Serge Ravet has posted a Google Doc including the original formatting. This is fantastic as it would have taken ages to guess.

I have highlighted the bits that jump out. There will be more on the website later.

This is a Green Paper about eQuality. There was an awards event in Paris in January and this paper was written later. So the meaning of the word is still for discussion. Any scope that includes learning, quality and technology is helpful for me.

Checking out the links on the website I find that the various European quality research projects seem to have combined to support a Quality Foundation. Here there is a wiki with several texts.

My impression is that the discussion has gone a long way in combining ideas about learning and quality. I am trying to reformat this text to get a better idea of it. It is very encouraging so far and may be a base on which to reorganise other material.

The book "Everything is Miscellaneous" has been published.

There are extracts and versions and reviews have started. See the blog for links.

there is also a video on Google



I will come back to this later.

What interests me is the possibility of breaking down the gap between learning and quality as academic subjects. On the web my impression is that many people search on either word and maybe both. But academics in the UK at least who are researching learning tend not to be interested in quality except to critique it.

I have found a couple of links following an article in yesterday's Guardian. Michael Rosenblum has a copy of most of an article by Ian Reeves, who has some video on his own site.

Rosenblum is quoted as distinguishing web 1 as based on text and web 2 as based on video. Personally I find the use of webs 1- n confusing but the idea of a text web and a video web is interesting. The video on Ian Reeves site shows several examplesof newspappers moving to the web. Jeff Jarvis believes that video is suitable for conversation but I don't really expect US candidates to respond in detail to every post on YouTube. Text still has some scope, even if email exchange started in web zero.

Today Adobe announced a new Creative Suite ans I am struck by the low priority for print. My guess is that most people still relate to hard copy. But 'design' seems to be one of three words, the others being web and video. Within 'design' print is hanging on with mobile devices. The most recent figures show sales of Flash to device OEM as about 2% of Adobe revenue. Postscript sales are included with 'other', totalling about 10%. So somebody expects the mobile video aspect to grow fairly rapidly.

"text web" relates back to hard copy. "video web" may not. Except that if flying type is included in the animation I hope knowledge about typography survives somewhere.

I am posting this in learn9, about learning and quality, and in drupa2008, about whatever pre-press is supposed to be doing, and in a Guardian Education Talk comment about QR. I still don't understand the UK academic approach to quality but when a new set of students arrive one day expecting to borrow cameras from the library there must be some way to manage the transition.

I have had another look at word clouds and search engines. One reason is that the websites I have worked on have limitations. Based it the UK they are always going to have less scope than the US sites on similar topics. Planet PDF and PDF Zone get more news and have more resource. Stats so far show that the UK audience is usually less than 20% of the site intended for the UK, even with an opening screen suggesting going to the dotcom site. So maybe now there is some broadband in the UK there could be less diffence between them. The dotcom could be more about Flash for example. I have written on drupa2008 about my difficulty keeping up with Adobe. I realise there is some point in Flash but I think the UK is still slightly into hard copy.

Anyway, the benefit of search engines is that they can include your own site and others. So the people coming to it get a range of sources even if one website is not updated. I started last year on Swickis and Squidoo lenses. It is easy to lose focus through this but I managed a 'Hello spiders' diagram that had some sort of coherence.

At Google University last year I got a freebie introduction to adwords so tried to promote this hello spiders diagram page. It is clearly too complicated as my 'quality score' has gradually dropped so that all the words are inactive within the budget. So I have tried a simplified version for Google Customised Search. Gradually Google offers enough to absorb most of what is happening. Their webpage creation tool is pretty good so I have used that. It started as a personal homepage which is ok as I can relate to most of the issues around the search engines on it.



Customised Search Engines start here.

So far it seems to work ok.

I am also working on a Google doc following up some ideas from last year. There is academic study on how the weak links of the web change views on communities of practice. I have not been able to follow how this relates to practice, but these search engines with social aspects may demonstrate some issues after a while.

I have started to think about updating the Acrobat Services sites. Relevant here because the technology around PDF is now a useful part of learning and documentation. Over the last few months I have got more into blogging than websites. It is easier and more provisional. Also I have not been settled in a view on Acrobat 8. It is too much about Flash. Now I know a bit more about Mars I have come to accept the Flash aspects. Apollo runtime is now available and some of it looks ok. So I realise what I am interested in fairly retro for the current Adobe direction. The dotcom site could expand into the Flash aspects of what is now Acrobat. The UK one will stay close to print, at least until drupa.

Last week I was in Lancaster and I had a look at the campus again. The new IT building is still a major feature and there is a lot going on to promote IT companies and projects. I think quality ideas could fit with this. I didn't check out the Management School but it should be possible to work on some kind of 'performativity' that is accepted to some extent. As in wifi should work some of the time, for example. In the cafe at the top of the building it is working fine.

