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I've been using twitter for more than seven years, as many of my readers will already know. One of the most useful aspects of twitter, for me, involves tweeting at conferences - whether I am at the conference, or following a conference hashtag. As well as being part of the general conference discussion and backchannel, it also offers insight to an event beyond the traditional boundaries of location. How I use twitter at conferences If I am (physically) attending a conference, my usual style is to tweet key ideas, references, links, and photos of the speaker and his/her slides. More recently, since I'm trying to make written notes (yes - on paper) I will also tweet an image of my notes. I converse with other twitter users, who may be co-located at the conference, or not. I use my own twitter feed as a record of event, along with my notes. I often use storify to collate and share a record of all the event tweets. In particular, I use the photographs to remember useful information...

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...

I wasn't sure which identity to bring with me to #cesicon , the annual conference of CESI (Computers in Education Society of Ireland). Billed as an event for those who are interested in integrating technology into their teaching and learning , it seems aimed mostly at first and second level education. Since my professional experience is embedded firmly in higher education, I wasn't sure what benefit the event would be for me. The free stickers went down well In my new found interest in all things Wikimedia, however, I wanted to support the Wikimedia Community Ireland group who were presenting in a session called Wikipedia for Education . And so, I signed up as part of An Lucht Vicí. With my new (purple) avatar on twitter, I can no longer hide easily at events, and so I brought along my "me" identity as well. The one identity that I tried to leave behind was the parent of two children in secondary school. My experience is that parents and teachers don't mix, unles...

Today I am looking forward to the start of our popular module on Learning Technologies, CEL263. This module forms part of our PostGraduate Diploma in Academic Practice, but can also be taken by academic staff as a stand-alone module. This year is the sixth time that it will be run, and we have an eclectic line-up of participants from across the university. I know it's going to be fun. The module is run as a series of 7 workshops, each on a different topic. While we explore lots of different technologies, the focus is on how the technologies can be used in a meaningful way to support teaching and learning activities. We always have a great mix of people, from technophobes to technophiles, and we all learn from each other. Our aim is to move each person out of their comfort zone, to try something new in a supported environment. As well as the face-2-face workshops, the module is supported by a Blackboard course, with resources and activities, as well as recordings of each workshop. I...

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...

I was very pleased to be asked to speak at the Faculty of Science and Engineering 4th annual Learning and Teaching Day, which took place at the University of Limerick last week. The focus of the event, organised by Hussain Mahdi and Michael English, was on Technology Enhanced Teaching and Learning. My own presentation, which had the title Trends in Technology Enhance Teaching and Learning , is embedded below. While developing it, I realised that 20 minutes was too short for me to cover a multitude of trends, so I decided to focus on video in teaching and learning, and the opportunities for video to play a part in content production, delivery, supporting of student learning and assessment. I mentioned a number of video initiatives by NUIG staff, including Conor O'Byrne, Oliver Ryan, Bryan McCabe, Ger Fleming, Susan Folan, John Breslin and John Murray, as well as Anne Wiseman from GMIT. What I enjoyed about the day, though, was the opportunity to hear from a group of practitioners a...

At this stage, #edcmooc is over, and I can say that I have finally completed a MOOC. Before I reflect on my own experience of being a student on #edmooc, I want to complete my musings on the resources provided. Week 4 continued the theme of Being Human, with a collection of videos, some readings on Transhumanism and some less challenging perspectives on Education. Of the four videos, the two that I connected with most are True Skin ( see it on Vimeo ) and Avatar Days ( watch on YouTube ). True Skin reminds me of some of the sci fi videos from week 1, and has a dystopian feel running through it. The idea of being able to upload your mind - memory backup - is fascinating and has clear beneficial aspects, for example, for early alzheimers sufferers. What does it mean for learning though? If you can upload a (brilliant) mind, can you download it, or part of it, multiple times to many people? Maybe we'll all become like our smartphones, downloading learning to our brains like apps. L...

I've decided to stick with my avatar. Here's why... (from Storify)   [ View the story "Hiding behind my avatar - follow up" on Storify ] Tweet

The last couple of weeks have been busy, between the EdTech 2012 conference organised by ILTA, our own CELT conference, and then a presentation to the WRSLAI event last week. I haven't had time to think! So, before my memories fade completely, I'll write a couple of blog posts about all these events. I'm starting with the keynote speakers at EdTech 2012, compiled from my notes and tweets, using storify. [<a href="http://storify.com/sharonlflynn/edtech-2012" target="_blank">View the story "Keynotes at EdTech 2012" on Storify</a>] Tweet

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...

Tweet It's that time of the year again when we hold our Learning Technologies symposium. This is when the participants on our Learning Technologies module (cel263) come together and present their projects, developed as part of the assessment for the PG diploma module. During our workshop on video Participants are asked to identify and complete a project, based on the material covered in the module, to incorporate Learning Technologies into their teaching. They are given free scope in identifying a technology or technologies and what they want to achieve. From the team's perspective, we aim to move each person beyond his/her comfort zone and to try something new in a supported environment. This year, six people presented their work, using technologies such as social media, podcasting, screencasting, video and google earth. Maura spoke about her plans to use social media to keep MA students engaged while they are involved in a field based module and away from the on-campus, con...

Last Thursday and Friday I attended some of Blogtalk 2010 , taking place on the campus here at NUI Galway. Of course, attending a conference on campus means that you get called away to meetings and try to keep up with email and issues as they arise during the day. So, I didn't get to as many sessions as I'd have liked. But I did very much enjoy those sessions I did see. The conference was very well organised by John Breslin , leader of the Social Software unit at DERI, co-founder of boards.ie and member of staff in the Electrical and Electronic Engineering discipline at NUI Galway. Unlike some of the other bloggers who have written about the conference ( Mark Cahill , Emer Lawn ), I was there very much from a teaching and learning in Higher Education perspective. So any of my comments will be from that angle. DAY 1 Darragh Doyle ( boards.ie ) who we are, what we do, where we are going This was a great talk from Darragh Doyle about boards.ie which is quite unique, there is not...