Blog.NetGeners.Net

We would like to ask all of you for your contribution to prepare for a panel discussion at the Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference (FKFT) conference, taking place from July 15^th to 17^th 2008 in Barcelona, Spain and a subsequent global virtual online meeting initially scheduled for middle of September 2008.

Some of you already actively participate at the NetGeners.Net pilot and others of you seem to have a common interest in it. Independently whether you are a student, free / libre open (re-) source experienced or educator you all should be in the position to share a lesson on how future education might look like and how it could be improved by harnessing the potential the web offers - and this is what we like to invite you to!

Objectives

The currently identified objectives are:

1 Preparation for FKFT panel discussion

The NetGeners.Net pilot is inspired by the open source move, and also success cases like Wikipedia, and tries to apply some of the underlying principles in the light of open education. At this point we would like to presents some lessons learnt from the first round of the NetGeners.Net pilot course and general reflections that might help us to approximate towards the future of Free / Open Education.

1.1 Task 1

For this reason we came up with an Initial Set of Questions of which we hope to have answered some prior to the FKFT conference.

1.2 Task 2

With the results of task 1 we would like to compile some short presentations to be presented at the FKFT panel discussion.

Those presentations should also include the experiences of the participant at the learning projects of the 1st NetGeners.Net course round (Copyleft vs. Copyright, Different ways to disseminate information and Ética, tecnología y libre elección: abordando dilemas en red)

2 FKFT Panel discussion

The FKFT panel discussion will allow us to present our findings to a large international audience and hopefully serves as a space for a vivid debate.

3 Follow up on FKFT panel discussion

To sum up the outcomes of the FKFT panel discussion and to identify follow up questions to be addressed. Ideally those results would allow us to improve the NetGeners.Net pilot prior to its second course round, which will start on September 22^nd.

4 Global Virtual Online Meeting

This meeting should allow global virtual participation and enable all participants to learn more about our work. Ideally this meeting would be held close to the start of the second NetGeners.Net course round.

4.1 For the 3 learning projects of the NetGeners.Net 1st course round

Please provide a short presentation of your learning project. First present the results and Second a short overview on the roads toward it (e.g. meetings, work division, etc.).

Roadmap

July 1^st to 15^th 2008

Preparation for FKFT panel discussion, including lessons learnt from the NetGeners.Net pilot and similar learning environments at the web (e.g. the free / libre open (re-) source movement)

July 16^th 2008

                        FKFT Panel discussion

July 18^th to middle of August 2008

                        Follow up on FKFT panel discussion, outcomes and further reflection

September 2008

Virtual online meeting (e.g. videoconference or chat session) to share our outcomes with the global community

September 22^nd 2008

                        Start of the second (improved) NetGeners.Net pilot course round

About the FKFT conference

The Free Knowledge, Free Technology Conference (FKFT) is the first international event which will centre on the production and sharing of educational and training materials in the field of Free Software and Open Standards. With the objective of promoting Free Software and the sharing of free knowledge, the FKFT 2008 Conference will bring together hundreds of people from different continents including government representatives, school and university teachers, IT companies, publishers, and NGO’s.

If you like to participate this link will take you to the initial set of questions!

We had several chats over the past weeks in which each team of the currently working 3 learning projects set up their roadmap and activity plans to develop them.

The subjects of those 3 learning projects are:

1. Different ways to disseminate information (English)

2. Copyleft vs. Copyright (English)

3. The impact of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt policies) on free user choice (Spanish)

Each of the three projects selected their preferred working tools with chats being held either at the NetGeners.Net chat, on freenode or at jabber depending on the learning project.

So in the case you feel like participating at one of their next chats, you will find the dates and minutes of pasts chats here.

If non of those areas above is of your particular interest than just go ahead an set up you own learning project and get in touch with me.

Cheers

Andreas

Ok, I am not a regular blogger I have to admit – sorry for the silence at this blog!

BUT: We were working like usually and discussed about 3 learning projects and you can follow up on all of this here. In the case you are interested in joining those 3 learning projects just go ahead and contact the respective team members!

Though some of the 3 teams have never met before, it was really interesting to see that they do have a common point of understanding on the subjects involved.

In parallel to the NetGeners.Net course I really wonder how education might look like in 10 years from now. This morning I received a mail from OZ from Debbie who was impressed by the NetGeners.Net approach. Well I do have my very own vision on 10 years from now, but from a vivid chat with some colleagues at IET, I understand that there seem to be many hurdles to be overcome (if they could be overcome). As a result of this chat with my colleagues I decided to write down this vision and what I came up with was this.

