The Wild Show on Phonic FM has occasional space for some conversation. It is mostly a music show. Actually the music is the main point. But I can slip things in, having worked my way up from a guest on the New Exeter Radio Show, a fairly dangerous space but that is another story.

So there may be a new spot , the eleventh hour, that covers aspects of technology. Is it the eleventh hour for live radio? that sort of thing.

I missed the last couple of weeks but have sent in email etc. and met offline last Wednesday. Here is a YouTube clip based on photos and the sound from last week.



The clip explaining the eleventh hour as "the time when Exeter connects the cloud and coffee" is from me via Chris Norton iPhone to Soundcloud from Cafe 55 on Northernhay Street. Edited into a jingle by JD somewhere in Devon. Photos from Exeter cathedral yard and St Pauls both actual and in Twinity.

Universities and conferences could benefit from virtual worlds linked to actual space. It extends the access possible without reducing the value of actual face to face.  Also connections are maybe easier. In Twinity it takes maybe half an hour to walk from the CQI near Chancery Lane to the Work Foundation near Victoria. The Tent City University and Exeter Cathedral are good venues because daylight helps the camera.

The eleventh hour on the Wild Show will return to the university library. The university bookshop is under threat as of April 2012.

Thinking about Critical Management Studies as I am contributing to an online version of a revival for Management Theory at Work. This is a LinkedIn group ( search on "mtw3" ) or this blog.

The original conferences were about ten years ago. I am still interested in learning organisations, especially connected to ideas about quality. But the first conference was very influenced by critique and a lot of practitioner concerns got lost, in my opinion.

Without a doubt CMS has done well for academic publishing. Here is a graph based on Google Books.

The growth starts befor the time of the conferences and has continued strongly.

But a search of Google Trends in general shows no significant result.

This suggests that CMS has been an academic project that has no connection with a public. This might explain why conferences that ionvolve both academics and practitioners are rare. And rarer now than a while ago.

The mtw3 blog has some more stats on learning organisations and dynamic capabilities.

There is the start of an update for Management Theory at Work, two conferences from around ten years ago.

A blog has started and there is a LinkedIn group #mtw3

As memory serves the closing session for first one did not really consider the opening keynote from John Burgoyne which was partly about how technology might assist the learning organisation. As technology changes this is a good time to have another look.

By the way, there has been a gap in posts to this blog as I now mostly post to will789gb on Posterous, an effort to integrate various flows.

http://will789gb.posterous.com/

Here is one in a smaller size, might fit better

Testing out Flickr embed code,

Coming soon Learning technologies. Will there be free Adobe coffee, as at BETT?

Thinking about the Experimentality event, I will start with the Dark Side of Mode II Knowledge. This is where many people are at and by clarifying this it could be possible to move on to whether quality ideas can help with anything at all, like dissemination. A collection of papers in book form could be one product. From IPEX I am aware that short run books are possible. The binding kit is under rapid development. Not sure where it is in production, but this could be a case study. Social media etc also relevant. The official blog has some links but more could be happening.

Thinking about the Experimentality conference and what to put in my paper, I think I will go back to issues around e-learning, quality and learning organisations. I got a bit lost here around the time of the emphasis on leadership and/or critique. not sure about this but it may be possible now to get closer to something I can understand.

There is video from the recent Networked Learning conference that covers the opening session. After a couple of views it is getting easier to follow. However I am still confused about the manifesto, or the reasons to drop the manifesto, or what is proposed otherwise. There is a summary page with links to four papers and an intro but I am still working through this. I think the idea of a manifesto has been dropped. Possibly the relation to technology has been dropped. Criteria for network learning do not depend on a digital context. But I am not sure what the policy suggestion is or how it is to be disseminated.

(Not too far off topic for the Experimentality event. If there is a "Lancaster Declaration" from social activists
then there are questions about how easy it will be to understand and how widely it will be published)

I am starting with "Learning, Teaching and Assessment in Networked Learning" by Vivien Hodgson and Michael Reynolds. It starts off as if there is a connection with quality that I could follow-

Educational values which contribute to quality in learning and teaching environments are those that seek to encourage dialogue, exchange of ideas, intrinsic approaches to study and engagement. It is this that we need to support through networked e-learning.

So quality is in there somehow, but it is unclear to me what form of practice would meet the aims

In summary then we are suggesting that networked learning can be seen to be aspiring to provide a space and a place for dialogue and interaction that not only supports the co-construction of knowledge, identity and learning but also where this co-construction is exposed to critical analysis and reflection.

There is reference to previous publications

Ferreday, D., Hodgson, V.E. and Jones, C. (2006), Dialogue, language and identity: critical issues for networked management learning, Studies in Continuing Education Vol. 28 (3) 223 – 239.
Ferreday, D., Hodgson V. and Jones, C. (2006b ) Developing the Theory and Practice of Networked Management Learning, CEL working paper.

The Centre for Excellence in Leadership is now merged into the Learning and Skills Improvement Service but there are some publications still online. This may link but I cannot find ones on e-learning. There was a conference on Re-Thinking Leadership that again I found quite hard to follow. With BECTA closing it is not obvious where the energy will be for technology innovation in education. Any clues on which set of initials might do what would be welcome.

Previously some ideas about Learning Organisations were presented in ways that managers could understand. It would be interesting to revisit this and network learning. Technology and social practice make possible forms of activity that were not available ten years ago. I would like to look at the Experimentality website as an example. Links to other sites could improve the blog. So far there is not much conversation around it.

Meanwhile, it is possible there will be more about the Manifesto on the Networked Learning website. I would welcome some intro in a few thousand words.

The Experimentality project now have a poster (warning large PDF file) for the conference with an edited text that gives an idea of what the project is about.

The idea of experimentation was always at the heart of modernity’s promise of human freedom and self-determination. But, after the experience of the twentieth century, is the experiment now too complicit with power to act as a carrier of hope? Or can its progressive potential be restored through an inquiry into the different forms that it takes in science, technology, the arts and wider culture? To close the year-long Experimentality programme, participants at this international conference will debate different visions of an experimental society in which the emancipatory potential of the experiment could be renewed.

So my paper on Plan-Do-Check / Study - Act is still more or less on topic but there is not much in this text about business and organisation, There is another text with sort of tags -

science / politics / economy / publics / religion / music / art

education / design / media / advertising / technology

laboratory / simulating / making / performing / testing / trial

democracy / reflexivity / creativity / event / revolution

So economy is in there, and also education.

What I found previously is that quality is not  often considered along with learning. Perhaps quality assurance is part of modernity and education values something medieval. Not sure if that is the right word, but there must be something before modernity that was better. I will look at e-learning for examples of where quality ideas could be relevant and useful. From Cloudworks I have followed the recent Networked Learning Conference. There will be more online about the Networked Learning Manifesto. This may not be a manifesto in a future manifestation but it will outline concerns about how technology relates to education. Another Cloud links to a Review of Open Educational Practices (OPAL Project deliverable D3.1 ) which covers both strategy and quality assurance. I think the link could be stronger between the two. So far my impression is that quality assurance is seen as a control, with limited input into system review or policy.

But there may be other views at the conference.