Big Data - not only for the rich

The BBC features a really nice 5 minute video on the topic of Big Data.

Data is increasingly defining us - from the information we share on the web, to that collected by the numerous companies with whom we interact. Intrigued by the sheer scales involved, photojournalist Rick Smolan wanted to see how data was transforming the world.

Here, as part of the BBC News - What If? season, take a look at his global snapshots - compiled in his book The Human Face of Big Data.

This is also a topic that we are thinking for education, too! But for the moment, finding such appealing examples of what good big data can do for education is still limited. That said, it does not mean that they are not worth investigating for! Learning Analytics is one application area of Big Data in the field of education. I'm just writing a book chapter with Professor Bettina Berendt on the topic - more about that in another post.    

Call for Papers on Advanced Learning Technologies, Open Educational Content, and Standards

I have a pleasure to be part of the Programme Committee of this sub-conference taking place in November 2013.

Advanced Learning Technologies, Open Educational Content, and Standards as part of International Conference on Computers in Education 2013 focuses on recent directions for the alignment of learning technologies, open contents, standards and their rising impact for research, growth and societal change. To accelerate this growth, it is important to realize there will always be more than one approach. From a general perspective, two complementary approaches exist. One is ‘top-down’, in which technologies are identified and implemented from the educational and business needs for effectiveness and quality; the other is ‘bottom-up’, in which emerging technologies are utilized in design and implementation of novel learning methodologies...read the whole call

The paper submission is due on May 6 2013, see the link for the entire call.

The scope of the conference will cover but not be limited to the following topics:

• Open platforms, open educational resources (OERs), Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs),and open learning methods
• International alliance for open source, open standards, and federated
  repositories
• Repository and Network systems 
• Technology standards for content, portfolios, learner information, and   competencies
• Life cycle management of technical learning objects
• New generations of educational technologies
• Learning Analytics / Big Data
• Web 2.0 and social computing for learning
• Personalized educational and learning systems
• Learning systems platforms and architectures
• Advanced applications
• E-learning, knowledge management and their organizational management
• E-testing and new test theories
• Automated assessments
• Recommender systems
• Learning content retrieval
• New directions for standards development in the field of ICT and learning

The Open Book Project announced by H.Clinton - STEM material in Arabic

An interesting announcement was just made between the United States and the Arab League:

Through the Open Book Project, we will work to expand access to free, high-quality, open education materials in Arabic, with a focus on science and technology. Our hope is to lower geographic, economic, and even gender-based barriers to learning. Anyone with access to the internet will be able to read, download, and print these open materials for free or adapt a copy that meets the local needs of their classrooms or education systems.

So interesting! In the beginning of 2000, I also worked on an initiative to share learning resources across Europe. At the time, the MoE of Israel was also part of the project called European Treasury Browser. Before the second intifada broke off, there were talk of sharing resources with them, including the Arabic speaking people.

The European Treasury Browser Thesaurus, which was used to facilitate the multilingual search, had been translated into Hebrew and people were looking into translating it into Arabic too. Unfortunately, no one could decide into which Arabic, as there are so many varieties of Arabic spoken in a wide range of territory across the Middle East and North Africa. Apparently, even the modern standard Arabic has many different variations... In any case, the translation was stalled and due to circumstances, I assume it was not only because of linguistics...

I truly hope that the language will be a non-issue for this great initiative! I understand that search keywords are a complex issue as they are out of context. The content of learning material is (probably) different. In any case, I'll be interested in seeing what's coming out.

Last, a great list of people behind this initiative :) I'm so glad that I've had a chance to work with many of them!

I’m proud that so many trailblazers in open education come from the United States, including Creative Commons, the Hewlett Foundation, ISKME, Meedan, MIT OpenCourseWare, the OpenCourseWare Consortium, and Rice University OpenStax College. Your work is already proving that it has the potential to transform the way students learn across the world. 

