Steven Verjans

Link: http://sverjans.hyves.nl/

Link: http://cloudworks.ac.uk/user/view/919

Feed: Cloudworks: Steven Verjans

• Self-directed learning vs. formal/informal/non-formal learning | 11/19/2009

  In a blogpost by Jane Hart, she suggests another way of categorising learning situations/contexts.

  "Rather than use the broad categories of formal and informal learning - terms which I think are  pretty difficult to grasp, and which are being confused and abused if phrases I have read like "managing informal learning information" are anything to go by! - I have decided to categorise the use of social media in the following 5 different ways:

  1. IOL - Intra-Organisational Learning - how social media tools can be used to keep employees up to date and up to speed on strategic and other internal initiatives
  2. FSL - Formal Structured Learning - how educators (teachers, trainers, learning designers) as well as students can use social media within education and training - for courses, classes, workshops etc
  3. GDL - Group Directed Learning - how groups of individuals - teams, projects, study groups etc - can use social media to work and learn together (a "group" could just be two people, so coaching and mentoring falls into this category)
  4. PDL - Personal Directed Learning - how individuals can use social media for their own (self-directed) personal or professional learning
  5. ASL - Accidental & Serendipitous Learning - how individuals, by using social media, can learn without consciously realising it (aka incidental or random learning)

  It may well be that these categories will need tweaking or even overhauling completely, but here is my first attempt at how social media can be used in these 5 categories, which will be a work in progress.

  Harold Jarche takes these thoughts and puts them in a diagram in a follow-up blogpost.

  "This had me thinking about how best to explain these categories to clients and folks not immersed in social media and learning. I started by looking at it as a 2×2 matrix, but of course there are five categories, so that wouldn’t work. However, the axes of the amount of direction versus group size made sense to me, so I created the diagram below. What jumped out at me after the fact, and I’ve highlighted in red, is that social media for learning requires a lot of self-directed learning, either individually or as a participant in a group/organization. Externally directed learning (FSL) is only one of five possibilities. Good food for thought on the future role of the “training” department, isn’t it?"

  

   

• Library School - Professionalisering voor Nederlandse bibliothecarissen | 10/22/2009

  

  Students, staff and on-line learning network of the Library School are all set now to start exploring the Library School learning pathway in Umbria next week. The Library School is a new school, founded by Association of Public Libraries (VOB) in collaboration with CELSTEC, for librarians who work in a managerial position in a public library and who want to become an innovator in their profession.

  Introduction meeting
  On September 7th the selected quartermasters and front runners of the Library School met for the first time in Utrecht. They were informed on the setup of the Library School Pilot. This pilot will end in January 2010. Part of the meeting was a videoconferencing with programme coordinators of several OU-faculties in Heerlen who gave a short presentation.

  Learning network
  In the weekend of September 20th the on-line learning network of Library School, tailor made by CELSTEC, was opened. In this network organizers and participants meet, exchange information, collaborate and discuss.

  Learning activity
  On September 25th the first learning activity of Library School will get started. A group of about 15 quartermasters and coaches leave for Umbria. There they will actively participate in the further design of the Library School. The Association of Public Libraries (VOB) organized the programme in collaboration with CELSTEC and Inspirationworks. The programme is shaped in a ‘Cammino’. This means literally ‘journey’ or ‘road’ as a metaphore of the road that the quartermasters have to go to create the Library School.

  End goal
  The final destination of the road is the innovation of library work. The public library sector needs to develop the attituted and competences for permanent, high quality innovation ánd therefor Libraries need ‘new librarians’. The Library School combines the two needs and chooses an approach that combines learning, working and innovating.

  Part of the programme in Umbrië will be taken care of by CELSTEC’s Marlies Bitter en Steven Verjans.

  More on the Library School (in Dutch) on the VOB-site.
  Or download the brochure in Dutch (pdf) or the brochure in English (pdf).

  Contact details: Steven Verjans

Link: http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UY4V3AZVECSK2S5VYLU5EZTH3Y

Link: http://open.spotify.com/user/sverjans

Link: http://ou-nl.academia.edu/StevenVerjans

Link: http://www.scribd.com/sverjans

Feed: Scribd Feed

• DAYANA. DIAGNOSTICO | 05/26/2013

  República Bolivariana de Venezuela. Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador Instituto Pedagógico de Miranda José Manuel Siso Martínez Profesor: Yerhika Villasmil Bachiller: Dayana Rudas C.I: 20.102.236. Río Chico, Enero de 2013. *Plantel: U.E “Las Mercedes” Nivel Educativo: 7mo “K” Docente del Aula: Profesora Sibelys García Diagnóstico Los estudiantes de 7mo año sección “K” poseen edades comprendidas entre 12 y 16 años, formando una matricula de treinta y seis alumnos en total. 13 hembras y 23 varones, el peso oscila entre 32 y 79 kilogramos, su talla es de 1.50 y 1.65 cm. De acuer

