialogue About Academic Capitalism by Susan Awbrey. One institution mentioned which maintains a mix of commercially orientated and personal self development course was the Tasmanian Polytechnic.

I suggested that educators need to educate the community. In response it was mentioned that the Productivity Commission is having an inquiry into the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector (submissions close 28 February 2011). Also there is the "Higher Education Base Funding Review".

"Electronic Engagement: A Guide for Public Sector Managers" by Dr Peter Chen (2007) discusses some of how to make these views made. This in part comes from his PHD Thesis "Australia's online censorship regime" (2000). Peter interviewed me for his thesis in how I helped make a submission to a Senate inquiry.

Do your PHD through Wikiversity

In the last session of Recent Changes Camp 2011: Canberra
at the University of Canberra Leigh Blackall demonstrated how he was using Wikiversity for his PhD. I was sceptical as to the value of this and if it would be accepted by formal university processes. Leigh pointed out that there were several Examples of PhDs using Wikiversity. These ranged from a relatively traditional approach where the PDH thesis is put on the Wiki at the end of having been written, to one where the notes and work in progress is put in the wiki and publicly available from the start.

Teaching and Learning Commons at University of Canberra

The Recent Changes Camp 2011: Canberra is taking place in the Teaching and Learning Commons at University of Canberra. This is a newly opened facility in Building One of the university, just above the refurbished refectory.

The learning space is a mezzanine, allowing the students to look down at what is happening in the refectory. A walkway and bridge allow access to rooms placed around the periphery of the building. The floor is divided into sections, each for a different style of learning with a different level of formality. At one end the "Teaching Commons" has has a glass wall with its own doorways, an open area, with a kitchen and the several breakout rooms. This allows a class to have an area to themselves and then to use several breakout rooms.

What also makes the space interesting is that the University of Canberra Teaching and Learning Centre is co-located in the space. In a way the physical space is a physical manifestation of the style of education being advocated. As commented on at the event I am attending, the walls of the rooms become covered with cooperatively written notes and are a sort of whiteboard wiki.

Some areas are equipped with desktop computers. The room the event I am at is using is called "The HotHouse" this is about 8 x 12 metres. All the walls are painted with gloss white whiteboard paint (IdeaPaint brand), allowing all the walls to be written on. There is a short throw Epson projector fixed to the ceiling projecting a 2 metre picture on one wall. The projected image is good, dispute the gloss of the walls. One problem was that there are spotlights on the ceiling pointed at the walls which create glare from the shiny walls.

There is glass in all rooms, allowing someone in a room to see out into the open area and see in. This makes the floor feel large and open. Considerable care has been taken with the design of the space. One small detail is that luminous contrast strips are installed on the stairs. Some of the smaller rooms are around the outside of the building, most windows are covered with blinds to block light to allow use of video projectors. This removes views of the outside. However these rooms have been palced on the sides of the building which do not have good views.

Wikis for Education

The second session at Recent Changes Camp 2011: Canberra
is on "Wikis for Education". This is a topic I did not think I knew much about, but realised I had run two courses were I got the students to edit the Wikipedia, one is 2007 was Writing for the Web for Local Government and the other Electronic Document Management: Course for government staff. In these I had the students edit or create a Wikipedia entry for their organisation. Government staff were reluctant to edit the Wikipedia, saying they were lot allowed to. I had to reassure them it was okay for the purposes of the course. With a little practice they became comfortable with this.

One issue which came up is open access Creative Commons type licensing for educational materials. The Austrlaian Government has adopted a policy for open access to materials, as have some state governments, particularly Queensland. Universities in Australia are government funded, but so far there is no policy requiring, or encouraging open access. There are such policies for research publishing, where open access is encouraged, but not for education.

An example of a more "open" approach is the Graduate Diploma of Education at the University of Canberra.

One tool mentioned which breaks out of the linear text model is SpicyNodes.

There was some discussion of how Moodle 2 allows integration of external tools.

Wiki culture in the shadow of Wikipedia

The first session at Recent Changes Camp 2011: Canberra
is on "Wiki Culture". Some issues discussed were the dominance of Wikipedia, resulting in culture ways online.

Recent Changes Camp 2011 Canberra

Greetings from Recent Changes Camp 2011: Canberra
at the University of Canberra, an informal symposium on anything to do with Wikis. There are 21 of us at the event. About a third are from the university, most of the others are from other Canberra universities. There are also some from interstate and overseas.We are in the Learning Commons, Level 2, Building 1 of UoC (just above the refectory). All are welcome to come and join in the discussion.

The event runs until Sunday afternoon. At present the first session on "WikiCulture" is under-way. We have three rooms available in the very new and very well equipped commons, so have space for three sessions. So far on the agenda are:

Friday:
Wikis for Education/Assessment/ Postgraduate/Wikipedia, Wikis for Printing/Replace WP, Wikis for Fun, Appropedia.org

Saturday:
Extended WIki Editing/why wikis don;t work/structure in wikis, Wikitravel/Gender mix (more males use wiki), Key facilitation for wikis/wikis for non-computer people, Wikis in Vocational Education and Training/Resources for Education

Sunday
Referencing and appraising scientific literature/Wikinews/More Wiki Conference, Why isn't Wiki a bigger social platform/Advanced skills/Bots