Trade negotiations may seem dull but when it comes to rich countries ripping off poorer countries the fair trade movement can understand this and empathise with this so should be a part of that process. (Mike Gidney).

How far do we see campaigning for long term sustainable change going? Buying fair trade does help of course; but for the long term we need to be campaigning in a more robust and coherent way.

The EU is trying to downgrade the political component and look at the technical negotiations. These do not make headlines though; as you need to fully understand these technical aspects in order to report as a journalist (also it is not very exciting!). EPAs campaign has done a good job of raising the profile but still the ACPs are in a weak negation situation. There is a race between the EU and the US for a market share in China.

‘Engagement v boycott’

This was later summed up in the closing session: ‘from the producers’ perspective, networks are not succeeding as much as they could as they have been sidelined somewhat in political activism; dissipated somewhat as fair trade has gone mainstream. This is a travesty for the 76 countries from the ACP; we must bring this to light. It is treated as a technical issue but it’s not – it will kill people’.

Dolors (@dreig) is brilliant – a psychology teacher by trade, she is in to communities, e-learning, web 2.0, web 3.0 – and she is a pioneer for open education and this is what she has come to talk to us about at Podcamp BCN.

First up – a little recommended reading; she talks about ‘Free – the future of a radical price’ and ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’ (Eric Raymond).

Like many others Dolors believes that our education system is not working; there’s a lot of talk in the media about this but what I like about Dolors is that she actually has some ‘solutions’ to change and she’s positive about it. She isn’t standing here ranting about what’s wrong without putting it right. Refreshing.

She says in order to learn, self-motivation is key, along with attention and relevance. In the world of business it’s all about rights and ownership whereas in the education sector we are geared towards learning: so why don’t we have a more open style of learning? When you realise how much you can learn on the basis of other’s recommendations… information is power!

Dolors talks a little about the ‘university of the people’ (UoPeople) which is ‘the world’s first tuition-free, online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education’. The educational model embraces the internet and reduces technology costs to bring university level studies within reach of people across the world. It has the support of respected academics, humanitarians and other visionaries. Obama says it’s a good alternative for those who are not ready for university. Low cost education for all. “By 2020 these universities will be abundant”.

Dolors talks about 2 models for the future:

The MOOC model (a mixed education model: Massive Open Online Course). It’s a free and open ‘Connectivism and Connective Knowledge’ course.

Then followed CCK09 – Connectivism and Connective Knowledge by George Siemens. Content and conversations are open so participants can take the course in any direction that they find useful.

Dolors tells us about an open education conference in Barcelona next year, a meeting point of HE professionals. They all work with the internet and believe that an open social learning is very important. (Good start! Back to Barcelona again then…).

As was brought up in Stefaan’s discussion: it is no longer about software or hardware now – it’s about crossing the chasm. We need a change of mindset.

E learning is not just digitising the existing resources and getting them onto pdf with no interaction – that is not e-learning at its best.

So… does Google make us stupid? Quite the opposite, she says. The abundance of content makes knowing the right content to choose the most important. (The difficulty I suppose is teaching young people how to check the quality of their sources?).

Education should be open: no more ‘sign up’ communities. I suppose much of the hesitancy in teachers and academics is concern over making mistakes so publicly – but @dreig believes this is the key to learning. Making mistakes is OK.

So – what can we do to make small changes now? How can we make the most of what we have? Dolors suggests using blogs on which to publish learners’ work, using PLNs (personal learning networks ). These could also be used as professional networks. Everyone should be teachers and learners: we can comment on each other’s work, build knowledge collaboratively. Social skills and learning as a community is so important, as is trust and transparency, and authenticity. “Transparency is the new objectivity”! We don’t need to be total experts as long as we’re not claiming to be… (phew!). It may sound Utopian but it is the main goal she has in her quest to open up education. Get free of copyright based models – open course web; start freeing up content, publishing it on the web, working in class with a wiki – it all makes a difference.