See the video of the announcement here: http://bcove.me/qh6ebr2q 
and the press release here: http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2013/01/203382.htm

International Conference on Web-based Learning (CfP)

One of the truly international e-learning conferences that crosses the boundaries between continents is the International Conference on Web-based Learning. This year, the ICWL takes place in Taiwan on 6-9 October 2013. In 2009 it took place in Germany, where my paper won the best-paper award. This year again, I'm serving as part of the International Program Committee (IPC) which gives me a privileged access to review the papers!

Abstract submission deadline: April 8, 2013

Personal Learning Environments (PLE): Learning and Diversity in the Cities of the Future

The annual conference on Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) has a great focus this year: learning and diversity in cities of the future. I love the step out from the formal context of learning (i.e. schools, university) and the fact that we now start thinking of the whole city as a learning environment. This allows asking the following type of research questions, for which the call for papers has now been set-up (deadline 4 March 2013)

What shapes can Personal Learning Environments take to support diversity, cross-boundary learning and interdisciplinary transformation of urban spaces? How can we design and implement Personal Learning Environments as part of highly interconnected social and technological infrastructures of smart cities? What technology-enhanced scenarios can be envisaged to enhance learning and diversity in cities of the future?

In general, PLEs are an approach to Technology- Enhanced Learning based on the principles of learner autonomy and empowerment. PLEs include methods, tools, communities, and services constituting individual learning infrastructures or ecosystems which learners use to direct their own learning and pursue their educational goals.

This year, I'm honored to serve as part of the Scientific Committee. In 2011, I was one of the (un)keynote speakers.

Teachers' collaboration networks as a PLE for professional development from Riina Vuorikari

Reading habits (paper based and web) by Finnish youth

The PISA results have since 2000 highlighted how Finnish 15-year olds excel in math, science, reading, etc. This report gives an interesting look into Finnish youth's reading habits, it includes both digital and paper-based media. Interestingly, we again find out that computers and ICTs are not often used for learning purposes, at least not in a formal learning setting (i.e. school, homework).   

Some outcomes (hastily) translated :

Since 2000, Finnish young people are reading the most variety of literature among 26 participating countries. The "reading index" that tracks the variety of reading, e.g. magazines, comics, literature (fiction and non-fiction) and newspapers is statistically decreasing in all countries. Apart from fiction and non-fiction book, Finnish youth reads less printed material. It is likely that the printed material has been replaced by, among other things, online reading and communication. 

In general, the use of web-based material among Finnish youth is at about average among PISA countries. In schools, however, computers are not used as actively as at home. In Finland, students seek less information on the Internet to help with homework and they rarely discuss their homework assignments online. Instead, the use of computer at home is mainly for pleasure purposes in Finland.

Parviainen (2012) Suomalaisnuorten lukemisen ja verkon käytön monipuolisuus http://www.oph.fi/julkaisut/2012/suomalaisnuorten_lukemisen_ja_verkon_kayton_monipuolisuus

International evaluation data on Science and Reading (TIMSS and PIRLS)

This international benchmarking data becomes available in 4 and 5 year cycles presenting participants’ achievement results in mathematics, science and reading.

For the past 20 years, TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) has measured trends in mathematics and science achievement at the fourth and eighth grades. For the past 15 years PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) has measured trends in reading comprehension at the fourth grade. 

The results are presented as videos on YouTube, too, otherwise, the reports are available here.


A few pointers highlighted by my colleagues:

• An early start is critical: if parents before the start of primary school engage their children in literacy and numeracy activities (at home or at pre-primary schools) children had better scores in those subjects in the 4th grades. 
•  Fourth grade students with access to computers for instruction had higher average science achievement than those students with no access to computers for instruction (Page 235 TIMSS International Results in Science)

The EC's "Rethinking Education" strategy is out

The EC has its "Rethinking Education" strategy out since last week. You can find the communication and related documents in this link: http://ec.europa.eu/education/news/rethinking_en.htm.

