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Flowers for International Women's Day Yesterday was International Women's Day and there was a plethora of blog posts and twitter messages identifying various inspirational women. Twenty five years ago I would have found this unnecessary, demeaning even. But now, with a pre-teenage daughter about to enter secondary school, with her whole life ahead of her, I'm increasingly concerned about the world that she is about to encounter. I grew up with just one sister, no brothers. We were never told that there were career paths not open to us. We both ended up taking Computer Science degrees and both continue to work in technology. I went to an all-girls convent school. I took Honours Maths and Physics, because I liked them. Originally I wanted to be an accountant (like my dad) or an actuary. But then I got the CS bug, and decided that's what I wanted to do. I graduated in 1990, one of 8 girls in a class of 34 computer scientists - that's almost 25% female. I took a joint h...

Day two of BYOD4L mini course , and I'm still here, though a little late to blog about it. The theme was communicating and we had a very intense twitter chat on that topic. The first task, which I completed over lunchtime on my iPad, was to create a representation of yourself as a communicator in your private and professional life The directions suggested that I find a free app that would help me with this. Some mind-mapping apps were suggested, but eventually I decided that iBrainstorm looked fairly easy. This is what I came up with. Me, as a communicator Interestingly , in retrospect, I focused on me (as a communicator) rather than focusing on the tools that I use - though some are mentioned. I also chose to reveal an aspect of my personality, that I am an introvert. This was actually the first thing I pinned to the board, because I feel that it does define the way that I prefer and choose to communicate. The Videos I did look at both video scenarios . I reflected a little on t...

This week I am dipping into the open bite-size course BYOD4L: Bring Your Own Device for Learning . I can't promise that I'll keep up, especially since the History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education MOOC also starts today. But since it's only over 5 days, I might just manage. The first topic is that of Connecting . There was quite a bit of connecting on the twitter chat this evening , under the hashtag #BYOD4Lchat. It was fast and furious. But, back to the task at hand. I watched both videos embedded on the Resources page and decided to reflect on the second one, from the point of view of the teacher. This is a scenario with which I am familiar, since I work in supporting teaching staff in their use of technology. A constant refrain is "I haven't got time", which, to be fair, is usually true. Academics are, increasingly, very busy with many demands on their time. To start using a new technology (device, app, system, tool) for teaching, they need to be c...

Calman Learning Centre, Durham Earlier this month I attended (and presented at) the Durham Blackboard Users' Conference. This was my fourth time to attend the conference, which is always a very valuable event, particularly at the start of the new year. This year's event was no exception. Quite apart from the excellent keynotes (Patrick Carmichael and Robin Goodfellow) and the varied programme , this also gives me a chance to catch up with a very open and sharing community of learning technologists, teachers and administrators with common issues and challenges. It's now about 2 weeks since the conference and I've had a chance to let some ideas and thoughts settle. Rather than being a conference report, I'd just like to write down some of my reflections arising from the event. Apologies for the long post, it has taken me a few days to bring the threads together. An archive of the tweets from the event is available on storify. Plumbing One of the first things that I n...

Shortly before Christmas, I followed a #edchatie twitter chat. This twitter chat, for Irish educators, takes place every Monday evening. While I am aware of it, I don't normally participate, because 1) the time doesn't suit me, 2) active participants are mostly from primary or secondary education, with minimal HE discussion, 3) although I have an interest in primary and secondary education as a parent, I haven't felt encouraged to engage from that perspective. However, I do like to drop in from time to time. On this occasion, I introduced myself as usual, and said that I would be mostly lurking. I got an immediate response from @fboss , the convenor, who suggested that I should try to participate, and I agreed that I would. The topic on the evening was #whatilearntin2013 . The stream was full of positive reflections on the year. Maybe it was the time of year, end of semester blues, a particularly challenging year, or maybe I was just a bit down, but I could not think of a s...

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...