WLS

Living and learning in a networked world

Keynote by Phil Komarny

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Phil Komarny, Vice President of Innovations at Salesforce

Blockchain and education – the future of work and education relations. Exploring trends and challenges

We have all heard of either ‘blockchain’ or ‘the coming of network society’, ‘bitcoin’ and/or ‘digital currency’. 2017 might have been the year when the Blockchain discussion really hit the international agenda. But few may have the kind of insight in what these emergent de-centralized and decentralizing technologies might come to mean for society and for education.

What’s up for education and how we relate to work-life?

Is Blockchain more than a fad? How should we think about this phenomenon and technology? What are some of its key uses? And how can we expect and predict implications for education? Phil Komarny is a long-time expert in the area. For the past year he has also been VP{ of Innovations at Salesforce, easily one of the largest global drivers behind technology entrepreneurship. Phil is also dedicated to working for and with non-profits and educational institutions. A great speaker, we are inviting you to join this session and also the following break-out session where themes from the keynote will be explored in conversation.

About Blockchain, here is a background link.

If you want more, here is another one.

A couple of quotes from the above links

“The blockchain is an undeniably ingenious invention – the brainchild of a person or group of people known by the pseudonym,  Satoshi Nakamoto. But since then, it has evolved into something greater, and the main question every single person is asking is: What is Blockchain?

By allowing digital information to be distributed but not copied, blockchain technology created the backbone of a new type of internet. Originally devised for the digital currency, Bitcoin,  (Buy Bitcoin) the tech community is now finding other potential uses for the technology.”

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“Information held on a blockchain exists as a shared — and continually reconciled — database. This is a way of using the network that has obvious benefits. The blockchain database isn’t stored in any single location, meaning the records it keeps are truly public and easily verifiable. No centralized version of this information exists for a hacker to corrupt. Hosted by millions of computers simultaneously, its data is accessible to anyone on the internet.”

Would a system of distributed, networked ledgers represent a new way of thinking about trust and accountability, also in education? Might Blockchain affect that eco system in which higher education co-exist with work-life, and not always with the same sense of time or relevance?

In short, a lot of different questions come on the table. Come and listen to Phil Komarny outlining future entrepreneurship in education and work-life, from those points of view. 

 

ICDE joins up with WLS for 2017

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icdelogo322x130We are extremely honored to announce our new partnership for the 2017 summit with ICDE: International Council for Open and Distance Education. This has been on the discussion docket for some time. We will soon present ICDE more thoroughly for those who do not know the organization. And we will get back to how they will feature in our program for WLSA 2017. Meanwhile – some pointers here:

The International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) is the leading global membership organization for open, distance, flexible and online education, including e-learning, and draws its membership from institutions, educational authorities, commercial actors, and individuals.

  • Enables change to technology enhanced quality education across the globe.
  • Advocates for access, equity and quality learning through online, open and flexible learning.
  • A dynamic platform for cooperation on innovation and development, featuring key regional actors and leading experts.
  • Access to thousands of higher education institutions, networks and systems.
  • A key partner for UNESCO.
  • Part-funded by the Government of Norway.

Call for scientific papers

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broadbookCourtesy of our new collaboration with the Linq conference (their last one was in 2015), we are as of 2017 extending a full call for scientific papers. Please review the information on this link.

World Learning Summit is committed to providing new features and opportunities every year. This year we have placed a particular emphasis on providing a means for researchers to receive credit and citations from their work. Our call has gone out worldwide and we will work hard to make this a worthwhile research presentation arena.

Our standard for Scientific papers will be high. An international panel of highly accomplished peer reviewers are in place. Each selected paper will receive ample time for presentation and a featured spot in our newly established WLS Proceedings. We are indexed where it matters.

The general call for research papers has been divided into three categories, all of which will be part of the Summit Academic Track:

  1. Scientific papers will be reviewed as complete papers, accepted for publication. Presenters are eligible for discounts.
  2. PhD papers will be reviewed as papers in progress, and does not require publication of full papers in our own publications. Rather, the intention is to provide PhD students from around the world to benefit from our review panel, planned opposition and the publication in our Summit Proceedings of PhD papers as extended abstracts. More information on this link. Presenters are eligible for discounts.
  3. Projects presentations will be organized as sessions centered on “papers in progress” and projects on their way. For this slot, please see our template on this link.