What you also should look at it the Country Analysis. If I'm right, a little bit of my work is included in the analysis from Finland. One of my independent expert assignments this year was to write a long report on that, which was, most likely, used as a material for this piece of work. It's a nice feeling to be part of a big strategy report like this one ;)

A few highlights from the communication below. 

• Developing the competences of teaching staff is a continuing and increasingly urgent priority in all Member States. A completely new generation of teachers is ready to take over and a completely new set of skills are required from them. 
• It is essential that Member States create flexible options, such as high quality distance learning. Widening access and engagement through Open Education is a necessity. Technology will play a crucial role in this. 
• Apprenticeships are one very effective way to do this and I urge all Member States to develop more work-based learning schemes. 
• In particular, I support and welcome the initiative by EU Ministers of Education to boost cooperation to increase both the quantity and quality of work-based learning. The first steps will be taken at a meeting of EU Education Ministers in Berlin next month.
• Foreign language skills are especially important in times of crisis as they can open up new opportunities. That is why we are proposing a new benchmark on foreign language competences. 
• We shall also develop guidelines for entrepreneurship education at all levels including schools, universities and vocational education and training. This will encourage education institutions to develop more entrepreneurial approaches in areas including leadership, teacher development as well as curriculum delivery.

Merit pay for teachers - rambling thoughts on the issues

One answer to the issue of bad performing schools/students in the US has been the idea of merit pay for teachers. The Economist  reported on the topic recently using the case of New Jersey state, which, according to the article, has a real problem in its hands already since more than 15 years. Ugh..that's a long time, a whole childhood, if you wish..

Although they have been under the supervision of New Jersey’s state government since 1995, there has been little improvement since then. Only 40% of students read to the standard prescribed for their age, and in the 15 worst-performing schools the figure is less than 25%. More than 30% of pupils do not graduate. Few of those who do are ready for higher education. Of those who entered one local establishment, Essex County College, in 2009, a whopping 98% needed remedial maths and 87% had to take remedial English. As a result, fed-up parents are taking their children out of Newark’s public high schools and placing them in independent charter schools. Many public-school buildings now stand half-empty. The best teachers often leave in despair.

Merit pay for teachers Bonus time
A new contract for teachers is shaking up New Jersey’s largest city

It's impossible to understand the whole magnitude of the problem, but for now, I'm only wondering how such merit pay system works in an educational establishment? What is it based on? What does it really evaluate? Does it take into account how the students' perform, say, during the last academic year? Or how did they perform with other teachers for that matter? Or does it only concentrate on the teacher? What is the baseline for the evaluation? How well did you teach last year? How many hours you taught for a give group of kids? How well the kids that you teach perform in a standardised test over a period of time (which period;)? Is your "merit" based on your average performance with different group of kids if you for example teach math to several groups of kids?

Creating metrics for teacher performance has gotta have been a hec of a job, they probably spent lots of resources trying to figure that out. And then, I would also like to see how does it plays out in the school itself. Is the performance of all the teachers fitted on the normal curve to give the "grades"/merit pay? What if all the teachers' started teaching better, does it mean that non of them get any extra money?

I pay lots of attention to the TALIS study (OECD, 2009) where teachers' appraisal and feedback mechanisms as well as the feeling of self-efficacy are studied and discussed. The whole issue isn't only about the "quality" of teachers'  performance that is delivered to the kids, but the Professional Development and teacher cooperation opportunities in general play an important role too. Placing more emphasis on those factors might be a more helpful way forward..

Pedagogical Innovation and Connected Minds: two interesting reports

Teacher Network - Today's and tomorrow's challenges and opportunities for the teaching profession

We have just finalised a new book, the title is "Teacher networks - Today’s and tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities for the teaching profession". It's now at the printer and the launch event will take place later this month (Nov 14) at the Media & Learning Conference in Brussels.

