G’day
The DEANZ, now FLANZ
. Flexible Learning Association New Zealand
2016 Conference was an excellent event with some very useful and interesting presentations and workshops. Some good stuff on eportfolios in the mix,
, provided an entertaining opening keynote and made mention of a FREE e-book co-authored with Elaine Khoo (DEANZconference co-chair):
ADDING SOME TEC-VARIETY 100+ Activities for Motivating and Retaining Learners
Online.
I was lucky enugh to have signed copy sent to me by Elaine 🙂 Interesting read, with all sorts of tips and tricks, guides and wisdom.
There appeared to be a shift in thinking with regard to learning and instructional design . Joyce Selzinger was promoting the concept of learning experience design,
http://www.slideshare.net/catspyjamas
and it seems there is a growing body of people who believe it’s a positive move, me for one:-)
It was great to catch up with colleagues from around the country, some of NZ’s best elearning gurus!I won’t mention them all as I am bound to miss someone out.
Even the conference dinner was a real highlight, a visit to the ‘movie set’ of Lord of the Rings at Hobbiton. It’s spectacular and the ‘set’ is really extensive and complemented by beautiful rolling hills and countryside. Amazing place and I would definitely recommend a visit and a pint of ale in the Green Dragon!
In this posting there are links to security and the Internet of Things, Biological Science animations, games in digital learning, deeper elearning series,technology in Science, Maths and Engineering,Learning in Virtual Worlds,Improvement of student learning,Formative E-Assessment, collaborative learning environments, conferences and the odd one out.
This year is going fast. June will be breaking out very soon
1.DEEPER ELEARNING DESIGN: PART 1: THE STARTING POINT: GOOD OBJECTIVES. This is part one of a series of six that covers many aspects of deeper elearning. Written by Clark Quinn, the series provides a very comprehensive and a useful guide to the principles and practice of elearning. Highly likely that many of you are already gurus on elearning, this series will serve to reinforce your approaches and maybe add a little more.
2.Securing the Connected World: A short article on the security issues associated with the Internet of Things. Things , they say will get more secure. Be interesting to see if MIT hackathons have the same outcomes in the future. [other interesting articles on the site]
http://www.yetanalytics.com/blog/securing-the-connected-world
3. From the elearningNetwork: The role of games in digital learning. A short but useful article if you are into using gaming in your learning environment. Lots of other stuff on the site which may be of interest. Have a womble around.
4. The Concord Consortium: Extract from the site:
‘We’re a nonprofit educational research and development organization based in Concord, Massachusetts. Our pioneering work brings the promise of technology into a reality for education in science, math and engineering’.
Take some time to explore what they are up to. Some fascinating stuff:
This is different and could be the way of the future for analytics?
http://blog.concord.org/listen-to-the-data-with-the-visual-process-analytics
5.CAST: Always good to find free learning tools which are of good quality and cover a reasonable range of areas. CAST offers a number of robust (and free) learning tools. These tools, designed and tested as part of CAST’s research projects, help educators, parents, and students experience the power of flexible learning environments. Funding from a number of well known sources enables this to happen. Well worth exploring the possibilities.
ALSO
if you are interested in the Zika Virus: Animation, Illustrations and 3Dmodelling
http://visual-science.com/projects/zika/animation/
6.Flash tutorials for Biological Sciences: If you haven’t seen this before and are into teaching in this area, they are an excellent resource for your students (and maybe you as well !)
http://telstar.ote.cmu.edu/biology/index.html/learn
7.Learning in Virtual Worlds:Research and Applications. Edited by Sue Gregory, Mark J.W. Lee, Barney Dalgarno, and Belinda Tynan.
Just released and you can download a FREE copy
http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120254
8.Introducing a Formative E-Assessment System to Improve Online Learning Experience and Performance: Hettiarachchi, E. et al,Journal of Universal Computer Science, vol. 21, no. 8 (2015), 1001-1021. A useful publication for those involved in looking after students in online learning
9. Creating a Collaborative Learning Environment: A useful guidebook which, although produced in 2005, is still relevant today and adds to the thinking about and organising collaborative learning environments. A full and comprehensive tool for professional development.
10. Six steps to continuous improvement of student learning: A useful guide from Kent State University, Ohio, USA
http://explore.kent.edu/aa/guide/fulltext.html
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.
http://2016conference.ascilite.org
Call for submissions is open:
http://2016conference.ascilite.org/program-2/submissions/
11.2 Connect, Collaborate, Create: The ALT Annual Conference 2016
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
12. The odd one out: The strange fate of Chernobyl’s wildlife. 30 years have passed since the world’s worst nuclear accident. How badly has the local wildlife been affected by the radiation? A very interesting article with some surprises around survival.
Until June is all over us
Have a productive May
Richard
Richard Elliott
The Eternal Macademic
Auckland
New Zealand