The 2010 Global Education Conference

The 2010 Global Education Conference will be held November 15 - 19, 2010, online and free. Sessions will be held in multiple time zones and multiple languages over the five days.

The conference is a collaborative and world-wide community effort to significantly increase opportunities for globally-connecting education activities and initiatives.

There is no formal registration required for the conference, as all the sessions will be open and public, broadcast live using the Elluminate platform, and available in recorded formats afterwards. Links to watch the sessions will be posted a few days before the conference begins, in the "Sessions" and "Schedule" pages, and recording links will be listed soon thereafter.

More information from http://www.globaleducationconference.com/

Event: From Margin to Mainstream

From Margin to Mainstream: consultation conference on an e-learning strategy for Higher Education in Wales

Date: Tuesday 13 November 2007, 9.30 – 16.30

Venue: The Metropole Hotel, Temple St, Llandrindod Wells, Powys, LD1 5DY www.metropole.co.uk

Bookings are invited for a major conference on e-learning in Welsh Higher Education. This free conference is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales www.hefcw.ac.uk and the Higher Education Academy http://www.heacademy.ac.uk in association with JISC RSC Wales www.rsc-wales.ac.uk. Staff from HEFCW-funded institutions are encouraged to attend.

In addition to sessions for delegates to consult on an E-learning Strategy for Higher Education in Wales, there is a rich programme of speakers assembled from universities and e-learning organisations across the UK, covering the following themes:

- E-learning and Pedagogy

- E-assessment

- Widening Participation

- Innovation in e-learning

- Learning spaces – physical and virtual

Participants are invited to opt for three breakout sessions from any of these strands.

Programme

The full programme, together with abstracts of breakout sessions and speaker biographies, is available via the JISC RSC Wales website at

http://www.rsc-wales.ac.uk/hefcw/programme1.asp

Benefits of attending

The conference offers participants the opportunity to:

- Take part in consultation on the draft E-learning strategy for Higher Education in Wales

- Network with a wide range of staff across Welsh Higher Education who are interested in developing the use of technologies to support learning and teaching

- Draw on examples of good practice and expertise from universities and other organisations

Target audience

The conference will be of value to a wide range of staff in Wales including:

- Pro-Vice Chancellors or other senior staff with responsibility for learning and teaching

- e-learning champions in universities

- university staff with responsibility for developing e-learning

- staff leading in innovative practices in relation to university learning and teaching

- university staff involved in library and information services for learning and teaching; learning spaces; widening participation

- Higher Education coordinators and ILT champions (or equivalent) in Further Education colleges in receipt of HEFCW funding

How to book

Please complete the online booking form at http://www.rsc-wales.ac.uk/hefcw/ no later than Friday 12 October. Please note that space is limited so early booking is advised.

Accommodation

Delegates may take advantage of a discount available on overnight accommodation at the Metropole Hotel.

Further information

Further details are available from:

Alun Williams, HEFCW, Linden Court, The Orchards, Ilex Close, Llanishen, Cardiff CF14 5DZ. Tel: 029 2068 2202; fax: 029 2076 3163; email: alun.williams@hefcw.ac.uk.

Helen Kelly, Administrator, RSC Wales, Library and Information Services, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP. Tel: 01792 295005; email: h.kelly@swansea.ac.uk.

Wikis as a collaborative Tool

Using Wikis to quickly and simply create shared websites

Friday's Lunch and Learn session in SDU (a 1 hour session where lunch was served, information provided, and questions answered), was all about Wikis!

What are Wikis? Essentially they are a set of web pages which can be quickly and easily edited through a web-browser. A Wiki is a piece of software, where the main feature of is an "edit" link or button on the web pages, which gives you a simple editing panel enabling you to add content without needing to know any web languages. More

Wiki is a bit of an odd looking term, but in fact it is the Hawaiian word for "Quick"! The creator of Wikis Ward Cunningham, was inspired by the Wiki Wiki (Quick Quick) busses at the airport in Hawaii. And what better term for software that allows you to quickly edit web pages, than Wiki!

Most of us are familiar with Wiki's because of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedic website that is as commonly used as Google.


Wikis enable more than one person to edit the content on a page, quickly and easily. This enables the content to have been placed by many different authors, of varying expertise, where information that one person doesn't know is added by someone else, so that the document is cohesive, and as extensive as possible.

