Don Passey
email: d.passey@lancaster.ac.uk

Educational transformation with open and social technologies in the non-formal school curriculum An analysis of three case studies in the United Kingdom

Keywords: Educational transformation, social networking, school community developments, intergenerational learning, digital technologies

This paper explores ways that open and social technologies relate to educational transformation, analysing three case studies of exemplar schoolbased projects. Schools in England have been asked to develop 'educational transformation'. Although there is no single definition, aspects of community and social interactions and networking are intended, as is development of appropriate uses of digital technologies. Managing educational transformation with digital technologies requires knowledge, levels of expertise, and willingness to manage innovation. Curriculum position and intention, management models and roles of intergenerational learning are fundamental to developments. Future implications for educational support and schools are considered.

Introduction

Educational transformation is of international concern at policy and practice levels. A recently published INTEL White Paper reported findings of educational transformation research in 5 countries [START_REF]INTEL: White Paper -Intel Education Transformation Research: Lessons Learned Across Five eLearning Programs[END_REF], while Becta (former government agency in England for e-strategy) stated clearly its aims to provide: "strategic leadership in the innovative and effective use of ICT to enable the transformation of learning, teaching and educational organisations for the benefit of every learner" [START_REF]Educational Evidence Portal: Becta -British Educational Communications and Technology Agency[END_REF]. But the definition of educational transformation is unclear even at a single national level. Educational transformation and school build and structure have been considered as related areas in England. In 2003, the government department for education announced the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Programme, aiming to renew all 3,500 English secondary schools over a 15-year period from 2005 to 2020 [START_REF]Building Schools for the Future: renewing the secondary school estate[END_REF]. The National Audit Office report stated that: "Refurbishment includes providing new [information and communications technology] ICT to recently built schools" (p.4). The Partnerships for Schools, an executive non-departmental public body responsible for the BSF programme, gave a clearer statement on its web-site [4] about intentions for ICT, stating that: "The whole process begins with the [local authority] LA and its schools drawing up a strategy for improving secondary education. This is informed by an understanding of the ways in which new technologies can improve educational provision" (n.p.). ICT is clearly seen as a means to improve education and learner outcomes. Indeed, the web-site states more precisely that ICT should be considered in terms of: "the development of real and virtual workspaces which help to make effective, personalised learning a reality for all pupils … access to high quality learning materials in a wide range of settings through as wide a range of end-user devices as possible … infrastructure which is extremely reliable and easy to use" (n.p.).

Schools and teachers have not necessarily found it an easy task, however, to use digital technologies and to bring about forms of improvement through transformation. In a speech at the UK's largest schools' ICT exhibition and conference, BETT 2012 [START_REF] Gove | Speech at the BETT Show[END_REF], the Secretary of State for Education stated that: "The fundamental model of school education is still a teacher talking to a group of pupils." He went on to say that: "It's clear that technology is going to bring profound changes to how and what we teach. But it's equally clear that we have not yet managed to make the most of it." Most importantly, perhaps, he said that: "While things are changing so rapidly, while the technology is unpredictable and the future is unknowable, Government must not wade in from the centre to prescribe to schools exactly what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. We must work with these developments as they arise: supporting, facilitating and encouraging change, rather than dictating it." A key question for schools is, therefore, how is this achievable?

These statements advocate educational transformation, using ICT; they ask for something different, to meet tomorrow's needs rather than those of yesterday. This is not a new concern; but it appears it has not yet been achieved. In a study involving a survey of 2,611 pupils aged 12 to 13 and 14 to 15 years, and data from 60 focus groups held with some 300 learners, from 15 English schools representing a range of school types and demographic variables and from 12 schools representing school environments in which Web 2.0 activity was flourishing, Luckin, Logan, Clark, Graber, Oliver and Mee [START_REF] Luckin | Learners' use of Web 2.0 technologies in and out of school in Key Stages 3 and 4[END_REF] concluded that: "The types of activity evidenced suggest that of the categories of user identified in the literature, there are readers, gamers, filesharers, communicators and newscasters (in the sense of sharing experience through social networking sites) amongst study participants. However, relatively few learners are engaging in more sophisticated Web 2.0 activities such as producing and publishing their own content for wider consumption. In order to be motivated to publish content, learners must perceive that publication carries utility for the self or important others. In addition, learners may lack the technical knowledge and skills needed to publish content online" (p.3). Yet in informal settings open and social technologies can effectively support learning (see Yaşar and Karadeniz [START_REF] Yaşar | The power of social media in informal learning[END_REF]). So, how can these technologies be positioned across curriculum elements -formal (in-class), non-formal (after-school and home-directed) and informal (undirected but related by the learner)?

Educational transformation

How should educational transformation be conceptualised? An article exploring school design and educational transformation [START_REF] Leiringer | Schools for the twenty-first century: school design and educational transformation[END_REF] concluded that, from a study of four case schools in Scandinavia: "underlying learning intentions and values of the schools can be successfully incorporated into, and supported by, design" (p.931). However, it would be wrong to assume that new buildings automatically generate transformation in forms intended and stated above by policy makers. Transformation at a structural level is not necessarily used by teachers, and indeed, can be ignored if teachers are more concerned with maintaining a traditional teaching approach. To bring about transformation, there needs to be full and adequate consideration of features other than structure -curriculum, content, process and outcome.

For this study and paper, a definition adopted of using ICT in educational transformation will include previously-cited key features: transformation is concerned with improving educational provision; it has a community focus (either school or wider); it integrates new ICT into its structure and practices; it uses a reliable and usable infrastructure; it offers high quality learning materials, personalised learning opportunity, real and virtual workspaces; and it offers encouragement to engage and develop 'readers, gamers, file-sharers, communicators and newscasters' including 'producing and publishing their own content for wider consumption' [START_REF] Luckin | Learners' use of Web 2.0 technologies in and out of school in Key Stages 3 and 4[END_REF].

Research approach and method

The research approach taken in this study is a secondary analysis of findings from three projects previously evaluated by the author as case studies. The three projects all involved uses of emerging technologies including open and social technologies, and were all identified by schools and local education policy makers as being innovative and transformative (leading to improved educational provision and wider community involvement). These three projects were selected additionally on the basis of their providing evidence from a range of schools representative of a width of contexts.

The case studies here are reported using a framework suggested by Yin [START_REF] Yin | Case study research: Design and methods[END_REF]: an overview of the case study project (its objectives, issues, and topics being investigated); field procedures (including role of the researcher, access to sites, and sources of information including documents, interviews, and direct observation); case study questions (specific questions that the investigator explored during data collection that related to the topic of this paper); and an analysis of results (in terms of relevance and relationship to the focal research questions in the secondary analysis in this paper):

 How is the project concerned with improving educational provision?

 In what way does it have a community focus (either school or wider)?  How does it integrate new ICT into structure and practices, using a reliable and usable infrastructure?  How does it offer high quality learning materials, personalised learning opportunity, and real and virtual workspaces?  How does it offer encouragement to engage and develop 'readers, gamers, filesharers, communicators and newscasters' including 'producing and publishing their own content for wider consumption'?

4

Case study 1 -links to homes and home learning

An overview: in 2004, a project was initiated in an area in the north of Birmingham, the second largest city in England. Placed in the 10% most deprived areas in England [START_REF] Batty | The New Deal for Communities Experience: A final assessment[END_REF], the project, called Aston Pride, involved 14,314 residents in 4,500 households. Concerned with community development and regeneration, it focused in part on aspects of education and learning, as key elements to address short and longer-term needs of the community. The education theme was implemented in three phases. Field procedures: the author evaluated the project over 7 years [START_REF] Passey | Independent Evaluation of the Aston Pride Phase 3 Computers in the Home Project (2009 to 2011): Final Report -March 2011[END_REF], had access to implementation documents and to parent training attendance records, met with project managers regularly, and in the final phase gathered evidence through 812 home installation and 154 follow-up questionnaires, test data for mathematics and reading from 14 classes of 7 to 9 year old pupils, 32 teacher and 134 pupil mid-phase and 85 teacher and 20 parent late-stage questionnaires, and 20 parent interviews.

How was the project concerned with improving educational provision? The project aimed to increase quality of resources for teachers and pupils in schools and at home, as well as parent involvement with children's learning. In 2010, using standardised test comparisons over a 9 month period, with t-tests, ANOVA and multiple regression factor analyses to check significance of outcomes, positive shifts in mathematics and reading results were identified in a large population of pupils (over 500 in total). Impacts at statistically significant levels were identified: on mathematics scores for all pupils (t=-8.58, p=.000); particularly for girls in the final test (F=4.577, p=.033); on reading scores for all pupils (t=-3.141, p=.002); and particularly for boys (t=-3.778, p=.000). Teachers and parents reported widely and positively on impact; reports were supported by improvements in terms of national test and inspection scores (between 2004 and 2008 performance in English for 11 year-old pupils improved by 16%, from 50% to 66%, and in mathematics by 8%, from 56% to 64%, and by 2010 the attainment level in mathematics reached 74%, and in English 73%).

