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Regular readers of this blog will know that I strongly support the use of Wikipedia (and Wikimedia generally) in teaching, and that I'm a member of Wikimedia Community Ireland . I'm still very nervous about editing, and until recently have only made very minor contributions to the online encyclopedia. It's one of my own development goals. I am completely in awe of anybody who takes on the #100wikidays challenge - to write an article a day for 100 consecutive days. I first heard of this through our community member Rebecca O'Neill, who completed the challenge in 2015. Mourning my mother through a hundred days of Wikipedia editing is another, more recent, account of the challenge. Given that I've only written one article from scratch, I'm a long way from even contemplating the challenge. However, earlier this year I saw that Rebecca had started the #100CommonsDays challenge - to upload an image to Wikimedia Commons every day for 100 days. I thought that sounded ...

The National Forum for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education has published 2 focused research reports today. One of these is the outcome of a project, led by Angelica Risquez at the University of Limerick, and involving a team of people from University of Limerick, Dublin Institute of Technology, Mary Immaculate College, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and National University of Ireland Galway, looking at the current state of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education in Ireland. This report provides a considered account of some of the key issues which influence the sharing of open educational resources. These include questions of awareness and understanding of open educational resources at individual as well as institutional level, and the value placed on openness as a positive incentive for academic engagement. Acknowledging the complex interplay between these factors, the study suggests important practical steps to take for...

St Leonard's Hall The EduWiki 2014 event was held on Friday 31st October in the stunning St Leonard's Hall at the University of Edinburgh. Ever since I heard Toni Sant (Education Organiser with wikimedia UK) speak at the International Integrity and Plagiarism Conference ( see previous post ), which led me to join the Wikimedia Ireland Community working group, I have been fascinated at the potential of using Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) to support student development in higher education. So, I was thrilled to be at the one day event in Edinburgh to find out more about the Wikimedia UK education projects. This was always going to be a different crowd from my usual conference network, and there wasn't much tweeting in advance of the event, so I was a little nervous when I turned up at the social event on the evening before the conference. I needn't have worried, the small group that had gathered were as welcoming as could be, including a nacho-eating dog, an...

In my role, I wear a number of different hats. Sometimes they are distinct, but often they overlap. Apart from the use of technologies for learning, one of my major interests is in supporting academic integrity - not just plagiarism detection, but the creation of an environment where scholarly work can flourish. At the 6th International Integrity & Plagiarism conference this summer, I found these two interests overlapping in a new way (for me) in Toni Sant's keynote talk. For a long time, I have been trying to persuade academic staff that Wikipedia is not necessarily the work of the devil. I argued that it can be a useful place for students to start researching a topic and can direct them towards more authentic and useful resources. I'd even heard of student assignments based on editing wikipedia, but I hadn't really thought too much about it. What's wrong with Wikipedia? @tonisant #6iipc pic.twitter.com/tYWP8szPTI — Sharon Flynn (@sharonlflynn) June 17, 2014 Toni...

Poster by Andrew Flaus, NUIG Last Wednesday, a group of us from CELT took the early morning train from Galway to Dublin to attend the 2012 NDLR Fest at Croke Park. A number of our NUIG Learning Innovation Projects (LIPs) from last year were included in the poster showcase , and we welcomed the opportunity to participate in an event to highlight the valuable work being done by academics across Ireland in the area of open educational resources (OER). What was good about the event? It seems that we are finally reaching a critical mass in terms of creating a culture of sharing and collaboration. This is wonderful to see, though I suspect it still exists in pockets of good practice, rather than being widespread.   We are building up experience and data in the OER movement in Ireland, so that our practice can be evidence based. It was suggested that Ireland is currently "punching above its weight". I am not sure about this, but I think we are holding our own. The OER moveme...

Tweet I see from today's NDLR newsletter that Minister Seán Sherlock will launch the 2012 NDLR Fest in Croke Park on 2nd May. Of course, Seán Sherlock is infamous for signing the Irish copyright amendment (also known as the Irish SOPA) into law last month, without public consultation and despite more than 80,000 signatures on an online petition ( stopsopaireland ). It will certainly be interesting to hear his views on the notion of people collaborating and sharing freely their digital learning resources. The NDLR Fest, now in its 6th year, is a nice event to attend. The community is friendly and open and there is a great buzz generated. The aim of the event, according to the NDLR conference website, is to showcase the wide array of free technology enhanced learning that has been generated across all subject disciplines in the Irish HE sector as well as celebrating the cooperative and collaborative process in which these resources have been developed, used and reused. You can si...