is it just me

I am pretty excited this week as the first PLE Conference finally is about to begin. On Thursday and Friday many people interested in the PLE concept and networked learning are meeting in Barcelona.

My colleague Ilona Buchem asked me to co-chair a workshop at the conference that will focus on the collaborative definition of the term PLE (see her blog post & the update about the workshop). While there are many definitions out there (see for example the mentions at Beat’s Biblionetz) we try to focus on four concepts that are (at least for us) mainly relevant for the understanding of PLEs and try to make them the starting point for a discussion:

1. Content (moderator: Ilona Buchem)
2. Learning (moderator: George Couros)
3. Technology (moderator: me)
4. Social Interaction / Social Change (moderator: Cristina Costa)

In fact four groups will have the chance to work on their own Mindmeister mindmaps and add their point of view regarding the four main concepts that we figured out. We are looking forward to the creativity and power of the participants of the workshop regarding our main concepts and wether people agree with them, if they’ll add or remove main concepts, which subconcepts they’ll add etc. Within the workshop four local groups and all remote participants can work out their own mindmap which we’ll compare at the end of the workshop. We all agree there is not the ONE definition of what a PLE is, but with the workshop we try to figure out diverse dimensions and digg into the different understandings of different people.

Graham Attwell already tried to give a 140 character definition you can start to think about:

PLEs are the spaces in which people interact, communicate and whose result is learning and development of collective know-how

Here are the motivational slides Ilona put online, see also George Couros’ post on the workshop (look at the comments!!!)

Popularity: 5% [?]

After the successful Science 2.0 workshop at last year’s EC-TEL conference, there will be another cool workshop where you can present your cool ideas and applications about what Science 2.0 and Research 2.0 could look like. Spread the word and hand in your stuff. We’re pretty much looking forward to see what you are doing…

Research2.0 is in essence a Web2.0 approach to how we do research. Research2.0 creates conversations between researchers, enables them to discuss their findings and connects them with others. Thus, Research2.0 can accelerate the diffusion of knowledge.

Topics for this workshop include, but are not limited to:

• Evaluation of existing Research2.0 tools and infrastructures from a TEL perspective
• Development of TEL-related use case scenarios for Research2.0 tools and infrastructures
• Influence of Research2.0 tools and technologies on scientific practices in TEL
• Formats and protocols for Research2.0 data exchange (linked data, RSS, BuRST, …)
• Ownership and privacy of research information
• Practices of the diverse Technology Enhanced Learning disciplines, and how Research2.0 can influence them

Format

Authors are invited to submit original unpublished work. The following types of contributions are possible:

• Short papers (3-5 pages) that state the position of the authors on issues relevant to the workshop or work in progress, even when in very early state.
• Full papers: (8-12 pages) that describe problems, needs, novel approaches and frameworks within the scope of the workshop. In this category, empirical evaluation papers and industrial experience reports are welcome for submission.

Each presenter will be linked to related papers from other presenters and will be asked to compare in the presentation how the works of others relates to their own work.

The presentation of unfinished ideas, tools under development and especially failures is explicitly encouraged. This includes the presentation and discussion of tools and their real-world usability.

Prior to the workshop, a dedicated group on TEL Europe will be opened to:

• facilitate discussions among participants before and after the conference;
• post submitted papers for an open peer review;
• publish information and news about the workshop;
• collect reactions through social media on the workshop.

All presentations and discussions will be broadcast via Flashmeeting to attract more feedback, and to document the event. Online questions and comments will be explicitly taken into account during the workshop.

Important Dates

• Paper submission: 27 June 2010
• Paper acceptance: 11 July 2010
• Main Conference: 28 September-1 October 2010

Paper submission and questions

Please submit your paper at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=research20.

Feel free to contact erik.duval@cs.kuleuven.be if you have any questions!

Popularity: 10% [?]

Today I received the invitation to join the PC of the “Research 2.0 and Software Engineering (R20SE)” workshop, organized by Jean-Marie Favre and his colleagues Dragan Gasevic and Pieter van Gorp. They describe Research 2.0 as:

Research 2.0 (aka e-Science or e-Research) refers to new approaches, techniques and tools to support collaborative research efforts taking profit of new Information Technologies. From an historical point of view, Research 2.0 (R2.o) can be considered as an evolution of Small Research (aka Research 1.0) and then Big Research (aka Research 1.5). In terms of goals, Research 2.0 lies however between Small and Big Research: through unprecedented means of connectivity, computing power, storage space, and tool versatility/flexibility, R2.o adds scalability to Small Research but also agility to Big Research. Simply put, R2.o allows emerging and agile groups of researchers to communicate, collaborate, share scientific information and scientific tools in new modes. This impacts not only the way research is done, but also on how research is perceived and managed.