In what way did it have a community focus? The project aimed to increase access to resources in homes, and to benefit community members through training. By 2011, 2,680 computers were deployed in homes; some 60% of homes gained up-to-date ICT access, with possible leverage to almost the entire population (as family members shared facilities with other residents). At least 1,227 adults (1,171 parents, 47 school staff and 9 advanced learners) had been involved in ICT-based training run in schools.

How did it integrate new ICT into structure and practices, using a reliable and usable infrastructure? By 2008, funding enabled all 8 primary schools to put interactive whiteboards into all classrooms, personal digital assistants were trialled in 2 schools, computers in homes were deployed through one school, shared school training and support were facilitated, local community centres gained ICT facilities, a mobile ICT facility was established, and a pilot wireless network was set up. By 2010, the wireless infrastructure covered the entire locality; reports indicated that it was robust, providing high bandwidth and good coverage, with few instances of issues reported.

How did it offer high quality learning materials, personalised learning opportunity, and real and virtual workspaces? The third phase focused on aspects of learning, particularly providing home access to online learning resources (such as Education City and Mathletics). In 2010, 74 out of 85 teachers reported using online facilities to support homework activities. Most (52 out of the 85) reported that this practice had shifted types of homework activity; some teachers asked pupils to undertake tasks such as research at home, not previously demanded of them. This heralded a shift in demands on pupils outside classrooms, and was seen to change qualities of learning expected.

How did it offer encouragement to engage and develop 'readers, gamers, filesharers, communicators and newscasters' including 'producing and publishing their own content for wider consumption'? The project developed pupils and teachers as 'readers'; pupils accessed online educational games at home, they shared files of completed homework with some teachers, and increased their communication with parents. They did not develop as 'newscasters' in this project.

5

Case study 2 -the focus of after-school clubs and group work

An overview: in this case study pupil teams aged 11 to 14 years used Little Big Planet 2, a popular Sony PlayStation videogame, in 15 secondary and special schools in one LA. The project focused on: development of 21 st century skills required by employers and trainers; widening career opportunities in the videogame industry; and 'building scenes for learning' by creating levels in the game. Using the videogame, a range of skills were brought together, some technical, but others including artistic, team working, logical thinking and planning skills, to construct 'levels'. Teachers 'advertised' the project, selected team members, provided working space and ICT resources, and facilitated the teams. Largely, they did not teach; the work was outside their experience or understanding, but they could access technical support to aid the pupils. Teams worked mostly in after-school clubs, but some in lesson times. Pupils often had specific roles (such as artistic director or lead programmer), but also worked collaboratively and flexibly to bring elements of planning and structure together. Field procedures: the author evaluated the project over 6 months [START_REF] Passey | Independent evaluation of the Little Big Planet 2 project in Wolverhampton's Local Education Partnership schools: Outcomes and impacts -Final Report[END_REF], had access to implementation and interim pupil notes, met with project managers regularly, interviewed teachers in 4 schools, and gathered evidence through 12 teacher and 107 pupil questionnaires at the outset, 8 teacher and 77 pupil questionnaires at a midstage, and 3 teacher and 42 pupil questionnaires at the end of the project.

How was the project concerned with improving educational provision? Looking at individual pupil responses, some pupils gained more in terms of skill development than did others. Across a group of 31 pupils responding in both the first and last surveys, by the end of the project 28 scored above the mid-point of 12 (on a range from -72 to 96, collating scores for 80 different elements in 16 sets of skills). Over the period of the project, 12 pupils neither increased nor decreased in terms of their selfreporting of skills, while 19 increased in this respect (an increase of up to 65 points).

In what way did it have a community focus? Involvement in after-school clubs required a high commitment from pupils, both in terms of attendance and in terms of work undertaken. Many pupils also worked on the project at home, individually or in groups. In team group activities, whether in-class or after-school, high levels of indepth and focused discussion were generated and recognised in many instances.

How did it integrate new ICT into structure and practices, using a reliable and usable infrastructure? The videogame technologies were not widely integrated with other ICT systems. Communication between teachers and key supporters and between pupil teams happened within workshop events, while bespoke-created blogs and discussion forums were available but not used widely. Pupils used social media widely, however, to maintain contact, including using Facebook and mobile telephone messaging.

How did it offer high quality learning materials, personalised learning opportunity, and real and virtual workspaces? Pupils being immersed in planning and creating, and having direct contact with professionals, offered a way of working many had not previously experienced. This approach was widely welcomed by pupils, and teacher reports indicated that some pupils gained enormously from this aspect alone.

How did it offer encouragement to engage and develop 'readers, gamers, filesharers, communicators and newscasters' including 'producing and publishing their own content for wider consumption'? In this project almost all pupils involved became 'readers' and 'gamers', but fewer engaged technically to create new levels. File sharing was not apparent, and communication happened largely in team meetings rather than through online means. Those teams completing levels (about half the number starting the project), were all encouraged to broadcast their games across an international user network for others to access and play.

6

Case study 3 -the audience and reality of school work

An overview: the BBC News School Report project, run since 2006, enables pupil teams to create and broadcast video, audio and text-based news reports. Teams put reports onto school websites at a particular time on a particular day (News Day); the sites are linked to the BBC News School Report website, made accessible to regional and national radio and television broadcasting teams, and to a worldwide audience. Field procedures: the author and a colleague evaluated the project over 6 months [START_REF] Passey | BBC News School Report 2008/2009: Independent Evaluation[END_REF], met with project managers on three occasions, gathered evidence using pre-and post-News Day online questionnaires for pupils (591 and 705 responses respectively) and teachers (142 and 135 responses respectively), observed two News Day events, and visited 25 schools to interview pupils and teachers.

How was the project concerned with improving educational provision? Many schools were involved because they felt it extended opportunities for pupils and could widen their experiences. Evidence indicated that the project supported important aspects of learning: authentic learning; understanding through discussion; internal cognitive aspects; and transfer of learning (thinking about how in the future they would use ideas they had learned, and using these at other times and in other contexts). Some schools subsequently considered longer term sustainability of the project, creating permanent teams to gather and report news from the school via the school website or intranet, for parents and the wider community to receive regularly updated news.

In what way did it have a community focus? The requirement of the project was for pupils to create real news stories, gathered from their school or wider community, to broadcast to wider communities and nation-wide. How did it integrate new ICT into structure and practices, using a reliable and usable infrastructure? Some schools used existing ICT facilities to fulfil project needs, while others needed more specialist support and resources (including video cameras, editing software, and advice on integrating items into web-sites). Pupils tended to work independently but not on their own. They often took responsibility for individual work elements (such as researcher, scriptwriter, or editor), all needing to be completed to a high quality and standard, within a strict time scale, for integration into a wider piece of group work. This was very different from working 'on their own', giving work to someone with a different form of responsibility for it. This approach made the project different, but allowed it to work with other school-based activities.

How did it offer high quality learning materials, personalised learning opportunity, and real and virtual workspaces? Pupil perceptions of their own gains were concerned with specific subject skills, and with team working, creativity, attitudes towards work, and social interactions. Differences in responses before and after News Day indicated perceived improvement (endorsed by teacher perceptions) in abilities to write an article for an audience (+10%, Z=-2.754, p=0.006), create ideas for news stories (+15%, Z=-5.262, p=0.000), negotiate a point with others (+10%, Z=-4.228, p=0.000), work hard in contributing to group endeavour (+11%, Z=-4.851, p=0.000), and meet deadlines (+14%, Z=-6.276, p=0.000). Although pupils indicated no significant change in abilities to produce a video and an audio story, teachers felt they had improved in these respects, suggesting that pupils' capabilities exceeded their teachers' expectations. Pupils indicated they had learned more about news production and jobs, and their understanding of how news was produced and about jobs in news.

How did it offer encouragement to engage and develop 'readers, gamers, filesharers, communicators and newscasters' including 'producing and publishing their own content for wider consumption'? The project results indicated that more pupils were listening to and watching news media at the end of the project (+5%, Z=-2.443, p=0.015 for television, and +4%, Z=-5.107, p=0.000 for radio). The project did not focus on developing gamers, and some file sharing did happen, between pupils and between pupils and teachers. Communication, (working in teams), was enhanced greatly, but the major project focus was to develop broadcasters, which it clearly did.

Community development and educational transformation

These case studies of practice are not universal but were implemented in ways suggesting wider potential adoption -the first involved all 8 primary schools in a geographical area; the second involved 15 secondary and special schools across another area; and the third involved 514 schools from across the United Kingdom. An important point to recognise in each case is that digital expertise comes from the young people, is extended in the young people, and used in sharing activities and experiences with older people. While there is a parallel with the concept of 'digital natives' coined by Prensky [START_REF] Prensky | Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants[END_REF], it should be noted that in each exemplar, while young people had some knowledge of ICT, this was extended. The extension made the difference -reaching out to others -parents, teachers, and wider community.

