learning, teaching and research (archive)

It is 1.00am Wednesday morning and I have just got back to my room from the Wimba sponsored event at Jongleurs, the comedy club. Me and my 5 guests had a great time and the acts were great – tailored I suspect for the ‘corporate’ audience. There were some slightly uncomfortable moments when the compere took the mickey out of intellectuals, new universities and the last act edged into gender issues areas, but pretty funny and pretty harmless I think.

I have had a most interesting day and feel both motivated and a little frustrated at how far we have to go and some of the great stuff being done elswhere and the progressive, enlightened and can-do attitudes on display. I will spend a little time deciding what I will go to tomorrow (actually later today) before turning in rather than blog on today’s sessions but I will list what I went to at least and write more later when I get a chance. First was the opening keynote presentation by Michelle Selinger of Cisco. There was some really interesting stuff here that I want to follow up on. Then:

• Podcasting exercise physiology – enhancing the student experience
• Using informal podcasts to enhance students’ collaborative learning
• Measures of learning style in the evaluation of blogs as reflective learning
• Blogs and e-mails: an effective means to understanding the student learning
  experience?
• Blogs, reflective practice and autonomous learning in graphic design
  communication.
• Whose e-learning is it anyway? A case study exploring the boundaries
  between social networks and VLE courses.
• Building bridges: how e-learning can encourage social constructivist
  approaches to teaching
• Social conferencing: moving learning beyond lectures and learning
  management systems

Tomorrow at 9.00am I am torn between “Web 2.0 applications as student-centred tools for portfolio construction: evaluating the fit between the technology and the stakeholders” and “Web 2.0 Slam – ‘Performing’ innovative practice”.

I’m afraid I have wimped out a bit on this post but hopefully I will still be able to read my notes tomorrow and try to summarise what I found particularly stimulating and useful today.