• 60121957-Kuesioner-penelitian | 05/26/2013

  DAFTAR PERTANYAAN Bapak/Ibu/Saudara dimohon memberi tanda (X) pada jawaban yang dipilih : A. Pertanyaan identitas responden 1. Jenis kelamin : a. Pria b. Wanita 2. Usia Anda : a. Di bawah 20 th b. 20-30 th c. 31-40 th d. 40 th keatas 3. Pekerjaan Anda : a. Pelajar/Mahasiswa b. Pegawai Negeri c. Pegawai Swasta d. Petani e. Lain – lain (Sebutkan……………………………..) 4. Pendidikan terakhir Anda : a. SD b. SLTP c. SLTA d. D1/D2/D3 e. Sarjana B. Pertanyaan ini berkaitan dengan kualitas pelayanan Bapak/Ibu/Saudara dimohon memberi tanda (x) pada jawaban yang dipilh : SS S N TS : Sangat Setuju : Setuju : Net

• Fobia en Un Perro | 05/26/2013

  Psicothema 2000. Vol. 12, Supl. nº 2, pp. 187-191 ISSN 0214 - 9915 CODEN PSOTEG Copyright © 2000 Psicothema Tratamiento de un caso de fobia en un perro mediante contracondicionamiento C. Díaz Berciano y M. V. García Jiménez* Centro de Enseñanza Superior San Pablo CEU y * Universidad Complutense de Madrid Este estudio supone que a los casos de fobias subyace un tipo de condicionamiento pavloviano, supo niendo que la respuesta de miedo se generaliza a configuraciones estimulares similares. El tratamiento aquí aplicado consiste en trabajar sobre la base del contracondicionamiento, en un sujeto

• Cajas Triangulares | 05/26/2013

• Rekap Belanja Makanan Tradisional | 05/26/2013

  Rekap Bahan Makanan Praktikum 1 (Makanan Pokok) No 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Nama Bahan 1 2 3 kelompok 4 5 6 7 Total *41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 Sabun cuci Sarung tangan plastik Tissue Plastik Plastik sampah 7 sachet 1 pak 7 gulung 4 pak 2 pak 7 sachet 1 pak 7 gulung 4 pak 2 pak *akanan Pokok) Kebutuhan Rencana Sebenarnya Belanja Perkiraan Harga Harga Sebenarnya **Rekap Bahan Makanan Praktikum 2 (Masakan Tradisional) No 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2

• Tes Formatif | 05/26/2013

  latihan

• Wikipedia | 05/26/2013

  Tinta é o nome normalmente dado a uma família de produtos (líquidos, viscosos ou sólidos em pó) que, após aplicação sob a forma de uma fina camada, a um substrato se converte num filme sólido opaco. As tintas são usadas para proteger e dar cor a objectos ou superfícies. A tinta é muito comum e aplica-se a praticamente qualquer tipo de objectos. Usa-se para produzir arte; na indústria: estruturas metálicas, produção de automóveis, equipamentos, tubulações, produtos eletro-eletrónicos; como protecção anticorrosiva; na construção civil: em paredes interiores, em superfícies exteriores, expostas à

• Resumen Tutorial Finale 2006 | 05/26/2013

  RESUMEN TUTORIAL FINALE 2006 FUNCIONES DEL TECLADO : Algunas letras sirven para facilitar el ingreso de funciones deseadas : La tecla La tecla La tecla La tecla La tecla La tecla La tecla A B C D E F G ingresa la nota de La ingresa la nota de Si ingresa la nota de Do ingresa la nota de Re ingresa la nota de Mi ingresa la nota de Fa ingresa la nota de Sol En el teclado numérico también podemos ejecutar otras funciones : La tecla 1 escoge la semifusa La tecla 2 escoge la fusa La tecla 3 escoge la semicorchea La tecla 4 escoge la corchea La tecla 5 escoge la negra La tecla 6 escoge la blanca La

• Listo Parte37 | 05/26/2013

• Soil Mechanics | 05/26/2013

  Discussion

Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/3HHSFCESTA36Q/

Link: http://www.last.fm/user/sverjans/

Link: http://www.netvibes.com/sverjans/

Feed: Netvibes Blog

• Maintenance: some minor disruption of service expected | 05/23/2013

  To ensure an ever better service, we’re going to perform large database operations and do some maintenance work on our servers. This maintenance is scheduled for Tuesday 05/28 morning (5:30am CET) and should not exceed 4 hours. Analytics for Netvibes Premium will not be available during that period (though data will still be collected). Thanks [...]

