UNESCO Chair International Seminar 2009

‘Open Social Learning’

The VI International Seminar organized by the UOC-UNESCO Chair was held in Barcelona, Spain, on November 30th and December 1st 2009. To mark the end of the 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, the UNESCO Chair offered an international platform for presenting OSL related research and practices, with an eye on mapping new trends in the field of open online education at all levels. 

The theoretical foundations of collective knowledge production in social networks on the Internet (connectivism, collectivism, constructivism, Edupunks) were discussed, as well as the latest research and case studies from various continents, assess the possibilities offered by an emerging mode of learning involving a high level of self learning based on the peer-to-peer support. Different designs, tools and functionalities of social learning networks were evaluated. 

The main scope behind this analysis was to evaluate the possibility of using tools of social networking for teaching and training in a formal educational setting as well as the possibility of offering subjects using open social networks.

Speakers

• George Siemens, Associate Director in the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba, Canada.
• Alejandro Piscitelli, Professor at the School of Communication of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• Joel Greenberg, Director of Strategic Development, Learning and Teaching Solutions at the Open University, UK.
• Stephen Downes, Senior Researcher at the National Research Council in Moncton, Canada.
• Laura Czerniewicz, Director of the Centre for Educational Technology (CET) at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
• Tony Carr, Senior Lecturer at the Educational Technology Center of the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
• Jay Cross, Independent consultant, founder and CEO of the Internet Time Group LLC, Berkeley, USA.

Presentations

• Jay Cross, “Meta-Learning: Process of Learning in the Network Era”.
• Laura Czerniewicz and Tony Carr, “E/merge: Peer Learning Online from Developing Context”.
• George Siemens and Kathleen Matheos, “Open Social Learning in Higher Education: an African context”.
• Stephen Downes: “The Role of Open Educational Resources in Personal Learning”.
• Joel Greenberg, “Code, Community and Commerce for Open Social Learning”.
• Alejandro Piscitelli: “The Facebook Project. Edupunk and the Redesign of Power/Knowledge Relations in a Public University Setting”.
• George Siemens: “Connectivism: Socializing Open Learning”.
• UOC Session: “In Search for Pedagogical Value of OSL: UOC Experiment in Progress”.