Tag: series

Collaboration, Conference, Learning Community, Professional Development, Social Media

AACE Global U – Social Media Seminars

Laura Pasquini

groupglobalu

AACE Global U will be hosting a series of seminars around “Social Media: Trends and Implications for Learning.” I was able to listen to the archived seminar for July, however I hope to participate in a future monthly online seminar:

August 10, 2009, 9:00 PM Eastern USA
September 8, 2009: 3:00 PM Eastern USA
October 13, 2009: 9:00 PM Eastern USA
November 10, 2009: 3:00 PM Eastern USA
December 8, 2009: 9:00 PM Eastern USA

The seminar series, led by George Siemens and David Cormier, is without fee and will include live interactive sessions, in addition to discussions with guest speakers and participants. All sessions are co-sponsored by and will be archived in the Education & Information Technology Library (EdITLib). And you can join in the discussion on AACE Connect.

During these Elluminate sessions, the conversations will be active in the webinar and recorded for those who cannot participate at these specific times.  By using the #SMTI hash tag you can find conversations on Twitter, archives in blogs and resources in Delicious.

Here were a few key discussion pieces I found useful from the first social media seminar:

Collaboration, Learning Community, Learning Technologies, Professional Development

Supporting Learning & Teaching

Laura Pasquini

kmdi_logo_vert

I was introduced to the Lecture Series from KMDI at the University of Toronto from my former U of T colleague.  This series is free and open for live events to the viewing public by creating a log-in ID and password.  The other option would be to check out the Recently Published Events on the ePresence Presentation Portal.

Yesterday’s 2-hour lecture series was on the topic of  “Supporting Learning & Teaching.”  Three Curriculum Learning and Teaching presenters from OISE discussed various topics around this main idea for the viewers.  Here are the presentation topics and a few few notes/thoughts/questions that I had for each:

  1. New Ways of Teaching & Learning with Technology, by Jim Slotta
  2. Digital communication technologies: educational and social practices, by Claire Brett
  3. Technologies for Higher Education, by Jim Hewitt

 Here are some notes & references made during the webcast that caught my ear/eye:

  • The challenges to using technology in education is the evolution and perspective of social online resources.
  • Check out the WISE Project: http://wise.berkeley.edu/
  • Values in Education (Terry Anderson, 2008): Presence, notification, cooperative learning, student modelling, documenting and sharing
  • Technology & learning is understanding HOW to best utilize & embedd these technology resources into education and courses.
  • How do you reconcile the difference between education and cultural purposes of these tools??
  • Social vs. Technical integration; the GRAIL model: GRaduate Student Academic Identity on-Line – to help students see how their research and training is connected to their broader academic experience and relevance to their social life.
  • Higher education learning with powerpoint, clickers, podcasts & wiki:
  • Do students skip class if the lecture is available on podcast?
  • Havard study says NO; students use podcasts for key points in lectures, or could podcasts be used to replace lectures and use the lecture time for more in-depth review of matrial 
  • Clickers: “gateway” technology to expose more lecturers to the great uses of technology in their teaching practice. 
  • Clickers promote learning by: questioning, encourage peer to peer learning, take a vote/poll & discuss results with peers in the class
  • Clicker Results: Increased performance on test, decreased dropout rates & reduced failure rates (10-12% is now down to 4%)
  • Higher education needs to consider utilizing peer instruction/learning instead o f traditional teaching practices
  • MIT are going the way of Blackboard: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/us/13physics.html

Overall, these lectures provided a few insights and it is interesting to see what colleagues elsewhere are thinking about learing & teaching with technology.

A few technical notes, that you should keep in mind if you are to partake in these lecture series:

  • distance viewers are able to engage in online chat & questions
  • ensure you have a strong wireless connection for streaming video
  • attach  good set of speakers as the sound quality was low