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• Important Update: Twitter 1.1 API and your Netvibes account | 05/03/2013

  IF YOU’RE USING THE TWITTER APP ON YOUR NETVIBES BASIC DASHBOARD, PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING CAREFULLY. Starting Monday, May 6, due to Twitter’s new API policy, you’ll need to have a Twitter account linked to Netvibes Basic to continue using Twitter apps and searches from your dashboard. Twitter will require user authentication and rate-limiting, which [...]

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• Feature Spotlight: New UWA2, now powering the core of Netvibes.com | 03/21/2013

  A lot of developers are using our UWA (Universal Web App API) to build simple web widgets. But did you know that the core of Netvibes.com–dashboards and apps–is now coded using UWA2, our latest version? Since 2007, UWA has pioneered the concept of “write once, deploy everywhere” enabling developers to create simple universal web widgets [...]

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• Agencies:Now you can roll your own social tool | 03/18/2013

  There are always new social tools showing up. But they are made by others. But what if you could design your own? Made exclusively by your agency. For years Netvibes has powered custom social dashboards and analytics for top agencies and global brands. Today, at The Advertising Research Foundation re:think and Social Media World Forum [...]

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  3. Netvibes Social Pack In The Press

• Live Dashboard: SMWF | 03/15/2013

  #SMWF is the leading social media & digital marketing event that connects marketers, digital brand managers, agencies and social tools and platforms. It’s a showcase of best practice in social media marketing strategies. It will take place in London, between the 18th and 19th of March, and for those of you not fortunate enough to [...]

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• Easily migrate from Google Reader to Netvibes | 03/14/2013

  As you may have heard, Google has decided to shut down its Reader service on July the 1st. Good news: you don’t need to look for an alternative, Netvibes is the perfect home for all your RSS feeds, and more. Judging by the increase in traffic since the announcement,  it’s safe to say that most of you [...]

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• Live Dashboard: South By Southwest (SXSW) 2013 | 03/07/2013

  If you’re a fan of music, indie films and emerging technologies, Austin will definitely be the place to be in the forthcoming days. Between March 8 and 17, the capital of Texas will hold the famous South by Southwest (SXSW) conferences & festival. Fostering creative and professional growth alike, SXSW is the premier destination for [...]

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• Feature Spotlight: Push Publishing, instantly send updates to your team | 02/20/2013

  One of the most praised features of Netvibes Premium is “Push Publishing”. Imagine being able to propagate live content to your teams or clients, through your dashboard in custom tabs, Web apps, automated alerts or emails. Let’s take a real life example: you work at an agency specialized in the wine industry and you use [...]

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• New Real-Time Search Streams: When everything that matters flows to you… | 02/08/2013

  …there’s no need to search anymore. You’ll already know it. This is something that will change the world of search forever. In our ongoing quest to help you dashboard, monitor and analyze everything, we started to rethink search and what search means on the real-time Web. The traditional workflow is to type in a keyword [...]

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• Live Dashboard: Social Media Strategies Summit 2013 | 02/01/2013

  The Social Media Strategies Summit has been the place to be for social marketers over the past two years: over three full days, providing an interactive learning environment, keynote talks from influential names in social media marketing, more than 40 learning sessions, nine workshops on varying topics and much more! It will take place in [...]

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Link: http://del.icio.us/sverjans

Feed: Delicious/sverjans

• Snif snif “@stubru: Erika presenteerde vandaag haar allerlaatste keer op Studio Brussel. We gaan je missen, Erika! https://t.co/WypZsWl9gL” | 05/25/2013

  Snif snif “@stubru: Erika presenteerde vandaag haar allerlaatste keer op Studio Brussel. We gaan je missen, Erika! https://t.co/WypZsWl9gL”

• Scoop.it integrates with Yammer to supercharge enterprise social media | @scoopit http://t.co/VUJxWHzdP0 | 05/24/2013

  Scoop.it integrates with Yammer to supercharge enterprise social media | @scoopit http://t.co/VUJxWHzdP0

• Registration | Association for Learning Technology | 05/24/2013

  Registration for #altc2013 in Nottingham (10-13 Sept) now open http://t.co/b7PyspBj6u

• Enroute to Groningen for #registerpilot, I came across this brave technician. :-) [pic]: http://t.co/D3JJc46OaC | 05/23/2013