I'm pretty exited about this, it's one of the major outcomes of my last project (www.tellnet.eun.org) that I've run for three years :)

Teacher networks - Today’s and tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities for the teaching profession from European Schoolnet

FP7 priorities for Creativity and Learning

Over the summer holidays, EU's new FP7 priorities for 2013 funding were communicated. Challenge 8. is related to learning, namely called "ICT for Creativity and Learning"

...Europe must also support national efforts to help students to learn better, teachers to teach better, and school systems to become more effective. This goal can be greatly advanced by learning systems that can adapt to effective use in a wide variety of diverse contexts.

Under 8.2 (technology enhanced  learning), they also mention Learning Analytics:

b) Learning analytics, educational data mining: tools and processes for collecting, storing, exploring and reasoning on large-scale educational data to better understand learners' knowledge, assess their progress and evaluate environments in which they learn. These tools and processes should aim at improving learning and teaching (including 21st century skills) for students and instructors.  

Learning analytics has now become such a hot topic. So, like all the others, I'm also studying the topic. Here is a link to my recent paper on learning analytics. I presented it this summer at “Open and Social Technologies for Networked Learning” in Tallinn.

Use of personas in communication (Professional Development Workshop)

"Personas" are used in marketing and product design to represents a group of customers so that the company can better focus its efforts. In companies such as Ford Motor Company, Microsoft and Reuters, personas are used to help better understanding of customers . A persona has a name, face, motivations, and goals - yet it is fictitious.

We in eTwinning also use personas to help our 27 National Support Services (NSS) better segment their "market" and focus their efforts. This time (June  27, NSS PDW) we worked on communication strategies. First all the six eTwinning personas were introduced (see the slides below). Then we set up groupwork to think of strategies; first of all,  how the NSS can identify eTwinners who belong to different personas?  and then, what are the strategies to communicate with them?

Identifying an active eTwinner like Maria or Peter (slides, page 8 and 10) can be rather straight forward for the NSS. They can use the "NSS desktop tools" that allow monitoring eTwinners' activities in their own country. Especially Marias are someone that the NSS staff already knows rather well and is most likely already in continuous communication with (they are often times also "eTwinning Ambassadors").

However, the most interesting and "potential" eTwinners for NSS are Marcus, Lucia, Shaun and Nina (slides, pages 12, 14, 16, 18) . They already are aware of eTwinning and have most likely established an account, but for a reason or another, are inactive or dormant users. In the workshop, we brainstormed better and more efficient communication strategies for these personas.

eTwinning personas

View more PowerPoint from European Schoolnet

Social Analytics for eTwinning

For the eTwinning report in 2011, I worked on creating a conceptual framework for eTwinning Analytics with a little "proof of concept"-study. The report itself is only for internal use, but we re-worked it into a research paper. The paper contributes to the field of Learning Analytics, which is pretty hot right now (see LAK12). This combines my personal research interests as well as my work (e.g. the Tellnet project, monitoring eTwinning).

An interesting thing about the framework is that we build it around the OECD‘s indices for teachers’ co-operation. This was one of the outcomes of the TALIS study which is one of my favourites. The TALIS study takes a wide look into teaching as a profession in a number of OECD countries. 

The definition of eTwinning Analytics follows the one from G.Siemens (2010) on Learning Analytics in general:

eTwinning Analytics focuses on the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about eTwinners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimising their co-operation and the environment in which it occurs. The goal of eTwinning Analytics, therefore, is to offer eTwinning stakeholders better tools to monitor the action through emerging trends and patterns upon which they can better base their decisions.

The paper can be downloaded here!

Social Learning Analytics to study Teachers’ Large-scale Professional Networks  
{Riina.Vuorikari, Santi.Scimeca}@eun.org  

Abstract. A growing interest in research focuses on teachers’ large-scale socio- technical networks. Social learning approaches such as social constructivist theory is well established, however, the current challenges lie in creating reliable methods to gather evidence of how and under which conditions social learning takes place in such socio-technical networks and how does it support teachers’ lifelong learning goals. The field of Learning Analytics (LA) addresses the issue of individual learners, whereas Social Learning Analytics (SLA) addresses that of groups’ processes in knowledge construction. 

