2009 DACeL Conference

"Back in the highlife again" - Steve Winwood

I am proud to be on the scientific commitee of DACeL 2009, which aims to address the many opportunities, challenges and new directions presented by ICT innovations in Defence-related educational settings.

Its plenary sessions, workshops, and round table discussions enable a sustained examination of how e-learning can be effectively integrated into all facets of Defence and Professional military Education. As such, the conference will provide participants with a forum for intensive interdisciplinary interaction and collegial debate. Those attending DACeL 2009 will leave with an excellent overview of current thinking, strategies, practices, and tools for creating e-learning environments appropriate for twenty-first century Defence education establishments.

Venue: Stellenbosch, South Africa on 25-27th of March, 2009.

Epistemological unification of the disciplines

"... One too many mornings,

and a 1000 miles behind"

- Bobby D

Here is a paper that Bernard Scott and I wrote called Epistemological Unification of the Disciplines: The Contributions of Socioccybernetics. We presented it at the 6th European Congress on Systems Science in Paris in 2005: "In order to develop transdisciplinary working across the disciplines, clear epistemological foundations are required. Without these, even simplistic approaches to interdisciplinarity are likely to fail. Our proposal is that sociocybernetics promises to provide the required unifying metadisciplinary epistemological foundations and transdisciplinary frameworks. We note that second order cybernetics provides a metadisciplinary framework for discerning the causes and cures for the schisms within the natural and cognitive sciences. The particular contributions of sociocybernetics are to (i) extend the second order understandings to unify the social sciences and (ii) by incorporating extant sociological theory back into the transdisciplinary pursuits of cybernetics and systems theory to enlighten and enrich those pursuits. In order to highlight the power and fruitfulness of these contributions from sociocybernetics, we problematise, deconstruct and reconstruct key concepts concerned with human communication. To do this, we take as central the question, What is a symbol?”.

It is a follow on to my first ever paper: Shurville, S. (1993). “The Symbol Grounding Problem and Machine Learning”, in Proceedings of IASTED/IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Manufacturing, Christ Church, Oxford, September 1993.

The Professors are Revolting Against the High Prices of Textbooks

"I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind,

got my paperAnd I was free." - The Indigo Girls

Bob Lefsetz runs a facinating mailing list on the e-changes going on in the music buisiness (an old stomping ground of mine). Today he ran the following snippet on a related issue that should interest academics and educational technologists: "The most fascinating story of today is in the "New York Times". Wherein professors are revolting against the high prices of textbooks. And releasing their own works online, for free! In one case forgoing a $100,000 advance. The silver lining? Greater distribution. A wider spread of the information. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/technology/15link.html?ref=business)"

You can visit Tom's archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/--If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1.

EduPunk

The following is from my mate Asher Rospigliosi's blog:

One of the highlights for me, at ALt-C was the Edupunk debate. My mate (from ICICTE 2007) Steve Wheeler challenged us with a great presentation, and took the table by storm with his funny and poetic stance. Who could not be inspired? Well, it turned out age race and gender might have had a slight impact, as Helen Keegan pointed out "EduPunk: Yes it is a white, male, middle-aged thing. Our students would be ashamed of us". This was the livliest discussion I got to participate in at an inspiring and very lively conference!
Here is PowerPoint presentation for the Edupunk session

More on fanzines

" .. the kind you find in a second hand strore"

Rasberry Berret - Prince

The British Library runs an interesting site on Fanzines at http://www.bl.uk/collections/britirish/modbrizines.html. I was interested to learn there more about a genre called Women's Zines: "Women's zines are generally independent small-circulation self-published magazines and are characterised by a striking do-it-yourself aesthetic and attitude. They are diverse, covering topics from music, art, politics, parenting, ethnicity, sexuality, class issues, religion, feminism and much more. Distributed at concerts, record shops, and at ladyfests, weekend music and discourse festivals devoted to women performers, they complement and derive from the punk-related feminist rock music scene, particularly the Riot Grrrl movement with its immediate origins in the early 1990s music scene of British Columbia, Canada, and the Pacific Northwest of the United States." I remember meeting Karren Ablze, probably not her real name, at some 90s womens punk concerts where she used to hawk a great womens' music zine called Ablaze. I wonder what happened to her?

