Digital Dialogues

What do you LOVE about learning?

'veI presented at 5 difference conferences and workshops over the last couple of  weeks - and collected some interesting data / responses to 2 questions:

1. What do you LOVE (or like) about learning?
2. What do you dislike (not hate - I didn't go there!) about learning?

Here are the collated responses:
1. What do you LOVE about learning?
new things, discussion, sharing ideas, discovery, different perspectives, sense of achievement, empowerment.

2. What do you dislike about learning?
time commitment (huge number of responses here), lack of interaction, rote learning, long texts, too much reading, feeling stupid, information overload, being spoon fed, over structured learning, tedious sessions.

What's missing??
No mention of assessments or assignments or competence?
Can we assume then that people don't consider learning in the same category as assessment?
Maybe I should have asked the additional questions: what do you love about assessment? and what do you dislike about assessment??

The other issue that glares out from these results: why, as designers of learning events, do we continue provide learning events that pretty much address all of the issues covered in by the dislikes?
Institutional boundaries?
Organisational metrics driven courses?
Legislative reporting commitments?
Actually - it beats me... perhaps it's just easier to keep doing what has been done before?
BUT - that's not a good excuse - and I won't be endorsing any learning designs I see reinforcing these strategies - so watch out, if I'm about to mark your assignments... there's a message here!

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Learning Technologies 2008 - Call for papers

It's that time of year again....!
Time to submit a case study for the annual Learning Technologies conference in Mooloolaba, Queensland: 6 & 7 November, 2008.

This year's theme is Connections:

Technology has had an effect on how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn. The plethora of tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, social bookmarking, streaming, YouTube, Skype, Twitter, Facebook and many more.... form the basis of new approaches to, and means of, interacting with learners, each other, and information.

The Internet is not a network of computers it is a network of people! The new technologies are increasingly focused on connecting people. It's important for learners to create connections and develop their own networks - with other learners, with content, with teachers/mentors. It's also important for educators to create connections and develop their own networks.

We now recognise that learners want to be active participants and require a connection on a personal level. The development and provision of collaborative learning communities, communities of practice, meaningful learning opportunities and supportive learning environments engage learners and support their learning goals. Learners do not learn from technology, technology is a tool that enables knowledge construction, collaborations, cooperation and connections across the boundaries of space and time.

Full details on the call for papers .
Due - 10th June.

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Upcoming Sydney events

Apologies up front - but this is a rather Sydney focused post!
There are some great events over the next couple of months in Sydney... so  - here they are:

BarCamp Sydney 3
Date: Sat 5 & Sun 6 April 2008
Where: Roundhouse at UNSW on Anzac Pde, Kensington
BarCamp Sydney is only up to it's 3rd event - but if this one is anything like the other 2 - should be a cracker! And it's extended to 2 days - plus a few intermittent social events. Definitely worth participating - oh, that's a warning - it's a spectator free zone!

AITD: Gen Y - How to engage, develop and keep the graduates of today
Date: Wed 9 April
Time: 5.45pm - 8.15pm
Where: Cliftons - 190 George St, Sydney
The promo blurb says: " It is often said that Gen Ys are always wanting more, are hard to satisfy and even harder to retain. Various reports have suggested that learning and development opportunities are highly sought after by today’s graduates, and this can often make the difference between graduates staying with or leaving their respective employers."
I wonder if this is exclusively a Gen Y behaviour.. hmmmm...

AITD National Conference: Learning Alive!
Date: Tue 22 & Wed 23 April, 2008
Where: Australian Technology Park, Redfern
Huge range of workshop sessions, keynote speakers, expo, dinner, awards - the whole whizz bang!

Walkley Foundation: Social media and public relations - are you ready for the audience to join in?
Date: Tue 6 & Wed 7 May, 2008
Where: NSW Teachers Federation, 37 Reservoir St, Surry Hills.
This conference is focusing on the online communications strategies for Public Affairs Professionals and engaging the media in the evolving multi-user environment. Great line up of speakers and panels - looks like some hot topics being debated!

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Learning Landscape webinar series

LTUG is presenting a series of webinars for the first half of the year that focuses on the changing learning landscape and the use of social software for learning.

The first webinar will set the scene for the series:
The Changing Learning Landscape
Date: 27 March 2008, 4pm-5pm (Sydney time – daylight savings time)
Where: your computer - via webinar

The world of online collaboration for learning is evolving rapidly with social software (or Web2.0) providing new and exciting ways of developing ideas and educational opportunities.
I will discuss how to extend our scope in using the web in order to facilitate learning and address these important questions:

* What are people doing with these new tools, and how is this affecting learning practices?
* What do learning & development practitioners need to do to start bringing these tools into their own practices?
* How does this all affect learning design?

