CfPs 3th IEETeL 2012

You are very welcome to participate in

3th International Workshop on
Interactive Environments and Emergent Technologies for eLearning (IEETeL 2012) that will be held in conjunction with The 11th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Communications
(IUCC-2012 - http://scim.brad.ac.uk/~hmibrahi/IUCC2012/),
Liverpool, UK, 25-27 June 2012

For further details, please see the workshop site:
https://sites.google.com/site/ieet4el/home

Rationale
------------------

The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers, educators and technology experts to share and discuss the new solutions, trends and realizations of eLearning environments and the adoption of emergent technologies in a learning process.
New kind of learners requires suitable environments ensuring flexible, personalized, adaptable, in-demand learning. The dynamic, interactive and social aspects of Web 2.0 have great potential to support innovative teaching and meaningful learning. Semantic web enables computers and people to work in cooperation, 3D virtual worlds support new online experiences of research and learning, augmented reality helps deeper understanding of subject matter, mobile technologies play a role in increasing individual support and opportunities for personal development.
This forum invites research, technical papers, and work in progress investigating eLearning environments process development and practices of their implementation in education to support university students as well as to prepare them to become self-organized and life-long learners.
These include the technological aspect of environments building: “from scratch”, using open source software or mashup applications from a cloud as well as pedagogical strategies and solutions for utilizing such environments.

Topics of interest
-----------------------------

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Web 2.0 Applications for Learning
• 3D Virtual Environments
• Semantic Web
• Educational MashUps
• Immersive technologies in ADL
• Networks/Grids for learning
• Adaptive and intuitive environments
• Personal Learning Environments
• Mobile learning environments and applications
• Augmented Reality Implementation

Program Committee
--------------------------
Toshio Okamoto, University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan
Gabriela Grosseck, West University of Timisoara, Romania
Reggie Smith III, United States Distance Learning Association
Inge de Waard, Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, Belgium
Ion Roceanu, "Carol l" National Defense University, Romania
Marco Temperini, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Mohamed Amine Chatti, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Dimiter Denev, Max Planck Instiut Informatik, Germany
Volin Karagiozov, American University in Bulgaria, Bulgaria
Jennifer Richardson, Purdue University, USA Alev
Elci, Eastern Mediterranean University, Turkey
Javed Alam, Youngstown State University, USA
Palitha Edirisingha, University of Leicester, UK

Organizers
-------------------------
Malinka Ivanova
Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria
Email: m_ivanova@tu-sofia.bg
Anguelina Popova
Open University of the Netherlands
Email: angie.popova@gmail.com

PLEM - User Scenario

Our student Simona Dakova has created a sample user scenario for PLEM. More information about PLEM can be found here.

Please feel free to use this service. Comments, feedback, suggestions for improvement etc. are welcome!

Toward a Personal Learning Environment Framework

The paper "Toward a Personal Learning Environment Framework" was selected as the best article from the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments (IJVPLE) for the 2010 volume year. More important, the paper is now free and can be downloaded here.

Abstract:

Over the past decade, it has been argued that technology-enhanced learning (TEL) could respond to the needs of the new knowledge society and transform learning. However, despite isolated achievements, TEL has not succeeded in revolutionizing education and learning processes. Most current TEL initiatives still take a centralized technology-push approach in which learning content is pushed to a predefined group of learners in closed environments. A fundamental shift toward a more open and learner-pull model for learning is needed. Recently, the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) concept has emerged to open new doors for more effective learning and overcome many of the limitations of traditional TEL models. In this paper, the authors present theoretical, design, implementation, and evaluation details of PLEF, a framework for mashup personal learning environments. The primary aim of PLEF is to help learners create custom learning mashups using a wide variety of digital media and data.

Model-driven mashup personal learning environments

The paper "Model-driven mashup personal learning environments" has been published in the Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (Vol. 3, No. 1). The paper can be downloaded here.

Abstract:

Mashups have become the driving force behind the development of personal learning environments (PLEs). Creating mashups in an ad hoc manner is, however, for end users with little or no programming background not an easy task. Various tools and platforms have been built in an attempt to support mashup creation. These platforms, however, are still considered complex and do not address crucial challenges in mashup development today, such as scalability, interoperability, reuse, and automatic service invocation and mediation. In this paper, we leverage the possibility to use the concept of model-driven mashup development (MDMD) as an approach that can drastically tackle the aforementioned issues and drive the rapid and user-friendly creation of mashups. We then present the conceptual and technical details of PLEF-Ext as a flexible framework for end-user, model-driven development (MDD) of mashup PLEs.

