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Alexandra Okada, Thursday 16 March 2017
The ENGAGE project conference, at the Open University on March 11th, was a unique event designed to launch a community of innovative science teachers. Funded by the European Commission (EC), this event brought together more than 80 Science teachers from right across England, as well as Russia and Brazil.
The conference themes were chosen by the teachers themselves, who presented their innovative classroom practice on curriculum, assessment, and teaching methods. “Overall the event was excellent, inspiring, and very informative. I enjoyed presenting. I would be happy to present again next year. I enjoyed networking with colleagues from around the country.” Rowan Mangier, Science Teacher. “Teachers were so very grateful to have the opportunity to discuss ideas and strategies with other teachers and hear solutions to the problems they are encountering” Jude Sanders, facilitator.
Ale Okada, the legacy and technical coordinator of ENGAGE, opened the conference with the key outcomes of this European project: an open science education portal, including OER and MOOC in 10 languages for equipping students to make decisions using science; a relevant framework to foster 10 inquiry skills for Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI); and an international community of science teachers with 18,043 members interested in topical science.
She highlighted that RRI is one of the key areas created by the EC for promoting science with and for society. “This is exactly our aim: to empower students supported by teachers to take an active role and voice their informed views and concerns on socio-scientific issues that are relevant for their lives and society.”
The keynotes Tony Sherborne, scientific leader of ENGAGE, and Stella Paes, Head of science at AQA presented important questions and reflections on Science Education: “How can the Science Education curriculum be reshaped so that it’s more fit for purpose?” and “How can an approach focused on examination success still lead to an enlightened science education?”
The workshops on a 5-year plan and assessment, including ENGAGE resources, were also considered very thoughtful for several teachers who mentioned that there was a sense of relief that they could finally see ‘proof’ that their hunch that there was just not enough teaching time was a valid criticism to take to senior leadership. There was too much content to teach across the 5 years, so teachers should focus on teaching the core well rather than covering everything badly.
“ENGAGE project is very relevant to attract teachers and students across the world. Its content and strategies are very relevant for secondary schools and it should be also extended to primary education” Marianne Cuttler – the head of the Association for Science Education in the UK. “It was very useful to talk to teachers in the UK to know how they used ENGAGE. Our students in Bahia were really engaged with topical socio-scientific dilemmas, including innovative resources to develop scientific argumentation.” Ana Karine Rocha, Sonia Pinto, and Silvar Ribeiro – Teachers from Salvador Brazil.
“I came away from the conference very proud of the work we have done over the years! It was great to meet so many teachers who like what we do and want more.” Gemma Young, ENGAGE resources developer and KMi research visitor.
Indeed, it is really significant for us to see the impact of ENGAGE in the UK and across the world.
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Alexandra Okada, Monday 14 December 2015
Syllabuses in science are not known for being interesting. They are typically shopping lists, itemising every fact and concept. The problem is, with all those items to check off, teachers spend most of their time drilling kids’ heads full of content instead of filling them with enthusiasm.
The new KS3 Science Syllabus from AQA is different. Jointly developed by the Open University (KMi)’s ENGAGE project for the European Commission, it’s a blueprint for a different kind of science teaching. Students have time to explore real-life controversial issues that affect their lives now, from genetics to climate change.
Our breakthrough design has two special ingredients, which reduce the content teachers need to cover, and show them how to put science in context. First are Big Ideas. Instead of presenting science as a list of facts and concepts, our Syllabus sets it out as a set of principles and theories that have changed our view of the universe and ourselves. By reorganising the stuff in the National Curriculum around these 10 big ideas, we slashed the content by half. Teachers can now see what their students really need to know.
Our second ingredient is a new section in each topic – Apply. Syllabuses usually just define knowledge, which is strange because applying what you know to new situations is what we really want students to be able to do. The KS3 Science Syllabus sets out in black and white the ways we want students to be able to use their knowledge – including the real-life science students want to learn about.
And this is where ENGAGE fits in – making it easy for teachers to introduce science-in-news issues into the classroom. So instead of just studying burning and writing equations, the Syllabus asks students to think about the applications, and ENGAGE provides a lesson on the Diesel scandal. Students learn the chemistry by studying a diesel engine and wondering whether it’s a good idea to buy Diesel or not.
4000 UK science teachers already come to ENGAGE when they want to turn a conventional lesson into a provocative dilemma for students to solve. Now that these are on the syllabus, we hope these will become a regular part of students’ diets, and help to make learning science the exciting experience it should be.
