UCD presentations in the Practitioner strand at EdTech 2008 included:
Blogging as a Facilitator in the Learning Process: Student Reflections on Their Information Seeking During Assessment by Crystal Fulton of the UCD School of Library and Information Studies. About 100 second-year students used blogs to record and reflect on their information searching strategies. This helped to deepen their understanding of their own information seeking processes and thus increase their information literacy. Abstract.Slides.
Scholarcast – Podcasting Irish Studies to the World by Niall Watts of Media Services, UCD IT Services. Scholarcast aims to be the audio equivalent of a research journal. It is inspired by RTE’s Thomas Davis series where specialists in the field of Irish Studies broadcast public lectures. Series 1 of Scholarcast consists of eight audio podcasts accompanied by transcripts, which can be used for referencing purposes. It was developed by UCD School of English, Drama and Film and Media Services. Abstract.(PDF)Slides(zip).
Real & Relevant – learning is changing: reflections on the experience of task-based assessment within a masters’ programme by Anne McMorrough and Ana Maria Perez Martinez.
The presenters are both primary school teachers and postgraduate students in the UCD School of Education and LifeLong Learning. They described ICT projects in their schools – one involving e-Twinning with a school in Newcastle, UK and the other Spanish language skills. In both cases the children learned to work collaboratively using ICT tools. Abstract.Slides.
Developing Communities of Practice: Experiences and Challenges co-presented by a team of National Digital Learning Repository (NDLR) Community of Practice (CoP) co-ordinators, including Diane Cashman of the Centre for Teaching and Learning in the UCD School of Education and Lifelong Learning. Other team members were Muireann O’Keefe from DCU and Lisa O’Regan of NUI Maynooth. The presentation discusses the development of CoPs including motivation, structure, collaborative environment, and sustained promotion. Abstract(PDF).
The EdTech 2008 conference presentations have been published on the ILTA web site. They are divided into three strands practitioner, research and postgraduate with the bulk of the presentations (29 out of 45) being practitioner papers. Being one of the organisers I did not have time to blog at the conference but I can recall the highlights – the best probably being Larry McNutt’s keynote presentation An exploration of the habitus of educational technologists: What does the research tell us? where he explored the beliefs and values of educational technologists.
Practitioner presentations covered topics ranging from podcasting to screencasting, reflection to assessment, communities of practice to e-twinning and learning organisations to learning objects.
Gorka Palazio, a participant from the Basque region of Spain, recorded his experiences on video…
Tribe Wanted is a group of people trying to live a sustainable life style in co-operation with the local community on a Fijian island. The ‘tribe’ is organised online and leaders are democratically elected from the membership. Members can spend a certain amount of the time on the island, working on community projects. The rest of the time they participate remotely through the website.
TribeWanted has been featured on BBC and on National Geographic.
Conor Galvin of the School of Education and Lifelong Learning accompanied by one of his postgraduate students, a primary teacher, Anne, gave an overview of how a range of social learning tools were used on the course for practising teachers. The teachers wanted hands-on experience of tools that they could learn in one day and apply the next day. They tried tools such as webquests, blogs, eTwinning and used Ning as their social networking VLE.
Aine McHugh of the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems who is working on secondment with An Bord Altranais (Nursing Board) has led the development of an elearning project on medication management which is available through HSE Learning.
The National Digital Learning Repository (NDLR) has received a further years funding from the HEA. The aim of the funding is to evaluate the work done in the first three years of the project, archive resources for posterity and possibly transfer to another more permanent repository. According to the IntraLibrary system (where the NDLR is hosted), there are now 1,598 learning objects in the repository. These objects include images, Powerpoint presentations, lesson plans, videos and other teaching and learning resources which may be of use to academics. The NDLR has recently produced its own licence agreement for contributors, users and member institutions. In simple terms this licence allows members to share resources for educational purposes in a secure manner.
The NDLR has set up Communities of Practice (CoPs) in a number of disciplines. CoPs aim to build a collaborative community amongst academics by providing advice and organising events to support the development and sharing of digital learning resources via the NDLR. UCD, for example, is leading the Veterinary and Bio-Environmental Sciences CoP.
Last week I attended a meeting of the Technology Enhanced Learning CoP. Its members are educational technologists and elearning developers. The aim was to examine ways of increasing networking and knowledge sharing. The particpants agreed to focus on the development of exemplar resources to support good practice. Closer collaboration with ILTA was discussed, as there is a considerable overlap in membership.