Lew Stringer http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2007/10/who-says-comics-fanzines-are-dead.html has written a nice blog entry about modern comics fanzines: "The glory days of numerous self-published comics fanzines may reside in the 1970s and 1980s but the internet hasn't completely killed off these labours of love. At the Birmingham International Comics Show a few weeks ago I picked up two titles that dedicate themselves to two sometimes neglected areas of comics; classic British weeklies and Fifties horror comics." This is ineteresting reading for everyone who wonders about alternatives to Web 2.0. The social networking that comes from hawking a fanzine is incredible (I met some of my best friends through the old comics and punk fanzine culture). It is like playing a gig verses distributing tunes via the YouTube. Both have their place but the web should offer an alternative not the whole enchalada.

There is a good article on how much fanzines can be worth at http://downthetubescomics.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-much-is-fanzine-worth.html. Amazingly the one on the right is going for £325.00. But as Butch Hancock once sang "Who can put a price on what you learn, baby what's it worth to you?".

Fanzines

"Let's go crazy" - Prince (get it?)

My first experiance of self publishing, which was a distant precursor to this blog, was a fanzine called Planet, which was printed by my mother Shirely Slimane. She worked long and hard on that!

In those days we used Gestetner duplicating printers. A recent visit to Comics Kingdom in Syndey took me right back to the era. There were some fanzines from back in the day. It is amazing that they have survived over thirty years.

The picture at the top of the page is of Bemusing, which was a great fanzine published by Martin Lock. I have a soft spot in my memory for The Comics Times (published by Asher Rospigliosi back when we called him Pel) and the works of Paul Hudson (later emporer of Comics Showcase in Covent Garden and Oxford and now a postman), Guy Lawley and Nick Niocholas. There was also an interesting chap called Andy Polaris who went onto be the singer in the great forgotten band Animal Nightlife (he and his mates were the generation just after us who went around comic conventions dressed rather stylishly as Rick Deckard from Blade Runner when we still dressed like Shane McGowan without the class). In the words of my old mate Si Spannavich "all those blokes came good".

Always Coming Home: Applying Force Field Analysis

"OOOOHHHH, OOOOHHHH, OOOOHHHH, OOOOHHHH, Can you feel the force?" - The Real Thing

"Always Coming Home: Applying Force Field Analysis as a Structured Approach to Eliciting Ongoing Organizational Contexts and Requirements for Flexible Learning" is a paper I wrote for ICICTE 2007 with Mrs Aurélie Owens of Cranfield University. It is due to see publication in the UCFV Research Review. This paper is about helping academic and professional university staff to engage with flexible learning. We will argue that flexible learning is, in Ursula LeGuin’s phrase, “always coming home” because transformations to flexible learning can never be complete. This notion suggests that flexible learning actually requires a constant personal and institutional commitment to change management and staff development. The paper features a tutorial on applying Force Field Analysis to drive staff development workshops to engage academic and professional staff in the personal and institutional changes heralded by flexible learning. It also includes reflections on the use of Force Field Analysis from a facilitator and a participant observer. This is an example of practice-based research, which enables professionals to make informed decisions about if, where, and when to use a particular method. As The UCFV Research Review is not a specialized educational journal, we will introduce flexible learning, its critiques and some of the burning issues which herald widespread change to individual practice and institutional structure in higher education.

Keywords: change management, flexible learning, force field analysis, institutional change in higher education, personal change, practice-based research, staff development, staff development workshops

ConFigures: The Laptop Bake-Off

"Baking* rocks in the hot sun"

- The Clash (channeling Bobby Fuller and his fearsome four)

Sarah Elkins, a configuration management specialist and knowledge gardener, runs a very interesting blog at http://configures.sarahelkins.org/about/. Her Laptop Bake-Off is a great idea!

* OK Clash and Fuller fans, you know I cheated with the lyrics there.