CfP MUPPLE Workshop at EC-TEL 2010

3rd Workshop on Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments (MUPPLE-10)

Held at the 5th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning
(EC-TEL10) in Barcelona, Spain, September 28 - October 1, 2010

https://sites.google.com/site/muppleworkshop/
*******************************************************************
RATIONALE

A change in perspective can be certified in the recent years to
technology-enhanced learning research and development: More and
more learning applications on the web are putting the learner centre
stage, not the organisation. They empower learners with capabilities
to customize and even construct their own personal learning environments
(PLEs).

These PLEs typically consist of distributed web-applications and services
that support system-spanning collaborative and individual learning
activities in formal as well as informal settings. These PLEs typically
complement Learning Management Systems (LMS) with additional widgets,
services, and data integrated from and with organization-external
learning tools. Technologically speaking, this shift manifests in a
learning web where information is distributed across sites and activities
can easily encompass the use of a greater number of pages and services
offered through web-based learning applications. Mash-ups, the
'frankensteining' of software artefacts and data, have emerged to be the
software development approach for these long-tail and perpetual-beta niche
markets. Core technologies facilitating this paradigm shift are Ajax,
javascript-based widget-collections, and microformats that help to glue
together public web APIs in individual applications. Interoperability is
the enabler to allow these different components to be worked together
facilitating the achievement of the underlying learning task.

In a wide range of European IST-funded research projects such as Stellar,
ROLE, LTfLL, Mature, and OpenScout a rising passion for these technologies
can be identified.

This workshop therefore serves as a forum to bring together researchers and
developers from these projects and an open public that have an interest in
understanding and engineering mash-up personal learning environments (MUPPLEs).

The workshop is supported with donations to the Open University of the UK:
travel grants will be available.

*******************************************************************
TOPICS OF INTEREST (but not limited to):

* Visions: Architectures, Frameworks, Strategies, Models
* (Collaborative) Authoring Tools
* Data Interoperability: with e.g. Microformats, streaming data,
mixed media data
* User Interfaces: Concepts, Metaphors, Workflows
* Development Methodologies
* Innovative Widgets and Services: e.g. for instruction, game-based learning,
self-reflection, personal information
* Interoperability Standards for widgets, content recombination, configuration
* User Studies & Evaluation Methods: evaluating e.g. performance, usability,
specific design features, training methods
* Educational theories for PLE

*******************************************************************
WORKSHOP FORMAT

The aim of this workshop is to bring together the various research and
development groups in technology-enhanced learning that currently focus
on the development of the next generation learning environments that
put the individuum centre stage and empower learners with design
capabilities by deploying modern mash-up principles to establish
system-spanning interoperability.

As this approach is rather young, the workshop seeks to attract both
research results and work in progress in order to chart out the current
state-of-the-art of MUPPLEs in TEL and to define main enablers and future
challenges. Naturally, it will serve as a forum for establishing new
collaborations.

Using the presentations as impulses and continuing post-talk debates,
the workshop will conclude the day with an open discussion exchanging
ideas, summing up, and defining a medium- to long-term research agenda.

*******************************************************************
SUBMISSIONS

Authors are invited to submit original unpublished research as position
statements (max. 2 pages) and extended abstracts (max. 4 pages). Those
extended abstracts that are accepted will be given the option to be
extended into full papers (8 pages). All submitted position statements
and extended abstracts will be peer-reviewed by at least two members of
the program committee for originality, significance, clarity, and quality.
The workshop proceedings will be published online as part of the CEUR
Workshop proceedings series. http://CEUR-WS.org is a recognized ISSN
publication series, with ISSN 1613-0073.

We are additionally preparing a MUPPLE book, which will draft contributions
from this and the previous workshops.

Authors should use the Springer LNCS format (http://www.springer.com/lncs).
For camera-ready format instructions, please see 'For Authors' instructions
at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.