Other things that educators can consider in improving education in the here are now, is simply to remember that customised, personalised, contextualised education will help people excel.

Centralising tools of dissemination, collective distribution throughout communities can help and there are already a number of tools available such as real time web (Twitter etc).

http://www.dreig.eu/caparazon/

Our new friend Stefaan Lesage on Educational podcasting (www.devia.be)

Kids are using PSP/podcasts all the time – so why not use them for educational purposes?

At Podcamp Barcelona, Stefaan outlined the advantages of podcasts: with ear phones on you can get much closer to your customer (and shut out everything else). They’re mobile, you are not time bound… Commuters can maximise their time by learning something.

But are people really learning by using podcasts? Research seems to support this (he says).

Stefaan believes there are 2 approaches to learning by podcast – passive or active. The active approach he suggests goes a step further; let the students record things, conduct interviews, go on trips, research their interests, create… This makes sense to me, they’d probably learn much more this way as they’re developing their own personal motivation to learn. Can teachers let go though?

Stefaan outlined a few podcast projects in education that he knows of:

• Mees podcast is a Dutch project taking place in a Belgian school. 5th graders record a half hour session every Thursday, telling jokes, riddles, things they have learnt at school.
• Stanford University runs an iPhone programming course, by recording all their sessions and putting it all on the net for anyone to use.
• Radio Lingua Network is popular in Spain for learning languages. Short courses ‘1 minute Catalan, 1 min Russian’ work really well. You learn a phrase in one minute and you can revisit the podcast, and use it whenever you want. They have started to enhance their offering with additional resources to support learning by podast.

Of course Podcasting is not limited to school or class. You can learn how to make better video, colour correcting, importing information. For example:

• IzzyVideo: how to shoot, edit, produce better video
• Screencasts online: a weekly podcast of Mac tutorials www.screencastsonline.com

Stefaan produces a weekly episode each month, with 2500 downloads each month. He thinks teachers in Belgium are a too scared of making mistakes to use Podcasting but Stefaan believes that by making mistakes, learning becomes bi-directional.

‘The world needs talent – it’s time to use technology to improve education’ Stefaan finishes. The other Podcampers seem to agree; it is time for a ‘different kind of university’… We have the technology now; but we need to change the mindset in teachers before we can move forward. (Seems to be a running theme).

We’ll start with Alastair Campbell’s opening address, detailing the theme of the event, ‘Innovation in Action: what does it mean?’.  Keep refreshing this page for updates to the live blog.

09:48 Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s pre-recorded message is screened, thanking the civil servants for their efforts and indicating the financial crisis.

09:50 Alastair Campbell is introduced as our host and he is appreciative of a short intro.  He notes that he was asked to speak about his time with civil servants, and after initially refusing he decided to accept but now wants to sell his book outside!

09:55 Campbell tells the story of his first dealings with civil service as a new government minister.  It took him awhile to adapt and he felt that his PA was loyal to his predecessor.  Tried to replace her initially but he was unable to replace her. Then as time went by and they worked it out, he found her indispensible and was one of the few people he could not do without.  He received the same loyalty his predecessor had done.  This is the practice of the civil service: the assistance and access to information and resources that would otherwise be extremely difficult to access.

09:59 Campbell notes that in times of crisis – Diana’s death and the Omagh bombing given as examples – the civil service machine simply kicks in and communicates, feeds, supports and facilitates all that is required to deal with the crisis.

10:01 Civil Service machine necessary so that the actions of the government can be executed.  Yet the public service ethos is under significant attack in public mindset.  This means civil servants become far too defensive about the good things they do.  The very fact that you go in to the civil service there is an understanding of the public service ethos and work ethic.

10:09 When it comes to the changes in the structure of government, implications are substantive for the civil service.

