Several Universitat Oberta de Catalunya professors and researchers will analyze next wednesday the different ways to measure the behavior of the students when they interact in a digital environment like the UOC campus. Data mining, the process of analyzing large amounts of data from an on line application, is a usefull tool to measure the students behavior and take important decisions based on the obtained conclusions.

During the conference, organized by the UOC UNESCO Chair in E-Learning, different professors and marketing specialists will present nine research projects: from the analysis of the students roles to the research on the UOC degrees value and the profile of the different graduates.

Later, we will have a chance to hear to Dr. Sebastián Ventura, head of the director of the Numerical Analysis department at the Universidad de Córdoba (Spain) and author/coordinator of the book Data Mining in E-Learning (published by WIT Press on 2006).

As an introduction to the conference, you can check the slides (in Spanish) prepared by Dr. Juliá Minguillón, who will be in charge of the opening presentation:

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As we announced some days ago, we are closing the program of the UOC UNESCO Chair in E-Learning Fith Seminar, Fighting against the digital divide trough education.

During the last days we have confirmed two more names. On one side, Security Architecture of the OLPC ex-director, Ivan Krstic, from Harvard University, will feature the low cost laptops for education Case Study. On the other side, we will count with Mr. Bakary Diallo, Rector of the African Virtual University to analyze the case of that institution.

Anyone interested on the topic can check the details on the Seminar’s web site or on the downloadeable program (on PDF).

Related entries:

• Fighting the digital divide throught education.

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I first came to the concept of edupunk through a line dropped by Max Senges, researcher at Stanford University and occasional collaborator of this UNESCO chair, on his Twitter. The sentence went like this: “let’s join the educational revolution through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edupunk“.

As you can read on Wikipedia, edupunk is “an ideology referring to teaching and learning practices that result from a do it yourself (DIY) attitude”. Alltough it can be an eccentric assotiation, the connection between this way of managing and spreading knowledge, typical from the 2.0 age, and the punk art and music scene from the 70’s & 80’s, where the term DIY became most popular, is undeniable. In this sense, and speaking in a complete personally way, I think edupunk is a right term.

The word is so new that anyone can ensure its permanance. It was first used by Jim Groom (on the picture), from the University of Mary Washington, on his blog on May 25. After its first appearance, some authors started the process of adoption that motivated me to write this post. A good example of edupunk is the course Murder, Madness, and Mayhem: Latin American Literature in Translation, from the University of British Columbia, that aims to be an experiment on creating articles on wikipedia “(having) one’s students as partners and peers”.

We can find other evidence of its soon adoption on a video clip produced by Tony Hirst at the Open University in the UK on 8 June 2008, created as an introduction to the term. Some unresolved questions about this are: Is edupunk a proper term? How long will it last? Is it too little serius for eduworld? What do you think of it all?

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We are working on the organization of the UOC UNESCO Chair Fith International Seminar, that will take place on Barcelona from November 12th to 14th. Altough we already have some names to be confirmed and we can’t make public the entire program, this weblog is a good place to announce that we will have some a good representation of several universities and institutions talking about the fight against the digital divide through education.

For example, we will listen to professor Tim Unwin about how ICT4D can help the fight. We will also count with Teemu Leinonen in representation of Wikiversity, a project that will allow us to open a very healthy debate about sharing academic knowledge.

On the same way, Bobbi Kurshan will present Curriki, an international network that offers free access to educational contents for pre-school and primary school levels.

On the other hand, Professor Sugata Mitra, from Newcastle University, will present his case “Hole in the wall”, where the concept Minimally Invasive Education comes from. There are some other topics to discuss during the Seminar that we will announce as soon as we have more confirmed speakers. Meanwhile, you can have a look at the seminar info on its web site.

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UOC has been responsible for the translation onto Catalan and Spanish of The Way Forward, a document for the development of the Open Educational Resources (OER) that is the result of an efford started by the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). The term Open Educational Resources, adopted in 2002 by UNESCO, and also all the philosophy behind, has been in constant evolution since it’s first appearance thanks to the work of a big world community, again promoted by UNESCO.

Our university has been working on the adaptation of The Way Forward, the document that defines the goals to make a bigger use of the OER on education world wide. As a result of our contribution to the work, you can check the Spanish and Catalan version of the document on the OER Wiki. Any suggestion will be kindly accepted.

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Ladies and gentlemen, wellcome to the first post of the UNESCO Chair in E-Learning of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya weblog. Let me introduce myself. My name is Carlos Albaladejo, I work full time on the coordination of the Chair and I’m proud of being the first author of this second version of our weblog.

This UNESCO Chair weblog inherits the contents of the Education and Culture channel of an older collaborative project, Creamos el Futuro, an open publication and debate platform managed by the Telefonica Foundation that counts with the support of different selected innovative Spanish universities.

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, from now UOC) was responsible for the publication and edition of one part of the project, the Education and Culture channel. Now that we have started our own weblog I’ll asume the role of editor, newsteller and network coordinator. I hope not to be alone on this travel trough content, so If you have a good knowledge about E-Learning, use of TIC on education and other topics related with the philosophy of the UOC UNESCO Chair in E-learning, please feel free to contact me.

During the next days and weeks several authors will start publishing their own content on this blog, so you can expect a good level of activity.

One last thing. I’ll write in English, wich is not my mother language, so I hope you can excuse any mistake I can make on my texts. On the same way, there’s no official language on this blog. We recommend you to post/comment in English if you are able to, but you can also use Spanish or Catalan languages. Enjoy.

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