Wikis are really useful for collaborative activities, which fits well in the educational environment. Some activities that a Wiki could be used for are:
Brainstorming/Mind Mapping; for Collaborative Document Creation; Group Projects; Event Planning; Meeting management; Lists; Simple Websites; Shared Web resources…… there are many possibilities.

Within the session we looked at many examples of Wikis, and at exactly how easy it is to edit a Wiki page. A handout was given at the end of the session and can be found here: http://learninglab.swan.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=wikis

Is e-learning better than sex?

That was the question posed by Terry Anderson at The Shock of the Social at Oxford University. I’m not sure I agree with him but here’s his argument anyway –

Why is e-learning better than sex?

• If you get tired, you can stop, save your place and pick up where you left off.
• You can finish early without feeling guilty.
• You can get rid of any viruses you catch with a $50 program from McAfee
• With a little coffee you can do it all night.
• You don’t usually get divorced if your spouse interrupts you in the middle of it.
• And If you're not sure what you are doing, you can always ask your tutor.

Maybe some people have this feeling about Blackboard but what you do in your own time……

Actually that wasn’t Terry’s main argument or a firmly held belief (I hope), it was just by way of an introduction to his keynote on Social Software and Personal Learning Environments.

He argued that student control and freedom are integral to 21st Century life-long education and learning and that education for elites is not sufficient for planetary survival. He concluded that content is now cheap or free and that there is a need to learn to share, recontextulize and re-use. We shouldn’t build value on our content. Content is necessary, but not sufficient, to create a quality educational experience. However, there is no single ‘killer app” in this environment - rather an evolving set of personal and social tools, pedagogies, and resources. Thus according to Stephen Downes "The PLE is an approach not an application."

The rest of the presentations, whilst interesting, didn’t really match up to the opening. Some of the uses of ‘Web 2.0’ were quite controlled, which some argue is against the ideas behind the tools

However, there were some interesting points raised

• Students like social networking tools (myspace, facebook etc.) but have concerns about their use in HE
• Does the proliferation of Web 2.0 mean the end of in-house IT services?
• Students might prefer to use non institutional tools
• A PLE is personally constructed and you don't provide a PLE like you do with a VLE
• Revealing personal information to others on the internet can facilitate deep learning thus, it was argued, there is a relationship between self disclosure and deep learning
• There are a number of very successful ways in which mobile learning can be used to support students.

Bizarrely, when searching for information on the conference tagged with ‘shock2007’, I found this picture – just to prove I was there :-). I was actually reading some interesting information about students’ use of Web 2.0 tools

Surprisingly, by far the most interest section of the conference was the second day – Beyond the Search Engine, which initially may have seemed about as interesting as watching England bore draw against Israel.

Plagiarism and Intellectual Copyright are not normally subjects to get the pulse racing, although some of Alastair Campbell’s homework got a few column inches . However, the thrust of the day was not so much about catching cheats but that firstly, most plagiarism is incompetence rather than wilful cheating and secondly, we should be setting different kinds of assessment; tasks that say ‘build it not find it’, ‘make it not fake it’.

Students don't see plagiarism as a moral issue as most plagiarism arises from misunderstanding and there is no evidence to indicate an increase in deliberate cheating. The question was posed ‘Why do we have peer reviewed journals if not to stop plagiarism amongst academics?’

It was argued that plagiarism is not a technical or a Quality Assurance issue but more a pedagogic issue and one that forces us to create a clearer sense of what learning is. We should teach and not tell, moving away from lectures on plagiarism towards active learning.

Enter the Blogosphere

Find out how Weblogs can be used in Education

This was the topic of todays Lunch and Learn session in SDU, a 1 hour session where lunch was served, information provided, and questions answered.


Blog or Blogs is a word you probably hear from time to time, I was reading so and so’s blog; there was an interesting discussion on this blog; I’ve just blogged about that; I’m blogging about....

People talk about blogs, they mention blogs, they own blogs, and blogs seem to cover a variety of topics, the blogging phenomenon seems to be everywhere!

but What Exactly are Blogs?
Well the term Blog is a shortened form of the word weblog. An online space for the written word, each entry is called a post, and when submitted is automatically time stamped. These are organised reverse chronologically, so that the latest post is at the top.

