My last posting “Where are the Welsh blogs” has elicited an interesting response, via blogs, emails, and in conversation. I always knew that I was stepping into a tricky arena, and one which I don’t understand well.  I also know that the fate of minority languages is very, very important. Most people on the planet speak more than one language, and this enriches all our lives.

What I am not clear on is how this story is unfolding, and which way the technology is influencing things, if at all. I spend quite a lot of time talking to people about blogs, and how they can benefit teachers and learners. It’s a way to get people to read more, understand other viewpoints, find out what is going on around the world, and to practise their writing skills. Another learning opportunity, in other words.

I have this sneaking suspicion (and it may just be natural optimism) that language teaching may be the place for blogs to really take off and show an educational impact. Reading books in a language you are just beginning to understand can be very hard, and demoralising. So too can speaking and listening, although that is an essential part of learning a language. But blogs and tweets are a great way for people to engage with manageable pieces of text, and at their own pace. When learners start to write, they can develop their own community of critical friends, who can correct and encourage them. Meanwhile, the automatic tools, such as Google translate and Cysill ar-Lein, just get better.

I notice that a few bloggers are adding various languages into the mix lately. Pontydysgu have been hosting a Polish language blog ‘Paradygmat’. Alastair Clark has also slipped into French in his latest posting from Auvergne (Don’t Get Lost).  All of this helps to raise awareness, and to remind people that each language does not have to live in its own box.

One of my critics (and I use the word in its most positive sense) has encouraged me to start blogging in Welsh. I will do, but not here. I will let you know how I get on…..

I have just caught up with the reports of ‘Hacio’r Iaith’, on Carl Morris’s blog. This was a free, open meeting which took place physically in Aberystwyth on January 30^th , with lots of associated backchannel activity on Twiter, Youtube, and elsewhere. Carl’s account makes fascinating reading, and points the way to interesting and potentially very important developments. As he says, for some parts of this you needed to be there, but other aspects start to make sense to me, simply from following the backchannels. Is reporting of events getting to the point now where the overall experience approaches the richness and quality of the ‘live’ event? (A question for another occasion, I feel).

So what is Hacio’r Iaith about? At the heart of this, in my view, is an understanding that technology and language are interdependent. This is perhaps obvious, but once you try to unravel this, a startling complexity emerges. Technology can introduce pressure leading to a reduced linguistic diversity, but as the ‘read-write web’ starts to predominate, can we expect linguistic diversity to flourish?

This reminded me of a discussion which took place some time ago on the datblogu page about the relatively low number of Welsh language blogs out there. A number of  possible explanations emerged.  Perhaps some bloggers are simply trying to reach the widest audience? Alternatively, as Carl suggests, people may choose to use the ‘English part of their brain’ with a specific technology (he refers to Twitter here). Either way, many first-language Welsh speakers choose to blog in the English language. However, this could be about to change given the vigorous activity which is becoming evident e.g. with the support of ‘Hacio’r Iaith and Metastwnsh. I also wonder whether the huge progress made by Google Translate will encourage writers to adopt Welsh as their preferred medium, given that they can be reasonably confident of being understood by non-Welsh speakers.

Meanwhile, the new technologies (especially those which come under the broad heading of Web 2.0) provide massive opportunities for Welsh learners to exercise their skills. I, for one, will be taking a look at ‘Say Something in Welsh’. Tweets and blogs are also a great way for learners to practise reading and writing skills with relatively small chunks of text.

When I mentioned the Welsh language blog scene on Twitter yesterday morning, there was an immediate response from a number of people.   I am looking forward to seeing much more Welsh language blogging, and soon.

At the end of this conference, Sangeet Bhullar of Wisekids approached me to record an interview about my impressions of the conference. I had many positive things to say, but it was only when I had gone home and thought about it that I realised that I had left unsaid the most significant feature of the two events. This was that so many utterly different voices had made themselves heard.

It is relatively easy to organise an event which involves only a single community of practice, and where all the delegates are roughly the same kind of person, and know what to expect. This one was not like that at all. We heard from teachers, youth workers, emoderators, regulatory authorities, policy makers, purveyors and advocates of various technologies , and others who don’t fit any of these categories. There was also participation from outside the physical environs, mainly at #ypdw 2010 on twitter.

