The rocky road from Dublin 1 - Second thoughts on the conference
19-September-2005
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Graham Attwell has shown that a conference weblog can provide real-time news coverage on the events in the conference. It strikes me how quickly he has been able to summarise some main threads in the conference (see his blog entries of the 13th September). For me it has always taken a longer time to work my way to a comprehensive mission report (see my archives on ECER and VETNET in the years 1996-2003). Consequently, by the time I have managed to produce a reflection document to support possible follow-up there has been hardly any energy left for any real follow-up measures.
However, in this respect the new tools and facilities provide also new opportunities. So far there has always been the hurdle to write the first documents that could trigger into move inspiring spin-off activities. Now, all you need is to test your ideas with a blog entry. They either reach the "take off" point - thanks to the active people who respond - or remain on the ground. This doesn't cause anyone any greater damage - at least the ideas have been tested.
Extended text for this entry:
In this spirit I would raise some issues for further discussion: 1. The opening colloquium (based on the keynote of James Wickham) and the VETNET Research Forum (based on the European follow-up study on the progress with the Lisbon goals in education and training) raised the issue how to position the VETNET community in the European debates on the future of VET (and of VET research). Once again (from Frankfurt 1997 onwards) statements were made that VETNET needs a proper discussion on European research agenda - to be concluded with common positions. I remember that the Open meeting at Hamburg 2003 tried to take a step towards launching such a discussion (see my archive notess on the debates on "I-Europe" of the year 2003). However, it was not clear to us what kind of role could be given for such a debate. Now we could just start the discussion on the blog page and see at a later date what kind of document could come up as a result. (I promise to come back on this with a further input.) 2. The round table on "regional development" and "action-oriented research" made some progress in bringing some conceptually and methodologically similar approaches to dialogue with each other. However, the time frame enabled only opening statements and some cross-cutting remarks. Now that the papers and powerpoints are available on the website, it might be worth looking more closely what kind of mutual learning could be promoted after the conference. 3. Several sessions were addressing some aspects of virtual support for learning, research, knowledge sharing or knowledge development. Yet, most of these inputs were based on ordinary papers and power point presentations. Not many efforts were made to pilot with virtual support being linked to the presentation (either in the preparatory phase, in the mode of presenting or in the follow-up phase). Now we might have a chance to do some piloting in this sphere. I guess this is it for the moment. I am looking forward to comments or alternative ideas. Let us keep up the momentum of ECER'05 Dublin instead of letting the Autumn turn the grey side up too quickly! Pekka Kämäräinen
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