Learning+Technologies+Conference+2009

= Learning Technologies Conference 2009 =

The conference ran from Thursday, 19th to Friday, 20th November 2009 at the Mooloolaba Campus of Sunshine Coast TAFE


 * 1) Me We and the Network presented by Nancy White
 * 2) Designing for Open and Networked Learning presented by Alec Couros:
 * 3) Wikimania presented by Mary Hill
 * 4) e-Porfolios with the Australian Flexible Learning Framework presented by Alison Miller
 * 5) Case Study : The Interactive Classroom Project presented by Ann-Marie Furney
 * 6) Great Gizmos

1. **Nancy White** **Me We and the Network**
The power of you - or of me, is mighty. But when and how do we tap into the power of "we" ... How do we, as learners, educators and designers decide when to focus on the individual, the group or the wider network? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? How does our choice inform our selection of tools and methods? And what about all the gray area "in between" each of these? ...

Nancy talked about what it is to be a "Technology Steward" and about the difference between communities and networks.

Nancy defines a network (harvesting the power of we) as a loose formation of individuals with varying levels of commitment to the group and the group's purpose. Networks are often boundaryless and fuzzy. The focus of the network will often have intersecting interests with other networks. They are object centred and have a distributed power/trust dynamic.

White defined a community as usually smaller and closer knit, with members having a high level of commitment to the subject and each other. Communities tend to have boundaries, a group identity, shared interest and are human-centred. A community tends to have distinct power/trust dynamics. Communities can have a shared forward movement or strong blocking movement. They can exist in a state of stasis, ie. they can be motionlessness or unchanging.

In understanding the differences between the different forms of cooperation and sharing of knowledge, we can help people, ie the students, our teachers and ourselves to discover and appropriate useful technology; select an appropriate forum for communications; find and create great content,

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2. Alec Couros: Designing for Open and Networked Learning
Alex Couros is from the University of ReginaCanada. He is an Educational Designer and has run "open courses". This means he runs a course online and while he has about 20 registered online students, he also has about 200 non-paying "lurkers".

Alex talked about the different forms of openness in modern communication and education:
 * __#|free__ software
 * open educational resources
 * open access publications - Directory of Open Access Journals
 * open courses and
 * open accreditation

He spoke about the rise of the Personal Learning Network (PLN) or Personal Learning Environment (PLE) "systems that help learners take control of, and manage their own learning". Alec believes that, in the e-learning environment, the boundary between teacher and learner may be blurring. Classes feel more like communities with an ongoing interchange of __information__ between participants..

He introduced us to lots of new jargon:
 * Social affordance - what an app lets you do, it opportunities and limitations
 * Distributed conversations - and the culture of sharing knowledge in the e-learning environment
 * Invisible colleges - presenters and lecturers online, with a student body dispersed across cyberspace
 * Digital citizenship brought to the classroom
 * RT collaboration - ie realtime collaboration through tools such as Etherpad, a web-based word processor that allows people to work together in real time.
 * PD gone wild - there are now conferences online all over the world everyday. The difficulty can be in finding the right PD.

Alec maintains the use of Web 2.0 applications in education has led to the thinning of the walls between private and public,,closed and open, This has led to the expansion of professional identities via blogs, etc. requiring teachers to reconsider roles in their students lives. Teachers are no longer merely the experts but connectors.

If you want to learn more about Alec Couros, visit some of his sites:
 * Slideshare presentatios
 * Alec Couros' Twitter page
 * His blog

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3. Wikimania / Mary Hill
Mary Hill is from the Southbank Insitute of Technology. Mary incorporated online elements into her delivery of a Level II English Language course. Her students, typically, had low English skills and no IT experience.

While Mary hosted her course online (using Blackboard), student output was published to a wiki. Each student had their own page in Wikispaces where they posted reports and photographs. The wikis were open to the public and students communicated with other groups at other TAFEs, something not possible within the constraints of LRMs such as Blackboard or Janison.

Some software __applications__ students became familiar with in the course of their studies included:
 * Blackboard,
 * wikispaces.com,
 * Powerpoint, and
 * Audacity which was used to create a photostory.

