Online Educa Berlin collected a record-breaking crowd again this year. My favourite speaker was Sugata Mitra, who kick-started the learning process by carrying the computer in – and the teacher out. Our own session was called “Learning 2.0: The Gap Between Talking and Doing” in which the speaker was – standing next to Satu and myself – Lance Dublin; the chairman was Jan Kees Meindersma.

This year’s Online Educa Berlin conference once again collected a record-breaking crowd. The conference was attended by 2,197 education professionals from 108 countries, even though the participation was made more difficult by the problems with flights: the Finns had to deal with the repercussions of the airline strike and the others were troubled by snow storms. The conference arrangements and the hotel services were excellent as usual, apart from the online connections.

The keynote speeches envisioned the future and emphasized the fact that the majority of people in the world use the web with their cell phones. Many speeches touched on the importance of versatile digital reading skills and the need to find a way to connect formal and informal learning in a new way. The true star of the conference, Sugata Mitra – who is known for the Hole on the Wall project directed at poverty-stricken Indian children – spoke of these themes, too. Mitra had a fun way of showcasing his current experiments in which he makes the pupils teach themselves through the aid of the computer. He asks the learners to form groups of four people, each of which has one computer at their disposal. The groups are given a difficult problem to solve and all the distractions – such as the teacher – are removed from the site. Surprisingly 10–12 year-olds are already capable of solving the problems independently, set their own learning goals and develop the suitable pedagogical solutions. Mitra’s presentation was illustrated with many good case examples: among other things, the Indian children downloaded a spoken dictionary to help them learn better pronunciation in English, so that the computer program started to understand their speech. Mitra’s methods have the sort of revolutionary ingredients which have the power to really take learning to a truly new digital age.

The educational use of the social media increases at a steady pace, but the conference didn’t reveal anything new happening in the field. Personal learning environments are still current, and the tools used in them are being developed further. Russell Stannard spoke in vivid terms about Twitter as an aid for networking; according to him, the core of the whole activity is in the meaningful messages and the reputation of the sender. 10 Theses For and Against the Educational Use of Social Media, presented by Satu Nurmela and myself, had a similar message. The usage of the tools has to be based on the benefits and the quality of the content, otherwise they have no intrinsic value in teaching. However, there were multiple well-developed practical applications presented at the conference, which speaks of the deepening of knowledge in online teaching.

Larry Johnson envisioned a future in which the keyboard is transferred from the screen onto the user’s skin. Russell Stannard’s energetic Twitter presentation got even experienced users excited. The Christmas Market offered only a hasty currywurst thanks to the airline strike – even Satu had to make a quick getaway in the middle of our session.

Waltic is an international writers’ and literary translators’ congress managed by the Swedish Writers’ Union. This year’s Waltic 2010 was organised on the first weekend of September at Bilgi University in Istanbul, and both its programme and participants were very much oriented to the Nordic Countries.

The themes of the presentations were varied, but many statements touched on the impact of the Internet on the work of a writer. The tendency has been to think of the Web as a threat, but it also opens possibilities for a content producer – even a new kind of independence from the publisher. The chairman of the Swedish Writers’ Union, Mats Söderlund, gave quite an interesting presentation on the Dejavu web service. The Writers’ Union’s own web service offers books the publisher has pulled out of commercial circulation to be bought by the public. The writers own all the rights to their own work and receive a larger portion of the profit.

Another very tempting web service was also present at Waltic: the Bokhylla service maintained by the Norwegian National Library. The Bokhylla web library offers over 50 000 works which can be read off your own computer screen. The writers are remunerated by Kopinor, the Norwegian Reproduction Rights Organisation, the same way as Finnish writers are remunerated for photocopying.

Writers and translators have to do non-biased research on how they can better their own working conditions in the new situation. From the perspective of financial advantages, the connections – for example, sharing information about fees – are important, but what is even more significant is the international communication to secure the writer’s freedom of speech. A shockingly large number of the comments revealed how vulnerable a writer’s position is in a closed society.

Waltic 2010 writers Azar Mahloujian, Hasna Jasimuddin Moudud ja Ana Luisa Valdés told impressive stories of exile. Olov Hyllienmark urged translators to hold their ground in fee negotiations. The Swedish Dejavu service gives books a new lease on life.