Blogs also allow readers to leave comments about individual posts, enabling conversations to take place about the topics blogged about.


Why do people Blog?
People blog for a variety of reasons: to Share thoughts and opinions on a topic; to keep a diary or journal; to communicate with family and/or friends.
Some people describe a need to share; many wannabe writers use blogs to get themselves known or simply to have a voice – after all, a blog can be a personal publishing medium; some blog to eliminate frustration through the process of writing things down, getting them out there; people also blog to create social connections, meeting other people through blog comments; and some simply because its Fun!


As 5th Grader Dominic says:
"Blogging is an opportunity to exchange our point of view with the rest of the world not just people in our immediate environment"
in Educational Blogging, Educause 2004

Blog and connect with a large number of people.


What makes Blogs powerful?

The Connections!

The links within the posts, to articles, websites, other Blogs, these connections are particularly useful, readers do not need to go to a search engine to find out more, the links are right there in the text. They can be referencing other peoples blogs, or perhaps providing contextual information to what you are talking about on your Blog.

But the connection of people really makes blogging powerful.

People leave comments on blogs, leaving their opinion, the author may comment back, a discussion make take place in the comment area of the post, I’ve certainly been involved in this. This discussion may lead the author to re-post, taking into account other peoples opinions and reforming their argument.

When you add a comment to a Blog post, you have the opportunity to link to your own website or Blog. This enables other people who particularly like your comments to go and see your Blog and read more about what you have to say.

Its easy to follow links from one blog to the next to the next in a neverending series of connections. Each time coming across new content and ideas. Forming connections across a number of Blogs, by linking to eachother, commenting on eachothers Blogs, creating an informal network.

This is when you truly "Enter the Blogosphere!"

Interestingly enough, "People typically find blogs through other blogs they are reading, through friends or colleagues telling them about their blogs or those of others." (Nardi & Schiano)

Its time to introduce the element of RSS, something very powerful, and always associated with Blogs. There are actually two definitions for this, the one we tend to use, Really Simple Syndication, and Rich Site Summary.

Now the words themselves don’t really explain a lot, but, the process of RSS is to create a feed – a summary with links back to the source - from your blog of the most recent posts (or a certain number depending how it has been set up), which can be subscribed to by readers. (Using Feed Readers/Aggregators)

Why?
Because instead of having to go and check all the blogs that you are interested in to see if there is a new post, your feed reader will tell you when something is new. Information coming to you, rather than you having to go to it.


and How are Blogs relevant to Education?

In education blogs can be useful to keep a daily or weekly progress report, on study, on a project, on a class, as a reflective journal.

To Communicate opinions, research, reflection.

There can be class blogs, staff blogs, student blogs, community blogs, the possibilities are endless!

Blogs encourage Students to write, the more you write the more your style is defined, and your writing improves.

A conclusion from one Blogging study was that:
"From a junior scholar’s point of view, blogging can be an excellent method for developing and sustaining a confident and clear voice of one’s own and the ability to formulate and stand by opinions." T.Mortensen, & J.Walker

There are several examples of students using Blogging during the composition of their PHD's, documenting their research, their thoughts, their ideas.

T.Mortensen, & J.Walker concluded "that writing the thesis became easier and the writing more focused after we started blogging."

And Blogging in education is not just for students, blogging can be useful for staff as well, possibilities include reflection on classes, on teaching practice, for use with research.

During this session a handout was provided with many links to examples and articles used to create the presentation materials, i link to this information here: http://learninglab.swan.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=blogosphere


Can you see a use for Blogs? Within your Teaching? Research?

E-Learning & Cakes - March 15th

Fancy a coffee, some cake and a chance to find out what's going on in E-Learning here at Swansea? The next E-Learning and Cakes session will be on Thursday 15th March at 11:00am in Room 703 on the 7th Floor of the Library building. It's not a formal meeting but a chance for anyone who is interested in using technology in learning to share what they are doing and find out what others are up to. Last time there was a good mix of academics, learning technologists, IT staff, project teams and PhD students, which led to some interesting and wide ranging discussion.