The integration of projects in the curriculum is worthy of consideration too. Each project fitted alongside a content-based curriculum; curriculum intentions matched project intentions. Indeed, some enabled important long-term skill developments such as group work, team work and communication skills that would benefit and support employment and training as well as further involvement in school. But projects were in some respects in conflict with the content curriculum and how it was managed, in terms of time and organisation. But schools involved did not see potential challenges In the past, the purpose of after-school clubs has been clear (in terms of games, hobbies and interests, for example); how teachers are currently trained in developing and considering these, and how benefits feed into the curriculum, is not so clear (see, for example, Malcolm, Wilson and Davidson [START_REF] Malcolm | Out of School Care: A Brief Review of the Literature[END_REF]). Shurnow [START_REF] Shurnow | Academic Effects of After School Programs[END_REF] suggested a need to review roles and centrality of after-school initiatives. Evidence here suggests a need to identify different forms of practice, so their places in the curriculum and potential impacts on pupils are clear, so those who guide and inspect the curriculum are clear about their legitimacy, so continuing professional development covers management as well as activity training and a focus on how digital technologies can play legitimate roles in after-school and home learning, so that structural concerns about developing skills in lessons alone can be revisited, and young people's involvement can be considered more from an intergenerational learning perspective (not just a learnercentred perspective) particularly with regard to using open and social technologies.

Is this a new scenario or situation? In some respects it is -after-school clubs do not often currently involve uses of ICT in these forms (and traditional computer clubs, for example, are often quite different in nature). Given this evolving scenario, those driving policy and supporting professional development need to review how the nature and practices of after-school clubs and non-formal and out-of-school learning are managed within the wider rather than the narrower curriculum.

If benefits of open and social technologies are to be gained by pupils, policy makers should consider: the importance of the non-formal curriculum; how effective evidence-based projects and home-link activities can be built into the non-formal curriculum; how transformational projects can support real-world community development; endorse such activities as being important; support creation of practice (placing and managing projects); how high quality learning materials are provided by professionals and ICT-based materials; and how a management focus can critically enhance the formal curriculum through longer-term needs of pupils and communities.

Similarly, curriculum developers should consider: how project-based activities can integrate open and social technologies to improve educational provision; encouraging intergenerational learning, through pupil-led and teacher-facilitated activities (allowing extensions of pupils' technical and associated skills); adopting transformational projects with a real-world community development focus; endorsing outcome-evidence-based activities; how technical and professional support can be offered; how high quality learning experiences can be integrated from professionals and from ICT-based materials; supporting non-formal activities to enhance the formal curriculum and influence longer-term needs of pupils and communities at local or regional level.

Acknowledgements. My sincere thanks to all the pupils, parents and teachers providing invaluable evidence in the originating case studies, and to the managers involved, Dave Brodie, Mike Farmer and Avtar Dhillon in Aston Pride NDfC, Jill Purcell in Wolverhampton LEP, and Andy Goff in Interactive Opportunities.

as barriers; these projects worked in ways described in extended schools and extended curricula contexts [START_REF] Barker | The impact of out of school care: A qualitative study examining the views of children, families and playworkers[END_REF]. Integrated projects and after-school clubs of these forms focus on important aspects of educational transformation -they demand a different form of organisation from that found in classrooms generally, putting the teacher squarely in the role of facilitator (including technological facilitation).

Social networking and digital technologies

An important aspect highlighted by these cases is the role of networking through digital technologies. Although it could be argued that digital technologies should provide the medium for networking (and indeed social media were used by pupils in after-school clubs and at home), it is clear that in these cases important networking happened outside but was encouraged by the technological medium. Social interactions, between teachers and pupils, between parents and their children, between specialists in certain uses of technology and pupils, and between managers and teachers, were all fundamentally important in bringing about the transformations captured here. In these cases, face-to-face interactions often flourished, but not in traditional 'apprentice-master' form. In many instances, the young were the 'masters' and the older generations (parents, teachers or managers) were the 'apprentices'. The development of intergenerational learning was important, adding to the need for teachers, parents and managers to take on facilitator roles. The roles of all professionals, those in the video games industry and broadcasters, worked complementarily, across ages. But the presence of open and social technologies in all cases was a vitally important stimulus.

From these cases, educational systems have yet to accommodate current professional and vocational needs of teachers and educationalists -highlighting and considering issues, or understanding ways to effectively integrate open and social technologies into practice. There are management implications, for those in schools, and those concerned with training and future policy. As Kane [START_REF] Kane | Extracting Evaluation Lessons From Four Recent Out of School Time Program Evaluations[END_REF] concluded from four after-school programme evaluation studies in the United States: "After school programs may be unaccustomed to holding center stage in the national education policy debate, but that is unlikely to change anytime soon. Some of the evidence so far is forcing a reconsideration of the magnitude of impacts we might reasonably expect" (p.3).

Conclusions and ways forward

To successfully undertake initiatives exemplified here, teachers and schools needed to address management issues; curriculum concerns -projects did not absolutely match a content-based curriculum; guidance issues -projects were not supported by all those producing and inspecting the curriculum; practice concerns -projects were not part of the professional and continuing training practice of teachers; and structural concernsprojects did not fit into classrooms and lessons readily within a traditional timetable.

Vocational practice needs to be rethought; current and future teachers need to assimilate and revisit concepts and practices offered by educational transformation (including those integrating uses of open and social technologies) throughout their careers, exploring potentials that project, after-school and non-formal work can bring.


Bill Davey
email: bill.davey@rmit.edu.au

Arthur Tatnall
email: arthur.tatnall@vu.edu.au

Social Technologies in Education -an Actor-Network Analysis

Keywords: Social technologies, social networking, Ultranet, CASES, MySchool, schools, students, parents, teachers

There are many opportunities for social technologies to create wider and more valuable educational communities. This paper presents an analysis of a Government initiative to create educational communities around schools in Victoria, Australia using social networking systems. The analysis, comparing several systems, shows that a number of factors, including interpretation of reactions by actors are crucial to the success of applications of social technologies in an educational setting.

Introduction

It seems obvious that the addition of social-technology based software in an educational context would be readily adopted by schools and systems, but several studies [START_REF] Botto | Digital Ecosystems Adoption at Local Level: A Preliminary Comparative Analysis[END_REF][START_REF] Stale | Application of enterprise modeling method for continuing education design and development[END_REF] have shown that this 'obviousness' should always be challenged. While several authors suggest a new digital age of well-prepared consumers [START_REF] Andone | Building a Virtual Campus for digital students[END_REF][START_REF] Castro | Trends of Use of Technology in Engineering Education[END_REF] there are findings that cast doubt on the unsupported assumption of automatic adoption of new systems [START_REF] Ouf | An enhanced e-learning ecosystem based on an integration between cloud computing and Web2.0[END_REF][START_REF] Johnson | Learning style and digital activity: An ecological study[END_REF][START_REF] Margaryan | Are digital natives a myth or reality? University students' use of digital technologies[END_REF]. Sappey and Relf [8 :19] believe that: "Learning and teaching should be considered inseparable and always considered holistically in developing technology enhanced learning models." For many years computer systems in schools have been built around the need to handle the large amount of administrative data relating to individual students and student cohorts. This is collected from many formal and informal sources including: student enrolments, observational surveys, early year interviews, running records, other formal testing and anecdotal notes [START_REF] Tatnall | Using Educational Management Systems to Enhance Teaching and Learning in the Classroom: an Investigative Study, in Knowledge Management for Educational Innovation[END_REF]. Other educational data relating to school and student performance is also important.

Three Computer Systems in Victorian School Communities

The goal of this study was to examine three computer systems in use in Victorian schools: CASES21, the Ultranet and MySchool, and to investigate whether, and if so how, they contribute to school community involvement and whether this has a beneficial effect on education.

CASES 21

In Government schools in Victoria the Department of Education mandates use of CASES21 (Computerised Administrative System Environment in Schools) for school administrative purposes. CASES21 aims to provide school administration with secure access to data entry and reporting modules that support school administration and finance functions. CASES21 has two modules [START_REF][END_REF]: The prime purpose of CASES21 is to enable reporting from schools back to the Department of Education. It runs only on the school administrative network, and an earlier version has been in use since the late 1980s [START_REF] Tatnall | Information Technology and the Management of Victorian Schools -Providing Flexibility or Enabling Better Central Control?[END_REF]. It was developed as a tool for overall school administration and as a means of reporting back from schools to the Department of Education. No consideration was given to its use in school classrooms either to support teacher administrative functions or to enhance teaching and learning [START_REF] Tatnall | Information Technology and the Management of Victorian Schools -Providing Flexibility or Enabling Better Central Control?[END_REF][START_REF] Davey | Involving the Academic: A Test for Effective University ITEM Systems, in Management of Education in the Information Age: The Role of ICT[END_REF][START_REF] Tatnall | Open ITEM Systems are Good ITEM Systems[END_REF].