If you have questions, please do not hesitate to make inquiry, by using this email address: admin@futurelearninglab.org

Jane-Frances Obiageli Agbu to WLS 2017

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We are extremely happy to report that Professor Jane-Frances Obiageli Agbu has accepted our invitation to keynote at the 2017 World Learning Summit. Among many other things, Jane-Frances was until recently the Head of the Open Educational Resources – Massive Open Online Courses (OER-MOOC) Unit at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). She works closely with UNESCO and with the Openup Ed initiative.

dr-janeGiven our main summit theme “Smart Universities” a likely question to raise is how that idea relates to Massive Open Online Courses, to African countries like Nigeria and to education as an aspect of urban and regional development. Please keep coming back to this blog to see how this theme develops as we approach the time of the summit.

Courtesy of the European Union and UNESCO, we might quote from a recent story:

“Initially I did not really know much about OER, so I was curious and decided to learn more. In July 2013, I attended the Regional Workshop on OER for West African states, in Abuja, Nigeria. In a nutshell, we learnt that OERs are learning materials released under an open intellectual property license or in the public domain, allowing free-of-cost and legal reuse, revision, remixing and redistribution. MOOCs on the other hand are short courses aimed at unlimited participation and open access through the web. The underlining philosophy of ‘openness’ and ‘sharing’ of educational resources for the common good, especially those produced with government funds, was emphasized.”

The source story continues — read the rest of it here:

“In August, 2014, NOUN took the bold decision to embrace OER/MOOCs and created a dedicated unit for this. Astonishingly, I was asked to head this project. With the full support of UNESCO, the second Training Workshop on OER/MOOCs, for NOUN staff is taking place on February 3-6, 2015. This exercise aims to sensitize about 400 people, train 10 course writers on skills required to convert course materials into OERs and present proposals and design for NOUN MOOCs. The first set of OERs will be uploaded on the NOUN OER portal at the end of the training workshop.”

With funding from the European Union, UNESCO is assisting the university in transforming all the courses into open-licensed Open Educational Resources (OERs) as well as open-licensed Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) to attract very large numbers of young Nigerians to access high-quality higher education. With over 180,000 enrolled students, NOUN is the 2nd largest university in Africa with 1,500 courses at Bachelors, Masters, and PhD level. This is the Jane-Frances’ story.OpenupEd project is carried out by UNESCO with the support of the European Commission, DG Education and Culture, under the Lifelong Learning Programme.”

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About OpenupEd: Read more about it here.

  • OpenupEd is an open, non-profit partnership offering MOOCs that contribute to open up education – much to the benefit of individual learners and the wider society.
  • The vision is to reach out to all those learners who are interested to take part in online higher education in a way that meets their needs and accommodates their particular situation.
  • The project aims to provide guidance to enhance the development and implementation of national OER strategies through increased international cooperation
  • The main characteristics of the project are: learner-centred, openness to learner, digital openness, independent learning, media-supported interaction, recognition options, quality focus, spectrum of diversity

A note from Jane-Frances, published on the Creative Commons site:

Published by Creative Commons on November 1, 2016, please find the below statement an inroad to the kind of work Jane-Frances and her colleagues do: Naturally, with whatever knowledge we have, we want to be the “sage on the stage rather than a guide on the side”. This famous statement from Allison King brings back floods of memories for me. I can still visualize my former professors speaking eloquently in class, filling students with respect and awe. I felt anxious and wondered if I could ever get to be as knowledgeable as my professors. They were knowledge personified. But for me, open education has demystified this sort of reverence toward dissemination of knowledge. Open Educational Resources—with its five Rs (retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute) and the flexible license options of Creative Commons—has humanized and democratized teaching and learning. Surely there are some that still believe in sole ownership of knowledge. Those people will continue to feel threatened by the ‘open movement’, but we’ve seen the incredible opportunities of open education, and we’ll continue on our path.

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