The midden

One of the characteristics of HE teaching is that lecturers tend to teach in the way they were taught when they were undergraduates.  So if they were taught by inspirational teachers who saw the value of teaching, they are more likely to focus on inspiring their own students. If they were taught by lecturers who [...]

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Billed as “a resource for educators planning to incorporate technologies in their teaching and learning activities”, this handbook written by George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger at the University of Manitoba,  is a lot more than this. It starts from the premise that Higher Education, whether individual institutions know it or not, is in the midst [...]

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This is a useful article by Olivia Mitchell, posted on the Slideshare blog, describing 4 multimedia learning principles that can be applied to improve the learning value of presentations. She distinguishes between graphic design and instructional design and explains why the latter is the most important if you want to help your audience to learn.

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The latest Horizon Report, that looks at the likely impact of emerging technologies on teaching, learning and research, features six examples of tools, applications and devices that will change the way we operate. Two of these technologies, i.e. mobile devices and cloud computing, are already with us and used extensively. With the advent of the [...]

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While this handbook from futurelab is aimed at promoting discussion around the nature and purpose of innovation in schools, much of the evidence, ideas and recommendations it presents are equally valid for HE.
Transformative innovation is radical and challenging. It is the kind of innovation that challenges our assumptions about how we do things and causes [...]

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Half an Hour: The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On

This posting by Stephen Downes provides a useful summary of where we are at now and how we got here. He re-visits a previous article written in 1998, noting that many of his earlier predictions have been remarkably accurate. The main areas he discusses include:

new [...]

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AccessApps is a collection of over 50 open source and freeware assistive technology applications for Windows PCs, that can be used directly from a USB memory stick without the need to install anything onto your computer.
The applications have been collated by the two Scottish JISC Regional Support Centres (Scotland North & East and Scotland [...]

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Mike Wesch’s latest Youtube video, A Portal to Media Literacy, is essential viewing for all educators. He describes so clearly why we have to change and challenge the present system of educating our young people. He is clearly a passionate teacher and someone who understands the world in which his students move.
His dismantling of the [...]

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The OU has become the second UK university (after UCL) to make its content accessible through iTunes U. It joins other world class universities such as Yale, Stanford and MIT in making course materials available for free download. It plans to have 500 video and audio materials from 50 courses on iTunes U by the [...]

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This is a video of my presentation to the JISC Regional Support Centre for Yorkshire & Humber on June 10th at Bradford University. The sub-title of the presentation was Beyond “no significant difference”, on the basis that, in education, we use technology to do things the same way as we have always done rather than [...]

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