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A couple of weeks ago, I had a coffee with Michael Coyne ( @MichealCoyne on twitter) of the NUI Galway School of Law. I was interested in finding out a little bit more about the School's presence on Facebook . The site currently has more than 400 fans and is a very nice example of using facebook to enhance the student experience. Michael made some interesting points. The site is mainly aimed at final year undergraduate students, but also targets recent graduates and prospective students. It offers some useful course-related information such as timetables and announcements, more general information about upcoming seminars and career advice and whatever is considered newsworthy or of interest to law students, past and present. It’s also a good platform for current PhD students who actively blog on human rights and disability issues to highlight their work and perhaps make contact with like-minded people. This is seen as a good way to reach students. Michael's perception is that...

Last week, November 23-26, I "attended" the JISC online conference Innovating E-Learning 2010, Bringing innovation to life: from adversity comes opportunity. This was the 5th JISC online conference, attracting 475 delegates from 11 countries . For a registration fee of about €60, I had access to a number of excellent keynote presentations and invited speakers, using Elluminate, discussion areas and other resources. I didn't manage to get to all the sessions, which were arranged in two themes: Realising the Potential and Realising the Value. I participated in the following live sessions: Theme 1 Learning to Live in Interesting Times - What are Educational Institutions for? Keri Facer Transforming Assessment for Learning in a Digital Age David Boud What do students really want? Usman Ali Theme 2 Is the Future Mobile? Graham Browne-Martin Sustaining OER Innovation through Collaboration and Partnership Simon Thomson and Andy Beggan I missed a few sessions, but the grea...

On Monday afternoon, the European Day of Languages, we were invited along to the launch of PAISAGE, an Irish/Spanish project for the teaching and learning of both languages. PAISAGE stands for Portal Audiovisual Intercultural sobre el Aprendizaje de Gaélico y Espanol. It is a NAIRTL -funded project aimed at linking linguistic and cultural learning in Irish and Spanish, carried out by Dorothy Ní Uigín ( Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge ) and Pilar Aldarete ( Spanish ), both academic staff members at NUI Galway. Dorothy and Pilar have developed a range of resources including videos in both languages showing aspects of NUI Galway and its surrounds; interviews with Spanish students living in Ireland and Irish students living in Spain; interviews with professionals working in both languages and cultures; grammar explanations contrasting both languages; grammar exercises to accompany the videos. All resources are linked to the levels in the Common European Framework of Reference for Langua...

It has now been 2 weeks since the second day of Blogtalk 2010, but some of the themes have been mulling around in my brain since then, even though I haven't had time to write about them. As before, most of my comments will be from a teaching and learning in Higher Education perspective. Unfortunately, I missed a lot of day 2. But I was lucky to be present at the first keynote of the day, given by Stowe Boyd . This was the highlight of the conference for me. Stowe Boyd (keynote) Social media blur: blogs, networks, streams Stowe Boyd talked about the development of blogging and social media over the last 10 years and also gave us a glimpse of a possible future. The blog culture has changed and people are not blogging as much any more. How many blogs do you know where the most recent entry is 3 or 4 months ago and the message is "I must get back to blogging"? People like the immediacy of social networking and social conversations such as twitter. Where people are blogging, ...

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...

On Saturday 31st July, encouraged by reports from @vonprond, @klillington, @catherinecronin and @jamesclay, I went out and bought myself an iPad. I knew more about it than the sales guy in Curry's, Galway. I took it home and from the first moment I held it in my arms and connected it to iTunes, it was love. I should explain that I never, ever, have done anything like this before. I don't buy expensive gadgets for myself. This was a completely irrational move for me. Even my trusty iPod, now 4 years old, was bought as a present by my husband, after much hinting. For the next week, I proudly showed off my new purchase to family, friends and colleagues. I spent time considering apps, reading reviews, thinking about how I could use it for teaching and work, as well as having a bit of fun. I installed not one but four twitter apps: twitterific (good), tweetdeck (not great), osfoora (very nice) and flipboard (fantastic). I started to use it for reading (iBooks and Kindle) and was loo...

Fiona Concannon and I were delighted to participate in the Rahoon Youth Project Multimedia Camp which was held in NUIG Galway from July 19 - 23. Coordinator Kerry E'lyn Larkin kindly asked if we could facilitate a Web 2.0 session as part of an action-packed schedule incorporating audio, video, digital literacy and safety, as well as working with NUIG's Flirt FM. The 13-15 year-old students were amazingly talented and motivated (thanks to the programme and support offered by Kerry and her team), and we were delighted provide the students with a chance to use clickers, flip cameras and post to a private blog online. We also gave them a whistle-stop tour of the CELT recording and production facilities to add a bit of 'wow' factor to the proceedings. Well done to one and all involved. We are looking forward to next year's Multimedia Camp already!