In practice, Research 2.o corresponds to the progressive emergence of new scientific repositories, new scientific networks, new research products (including new form of “publications”), new research processes, etc. It is likely that this will lead in the future to new evaluation schemes and new research policies. Though Research 2.0 should be considered as a medium to long term vision in an historical perspective, short term vision are also of interest. In fact current practices already exibit some R2.o flavors. For instance Web 2.o technologies such as blogs, wikis, social networks and twitter already have an impact on collaborative research. We can only expect this impact to grow in the future. Interestingly, in the last couple of years, Research 2.0 has received much more attention in disciplines such as Physics, Biology, Mathematics or Social Sciences than in Computer Science. Building on the great success of the IBM CASCON workshop on Research 2.0 and Software Engineering 2.0 (SER2009), this workshop aims to further explore how Research 2.0 could benefit the Software Engineering (SE) community and vice versa.

The topics of the workshop include:

• Integrated Research Environment (IRE) and personal research portfolio,
• Collaborative and distributed repositories of software artifacts or information about research eco-systems.
• Techniques and tools for on-line demonstration, collaborative experimentation, collection and archiving of research information, etc.
• Interoperability and standardization of research repositories, tools, platforms, and standards  for research collaborations
• Mining research repositories, analysis of software engineering communities and their history
• Ontologies and classifications of software engineering fields and their evolution
• Usage/development of Web 2.0 tools for the software engineering research community
• Concepts and techniques that goes beyond the notion of Software Engineering “publications”
• Analysis of R2.0 success stories or failures (in SE but also in other fields) including lessoned learned and recommendation.
• Social, political, economical and ethical analysis of past and/or current research practices and recommendations for the future

Furthermore contributions that are not directly connected to the domain of software engineering are also welcome. You can submit your contribution until April, 20 2010 at the workshop site.

Popularity: 3% [?]

On wednesday our workshop Social Software Engineering takes place and we finished the program. You can see it online at the website for the workshop.

Presentation 1: Towards Social Information Systems

Presentation 2: weHelp: A Reference Architecture for Social Recommender Systems

Presentation 3: Towards Assisting Software Engineers in Switching Artifacts by using Personal and Shared Context

Presentation 4: Bringing Semantics into Social Software Engineering: Applying Ontologies to a Community-oriented Requirements Engineering Environment

Presentation 5: Diagnosing Inconsistent Requirements Preferences in Distributed Software Projects

Presentation 6: User-Driven Requirements Engineering for Mobile Social Software

Keynote: The use of social engineering in software projects

Popularity: 6% [?]

There is a logo competition going on for the 2010 EC-TEL conference in Barcelona. Here is my creation:

I took the some (Flickr-CC) pictures of the beautiful city and combined it with the sustainability theme of the conference. The recurring style element is an abstract wing that visualizes the TEL way from innovation to practice.

What do you think?

Popularity: 3% [?]

It is my pleasure to announce the call for paper for the first workshop on Using Microblogging to enhance communication within Communities of Practice (MicroECoP) which will take place at the WCC 2010 conference in Brisbane, Australia. I organize this workshop together with my colleagues Steve Wheeler, Graham Attwell and Johannes Magenheim. You’ll find all the necessary information at the workshop website.

Microblogging has become a very popular social networking activity in the recent years. The limitation of 140 characters constrains the user to send concise messages. Twitter and other popular microblogging tools have acted as catalysts for a flurry of new and fast exchange of thoughts and artefacts, and from these activities a new area of research has emerged. There are case studies for the application of microblogging in scientific conferences, educational courses, distributed software engineering teams and corporate project groups.

A number of questions are emerging from the early use of micro-blogs as social networking tools that connect communities of practice and interest. These include: How can microblogs support the development of professional communities of practice? How can microblogs be effectively incorporated into formalised professional learning? How can we measure the optimum levels of engagement necessary for microblogs to be successful social networking tools within professional communities of practice? How are communities of practice enhanced or enriched as a result of the application of microblogs? What about issues of security, privacy and intellectual property – how can these be protected? Do the filtering features on microblogs constitute semantic tools?