All questions and submissions should be sent to: mupple @ googlegroups.com

*******************************************************************
IMPORTANT DATES

* Paper Submission: June 26th, 2010
* Results Notification: July 7th, 2010
* Camera Ready Submission: September 15th, 2010
* Workshop Date: September 28th or 29th, 2010

*******************************************************************
PROGRAMME COMMITTEE (to be confirmed)

* Abelardo Pardo (University Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
* Dai Griffith (University of Bolton, UK)
* Denis Gillet (EPFL, Switzerland)
* Effie Law (University of Leicester, United Kingdom)
* Felix Moedritscher (Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria)
* Graham Atwell (Pontydysgu, United Kingdom)
* Gytis Cibulskis (Kaunas Technical University, Lithuania)
* Mart Laanpere (Tallinn University, Estonia)
* Martin Wolpers (Fraunhofer FIT, Germany)
* Mohamed Amine Chatti (RWTH Aachen, Germany)
* Nikos Karacapilidis (University of Patras, Greece)
* Scott Wilson (University of Bolton, United Kingdom)
* Stephane Sire (EPFL, Switzerland)
* Tony Hirst (Open University, UK)
* Zuzana Bizonova (INT Paris, France)
* Jan M. Pawlowski (University of Jyvaeskylae, Finland)
* Stefan Trausan-Matu (University "Politehnica" Bucharest, Romania)

*******************************************************************
ORGANISERS

* Marco Kalz (Open University, The Netherlands)
* Matthias Palmer (University of Upsala, Sweden)
* Fridolin Wild (The Open University, UK)

*******************************************************************
ABOUT EC-TEL10

After four successful EC-TEL conferences in the year from 2006 to 2009,
the Fifth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning provides
a unique forum for all research related to TEL, among them education,
psychology, and computer science. The contributions will cover the design
of innovative environments, the implementation of new technological
solutions, results of empirical studies on socio-cognitive processes in
learning, and field studies regarding the use of technologies in context.

EC-TEL is a competitive and broad forum for TEL research in Europe and
beyond. In its specialised accompanying workshops and the highlighting
main conference programme, EC-TEL10 provides unique networking
possibilities for participating researchers throughout the week and
includes project meetings and discussions for ongoing and new research
activities supported by the European Commission.

See http://www.ectel2010.org/ for details.

CfP Workshop Future Learning Landscapes at EC-TEL 2010

Call for papers

Future Learning Landscapes: Towards the Convergence of Pervasive and Contextual computing, Global Social Media and Semantic Web in Technology Enhanced Learning
2nd edition

A workshop of EC-TEL 2010
Barcelona (Spain), 28 or 29 September

http://conferences.telecom-bretagne.eu/futurelearning2010/

Rationale
This workshop seeks to foster discussions and conceptual ideas regarding the convergence of three technologies which will have a major impact on the next generation of technology enhanced learning environments: pervasive computing, social media and the semantic web. Each of these technologies provides its own opportunities and challenges. Their convergence could enable the development of new educational practices in situated and networked learning.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together practitioners and academics interested in the application of pervasive computing, social media and the semantic web to new educational settings and future learning landscapes. The main outcome will be a published white paper on future research directions.

Relevant topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

* Global learning environments
- How can we combine and reuse data to enable activities and collaborations across multiple environments to support learners?
- How can we employ semantic, social and contextual technologies to help tutors and teachers to understand learning processes and learner progression?
- What will be the contribution of such environments to pedagogical design and activities (e.g., field work, inquiry learning...)?
- What are the possible infrastructure solutions that will enable the aggregation of learning services and data interoperability among them (e.g., facebook, skype and blogs)?
- What are the technological and social issues relating to the merging of semantic and social technologies for learning across diverse cultures and settings?

* Institutional and social environment integration
- How can we integrate institutional learning and personal informal learning through the use of social media and mash-up techniques?
- How can we define global scenarios including formal and informal learning in social environments?
- How to support learning activities in context and across contexts?

* User modelling
- How can social data ontological tools like FOAF, SIOC, etc. enrich the user model?
- Can we build and leverage a rich user model, built from linked data on the learning web environments?

* Context and adaptation
- How can we develop new approaches to modelling context, arising from interactions between people, locations and interactive artefacts?
- How can context be dynamically adapted to social environments, to enable local and global adaptivity?
- How can continually changing contextual data be interpreted at the semantic level?
- How can we create mixed reality environments for learning that merge physical and virtual environments?
- How can we create new digitally enhanced learning spaces with pervasive and contextual technologies?

Submission

Each position paper should address one or more of the topics of the workshop and range from 2 to 4 pages long.

It should outline the submitter’s view on the workshop themes and the reasons for the submitter’s interest in the particular topic. Based on the analysis of the submissions, the workshop organisers will prepare a short synthesis and issue-oriented presentation to introduce the workshop.