Perhaps most importantly of all, we heard from the key stakeholders, the young people who are most directly affected by the issues. Their presentations were well prepared and thoughtful, indicating to the audience what kind of input the Internet has had on their lives. However, the highlight was probably the panel, where they answered honestly and engagingly a series of really challenging questions about their attitudes to the online world, their perceptions of the dangers involved, and the things which they most value about it.

In brief, what these young people said was that they need freedom to explore, to learn and perhaps to make mistakes, but they also expect the adults around them to teach and to support them. They really didn’t see the purpose in simply blocking social networks such as Facebook, and were very confident of being able to circumvent school systems in order to overcome these blocks. Attempts to cover Internet safety in the classroom have clearly been ‘too little, too late’, as far as they are concerned. There were some inconsistencies and differences in their attitudes, but overall they spoke almost as one. Unless we hear this voice, there is precious little chance of us understanding the changes which are happening, or making rational and fair judgements about what support and control might be needed. As John Davitt put it in a tweet, there has been a “… sea change in the quality and range of dialogue from students + impact poss when student voice is heard”.  This resonated very clearly with one of Tanya Byron’s opening messages: “Children should be able to resiliently deal with risk, but they can’t if nobody has a conversation with them.” May the conversation continue.

I wrote a posting about e-safety a few months ago, thinking in particular about the safety of children online. There has been much activity and discussion of this important issue in the intervening time, and yesterday saw a very interesting conference organised by Wisekids and WISP, called Young People in a Digital World. The event was located in Swansea, but the webcasting clearly reached much more widely, to judge from the tweets which were flowing during the course of the day. Difficult of course, to have a discussion of any depth in chunks of 140 characters, but it certainly showed that quite a few people were present, and paying attention. I cannot write a full report, but I will just mention a couple of key things which I took from the day.

In an recorded interview, Prof Tanya Byron gave her own special ‘take’ on child Internet safety, derived from her experience of writing her governmental  report, ‘Safer Children in a Digital World’ ,as well as extensive professional experience of child behavioural issues. She referred to her view that society is becoming increasingly risk-averse, leading to a tendency to “raise children in captivity”. Supporting this, she said that children’s radius of play has decreased 90%. One consequence of this is that children increasingly spend time in front of a computer screen. Nothing wrong with that, perhaps, but it all depends what they are doing, and who is paying attention and taking responsibility. To extend Prof Byron’s argument, it is of key importance for parents to support their children effectively in their online activities. The problem is that this means that the adults must have the necessary understanding and skills to do this. This is where I believe that there is a key role for Adult Community Learning. But there is a lot to know and to understand about online technology, and it changes so fast, and how effectively do accredited courses (usually the only ones which are funded) cover this material?

Later in the day, we heard from groups of young people about how they were using computers and Internet technology to have fun, and to learn. Most impressively, they fielded questions from the audience about their own behaviour and attitudes, showing extraordinary honesty and maturity. This session revealed the key point that young people are very capable of taking responsibility in a great many areas of their online life, although there are a few gaps there too.  And not all of the kids you meet will be as smart and as self-aware as these ones proved to be, of course.  The final question they had to field ‘what would life be like without the Internet?’ was (not surprisingly) quite difficult for them. It would be hard for me too, come to think of it.

I am looking forward to tomorrow’s event in Bangor, where I can be present in the real world. Let’s hope the discussion is equally stimulating…..

A couple of stories have caught my eye this week on the theme of citizenship and Internet technologies. The gloomy news about the gap between Britain’s richest and poorest people made headlines during the middle of the week, with a good deal of debate as to whether this could be blamed on the Labour government, or on the previous Conservative administration. Either way, there was consensus that this situation is damaging in more ways than I can begin to describe here: socially, economically, and in terms of health and education, just to name a few areas.

Earlier in the week came the launch of data.gov.uk, the new British government’s website offering free access to a huge amount of public-sector data for private or commercial reuse. Legislation such as the Freedom of Information Act has long provided citizens with the power to find data, and free publication of some kinds of data has become the norm. But how easy is it to find the data we need? Well, not easy, if you believe Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, who formally launched the website. “You have no idea of the excuses people come up with to keep data out of your hands, even when you as taxpayers have paid for it,” he said in a talk to the TED conference in March 2009.

This is of course not the first initiative of this kind, in Britain or globally. The U.S. has a similar site, data.gov, launched by Obama’s administration last year. Meanwhile, in Sweden, the Gapminder foundation continues its excellent work bringing global statistics to light and presenting them in a clear and engaging way.