  Enroute to Groningen for #registerpilot, I came across this brave technician. :-) [pic]: http://t.co/D3JJc46OaC

• Op weg naar ROC Rivor in Tiel voor #registerpilot #lerarenregister #LOOK_OU. (@ Station Sittard) http://t.co/E991EIhvOX | 05/21/2013

  Op weg naar ROC Rivor in Tiel voor #registerpilot #lerarenregister #LOOK_OU. (@ Station Sittard) http://t.co/E991EIhvOX

• MT @Johan_Ceulemans: "Strikte functiebeschrijvingen zijn rem op talent" http://t.co/SLWyIip6gu (p.5) #yam #ounl #talentmanagement | 05/18/2013

  MT @Johan_Ceulemans: "Strikte functiebeschrijvingen zijn rem op talent" http://t.co/SLWyIip6gu (p.5) #yam #ounl #talentmanagement

• things that are interesting / this article is amazing! it helped me find my new job, which is the BEST Job in America :) | 05/17/2013

  this article is amazing! it helped me find my new job, which is the BEST Job in America :) http://t.co/TF0KmGOkNh

• TweetGenie | 05/17/2013

  Volgens #tweetgenie ben ik een man van 38 jaar. Ik voel me meteen een stuk jonger

• Peumans censureert Franse tekstballon uit brochure - De Standaard | 05/16/2013

  Nationalistische kramp= treurig #TrotsOpBelgischeStripcultuur? "Peumans censureert Franse tekstballon uit brochure" http://t.co/ReJDAYIjmb

• my job is great / this MSNBC article is marvelous! it helped me find my new job, which is the BEST Job in America :) | 05/16/2013

  this MSNBC article is marvelous! it helped me find my new job, which is the BEST Job in America :) http://t.co/NtvwuuAOpf

Link: http://stievie.blogspot.com/

Feed: Stievie's adventures in e-Learning

• The digital scholar - which way to go? | 09/30/2011

  
  

  
  
  Within the context of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) #change11, week 3 dealt with different aspects of digital scholarship. This week's discussion was based on the new book by Martin Weller called: The Digital Scholar. I participated in a webinar with Martin on Wednesday, and heard him present a strong case for the potential impact of digital technologies on professional scholarship.
  Now I have been following Martin's contributions in this discussion for some time now (I have referred to his work in my workshop about social media for PhD students, and will be interviewing him later for an internal workshop at Open Universiteit), so I kinda knew his story.
  I find that what I'm missing from his story, is a perspective for individual teachers and institutions on how this digital scholar will look in practice.
  
  • Is it enough to use social bookmarking or to share your conference presentations, or is that a start that will inevitably lead to more?
  • Are you only a 'real' digital scholar if you refuse to publish in closed journals and only opt for open access journals? How to deal with publishing your publically-funded research results?
  • Do I need to be a rebel within my institution, and how does it effect my own career? Or can I act as an evangelist and try to convince people that the end of the world as we know it is near?
  I am convinced that the digital scholar is the scholar of the future, but I guess what I'm looking for is some guidelines on how to achieve a gradual, yet speedy innovation within our institutions that will lead to a point in the near future where we look back upon 2011, and wonder where the change actually happened. Can we formulate a path of inevitability that will sneak up on our decision makers and allow us to gradually become digital scholars, or do we need a shock therapy to achieve this?
  And - by the way - I made a first downloadable ebook version of Martin's book. The internal links in the document are not all functioning perfectly, but you can download the book as is (also on non-Kindle readers) and enjoy reading it offline too. I've made pdf, ePub and mobi versions available on Dropbox, made with the help of the calibre tool.

• Professional identity and social media | 09/07/2011
  
  It seldom happens these days that I meet someone - or hear someone speak - who causes immediate recognition and identification. This morning was one of these occasions where you think: "How come I wasn't following this person already?" Anne Marie Cunningham's talk about professional identity was very much related to the work that I have been focusing on the last couple of years, namely the role of social media in professional learning. We at CELSTEC have been focusing rather on the technology side of what we call "Learning networks for professionals", but I notice that in recent workshops and presentations people keep asking me more about the issues around social appropriateness, openness vs. safety,  reputation, being taken seriously, etc.
  Anne Marie's talk - similar to this workshop - addressed exactly those issues. Looking forward to getting the presentation and recording online. Some of @amcunningham's most remarkable quotes were:
  