Send papers to the following email address : futurelearning2010@mlistes.telecom-bretagne.eu

Important Dates

* Paper submission deadline: June 27th, 2010
* Notification of acceptance: July 11th, 2010
* Final camera ready papers due: September, 4th, 2010
* Workshop date: September 28 or 29, 2010

Organisers:

Serge Garlatti – Telecom Bretagne, France
Yvan Peter – Université Lille 1 – LIFL, France
Mike Sharples, University of Nottingham, UK
Elizabeth Brown, University of Nottingham, UK
Marcelo Milrad, Linnaeus University, Sweden
Mohamed Amine Chatti, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Bich-Thuy Dong Thi, Vietnam National University - Ho Chi Minh city

PLEM: a Web 2.0 driven Long Tail aggregator and filter for e-learning

The paper "PLEM: a Web 2.0 driven Long Tail aggregator and filter for e-learning" has been published in the International Journal of Web Information Systems (IJWIS) by Emerald. A preprint of this paper can be downloaded here. The PLEM project homepage can be accessed here.

Abstract:

The Personal Learning Environment (PLE) driven approach to learning suggests a shift in emphasis from a teacher driven knowledge-push to a learner driven knowledge-pull learning model. One concern with knowledge-pull approaches is knowledge overload. The concepts of collective intelligence and the Long Tail provide a potential solution to help learners cope with the problem of knowledge overload. Based on these concepts, the paper proposes a filtering mechanism that taps the collective intelligence to help learners find quality in the Long Tail, thus overcoming the problem of knowledge overload. We present theoretical, design, and implementation details of PLEM, a Web 2.0 driven service for personal learning management, which acts as a Long Tail aggregator and filter for learning. The primary aim of PLEM is to harness the collective intelligence and leverage social filtering methods to rank and recommend learning entities.

Reference:

Chatti, M.A., Anggraeni, Jarke, M., Specht, M., and Maillet, K. (2010) ‘PLEM: a Web 2.0 driven Long Tail aggregator and filter for e-learning’, International Journal of Web Information Systems, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 5–23.

Tim Berners-Lee on Open Data [Video]

In this video, Tim Berners-Lee talks to the TED audience about Open Data and shows some results when the data can be mashed up. In a TEL context, this data can also be leveraged to build mashup personal learning environments.

IJTEL Special Issue on MUPPLE

Call for articles of the
International Journal for TEL
for a special issue on
'Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments'

Submission deadline: January 8th, 2010


The International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL)
seeks original manuscripts for a Special Issue on Mash-Up
Personal Learning Environments to appear in 2010.

A change in perspective can be certified in the recent years
to technology-enhanced learning re-search and development: More
and more learning applications on the web are putting the learner
centre stage, not the organisation. They empower learners with
capabilities to customize and even construct their own personal
learning environments (PLEs). These PLEs typically consist of
distributed web-applications and services that support system-
spanning collaborative and individual learning activities in
formal as well as informal settings.

Technologically speaking, this shift manifests in a learning
web where information is distributed across sites and activities
can easily encompass the use of a greater number of pages and
services offered through web-based learning applications. Mash-ups,
the 'frankensteining' of software arte-facts and data, have
emerged to be the software development approach for these
long-tail and per-petual-beta niche markets. Core technologies
facilitating this paradigm shift are Ajax, javascript-based
widget-collections, and microformats that help to glue together
public web APIs in individual applications.

The International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning
(IJTEL) dedicates a focused issue on col-lecting the research
on understanding and engineering mash-up personal learning
environments.

TOPICS:

- Visions: architectures, frameworks, strategies, models
- (Collaborative) authoring tools
- Data interoperability: with e.g. microformats, streaming
data, mixed media data
- User interfaces: concepts, metaphors, workflows
- Development methodologies
- Innovative widgets and services: e.g. for instruction,
reflection, personal information
- Interoperability standards for e.g. content recombination
or PLE configuration
- User studies & evaluation methods: evaluating e.g. performance
- Usability, specific design features, training methods

IJTEL fosters multidisciplinary discussion and research on
technology enhanced learning (TEL) ap-proaches at the
individual, organisational, national and global levels.
Its key objective is to be the leading scholarly scientific
journal for all those interested in, researching and
contributing to the technology enhanced learning episteme.
For this reason, IJTEL delivers research articles, position
papers, surveys and case studies aiming:

- Provide a holistic and multidisciplinary discussion
on technology enhanced learning research issues
- Promote international collaboration and exchange of
ideas and know how on technology enhanced learning
- Investigate strategies on how technology enhanced
learning can promote sustainable development

Papers submitted to this special issue must follow the criteria
used by IJTEL and defined by the na-ture of this special issue,
namely by covering the following mandatory items:

- Presenting original research;
- Offering a critical review of the state of the art in the field;
- Providing methodologically sound and innovative
technological insights;
- Illustrating the application in real-world cases;
- Performing the evaluation of the proposed ideas.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published or
be currently submitted for journal publication elsewhere. As
an author, you are responsible for understanding and adhering
to our submission guidelines. You can access them at

http://www.inderscience.com/mapper.php?id=31

The journal is now accepting submissions for this special issue
through its Online Submissions and Peer-Review System at
http://www.inderscience.com/papers, which provides instructions
about formatting and length. If you have any questions,
please contact submissions@inderscience.com or the guest
editors at the addresses listed below. Please include the title
of the Journal in your email and give as much detail as possible
about your query or problem.