But will bringing a host of government data into one place will help to close the gap between the rich and the poor?  Perhaps not directly, but it may help to raise people’s awareness and understanding of the issues which government and citizens face, for example relating to the environment and to poverty.  Meanwhile, this could act as a powerful resource for teachers who are bringing the key issues of global citizenship and environmental sustainability into the curriculum.  I will come back to this once I have had some more time to explore….

“Some people may be sceptical, but I say consuming 6,000 trillion more words must have an impact” says Stephen Downes . I am one of the sceptics, but not for the same reason as David Willingham, who claims that reading on the web is lightweight. I don’t think that the medium, or even the length, necessarily  makes any writing lightweight. Well constructed writing for the web can have both depth and impact. No, my issue is more with the word “consume” in this context. Ignoring the cognitive dissonance which I experience from the notion that the text is consumed when it is not ‘used up’, I do wonder what has been measured in the study ‘How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers by Roger E. Bohn and James E. Short?’ (PDF). This report is a technical one about information flow into the home (not the workplace), and tells you nothing about whether or not people actually read, or listen to, the words.

Nevertheless, the figures make startling reading, with a four-fold increase in bytes and a 140 percent increase in words “consumed” by Americans from 1980 to 2008. And I agree with Stephen Downes that we must look for an impact from these changes, but the question is ‘where?’ should we be looking? For some reason, there seems to be a general assumption out there that there must be some kind of ‘dumbing down’ going on, but I don’t see the logic in this. Did the telephone or the radio make us worse at listening? So how are people responding to what may be seen as a bombardment of huge volumes of information?  I don’t have answers to these questions, of course, but they may encapsulate key issues which educational technologists need to address.

 Towards the end of last year, I wrote a posting about some of my favourite blogs about eLearning. I will now expand on that, looking at a few great examples of the bloggers art, but taking a much wider perspective. At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, teachers have interests other than teaching and learning, and so do learners. These interests are reflected in what they read about in printed media, and so it will be for blogs.

In an attempt to make sense of the whole area, I have been reflecting on whether or not it was useful to put blogs into categories. To be honest, I am still not entirely convinced of the value of this approach, but the idea is an interesting one. I like the way that Margaret Simons has gone about this at http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0  so I have used her categories, with a one or two sub-headings of my own.  I have pulled out some of the most interesting from my RSS feeds, skipping the items which were clearly newsfeeds rather than blogs, and placed them under these headings.

These blogs come from a range of sources: a look down the domain names tells you immediately that some are corporate, while others are clearly homespun. Some bloggers tread an interesting line between the personal and the professional, and between the chatty and the literary. Hasn’t this got to be great for engagement, for citizenship and for learning? See what you think of this approach…. 

The Pamphleteering blog

This one is about climate change, and it gives a fascinating insight into events at COP15 in Copenhagen last December. Like many, I followed this closely through the mainstream media, but this blog gives another perspective. http://tcktcktck.org/stories/campaign-stories/not-fab-deal-we-need-so-we-must-fight

The Digest Blog

Metastwnsh. This blog could have gone into any (or perhaps all?) of these categories. It covers technology, the arts, and language issues, amongst other areas. It’s in the Welsh language, making it a great opportunity for learners to engage. If you get lost in the language, by the way, there is always Google Translate to help you out.

The Advocacy Blog

Here are three blogs by leading politicians in Wales. It’s very interesting to see how their remarks here relate to their utterances in other media. Use of blogs is an aspect of campaigning in which politicians are still feeling their way. (This selection tells you nothing about my political allegiances, by the way).

http://peterblack.blogspot.com/ 

http://www.leightonandrews.com/

http://www.adampriceblog.org.uk/

The ‘Popular Mechanics’ blog (or ‘How to do stuff’) 

Examples are too numerous to mention. I like ‘My Tiny Plot’;  it’s about gardening. http://www.mytinyplot.co.uk/.

The ‘exhibition’ blog 

Stephen Fry needs no introduction. He normally blogs at  http://www.stephenfry.com/, but is currently on ‘sabbatical’. Archives are at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10917.Stephen_Fry/blog.

The gatewatcher blog

If I read this correctly, this is about focus, independence and expertise. Hence a site belonging to a government, broadcasting corporation, or a national newspaper would not qualify. For its genuinely free-thinking nature, I suggest Hans Rosling’s work at Gapminder is a good example.

