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We've finally gotten around to uploading Doug Belshaw's keynote from last month's symposium...   Tweet

Last Friday (19th June) was our CELT Symposium on the topic Getting Real about Virtual Learning . It was a fantastic day (despite the weather) with about 200 participants and plenty of learning. Twitter at #celt15 Thanks to the twitter team ( @gramcgrath , @marloft , @allaboardHE , @catherinecronin , @rosenidhubhda , @TELtales ) and all the lovely tweeps at the conference, there were almost 1200 #celt15 tweets on Friday alone, and we trended in Ireland for most of the day! The quality of the backchannel was quite amazing. I've created a semi-structured archive of all the comments and pictures using storify, which gives a sense of the day. A beautiful TAGSExplorer visualisation of all the tweets for the hashtag was created by Martin Hawsey's Twitter Archiving Google Sheet (TAGS). From here you can find the top tweeter from the conference ( @iainmacl ) and the top conversationalists ( @worried_teacher and @sharonlflynn ). TAGS also produces a searchable archive of the confere...

This is based on the original post by @derekbruff who has kindly given his permission to re-blog. It's an updated version of the #celt13 instructions , posted on this blog 2 years ago. Hello #celt15 twitter team (you know who you are) and thank you for agreeing to take part. We're looking forward to an active twitter stream at #celt15 again this year and you will play a big part in keeping the backchannel going. What does it mean to be on the #celt15 twitter team? Glad you asked.... Take a few moments at several points during the day (during keynotes, during sessions, whenever) to share highlights of the conference.  What are you learning?  What useful resources are you hearing about?  (Include links when you can!)  What questions or answers are occurring to you as you  participate in the conference? Don't forget to use the hashtag! It's #celt15 . You’re encouraged to tweet some photos of the conference. Having some photos in the Twitter steam ma...

I wrote this post a week after BbWorld14, while still on holiday, but I never got around to publishing it. So, here it is - just a month later. ============================================================= BBWorld14 seems like a distant memory to me now, a week later. All the people, the excitement, the bling of Las Vegas - it's all a little bit vague. But the time has given me a chance to reflect and consider the experience. Before I get to the reflection, I will put together a few words on the parallel sessions I attended on the second day. Again, at times I felt that I should have gone to something else, some other part of the programme, but I will get back to that later, too.  I went to a session on Outcomes Assessment in Blackboard, where some users from Syracuse University and Western Kentucky University spoke about their experiences. Outcomes Assessment sounds like a tool that could be useful, particularly for programme accreditation, where programme level learning outcomes...

Leaving Las Vegas I am currently sitting in an aeroplane, high above Arizona (I suspect) looking back over day 2 at BbWorld14. I had to miss the third day, which is unfortunate, but unavoidable. Yesterday started with our own session, and I was joined by Darren and Fionn in Murano 3205, where we gave our presentation to a fairly full room. It was a very different audience to Dublin, but a good one all the same. Thanks to everyone who came along. We know you could have picked up a free webcam at the Respondus session, but we had no freebies to give, so we particularly appreciate your support.  The big keynote of the day was from Jay Bhatt, CEO of Blackboard , in the Venetian Ballroom again. As we entered the room, music pounding, there was an air of expectation and excitement. The theme of the keynote was Reimagine. Redesign. Redefine. which was expanded to: Reimagine the education experience; Redesign our approach; Redefine the teaching and learning environment.  We heard abou...

I am sitting in the airport at Philadelphia, waiting for the next stage of my journey to BbWorld14 in Las Vegas. It seems a very long time since I set off, early this morning, from Galway. I got the 5:15 CityLink bus from Galway to Dublin airport, accompanied by my 12 year old daughter, who is spending a few days with family in Dublin.  As we sat into our seats, my daughter took out her mobile phone, connected to wifi, attached her ear buds and proceeded to ignore me for the whole 3 hour journey. As we left Galway, I was surprised that she started taking photographs out the window - it was dark - and posting them on snapchat and Instagram. Then I realised that she was starting to document her visit to Dublin, which is probably almost as exciting for her as my trip to Las Vegas. Maybe she's a future blogger? In contrast to her single device, I am travelling with at least four (five if you count my watch - which I still use to tell the time). I have my phone and my iPad, to keep me c...

