G’Day
March is upon us and the eager beavers are clawing their way back to Uni to change the world and in order to succeed in a healthy digital world they will have to keep taking their tablets.
Personally, I spent much of January catching up on reading. I enjoyed the life and times of John Hunter (1728-1793);same period as Edward Jenner, his friend. An amazingly versatile, inspirational and accomplished man. Worth having a read if you are interested in pioneers, especially in anatomy and physiology. The Hunter museum in London is a tribute to the man; he is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Reading good genuine stuff makes a change from the cacophony of digital doings in academia.
However it’s now onto concentrating on the upcoming DEANZ conference. Going to be a great event!
[I was going to mention the prolific gathering of the tomatoes, raspberries, blueberries, beans, spring onions, cucumbers and carrots (all organic of course), but I will leave that until the next time].
In the posting this month, there are links to making MOOC’s successful, Apps for Macs. Teaching in a digital age from Tony Bates,five elearning components,digital badges,learning space toolkit,democratisation of knowledge,higher education Horizon report,validation of formal and non formal learning,toolkits from Jisc digital Media,conferences and the Odd one out.
I’m no fool, but I’m sure the 1st is fast approaching.
Until then.
1.From the pages of Education Technology and Mobile learning:The Ultimate Student App guide. The provides a useful guide on apps that may enhance studying efforts. Some are free and some are paid versions and they are split up according to different goals. Worth a look.
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2016/02/the-ultimate-app-guide-for-students.html
AND if you are a Macademic (like me) and have an iPad, have a look at this list of Apps which are all designed to help your students learn and succeed:
2.Making a MOOC ‘successful’. Interesting opinion piece with some useful comments and suggestions on how to make a MOOC successful as opposed to designing a successful MOOC.The links in the article to other commentators on MOOC’s paint an interesting picture.
http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/mooc/making-a-mooc-successful/
3. Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning. Tony Bates is well known in education circles as being a guru (as well as an e-vangelist) on the subject of learning with technology. His online book is an excellent resource. The final version was released in April last year (2015) and he continues to make updates and revision, so it’s a living document and it sure does have a life ! If you haven’t read it or downloaded a copy, you are missing out on lots of gems and wise advice.I forgot to mention it’s absolutely FREE.
http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/
4. The Five eLearning Components from the instructional design expert. This guide looks at five elearning components which are critical to the successful design and implementation of an elearning course or event. Useful even if only to reinforce a defined process and successful outcome. Other topics on the site are worth perusing.
5.UK Higher Education Learning Space Toolkit: a SCHOMS, AUDE and UCISA collaboration.
The Toolkit includes advice on: managing a learning space project, working with professional advisors, considerations for particular types of learning space, using learning technologies, the evaluation of learning spaces and changing working practices.
http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/learningspace
6.A catalyst for change: An interesting and thought provoking opinion piece on democratisation of knowledge and the changing face of education.
7.NMC Horizon Report: 2016 Higher Education Edition.This 13th edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education.
8.Digital badges: The future of tracking staff development. An interesting article on the use and development of digital badges in the workplace and for credentialing existing skills to enable the award of a degree. There are several links to related resources; the link to Deakin Digital is worth exploring.
9. Toolkits from JISC Digital Media: Here are a couple of toolkits which could be useful for your digital projects; both are new releases.
Equipment for Image Digitisation Projects: A comprehensive and practical guide supported by some useful theoretical stuff.
Print Size and File Size Calculator: A neat little calculator. Use it to to work out maximum print sizes for digital images printed at 300 dots per inch.
10.European guidelines for validating non-formal and informal learning: This is a very comprehensive and potentially very useful document for other than European states. The principles and practices outline and described could easily be adapted or modified to suit conditions in other countries. Worth reading in any case to evaluate the European approach to recognition of prior learning.
http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/publications-and-resources/publications/3073
You may wish to peruse a companion document’Ensuring the quality of certification in vocational education and training’ which has some useful insights into certification process and associated quality features.
http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/publications-and-resources/publications/5551
11. Conferences
11.1 ascilite 2016
The ascilite2016 conference will be held at the Adelaide Convention Centre from 28 to 30 November 2016. The conference is being hosted by the University of South Australia.Make a note of the dates. Website coming soon.
Initial details available from:
https://ascilite.org/2016-conference/
11.2 ALT Annual Conference 2016: Connect, Collaborate, Create
6 to 8 September 2016, University of Warwick, UK:
11.3 Innovate and Educate:Teaching and Learning Conference ANZ will be held in Sydney from the 28 to 31 August 2016. Education leaders, educators, course designers, system administrators and eLearning managers who partner and innovate with different Learning Management Systems such as Blackboard Learn, Enterprise Moodle and Moodlerooms, from across Australia and New Zealand will come together to share their knowledge and expertise in the field of online teaching and learning.
Find out more and register:
http://experience.blackboard.com/TLC-Sydney/
Make a submission:
http://events.blackboard.com/TLCSydney2016CFP
11.4 DEANZ conference 2016:
17 to 20th April 2016
The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Conference Website with registration details:
http://conference.deanz.org.nz/
The DEANZ2016 conference covers research and practice in open, distance, flexible and mobile learning across the compulsory schooling sectors, vocational, tertiary and professional development settings.
For the latest update on speakers and activities:
Don’t miss this opportunity to participate in DEANZ2016.
We look forward to welcoming you to Hamilton in April 2016!
12. The Odd one out: Visualizing the History of Improving Health around the World. Some fascinating facts and figures here. Navigate and learn:
http://ourworldindata.org/VisualHistoryOf/Health.html#/title-slide
Richard
Richard Elliott
The Eternal Macademic
Auckland
New Zealand