IMPORTANT DATES
- Paper Submission: January 8th, 2010
- Results Notification: February 8th, 2010
- Revisions: March 8th, 2010
- Notification of Final Acceptance: March 21st, 2010
- Final versions: April 21st, 2010

BOARD OF REVIEWERS
- Abelardo Pardo (University Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
- Dai Griffith (University of Bolton, UK)
- Denis Gillet (EPFL, Switzerland)
- Effie Law (University of Leicester, United Kingdom)
- Felix Mödritscher (Vienna University of Economics
and Business, Austria)
- Graham Atwell (Pontydysgu, United Kingdom)
- Gytis Cibulskis (Kaunas Technical University, Lithuania)
- Mart Laanpere (Tallinn University, Estonia)
- Martin Wolpers (Fraunhofer FIT, Germany)
- Mohamed Amine Chatti (RWTH Aachen, Germany)
- Ralf Klamma (RWTH Aachen, Germany)
- Nikos Karacapilidis (University of Patras, Greece)
- Scott Wilson (University of Bolton, United Kingdom)
- Stéphane Sire (EPFL, Switzerland)
- Tony Hirst (Open University, UK)
- Ernie Ghiglione (Macquarie University, AU)

(GUEST) EDITORS

- Fridolin Wild (The Open University, UK)
- Matthias Palmer (University of Upsala, Sweden)
- Marco Kalz (Open University, The Netherlands)

Model-Driven Mashup Development

Challenges for mashup development today include interoperability, reuse, and automatic service invocation and mediation. In my opinion, model-driven mashup development can provide a potential solution to these challenges.

In analogy to model-driven engineering (MDE) as used in software engineering, model-driven mashup development (MDMD) focuses on mashup specification (i.e. creating mashup models) rather than mashup implementation.

The figure above depicts how a model-driven approach to mashup development works.

1. The MDMD approach starts with a mashup modeling step, which occurs in a mashup environment neutral manner. In this crucial step, mashups are expressed as models. These models define the mashup functionality using a general purpose Mashup Modeling Language (MML). An MML would be used to describe how to call the mashup services (service invocation), what parameters are expected (service input), what parameters are needed for mediation (service mediation), and what to expect in return (service/mashup output). The result of this step are mashup models that are portable, reusable, interoperable, and user interface framework independent. I would propose the Mashup Mapping Description (MMD) as an example of an MML. MMD borrows from the Service Mapping Description (SMD) proposed by Kris Zip to describe RESTful and JSON-RPC services. MMD is a simple and lightweight JSON representation describing RESTful mashups (i.e. mashups of RESTful Web services). Here is an MMD sample that provides a model for the mashup of two popular services, namely Geonames and Google Video Search.

It's also possible to think about other mashup modeling languages that are based on other well-established service description specifications, such as WADL and WSDL 2.0 (both are XML-based and are used to describe HTTP-based services). The main advantage of MMD, as compared to a WADL or WSDL 2.0-based MML, is that it uses JSON, which offers several major advantages over XML (less verbose, easier to parse, enables client-based/in-browser mashups, and supports cross-domain Ajax via JSONP).

In order to support the mashup modeling step, mashup modeling tools (e.g. Visual Mashup Model Composer) are required to help users create mashup models in an easy and visual manner without the need to get familiar with the MML.

2. In a second step, the mashup model is translated to one or more platform/UI framework specific mashup implementations. The mashup implementation can be a mashup code using a particular declarative mashup Domain Specific Language (DSL) (e.g. EMML) or a mashup UI based on specific UI framework (e.g. HTML/JavaScript/CSS, Flash/Flex, Android).

This step should be well supported through generic tools that can process the mashup models written in MML and generate human or programmatic interfaces.

3. Once the mashup code/interface is generated and the mashup property values are assigned (in the code/interface), the mashup can then be executed inside a compliant mashup runtime that serves as a mashup demonstration environment (e.g. EMML Reference Runtime Engine, Flash Player Runtime, Android Runtime).

