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Earlier this month I was very pleased to give a keynote at the #GREAT13 student conference. The event was organised by 2nd year students of the Michigan State University's (MSU) MA in Educational Technology. One cohort of this programme is the Overseas Summer Cohort , which came to NUI Galway this year. The programme is aimed at primary and secondary teachers from all over the world, who come together to learn and to share their experiences, creating an international community. The conference organisation, planning and implementation as a requirement for a Technology and Leadership course. Over just two weeks, the students have to act as a team to identify and invite keynote speakers, create a conference schedule, design a website , consider social media and conference promotion to the local community. Apart from the keynote speakers, the sessions themselves are prepared and delivered by the students, so they also have to put a lot of work into preparation and presentation. On the...

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...

This is based on the original post by @derekbruff who has kindly given his permission to re-blog. Hello #celt13 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 #celt13 again this year and you will play a big part in keeping the backchannel going. What does it mean to be on the #celt13 twitter team? Glad you asked.... Take a few moments at several points during the 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 #celt13. 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. F...

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of attending a workshop in the School of Medicine, involving a small but dedicated group of staff and students. Earlier this year, the Undergraduate Teaching and Learning Working Group (UGTLG) of the School conducted a review of students' perspectives on using Blackboard and compiled a comprehensive report. The report highlights a number of issues relating to how the VLE is being used, and it was clear that a more consistent approach to using Blackboard within the School is needed. A survey on staff use was also carried out. The purpose of yesterday's workshop was twofold. First, the students were asked to design a template that could be used/adapted for all undergraduate modules in the School of Medicine, based on how they would like to access resources. Second, and deriving from the discussion, the UGTLG would like to write up a set of guidelines/policies for staff on good practice in using Blackboard, particular to the School of Medicin...

Bryan McCabe is a lecturer in Civil Engineering at NUI Galway, and a winner of a President's Award for Teaching Excellenc e in 2011/12. About a year ago, Bryan was considering how he might use a flipped approach in his teaching and began planning such an approach for his 3rd year undergraduate course in Soil Mechanics, to be delivered starting January 2013. Bryan had a number of conversations with us in CELT during the year and we were keen to find out how his initiative had worked out. So, we invited him to give a CELT lunchtime seminar on March 21st. In advance of the seminar, Bryan was keen to point out that this was his first experience with flipped learning and he could only talk about initial findings. He didn't want to be perceived as an expert in the area, but was willing to share his experiences and thoughts. The seminar abstract is: First experience of a flipped learning approach to a 3rd year Engineering module Flipped learning is a form of blended learning in which ...