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The International Turnitin User Group meeting took place on Monday 16th July at the Sage in Gateshead, just before the start of the 5th International Plagiarism Conference. This was a great opportunity to meet with Turnitin representatives as well as other Turnitin users, to compare experiences and find out about the product roadmap. After a welcome from Will Murray (VP International), Christian Storm (CTO) gave an update on recent developments and current research in the Turnitin suite. It's clear that there has been a shift in focus from plagiarism detection towards supporting assessment and feedback, with a view to improving student outcomes. Turnitin aims to be the complete solution for improving student writing and the best-in-class solution for grading . It seems that the company has really been listening to its customers, and my impression is that future directions are very positive and exciting. Recent developments include voice based grading (which I haven't played wi...

This afternoon I am UK-bound again, this time to Newcastle, for the 5th International Plagiarism Conference . Having been to two previous events, I'm looking forward to catching up with some old friends and meeting some new ones. I will miss Jo Badge @jobadge , who has moved on to new challenges. Although not strictly learning technologies , I will post my thoughts on the conference, and will certainly be tweeting from the event - the hashtag is #5ipc. Day 1, Monday, incorporates the Turnitin User Group meeting, and I'm looking forward to hearing about the roadmap for this product. So, do follow me on twitter for updates. And if you are going to be at the conference, let me know so that we can meet up.   Tweet

Yesterday I attended the inaugural event of the Centre for Learning Innovation, a new organisation funded by Enterprise Ireland and the IDA, to bring together industry and research in the area of technologies for learning. The event was held at Croke Park, where the pitch was busy being prepared for the farewell Westlife concerts tonight and tomorrow. (That's not an omen - I hope.) The theme of the event was Learning for Growth, and the purpose was to launch the Centre for Learning Innovation, an organisation which has been in gestation for some years, and which only arrived at its name the previous evening. Yesterday it was announced that the government is to invest €6m in the Centre over the next 6 years. The first keynote speaker, Donald Taylor ( @DonaldHTaylor ), chair of the Learning and Performance Institute, spoke about the many changes in Learning Technology in the last 13 years. He identified 3 major changes in that time, leading to new opportunities for the Centre: Le...

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

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...

Today we are very pleased to announce the launch of our new Blackboard help website. This site brings together useful documentation and resources on using Blackboard at NUI Galway. It can be found at the following location: www.nuigalway.ie/blackboard Based on user feedback about our existing support site and on support calls and requests since the upgrade to Blackboard 9.1 last Summer, we have completely redesigned the website and developed new materials to help you find the answers to your most asked questions. The resources are grouped into categories, to help you navigate quickly to the required resource, and an A-Z of help topics is also available. It is also possible to use the Quick Search facility to jump straight to a topic. We hope you'll agree that the new site is tidier and easier to use. We will continue to develop resources for this area, based on common queries and requests. If you have any comments or suggestions for the new website, please get in contact . As we la...