Tag Archives: espoo

weeknotes

Love a bit of snow me – Weeknote #311 – 14th February 2025

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This week I was in Finland for a workshop regarding NRENs for Education. NRENs are the National Research and Education Networks that most countries have for connecting their universities and research institutes. In the UK Jisc is the NREN.

This workshop was bringing together a group of like-minded NRENs to work together on essentially student mobility across Europe. The group has written a series of use cases on a prospective student journey. This takes the student through the recruitment process, transferring easily between institutions, and ensuring that they are accredited and recognised for what they have been studying.

Now of course we know that the UK is no longer part of the EU, however there are potentially good core reasons why the UK should be involved in this. First the situation in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland ensuring students can move freely between institutions. Secondly, there has been discussions about free movement for young people, streamlining and aligning education would enable young people in the UK to study at universities in the EU, and for EU students to come to the UK.

This can happen now, but it’s a complex and often manual process. It also favours the institution rather than the student.

I have been to Finland before, I was there for a conference in July 2006, nearly twenty years ago. Back then I was presenting at the EU e-Learning Conference in Espoo. It was a quick trip in 2006, flying out on Monday and then back home on the Wednesday. I flew from Bristol Airport and then there was a bit of a mad rush at Schiphol where I had to change to a flight to Helsinki. Schiphol is one huge airport… Having arrived at Helsinki, I needed to get to Espoo and travelled by shared taxi to the hotel. I spent part of the evening walking around the area, before ending up in the hotel restaurant. It was lovely and sunny, and as being so far north, the sun never really set. I had spent the Tuesday at the conference. I had some time the following day before my flight to have a really quick look around Helsinki. I caught a bus to the centre and back. I had always planned to return, so nineteen years later I was back.

This time I flew direct to Helsinki from Heathrow. I arrived late afternoon, this time I took a train from the airport to the centre. I then walked to my hotel, so after checking in I did explore the area around the hotel.

The following morning, I was up early so I went for a walk around the city centre. I then headed off to Espoo for my workshop, using the Metro to get there. The workshop was over two days. I had an evening flight the following day. I woke up to 4cm of snow, so after working at the hotel, after checking out I took a walk down to the harbour to catch a ferry to Suomenlinna. Suomenlinna is an island fort that has a long history and some amazing architecture and a few museums.

Helsinki is an amazing city, and there is some incredible architecture and buildings. I was impressed with the public transport, there were trains, buses, trams, a metro, and even a ferry. I used the HSL app extensively for tickets. It was nice to return to Helsinki and having a little more time to see something of the place, whereas back in 2006 it was very rushed.

I had a fair few meetings in my calendar for Friday, when planning my trip, and originally going by train, I had intended to head to the London office on Fetter Lane and have my meetings there. With potential issues with the trains the preceding Sunday, I had decided to drive to Heathrow. That didn’t preclude going to the London office, but I thought, as I had the car, I would travel to our relatively new offices in Milton Park near Didcot. These replaced our old offices in Harwell. However with my body clock still on Helsinki time, having woken up early I had the time to make the trip back to Bristol and still do my meetings, so I did that.

candle and laptop
Photo by PJ Gal-Szabo on Unsplash

Over the week I continued my work on the state of activity of higher education and on data standards.

My final action of the week was reviewing the proposals for the collaborative UUK project work which is my next big thing.

weeknotes

Raising the standards – Weeknote #308 – 24th January 2025

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I was off to London again this week. I was attending an 1EdTech Event in London, Innovate your way out of the funding crisis. This was my first engagement with the standards community for some time. Before I joined Jisc and when I was working in Further Education I did a lot of work looking at standards in relation to moving student data around so it could be imported into the VLE. Then there were standards for learning objects and ensuring that they would work on the VLE, both importing and exporting the right data. I also being very impressed with LTI and what it would enable in allowing students to use a WordPress installation for blogging. Blogging, what was that, and is it still around?

We are starting work on a collaborative project with UUK on collaboration. Part of that is reviewing the original terms of reference and bringing in a consultant to undertake some of the work as well.

laptop
Image by fancycrave1 from Pixabay

I have been spending time researching, planning and writing initial draft for a higher education state of activity report.

In February Jisc has one of its regular meetings with the OfS and I have been preparing some notes for that meeting.

Spent time on the planning and logistics for a workshop I am attending in Helsinki in February. The workshop is about NRENs for Education. NRENs are the National Research and Education Networks that most countries have for connecting their universities and research institutes. In the UK Jisc is the NREN. This workshop is bringing together a group of like-minded NRENs to work together on essentially student mobility.

I am anticipating that Helsinki will be cold. I have been before, for an EU e-Learning Conference which took place in July 2006 in Finland. I reminisced about that conference back in a weeknote in July 2019.

I also signed up for TNC in Brighton in June. It’s the first TNC I go to, and it’s in the UK. Reminds me when I got funding to go to the international conference mLearn, and the year I went, it was in Dudley.