The Ultranet

The Ultranet was designed to support knowledge sharing across the 1,555 Victorian government schools with their 540,000 students and 40,000 teachers [START_REF]Statistics Victoria[END_REF][START_REF]Summary Statistics for Victorian Schools[END_REF]. It was launched in September 2010 and designed to provide facilities for informing parents about their children as well as for curriculum delivery and online learning and teaching [START_REF]Ultranet -Students@Centre Trial[END_REF]. The Ultranet is: "a student centred electronic learning environment that supports high quality learning and teaching, connects students, teachers and parents and enables efficient knowledge transfer." [17]. It has many of the features of a business extranet in that it is closed to people outside the Victorian government school community and requires a username and password to gain access. One major difference, however, is that with over half a million users, the Ultranet is larger than most business extranets [START_REF] Tatnall | Informing Parents with the Victorian Education Ultranet[END_REF]. The Ultranet's incorporates various Web 2.0 technologies so making it a closed, secure place on the Internet, accessible at any time by students, teachers and parents/guardians from the school community [START_REF] Tatnall | The Ultranet as a Future Social Network: An Actor-Network Analysis[END_REF]. It was designed to allow students to access personalised learning activities and keep an ongoing record, allowing them to collaborate and communicate with students from their own school and from other Victorian government schools. They will be able to create learning portfolios and use online communication tools such as Wikis, blogs and discussion boards. The idea is that, using the Ultranet, teachers will be able to create curriculum plans, collaborate with other teachers, monitor student progress and provide assessment. The Ultranet will also assist parents in gaining benefits of flexible access to student information and school resources that will help them keep up-to-date with their child's learning. This dynamic student profile will include attendance records, test results, timetables, learning progress, homework activities, tasks, and feedback so providing a way for parents to support their child. These features should strengthen and extend parental involvement in schools and will result in richer more holistic and better negotiated approaches to student learning.

MySchool

The MySchool website provides a system designed to inform parents and the community about Australian schools [20]. It was set up by the Australian Government. (Although school education in Australia is a State responsibility, the Federal Government is also a significant actor in providing information and targeted grants to schools for specific projects.) Early in 2010 the Australian Government launched this new e-government initiative [START_REF] Gillard | My School website launched[END_REF] that contains information about each of Australia's 10,000 primary and secondary schools, including: the number of students and teachers at the school and how the school is performing in national literacy and numeracy testing. The ideas of setting up MySchool was so: "parents and school communities would be able to compare their school's results with neighbouring schools and up to 60 statistically similar schools" [START_REF] Gillard | My School website launched[END_REF] to see which schools are doing well and which schools are not. Data for this comes from NAPLAN (the National Assessment Program).

MySchool is quite different to the Ultranet, however, in that it provides general information about all Australian schools, and not about particular students, to anyone who wants to see this. The aim is to allow parents to compare potential schools where they may want to send their children. MySchool also shows information on all Australian schools, both government and non-government whereas the Ultranet includes only Victorian government schools and aims to inform specific parents of their own school children.

Research Framework and Methods

Many approaches to socio-technical research treat the social and the technical in entirely different ways and as either: technologically driven or socially driven. A common approach is to focus on the technical aspects and to treat 'the social' as the context in which development and adoption take place. Actor-Network Theory (ANT), which originated from research in the social studies of science in the 1980s [START_REF] Callon | Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay, in Power, Action & Belief. A New Sociology of Knowledge[END_REF][START_REF] Latour | The Powers of Association, in Power, Action and Belief. A New Sociology of Knowledge? Sociological Review monograph[END_REF][START_REF] Law | The Heterogeneity of Texts, in Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology[END_REF], was designed as an approach to socio-technical research that would treat the contributions of both human and non-human actors fairly and in the same way. ANT considers the world to be full of hybrid entities containing both human and non-human elements. Questioning 'is it social?' or 'is it technical?' misses the point: the question should be 'is this association stronger or weaker than that one?' In this socio-technical order nothing is purely social and nothing is purely technical. ANT is concerned with studying the mechanics of power as this occurs through construction and maintenance of networks made up of both human and non-human actors [START_REF] Tatnall | Informing Parents with the Victorian Education Ultranet[END_REF]. In actor-network theory, an actor is any human or non-human entity that is able to make its presence individually felt by the other actors [START_REF] Law | A Sociology of Monsters. Essays on Power, Technology and Domination[END_REF]. An actor is made up only of its interactions with these other actors, and a network can be hidden inside a 'black box' when its internal details are not under investigation.

If our research was into how students learn using these technologies we may have made use of a theory relating to learning with social technologies, a theory such as connectivism [START_REF] Siemens | Connectivism: a Learning Theory for the Digital Age[END_REF][START_REF] Siemens | Knowing Knowledge[END_REF]. Here, however, we are investigating adoption and use of these systems and in their use in creating educational communities, not their effectiveness in learning. For this purpose a lens that allows for contributions from both human and non-human actors is appropriate, and ANT fits well.

This research involved a study of the documentation of the three systems. A small number of people were interviewed to determine the range of relationships between the actors, including those interactions with the systems. Reports on the introduction of these systems including both official press reports and those from commentators also were used to find underlying relationships.

An Actor-Network Analysis

This study is especially interesting as all the human actors (schools, teachers, students and parents) are the same for each system so it is just the interactions with the nonhuman actors that lead to any new insights. The first steps in any ANT analysis are to identify and 'interview' the actors. Although not complete the list of actors with significant relationships here included students, teachers, principals, parents, schools, State Government, National Government, The State Education Ministry (DEECD), the Internet and web tools and the three systems: Cases, MySchool and the Ultranet.

Relationships between Actors: Schools and Government

Schools in Victoria have had a long tradition of independence in curriculum and in the delivery of their versions of the curriculum. In the last ten years or so, attempts have been made to standardise aspects of the curriculum but these have had little effect on how it is delivered. There is a political dichotomy between making schools self-governing and having sufficient control that governments can fulfil their accountability requirements to the electorate for education expenditure. Part of the decentralisation effort of government has been to grant more power to employ individual teachers to schools, but this is constrained by budgets. This decentralisation has been accompanied by attempts to make schools accountable for performance and a number of techniques such as a National Curriculum initiative and the National Testing Plan are being employed [START_REF]Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority[END_REF]. These changes are relatively new in Australia and the relationship between government and schools is still in flux. It would be fair to say that there is not complete trust between schools and government.

Relationships between Actors: Schools and Teachers (Unions)

Teachers in Victorian state schools are represented by the Australian Education Union (AEU). One of the recent campaigns by the union is the 'Stop league tables campaign' [START_REF]Stop League Tables[END_REF], resulting in the AEU submission to the 'Senate Education Employment and Workplace Relations Committee' into the 'Administration and Reporting of NAPLAN Testing' [START_REF]Australian Education Union Submission to the Senate Education Employment and Workplace Relations Committee into the Administration and Reporting of NAPLAN Testing[END_REF]. The union campaign is directed at preventing the Government having a more intrusive influence on teaching. One effect of the MySchool website seen as being a significant problem by the union was the possibility of the school changing its delivery as a result of poor showing in the National tests. The following was used as an explanation of behaviour seen as abhorrent:

"Teachers have been told by the Victorian Education Department to 'explicitly teach for NAPLAN', focus on literacy and numeracy and give students a 'daily NAPLAN item' in class … The directive has led to accusations that Victorian education authorities are pressuring schools to 'teach to the test' to lift their performance on the new website at the expense of a broader curriculum." [START_REF] Perkins | Teach for tests, teachers told[END_REF] Significantly among their arguments is the contention that public release of information is not an absolute right of the public -presumably parents and other community interests. The AEU submission included evidence from Dr Ken Rowe of the Australian Council for Educational Research who wrote that:

"... it can be argued strongly that the public disclosure of information cannot be held to be an absolute principle." [30 :29] Our interviews with teachers showed that there is a general understanding that the teacher is the qualified person in the school community, but also the person with understanding of the local educational environment, and these two factors mitigate against anyone else having the right to significant input into school level decisions.

The Australian Newspaper of Dec 16 th 2009 reported the desire of school principals to be given more rights to hire and fire teachers. This seems to provide evidence that teachers are seen as being antithetical to the idea of sharing power over school decisions.

The relationship between government and teachers can be seen as being instrumental in the fate of the three systems. CASES was constructed firstly to provide a single means of gathering data required by government from schools. In the knowledge that schools saw themselves as having significant data needs, the first version changes in CASES were to include modules that answered local school needs for the data being collected by government. In this way CASES began 'co-operating' with schools and teachers. MySchool, similarly recognised the power of teachers at the local level and completely bypassed them, communicating through the public website rather than normal communication channels, all of which required teacher involvement. The Ultranet seeks to involve teachers as part of the systems value, but has the problem of providing little help to teachers in their daily work and exposing them to local accountability that they have not experienced before. An ANT approach to this investigation considered all interactions between these actors as significant.

Relationships between Actors: Teachers and Parents

Our interviews indicated that teachers see several different types of relationships with parents. The first are with enthusiastic parents who want to be part of the school. At the primary school level these parents are involved with as many voluntary jobs as possible. These are mostly positions such as canteen worker, working bee participant and provider of reading help. A few are elected to the school council, an official, unpaid position with some governance duties for the school. The school council members do not have an easy or direct method for communicating with other parents and teachers do not see them as having the influence of an elected official with the backing of an electorate. By the secondary school level the amount of involvement of parents diminishes. There are still working bees and other volunteer jobs, but attendance involves a much lower proportion of families than for the primary level.