Pluses:
 * Students became familiar with computer applications through their use of Blackboard and through publishing work online;
 * Communication could be asynchronous, which meant students could participate in their own time;

Minuses:
 * Communicating in a forum where there was a lack of non-verbal clues from students made it harder to guage student reactions, etc.
 * Password maintenance was often a problem;
 * Copyright education assumed greater importance. Because work was posted on a public site, students needed to be aware of copying limits and how to attribute sources.

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4. e-Porfolios with the Australian Flexible Learning Framework
Alison Miller from TAFE SA talked about emerging technologies which support flexible learning. Her presentation featured the e-Portfolios project currently underway at the Australian Flexible Learning Framework.

Visit the e-Portfolio pages at AFLF to learn more: Australian Flexible Learning Framework - e-portfolios Also visit the e-Portfolios resources page to access brochures and reports about the project

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5. Case Study : The Interactive Classroom Project
Presented by Ann-Marie Furney, NSW Department of Education and Training

Ann Marie spoke about the **Connected Classrooms Program** currently underway at the NSW Dept of Education. The program, which includes three separate projects, aims to enhance the Department's ICT capacity for teaching and learning The projects will run over four years (between 2008 and 2011), involve over 1000 schools, at a projected cost of $158 million.


 * The three projects include:**


 * The** **Interactive Classroom Project** which aims to equip every school with an interactive whiteboard, videoconferencing facility and data collaboration technology. In October 2008, as part of the project, fifteen different NSW public schools used videoconferening equipment to become part of the audience at the the Metropolis conference (urban planning for the 21st century) in Sydney. They also participaed.in three of the conference forums (Climate change, Cities of India and Cities of China) using a wiki to plan and prepare for the event.
 * Read more about this project in this article: Interactive Classroom Project

This project is working towards the development of a system-wide blogging tool for NSW. DET.blogging tools such as BlogEd which will provide secure online workspaces for staff and students.
 * The Learning Tools Project **

The project will also provide support for teachers, training on equipment, learning systems training, intranet pages with tutorials, eg. videos and PDF guides,

Ann-Marie saw the major keys to success in the project as the need for an in-house expert; just intime learning; coaching and mentoring; same time / own time balance, home access software, and a ready access to it support.


 * The Network Enhancement Project (NGEN)** aims to upgrade networks and bandwidth within schools to support of Interactive Classrooms and Learning Tools projects. It will also provide enhanced authenticated and filtered internet browsing services; network upgrades to support the delivery

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6. Great Gizmos
During the conference, we saw a lots of new equipment which might be good for us to explore. Here are some:


 * 1) Sony Bloggie
 * Very small - about the size of an iPod Touch.
 * Very simple - basically point and hit record button. Has limited zoom in and zoom out; play and delete buttons.
 * Great HD quality images
 * Similar in function to Flip camera, which is now discontinued

2. The **Smartpen**, eg. Livescribe pen - $200-$300 depending on the capacity
 * The smartpen records audio and links it to what you write. It captures everything as you write and draw. Tap on your notes or drawings with the tip of your Pulse smartpen to hear what was said while you were writing.
 * The smartpen can turn by your notes into interactive movies.
 * Large capacity. the 2GB model can hold over 200 hours audio

3. **Point of View (POV) glasses**
 * Sunglasses that have a video camera built in that can also record sound.
 * Negatives: they have a small memory, about 32MB of onboard memory, upgradable with an SD card.
 * Negatives: the sound quality is not great.
 * Negatives: They can be expensive. The edupov site has them listed at about $1,600.
 * Positives: they will probably improve, and may get cheaper over time. Could prove useful for work-based and online assessments.

4. **USB Microphones**
 * A microphone with an inbuilt audio recorder
 * Turn lectures into podcasts.
 * Example of a USB microphone

Most of us are familiar with electronic whiteboards by now. There were lots on display at the conferences. For some great specials during the conference visit Electroboard
 * 5. Electronic Whiteboards**

__#|For more information__, also try Interactive Whiteboard Network

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