Research Communities: A Commercial REAL for Distributed Postgraduates and Professionals

"Real, real gone" - Van Morrison

Here is a paper called Research Communities: A Commercial REAL for Distributed Postgraduates and Professionals that I wrote with Richard Harding of Harrow Business School, University of Westminster and Dr Sarah Vaughan of Research Communities back at the turn of the century. " ... We then describe the design of Research Communities, a commercial learning environment that augments traditional Rich Environments for Active Learning (REALs) in three ways: (i) by providing AI tools for independent research, (ii) by maintaining a learning portfolio and (iii) by facilitating the formation of self organizing communities of practice. Finally, we describe a formative evaluation undertaken with international MBA students. ... A suitable Rich Environments for Active Learning (REAL) should address the learners’ needs for access to authentic materials and management of limited research time. REALs need not be centered upon pre-designed multimedia or micro-world resources (Grabinger and Dunlap, 2000). However, if REALs are centered upon such resources, they may restrict learners to a predetermined conclusion, solution or opinion. Centering on the World Wide Web contrasts with such closed resources because it offers any number of viewpoints on a given topic. The potential problem is that the learner must spend precious searching time for relevant information. Research Communities applied intelligent tools to tame the web and help learners to optimize their research time ... " (Shurville, Vaughan S. and Harding R., 2001).

Reference: Shurville S., Vaughan S. and Harding R., (2001). Research Communities: a Commercial Research Environment for Active Learning for Distributed Postgraduates and Professionals, Computer Aided Learning 2001, University of Warwick, UK.

Educational Technology: An Ecumenical Stance

"Get up, stand up" - Bob Marley

Here is the paper Educational Technology: An Ecumenical Stance, which I wrote with Sue Greener and Asher Rospigliosi for ICICTE 2008. (The picture is of Urulua LeGuin, who wrote The Ecumen books).

We examine media & technological determinism in the context of educational technology. We argue that educational technologists cannot take a ‘deterministic stance’ & should practice ethics founded on an ecumenical view of theory & technology. Taking a cue from social cognitive theory, senior educational technologists should also visibly engage in reflective practice leading to ethical outcomes to motivate less senior members of the profession to do likewise. We note the problem that many senior educational technologists are aligned with a particular theory and/or technology, which has helped them to secure their position. They will need to change their outlook in order to address these goals & this is very hard for senior practioners to do. We suggest that action learning might offer a supportive route to personal transformation.

Shurville, S., Greener, S. and Rospiglosi, A. (2008). Educational Technology: An Ecumenical Stance. In the proceedings of the 8th International Conference of Information and Communications Technologies in Education, Corfu, Greece.

Developing collaborative competence in the records managers of the future

"People have the Power" - Patti Smith

Here is the PowerPoint from my presentation at Adopting & Adapting, the 25th International Convention of the Records Management Association of Australasia, 7th - 10th September 2008, Sydney, Australia. Developing Records Managers with their Mashedup Heads in the Clouds. Be good little PowerPoint.

Oh Maggie, I wish I'd never seen your face

"Oh Maggie I wish I'd never seen your face ..."

- Rod Stewart only as performed by The Pogues

I'm just back from Syndey. I was staying in the Spanish Quater in Liverpool Street, where the Tapas is good and Comics Kingdom is a trasure trove. I visted Red Eye Records and bought the new Pogues boxed set, which is something magic. Everyone should have one. Their version of Maggie May is 'worth the dying' as James Crumley once wrote of the rockies.

And talking of Liverpool and Maggie, here are some fine words that a certain Pogues producer once wrote about a Maggie I wish I had never seen:

"Well I hope I dont die too soon

I pray the lord my soul to save

Oh Ill be a good boy, Im trying so hard to behave

Because theres one thing I know, Id like to liveLong enough to savour

Thats when they finally put you in the ground

I'll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down ..." - Elvis Costello

Fair play to you Elvis, fair play!

'cause I've heard so much about it, I don't want to live without it

"Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes ..."
- Billy Joel (but as sung by Ronnie Spector)

OK, so a small come back; if it's good enough for Bill Clinton, then it's good enough for me.