Secondly there are those parents who see the teachers as domain experts who take sole responsibility for student learning experiences. These parents will sign off homework and dutifully attend the occasional Parent Teacher meeting, general held once per term (semester) on a single evening for all families. These parents are happy to be directed as to what role to play and will openly become involved if they feel their 'consumer rights' have been infringed when their children perform less well than expected. The third parent image in the minds of teachers is of the disinterested. Teachers interviewed indicated that some parents were never seen and could not be relied upon to support teachers' decisions.

There was no indication from any teacher interviewed that parents were seen as having any ability to contribute to education outside support for homework or a talk about "what do firemen do" (or similar). Parents felt disenfranchised by school systems. There was not a lack of support for the school but questions about their involvement in real decisions produced either incomprehension at the idea or anecdotes about 'brick walls' placed in their path by the school.

These relationships have a significant impact on the chances of acceptance of two of the three systems. The CASES system has an impact on parents to the extent that the system provides the school with fast access to important information (from the Education Department). A parent without visiting rights (court injunctions) will be turned away at the front desk and a student with a medical condition will be treated properly with a single CASES query. To this extent CASES supports the relationship of professional and client that teachers see as the natural state.

MySchool talks directly to parents and informs them of NAPLAN test results across their school. Teachers are armed with a number of explanations for shortfalls in performance -the problems of general statistics and such. They use these to prevent individual parent influence, but are being seen to react to MySchool in preparing students to improve results. There is no evidence outside our interviews, but it does seem that the one tactic considered by parents as a result of MySchool is to move children if the school performance is sub-par.

The Ultranet seeks to create a porous communications boundary between teachers and parents having the advantage of making the task of communicating with parents very easy for a teacher. The excuse for the 'grand occasion' parent/ teacher evening would be done away with. Teachers could become more aware of home circumstances and occurrences with little effort if parents were enticed to use the system. In our interviews teachers saw the system as being an extra workload burden in which they saw little value. Parents were not able to see anything on the system that would entice them to look, let alone contribute. This conclusion is to be doubted as the system is not fully functional as yet, but the functions that have been present for some time do seem to be ignored by both parties. The relationship between parents and teachers would lead us to conclude that the system will not progress past the present stage. It would not be in the interests of a teacher who claims absolute power over the education process to be completely candid with parents as that would presuppose parents could do something with any information they receive. Similarly a system that does not provide information is unlikely to have parents contributing. This would be especially true if they found their contributions not acted upon.

Conclusion

The CASES system was developed for accountability purposes to facilitate reporting from schools to the Department of Education. Its use is mandatory and it is not intended to provide support in school classrooms. The Ultranet is not just a single connection between government and the public, as is MySchool, but an attempt to create a mutually supporting educational community [START_REF] Tatnall | The Ultranet as a Future Social Network: An Actor-Network Analysis[END_REF]. Its use is encouraged, but not mandated. MySchool was designed to provide information to parents about the school their children potential might attend. No regard was given to teachers as actors. This paper has highlighted a number of important issues relating to the use of social technology in education, but we make no claim that these findings can be generalised to all other education systems. What makes a system valuable? Even systems provided available for no cost do not always persist, and the mandatory nature of some systems is not a reason for universal acceptance. When a system is seen as having value for its users it is likely to be adopted. This means we must consider that user scenarios are important when designing these systems. This paper has considered the question of who should be the actors: who should be the users of a system in a community and who should have input into its use? Should schools be regarded as central experts with no need for two way communication, or should social technology be allowed to give educational communities the opportunity to contribute?

Fig. 18 .

 18 Fig. 18. The Victorian Education Ultranet (http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/directions/ultranet/benefits/default.htm)

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 2: MySchool website (http://www.myschool.edu.au/) showing information for Hurstbridge Primary School

Table 8 .

 8 CASES21, the Ultranet and MySchool

		CASES21	The Ultranet	MySchool
	Purpose	School administration	Knowledge	Comparison of
			sharing	schools
	Usage	Schools must use	Encouraged	Voluntary
	Year	1988	2011	2010
	introduced
	Main human	Principals, school	Students,	Parents, students
	actors	administrators, DEECD	teachers,
		staff	principals,
			parents
	Main non-	CASES21, school	The Ultranet,	MySchool,
	human actors	admin computers	school and home	schools, home
			computers	computers
	Sponsor	Education Department	Victorian	Australian
		(DEECD) Victoria	government	government


Jörgen Jaanus
email: jorgen.jaanus@tlu.ee

Tobias Ley
email: tobias.ley@tlu.ee

Driving Forces behind the Development and Stabilization of Knowledge Organization Systems in Digital Environments

Keywords: Knowledge Organization Systems, Knowledge Maturing, Digital Ecosystems

The emergence of Digital Ecosystems can be endorsed by creating shared conceptualizations. Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) form a backbone of organizing knowledge. Focusing in developing KOS and having its present and future requirements in mind would eventually support knowledge sharing and learning at collective level. Three types of KOS are distinguished: a) private level KOS; b) arbitrary KOS; c) methodic KOS. Knowledge Maturing can be described as goal-oriented learning on a collective level. In line with the knowledge maturing model, we assume that stabilizing and dynamic forces co-exist in all organizations which seek a dynamic equilibrium between further development and stabilization. Identifying and measuring these forces would help in the effective development of Knowledge Organization Systems and consequently support planning and development of information systems.

Background Concepts

Digital Ecosystems support modern networked economies being a next generation information and communications technology for ensuring that information and knowledge are shared across organizations as quickly and effectively as possible [START_REF] Price | The organizational challenges of global trends[END_REF]. The functional characteristics relate digital ecosystems to achieving cooperation, knowledge sharing, accessing, editing and extrapolating data in order to facilitate learning, knowledge flow and information [2].

Within those ecosystems there are nodes which have their internal development mechanisms which can be described as goal-oriented learning on a collective level defined as knowledge maturing. Knowledge maturing process consists of five consecutive stages: expressing ideas, distributing in communities, formalizing, ad-hoc learning and standardization [START_REF] Maier | Characterizing Knowledge Maturing. 4th Conference Professional Knowledge Management (WM 2007)[END_REF]. Hereby it is claimed that those stages appear in consecutive organizational settings. Ideas are typically expressed in small communities of practice while the standardization can appear at industry-wide level.

Ontologies are taken as a core enabler for Digital Ecosystems which is built from the entire residing knowledge while Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) are a development framework for that.

KOS are referred to as levels of semantics [START_REF] Cardoso | The Syntactic and the Semantic Web[END_REF], maturity of knowledge organization [START_REF] Brun | Towards an Integrated Approach to Assess the Potential of an Enterprise to Mature Knowledge[END_REF], spectrum of knowledge representation [START_REF] Davis | Semantic Wave 2008 Report: Industry Roadmap to Web 3.0 & Multibillion Dollar Market Opportunities[END_REF] or just ontology spectrum [START_REF] Lassila | The Role of Frame-Based Representation on the Semantic Web[END_REF]. The key difference in those concepts is whether ontologies are considered just formal ontologies whose concepts and relations have definitions that are stated in logic or in some computer-oriented language that can be automatically translated to logic or ontologies are considered on the broader spectrum including both formal and terminological ontologies as distinguished in [START_REF] Lacasta | Terminological Ontologies[END_REF]. There are four knowledge organization systems that can be used to model and organize concepts and to describe terms semantically: controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, thesaurus, and ontologies.

[4] Controlled vocabulary is described as a weaker end of this spectrum. Adding structure, hierarchy and child-parent relationships to the controlled vocabulary taxonomy is created. Further from taxonomy thesaurus represent equivalence, homographic, hierarchical, and associative relationships. Using richer semantic relationships among terms and attributes, as well as strict rules about how to specify terms and relationships leads to ontologies. The development of those four KOS in this particular sequence is considered as semantic continuum.

KOS have an important role in each of the knowledge maturing stage. As knowledge matures, more complex structure is needed for knowledge sharing and technical interoperability at the broader scale. The concept of KOS as the core of Digital Ecosystems has shared conceptualization as an essential development mechanism. Private level KOS exist as idiosyncratic and for mainly private use. From this state KOS mature and then gain the guiding role. As an opposite to private level KOS it can be entitled public level KOS which has to distinguishable roles: arbitrary and methodic which roughly correspond to the maturing and guidance in Knowledge Maturing model.

Conceptual Assumptions

Hereby it is claimed that KOS develop and stabilize to the level which is optimal for knowledge sharing requirements at a given stage of knowledge maturing. Knowledge sharing takes place between individuals in communities, communities in organizations and organizations within cooperation networks. KOS are functioning as boundary objects between those functional units which enable cross-boundary flow of information and knowledge.

Boundary objects are plastic, interpreted differently across communities but with enough immutable content to maintain integrity [START_REF] Star | Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology[END_REF]. The role of the boundary object is not the by-product of organizing knowledge but it is essential to consider KOS as artifacts becoming mediators of distributed cognition as described by Wallace and Ross [START_REF] Wallace | Beyond Human Error: Taxonomies and Safety Science[END_REF]. This perspective has broadened the value of KOS from solely standardization and findability to coordination and sense-making, consequently fuelling the efforts to advance towards the higher end of semantic spectrum.