Free Online Tools for Learning
When: 17 April 2008, 10am – 11am (Sydney time - AEST)
Where: your computer - via webinar
Many online collaboration tools are free. Carol Daunt Skyring (LearnTel) will follow my session with an overview of the free online tools that are available for use for education & training. This will be a ‘helicopter’ view of the following tools:

* Blogs
* Wikis
* Online Communities/Forums
* Aggregators
* Social Sharing Sites eg Slideshare, flickr, de.licio.us, YouTube/TeacherTube
* Social Networking
* Micro-blogging

At the end of this session you will know how to access each of these tools. If you’d like support in setting them up, then please join one of our detail sessions following.

Set up your own.....
The following sessions will be 30 mins during which Anne or Carol will step you through setting up your own..... At the end of the session you will have an operational site/online tool.

Set up your own blog
When: 30 April 2008, 4pm (Sydney time - AEST)

Set up your own wiki
When: 6 May 2008, 10am (Sydney time - AEST)

Set up your own online community/forum
When: 15 May 2008, 4pm (Sydney time - AEST)

Set up your own aggregator
When: 21 May 2008, 10am (Sydney time - AEST)

Set up your own social sharing site
When: 27 May 2008, 4pm (Sydney time - AEST)

Set up your own social networking site
When: 4 June 2008, 10am (Sydney time - AEST)

Set up your own micro-blogging
When: 10 June 2008, 4pm (Sydney time - AEST)

Register here

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Learning Technologies 2007 Revisited

Did you miss the Learning Technologies 2007 conference... ?
The videostreams of the presentations are now available on the conference website..

Here are some of the highlights (for me) from the 10th Learning Technologies conference.
I know I've said this before... but one of the reasons I love this conference is we always manage to gather  a group of committed, innovative learning practitioners.
I'm not going to review each presentation but just select some of the key issues from practice that attracted my attention.

The theme for this year's conference was: Telepresence - so naturally there was lots of focus on defining this and Wikipedia seemed to be used as the obvious source:

   

"Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance that they were present, or to have an effect, at a location other than their true location."

(I can't link you to each presentation - only the page that contains the videostreams - so you'll need to scroll if you want to view them in the order outlined here!)

Perhaps a good place to start - to set the scene -  would be with Michelle Selinger, from Cisco Systems: The What, Why, When and Where of Telepresence.

Then scroll back up to Melissa McCarthy, from the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children to find out how they teach deaf and blind babies language skills using video conferencing!! Yes - that's right - how do you communicate through video conference with deaf and blind children - and babies???! This was probably one of the most moving sessions for me - these educators are achieving awesome results - a viewing must!

To change the pace a little, view Dr Robert Brown & Dr Scott Brewster, from University of North Carolina: Gaming as a Telepresence Technology. Some serious games - high end multimedia (with a price tag to match) - innovative and engaging!

Now - Julie Woodlock, from Barrier Reef Institute and her work on Palm Island is inspiring - make sure you watch the rap song!

For more innovations with video conferencing - watch the Global Nomads project: Connecting students around the world via videoconference. This is how we break down barriers, cross cultural divides and all learn together!

Then take a trip to Second Life with Jo Kay. And there's one thing I can confidentally predict... we'll be seeing many more examples from the virtual worlds at future Learning Technologies conferences.

And now for the students themselves!
You could set the scene and look at my presentation: Gen Y: The changing face of the adult learner... (or get the slides from SlideShare)
Or skip to Laurence Zwimpfer presentation: Ten years on - the evolution of Learning Technologies. Stay with this presentation... after Laurence has done his review there are interviews with a number of students from New Zealand (via video conference) and 2 students from University of Kansas who were part of Dr Michael Wesch's Digital Anthroplogy project. There are some great comments from the students - in particular - my favourite from New Zealand: " But we want you [us Baby Boomer educators] to learn with us!"

Then - if you still have the time... watch the remaining presentations! Remember, this is just a selection of presentations that had an impact on my context... the others are all equally as engaging!
Tags: LT2007

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14th AiMiA awards

AiMiA - The Australian Interactive Media Industry Association - is running their 14th annual awards:

   

The AIMIA Awards are the longest running and most prestigious awards in Australia’s Digital Media Industry. Celebrating the very best in digital content innovation across all genres and interactive media platforms, the AIMIA Awards recognise the industry’s finest and showcase Australia’s leading Digital Content developers, content providers and application developers.

