There will be a special blog for the EDEN conference this week in Lisbon, and I will be contributing toward the content. I'm actually quite looking forward to the conference this year, as it promises to be memorable for all the right reasons. The city itself is new to me - I have never visited Portugal, and have heard a lot of good things about Lisbon. The conference themes are also appetising, with e-portfolios, open libraries, cultural contexts for e-learning, digital literacy and e... Read Full Story

I'm taking part in a live podcast on Monday evening for Pontydysgu using Skype direct from my new wireless laptop, if I can get the blasted software to download. I'm going to be talking about social software and open content for e-learning, and will be in conversation with the show's host, Graham Attwell. This was a session I agreed to do with Graham earlier this week whilst attending the Edumedia conference in Salzburg. Graham has already posted an invitation on his JISC Emerge site and I... Read Full Story

A lot of decent things came out of Edumedia 2008 this week in Salzburg. Ralf Appelt has posted a useful blog reporting on the highlights of the event, and Graham Attwell's team are cooking up a whole host of sounds and interviews from the conference for podcast. Adesigna's Flickr photos are particularly evocative (this picture of the river at night is simply beautiful). One of the most innovative aspects of the event for me was the introduction of the Twemes application to capture an... Read Full Story

We have been enjoying using the Twemes (Twitter Memes) application here in Salzburg these last two days. Although the wireless network connections have been playing some games with us, several of us here at Edumedia have been able to Twitter and then direct our tweets to Twemes where they are aggregated in with a stream of images (Flickr) and tags (Delicious) from the conference. Anything on these tools that is tagged with #edumedia08 is fed directly into Twemes. Pictured are Graham and I... Read Full Story

We are cooking here in Salzburg. The weather is just as warm and humid as it was yesterday. But we are cooking in another way too. We have just enjoyed a very good and very interesting opening session at Edumedia 08 here in Salzburg. Jay Cross has just spoken about informal learning and made some interesting and thought provoking points. He tells the story of how an American professor told two groups of students to read a paper in preparation for an examination. He also told the second group... Read Full Story

Its all quite beautiful here up in the middle of the Austrian Alps. I am in Salzburg to speak at the EduMedia conference this week. The weather is hot and sunny and the birds are singeing in the trees. The theme of this conference is Self Organised Learning in the Interactive Web. I have already enjoyed some interesting and stimulating conversations with the likes of Jay Cross (USA), Mark Kramer (Austria) and Wolfgang Greller (OU Netherlands) and I am looking forward to listening to the first... Read Full Story

Arrived back home safely (and on time) after a week teaching in the Czech Republic. I have been teaching bright young things from Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland, and we have been doing fun things like role play, lively debates and the study of English idioms... The foreign language counterparts to 'beating around the bush' and 'raining cats and dogs' are outrageous, believe me. I also set them up with a group blog, and there are some interesting posts on there. I'm already a little... Read Full Story

I'm currently gathering and analysing data on two different blogging studies. The first involved a group of students who are in their third year of teacher training. They had to do a personal research project on ICT in education as a part of their studies, and I set up a group blog for them (which they themselves called 'Idiot's guide to research'). They reported (those who have responded so far) that they really appreciated the extra 'safety net' and that they also benefited from... Read Full Story

I'm very pleased to announce that Graham Attwell has confirmed that he will present a keynote speech at next year's Plymouth e-Learning Conference, here at the University of Plymouth. Graham shares his time between the University of Bremen, Germany and Pontydysgu (Bridge to Learning: An independent Welsh Research Institute - where he is director) as well as his many travels around Europe. I heard him speak as a stand in keynote speaker last year at Online Educa Berlin, (pictured, checking to... Read Full Story

This year's EDEN (European Distance and Elearning Network) conference looks like being a real blast. It will be in Lisbon, Portugal, in the middle of June. Last week, I was informed that my paper had been accepted (I will be talking about blogs, would you believe?) and so this week I booked my hotel. Today the message below was sent from EDEN to all delegates, and it looks very appetising... "The Conference Dinner online booking will open on 13 May. You can reserve places for this special... Read Full Story