The table below depicts the connections between KOS and knowledge maturing stages within consecutive organizational settings. As knowledge maturing leads to ontology development, enterprise application software applications have to be adjusted according to the knowledge maturing requirements which consequently become the cornerstone of long-term competitiveness. For gaining anticipated functionality of any information system it has to incorporate both flexibility and strict standards for information exchange.

As a consequence of ontology development more patterns appear between nodes which makes the overall Digital Ecosystem more dynamic. According to chaos theory in an extremely dynamic organization the boarders and the identity of the organization become open and fluid and cooperative external relationships are sometimes more important than internal ones. If the speed of development is much faster outside the structural unit than inside, the organization moves from equilibrium to the edge of chaos. In this situation a self-organizing ability emerges which is capable of creating a new order [START_REF] Caluwe | Thinking about Change in Different Colours[END_REF]. The ability of the organization to adapt to its ecosystem is considerably increased. If the organizations have difficulties finding the right adjustments to their dynamic surroundings the stabilizing forces prevail and KOS have lower interoperability needs. According to Knowledge Maturing model dynamic forces appear through generating new ideas and maturing those ideas throughout the entire ecosystem. Stabilizing forces are observable through organizational guidance. There are dynamic and stabilizing forces which influence the development of KOS and Knowledge Maturing.

Research for identifying and measuring those forces would add focus and precision to the development of KOS and consequently support planning and development of information systems. The existing and anticipated connectivity between various nodes in Digital Ecosystems would be the basis of understanding and measuring those forces.

Research Approach

Based on this conceptual approach the next step is developing practical model which has Digital Ecosystem as the unit of analysis with three levels: a) an individual belonging to the community; b) community member belonging to the organization; c) knowledge worker as part of industry/ cooperation network.

According to the conceptual assumptions we have to investigate three different types of KOS. First, private level KOS are measured based on respondents' ability to recognize and form categories from pre-given objects. Second, arbitrary KOS is based on the questions about work processes depicting regularly appearing situations. Third, methodic KOS are derived from Enterprise Application Software applications.

Table 1 :

 1 The congruence between KOS, Knowledge Maturing stages and structural units.

The analogous research approach has been successfully used by APOSDLE in the work place learning study [START_REF] De Hoog | Advanced Process-Oriented Self-Directed Learning Environment[END_REF].

Conclusions

In this paper we have modeled and presented several concepts which provide insight to organizing knowledge. KOS develop and stabilize to the level which is optimal for knowledge sharing requirements at a given stage of knowledge maturing.

There are connections between KOS and knowledge maturing stages within consecutive organizational settings. Two forces coexist which influence development of KOS and Knowledge Maturing. Dynamic forces appear through generating new ideas and maturing those ideas throughout the Digital Ecosystem and stabilizing forces appear through organizational guidance.

The framework of Digital Ecosystems provides context for understanding and measuring those dynamic and stabilizing forces in order to support planning and development of information systems.


Danel Apse
email: danel02@tlu.ee

Tobias Ley
email: tley@tlu.ee

Collaborative Tagging Applications and Capabilities in Social Technologies

Keywords: Collaborative Tagging (CT), Estonian Defence Forces (EDF), Knowledge Maturing, Semantic Scuttle (SSC)

With this paper we will be exploring the usage of Collaborative Tagging in administrative Information Systems of the Estonian Defence Forces (EDF), which is currently using Information Systems (IS) mainly for administrative purposes. The potentials of using Collaborative Tagging in Interand Intra-organizational settings for knowledge management and sharing are not well understood at present. Moreover, military applications of Collaborative Tagging have not been reported. The paper will therefore explore some initial use cases of the use of Collaborative Tagging and from these identify potentials and threats. Does collaborative tagging in semantic environment help us better organize knowledge in the EDF Information Systems? Semantics can foster to gain individual knowledge in the community.

Introduction

Collaborative tagging describes the process by which many users add freely chosen keywords (tags) to shared content (such as webpages, photos, …) and in the last years, collaborative tagging systems emerged as a popular tool supporting knowledge workers such as researchers or students in managing their own resources and finding relevant material based on keywords assigned to them [START_REF] Schoefegger | Towards a User Model for Personalized Recommendations in Work-Integrated Learning: A Report on an Experimental Study with a Collaborative Tagging System[END_REF].

With this paper, we will be exploring the usage of Collaborative Tagging in administrative Military Information Systems. The Estonian Defence Forces (EDF) is currently using Information Systems (IS) mainly for administrative purposes.

Backgrounds

In order to proceed with further analyses the conceptual terms should be clarified:

 Tags are metadata about the resource;  Collaborative tagging (CT) systems allow users to share resources in the web and to annotate them with freely chosen keywords, so called tags. The resources together with the tags are stored on a central server and can be accessed from any computer connected to the web. The term social bookmarking system often is used interchangeably for such systems. The problem: At the moment used Information Systems are having information overlapping -you can find the same information in different systems. Information is not managed effectively -finding exact information in different information systems can be very time consuming and problematic. One of the helpful solutions would be to start using Collaborative Tagging in the systems simultaneously with Taxonomy. How much it would help by organizing user`s knowledge during information sharing in the systems? -The empirical studies are conducted for this reason by the author.

Knowledge Maturing

The kind of activity and commitment which is facilitating tagging in organizational environment has to carry broader mission and goal for EDF.

Knowledge maturing is a concept which defines goal-oriented learning on a collective level. While developing collaborative tagging capabilities it thus becomes essential to evaluate the alternative solutions from knowledge maturing perspective. During the knowledge maturing process knowledge becomes less contextualized, more explicitly linked and easier to communicate. It takes place in five sequential phases defined as: expressing ideas, distributing in communities, formalization, adhoc learning and standardization [START_REF] Maier | Characterizing Knowledge Maturing. 4 th Conference Professional Knowledge Management (WM 07)[END_REF]. As collective tagging reflects the process of knowledge creation from individual perspective and collective perspective then the activities within collective tagging can be connected to the knowledge maturing phases.

In order develop and maintain the credible capacity of EDF and ensure constant learning at organizational level knowledge maturing phases have to identifiable inside the collective tagging.

The Research Project and Methodology

In this section the Research Vision of the Knowledge Maturing in the Collaborative Tagging will be presented. The principal author of the current research paper has started from the beginning of the year 2012 the small research project by using the Semantic Scuttle (SSC) software.

SSC has been implemented based on three level layers: 1. Information Systems Layer consists of different kind of used administrative Information Systems (IS) in EDF.

Semantic Layer consists of used Information System called SSC. It`s goal

and possibility is to combine all the coming information from IS into semantic context -every SSC user can find necessary information more efficiently and information is combined into one environment.

Knowledge Maturing Layer -taken into account the Knowledge Maturing

theory we can improve organizational knowledge collaboration. We can use technology efficiently and organizational knowledge will be improved. Collaborative Tagging improves Knowledge Management, because by using Tags we can prioritize most used information and knowledge. Personal Tag Clouds will be shared and it gives in community setting capability of Community Tag Cloud sharing. Finally we will have Taxonomy in Collaborative Tagging -based on common rules how to share information and knowledge will be tagging used as effective tool.

The principal author of the current paper would define research project as field experiment in Nascent Theory Research, because current research project tries to solve different kind of practical problems by using theory which has not been used in such context before [START_REF] Edmondson | Methodological fit in management field research[END_REF].

The principal author would define his research steps as Traditional Field Research Process [START_REF] Edmondson | Methodological fit in management field research[END_REF]:

-Identify target area of interest (Collaborative Tagging capability in EDF Information Systems); -Reading the literature (reading about Collaborative Tagging generally) -Develop research question (will be developed according that Knowledge not managed effectively in EDF Information Systems) -Design a study (Interviews, observations, questionnaire produced regarding how could help EDF Information Systems users Collaborative Tagging tool Semantic Scuttle by sharing knowledge more effectively) -Collect and analyse data (Qualitative data that need to be interpreted) -Write up results -Publish the research project Research consists of 4 cycles. Every cycle starts from action planning and continues with action, action observation and finally changes will be conducted:  I Cycle: Orientation phase goal was to understand the situation regarding information management in EST MIL information systems (domain description is the outcome). Different use cases were defined. First answers to the questionnaire.  II Cycle: Check out phase goal will be interviews (should be recorded) with the selected interested co-workers with professional ideas how to improve the environment. Detailed description of necessary needs and their improvement with CT technology and look up in semantic layer context will be done. Analysing semantic scuttle context with selected users will be conducted.  III Cycle: Exercising phase goal would be by summarizing previous phases improved use cases will be defined and exercises based on use cases how to improve these problems based on user's opinions by using CT technology and semantic scuttle context. All the ideas and experiences will be documented.  IV Cycle: evaluation phase goal would be summary of the project and documented results. Results should show different final use cases and how these will be solved based on CT and Semantic layer context. Finalized will be semantic layer context regarding Knowledge Maturing (KM) processes.

Further research improvements will be taken into account during PhD studies of the paper author.