4. Once a mashup is created, it should be possible to provide a view of the mashup in a portable and embeddable mashup widget (aka mashlet). Mashlets are defined by JackBe as "user-oriented micro-applications ... providing the visualization, or “face”, of a mashup to be embedded in a web page". Once a fully functioning mashlet is developed, it can be published, shared, and reused anywhere. It can for instance be embedded into any HTML page, blog, wiki, portal, widget/gadget container (e.g. iGoogle, Apache Shindig), CMS/LMS, social networking platform, enterprise mashup platform, or mobile device.

Model-Driven Mashup Personal Learning Environments

Here are the slides of my talk last week at the MUPPLE workshop at ECTEL09. You can find the proceedings of the workshop here.

In this talk, I mainly introduced the concept of model-driven mashup development and presented PLEF-Ext as a service that leverages the Service Mapping Description (SMD) annotations of RESTful Web services to facilitate the automatic mediation and creation of client-based mashups.This service can be accessed here. Below is a list of popular Web services described with SMD.

- Geonames

- Google Ajax API

- Google Maps

- Yahoo Answers

- Yahoo Search

- YouTube

You can also find here other SMDs by Eric Abouaf.

Model-Driven Mashup Personal Learning Environments

View more documents from Mohamed Amine Chatti.

Impressions from ECTEL 2009

During last week I was attending ECTEL in lovely Nice. It was indeed an excellent event, well organized by the dream team: Katherine, Marcela, Florianne, Clementine, and Sylvie. I witnessed the sleepless nights they had over the last week to make from ECTEL a big success. It was amazing to see how such a big event with more than 300 participants, was organized by a small team of 5 persons. I remember other conferences with much more people on the organization committee, where the result was far less good than ECTEL 2009. Chapeau les filles!

On Tuesday, I attended the pre-conference ROLE MUPPLE workshop, well organized by my dear friends Fridolin Wild, Matthias Palmer, Daniel Müller, and Marco Kalz. I presented there our paper "SMashup Personal Learning Environments". You can find the proceedings of the workshop here. I much enjoyed the talks and discussions on how to leverage mashups to develop PLEs and other closely related topics such as widgets and recommendations. I also met great young researchers whom I know well from their blogs and online activities, but I didn't get the chance to meet before, such as Hendrik Drachsler, Behnam Taraghi, and Wolfgang Reinhardt. Hope to get the chance to cooperate with you guys!

On Wednesday afternoon, I attended the Future Learning Landscapes workshop, that I organized together with my dear friends Serge Garlatti, Yvan Peter, Marcelo Milrad, and Mike Sharples, who also delivered a very interesting and inspiring keynote talk on the first day of the conference. Thanks a million Serge and Yvan for giving me the chance to work with you. I really enjoyed every moment with you at the conference and I'm looking forward to further collaboration with you in the near future. It was also great to meet Jim Hensman and Amel Bouzeghoub, who also had a nice contribution to the workshop.

On Thursday and Friday, I attended some selected sessions at the main conference and presented our other paper "NetLearn: Social Network Analysis and Visualizations for Learning". I will share the slides on Slideshare soon. I listened to several interesting talks at the conference such as the one given by Stefanie Lindstaedt on work-integrated learning environments.

ECTEL was indeed an excellent event for networking. I met great people there. Many for the first time...

MUPPLE Programme Online

The ROLE MUPPLE workshop programme is now online.

Looking forward to seeing many of you next week at ECTEL.

Related posts:

- SMashup Personal Learning Environments

SMashup Personal Learning Environments

This paper explores the possibility to use semantic mashups to develop PLEs. I will present the same at the ECTEL MUPPLE workshop organized in the framework of the ROLE project.

Abstract:

Mashups have become the driving force behind the development of Personal Learning Environments (PLE). Creating mashups in an ad hoc manner is, however, for end users with little or no prgramming background not an easy task. In this paper, we leverage the possibility to use Semantic Mashups (SMashups) for a scalable approach to creating mashups. We present the conceptual and technical details of PLEFExt as a flexible framework for mashup-driven end-user development of PLEs. PLEF-Ext uses the Service Mapping Description (SMD) approach to adding semantic annotations to RESTful Web services, and leverages the SMD annotations to facilitate the automatic data mediation and user-friendly creation of learning mashups.