ITE 2010 (Interactive Technology in Education) was organized this year for the 21st time. Many things were familiar from previous years: the crowds, the presenters, the atmosphere. This is apparently a working concept as it is, but the program could always use some spicing up with a few fresh names and ideas.

A sense of experimentation was introduced into the conference by the Sometu network, which realized its session with a rotation of panelists – these kinds of panel discussions which break the mould are oddly refreshing. The exhibition area also offered a greater input than expected: for example, the well-rounded presentation of the smart board raised the excitement, as did the simulations from the Emergency Services College. However, they were not enough to substitute for the disappointment caused by the fact that main speaker Stephen Downes was forced to hold his speech on personal learning platforms long-distance, due to the volcanic ash cloud over Europe.

In our Social Media – Beneath the Surface theme seminar, Satu Nurmela and I held our presentation “10 Theses For and Against the Educational Use of Wiki, Blogs and Social Networks”. After our own session, I had time to gain some familiarity with the useful Elma report and a seminar which discussed libraries as sites of learning. All in all, the conference dissects the field of online learning well, but offers only a few new things to try.

Tapio Neuvonen from the Emergency Services College demonstrates how the firemen train with the aid of simulations. Elina Harju and Ulla Vehmasalo from Tampere held a wonderful presentation entitled “Is Digital Life Fun, Easy and Free of Cost”? Kari Hintikka published a report on e-learning business models together with Anne Rongas. The leaders of our own theme seminar, Marja Kylämä ja Pasi Silander, got serious for the last effort.

The participants at Online Educa largely spoke for the changes in the teaching culture and informal learning. Both the bigger agents (an IBM function on the right) and private teachers (in the middle, Esben Lydiksen from Copenhagen) enthused over the use of social media. The only one who criticised the social media – Aric Sillman – also participated (on the left) in a lively debate.

Online Educa was held for the fifteenth time and the conference was attended by over 2,000 online learning professionals from 90 countries. All-in-all, the topics and the speakers were interesting, but the discussions seemed to be repeating the old demands for change in teaching practices, but lacked enthusiasm for taking action. The most useful functions were, in my opinion, those which really focused on fresh approaches to teaching – for example, the Pecha Kucha presentations, social media in language teaching and designing minimalistic web environments. As a perfect finish to the first day, the audience was treated to real fireworks at the debate in which – in accordance with British tradition – two completely opposing opinions were expressed concerning the benefits of the teaching technologies. In particular, the speeches by Aric Sigman and Donald Clark electrified the atmosphere at the end of the long day – we really need to bring something like this to all conferences! My absolute favourite of the keynote speakers was Artur Dyro (Young Digital Planet), according to whom there will only be two agents in the future world of publishing: the author and the service provider. The direction of the change is obvious both in publishing as well as education, but in practice things move forward at a frustratingly slow pace. The problem is not with the technology, but in the ways people are willing to function.

Zenna Atkins gave a colourful speech on the new ways of learning available to children, and the credibility problem the schools are faced with. The only Finnish participants were the Aalto University and Metropolia, but the Berlin Christmas Market boasted some Finnish stands as well.

Online teaching was once again advanced with Fenno-Greek vigour in Athens during the last week of February. At the fourth HAUS-EKDDA seminar, it came to the fore that community spirit has a strong foundation in Greece, but instrumental communications do not necessarily represent the strongest area. In any case, e-communications restore the principle of the identical and equal right to speak, in the spirit of convening together at the Pnyx. At this stage, however, online participation functions best through close encounters in accordance with the principles of multiformity. The philosophy of open production obtains abundant sympathetic response, even if the wikiversity and wikibooks are in their nascent stages of development.

Information and communications technology is being beneficially utilized in increasingly diverse fields in Greece. Know-how – in like manner to accessibility to network materials – are improving via target-oriented development. The fourth HAUS-EKDDA seminar was once again piloted by Riitta Suominen and Johanna Snellman.

