via the Yildiz University Wired In or Out blog, a vimeo interview with Dr. Gary Motteram by the British Council Turkey. Gary talks about the differences in his own experiences of teaching languages and the range of options available using recent technologies. The Wired In or Out blog covers the symposium with more posts to follow.
Pictures from the poster presentation session showing a range of different Turkish projects
educalogy blogs about recently participating in an online collaborative project to create an educational handbook with learners from Estonia, Norway and Finland. The project was completed entirely online using virtual classroom / meeting tools, shared online documents, wikis, facebook and other tools. the author writes about how the group dynamics developed and being able to participate in a joint presentation. The ability to participate in live sessions and the distribution of tasks are reviewed with mixed levels of participation as the project developed. There’s an interesting video embedded in the post from one of the presentations and their own presentation using Prezi.
mastery-oriented students in the group will always work for a good result and will all too often do literally all the work for a group’s presentation – as the social norm of not reporting the fellow student’s inactivity is still holding strong – which it should be. I think it is in the responsibility of the course designer and instructor to establish ways of monitoring and controlling a fairer distribution of work in academic collaborative learning groups
Kerry Muste blogs about the Crazy Crazes project with gives South African students the opportunity to connect with students from around the world sharing their experiences via a wiki.
The project has resulted in a whole lot of learning not only for the students but also for me as I have never used a wiki. I have also learnt to use Youblisher to showcase the students’ work about our town and school and VoiceThread to allow the other classes to hear us singing the National anthem.
She describes the excitement of being able to connect with other students via Skype,
Denise Ortiz writes a brief blog post about the opportunity for 7th grade students at the Carlucci American International School of Lisbon to connect with students in Makahlule Village, South Africa.
We collected photos and gathered information on children in the village and then sent that over to Lisbon, where the children were learning how to write fiction
Minulii takes a look back at technologies she has used – in school using different Apple technologies and she later took classes in IT where she learnt about using the interne, creating websites and editing photos. She thinks of IT as tools but remembers playing educational computer games as a child. She enjoyed the discussion groups more than the lectures.
Later in the post she reflects on gaps with technologies including countries where Internet access is more restricted and refers to a study which notes the importance of being able to find relevant information
Students more often search for relevant information, without taking into account how credible the obtained information is
Thanya Kunakornpaiboonsiri reports on the recent 2013-2025 blueprint which will provide 4G access and virtual learning platforms across 10,000 schools:
Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak unveiled the plan to embed ICT in teaching and learning for teachers, students, and parents through the expansion of 1BestariNet (Wi-Fi) programme to all schools.
Also, the government will increase the number of ICT devices until the ratio of student-to-device reaches 10:1. He added that the ratio can continue to be lowered further subjected to the availability of funds and impact assessment.
Brian Harrison reports from #DENSI2012 on a discussion about networked learning. He believes that learning networks can enhance and develop collaboration amongst educators and show how learning amongst students as well as educators are connected. He mentions a taxonomy provided by Judith Warren Little which includes
Sharing: There is an exchange of learning that flows in two directions (think of sharing units, links or resources) but there is no expectation that the parties will actually use what has been shared. We are great collectors of ideas and resources but tend to stick with what we know and prefer. Sharing is important because it fosters a norm that sharing is a good thing for teachers and builds positive interdependence; a precondition for true collaborative learning. It is worth noting that this phase, and the next one, are non-hierarhcical and based upon the principle of mutual benefit.
Debbie Morrison asks in Presence, part 2 of 3 about online communities. She notes that some students like lurking in online learning communities and MOOCs. She notes that social presence cannot be easily defined or designed by educators
Social presence is felt by learners, yet is created by the course design and participation of other learners, in contrast to instructor presence which is mainly driven by instructor behaviours and participation
She also provides some suggestions and resources for exploring further
Matt Lingard provides links and highlights from trip reports from some of this year’s conference attendees. There were student showcases with examples in primary and secondary learning ages including use of tablets, apps, Skype, google groups. Other highlights from keynotes and parallel sessions included examples of
There are also contributions from virtual participants via twitter, liveblogging, a crowdsourced wiki
Darrell West mentions that people can now use collaborative tools which change the way both they and organisations communicate with each other. He mentions several educators who describe how students and educators can connect and participate with less barriers. He asks what this means for students, parents, teachers, administrators
despite the wealth of communications opportunities offered by these changes, their impact on learning and instruction is still not clear. How do these technologies affect students, teachers, parents, and administrators? Do they enable new approaches to learning and help students master substantive information? In what ways have schools incorporated electronic communications in the learning process and messages to external audiences?
One Change a Day 