Once I am back from my vacations at the second week of May I will try to blog about the latest updates and developments – until than be invited to explore the NetGeners.Net site yourself!

So long

Andreas

So I decided to give this learning project a start – but now the question is where and how to start?

Ok, let me tell you step by step what I did so far.

First

This learning project shall provide an insight on how to use Google to find the information you are looking at. But before thinking about an introduction, objectives, tasks and activities, roadmap or outcomes of this learning project I first would like to see what exists already at the web related to “talking with Google a 101”. I believe that his will help me to evaluate better what would be of relevance for this learning project, what have other already created and on what have they focused, what is still unclear to me, etcetc.

Google provides already a very detailed Help Section (Source 1) on how to use Google tools. But this help section seems to be pretty comprehensive, so I might still find a better 101 and decide to “google” for the term google 101.

After not finding anything useful at the fist 6 hits, the 7^th hit points me to a web cast with Nancy Blachman on “Google 101: How to search more effectively on the popular Website”. Luckily there is also a link to a page Nancy set up called googleguide (Source 2) what looks like a good starting base to explore, though still not appealing enough for my taste.

The search results 8 to 20 are of no use, but the results 20 to 30 provide 3 further sources:

• Source 3: http://community.cue.org/forum/topic/show?id=904677%3ATopic%3A1707 – This link was leading me to this one: http://martinkat07.googlepages.com which provides some PDF tutorial and a further link to: http://stabaldo.googlepages.com which had some information and even further links. (Note: At this point I decided to not “click” on any further link as the chance is too high to just get lost without really finding what you are looking for).
• Source 4: http://www.mustech.net/2006/08/google-101-learn-from-my-trials - An interesting blog site with basic information at one page
• Source 5: http://www.netsquirrel.com/powerpoint/complete.html - Patrick’s page provides many presentations on how to use the web for learning – including some on how to use Google

The sources above seem to provide a good starting base to have a look at, but I still do a quick alternative Google search for “Google 101 introduction” to see if this provides even better results. But no, this search returned too many irrelevant results and thus I will have a more close look at the findings above.

(Note: Up to now this initial exercise cost me about 30 minutes to find existing tutorials and information on how to use Google)

Second

As a second step I will go through the sources 1 to 5 above to see what they can tell me on how to talk with Google.

Patrick’s page (source 5) provides several illustrative presentations and thus this will be my first starting point. For those of you being new to the area of searching at the web the Google 101 is probably a good introduction. If you are a bit more familiar with web searches than you might want to go directly to the Google 201. Google 201 explains how Google looks up pages, but as Patrick points out “this is what he (Patrick) assumes”. At slide 9 Patrick explains how Google looks up your search phrases (words or sentences), followed by the 5 golden rules for Google searches from slide 18 on, going over to “secret” aspects to know from slide 24 on.

(Note: This second step took about 2 hours, which I mainly spent on going through Patrick’s presentations. I could have spent easily two days on this and still would be reading interesting stuff. But the objective here was to get an initial idea only, going more into detail stays for the actual learning project)

Third

Having now a clearer idea on the subject I am going ahead and draft a first learning project introduction, the objectives, tasks and activities, a roadmap and possible outcomes.

Patrick’s presentation on Google 201 was quite interesting and what I also liked at his presentation is that he stressed continuously that this is how HE (Patrick) believes Google works.

Well, checking out whether Patrick’s assumptions are right or wrong sounds like being a good candidate for the “Tasks and Activities” of our “Talking with Google – a 101” learning project.

If Patrick is not sure about his assumptions, and other sources at the web also give us no clearer indicators on how Google works, we might just try to do (A) a number of Google searches ignoring the indicators Patrick provides us with and (B) a number of Google searches using Patrick’s indicators. If we do 50 searches for (A) and another 50 for (B) and keep a record on the search results we might be able to find out if option (B) provides us indeed with better Google search results.

I am now writing things up for the “Talking with Google – a 101” learning project and will place this information at the XXX and create a new project page for at the wiki

Fourth

Well, for today I think it is enough, but over the next days I will follow up at the “tasks and activities” and would certainly welcome it to have some of you joining in at this learning project.

I have to say that I consider myself to be quite familiar with Google web searches as I likely spend 10 hours a week with it. Interestingly though Patrick’s presentation provided me with several good ideas on how to improve my search technique, and some of Patrick’s hints I actually should have already known. My lesson learnt from this initial task today is that even if you think you know already about a subject in detail, there is still plenty of space for improvement!

If you are interested in joining this learning project, just register at the NetGeners.Net course site and add it to your “favourites”!