  • "Online identity has more to do with behaviour and relationships than the information provided." True, but usually the information constitutes the 'social objects' around which behaviour and relationships are centred.
  • "I'm too busy to be unprofessional online." A great oneliner, but I forget the context in which she said this. Personally I do not distinguish much between my personal and professional online identity. I prefer those online 'friends' who tend to blur the professional and the personal. I don't expect my students or colleagues in real life to just forget their personal background or worries between 9 and 5.
  • "To be a doctor is to be who the patient needs you to be". Does that apply to my students and professional network as well? Could you paraphrase this as: "To be a professional is to be who your customers need you to be?" Tricky, that one. @amcunningham quoted this in relation to an anecdote that she reported on, in which a seemingly innocent question for information suddenly turned into a kind of online doctor-patient consultation. I had a similar episode a while back when someone contacted me on Skype. She was an exchange student studying at a Dutch university, taking an elective distance e-learning course in the UK, and she had a problem with one of her assignments. I spent a good half hour 'coaching' her in trying to solve her problem (without solving it for her), whereas I could have just ended the conversation and said: "I am not your tutor or coach, so I am not the right person to talk to". Are you ever a non-teacher / non-e-coach when you are online 24/7?
  • Levels of professional identity: (3) socialised mind -> (4) self-authoring mind -> (5) self-transforming. This sounded very interesting, and I will be looking for the source of this theory.
  Interesting issues, brilliant presentation. Great start of the day.

• Personalised learning mesh through a multipath learning tool | 09/07/2011

  Very humorous presentation style in the next presentation by Iain Stewart from Glasgow Caledonian University about enriched recorded lectures, integrated in Blackboard. All related content to the lecture is in an interactive container: tutorial questions, exam questions, related content, discussion items. Lecturers starts a new container by uploading a powerpoint slideshow, and an existing lecture recording in the form of a video/audio file in flash or mp3. This assumes that the container involves quite a lot of post processing.
  

  • Wonder what the scalability of this solution is due to the amount of post-processing needed.
  • Questions about the use of proprietary formats.
  • Wonder if it could be linked to existing lecture recording platforms, so students can add materials to a lecture on the fly..

• Work based learning study amongst stakeholders | 09/07/2011

  One of the papers in this morning's proceedings session focused on technology-supported work based learning from the university of Northumbria. The authors did a multiple case study of MSc and BSc programs delivered online to full-time employees.
  The main findings that I picked up from interviews and questionnaires amongst the main stakeholders:
  

  • Teachers are more negative about VLE and other technologies than students.
  • Employer expectations of HE institution do not fit, and vice versa.
  • Role of mentors at employer side is crucial.
  • Get all stakeholders involved in the initial negociation about the learning contract.
  Worthwhile reading, although it could use some more reference to existing research on online / distance delivery.
  
  

• From Pecha Kucha through work based learning to emotional affect in learning | 09/07/2011

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamadryades/5867479356/

  Next to the keynote, the first day at the 18th conference of the Association for Learning Technology (#ALTC2011) had so many interesting sessions on the programme that it was hard to choose (in French: l'embarras du choix - hence the picture above). One slot was pre-scheduled, as I had to chair the session, but the others were yet to be filled. So what did I learn? Here's the short version.
  
  • The first session I attended was the first ever ALT-C Pecha Kucha and ePoster session, with 2 Pecha Kucha presentations and 3 ePosters. In contrast to the original 20x20 PechaKucha format, ALT has chosen a 9x45 format, in which the speaker gets to use 9 slides, which automatically progress after 45 seconds. The concept is: be well-prepared and stick to your message. The presentations covered two cases of blended learning. The first presentation by colleagues at the University of Huddersfield stressed the importance of social skills for blended learning in groups. They reported on how they used critical friendship groups to get the students to actively interact during their online learning activities. Unfortunately for the OUNL, such a model is hard to adapt to our model of solitary distance learners without the cohort to build those groups. The second presentation by University of Glasgow reported on a structured learning activity involving wikis, in which first-year philosophy students were grouped into small groups with clear assignments about collecting information before meeting in tutorial sessions. The effects of this approach on student scores were remarkable, but I wonder whether that was related to the use of the wiki or the clever design of the learning activity. The ePosters were not given a time slot, much to the surprise of the submitters who were there to answer questions. The next ePoster sessions repaired this flaw, and added time slots for ePoster discussion.
  • Lunch was good, as it was next year. Great opportunities to talk to people. The number of tweeps I have been talking to these last two days is amazing. For that reason alone, the ALT conference is worth my while. During lunch break I talked to James Clay, one of the web presence co-ordinators on the programme committee, who has set up a small TV studio, and uses Justin TV to bring an informal live TV channel from the conference. Of course I installed the justin.tv app on CELSTEC's Android phone and made a number of short recordings, which were immediately streamed to the justin.tv server. A very interesting video recording, sharing and broadcasting platform which allows low-threshold recordings with mobile applications, but also higher end grassroots broadcasting with a setup like the one at ALT in the video below.
  
