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I was delighted to be invited to the Educational Developers in Ireland Network (EDIN) AGM at Tipperary Institute in Thurles last week as one of four presenter to discuss the topic 'eLearning: A Marraige of Convenience or Made in Heaven?' . My fellow presenters were Dr Kevin O'Rourke of the LTTC DIT, Catherine Bruen NDLR Project Manager and Morag Munro Acting Head of the Learning Innovation Unit at DCU. The summary themes that I took from the discourse were: (1) 'eLearning developers' are also 'educational developers' by default - these are not mutually exclusive roles and it adds little to the debate by imposing artificial demarcation lines; (2) technology-enhaced learning tools must be driven by the value-added they bring to the teaching and learning experience e.g. facilitating geographically distributed students working on a group project. Pedagogy first - technology second! (3) Ireland's competitive advantage is that we have a relativeley small e...

The EdTech 2010 conference is being held on May 20-21 in Athlone Insitiute of Technology . This event is the main annual technology-enhanced learning conference for the Irish user community and once again a wide diversity of NUI Galway initiatives will be showcased at the event. NUIG has seven papers/presentations across practitioner , research, Pecha Kucha and Technology in Action strands - the largest representation from any Irish university or IoT . So congratulations to: Peter Cantillon ; Mary Flemming; Fiona Masterson ; Mark Campbell; Niall McSweeney ; Oisin Keelen ; Andrew Flaus ; Mary Dempsey; Paul Gormley ; Liam McDwyer ; Tony Hall; Bonnie Long, and Sharon Flynn. We look forward to seeing innovative uses: of Turnitin to support student writing and feedback ; the uses of wikis with Irish and German operational engineering students ; m molecules and movies in biochemistry ; and the use of online meeting rooms to facilitate primary care clinicians' teaching an...

I was honoured to chair the judging panel of the second Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning in DCU's Helix recently. The judging panel consisted of Karlin Lillington (Irish Times), Muiris O'Connor ( HEA ), Sheila Porter (IBM) and Brendan Tangney ( TCD ). John O'Connor ( DIT ) won the award for his Second Life project 'Virtual Environments: Is one life enough? '. The four other short-listed projects were all truly innovative and captured the spirit of the Award perfectly. More information on the finalists and the process is available from the Award web site . From a judging perspective, the decision making was very difficult due to the high standards set by the finalists. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience and Karlin has written about her take on the process in a lovely article in the Irish Times . John will be presenting his project at the EdTech 2010 conference in Athlone IT on May 20-21 , and will be presented the Jennifer ...

The NDLR (National Digital Learning Resources) is delighted to announce the call for applications to fund projects supporting the development of learning resources /materials for the NDLR Users over the next eight months (June – November 2010). Further details and the application form are available from the newly launched NDLR website . The deadline for applications is the Friday 28th May 2010. Funds will be available from 18th June to: (a) Support projects that will create learning resources and (b) Generate use and activity around these learning resources and the repository and portal. The outputs of these projects will be showcased at a major NDLR event at the end of 2010. Bids should focus on short, practical projects with clear identifiable outputs (i.e. resources and examples of use and reuse). The outputs of these projects should aim to actively progress and support the realisation of the new and dynamic streamlined SMART CoP model ( new CoPs and/or mergers between existing CoPs...

Just back from the Blackboard Teaching and Learning 2010 in Swansea , Wales held from 12-14 April. If your idea of fun is seeing: how a Saudi university was built in 1000 days; how Welsh bilingual medium provision is being supported through technology-enhanced learning; or just watching a video of Blackboard employees dressed up as ladybirds and bees to articulate their common goal of ensuring highest quality standards (getting rid of bugs!!!), this was the place to be. I presented a review of an NUIG 3-year project that aimed to embed Blackboard and other learning technologies as core mainstream technology-enhanced functions on behalf of our project team. Many international colleagues are in the same boat, so it was great chance for information and resource exchange after the presentation. Blackboard had their US product development team onsite to present Blackboard v9.1 , plus a number of new products such as Blackboard Connect (mass notification system), Blackboard Mobile , and Xyth...

On Wednesday the NDLR held their annual Fest in The Trinity Science Gallery. The day was a great success with many interesting presentations on the excellent projects that individuals and institutions have been working on over the past year. Many of the presenters showcased the RLOs they've been developing and there was a chance to speak with them and view the RLOs they have created. There was also a poster session held that gave everyone a chance to get up-to-date on what various NDLR CoPs are getting up to. The event was attended by individual academics, groups of academics who have been working collaboratively through various NDLR initiatives and key stakeholders in the Irish HE sector. Andrew Flaus and Oisín Keeley from the Dept. of Biochemistry at NUIG showcased the fantastic RLOs that they've created as part of a project to develop learning tools that would enable students to grasp conceptually difficult scientific topics and techniques and to create some new assets ...

For the fourth year in succession, the iHCI conference is inviting papers on a wide range of topics, including submissions exploring, discussing or challenging the many boundaries within our community today: the traditional boundaries between academia and industry; the physical boundaries which influence our work; the boundaries between creativity and code; the boundaries between research and real-world use; and the boundaries between 'traditional' desktop systems and mobile, tangible, or ambient interaction; and pushing boundaries into novel or challenging spaces. The event takes place at Dublin City University on September 2-3 2010. Contributions are also welcome that include, but are not limited to, any of the following topics of interest: - Accessibility & Universal Access - Case studies - Collaboration, groupware and social networks - Context-aware systems - Ethnographical and field studies - Evaluation methods and frameworks - Group interaction, collaboration and soci...