Archive for December 4th, 2008

Online Educa- post 2 – eLearning Africa

December 4th, 2008 by Cristina Costa

Today during the plenary sessions I heard about elearning Africa. The fully got my attention after that phrase!

And I found out that Senegal is a leading country in Africa when it comes to use ICT in education. There was no way I was going to let this chance escape. You all know how passionate I am about Africa and how people engage there with this kind of things. They make a conversation out of everything and my latest experiences have been that teachers over there really welcome participatory media do communicate. After all, that’s what they do better.

And so, this afternoon I set mind to go and meet Dr Mor Seck. I thought they would never let me talk to him, but that at least he would send someone to talk to me. When I got to the Senegal stand, Dr Mor Seck himself was there, and kindly accepted to talk a little bit about the Elearning Africa conference which will take place this coming May in Senegal. The call for papers is out and if you have a change do submit something. You will learn so much with these people. Their enthusiasm is just contagious. If you don’t believe me, just watch the video below. That’s just a glimpse to the whole story of course!

More info about the conference can be accessed here.

If you can’t see the video, please link here.

Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE from Berlin

December 4th, 2008 by Graham Attwell

We are at Online Educa Berlin, organising a series of fringe activities. This morning we produced a half hour radio programme. Lots of fun and if you want a quick impression of the conference just download the podcast.

Photos to follow.

Online Educa 08 – Post 1

December 4th, 2008 by Cristina Costa

We are at online Educa Berlin 08. It is my first time in this event. I have always heard wonders about it, and now I can see why. This is huge, hence impressive. But what I am enjoying the most is indeed all the fun and informal activities I have been able to take part in. And that was also the most popular arguments amongst experienced fellow researchers and practitioners who advised me about this conference – the networking opportunities. you are SO right. This is brilliant! ;-)
And it started right after the moment I set foot in the intercontinental hotel yesterday evening. I met the ‘suspicions ones: Among them the Ponty dream (Graham Attwell and Dirk Stieglitz), Josie Fraser, George Robertx, Joe Rosa, Steven Warburton, Marga Perez, Dave white…and the lsit goes on. It’s great to touch base with these guys once in a while.
To my greastest surprise, a couple of days I heard Buthaina wisher …well twitter …she was coming to Online Educa. One more reason to keep me happy. A really amazing opportunity to meet my fellow webhead from Kuwait. The moment we met, we couldn’t stop talking about the webheads and the passion that keep us connected: the world of education, where the learner and learning are the most important variables. Buthaina really fitted well with the rest of teh JISC team (as any webhead would!) and off we went to the European Edublogger meet-up. Again a lot of fun and great conversations until late in the evening. More people joined in, and once again we welcomed that to broaden our networks.
Today was the official starting of the conference. we had the plenary sessions which counted with the presence of Mike Wesch. I really liked his talk as always and there were some ideas that I hope attendants will take with them. Among others, I would just like to stress some of the key points Wesch valued in his presentation:

Teaching hasn’t changed, but learning surely has - and this is just a simple sentence, but with such a deep meaning. is’t it true. We have changed the way we do things, basically because the society we leave in so requires. however, we keep insisting and teaching people the same way. Something has to give. we need to change attitude. We need to help moving to a 21st century culture, and above all we need to adopt a new approach. Changes only happen if we act.

Learning is not about acquiring information: it’s about sharing it, it’s about co-constructing it; it’s about critically analyzing it.
And once again I couldn’t agree more. What is given doesn’t have half the value of what we create ourselves, because in it there is also something of us – the effort we put in it. And that is the added value of learning – to give information a personal touch.

Wesch mentioned many other important aspects, however I haven’t had a chance to capture them all, and hope there’s a videocast out there soon to be released. Nevertheless, I want to leave you with his last remark – a questions which he says to be the answer too:
‘How can we create students that can create meaningful connections’. To that thought I can add that to inspire others to lead us we have to try it ourselves too. So to create students who can create meaningful connections we need first as educators and mentors to re-create ourselves in the connected world and become connected people ourselves. The value of the participatory media is the fact it enables tangible participation in a virtual, yet really real and valuable world, where the interactions and relationships we establish is the true value of technology.

And on that note, I finish this post as it’s time to go and connect to another fellow webhead, Heike Philps, who I have been connecting online for a long time. Today we become f2f buddies as well. As Buthaina is here too, this is also a webhead party. :-)

Sounds of the bazaar – going live in 30 minutes time!