Encouraged by feedback so far on Google docs I have merged two bits of text that may start a new connection with management learning as a subject. One is from an earlier proposal relating quality to FE and the other is the last part of a paper on the knowledge economy. Current version at Google docs.

I have revised a Google doc on eTEN to include some ideas on learning.

While checking the links I found a new vision statement from Kaleidescope.

There is reference to quality but it seems to me that there is no recognition that quality relates to the output of organisations.

(TEL means Technology Enhanced Learning. see previous posts on why I think using just the word "learning" is more useful)

"The role of TEL is to achieve the improvement in the quality and reach of education implied by our highest aims for education. Improving quality means using TEL to change the way learners encounter and engage with knowledge: it can rehearse them in the high-level cognitive skills of negotiating ideas, exploring systems, collaborating on projects, constructing their own representations of knowledge. Improving reach means exploiting the internet to bring wider access to knowledge and communities of practice: technology can bring far greater flexibility to the ways in which learning and education are conducted."

However there is some reference to the idea that organisations can learn.

"In a changing world it is organisations’ and individuals’ capability to learn, rather than simply their access to information, that determines socio-economic development."

My impression is that the work around the "learning organisation" is no longer a priority for academics. One consequence of informatioin technology could be changes in the organisation of universities. An explanation of the apparent lack of disruption so far could be the effective resistance from individual academics. Opposition to any quality theory is still well established in the UK as far as I can tell.

The statement recognises practitioner knowledge so there may be scope for exchange with people working on quality in other organisations. However it is described or whatever theory people start from, it seems to me that any effective quality system involves some form of learning and that non-learning explains much else.

"We see ‘knowledge’ in two different ways. It may be seen as something fairly stable – the expert view, the common knowledge, received wisdom – which is to be passed on, enabling us to learn from others. It may also be seen as something quite unstable - the product of our experience, practitioner knowledge, local wisdom. There is a continuous interplay between the two - we rely on stable representations and treat knowledge as independent of context, and at the same time have to engage in 'work' to make sense of them in a particular setting - then creating new stable representations and so forth. The two types of knowledge are complementary."

Previously I have thought about this as "Research Assessment Friendly" knowledge - usually abstract and confined to one discipline- and "Search Engine Constructed" knowledge, usually coming out of a problem situation. There is some connection with mode1 and mode2 but it seems there is no current claim for e-learning as potentially mode1. One problem is that many articles are still only available in journals that are not public. Google Scholar finds an increasing amount of stuff from conferences and university archives. For making connections between learning and quality, what can be found through Google is probably "good enough" and what cannot be found may be mainly intended for academics anyway.

Latest version of draft story for OhmyNews on Learning Technologies.

This will change over the week. Probably finalised at the weekend.

Please add comments if there is something you would like included.

I have had a mailing shot about a conference in Dublin in March, Computer Assisted Learning.

It seems to be about why technology has not been disruptive so far in education.

There is mention of 'informal learning' but it may be mostly about educational structures.

My guess is that if you include all forms of learning there has already been more disruption than is realised in academic research.

I had a look at Computers&Education in St Luke's library. Print journals make a break from the screen. There is an interesting article on 'Rethinking scaffolding in the information age'. More on this later.

The article was recieved 27 May 2004 and accepted on 24 Jan 2005. Claimed publication date April 2007 so not sure when it was actually available.

I wonder if Elsevier are aware of any 'disruption'.

I have done a draft story about Learning Technologies for OhmyNews

Not sure I have been clear enough about my intention. If there is not some comment about quality from a credible source I might not make it up exactly, but add a comment of my own. I think there is some basis to suggest the Learning Technologies show is moving towards quality but it may need some probing.

Please add comments here or get in touch if you would like to edit the text. It may end up in OhmyNews.

Back in the Easy Cafe on the way to Olympia. I almost forgot that I plan to do this year in reverse so far as online is concerned. So a quick Google has recreated some of the Online Information show through the IWR blog.

The first few items show a bit of a pattern.

There is now a UK version of Pubmed Central with technical support from the British Library, University of Manchester and the European Bioinformatics Institute.

A link to blogger Peter Suber reports a decision by libraries in Norway to just say no to Blackwell charges.

And Wolters Kluwer have decided to put their education publishing up for sale.

My guess is that some people in journal publishing may be close to deciding that the 'creative commons' sort of approach is reducing the chances for ample margins.

Search on 'BETT, open source' in Google News shows there is a debate on what sort of discount might make Vista sensible at some point.

More later.

I have been looking at the 'Technology Enhanced Learning' project that is now part of Teaching and Learning Research. They have started some seminars and two of them are available online.