Last Friday, June 6th, we held our annual CELT Symposium. This year's theme was "Discover, Explore, Create" and it really was a very interesting and eye-opening event. After our keynotes and parallel sessions we rounded off the day with a whistle stop tour of our campus which meant making our way around campus guided by a map, stopping off at organised locations and meeting with interesting and enthusiastic colleagues who filled us in on what is going on in their specific area. It is amazing how little we sometimes know about all the different and exciting things that are happening in our University. Our videos from the event will be available shortly but in the meantime here is a little photo montage of the day: Update: the videos from the day are now available and can be found on the CELT website . There is also a twitter archive from the day, based on the #celt14 hashtag, which can be found on storify . Tweet

Calman Learning Centre, Durham Earlier this month I attended (and presented at) the Durham Blackboard Users' Conference. This was my fourth time to attend the conference, which is always a very valuable event, particularly at the start of the new year. This year's event was no exception. Quite apart from the excellent keynotes (Patrick Carmichael and Robin Goodfellow) and the varied programme , this also gives me a chance to catch up with a very open and sharing community of learning technologists, teachers and administrators with common issues and challenges. It's now about 2 weeks since the conference and I've had a chance to let some ideas and thoughts settle. Rather than being a conference report, I'd just like to write down some of my reflections arising from the event. Apologies for the long post, it has taken me a few days to bring the threads together. An archive of the tweets from the event is available on storify. Plumbing One of the first things that I n...

On Monday 4th November, I headed up to Dublin to attend the Turning Technologies User Conference at Trinity College Dublin. Although we are not a customer of Turning Technologies, we do have some significant experience with the use of Personal Response Systems , or clickers, which I've blogged about before. We have a large number of clickers made by eInstruction, which was recently bought over by Turning Technologies , so I was interested to see where the technology is heading. Opening Keynote: Eric Mazur The conference also gave me the opportunity to hear Eric Mazur speak. I've been aware of Mazur's work with clickers and peer learning for some time; his YouTube video Confessions of a Converted Lecturer is a joy to watch. His polished performance yesterday was an excellent demonstration of the techniques he promotes. Although he was speaking to the converted (he didn't need to convince anybody of the need for more active forms of learning), Mazur kept us engaged and ...

Earlier this month I was very pleased to give a keynote at the #GREAT13 student conference. The event was organised by 2nd year students of the Michigan State University's (MSU) MA in Educational Technology. One cohort of this programme is the Overseas Summer Cohort , which came to NUI Galway this year. The programme is aimed at primary and secondary teachers from all over the world, who come together to learn and to share their experiences, creating an international community. The conference organisation, planning and implementation as a requirement for a Technology and Leadership course. Over just two weeks, the students have to act as a team to identify and invite keynote speakers, create a conference schedule, design a website , consider social media and conference promotion to the local community. Apart from the keynote speakers, the sessions themselves are prepared and delivered by the students, so they also have to put a lot of work into preparation and presentation. On the...

Earlier this month we had our annual Galway Symposium on Higher Education, entitled "Thinking Differently" - New Curricula, New Skills in Higher Education. Although the conference theme itself is not technology-focused, we did make use of technology to support and enhance the conference experience. Twitter Back in March, we agreed the twitter hashtag for the conference and I used Martin Hawksey's excellent Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet to start archiving all tweets using the hashtag. About 2 weeks before the conference itself, I enlisted the help of a twitter team, targeting people that I knew would be at the conference and giving them advice on how to keep the backchannel going . This meant that we had an active twitter stream before, during and after the conference, with about 850 tweets currently in the archive. The Archive Tool produces a complete archive and TagsExplorer , which lets you explore the connections between the people who are tweeting.  From this...

This is based on the original post by @derekbruff who has kindly given his permission to re-blog. Hello #celt13 twitter team (you know who you are) and thank you for agreeing to take part. We're looking forward to an active twitter stream at #celt13 again this year and you will play a big part in keeping the backchannel going. What does it mean to be on the #celt13 twitter team? Glad you asked.... Take a few moments at several points during the day (during keynotes, during sessions, whenever) to share highlights of the conference.  What are you learning?  What useful resources are you hearing about?  (Include links when you can!)  What questions or answers are occurring to you as you  participate in the conference? Don't forget to use the hashtag! It's #celt13. You’re encouraged to tweet some photos of the conference if you have that ability. Having some photos in the Twitter steam makes the conference experience more concrete for folks not there. F...