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Alexandra Okada, Wednesday 17 June 2015
The Open University hosted the 15th International Conference on Technology Policy and Innovation (ICTPI) on 17-19 June 2015. ICTPI’15 conference brought together leading representatives of academic, business, and government sectors worldwide to present and discuss current and future issues of using science and technology.
The theme of ICTPI 2015 focuses on ‘ICT and Science in a Complex World’. This event attracted a large audience interested in: Education Futures, Smart Cities, New Economy, Data Security, Energy, and MK: Enterprise Growth. Professor Enrico Motta presented the project MK:Smart, including ‘MK Data Hub’, which supports the acquisition and management of vast amounts of data relevant to city systems from a variety of data sources. Annika Wolff gave a talk on ‘Bringing Smart City Data Skills to Schools’ as part of the MK:smart project.
Ale Okada introduced the project Urban Inquiries, which is based on various international and national projects. It applies pedagogical approaches such as scientific dilemmas (ENGAGE), data inquiry (MK: Smart), and inquiry-based learning technologies (weSPOT, LiteMap, and nQuire-it). Urban Inquiries aim to support educators and learners to develop authentic inquiry-based projects and promote Responsible Research and Innovation. She also presented the paper developed with Annika Wolff and Alex Mikroyannidis: ‘Promoting partnerships among Universities, schools, and research centres to foster Responsible Research and Innovation for smart citizenship’.
This pilot research discusses three ‘urban inquiries’ projects on: Energy Consumption, Electric Cars, and Solar panels, which were developed by Stantonbury School. This study indicated evidence of co-inquiry-based learning focused on the collaborative construction of scientific questions. It showed how Personal Learning Environments supported young smart learners to develop collective inquiry and share outcomes. Secondary pupils co-authored 3 videos, 3 posters for an international conference, and 1 conference presentation through ‘urban inquiries’.
Urban Inquiries, RRI and Partnerships from Alexandra Okada
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15th International Conference on Technology Policy and Innovation (ICTPI)
ENGAGE – inquiry-based learning OER
Alexandra Okada, Wednesday 03 December 2014
We are delighted to announce that the second edition of the book Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques has been published this month with five new chapters. The aim of this book is to present how mapping techniques and software tools can be used for learning, teaching, and knowledge management.
The readers will find 540 pages with all the maps and images in color presenting the current state-of-the-art in the field. This pioneer book in the area of Knowledge Cartography includes 22 chapters from 45 leading researchers and renowned practitioners. Learners will find new perspectives and tools to expand their visual thinking repertoire, while researchers will find rich enough conceptual grounding for further scholarship.
The book presents six chapters about OU research work, four European projects: OpenLearn, Engage, weSPOT, and Catalyst, and three KMi tools: Compendium, Cohere, and LiteMap. Dr. Anna de Liddo, co-author and head of the collective intelligence group in KMI, suggests this book to learners, educators, and researchers in all disciplines, as well as policy analysts, scenario planners, knowledge managers, team facilitators, and research project coordinators.
Ale Okada, chief editor, highlights that it was a great experience for her to bring together renowned authors, practitioners, and learners from across the world in various areas and diverse range of mapping techniques.
“Various pioneers in mapping techniques and tools each authored a chapter. The book also includes innovative case studies developed by my students. We are now in the decade of BIG DATA. Knowledge mapping, therefore, became more relevant as a key skill for this digital age – useful in various fields for visualization, sensemaking, management, and collective intelligence. It is really fruitful to see that this book has been helping lots of new PhD students, educators, research groups, and technologists. It has also been an important reference for various funded research projects”.
The first edition of this book was one of the top most downloaded eBooks in the Springer Collection. We think that the second edition will be popular too.
Current funded projects in KMi, which include mapping techniques:
In Education led by Dr. Okada:
WeSPOT
ENGAGE
In Collective Intelligence led by Dr. DeLiddo:
Catalyst
EDV
The book is also available at the Open University Library soon!
Okada, A., Buckingham Shum, S. and Sherborne, T. (2014) Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques. London: Springer Verlag.
See more at: http://www.springer.com/computer/hci/book/978-1-4471-6469-2
Alexandra Okada, Tuesday 11 November 2014
Dr. Izabel Meister, who was a PhD student in KMi in 2012, has just published a book about her thesis, which was launched today in Brazil.