Related posts:

- PLEF: A Conceptual Framework for Mashup Personal Learning Environments

PLEF: A Conceptual Framework for Mashup Personal Learning Environments

The paper "PLEF: A Conceptual Framework for Mashup Personal Learning Environments" has been published in the July 2009 issue of the IEEE Learning Technology Newsletter edited by my dear colleagues Sabine Graf and Charalampos Karagiannidis.

PLEM: A Mashup-driven Long Tail Aggregator and Filter for Learning

I would like to share with you a new learning service called PLEM which can act as a mashup driven Long Tail aggregator and filter for learning.

PLEM as a Long Tail aggregator:

PLEM enables to collect a variety of niche learning elements (i.e. learning resources, learning services, learning experts, and learning communities) and make them available and easy to find. Everyone with an OpenID can log into PLEM and create a personalized space, where she can easily aggregate, manage, tag, rate, and share learning elements of interest.

Aggregation is supported by a federated search engine that enables to pull together learning resources from distributed sources, remix, and assemble them to form a new personalized learning resource collection (LRC). To achieve this, we utilize multiple social media search APIs to add open educational resources (via MIT OCW and OUNL OpenER), blogposts (via Google Blog Search and Technorati), videos (via Google Blog Search and YouTube), books (via Google Book Search), images (via Google Image Search and Flickr), and presentations (via Slideshare). The list of supported services will be extended to include e.g. other OER initiatives such as OUUK OpenLearn. The figure below shows the interface of this federated search engine. You can see here an example of an aggregated LRC.

The idea is not just to bookmark learning resources but to create a collection of the same, tag, rate, and share theses LRCs with others who can then save them to their spaces. The benefits of creating a LRC are twofold:

- Foster the concept of "The Learner as DJ". Scott Leslie and Harold Jarche talked about a similar concept: "The Open Educator as DJ".

- Finding a good LRC related to a topic we're interested in will be a huge time-saver. Recently, Firefox has adopted a similar approach with their new feature Add-on collections.

PLEM as a Long Tail Filter:

The primary aim of the PLEM filtering mechanism is to harness the collective intelligence to rank and recommend learning elements. The idea is quite simple, each filtering action on a learning element from the Web (e.g. comment, link, save, like, rate, vote, view, share) counts as one "vote" for that learning element. The mean value of all "votings" for a given learning element is then used to measure its popularity. As shown in the figure below, these "votes" currently include PLEM saves and ratings, Delicious saves, Friendfeed comments and likes, Yahoo inbound links, Digg votes, Google Trackbacks, and Technorati blog reactions. This list will be extended in the future to include other social media filtering services such as Twitter mentions and Diigo saves.

Below is the CfP for the 2nd workshop on Mash-Up Personal Learning Environments (MUPPLE’09). The same workshop last year was a great success. Please do consider submitting a paper to this very interesting workshop. Looking forward to seeing many of you there!

MUPPLE-09

2nd Workshop on Mash-UP Personal Learning Environments (MUPPLE-09) Interoperable Widgets, Services, and Microformats to facilitate Competence Development held at the 4th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL09), Nice, France, September 29 - October 2, 2009 RATIONALE A change in perspective can be certified in the recent years to technology-enhanced learning research and development: More and more learning applications on the web are putting the learner centre stage, not the organisation. They empower learners with capabilities to customize and even construct their own personal learning environments (PLEs). These PLEs typically consist of distributed web- applications and services that support system-spanning collaborative and individual learning activities in formal as well as informal settings. These PLEs typically complement Learning Management Systems (LMS) with additional widgets, services, and data integrated from and with organization-external learning tools.

STELLAR

Consequently, the aim of this workshop is not to discuss the
concepts ‘PLE vs. LMS’, but to focus more generally on how learning
experiences can be enriched using mash-ups of widgets and services
with microformats and how technology can help to respond automatically
to competence level, need, or context. Moreover, the investigation
of necessary competencies to deploy mash-up technologies, is
dedicated special attention in this workshop.

Technologically speaking, this shift manifests in a learning
web where information is distributed across sites and
activities can easily encompass the use of a greater number
of pages and services offered through web-based learning
applications. Mash-ups, the ‘frankensteining’ of software
artefacts and data, have emerged to be the software
development approach for these long-tail and perpetual-beta
niche markets. Core technologies facilitating this paradigm
shift are Ajax, javascript-based widget-collections, and
microformats that help to glue together public web APIs
in individual applications. Interoperability is the enabler
to allow these different components to be worked
together facilitating the achievement of the underlying
learning task.

In a wide range of European IST-funded research projects
such as ROLE, iCoper, Stellar, LTfLL, Mature, Palette, OpenScout,
and TENcompetence a rising passion for these technologies
can be identified.

