My favourite teen girls blogging

I was checking quickly the web for references on teens, especially girls, and how do they use social media nowadays. Having an opportunity to spend time with my nieces every once in a blue moon, it's fun to see how they embrace social media.

14% of online teens now say they blog, down from 28% of teen internet users in 2006. (Pew, 2010)

Teens are now beginning to resemble their elders in their likelihood of blogging, as about 12% of adults have consistently reported blogging since February 2007. This decline is also reflected in the decline of the number of teens (Pew, 2010)

Last summer I helped my god-daughter (11), to start her own blog. Today, I received an email saying she had started a new one and had deleted the old one. This one is about her favourite receipts, she likes to bake muffins. A few hours later came a mail from her older sister (15) about her new blog, on nails, a topic she is, ehem, rather obsessed with.

Even before starting their own blogs, they've been reading blogs from other teens a lot. Mostly about hobbies, like pets and nails. It came out last summer, kind of a roundabout way, that my god-daughter would maybe be interested in starting her own blog. I asked her if she wanted us to do it together, and so we sat down to get it started, check how to post, choose templates, etc. By now, she's taught it to her older sister, who after a long time contemplating on the name of her blog (this was a major discussion item over the Christmas), finally got started with hers.

I enjoy seeing them as "doers" on the Web rather than as just readers and passive receivers. It's also fun that it's something that I can help them with. I think it's funny, though, that they are interested in blogs! No one blogs these days anymore, after all, everything can be expressed in 140 characters! - but I guess teenage girls - and me...wonder if this is a start of a new trend?

Open and Social Technologies for Networked Learning (OST '12)

30.July – 3.August 2012
Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia

Read more: http://ifip-ost12.tlu.ee

In 2011, Tallinn (Estonia) is the European Cultural Capital. In 2012, Tallinn will host an IFIP open conference on “Open and Social Technologies for Networked Learning”. Sponsored by IFIP Working Group 3.4 (Professional Education), the conference is jointly organized by Tallinn University and University of Tampere (Finland).

Open and Social Technologies play an increasingly important role in many educational settings. Social technologies are naturally entering primary, secondary and higher education where they blur the boundaries between formal and informal learning. Social technologies also enter
the workplaces where they connect learners and bridge the boundaries between individual learning and organizational knowledge processes.

Not only do these technologies connect learners independent of place and time, they have also been found to exert emergent properties. For example, wikis or social tagging environments are increasingly used for collaborative knowledge construction where new knowledge emerges
from a large scale interaction of individuals. These properties and their impact on individual, group and organizational learning have only started to be researched.

Open Source Software (OSS) and Technologies have received extensive
research attention due to some favorable properties contrasting with a
traditional understanding of software development and the use of those
systems. Many OSS issues are motivations for OSS developers and
licensing bodies. However, important research areas in OSS are product
and implementation success and the use of OSS in different educational
and enterprise settings. OSS can also serve as a platform for
providing services to user communities. Especially in developing
countries, OSS provides an attractive opportunity.

We invite Contributions for the following topics

• Social Technologies in Education (Weblogs, Tagging, Wikis, Microblogging, Social Networking)
• Open Technologies in Education (Open Source Software, Standards, Licensing, Linked open Data)
• Technologies for networked learning (Personal Learning environments, Virtual Learning environments, Mobile Learning)
• Collaborative and networked learning (Collaborative Knowledge Building, Community-based Learning)
• Socio-Technical Systems and Digital Ecosystems in Education,
• Models and Networks (Learning Analytics and User Modelling, Emergent Properties, Social Network Analysis, Educational uses of data mining)
• Design, Development and Evaluation Methodologies for Open and Social Systems
• Application of Technologies in Educational Settings (Pre-School, Primary and Secondary Schools, Higher Education)
• Application of Technologies in Professional Education and the Workplace (Workplace Learning, Learning in Business Networks and Alliances, Learning and Knowledge Management, Learning and Innovation)

Revised full and short papers will be published in the Conference Book
to be published by Springer Publishers as a special volume in
accordance with the high standards associated with IFIP publications.