 The eTwinning action is used as a case study for applying the concepts of Social Learning Analytics. Our interest is on teachers’ co-operation behaviour and patterns within a socio-technical network and how that can support teachers’ continuous professional development. The eTwinning platform currently hosts more than 160000 European teachers. We first introduce the underlying pedagogical and lifelong learning related assumptions regarding teachers’ co- operation. To better understand the type of activities that teachers undertake in eTwinning, they are classified according to the OECD‘s indices for teachers’ co-operation. This creates the core of the eTwinning Analytics framework, which operationalises activities and allows them to be better measured and monitored. A snapshot of data from the platform is used as a proof of concept.

A set of case studies focusing on "school teams"

As part of my assignments for 2012, I'm running a set of case studies on eTwinning school teams. The full set of case studies will be published on the eTwinning website and a sub-set will become a printed publication. They will come out at the end of 2012. The objective of these case studies is: to better understand eTwinning teams in schools; to analyse existing models of school team in eTwinning, andto understand what makes them work (enablers) and what not (inhibitors).

The case study framework includes the following aspects:

• Different models of school teams (i.e. whole school approach lead by a school head vs. teacher-led innovation) and the proportion of teachers in the school who are part of the school team 
• What kind of roles exist in teams within school and outside of school (involvement of internal and external actors in the school team)
• School organisational climate (e.g. vision on ICT integration, international collaboration, cross-curricular work, the whole school approach, history of innovation), 
• Organisation of learning (layout of the learning units; allocation of students into learning groups) both in school and out of school. 
• Infrastructure and resources (not only technical, but also physical, like libraries, etc) used within eTwinning teams both in school and out of school. 
• Other conditions: Teachers PD, peer-learning opportunities within the school, national and local policies enabling/ encouraging the teamwork 

To conceive the framework, I went through a bunch of papers and studies, out of which I was most inspired by this set of studies:

Forkosh-Baruch, A., Nachmias, R., & Mioduser, D. (2008). Innovative pedagogical practices using technology: Cross-case analysis of the SITESm2 data. Presented at the 3rd IEA International Research Conference, Taipei, Chinese Taipei. Retrieved from http://www.iea.nl/irc-2008.html#c2050

Forkosh-Baruch, A., Nachmias, R., Mioduser, D., & Tubin, D. (2005). “Islands of Innovation”and “School-Wide Implementations”: Two Patterns of ICT-based Pedagogical Innovations in Schools. An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments, 1(2), 202–215.

Nachmias, R., Mioduser, D., Cohen, A., Tubin, D., & Forkosh-Baruch, A. (2004). Factors Involved in the Implementation of Pedagogical Innovations Using Technology. Education and Information Technologies, 9(3), 291–308. doi:10.1023/B:EAIT.0000042045.12692.49

I also have been following up the Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research project for inspiration. 

Opening the teachers' professional development workshop on eTwinning

Last week about 80 teachers from various European countries gathered in Lithuania for a 3-day teachers' professional development workshop. I had the honor to give the opening speech in the event which focused on the eTwinning school collaboration in the field of STEM. eTwinning is "the community for schools in Europe", currently more than 160000 teachers have signed up. STEM fields stand for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.

In my presentation, I highlighted what are the good ingredients of an eTwinning school project. For this purpose, I "demystified" one of the awarded eTwinning projects in math (ATOM - a taste of math) using this video as an example.

I also talked about the importance of teachers' collaboration, both across schools and within the school. The main campaign in eTwinning this year is about school teams. By the end of the year, we will have a set of case studies from about 20 European countries on how eTwinning school teams work - a great way to highlight good practices but also to analyse different models.