Birgy Lorenz
email: birgy.lorenz@tlu.ee

Sonia Sousa
email: sonia.sousa@tlu.ee

Vladimir Tomberg
email: vladimir.tomberg@tlu.ee

Privacy Awareness of Students and its Impact on Online Learning Participation -a Case Study

Keywords: privacy, trust, e-learning, personal learning environments, LePress

This paper is based on a survey that addresses two main hypothesesthat there is a positive correlation between students' level of participation and their privacy awareness, and students with high levels of privacy awareness need to be assured that their open learning activities are protected from potential threats in order to achieve positive results. Results show that in fact there is a correlation between students' awareness of privacy and their predisposition to share and to participate in open leaning contexts. This is especially evident when students share their school assignments, grading results and teacher's feedback or even their comments with others.

Introduction

Our study explores the area of privacy awareness and trust in open or semi-open learning environments. We claim that by understanding the interrelation between students' privacy awareness, their attitudes and beliefs towards sharing in an online learning environment, we will are able to contribute to the design decisions regarding the blog-based tools. The featured example of such a blog-based PLE tool is LePress1 , which is an enhancement of the most popular blog engine WordPress.

Background

Privacy and security researchers in the e-learning domain often focus on a technical area like logging and tracking [START_REF] May | Privacy Concerns in E-learning: Is Using Tracking System a Thread?[END_REF], environments security (accountability, safeguards, individual access, administrative policies, disclosure, retention) [START_REF] El-Khatib | Privacy and security in e-learning[END_REF] or sensitive data misuse, and theft [START_REF] Hayaati | Information Security Threats Analysis for E-Learning[END_REF]. Nevertheless the questions related to personal privacy have come up [START_REF]Analysis of emerging trends affecting the use of technology in education[END_REF], as some researchers now included the topics of data ownership and privacy [START_REF] Gurses | Privacy design in online social networks: Learning from privacy breaches and community feedback[END_REF]. The status of e-learning in Estonia has its own clear peculiarities. At the high school level, the new National Curricula states an obligation for every school to use an e-learning environment [START_REF] Valitsus | Gümnaasiumi riiklik õppekava[END_REF]. At university / vocational school level, there are many open and non-open solutions to choose from, e.g. Wikiversity, Moodle, Blackboard, IVA, LeMill, WordPress, etc [START_REF]E-Learning Development Centre Strategy[END_REF].

Burdened with new professional responsibilities, primary and secondary school teachers have raised serious questions about personal and data protection in these environments and also suggested that learning experience shouldn't be public to allow children an opportunity to make mistakes [START_REF] Piir | e-õppe ajakiri[END_REF]. As a result, some schools have chosen closed learning environments like Moodle. At the same time closeness can be a mirage -especially when security holes are not patched and data is leaking anyway.

Thus the main aim of this study is to provide a further understanding how does the students' awareness of potential privacy threats influence students' learning experience and suggest some solution. For that we rely also on the theory about privacy by Razavi and Iverson [START_REF] Hansen | Marrying Transparency Tools with User-Controlled Identity Management[END_REF], [START_REF] Razavi | A grounded theory of information sharing behavior in a personal learning space[END_REF].

Methods

We carried out an empirical study among students from Pelgulinna Gymnasium and Tallinn University, with two main hypotheses: 1. There is a positive correlation between the subject's level of participation and their level of privacy awareness; 2. students with high levels of privacy awareness need to be assured that their open learning activities are protected from potential threats in order to achieve positive results.

Results

According to data, most participants are from Tallinn. The majority attended high school graduation level and most of them had no earlier experience with blog-based tools in learning contexts.

Regarding the first hypothesis, a positive and significant correlation was found between the subjects' predisposition to participate and their privacy awareness. More specifically, a bivariate analysis (Spearman's) showed a statistically significant correlations on the following issues: (1) those who publish often also agree that it is very easy to anonymously find information and pictures of others on the web (r=.272*, r=.267* and r=.264*); (2) those who publish often (school assignments on the web) tend also to agree that it is very easy to post comments anonymously on the web (r=.3 (Sig. (2-tailed)=.019) (3) those who publish often (something about a 2 Please see the following address http://goo.gl/xCTy8 for further information regarding survey questions.

teacher or a school colleague) also agree that it is very easy to post comments about somebody (friends, teacher, school) on the web under a false name (r=.311*) and also agree that it is not easy to permanently remove content that others have posted about them on the web (r=-.319*); (4) again, those who publish often also agree that it is not safe to take part in open forum discussions (r=-.279*); but argue that it is safe to read teachers' feedback in closed learning contexts (r=.286*).

Concerning the second hypothesis, again a positive correlation was found between student's privacy awareness and the need to be assured that they are interacting in a safe place. These concerns are especially expressed by the students who believe that teachers should always make extra efforts to provide support to assure that their learning activities are protected from privacy threats. This issue is mostly correlated with their beliefs that (1) it is very easy to post comments in the web anonymously (r=.332**), ( 2) it is very easy to anonymously see their friends' information and pictures on the Facebook (r=.279*) (3), or even with their belief that an email account is a safe place to exchange messages (r=.255*); and (4) that a closed learning environment is a safe place to read teacher feedback (r=.416**); but (5) it is not safe to share (e.g. work-related resources or to exchange comments) in social e-tools like Facebook or Google+ (r=-.270*). Also, most students who agree that it is safe to read and send e-mail through an email base account claim that (1) the teacher's grading information (r=.373**), (2) homework comments (r=.284*) and ( 3) feedback (r=.255*) should remain private by default. Again a negative correlation was found, though between those students who believe that it is safe to share using social e-tools (work-related resources or exchange comments) and their belief that (1) teacher's feedback (r=-.253*), (2) homework submissions (-.267*) and (3) grading information (r=-.282*) should remain private by default 3 .

Discussion

We conclude that the students who socialize the most on the Internet tend to be more aware of potential privacy threats of this communication medium and need assurance that they are interacting in a protected and secure environment. We also concluded that students in a virtual environment tend usually not to distinguish between private and educational social interactions and this might be a potential threat for their communication environment. Students don't usually filter their posts or comments when in social networks; though some of them feel that their rights and privacy may be violated if their posts or comments are open to everybody. This indicates that these matters should be addressed more at schools. Some environments convince that they store data safely, yet they may sell it to others or just have weak privacy settings.

For the future we are going to repeat the study, but also look behind of the obvious privacy needs what have come up. Unanswered questions are related to the digital divide between students and teacher changing role to provide safe learning environment.

Conclusion

The main outcome of this study is that from a learners' point of view, students need to be ensured that their online learning activities are protected from potential privacy threats. Based on that knowledge we aim to implement comfortable conditions that will stimulate students for self-regulated learning. It means that from a blog-based PLE perspective (e.g. when a student uses LePress or another PLE tool) the student should be able to define access restrictions to his/her resources or information. A paramount idea is that grading, homework feedback or comments should in many cases stay private. Our study indicates that privacy is becoming more significant as schools are starting to use open and semi-open PLEs as obligatory tools to educate students. The findings of this study allow us to start a new redesign iteration of LePress software for PLE privacy needs.

  The questionnaire was conducted by using an open source web application called LimeSurvey and used Likert scale as well as open-ended answers. Sixty-one (61) anonymous responses were collected during November 2011. The survey included 25 questions, divided into three main groups: (1) background, (2) privacy awareness, and (3) predisposition to participate in open learning activities 2 .

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Please see the following address http://goo.gl/xCTy8 for further information


Nicholas Mavengere
email: nicholas.mavengere@uta.fi

Mikko Ruohonen
email: mikko.j.ruohonen@uta.fi

Paul Nleya
email: nleyapt@mopipi.ub.bw

E-Learning Using Open Source Software in African Universities

Keywords: learning management systems, open source software, low resourced education institutes, community of inquiry

The use of technology in education specifically for enhancing learning is of immense value for improving education delivery. This article serves to highlight the research project to be done by the University of Tampere, University of Botswana and Catholic University of Mozambique. The aim of the research is to investigate how low resourced higher education institutes could make use of free and open source technologies to enhance education delivery. The community of inquiry is used as background theory because it also seeks potential to break new ground pedagogically by addressing the challenge to scientifically explore the combination of pedagogical principles and new technology that will advance the evolution of higher education. The expected results include critical success factors in implementing learning management systems in developing countries and models of open source learning management use.

Introduction

The use of technology in education is of differing dimensions but however its value is equally important. For instance, in education technology can be used for storing students' records, that is university information system, and also technology can be used for learning purposes, that is, learning management systems. It is important to study the technology used for learning for several reasons, for example, it is of direct benefit to the main education stakeholders, students and also Marshall and Ruohonen [START_REF] Marshall | Capacity Building for IT in Education in Developing Countries IFIP Publication[END_REF] noted that the use of technology in classroom is still a challenge both in developed and developing countries. Therefore, it is of value to improve how to effectively and efficiently make use of technology in classroom.

Free and open source software (FOSS) is widely considered to be a tool for promoting ICT in developing countries owing mainly to advantages like reduced cost of ownership, avoidance of vendor lock-in and development of indigenous technologies [START_REF] Lerner | Some Simple Economics of Open Source[END_REF][START_REF] Camara | Information Policies and Open Source Software in Developing Countries[END_REF]. In other words, FOSS is a considered to be important for removing the so-called 'digital divide' between developed countries and the rest of the world. Thus, a recent trend shows that governments of developing countries, especially from Africa, are adopting FOSS over proprietary ICT. Therefore, this research seeks to utilize FOSS because of the mentioned advantages. The FOSS systems that will be used in this research are learning management systems (LMS).