Important dates

15 January 2012: Submission of long (8 pages) and short (4 pages)
papers, submission of symposia (2 page description)

28 February 2012: Notification of acceptance for long and short papers
and for symposia

15 March 2012: Submissions for Doctoral Consortium, Posters, Demos,
Discussion Groups

15 April 2012: Submission of Revised Camera Ready long and short
papers, Notification of acceptance Doctoral Consortium, Posters,
Demos, Discussion Groups

29 July 2012: Meeting of the Doctoral Consortium

30 July - 03 August 2012: Conference at Tallinn University

Conference Chairs

* Tobias Ley, Tallinn University, Estonia
* Mikko Ruohonen, University of Tampere, Finland

Local Organisation Chair

* Mart Laanpere, Tallinn University, Estonia

Chair of the Editorial Board

* Arthur Tatnall, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

Workshop on Learning Technology for Education in Cloud (LTEC'12)

In conjunction with KMO'12 Conference
11th -13th July, 2012
Salamanca, Spain

Read the full call: http://ltec.usal.es/

The use of technology for learning has grown tremendously in the last decade. The need for continuous just-in-time training has made learning technology an indispensible part of life for workers. Learning technology is a type of system that provides educational services to students. Cloud Computing is perfectly placed to enable the learning technology providers to have an infrastructure that enables growth and at the same time save them considerable cost. Furthermore, it allows providers to deliver affordable solutions to universities along with the tools students require to maximise their time and their employability. Nowadays, we are living in a world of increased mobility where proliferation of mobile technologies is creating a host of new anytime and anywhere contexts. The emerging social media of Web 2.0 are more flexible, sociable and more visually attractive. We live and learn in a connected world. Schools, colleges and universities must change to adapt to these new needs and expectations. This highlights the need for innovative solutions in education and learning.

A day in 2061 - TEDxBrussels

What a day in TEDxBrussels- 35 speakers of a huge variety talking about the deep future, namely what will it be like in 2061.

Very inspiring, but requires lots of thinking and making connections between things that did not exist before or did not click together before (e.g. much talk about singularity, so I really had to re-fresh my memories about Kurtzweil's book, a good thing that Matt was there to help me!).

Here is my top talks:

• Leila Janah Absolutely the best "TEDTalk" of the day, just like what you would expect. She's smart, has a dream, then a vision and an idea, and able to make things happen. This talk was actually very inspiring for me, I really dig her idea and the fact that she was able to make it happen (and make it to TEDxTalks :)

• Peter Hinssen This guy had a challenge to be the 34th speaker of the day - boy, we were pretty tired at that point! He was good and able to energise us - and he talked about health care (about the most boring topic on my list). Regardless, he made it interesting and he made strong statements, like that he's the S-curve guy (as opposed to exponential curve, which was the underlying message of the remaining 30 talks).

• Rudy Rucker (video not yet online when I posted, must be coming soon) I like some of the science fiction just because it's so freaking innovative and mind-blowing. So this sweet looking, gray-haired dude turns out to be one of the early CyberPunks - and he is still totally out there! Check his predictions for year 3000 - we no longer produce things, we grow them.

• Rob Spence One particular thing about TEDTalks is that they are always sooo personal. They always tell something touchy about themselves, which after a few rounds gets pretty boring. Not so with this guy. After loosing his eye, he now replaced it with a video camera and he's talk is about pimping up humans with machines (the cyborg stuff) - really cool.

• Andrew Hassel A talk about science and biology in 2061. Very well composed and making a point about open science.

• Eileen Bartholomew Her talk is informative if you are interested in snooping out what the next X PRIZE challenge might be.

Probably any of the other videos are also worth of your 8 or 18 minutes. Some of the space travel stuff was fascinating too.

About dual licencing: Creative Commons and commercial work

Can I make money with Creative Commons?

• A FAQ answer by CC
• Creative Commons Plus (CC+), initially it's the same as dual licencing in open source world
• Example of dual licencing on Flickr with Getty image.
  