Enjoy the slides of the opening speech below!Twinning PDW on STEM

View more presentations from European Schoolnet.

Country monographs on synergies between teachers’ professional development and eTwinning

The eTwinning report Teachers’ professional development – An overview of current practice was published by European Schoolnet in December 2010, it aims at understanding how eTwinning and national and local teachers’ professional development schemes interact. The report focused on three case studies, namely on Estonia, Poland and Spain.

The report, called "Teachers’ Professional Development: an overview of current practice" can be downloaded in different languages as a pdf file here:  DE, EN, ES, FR, IT

Here is the reference in APA style: 
Vuorikari, R. (2010). eTwinning Report 2010: Teachers’ professional development: an overview of current practice. European Schoolnet. 

Contributing to the Polish Presidency on Mobility

The Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union organised a conference on "Mobility as a tool to acquire and develop competences from childhood to seniority” in October 2011. I participated  in two workshops as an expert on virtual mobility for teachers. The proceedings of the conference include my short paper called Virtual mobility and teachers’ collaboration networks.

Do netbooks require a different type of pedagogy?

In the beginning of the Educational Netbook Pilot, I was often asked whether netbooks really require a different type of pedagogy. I was rather convinced that they do, especially under the circumstances that our pilot was implementing them: 8000 netbooks were distributed in more than 200 classes in 6 European countries. This was a rather disruptive change.

From the end of 2009 until the end of 2011, I was the project manager and chief investigator of the Acer-European Schoolnet Educational Netbook Pilot. I was responsible for implementing the pilot from scratch, meaning establishing links with national points in 6 countries, facilitating finding the schools, organising a network of national pedagogical coordinators,  implementing pedagogical support through a community website, conducting evaluation and finalising the evaluation report. At the end, I was rather convinced that to use netbooks successfully, a netbook pedagogy is needed.

Below a 30-minute video presentation of the final results elaborating also on the concept of the netbook, or any 1:1 pedagogy (e.g. with tablets). Links to the reports can also be found below.



The final report "Introducing netbook pedagogies in schools" is available to download here (pdf, 7Mb).

Reference: Vuorikari, R., Garoia, V., & Balanskat, A. (2011). Introducing Netbook Pedagogies in Schools. Acer - European Schoolnet Educational Netbook Pilot. European Schoolnet.

The country reports are available in respective languages:

• Italy country report in ITALIAN (pdf)
• France country report in FRENCH (pdf)
• Spain country report in SPANISH (pdf)
• Turkey country report TURKISH (pdf)
• Germany country report in GERMAN (pdf)

Different types of "Blended learning"

The term "blended learning" has become a lot used word in educational sciences, and in general in the filed of e-learning and technology enhanced learning (TEL). It's almost a "passe-partout", a term used to mean a little bit of everything.

I came across a paper that had identified 6 models or categories of blended learning. I'll copy them here and I look forward to reading the whole paper!  

Choose Your Blend*
In 2010, more than 4 million K-12 students participated in some sort of online learning (up from 45,000 in 2000). An Innosight Institute survey of schools that have adopted blended learning was able to identify six basic models.

1. Face-to-Face: Most material is taught in the traditional manner. The teacher uses online learning as a supplement or remediation.
2. Flex: This is online learning but in a school setting. Teachers provide support as needed, generally through tutoring, either one-on-one or in small groups.
3. Self-Blend: Students supplement traditional school by taking online classes from home. This model is used mostly to take AP and foreign language courses.
4. Rotation: In this model, used in Rocketship schools, students spend a scheduled portion of their day learning online. Essentially, they rotate from classroom to online computer lab and back.
5. Online Lab: Courses are conducted entirely online, including interaction with the teacher, but students do coursework in school (rather than at home). 
6. Online Driver: Schooling is online: Students take classes and work with teachers remotely.

*Source: Heather Staker et al., The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning, Innosight Institute, innosightinstitute.org