In September 2008, the third online teaching-related HAUS-EKDDA seminar was arranged in Athens. The use of wikis still inspires the instruction developers: operational modes are being further refined and specified all the time. The open content production philosophy is vigorously in vogue, and wiki still appears to be the easiest type of community generation tool. The fate of open wiki courses and materials appears, however, to be based on the contribution of active editors, since the uneven quality of content production necessitates good editorial work – otherwise, the usability of content is poor regardless of the user-friendliness of the program itself. The seminar boasted participants from a gratifyingly large number of administrative sectors, and as usual the programme was the responsibility of Riitta Suominen and Johanna Snellman.

The initialization of online teaching is accelerated by easy tools that are available for use by many administrative areas for various purposes. Openness increases usability and application possibilities – wiki schools are a source of interest in both Greece and Finland.

The second consecutive HAUS and EKDDA mutual seminar was held 19 – 23 May 2008 in Athens. At the seminar, putting together an online course was the main emphasis as well as the use in instruction of social media tools such as wikis and blogs. Special attention was given to the fact that the quantity of high-quality Open Access materials is increasing at a feverish pace. Similarly, the role of learning platforms would appear to be decreasing and the utilization of light, free tools increasing. The culture of community sharing still requires strengthening in teaching, which has traditionally been a field of solitary achievement. Riitta Suominen acted as seminar leader in cooperation with Johanna Snellman.

The seminar was held at the Ministry of the Interior’s training centre in Athens. The participants included information and communications technology specialists, producers of electronic cultural services and teachers. The work goes on smoothly in accordance with the Become an eTeacher in a Week guide.

The SITE 2008 conference hosted speakers from 65 countries and a large number of parallel sessions. The use of social media in teaching – wikis in particular – was the thematic offering this year. The wiki presentations can be summarized as follows: Wikis have come to stay in teaching. The idea behind such activity is active cooperative effort with regard to some question of content, and wikis truly have the possibility of deepening learning. Monitoring-based research also indicated problems, however: participation is uneven, motivation tends to decline in long projects, and specialists in particular showed themselves to be cautious about editing their colleagues’ texts.

Research results have also obtained confirmation on what is a familiar matter in practice – teachers gain benefit from the same social media-based tools in teaching that they also utilize during their leisure time. Currently 19 out of every 20 American youth actively use social media, so it is certain that in the future social media tools are set to be used extensively both in teaching and in working life generally.

One aspect outside the field of social media that led to a lot of discussion was the presentation by Ronald McBride(Northwestern State University of Louisiana), according to which the research data does not support the rather general assumption that student results or satisfaction improve when classroom teaching is joined to online instruction. The speaker demonstrated in detail that it is possible to realize all the same operations online that are used in classroom teaching. Contradicting the assumption referred to, the quality of web services rises significantly when classroom teaching is completely abandoned. It is universities and schools that need teachers, he says – not students.

One of the most interesting speakers at the SITE 2008 conference was Professor Punya Mishra (Michigan State University), who emphasized the creative combination of content, pedagogics and technology. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) is King – that’s all right mama!

The combined online learning seminar between HAUS Finnish Institute of Public Management Ltd and EKDDA, the corresponding organization in Greece, was held 8 – 13 October 2007 in Athens. It was quite appropriate considering the Athens venue that questions of learning were discussed in the real Socratic spirit. The obstacle to the quick assimilation of online learning is not actually regarded as a technical problem but rather as the slow change affecting the culture of teaching. Online teaching – as with all network operations – is itself based on doing, participation and equal interaction, but the assimilation of consultative operational modes has proved to be much slower than the learning of information technology skills. Teaching practices in the land of democracy’s birth are no more learner-centred than in Finland, but the need for cultural change is evident if there is a wish that online teaching be intensified and its initialization accelerated. – Riitta Suominen acted as seminar leader in cooperation with Johanna Snellman (HAUS).

Online teaching-related good practices were a source of interest and discussion for the participants in both face-to-face and network-based connections at the eLearning seminar in Athens. Aris and Ada (in the middle) look after the Ministry of Education’s online learning portal, which offers open materials for Greek schools and colleges. Dim, Lena and George (on the right) are developing methods for teaching mathematics online.