This workshop therefore serves as a forum to bring together
researchers and developers from these projects and an open
public that have an interest in understanding and engineering
mash-up personal learning environments (MUPPLEs).

TOPICS OF INTEREST (but not limited to):

• Visions: Architectures, Frameworks, Strategies, Models
• (Collaborative) Authoring Tools
• Data Interoperability: with e.g. Microformats,
  streaming data, mixed media data
• User Interfaces: Concepts, Metaphors, Workflows
• Development Methodologies
• Innovative Widgets and Services: e.g. for instruction,
  game-based learning, self-reflection, personal information
• Interoperability Standards for widgets,
  content recombination, configuration
• User Studies & Evaluation Methods: evaluating e.g. performance,
  usability, specific design features, training methods

WORKSHOP FORMAT

The aim of this workshop is to bring together the various research
and development groups in technology-enhanced learning that currently
focus on the development of the next generation learning environments –
learning environments that put the individuum centre stage and empower
learners with design capabilities by deploying modern mash-up principles
to establish system-spanning interoperability.

As this approach is rather young, the workshop seeks to attract
both research results and work in progress in order to chart out
the current state-of-the-art of MUPPLEs in TEL and to define
main enablers and future challenges. Naturally, it will serve
as a forum for establishing new collaborations.

Using the presentations as impulses and continuing post-talk
debates, the workshop will conclude the day with an open discussion
exchanging ideas, summing up, and defining a medium- to
long-term research agenda.

SUBMISSIONS

Authors are invited to submit original unpublished research as full
papers (8 pages), work-in-progress as short papers (max. 4 pages) or
position statements (max. 2 pages). All submitted papers will be peer-
reviewed by at least three members of the program committee for
originality, significance, clarity, and quality.

The workshop proceedings will be published online as part of the
CEUR Workshop proceedings series. http://CEUR-WS.org is a recognized
ISSN publication series, with ISSN 1613-0073.

Furthermore, the workshop serves as stage for presenting
a snapshot of the work on contributions planned to be submitted
to the upcoming special issue on mash-up personal learning
environments in the International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL,
http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalCODE=ijtel).

Authors should use the Springer LNCS format (http://www.springer.com/
lncs). For camera-ready format instructions, please see “For Authors”
instructions at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.

All questions and submissions should be sent to:
f.wild @ open.ac.uk

IMPORTANT DATES

• Paper Submission: July 31st, 2009
• Results Notification: August 15th, 2009
• Camera Ready Submission: September 15th, 2009
• Workshop Date: September 29th, 2009

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

• Abelardo Pardo (University Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
• Dai Griffith (University of Bolton, UK)
• Denis Gillet (EPFL, Switzerland)
• Effie Law (University of Leicester, United Kingdom)
• Felix Mödritscher (Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria)
• Graham Atwell (Pontydysgu, United Kingdom)
• Gytis Cibulskis (Kaunas Technical University, Lithuania)
• Mart Laanpere (Tallinn University, Estonia)
• Martin Wolpers (Fraunhofer FIT, Germany)
• Mohamed Amine Chatti (RWTH Aachen, Germany)
• Nikos Karacapilidis (University of Patras, Greece)
• Scott Wilson (University of Bolton, United Kingdom)
• Stephane Sire (EPFL, Switzerland)
• Tony Hirst (Open University, UK)
• Bernd Simon (Knowledge Markets)
• Jad Najjar (Vienna University of Economics and Business)
• Kai Hoever (IMC AG)
• Zuzana Bizonova (INT Paris)
• Jan M. Pawlowski (University of Jyväskylä)

ORGANISERS

• Marco Kalz (Open University, The Netherlands)
• Daniel Müller (IMC AG, Germany)
• Palmer (University of Upsala, Sweden)
• Fridolin Wild (The Open University, UK)

ABOUT EC-TEL09

After three successful EC-TEL conferences in 2006, 2007, and 2008,
the Fourth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning
provides a unique forum for all research related to TEL, among
them education, psychology, and computer science. The contributions
will cover the design of innovative environments, the implementation 
of new technological solutions, results of empirical studies on
socio-cognitive processes in learning, and field studies regarding
the use of technologies in context.

EC-TEL is a competitive and broad forum for TEL research in Europe
and beyond. In its specialised accompanying workshops and the
highlighting main conference programme, EC-TEL09 provides
unique networking possibilities for participating researchers
throughout the week and includes project meetings and discussions 
for ongoing and new research activities supported by the European
Commission. See http://www.ectel09.org/ for details.