Keep your promises!

As I mentioned before, I have been working on a paper about the role of technical standards for Technology Enhanced Learning. You sent me some really relevant comments: Thanks!

I promised to acknowledge the comments that were really helpful – so thanks Martyn (your page on iet.open.ac.uk seems to be password protected , Wolfgang and Brian!

In the continued spirit of open research, you can read the version we submitted for review:

View this document on Scribd

Your comments, feedback, etc. are still more than welcome! We’ll have another opportunity to work them into the paper before submitting the final version. Now that the paper is more elaborate, you may have more to comment upon As before, if your comment results in a change to the document, then we will of course acknowledge your input.

Sometimes, I am told that it is “crazy” to share your work so “prematurely”. Sometimes, I am told that it is “dangerous” as others may “steal” your work. (And I have some experience with that ) I don’t worry too much about those things: I really value the feedback. It will be fun and interesting to compare what I get from you with the reactions from the formal reviews.

I promise to let you know afterwards…

(The title of this post was actually the slogan of a manifestation that ran last weekend, to remind the Belgian government that it had promised to “do something” for immigrants without papers who have been here for sometimes more than 5 years, work here, whose kids go to school here, etc. We took part, and both my daughter and my partner featured in the national radio news in the evening… As my 9 year old said: ”we need to allow people to come here and take shelter from war at home”…)

Serious Fun

I’ve often used the notion of “Serious Fun” to convey that “serious” doesn’t need to be boring and that “fun” doesn’t need to be pointless. Worse still, folks often seem to think that “boring” implies “serious”, whereas boring is … simply boring most of the times.

My best experiences are typically a lot of fun – and very serious. A recent one was the workshop we did at Online Educa on “Building an Open Global Learning Infrastructure“: I’m very proud that presentations took up less than half of the time, that no presentation went over 15 minutes and that several had no powerpoint . We all had a lot of Serious Fun. The wiki of the event has quite a few pointers to relevant material: do enjoy – and feedback is of course welcome.

The next day, I chaired a session on LMS issues. Again, in the spirit of Serious Fun, I convinced the speakers to do a Pecha Kucha rather than the typical 20 min presentation – that always seems to take 30 minutes. All the speakers expressed some fear and anxiety about the format in the days leading up to the event as well as during the session. All did Very Well. We had a very intensive round of questions from the audience after each 400 seconds of presentation. All the speakers were very positive at the end. Some of the audience also mentioned to me that they found it quite refreshing. At least on blogger agrees that “it worked“.

A crucial requirement for Serious Fun, I believe, is trust. In an environment where you can take risks without fear for ruining your ‘reputation’, you can think out of the box and engage in true conversation. That theme is also very apparent in the TED talk by Tim Brown from Ideo on “The powerful link between creativity and play“.

Strongly recommended!

I watched the video earlier this evening while doing the dishes – we live in interesting times