Catchng up
Never seem to have time to catch up these days.
Had a good time at ISSoTL in Canada last year: caught up with old friends, made some new ones and saw a bit of the country I didn't yet know. It was a big, but worthwhile conference. We were treated to some thoughtful keynotes
Marcia Baxter Magolda was the first, talking about self determination and
Sue Clegg picked up the idea while Graham Smith spoke eloquently about the work he had done in Maori education and the importance of understanding culture in order to facilitate learning. There were some interesting papers, but a couple that still stick in my mind were:
- the paper from COPPER (Communities of Practice Pooling Educational Resources) group members where we went off on a discussion about the importance of key people to animate and facilitate communities of practice or networks. The concept of animatrice is explained nicely in the following paper Jones, C., & Esnault, L. (2004). The Metaphor of Networks in Learning: Communities, Collaboration and Practice. Paper presented at the Networked Learning Conference 2004.
- the paper from Marc Spooner from the University of Regina about video capture and web 2.0 enhancement. Marc explained how sessions were captured and then students are invited to comment and add their own follow up contributions. Studnets engage with invited experts via web cam and this interaction is also recorded and enhanced with follow up activities and discussion.
Also made time to go over to British Columbia and visit their Teaching and Academic Growth centre. One of their associate academics, Harry Hubbell will be visiting us later in the year to deliver a workshop at our annual ELATE University teaching and learning conference.