This research seeks to investigate how low resourced higher education institutes could make use of free and open source technologies to enhance education delivery. The practical problem which this project seeks to solve is to reduce the impact of inadequate resources in higher education institute in developing countries. This is a common problem at most institutes in Africa. The aim of this project is to make use of free and open source technologies to reduce this problem. Technology offers a big opportunity for African education institutes to reduce the impact of lack of resources. The significance of the project is to offer sustainable solution to lack of resources at African education institutes. The research question to be addressed in this research is; how to make use of eLearning in African education institutes in order to foster the use of technology in higher education context?

2

Research background

Practical background

Mavengere and Ruohonen [START_REF] Mavengere | Using Open Source Software for Improving Dialog in Computer Science Education -Case Mozambique University[END_REF] note five key issues in application of LMS in African universities as computer literacy, computer infrastructure, collaboration/sharing culture, human resource (IT staff) and leadership support. These are essential aspects which have to be addressed before starting a technology related project in Africa. We will briefly discuss these issues before explaining the proposed Case Studies in this research.

The main challenge for IT-enhanced education in developing countries is availability of computer infrastructure [START_REF] Kumar | [END_REF]. Therefore, firstly the need for computer infrastructure has to be addressed before initiating any technology related project in Africa. In this research we access the computer infrastructure availability at University of Botswana and Catholic University of Mozambique and make adequate preparations. The second step is to guarantee computer literacy, as it was noted as also an essential aspect for LMS in African universities [START_REF] Mavengere | Using Open Source Software for Improving Dialog in Computer Science Education -Case Mozambique University[END_REF]. Third aspect and related to computer literacy is availability of the required human resource expertise, such as, IT technicians and managers. This research project will incorporate student and staff exchange programmes from African universities to University of Tampere as a well to improve the human resources on IT use in education. Moreover, joint intensive courses will be done by all partner universities to share experience and learn from each other. Last, two other important aspects for application of LMS in African universities are based on organizational behaviour namely collaboration culture and leadership support. Collaboration is important especially in African education context where resources are limited in that there is mutual benefit by the sharing parties. On the other hand, leadership support is the backbone in any change initiative and use of technology is education requires support from the policy makers and administrators.

Theoretical background

The community of inquiry framework, Figure 1, fits as the theoretical basis of this research as it also seeks potential to break new ground pedagogically by addressing the challenge to scientifically explore the combination of pedagogical principles and new technology that will advance the evolution of higher education [START_REF] Garrison | Exploring causal relationships among teaching, cognitive and social presence: Student perceptions of the community of inquiry framework[END_REF]. Community of inquiry is meaningful association in addressing a problem, for instance, in the project the partners University of Botswana, Catholic University of Mozambique and University of Tampere make up the community that is multi-disciplinary and includes discourse. The philosophical basis of this research just as elaborated by the framework is collaborative constructivism. The core elements of a collaborative constructivist learning environment identified in the framework and that are required for a purposeful learning are teaching, cognitive and social presence. The first element, social presence is the participants' ability to recognize themselves as part of the community. Thus in the project we aim to make every project member and participants to identify themselves with the project and its activities as a single family.

Cognitive presence, the second element of community of inquiry framework, is the degree to which learners are able to construct and verify meaning through continuous reflection and dialogue in a community of inquiry. Lastly, teaching presence includes three main responsibilities to be catered for in this project as elaborated by Garrison, Cleveland-Innes and Fung [START_REF] Garrison | Exploring causal relationships among teaching, cognitive and social presence: Student perceptions of the community of inquiry framework[END_REF] "the first of the primary teaching presence responsibilities is establishing curriculum content, learning activities, and timelines. The second responsibility is monitoring and managing purposeful collaboration and reflection. The third is ensuring that the community reaches the intended learning outcomes by diagnosing needs and providing timely information and direction" (p.32). Blended learning has transformative potential of learning in the context of the challenges facing higher education [START_REF] El-Ghalayini | An approach to designing and evaluating blended courses[END_REF]. In agreement with Garrison and Kanuka [START_REF] Garrison | Blended learning: Uncovering its transformative potential in higher education[END_REF] in simple terms blended learning "is the thoughtful integration of classroom face-to-face learning experiences with online learning experiences" (p.96). Blended learning that is the use of eLearning using open source software and face-to-face teaching will be utilized in this project [START_REF] El-Ghalayini | An approach to designing and evaluating blended courses[END_REF]. Blended learning has many advantages as noted by Garrison and Kanuka [START_REF] Garrison | Blended learning: Uncovering its transformative potential in higher education[END_REF], such as, "effective integration of the two main components (face-to-face and Internet technology) such that we are not just adding on to the existing dominant approach or method. What makes blended learning particularly effective is its ability to facilitate a community of inquiry" (p.97).

Figure 1 Community of inquiry [9]

System. The Department of Information Technology (FGTI) in Beira thus became the pioneer on the use of Moodle in UCM. The FLOSS-AHEAD project will be of immense value in developing required e-learning capabilities for UCM staff, students and the university as a whole. The exchange programs to Finland would of value as University of Tampere experience in Moodle use and moreover ICT in development in general. Therefore UCM intends to improve learning outcomes and student interest in IT in education and for development in general. Appreciation of the vast potential of Moodle is still being realized.

University of Tampere

The University of Tampere and also other universities in Finland generally use learning management systems, such as Moodle, webCT and Blackboard. However, the use of these learning management systems is very diverse with no agreed upon standards or best practices. There is room to improve the use of the learning management even though different institutes could be using different learning management system although this research advocates for FLOSS systems. Even at the same institute professors use differently technology in their classes. Thus it is motivating to draw lessons from all these different ways technology is being used and propose more efficient and effective practices that incorporate eLearning.

Conclusion

There is a need to be better employing the good technical facilities available to universities to provide equitable and quality education. Recent research, for example, [START_REF] Buettner | Teaching teachers to teach ICT integration[END_REF][START_REF] Ottevanger | Developing Science, mathematics, and ICT education in sub-Saharan Africa: Patterns and promising practices[END_REF][START_REF] Ruohonen | The Use of Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) for African Higher Education Advancement and Development[END_REF] have noted that there is a room for improvement in the application of ICTs in classrooms. Therefore, this research project is an effort to improve the use of ICTs at universities in general and with a specific focus on improving learning and interactions between main education stakeholders, students and teachers at University of Botswana and Catholic University of Mozambique. Moreover, eLearning use with support of open source software offers a plausible channel for enhancement of higher education in developing countries. One of the greatest challenges of ICT integration in education can be summarized as limited vision, policy and leadership given that ICT is changing faster than educators ability to keep track [START_REF] Ruohonen | The Use of Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) for African Higher Education Advancement and Development[END_REF]. To conclude the need to conduct evidence-led research in ICT integration in higher education is noted.

Research Methodology

This article is based on a proposed research to be conducted at University of Botswana and Catholic University of Mozambique. The research project includes joint courses among the partner universities, mirror courses (same courses) done at the partner universities and exchange programs for teachers and students. The value of the exchange program is in sharing academic and professional experiences and culture. The teacher exchange will enable the visiting teacher to give classes and carry out research at the host university. The students exchange will offer students a different learning environment. The intensive courses will expose the partner universities to diverse cultures in jointly offering the courses. There will also courses on the same topic simultaneously done at the partner universities in order to share experiences. All these project activities will also be support by use of a learning management system. Case studies from each partner university will also be analysed and reported. Below is a summary from each partner university.

University of Botswana

The University of Botswana is in need of e-learning individual and institutional capacity development. This project is the right step in ensuring this as the university seeks to explore the process of eLearning integration at the UB using both proprietary (WebCT/Blackboard) and alternative Open Educational Resources (OER) (Moodle).

The UB is currently using WeBCT/Blackboard for its eLearning and concurrently piloting with Moodle given that Moodle is low cost compared to WebCT/Blackboard where the UB spends $40,000 on license and service agreement fees and over $3 million for upgrades annually. There is therefore ample opportunity and relevance to explore the benefits of Moodle as a new learning management tool at the UB in the Botswana study. The University of Tampere (Finland) has expertise in the implementation of Moodle and has worked in the African context (Mozambique) assisting in the execution of Moodle OER. The Botswana case study therefore explores the process of integrating ICT into the tertiary curriculum focusing on the process of eLearning integration at the UB using identified SAM and other relevant conceptual frameworks. Therefore, the teacher and students exchange to the University of Tampere will aid in that the required expertise and experienced will be gained from the exchange program. Moreover, the university will host a joint intensive course which will provide valuable experience in its e-learning ambitions.

Catholic University of Mozambique

Catholic University of Mozambique (UCM) has recently started experimenting with aspects of an e-learning mode of delivery by being part of the African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources (AVOIR) Network, including universities of seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa with the objective to establish a group of universities in Africa who collaboratively develop open source software (KEWL.NextGen) to promote the innovative applications of ICT in higher education. However, in 2009, a general consensus was reached on the use of Moodle as the preferred Learning Management