There's an extensive list of categories:

1. Best Advertising or Marketing;  2. Best Children’s;  3. Best Classifieds;  4. Best Corporate or Business-to-Business;  5. Best Cross-Platform Content or Content Integration; 6. Best Cultural, Lifestyle or Sport;  7. Best Integration with an Offline Advertising Campaign; 8. Best Interactive TV; 9. Best Emerging Exporter;  10. Best Entertainment;  11. Best Financial Service; 12. Best Learning & Education; 13. Best Mobile Advertising or Marketing; 14. Best Mobile Product or Service; 15. Best News, Media or Reference; 16. Best Non-profit or Government; 17. Best Online Retail; 18. Best Science, Health or Environment; 19. Best Student Developed Content; 20. Best Tourism or Travel; 21. Best Word-of-mouth, Peer-to-peer or Viral; 22. Effectiveness Award;  23. Best of the Best Award; 24. Outstanding Contribution Award
Wow... and that's all...

I'm a judge this year, and I'm really looking forward to exploring the entries in my allocated category - which I had better not mention to ensure the integrity of the blind judging process!

Winners will be announced at the Digital Content Industry’s Night of Night’s in Sydney on Friday 7th March, 2008.

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Learning Technologies 2007 starts today

In about 5 hours the Learning Technologies 2007 conference will kick-off!
Sun's out in Mooloolaba - surf's good - and the conference program is looking great!
And as usual, Hot Pipi's Cafe is the place for wireless access... tough life sitting here beachside, watching the surf, drinking cappuccino's and of course, trying to finish off my presentations...there's probably just enough time to have a quick body surf before this afternoon's workshops start...
Standby for highlights from the conference ....

LMS Survey

This month we're trying to find out what's happening in practice with Learner Management Systems:

* who uses them and for what?
* who doesn't use them and why?

This topic was initiated by some comments from LTUG members - and there appears to be some contradictory figures floating around. Some figures indicate huge increases in the LMS markets, others indicate a definite move away from the centralised LMS, to the personlised e-Portfolio.

So - tell us what you really think... it's anonymous - we won't be publishing any names of respondents or their institutions/organisations (in fact, we won't know who you are or where you work...)!

Take the survey now.

Results will be available early next month!

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How the social web came to be .. Part 2!

And here it is! Part 2 from Trebor.... see below for part 1.
Again - Trebor, your timing is perfect! I'm in the midst of preparing a presentation for AITD this evening.... mashing up previous presentations, updating and re-framing.... but what strikes me particularly, is that much of the work I published in 2005 (based on research from 2002-2004) is still current, and I'm still saying the same things. Of course, some of the software applications are new - and they're exciting and enabling more functionality - but... the principles haven't changed.
In Part 2 - it highlighted for me that many of the popular software applications that are likely to be part of our daily lives (well, mine anyway) were around before O'Rielly coined the term "Web.20" in 2005! Which supports my argument - that much of what I'll saying at AITD tonight, isn't new!
What's different?
People and organisations are starting to listen!

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BlogTalk 2008 Announced

The 5th international BlogTalk conference on social software has been announced!
BlogTalk 2008
Where: Cork, Ireland
When: 3 - 4 March, 2008

   

"The conference is designed to maintain a sustainable dialog between developers, innovative academics and scholars who study social software, practitioners and administrators in corporate and educational settings, and other general members of the social software community.

We invite you to submit a proposal for presentation at the BlogTalk 2008 conference. Possible areas include, but are not limited to:

* Forms and consequences of emerging social software practices
* Social software in enterprise and educational environments
* The political impact of social software
* Applications, prototypes, concepts and standards

Participants and proposal categories:

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the conference, audiences will come from different fields of practice and will have different professional backgrounds. We strongly encourage proposals to bridge these cultural differences and to be understandable for all groups alike. Along those lines, we will offer three different submission categories:

* Academic
* Developer
* Practitioner

For academics, BlogTalk is an ideal conference for presenting and exchanging research work from current and future social software projects at an international level. For developers, the conference is a great opportunity to fly ideas, visions and prototypes in front of a distinguished audience of peers, to discuss, to link-up and to learn (developers may choose to give a practical demonstration rather than a formal presentation if they so wish). For practitioners, this is a venue to discuss use cases for social software and to report on any results you may have with like-minded individuals."

Proposal submission deadline: November 16th, 2007
(and it's peer-reviewed - just in case you need the "brownie" points)!

It will coincide with start of the academic year and start of semester, but I'm sure the students won't mind a week of self-directed activities!!! ;-)
See you there!

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