• Example of dual licencing on Magnatunes.
• Examples of making money in education
• E.g. offering print-on-demand (POD) copies at reasonable prices: MoveMeOn-book: pdf is made available for free and printed book at a price
• See a video by a commercial textbook publishing company that is leveraging CC licenses as part of their business model (Eric Frank, co-founder of Flat World Knowledge)
• A nice slideshare about Creative Commons and Open Educational Resources
  
  

Examples of how other people can use your photos under Creative Commons (CC-BY-SA)

• My travel photo from Prague used in an online travel guide
• My travel photos from South-Pacific
• Btw, I was asked if I wanted to be part of this
• Other examples that I was not aware of, but they were allowed to use my picture.
  

custom license

Workshop: Social and Personal Computing for Web-Supported Learning Communities (SPeL 2011)

The website with the call for papers is at: http://software.ucv.ro/~epopescu/spel2011 and the schedule for SPeL 2011 is as follows:

September 7, 2011 Abstract submission
September 10, 2011 Workshop paper submission
October 5, 2011 Workshop paper notification
October 15, 2011 Camera ready paper & Registration
December 8-10, 2011 ICWL 2011 conference

The workshop follows the previous SPeL 2008, SPeL 2009 and SPeL 2010 workshops. The general topic of the workshop is the social and personal computing for web-supported learning communities.

Web-based learning is moving from centralized, institution-based systems to a decentralized and informal creation and sharing of knowledge. Social software (e.g., blogs, wikis, podcasts, media-sharing services) is increasingly being used for e-learning purposes, helping to create novel learning experiences and knowledge. In the world of pervasive Internet, learners are also evolving: the so-called "digital natives" want to be in constant communication with their peers, they expect an individualized instruction and a personalized learning environment, which automatically adapt to their individual needs.

Call: Datasets and Data Supported Learning in Technology-Enhanced Learning

************************************************

CALL FOR JOURNAL PAPERS

Special Issue on dataTEL
“Datasets and Data Supported Learning in Technology-Enhanced Learning”

International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL)
ISSN (Online): 1753-5263 - ISSN (Print): 1753-5255

Deadline of submissions: 25 October 2011

************************************************

SCOPE

The prospect of great growth of open and linked data in the knowledge society creates opportunities for new insights through advanced analysis methods based on e.g., information extraction, filtering, and retrieval technologies. Educational institutions also create and own large datasets on their students’ and course activities. The analytic use of such data, however, is very limited, when considering new educational services, recommending suitable peers or content or processes or goals, and improving the personalization of learning. Nevertheless, personalized learning is expected to have the potential to create more effective learning experiences, and accelerate learners’ time-to-competence. In the educational world, the literature is sparse on how to build upon today’s very limited public datasets and how to accommodate the lack of agreed quality standards on the personalization of learning.

The special issue on dataTEL in IJTEL aims to address this issue by collecting high value research papers to develop a body of knowledge about data-based personalization of learning. So far, there is no consensus on algorithms that can be successfully applied to make reliable analyses of data in a specific learning setting. Having an initial collection of datasets, coupled with case studies of their use in TEL, could be a first major step towards a theory of personalisation within TEL that can be based on empirical experiments with verifiable and valid results.

However, data driven research confronts researchers with a new set of challenges, for instance, a lack of common dataset formats or policies to share educational datasets, a huge variety of different evaluation methods for comparing diverse personalization techniques, and new ethical and privacy issues that arise from the ability to link and mine information.

Therefore, the objective of this special issue is to explore suitable datasets for TEL – with a specific focus on recommender and information filtering systems that can take advantage of these datasets. In this context, new challenges emerge like unclear legal protection rights and privacy issues, suitable policies and formats to share data, required pre-processing procedures and rules to create sharable data sets, common evaluation criteria for recommender systems in TEL and how a data set driven future in TEL could look like.

TOPICS

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

- descriptions of datasets that can be used for experimentation

- descriptions of data experiments (methods or results of experiments)

- experiences with those datasets

- dealing with legal protection rights towards datasets on a European level

- privacy preservation for educational datasets

- methods of effective anonymisation of educational datasets

- management and pre-processing procedures for educational datasets

- future scenarios for educational datasets

- impact of educational datasets for learners, teachers, and parents

- mash-ups based on educational datasets

- recommender approaches that are based on educational data

- evaluation methodologies and metrics for educational recommender systems

SPECIAL ISSUE CO-EDITORS

Hendrik Drachsler, Open University, The Netherlands

Katrien Verbert, K.U. Leuven, Belgium

Miguel-Angel Sicilia, University of Alcalá, Spain

Nikos Manouselis, Agro-Know Technologies, Greece

Stefanie Lindstaedt, KnowCenter, Austria

Martin Wolpers, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, Germany

Riina Vuorikari, European Schoolnet, Belgium

SUBMISSIONS

Authors are invited to submit original unpublished research as papers. All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by at least two members of the program committee for originality, significance, clarity, and quality. In addition, the authors are asked to contribute short abstracts of their submissions to the dataTEL group space at TELeurope.