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Looking back – Weeknote #18 – 5th July 2019

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The beach at Sand Bay
The beach at Sand Bay

A busy and confusing week for me with various non-work activities taking place, resulting in a more agile and flexible way of working.

On Monday, that Amazon Photos reminded me that on the 1st July in 2007 I was taking photographs of our brand new library at the new Gloucestershire College campus on the quays.

Gloucestershire College Library

What really impressed me back then was that my library team came in over the weekend to unpack everything and ensure that the library was ready to open. They didn’t tell me they were going to do that, as they wanted to surprise me (and everyone else as it happens). The library was welcomed by staff and students. It would take a little time to embed the use of the library across the student body, but within a year or two we were there.

At Gloucestershire College I was responsible for TEL, the libraries and learning resources from 2006 until 2013. Ofsted at our March 2013 inspection. Ofsted said “Teachers and learners use learning technologies extensively and creatively inside and outside the classroom. Most courses provide a good range of materials for learners through the college’s VLE. Outside lessons, many learners make constructive use of the college’s libraries and resources.” This was achieved by working with curriculum teams and students on show how the library and technology could be used to support learners and enhance the learning experience. I was very proud that all the work myself and my team had put into the use of learning technologies, the VLE and the library was recognised.

I quite enjoyed the tweets this week from Microsoft celebrating the 1985 initial release of Windows.

My first experience of Windows was some time later with Windows 3.0 and remembering the big advance that Windows 3.1 brought to computing. It was probably Windows 3.1 that really made me appreciate the affordances that technology could bring to teaching.

I remember the huge fanfare that was Windows 95 and what a step change it was from 3.1. We even had video now on Windows, though it was quite small.

I never really moved to Windows 98 and moved straight to Windows 2000 when I started a new job in 2001. Well the laptop I was provided with did use Windows Me, but I soon moved over to 2000. I liked Windows XP and thought it was a huge improvement over previous versions of Windows.

After that I was more of a Mac person and rarely used Windows. I did have to use Windows 7 for a while, but found it confusing as I hadn’t used Windows for a long time. Today I have been known to use Windows 10, but my main computing platform these days is still OS X.

David Kernohan of Wonkhe wrote an interesting blog post Visualising the national student survey 2019.

I’ve long argued that NSS by institution only isn’t helpful for prospective students or others – you include so many different student experiences l that an average doesn’t offer much help for understanding how your experience may compare.

He then goes through a range of visualisations including results that allows you to get as close to results for an individual course as the data allows.

I liked the use of Tableau to enable you to interact with the visualisations.

Another news item this week caught my eye. Police face calls to end use of facial recognition software.

…independent analysis found matches were only correct in a fifth of cases and the system was likely to break human rights laws.

Relying on new technology for some stuff can be excused, but using unproven technology that could result in negative impacts on people’s lives is inexcusable.

Actually relying on technology without a human element is also inexcusable. The number of times we hear the phrase “well the computer says…”.

We need to remember that computers and software are designed by people and people can be wrong, biased and will make mistakes.

On Thursday, that Amazon Photos once more gave me a blast from the past and reminded me that thirteen years ago in 2006 I had presented at the EU e-Learning Conference in Espoo in Finland. I was presenting on behalf of Norton Radstock College (now part of Bath College) about a joint European project they had been working on. At the time I was Director of the Western Colleges Consortium of which Norton Radstock was the lead college. I was on holiday when I got the call to see if I could attend, so it was a somewhat mad rush to sort out the travel. I started off in Bristol Airport and then there was a bit of a mad rush at Schiphol where I had to change to a flight to Helsinki. Schiphol is one huge airport…

Schiphol Airport

Having arrived at Helsinki, I needed to get to Espoo and travelled by shared taxi to the hotel. I spent part of the evening walking around the area, before ending up in the hotel restaurant.

Espoo

It was lovely and sunny, and as being so far north, the sun never really set. I also remember trying to access the BBC News website connected to the hotel wifi and being surprised by the advertising all across the BBC site. I then connected to the VPN in my office in Keynsham and all those adverts disappeared…

The conference was opened by a string quartet which I remember been something I hadn’t seen before at an e-learning conference. My presentation went down well, but the humour didn’t!

EU e-Learning Conference 2006

The conference meal was a little disappointing, I had been expecting a meal that would be full of Finnish delicacies and national dishes. What actually happened was we went to an Italian restaurant and had a buffet of Italian food.

It’s quite happenstance that I was reminded of that conference and trip, as in my new role I am now working with NREN colleagues across Europe on different projects,

Helsinki Tram

I had some time the following day before my flight to have a quick look around Helsinki. I caught a bus to the centre and back.

Helsinki

As I didn’t know any Finnish I thought I did quite well to not get lost.

Helsinki

Spent some time reviewing and planning the Data Matters 2020 conference. I presented on the Intelligent Campus at Data Matters 2019 and in my new role the responsibility for planning the next conference falls of my shoulders.

I also spent a fair amount of time working on the Learning and Research Technical Career Pathway I am working on at Jisc.

My top tweet this week was this one.