Today we had an introductory flashmeeting (videoconference) for the NetGeners.Net Course using flashmeeting. The meeting took around 40 minutes and besides myself Sulayman from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (GR) and Thieme from Delft University of Technology (NL) participated.

We recorded the meeting so you can replay it at the flashmeeting repository and the complementary presentation can be found at slideshare.

If you like the concept of flashmeetings and would like to have one organized to discuss further aspects of the NetGeners.Net course just feel free and contact me.

I just like to address below two points that came up during the conference, and that might be of particular interest (though I am sure the other points discussed are of interest too).

1. Can I join in at any time to start my learning project or to join the ones of others?

YES, you can do so for the entire duration of this pilot course. We broke the NetGEners.Net course down into 2 semesters for handling reasons – BUT this does not mean that there actually will be a VISIBLE BREAK. You can start or join learning projects at any time.

2. How can I start / join a learning project, and what’s a learning project?

A detailed description of is available at the FAQ / Help area, and to have an even better understanding you might also have a look on already running learning projects, such as e.g. the one Margaretha started on Copyleft vs. Copyright.

More to follow by tomorrow!

Andreas

There are now less than two weeks until the start of the NetGeners.Net course and though it didn’t look like we were actively working behind the scenes fixing software bugs and organizing some events for the introduction week and the time after.

I am glad to announce that Dr. Sulayman K. Sowe from the University of Thessaloniki in Greece agreed to moderate a first video conference at the start date of the NetGeners.Net course on Monday the 17th of March at 14.00 GMT (UK time).  

As by today we have already registered course participants from Africa, Australia, Germany, India, Portugal, Singapore, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

This is a promising group for the start and I hope that this diversity will still be enriched by participants from further countries over the next month.

On the more challenging side this diversity also means that it will be hard to organize virtual meet ups at a time that fits all.

For this reason we set up a list at the wiki where you can state at which day and time you like to have a video conference, chat or other activity to be organized by us during the introduction week. (Note: you need to register at the wiki separately!)

Finally, if you haven’t used flashmeeting before I highly recommend that you try it out some days before the actual video conference. We used flashmeetings many times over the past years and our experience is that first comers / newbies almost all of the time regret that they were not checking before that all of their video and audio settings are working! Don’t be scared, this is really not a difficult task, but better spending those minutes a day before, than missing part of the actual videoconference!

Best

Andreas

If you are interested in the NetGeners.Net course than you certainly are interested in those links too: The Top 100 tools for learning comprises a list of tools that might help you within your learning. The list is comprised by learning professionals throughout the globe. A smaller list of web based tools, though equally interesting, has been compiled by students at NextPath.

There are still some weeks to go before the official Kick-Off day on March 17th, but we would like to announce that during the first course week we will organize a range of activities to get all of us lined up.

Activities will include chat sessions and - in the case of sufficient interest - a number of flashmeetings! Flashmeetings are a type of video group meeting where you can chat, talk, view other people, or even present some slides. For all of those being interested in a flashmeeting please add your name and preferred date at the wiki. If there is a number of 5 participants per day and time the meeting is set!

If you have any suggestions or ideas on possible activities and events for the introduction week we are very interested in hearing them - please suggest them at the forum!

It was quite a bit of work to pull together the different bits and pieces of the NetGeners.Net space, but now it looks like we have a good base for the start of the pilot course.

The full title of the course is “NetGeners.Net: The ne(x)t generation learner - Skills you need in lifelong learning knowledge and information societies”.

Firstly of all, this course is free: free to attend without any charge, free of cost for books or other materials, free for anyone independently of prior education; and free in terms of your personal time commitment that you decide to dedicate to it (Though we would like you to spend on a minimum 2 hours per week). The only thing you will need is a PC and internet access.

The course is supposed to be an open and participatory learning experience that involves practical ‘hands-on’ sessions where the learners’ learning activities and the things they create will become a part of the course. This is to say that future course participants should be enabled to benefit from earlier learners achievements and build upon the things they started, instead of starting from scratch.

The course will allow participants to act not only as a learner, but to become an active contributor and co-creator. Participants will be asked to establish their own course learning projects or to join into course learning projects of others; and will also have a voice to tell what they think this course still needs.

This course is a pilot course in the light of free and open education. Participants of this course can expect tutoring (support), but will not receive any official degree awarding certificate or credit points from the course team.

As the course is only scheduled to start on March 17^th we invite you to provide us some feedback on what you think could be improved, to report bugs (means to tell us what still doesn’t work as it should), to suggest further learning projects, or to submit already existing ones to our course category.