View of Empire State Building The last two weeks have been a bit surreal for me, and on Tuesday I spent a very pleasant day in Dakota Studio on 5th Avenue in New York City, recording a presentation for the Kaltura Education Video Summit . The summit will be a virtual event, taking place on 6th December, and you can register now for free. My presentation is on Supporting the use of video for teaching and learning (in the Blackboard LMS) and I am one of a long list of speakers , but the only one from outside the US, as far as I am aware. So, how did this strange situation come about? Being in New York, pre-recording a presentation for a virtual conference to take place next month? Well, just two weeks ago I got an email from Meytal Burstein, marketing manager with Kaltura , letting me know that my abstract had been accepted for the virtual Summit, and that I was invited to give a 30-35 minute presentation. I was very pleased, of course, and expected to deliver the presentation from my d...

Using Martin Hawksey's twitter archiving google spreadsheet , we can now reveal the top tweeters at the 10th Galway Symposium: The Written Word - writing, publishing and communication in higher education . The conversation is still continuing, using the #celt12 hashtag . So far, we have archived more than 1000 tweets from the event. To see a visual representation of the archive, you can visit the Interactive Archive of #celt12 tweets (static image below). Click on any name to get a list of that person's tweets and interactions. A full archive of tweets , though it's not particularly pretty, is also available.   Tweet

This is based on the original post by @derekbruff who has kindly given his permission to re-blog for #celt12. Hello #celt12 twitter team (you know who you are) and thank you for agreeing to take part. We're looking forward to an active twitter stream at #celt12 this year and you will play a big part in keeping the backchannel going. What does it mean to be on the #celt12 twitter team? Glad you asked.... Take a few moments at several points in each day (during keynotes, during sessions, whenever) to share highlights of the conference.  What are you learning?  What useful resources are you hearing about?  (Include links when you can!)  What questions or answers are occurring to you as you  participate in the conference? Don't forget to use the hashtag! It's #celt12. You’re encouraged to tweet some photos of the conference if you have that ability. Having some photos in the Twitter steam makes the conference experience more concrete for folks not there. Fe...

Last week I spent 3 days at the Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference . Since I came back, I find myself reflecting on the experience. At the time, it was a whirlwind of enthusiasm, inspiration and tweets . Now that I'm back at the day job, back in reality, I'd like to write down some reflections and share them. For me, PELeCON 2012 was all about making connections. Travel Connections For a start, there was the travelling. Last year, @catherinecronin and I travelled direct from Dublin to Plymouth, at a civilised time of the day. This year, unfortunately, travelling to Plymouth from Galway was a little more complicated. We had to fly to Bristol at the unfortunate hour of 6:40am from Dublin. This meant a stopover in one of the Dublin Airport Hotels, after a bus journey from Galway to Dublin. We met up with @crumphelen at Dublin airport, ready for the early morning flight. Once we arrived in Bristol, we got a bus to Bristol Mead train station, then a two hour journey by train to...

Tweet Over the last three days I have been immersed in the very special conference that is PELeCON 2012 . The theme this year was Create, Connect, Collaborate, and that is certainly what was achieved over the three days. The annual conference in Plymouth, organised by Steve Wheeler ( @timbuckteeth , @stevewheeler ), is well worth the long travel. It's also an event that can be enjoyed virtually, because the participants are so active on social media and, this year, all sessions were live-streamed. More thoughts on the conference are to follow. I presented yesterday (Friday) on our initial attempts to evaluated the longer-term impact of our Learning Technologies module (#cel263). While more in-depth analysis is needed, initial results from a survey of our alumni are very positive. In particular, we do seem to be affecting a change in culture, with the creation of technology champions within the disciplines. Here's the prezi from yesterday. I already tweeted the link yesterday mo...

The Calman Learning Centre Last week I travelled to Durham for the 2012 Blackboard Users' Conference . Coming immediately at the end of the Christmas/New Year break, it was a shock to the system, and a rude kick start to my brain. But I survived, and came away with my head buzzing. Now, if I can just get time to implement some of those ideas... The two keynotes , in particular, got me thinking about training and support for our academic staff in their use of technologies for teaching and learning.  The learning technology team at CELT aims to provide pedagogical support for staff in their use of technology, although often we end up dealing with queries about user accounts and basic support for our VLE, Blackboard. Our mantra is that we want to encourage each member of staff, from their current technology use, to do something a little more. We always keep in mind that the teaching/learning is key, and we're just using the technology to (better) support it. With this in mind, Gr...