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On Monday 4th November, I headed up to Dublin to attend the Turning Technologies User Conference at Trinity College Dublin. Although we are not a customer of Turning Technologies, we do have some significant experience with the use of Personal Response Systems , or clickers, which I've blogged about before. We have a large number of clickers made by eInstruction, which was recently bought over by Turning Technologies , so I was interested to see where the technology is heading. Opening Keynote: Eric Mazur The conference also gave me the opportunity to hear Eric Mazur speak. I've been aware of Mazur's work with clickers and peer learning for some time; his YouTube video Confessions of a Converted Lecturer is a joy to watch. His polished performance yesterday was an excellent demonstration of the techniques he promotes. Although he was speaking to the converted (he didn't need to convince anybody of the need for more active forms of learning), Mazur kept us engaged and ...

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...

My son will be 14 next month. He starts his second year at secondary school on Friday. He'll do his first state examination, the Junior Certificate, in summer 2015. Pictured is a selection of just some of the textbooks he is required to have. This is about 60% of the total set, not counting copybooks, homework journal etc. This lot alone weighs more than 10 kilos. Luckily, his school runs a book loan scheme, so we've only had to pay a fraction of the total cost of these books. So, I'm not complaining about the cost. My son gets quite a lot of homework. Each evening he has homework for between 6 and 8 of his subjects. That means he is carrying at least one textbook and one copybook per subject home in his bag. Some mornings last year I could not physically lift his schoolbag. He's a little bit taller than me, but fairly skinny. I watch him staggering down the road to the bus stop with a heavy weight on his back. David Hopkins wrote last week about digital textbooks and ...

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...