[[JJ's note - lots of story telling here but not actually sure where we're going with this.  Apparently Campbell is trying to make civil servants feel happy about themselves, but not sure whether he's dancing around the issue of forthcoming widescale change in the civil service, or whether he's just promoting his diaries!]

10:16 Around the world there is surprise that there is such a small circle of special advisors around a minister. Those special advisors are not independent but they are impartial, and thus there is a mutual understanding and respect for the tasks and responsibilities they carry out.

10:19 Any bigger organisation has to have some strategic element and there is no larger organisation than government.  The only way we can respond to serious issues is to operationalise the benefits of a well-run department of special advisors.

[JJ's note: still don't know what Innovation in Action is meant to be.]

10:22 Number 10 on Campbell’s list of things you have to do to make the machne of government work is: “Encourage innovation in an organisation in a non-blame culture”. If civil servants feel that they have an opportunity to improve the outputs of ministers they should be able to do so – going above and beyond what is expected of them.

Question 1: Media and politicians direct their attention to old media and not enough to new media. [YAY!]

AC Response – media is completely transformed. Biampbell worries less about both new and old media as people are generating their own understanding of what is happening. Need to ensure the core strategy is strong, clear and understood internally and that all media are being used to transmit messages.

Question 2: How far do you think the media generally understand what the civil service is and what it does.

AC response: Understanding is not deep but they don’t really care about that. Journalists rarely are interested in the activities of the civil service because it is rarely newsworthy. Civil Service need to communicate their functions themselves in order to ensure raised morale and recruitment quality.

Question 3: Look forward to reading the book. If you are to be a footnote in history, what would it be?

AC Response: A FOOTNOTE??? To be frank, I can’t see much thinking about what I will be remembered for.  Because we are a democracy you remember a leader for their programme changes across a range of areas.  You don’t remember individuals within the team outside of the leader.  Campbell believes he was able to make some changes in communication in part because of changes in media.

Question 4: If there’s one thing that slows things down in civil service it’s ‘getting sign off’.  How do you circumvent.

AC Response: Errrm.  A well run department is one with clear direction and leadership and which works well.  Yes Campbell occasionally circumvented process but only as a privileged advisor.  Yes it’s frustrating, but sometimes, taking the time if it’s necessary is a good thing.

Question 5: You said if the brown smelly stuff hits the fan, you should stick your head above the parapet.  What do you mean by that?

AC Response: When things go bad, you take a lot of hits.  You need to still be there because it’s better to take those hits and to explain, apologising where necessary and to set out a forward plan.

Question 6: How do you ensure interest in modern media age?

AC Response: politicians with the abaility to speak clearly in 140 characters and have authenticity and candour will be more attractive to new media.

With all eyes on TED at the moment it’s worth noting that there’s a brand new university being put together with an almost one of a kind program and faculty:

Singularity University aims to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.

Lots more to read over on the Singularity University website.

Photo credit: PhotonQ-Columbo Investigating the Singularity by photonquantique (CC licence)

My old secondary school was recently demolished and while that took a little time for me to digest I have to admit that its demise probably came as a relief to the locals. It never had the best reputation, but what I lost in terms of education did gain me a sense of eerie familiarity the first time I saw Battle Royale.

When I was a kid the only interaction we had with other schools was at the end of summer when kids in blue uniforms would try and kick the living crap out of anyone wearing a maroon uniform and vice versa.

For a pessimist like myself it was a wonderful surprise to stumble across this Classroom 2.0 project on Hoeben’s blog:

Initially, we asked students from all schools in India and London to exchange questions as audio files and then edit them in audacity or GarageBand to create a podcast. Here is an example of five Q&As:

“Well, families are quite important in England…”

The idea that kids in India and the UK can get together and build stuff like this is not only very cool, but perhaps the first steps in finding answers to some of the questions raised in Shift Happens:

As I’ve said before the emphasis for me with the above video is not on how we compete with developing countries, but how we can pool the enormous potential.

Collaboration 2.0 anyone?