  Watch live video from sverjans on Justin.tv
  • After lunch I chaired a session on Emotion and Pluralism with two proceedings papers. Finding the room in the maze of the EC Stoner building was tough, and only about 15 people managed to get in the session, but they got their money's worth. The first paper by Liz, Gill and Lachlan from the University of Greenwich presented the PANDORA project, a multimedia training environment for high-level crisis management in which they have been researching and developing a module that deals with the role of emotional affect and stress for decision making in severe crisis situations. Their tool allows a trainer to simulate semi-realistic crisis situations, with the explicit purpose of duplicating the emotinal and informational stress load. I kept wondering whether future crisis managers - so-called Gold Commanders - who might well be experts in World of Warcraft or other strategic games, will be more suited for handling such crises. The second paper by Chris Jones from the UK Open University and Gregor Kennedy from the University of Melbourne was of a completely different nature, in that it discussed research paradigms, and argued for taking a pluralist perspective when doing research in learning technology. They argued that new LT researchers often have a (socially) predetermined perspective about the type of research that they will be doing, with too little focus on the research question and its interaction with 'suitable' research paradigms and methodologies. Both papers were followed by a very good discussion with the audience.
  • For my next slot I attended a session named 'Worlds of learning' with three short papers. The first presentation by colleagues from the Japanese and Canadian Open Universities discussed research on the use of a Moodle-compatible audio applet named Nanogong for students learning English. It reminded me very much of the setup developed in the WebCEF and CEFcult projects in which I participated, where students record their own oral language utterances and are assessed on those. The second paper by colleagues from the ePortfolio centre at the University of Nottingham reported on a study of the use of the Mahara ePortfolio system with a group of Biosciences masters students during a 2-month industrial placement. The research reported positive outcomes, especially on the administrative burden of the university placement co-ordinator. Students were reported to use the ePortfolio system as if it were a special kind of Facebook. I kept wondering whether such a short term pilot would tell us anything about the long-term use of an ePortfolio tool. The final paper of that session was presented on Prezi, and discussed the instructional design practice at BPP - the first commercial university in the UK. I kept thinking about the wieldy process of developing distance learning materials at our own university, and couldn't help but wonder if thorough, structured and streamlined instructional design processes are the right way to go for any HE institution. The argument was that the students expected course modules to be similar and standardised. I'm not sure such a well-structured but time-consuming process is the right answer to the growing need for situated and just-in-time learning.
  • This feeling was strengthened during the last session of the day, a workshop called 'Employer engagement' on work-based learning (WBL) and all the issues involved in that. We were presented with a short background from some JISC-funded projects dealing with work-based learning, and then asked to contribute to three themes related to WBL. The intention of the workshop was partly to get feedback on the parameters involved in the 'Work Based Learning Maturity Toolikit', a self-assessment type instrument to judge institutional maturity with regard to work-place learning. During the discussion, which was quite relevant for my recent work with colleagues from the Zuyd University College, where we looked at a group of students from a Dutch ICT consultancy firm who are taking a degree in Networking Infrastructure while being employed full-time. Turned out that most of the issues we ran into, were well known in my group, especially within Mark Stiles' group at the University of Staffordshire. Negotiation between employer, employee and institution is the key element in work-based learning, but also change efforts in the HE institution, and at the employer site are crucial for success. From experience I know that it is hard to get university staff to look at what 'the customer wants', rather than what we have 'on offer' in the institution. A very informative session, indeed.
  All in all a very fruitful first day, in which I had some good conversations, started following a number of new tweeps, met some old friends, and started blogging again. I also noticed that I prefermy laptop for tweeting, rather than the HTC smartphone I borrowed from CELSTEC.
  
  Note from editor: Is this the short version? This post is much too long, BOO!

• First day at Alt-C 2011 - Opening keynote | 09/06/2011
  
  This year, the Alt-C conference is held at the University of Leeds, and its theme is "Thriving in a colder and more challenging climate", referring to the economic cutbacks in (higher) education throughout the UK, Europe and the rest of the world. As a member of the Programma Committee Executive, I've been involved in the review and editing process, and it's been a very good experience sofar.
  