My opinion is that 'learning' is an adequate word even if used casually without formal agreement on what it means. I think the web is now widely accepted so even adding an "e" serves no great purpose. coming up with the term "technology enhanced learning" seems to be making it more complicated just to invent a subject. I recently found a tape of a Douglas Adams talk on Radio 4 where he explains that "technology" is a word used about something that is not working yet. So electricity is not technology. Nor is the web a lot of the time.

The EU seems to be the source of this new term so I have looked on Google and found a Cordis page explaining a bit more.

"With the shift towards the knowledge society, the change of working conditions and the high-speed evolution of information and communication technologies, peoples' knowledge and skills need continuous up-dating. Learning, based on collaborative working, creativity, multidisciplinarity, adaptiveness, intercultural communication and problem solving, has taken on an important role in everyday life. The learning process is becoming pervasive, both for individuals and organisations, in formal education, in the professional context and as part of leisure activities. Learning should be accessible to every citizen, independent of age, education, social status and tailored to his/her individual needs.

To meet these social challenges is a leading issue of European research on the use of technology to support learning in the 6th EU Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (2002-2006)."

Why not just accept that the web is part of this and stay with this as a description of 'learning'?

The seminars seem to be looking at research for designing learning environments. There is a lot happening on the web already, some of which can be described as informal learning. I think that engaging with the web in general could be a useful form of 'research'. There was mention on the video of 'the educational blogosphere' but I got the impression that the printed journals were the centre of the discussion and that 'technology enhanced learning' is on the way towards becoming another defined subject.

I have done a Google doc as a draft for next year. Thinking about online in reverse order makes more sense as it puts the digital print and then the bookfair after the online information.

This will make more sense later.

The Information Today blog has a lot of photos and pretty full coverage.

Commenting on the keynote, Michelle Manafy writes

"I won't go into a lengthy analysis of my first impression of this sprawling and dislocated show (uh, right now I mean physically as the show is so far from the floor--but we'll see if I can draw larger inferences from this comment later). Anyhow, first take from the keynote: something we’ve been saying at EContent for a while now… content is not just that which is produced proactively AS content. This is too narrow a view and will limit the success of any organization. All organizations must view content as, in large part, a byproduct of doing actual work. Keynoter Thomas Stewart from the Harvard Business Review, sees three types of “knowledge”: instilled (yielding smarter products), distilled (knowledge turned into a product), and black box knowledge services (we know a lot about what we do and can help you do it too). I’d extend it to content, quite happily: knowledge collected as a byproduct of your employees’ work or better, as a byproduct of how your customers use your product, services, or even content can help you work better and offer them more."

So knowledge is in the context of work, or at least some form of activity. I'm not sure if the academics at the show accept this, but it makes sense for me.

This report from CMS Wire shows connections with Web 2

Found through Google News

The Information World Review blog is covering the main points from the conference. See previous post for link.

I have added a comment to a general post so I now know the first official blogger. I am not sure if the IWR blog will cover the free seminars tomorrow on social software, blogs etc.

More later. I have got as far as Easy Internet Cafe on High Street Kensington. So next post may be from the actual show.

Online Information this week. I am still in Exeter but plan to be there Wed and Thur.

I have done a draft article for OhmyNews.

Please add comments here if you have something to add to the draft. You may be quoted in an eventual story. Deadline over the weekend.

The November e.learning age includes an article by Donald Hunter suggesting that education is struggling to keep pace with student expectations about technology and presentation. Mobiles are assumed and Google is familiar. "Simply put, today's students learn differently to previous generations. They have come to expect information to be presented in timely, dynamic and entertaining forms."....."deep down we expect students to learn the way we did"..."what this adds up to is a paradigm gulf that separates students from the learning experience."

This is confirming the idea that I should just take a look at what is happening, rather than worry too much about the theory behind a design. I have so far more or less ignored the conferencing features in Acrobat 8. I still think the JDF for print is worth continuing with but I have written in the IPEX 2002 blog about imagining some time travel to move the world of print on towards 2008. More on this later. it may make sense eventually.

So I hope to spend the next few months observing what happens with forms of collaboration such as Breeze or now Acrobat Connect. It is not yet available outside the US. It seems to me to combine featurea available elsewhere. The whiteboard idea, videoconferencing and internet chat or phone are all available and have been for a while. I still prefer text but this is probably dated so is due for reconsideration.

There are some reports coming out about the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. I am struck by this photo of Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, by JD Lasica from Ourmedia. He looks the part for a solid business event. Last year Tim O'Reilley in a suit was not quite as convincing.

I am not sure how Google will be seen during the Online Information event in London. A couple of years back there was some resistance to Google winning an award. There is still some opposition from publishers to the idea of scanning books. But it is clear that Google is viable so there is a base of people working with them even if that is not an overlap with the entire Online Information world.