Date - Thursday 15th March
Time - 11:00am
Venue - Room 703, 7th Floor of the Library Building

Innovative Practice with Mobile and Wireless Technologies

Thanks to Lis Parcell for this -

I attended a pilot of this workshop at University of Wolverhampton and thought it was excellent. It didn’t require participants to have any great technical knowledge or a very flashy mobile phone. However you will get more out of the workshop if you have your mobile with you, as it is used during the event for feedback and activities. It’s probably the first event I’ve been to where mobile phones ringing were actually part of the event and not a distraction! We were given a quick overview of some of the benefits of using mobile and wireless devices such as PDAs and wireless keyboards in teaching and learning, and also to assist with admin. For example some universities use students’ mobile phones to send information about timetable changes, and this proves very popular. One of the most useful bits of the day was the group work, where we were given scenarios and had to decide where (if) mobile/wireless devices could help the learners in that situation. The end result had to be summarised in one short text message – quite a challenge! The case studies were also very good, the ones I went to were all Wolverhampton-based, but each event in the series will feature different case studies from the host university. The case studies are all given by staff who have actually piloted the technology with their learners, and they are good at showing how this relatively innovative technology can work ‘on the ground’ as well as some of the pitfalls you might encounter. All in all I would recommend this workshop for e-learning staff, those responsible for providing technical support for e-learning, staff developers, or lecturers who are thinking of going down the mobile and wireless route. And what’s more, it’s free!

Mobile Learning?

Thanks to Lis Parcell from RSC Wales for this -

The use of mobile phones and other small, wireless devices to enhance learning is becoming more widespread. To show what can be done, JISC and the Higher Education Academy are running FREE workshops on “Planning and Implementing Innovative Practice with Mobile and Wireless Technologies”.There are four venues and dates to choose from.

• London Met University - 7th MarchRegister at http://survey.jisc.ac.uk/innovprac_070307/
• University of Leicester - 21st MarchRegister at http://survey.jisc.ac.uk/innovprac_210307/
• University of Bristol - 18th AprilRegister at http://survey.jisc.ac.uk/innovprac_180407/
• University of Salford - 25th AprilRegister at http://survey.jisc.ac.uk/innovprac_250407/

Each workshop will explore the practicalities of implementing mobile and wireless technologies in an institution. As a participant you will explore technical, pedagogical and organisational change issues around implementation. A practical demonstration the hosting institution will provide an insight into the latest developments in mobile and wireless technologies at the venue. For a full programmes of each workshop see Full Programme.

If you have any questions relating to the events please contact Christina Ioannou jisc@inanyevent-uk.com or Eddie Gulc Eddie.Gulc@heacademy.ac.uk.

Even if you can’t make one of the workshops, you may be interested in the JISC guide “Innovative Practice with e-Learning” which includes lots of information and case studies on the use of mobile and wireless technologies, which can be downloaded for free at
http://www.elearning.ac.uk/innoprac/

Podcasting - does it have any use in education?

You may have heard of Podcasting or Podcasts, sometimes associated with Apple and iTunes, students may have mentioned it, colleagues may have mentioned it, you may have heard that the BBC provides podcasts for many of its radio programmes.

So What is Podcasting?
Podcasting is the concept of regular audio files being posted online, where the audience can subscribe to the audio files and have them automatically download to their computers and even automatically sync with their media device such as an iPod. This Audio tends to take the form of monologues on a topic, interviews, recorded debates, professional and amateur, Podcasting can be seen as a personal broadcasting medium.

Where does education fit in then? Many universities are now using Podcasting as a broadcasting medium, in a concept labelled "edupods", the most common use in education so far has been to record lectures, either students or staff themselves, and have these shared/distributed by the Podcast concept.

Imagine though, being able to record interviews with topical experts and providing this information for your students. Whether out on the street, at conferences, or in the office with your colleagues.
Imagine recording sections of your own knowledge, where it is presented in an easy to access format, and provides additional information on classroom topics. Think BBC radio meets the classroom.

What if it wasn't just the lecturing staff recording these podcasts?, what if students recorded Podcasts to share with their classmates, based on their research? What if every week a student or pair of students provided a Podcast to the rest of the class via the class Podcast stream?

Wouldn't that make learning a collaborative process.

Creating Podcasts can be very simple, reasonable quality Podcasts can be created with basic equipment, a microphone, a computer, and a quiet room; or a mp3 device. If the audio is clear, and the quality of the information is good, then the Podcast is likely to work well.

Where could you use Podcasting within education?