Another example is ‘Bad Science’, wherein Ben Goldacre takes a critical look at all kinds of research. The blog is more informal than his newspaper column of the same title.

The diary blog

The Disability Bitch gives her cogent thoughts from a disabled person about life, the universe and everything. A corporate blog with a homespun feel.  

The Radio 3 blog.  Witty and erudite material from musicians. If you have ever wondered how professional orchestral musicians spend their time between concerts, look no further…

“Quixotic Quisling“. Carl Morris says: “It’s about language, music, art, business and other stuff I care about.”

The Advertisement blog

I am not going to name any. There are plenty out there.

The news blog

These are everywhere, especially if you include newstreams, which are sometimes indistinguishable from blogs. Most of the political pundits in the broadcasting industry seem to have a least one, and those people already have ample opportunity to make themselves heard. However, some reporters manage to add a bit more of their own personality to their reports when they are blogging. A good example is Betsan Powys http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/betsanpowys/.

At this time of the year a very pleasant task awaits me as I return to my desk. I like to start the new year my remembering the learners whom I have supported over the previous year, and considering whether or not they could be nominated for the ‘Inspire’ Adult Learner awards which are organised by NIACE in England and by NIACE Dysgu Cymru in Wales.

As the nomination form says: “We are looking for people whose learning achievements will inspire others to return to learning, who have improved their lives and/or the lives of others, and gained a positive or life-changing experience from returning to learning.” Actually, when I think about that definition, lots of my learners fit the bill, so I try to choose just one or two who have made a really special contribution to the work of the group, or who have overcome particular difficulties.

My group works primarily online, with considerable emphasis on group discussions and also some collective gathering of data. This gives lots of opportunity for confident learners to show the way to others, and for those who are less confident to make visible progress through the year, by broadening and deepening the discussions which take place (in this case on environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity). Much of the learning is in the discussion, so  learners who are prepared to take a lead and show initiative get the most benefit, and also help the others along. These are not necessarily the ones who type the longest or the most frequent messages, by the way, but they often inspire other learners with their energy.

Learners like these make teaching easy and enjoyable, and it is a pleasure to recognise their contributions. Have you got any in your groups? If so, now is the time to nominate them for these awards: nominations close on February 26th in Wales http://niace.rcthosting.com/en/alw/campaigndetail.asp?section=14&ref=11, and January 29th in England http://www.niace.org.uk/alw/nominations/default.htm.

While I have been around a few of the Welsh colleges, talking about blogs and RSS, many people have asked me to recommend some of my favourite blogs. So far, I have been reluctant to do this, since it really is a matter of taste. However, it is often the first question I am asked, so I have decided relent and to compile a list of a few of my favourites.  These are in no particular order. If you want to let everyone know about your own favourites, please post a comment below. Here goes….

Metastwnsh. http://metastwnsh.com/ Welsh language technology blog. Ardderchog!

Teacher Reboot Camp. http://teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org/  Don’t be put off by the name. Shelly Terrell is an (U.S.) English teacher, and a highly reflective practitioner who shares her thoughts in an honest and articulate way.

New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/ Simply the best source on current science, whether you are a specialist scientist, or just have a passing interest. You can subscribe for free using RSS, although you won’t necessarily be able to access the full articles.

Always Learning. http://mscofino.edublogs.org/ An American IT teacher, Kim Cofino, reflects on the way she teaches (and learns). A fascinating read.

Emerging Technologies for Learning .  http://emergingtechnologies.becta.org.uk/ BeCTA, the UK government agency, keeps you up to date with new technologies.

Adult Learning Australia. http://blog.ala.asn.au/ A fascinating glimpse into the lifelong learning sector in Australia. They often have similar issues to us, but different ideas for addressing them..

RSC Wales. http://www.rsc-wales.ac.uk/blogs.asp In case you have parachuted into this  blog from some other link, try taking a look at some of the sister blogs on this site, on teaching and learning, technology, library resources, and about work in other sectors (HE, FE, WBL). There are plenty of well focused thoughts and useful suggestions in these pages.

The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education Interesting bits from the Guardian’s education pages, delivered to your screen.

 Learning with ‘e’s. http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/ Steve Wheeler is a teacher educator at Plymouth University, and a widely respected figure in eLearning. His views are original, well observed, and always worth reading.

NIACE news stream. http://www.niace.org.uk/news Especially useful for adult educators.  Mostly focussed on England, but some articles have much wider relevance.