The workshop focuses on current research trends in the application of microblogging in various domains. The workshop seeks to attract quality research papers that propose solutions to the issues identified above. The workshop also seeks papers that comment how the application of micro-blogging can impact on real life experiences in diverse communities. It aims to bring together scientists and engineers who work on designing and/or developing the above mentioned solutions, as well as practitioners who use and evaluate them in diverse authentic environments.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Design and development of microblogging tools
• Application of micro-blogging in teaching scenarios
• Application of micro-blogging in software engineering scenarios
• Communication and interaction issues using microblogging
• Understanding the dynamics of microblogging communities
• Harnessing the semantic filtering capabilities of microblogging
• Visualization issues of microblogging
• Evaluation issues and case studies
• Smart devices for microblogging in education
• Using microblogging for enhancing creativity in education
• Digital identities and microblogging
• Ethical and safety issue
• Harshtagging and tweckling
• Developing pedagogies around the use of microblogging
• Live microblogging and micro-narratives
• Language Learning with microblogging
• Engagement analysis and microblogging

Papers up to 12 but no less than 8 pages are solicited. All submissions should be original and not published or under consideration elsewhere. Papers must correspond to the WCC 2010 conference format requirements, as they are described at the conference web site (http://www.wcc2010.com/call-for-papers/submission-instructions). All accepted papers must be presented at the conference by at least one of the authors. One of the authors of accepted paper needs to register for the workshop.

Popularity: 12% [?]

The first day of the JTEL WinterSchool is almost over (we’re in the socialising event with iPod disco right now) and the event is already worth the travel. Innsbruck is not covered in snow, so we will focus on the actual work

Today we had 3 (more or less interactive) talks by Dai Griffiths, Jon Dron, and Marie Joubert that had the overall topic of Orchestrating Learning and Services Used. Gai did an good overview to SOA, WS-* and the applications in industry and learning (have a look at the eFramework) and Jon asked us to think about the possible education use cases of a wooden stick. That was really great fun. The last lecture by Marie covered the tasks of the STELLARnetwork of excellence and what orchestration of learning really means. She asked four questions that you always should keep in mind during your Ph.D. research:

1. What are you researching?
2. How are you researching?
3. For what reason are you researching? and
4. What is going to provide evidence for your research?

The attendees are very active in the social semantic web and thus the Twitter channel for the #jtelws2010 hashtag is very active.

I created a Twitter list for the attendees of the WinterSchool at http://twitter.com/wollepb/jtelws2010 which will be extended as soon as I spot new Tweeple here.

Here are some early statistics: 160 tweets tagged with #jtelws2010 from 27 different users. Here is a wordle of the first (Twitter) day:

Popularity: 2% [?]

If you ever searched for a comprehensive list of e-learning conferences to attend or to submit papers to? Well, Clayton R Wright did such a list for the rest of 2009 and 2010. The list is available at Tony Karrer‘s blog…

Popularity: 6% [?]

This week I had the opportunity to present the idea of Artefact-Actor-Networks at the CollaborateCom 2009 conference in Washington D.C. – a conference mainly focussing on collaborative computing and its applications in networking and at the workplace.
Abstract:

Social networks reflect communication, cooperation and loose acquaintances in networked communities. Numerous metrics allow to expose connections, important persons or clusters within these communities. Furthermore, networks can be spanned to connect documents, blog entries or wiki articles. We call such a network an artefact network. In this paper we introduce the approach of Artefact-Actor-Networks that tries to connect social networks and artefact networks in order to make claims on the semantical connections between persons and manifold artefacts. We present practical use cases for Artefact- Actor-Networks and discuss generic and specific semantical requirements and added values through the existence of Artefact-Actor-Networks.

Reference: W. Reinhardt, M. Moi, and T. Varlemann: Artefact-Actor-Networks as tie between social networks and artefact networks. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Collaborative Computing (CollaborateCom’09), November 2009.

Popularity: 7% [?]

I am very glad to announce the 3rd International Workshop on Social Software Engineering (SSE2010) that is co-located with the Software Engineering 2010 conference in Paderborn, Germany (February,  22-26 2010). The workshop will take place on February, 24 2010.

In this workshop we would like to bring together researchers and practitioners working on different aspects of collaboration and knowledge sharing in software engineering as well as the engineering of social software to discuss new results and future research challenges. Major topics addressed at the workshop include (but not limited to):

The topics of the workshop include, but are not restricted to:

• Social and human aspects of software engineering
  • Collaboration and knowledge sharing in development teams and (Open Source) communities
  • Impact of Social Software on development processes
  • Empirical studies on collaboration and information behaviour in social software engineering
• Engineering social software
  • Engineering of lightweight and unobtrusive tools, Web 2.0 and Social Semantic Web applications
  • Approaches and tools for context-aware and personalized assistance
  • Particularities in the development of Social Software
• Social Software Engineering
  • Concerns of individuals in collaboration settings, such as learning, usability and incentives
  • Usage of Social Software to teach software engineering, teaching social aspects of software engineering
  • Research methods and approaches for analyzing and designing successful collaboration support
  • Scientific analysis of the relation between methods/processes, tools and collaborative development practice

CfP Social Software Engineering 2010 (Paderborn, Germany)

Popularity: 13% [?]