Her thesis co-supervised by Dr. Okada – “The weaving of knowledge in social networks habitat of collective intelligences” – focused on social networks as a space of creation and acquisition of knowledge. She analyzed some social networks in FaceBook and in the OER Tool-Library of the European Project: OpenScout developed by KMi team: Dr. Alexander Mikroyannidis, Dr. Suzanne Little, Dr. Ale Okada, and Dr. Peter Scott.
FOREWORD written by Ale Okada
“The third edge: knowledge in social networks” is an interdisciplinary book that points out the collective intelligence of social networks as well as the convergence and expansion of knowledge from the “Relevant Status”.
The curious title proposed by Izabel Meister is an invitation to reflect on the social network knowledge as a means of transcending the delimited boundaries via the third edge which leads to the break-up of delimited spaces. So, according to Foucault (1997:356) “a place without a place, that exists by itself”; refers to a space without space, or better put, a space of every space. In this sense, the author discusses contemporary knowledge on the web, based on the abundant access to information and sources, in which the process of construction transcends the predetermined spaces and times that were established for this purpose. Here a third way flourishes, which invites us readers to think differently about the construction of knowledge of and within the social networks (Okada, 2014).
This work studies the interdependent processes in which knowledge is updated and expanded to connections between many participants, in a complex, chaotic, and hyperdynamic way – aspects of the web and of the openness movement towards cyberculture studied by many authors (Castells, 2005; Jones, 1998). Nevertheless, “The third edge” proposes a different look at the emergence of collective intelligences which can be activated at any time and space as soon as they have been visualized by the “relevant status”, term defined by Meister as “due to its importance according to its utility, timeliness, or meaning”.
Meister’s contribution offers us a valuable new outlook on Education and Cyberculture through the innovation of the process of construction of knowledge, which is based on her dissertation at Mackenzie University in São Paulo and the Open University in Milton Keynes (UK). At the Open University, she worked at the Knowledge Media Institute on and with open search networks as part of the Colearn project – Collaborative Open Learning (colearn.open.ac.uk).
In the three chapters of this publication, we can find the initial point of this research, the methodology of investigation, and the conceptional and empirical principles of interactive, complex, and chaotic culture, from which social networks emerge. Based on the interconnection of these three seminal references, we can consider the threading of web knowledge and the theory of Relevant Status explained in the last chapters.
This book is a source of discussion for many readers:
The objectives of “The third edge: knowledge in social network” for all of us – participants, co-learners, and co-authors of knowledge in 21st-century Cyberculture – are:
When we drive our attention to the fragments of human knowledge within the sophisticated and complex virtual social networks, we shall have to consider the discussion proposed by this book and the invitation to contribute to the reflective discussion on the space of contemporary knowledge. From here arises the opportunity to meet the Third Edge.
Alexandra Okada, Thursday 30 October 2014
EDENRW8, which was held in Oxford on 27-28 October 2014, provided a good overview of the current state of online, open, and distance learning in Europe. This event was organised by Professor Antonio Moreira Teixeira, President of EDEN from the Open University of Portugal, and Professor Belinda Tynan, Pro Vice-Chancellor on Learning & Teaching at the Open University UK, with official Rapporteur, Professor Tony Bates.
Ale Okada presented “Developing 21st Century Skills through Colearning with OER and Social Networks.” Her research focuses on COLEARN, an open research network constituted by communities of educators, students, and researchers who have been participating in various OER international projects, including OpenLearn (2006-2009), OpenScout (2010-2012), and weSPOT(2013-2015). This study presented a group of skills that emerged in the COLEARN network during the production of the research book “OER and Social Networks.” The coauthoring process was based on colearning approach with OER and social networks. Her work presented in EDEN was also published in the book “Key competences for colearning in the digital age” by WhiteBooks Publishers in Portugal, which was launched during the event.
Almost 150 participants from more than 30 countries presented over 40 selected research papers. There were lots of opportunities for deep dialogues and feedback on our research through very interactive sessions: team symposia, ‘research-speed-dating’ papers, demonstrations, poster sessions, a connect lounge, and informal sessions.
Tony Bates presented great comments during the workshop and in his blog, which were summarised below.
Research on Open Education:
The complexity of teaching and learning:
Some challenges for Researchers on Online teaching and learning:
Multiple audiences to be reached:
Next Steps:
“I believe that this is an important role for organisations such as EDEN, EDUCAUSE, ICDE, but it is also a responsibility for every one of us who works in the field and believes passionately about the value of online learning.” (Bates, 2014)
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