Pontydysgu: Bridge to Learning. http://www.pontydysgu.org/ Wales-based blog about technology, with an international outlook. The focus is on learning as well as the technology. . Author Graham Attwell has a well-deserved reputation for perceptive and intelligent writing about eLearning.

Social Media In Learning: http://janeknight.typepad.com/socialmedia/2009/12/ Keeping you up to date with social media news, resources and tips! Does what it says on the tin!

See also Jane Hart’s eLearning Tips of the Day at http://janeknight.typepad.com/pick/2009/12

Why did the chickenman cross the road? http://chickensaltash.edublogs.org The title is quirky,  but there is some innovative thinking on teaching and learning in this blog. School focused, but relevant across all sectors.

RSC Scotland North and East, Access and Inclusion. http://inclusive.ning.com/ Lively and well-informed discussion of issues facing learners who are excluded by virtue of disability, or for other reasons. You will be required to join, but membership is open, and it’s free.

BBC Technology Blog. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/ Rory Cellan Jones gives well-informed comment

Seb Schmoller’s Fortnightly Mailing. http://fm.schmoller.net Get it via RSS and relieve some of the strain on your Inbox! Some bias towards HE, but Seb is a good observer and knows about technology usage across all sectors.

Back in June, I wrote a blog posting looking at the implications of the Carter report (‘Digital Britain’), wondering how realistic it was, and what the costs of providing universal home broadband access would be. This came back into my mind yesterday as I was facilitating a session at Community eLearning Wales, a group of adult educators which meets termly in order to move the eLearning agenda forward in the Adult Community Learning sector. I asked the participants to nominate one piece of technology which was key to moving their learners forward right now, thinking that this would help the type of support which would be able to provide. The answer was pretty much the same everywhere: the Internet. This led me to ask how many classrooms used by ACL providers were disconnected from the Internet. Was it a majority? Certainly. Was it more than 80%? Yes. 90%? Quite possibly.

In an era when most educational sectors take connectivity for granted, this was a shocking estimate (I won’t call it a statistic). I am not too worried about the accuracy of this one, incidentally:  if the true figure were 50% it would still be a major issue. The discussion we had yesterday prompted me to go back to Carter’s report, to see what he had to say about the subject of connectivity in classrooms. Not much, it turns out, despite a strong emphasis on learning throughout the report. The assumption here is rather clear: that a generation of learners are emerging who had plenty of experience of technology in the school classroom and who, if connected online, will be more than capable of using online learning opportunities.

I beg to differ. While it is true that affordable or free online learning experiences are becoming increasingly available, I am not convinced that the majority of adult learners are well placed to take advantage of these. Setting aside for a moment that learners may not be connected at home, they are almost certainly not connected in the classroom. This limits their opportunities to acquire skills at working and learning online. To be fair, Carter does not ignore this issue. He refers to Estelle Morris’s review  of ‘Digital Life Skills’, which identifies a need for Adult Learners to have nine hours of learning in online skills in order to learn how to get online, and to operate in that environment. This may be enough to get people started, but the experience of most adult educators is that learners progress most quickly when they also have an opportunity to pursue their own interests online, but in a classroom setting. We have seen this time and again, and many of the RSC’s video case studies bear this out. Time spent in the in the classroom using online tools is of immense value to the learners, and this is currently not available to the majority. This raises clear issues of equity and fairness which I won’t explore here, and it also raises issues of cost effectiveness: if the ‘last mile’ is the most expensive, do we need a broadband connection in every home, at the expense of viable connections in classrooms? Looked at another way, if it’s worth investing in home connections, a much smaller additional investments would surely be sufficient to connect all of our classrooms.

Meanwhile, providers and educators must work with what we have. Increasingly, learners will have better facilities at home than in the classroom, a situation which could well lend itself to enriching the curriculum with online activities to be carried out as ‘extras’ at home. Unfortunately, this has to be done without immediate teacher guidance. To get around this, what is needed are simple online tools which anyone can use with minimal introduction. Does Moodle fit the bill? Perhaps, although arguably simple tools like blogs, combined with sharing documents online (e.g. via Google docs) could be equally important. Above all, learning for adults is a social activity, and the tools used need to reflect this. Over the coming months, we will be introducing educators to some online tools which they may be able to use, and inviting providers to share some of their own  exising good practice  in this area. Watch this space!