  Opening & keynote
  The conference was opened by the mayor of Leeds, a reverent adorned with an impressive official chain, who referred to the multi-cultural character of Leeds as the third biggest city in the UK. Then, the conference co-chair John Cook introduced the keynote speaker Miguel Brechner, the project leader of the Uruguayan One-Laptop-per-Child project Ceibal. He held a very inspirational talk about the project in which all Uruguayan children in the state school system (some 450.000 kids in primary and secondary education) were given a laptop that is connected to the Internet (99%) both in school and at home. This video he showed, gives a good impression of the project. Others - such as the ever productive Steve Wheeler - have blogged about this session. My major lesson from the session was:
  
  1. This kind of project is not about ICT or infrastructure, it is about social change, about teacher training, about social support mechanisms, about political will and endurance.
  2. Access to Internet is fast becoming the major factor in education. As Brechner forcefully stated: "The Ceibal project transformed access to computers and broadband Internet from a privilege to a basic human right.
  3. What can we learn from this, and why can't we offer the same broadband coverage in our part of the world? Some UK colleagues asked a question during the session, about how they could help the people in Uruguay to further this project. Somehow this question felt wrong (as noted by others). It's more: what can we (in the 'civilized' developed countries) learn from this? One thing I feel is that it should not be left to commercial providers alone to get everyone 'connected'. Miguel even mentioned rural areas where the laptops and broadband arrived before electricity did!
  4. Access to Internet means access to social media. I and others wondered how the kids were using their access to Internet to get to social media. Interestingly Miguel asked: "What is social media?" He then said: "Well, they're all on Facebook", which left me wondering whether their use of Facebook is similar to the way my kids are using it.
  All in all, a good start to a good day. More reflections coming up later.

• Virtual presentation at Digital Heritage Conference 2010 | 12/22/2010

  On December 7 and 8 2010, Rotterdam was host to the Digitale Erfgoedconferentie 2010 (Digital Heritage Conference 2010). The theme of the conference was lifelong learning, and the focus of the conference was on digital developments surrounding heritage and education. I was supposed to have been there to present some reflections on lessons learned within the e-learning domain, during a parallel session on the role of the heritage institutions in the production of learning materials.
  However, a flu virus kept me from travelling to Rotterdam, so I decided to prepare a virtual presentation for the session organisers.
  
  1) I had prepared my presentation using Prezi, which was a very informative exercise, as it was the first time I used the tool.
  
  

  
  

  e-Learning en de erfgoedsector - Enkele reflecties on Prezi
  
  
   2) I then decided to make a slidecast of my presentation. I first looked at Slideshare, but decided against it, because I would have to record a separate mp3-file, upload it to slideshare, and then sync the slides with the audio.
  3) I ended up using Screencast-O-Matic, because it allowed me to record my voice, while I walked through the Prezi presentation. I had used the tool before, and was quite pleased with its functionality.
  4) The 15-minute limitation of the basic account, however, forced me to split my talk up into two pieces, which I found rather annoying, so after I had recorded the first part, I decided to get a pro-account, hoping that I could extend the first part of the recording. Unfortunately, that was not the case. So I forwarded the link to the two presentation videos to the conference organisers. 
  
  
  I was quite disappointed to find that they decided not to use the video in the session, especially since I felt that the discussion (which I followed on Twitter) would have benefited from my contribution.
  Anyway, while making an overview of my contributions for 2010, I decided to turn the two videos into a single video.
  5) I recorded the playback of the first 15-min video (using Screencast-O-Matic), added the second video (which was about 5 minutes), edited the two pieces together, and exported it as an mp4-file.
  6) Finally, I uploaded the mp4-file on Vimeo (because YouTube has a limit of 15 minutes) and TADAA, here it is.
  
  
  
  E-learning en de erfgoedsector: Enkele reflecties from Steven Verjans on Vimeo.
  
  
  
  The presentation and video are both in Dutch, but if you're interested, just write me a line, and I'll translate it for you!

• Open Educational Practices - Expert meeting of OPAL project @ UNESCO - Paris | 11/10/2010
  
  On Monday and Tuesday, I participated in the "Research workshop on Open Educational Practices" hosted by the OPAL project at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The workshop was chaired by Ulf Ehlers (University of Essen-Duisburg and project co-ordinator) and Grainne Conole (Professor at Open University). It's been an intensive, but very informative and interesting two days. I got to meet a number of interesting people in our plenary and group discussions, and I bumped into Tom Wambeke, whom I hadn't spoken to in quite some time.
  The workshop centered around reviewing, commenting and refining the current OPAL model of Open Educational Practices, and it was organised mainly as small group sessions, in which the participants were asked to answer 5 questions, after which the groups reported. Tim Unwin's brilliant blogpost has mindmaps summarising that discussion, so I'll focus on my own learning points:
  