Submission will be available through the EasyChair submission system:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=datatel2011

Details of the journal, manuscript preparation are available on the here: http://www.inderscience.com/www/authorguide.pdf

Any questions and submissions should be sent to: hendrik.drachsler@ou.nl

REVIEW COMMITTEE (to be confirmed)

Erik Duval, K.U. Leuven, Belgium

Seda Gurses, K.U. Leuven, Belgium

Abelardo Pardo, University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain

Julià Minguillón, Open University of Catalonia, Spain

Olga Santos, aDeNu, Spanish National University for Distance Education, Spain

Julien Broisin, Université Paul Sabatier, France

Christoph Rensing, TU Darmstadt, Germany

Shlomo Berkovsky, CSIRO, Australia

John Stamper, Datashop, Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, USA

Eelco Herder, Forschungszentrum L3S, Germany

Martin Memmel, DFKI, Germany

Xavier Ochoa, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, Ecuador

Fridolin Wild, KMI, Open University, UK

Wolfgang Reinhardt, University of Paderborn, Germany

Wolfgang Greller, Open Universiteit, The Netherlands

Marco Kalz, Open Universiteit, The Netherlands

Adriana Berlanga, Open Universiteit, The Netherlands

Peter Sloep, Open Universiteit, The Netherlands

Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen, Germany

Pythagoras Karampiperis, NCSR Demokritos, Greece

Giannis Stoitsis, IEEE, Greece

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission of manuscripts: 25 October 2011

Completion of first review: 30 November 2011

Submission of revised manuscripts: 15 January 2011

Final decision notification: 10 February 2012

Publication date (tentative): February 2012

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

The manuscripts should be original, unpublished, and not in consideration for publication elsewhere at the time of submission to the International Journal on Technology-Enhanced Learning and during the review process.

Please carefully follow the author guidelines at http://www.inderscience.com/mapper.php?id=31 while preparing your manuscript. To get familiarity with the style of the journal, please see a previous issue at http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=246

All manuscripts will be subject to the usual high standards of peer review. Each paper will undergo double blind review.

Extended deadline: The 10th International Conference on Web-based Learning

Full Paper Submission Deadline: Jun 30, 2011

The conference program consists of high quality technical papers that are reviewed and selected by an international program committee. Papers are solicited on all technical aspects of web-based learning and related technologies, including but not limited to the following topics:

• Technology Enhanced Learning
• Personalized and Adaptive Learning
• Computer Support for Intelligent Tutoring
• Intelligent Tools for Visual Learning
• Web-based Learning for Oriental Languages Learning
• Game-based Learning
• Personal Learning Environments (PLE)
• Computer Supported Collaborative Learning
• Web 2.0 and Social Learning Environments
• Intelligent Learner and Group Modeling
• Human Factors and Affective Computing for Learning
• E-Learning Platforms and Tools
• Design, Model and Framework of e-Learning Systems
• Deployment, Organization and Management of Learning Objects
• E-Learning Metadata and Standards
• Semantic Web and Ontologies for E-learning
• Mobile, Situated and Blended Learning
• Pedagogical Issues
• Practice and Experience Sharing

Authors are invited to submit original papers reporting on research results or novel applications in web-based learning. All accepted full papers presented in the conference will be published as a volume in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). Selected papers will be recommended for possible publication in some international journals, including IEEE Trans. on Learning Technologies. Papers for submissions should be formatted in single column of no more than 10 pages in single line spacing according to the Springer LNCS Authors Guideline for a double blind review. Any identification information about the authors should NOT be included in the manuscript to facilitate double blind review. All papers should be submitted in PDF format. Please refer to the conference website (http://www.hkws.org/conference/icwl2011/) for more information and send us email at icwl2011@cs.cityu.edu.hk for any inquiry.