December 4th, 2008 by Cristina Costa

Dear All,
We are in Berlin and preparing to go live in less then an hour.
For those who want to join us either face to face or online, here are some deatails.

Graham Attwell is broadcasting today (4Dec) a 40 minute show at 11:00 CET (check your local time here http://tinyurl.com/66amtz ) live from Online Educa Berlin. The show will feature a mix of interviews with speakers and live debates on emerging issues from the conference. The programme is streamed live and can be listened to in any MP3 application (link here http://tinyurl.com/6df6ar ). A chat room will also be available here http://tinyurl.com/sounds08 (no password required – just add your name, and hit log in, leaving th epassword field blank).
The show will also be subsequently available as a podcast (download will be available at www.pontydysgu.org ).
If you happen to be in Berlin, you can join the show live at the ICWE booth at stand B 54.
The shows are sponsored by the JISC Users and Innovation programme Emerge project.

To find out about all the Emerge activities at Online Educa go to http://tinyurl.com/5m9zf2

It’s been a really interesting opportunity, and we will be blogging more about it later.

Above all, it’s been a great networking opportunity! And like Mike Wesch said this morning: in the question ‘how can we create students that can create meaningful connections?’  is the answer. So, the way I see it, we, as educators, need to make those connections ourselves to be able to deeply understand what it takes and then be able to mentor others. And that’s exactly what we are doing here! ;-)

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    News Bites

    From a Jisc press release:

    Over 14,000 items of archived TV footage from 17 European countries are now available via the EUscreen online portal for teaching, research and general interest.

    EUscreen – the result of a collaboration between 36 partners across Europe – provides a rich insight into Europe’s television heritage with content dating from the 1920s to the present day.

    The portal includes rare footage and commentary on key events in history, including a 1962 interview with Martin Luther King about racial discrimination in the US.

    John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway and principal investigator on the EUscreen project, said: “This is a valuable resource for anyone interested in social history or indeed TV history, as it brings together tens of thousands of clips from across Europe. The portal is available to anyone (not only academics) and it is very easy to get absorbed and spend hours browsing all of the footage.”

    The expansive footage has also proved popular as a learning aid for foreign language students, with clips available in 14 languages.

    By the end of September 2012, there will be around 30,000 items of digital content freely available on the portal as the European providers continue to add carefully selected material.

    Explore the EUscreen footage


    Open online seminar

    Jisc are hosting an open, online seminar on ‘Making Assessment Count (MAC)’ on Friday 3rd Feb – 1-2pm. The presenters are Professor Peter Chatterton (Daedalus e-World Ltd) and Professor Gunter Saunders (University of Westminster).

    The mailing for the seminar says” “The objective of Making Assessment Count is primarily to help students engage more closely with the assessment process, either at the stage where they are addressing an assignment or at the stage when they receive feedback on a completed assignment. In addition an underlying theme of MAC is to use technology to help connect student reflections on their assessment with their tutors. To facilitate the reflection aspect of MAC a web based tool called e-Reflect is often used. This tool enables the authoring of self-review questionnaires by tutors for students. On completion of an e-Reflect questionnaire a report is generated for the student containing responses that are linked to the options the student selected on the questionnaire.”

    You can find out more ans sign up for the seminar at  http://jiscmac.eventbrite.co.uk/


    EC-TEL 2012

    The EC-TEL 2012: Seventh European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning 21st Century Learning for 21st Century Skills takes place on 18-21 September 2012 at Saarbrücken in Germany.

    The focus for the conference includes:

    - How can schools prepare young people for the technology-rich workplace of the future?
    - How can we use technology to promote informal and independent learning outside traditional educational settings?
    - How can we use next generation social and mobile technologies to promote informal and responsive learning?

    The deadline for proposals is April 2.


    Visitors and Residents

    David White (University of Oxford) and Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway (OCLC) have been attracting quite a stir with their JISC-funded work on Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment?, being undertaken as part of the Developing Digital Literacies programme webinar series.

    Slides, audio and a recording of the Blackboard Collaborate session where they presented some of the findings of their work can be found at http://bit.ly/jiscdiglitvr.


    ECER 2010

    The keynotes, videos, radio shows and interviews from the ECER 2010 Conference in Helsinki:

    On the ECER 2010 website.

    Taccle handbook for teachers order form

    Here you find the Taccle handbook for teachers order form.

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