  For me, some of the more fundamental issues were
  
  • How do we define Open Educational Practices (OEP)? I felt that there was a consensus amongst the participants that OEP is broader than just practices involving OER, and that it relates to 'openness of teaching practice, learning envronment and educational resources' (Chris Pegler on Twitter).
  • Do we need specific practices for Open Educational Resources (OER), or can we make do with practices regarding 'Educational resources' in general? I share Susan D'Antoni's concern that we must avoid focusing too much on content as the Holy Grail. Let's not replace a 'technology push' within education with a 'content push'.
  • Building on that idea, should we focus on content when we talk about OEP, or should we focus more on learning activities or learning conversations that make use of resources? In that light, I like the CELSTEC view that learning content - artefacts as we label them - are an inherent part of a learning network, but in the sense of social artefacts, not as static, finalised bits of explicit - often factual - knowledge, eg. this working paper by Wigman, Hermans & Verjans (2009).
  • Our discussion group on Monday concluded that "Context, not content is KING", later changed to "Context is QUEEN". The background for stating this so strongly was that it is important to primarily consider the stakeholders' context (national, cultural, educational, etc.) before looking at other aspects of OEP, such as the main dimensions in the OPAL model: strategy, tools, skills.

  View from UNESCO meeting room

  
  All in all, it has been a fruitful 2-day meeting, supplemented by an active online discussion on Twitter and Cloudworks, which also produced a set of quite interesting and relevant external links and references. My follow-up from this meeting will be to
  - continue to act as an external expert
  - be a 'national ambassador' for both The Netherlands and Belgium
  - to stay active within the wider OPAL community.

• Social media in professional learning: piecing my past and current research interests together | 09/30/2010

  When I was doing my PhD, I often got comments from fellow doctorate students and my supervisors that my scope was too broad. What I did was look at technological (ICT-based) innovation from a personal psychological perspective, as well as from an organisational perspective, thus effectively combining insights and research methods from organisational psychology, organisational theory and management information systems. After I was finished, the jury commented that I had actually written 3 PhD theses, but that's not the point here. The point is that reality is catching up on my research, and that all the pieces of my (personal scientific) puzzle are coming together.
  Allow me to expand on this. During the past few weeks, I have been
  

  • spending quiet some time on laying the groundworks for a chapter on Learning Networks that my department is working on, 
  • rethinking some of the really good discussions at the Alt-C conference about my presentation on "Hybrid professional learning networks", 
  • having internal discussions about learning networks for professionals and with Marc Bijl about Enterprise2.0,
  • following the "Personal Learning Environments Networks and Knowledge" (PLENK2010) course from the side line,
  • participating / contributing to the strategic discussions about the 5-year institutional strategy plan of the Open University in The Netherlands in my role as chairman of the works council,
  • and looking around for job opportunities, as my future prospects here at OUNL are somewhat shady, and I will need to consider where to go next.
  All of this has contributed to the insight that the broad range of my scientific efforts so far, is now coming together in the research topic that I am currently dealing with, namely the role of social media in professional learning of individuals and organisations. What I'll need to do is revisit the models and ideas from my PhD and check in how far they can be applied to the topic of social media in professional learning.
  

• Impressions from my first ALT Conference | 09/08/2010

  Instead of taking the nap that I should be taking (considering that I have only slept 4 hours for the past 2 nights), I thought I'd write a short blog entry with some impressions of my first ever attendance at an ALT-Conference.
  
  

  Lunch with @kathrinder @timbuckteeth and Emmadw on Day 1 of #ALTC2010

  1. Firstly, I've finally met - in the flesh - some of the tweeps that I feel I've known for ages.
  2. Secondly, I find the Twitter backchannel increasingly important at a conference. For instance, it allowed me to deduce that @daveowhite's talk - that I didn't attend - should have been the opening keynote. I also got to know new tweeps through the backchannel - and made a separate Twitter list for them. It's s become a crucial instrument in my networking at a conference.
  3. The Crowdvine social application that ALT uses for planning the conference and getting to know people is definitely an asset. I found out that some old friends (Sally) and colleagues (Judith) were also attending the conference, and was able to arrange a meet even before getting my hands on the list of attendants.
  4. Oh yes, remind me never to stay at a Hall of Residence again. Cheap, but bleak and depressing and the atmosphere of a prison.
  That's all for now (too tired). I'll report on the things I learned at a later stage.

Link: http://www.google.com/profiles/steven.verjans

Link: http://dspace.ou.nl/items-by-author?author=Verjans%2C Steven