G’day
June always signals its downhill from now on to Xmas.Plenty to do between now and then. The 8th NZ SharEFest is fast approaching and there’s a number of elearning courses to present to international students. Work on badges for education continues. Apart from that, the garden lies fallow, waiting for the first planting and the dog is always keen for walks, which is now.
In this month’s posting there are links to learning styles, humanities resources, google hangout guide,K12 Horizon report, assessing competence in VET,elearning technology, geography educational game animated history, free tutorials and free ebooks plus conferences and the odd one out.
August won’t be long coming
1.Google Hangouts Guide for teachers. It’s always good to find out that someone has taken the time to create a useful guide to using a particular App or system. This guide is well worth perusing to learn about how to use Goggle Hangouts.
https://sites.google.com/a/lsr7.net/hangoutsforteachers/
2. How to respond to learning style believers: Articles and opinion pieces by Cathy Moore are always worth reading. This one looks at learning styles. I don’t believe in learning styles and this overview provides some pretty good reasons why you shouldn’t either. Or maybe you are a firm believer? Have a read and enjoy.
http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2015/06/how-to-respond-to-learning-style-believers/
3.Guidelines for assessing competence in VET (5th edn) 2013. I came across this document when I was working on creating competency based learning outcomes for health sciences.I found it very useful and although it is focused on Australia much of what it presents can easily be adapted and used elsewhere.
4.EDSITEment: For those of you who are involved in teaching the humanities. This site offers a wealth of resources. Sure, many are focused on American resources and information but there is a lot of others to explore. Lots of useful lesson plans as well. See Anne Frank: One of Hundreds of Thousands, as an example:
5.NMC Horizon Report 2015: K-12 Edition.
Extract from the site:
‘What is on the five year horizon for K12 schools worldwide? Which trends and technologies will drive educational change? What are the challenges that we consider as solvable or difficult to overcome, and how can we strategize effective solutions?’An interesting read and do you agree with the direction in which technology is taking student learning and teaching? Have a look at the Wiki whilst you are on the main page.
http://www.nmc.org/publication/nmc-horizon-report-2015-k-12-edition/
6. TravelPod has a fast-paced geography game that quizzes students on world capitals, location of popular cities, world flags and more. Try for yourself and se how good your geography is, not!
http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq
7.History Animated: If you are into teaching History or just interested in critical events , this site is q bit different. Have a look at The battle of Britain animation; Make sure sound is on.
http://historyanimated.com/verynewhistorywaranimated/?page_id=97
8.eLearning Technology from Tony Karrer: How Khan Academy Nike Training Club and SparkPeople Motivate Users Behaviour. A very interesting overview mainly looking at design concepts but also making some useful comments on the way each system is structured and the outcomes achieved.
http://elearningtech.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/how-khan-academy-nike-training-club-and.html
9. Free ebooks by Project Gutenberg: Project Gutenberg offers over 49,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, all can be downloaded or read online. Check copyright laws before downloading or distributing ebooks.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
In a similar view, free public domain audio books:
10.Free tutorials on a very wide range of technology. Must be at least one that will interest you. Fancy creating an App for the Apple Watch ?
11. Conferences for 2015
11.1 ALT Annual Conference 2015: Shaping the future of learning together
The 22nd annual conference of the Association for Learning Technology, 8 to10 September 2015, University of Manchester, UK:
11.2 Ascilite 32nd conference. Perth, Western Australia.
Globally Connected, Digitally Enabled: November 30th to Dec 3rd 2015.
Website:
http://www.2015conference.ascilite.org
11.3 8th Annual New Zealand SharEfest: 28th and 29th September 2015.
The organising committee is delighted to announce that
Ako Aotearoa, the National Centre for tertiary Teaching Excellence
, is a GOLD sponsor for the event. The NZ Ministry of Education Tertiary eLearning reference Group will hold their meeting at the same time as the SharEFest and some of the members will be attending the Shar-E-Fest.
We are very pleased to announced that adjunct Associate Professor Rob Phillips from Murdoch University, Western Australia has accepted our invitation to to be the Keynote speaker and workshop presenter for the 8th Annual NZ SharEFest. Rob will also present at The Open Polytechnic, AUT University, The Auckland University and Northtec.
Here is a brief ‘bio’, more will appear on the Website in due course. Mark the dates in your Diary and commit to attend another great opportunity to present, network and learn.
‘Adjunct Associate Professor Rob Phillips has worked in higher education learning and teaching since 1992, working with staff from most discipline areas. His expertise includes educational design, e-learning, distance education, educational policy development and academic staff development. He has provided professional development and mentoring for academic staff in the scholarship of learning and teaching, and has chaired university committees on Awards and Citations, Learning and Teaching Spaces and Open Education.
Rob’s research interests include evaluation research in e-learning; learning analytics; making creative and innovative use of technology; university policy issues; and project management in educational innovations. Rob has over 130 publications, including 60 refereed papers. He has been principal author of two internationally published books ‘Developer’s guide to interactive multimedia’ and ‘Evaluating elearning: Guiding research and practice’.
Shar-E-Fest 2015 information:
http://wordpress.isle.ac.nz/shar-e-fest-2015/
FIRST call for submissions has been released:
http://wordpress.isle.ac.nz/submission-process/
11.4
DEANZ2016 Conference
Call for Submissions
Conference dates: 17th-20th April 2016
Conference Venue: The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
THEME: There and back: Charting flexible pathways in open, mobile and distance education
DEANZ2016 conference website:
http://conference.deanz.org.nz/
If you are interested in taking the opportunity to be a sponsor of the event, please contact me:-)
12.0 The odd out: How can I make my smartphone smarter?. This is part of the BBC’s ‘Make it Digital’ project. Fascinating and worth exploring. Do it with someone else’s phone first.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zss3gk7
That’s it for now
Richard
Richard Elliott
The Eternal Macademic
Auckland, New Zealand