Back in the early days of blogging, content was largely an annotated record of the sites someone had been visiting and wanted to share, a web log. A couple of months ago, I started a weekly ed tech column in this tradition in Campus Morning Mail, an Australian tertiary education focused daily email newsletter run by the former Higher Ed reporter for The Australian, Stephen Matchett. It gets a few thousand views a day and I get to write what I like and people have been teasing me for being famous so it seems like a win.
Anyway, I thought I might as well share my work here too.
Why returning to the lecture only model is a bad idea from The Ed Techie
Martin Weller is one of the more interesting practitioners in the ed tech space and this thoughtful post breaks down recent discussion in the UK (but, arguably everywhere) about where we need to go with technology enhanced learning when we (eventually) emerge from the pandemic.
Education Technology Competency Framework: Defining a Community of Practice across Canada from Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology (Open Access)
What is an Education Technologist? What do they do, what do they know, how do they help educators to navigate the digital age of learning and teaching? This article from Sonnenberg et al. outlines recent work to describe their practices and proposes some useful ways forward for edtech teams in transforming “the academic experience for learners and teaching faculty”. While the focus is on the Canadian experience, the ideas translate very well to Australia.
Kevin Gannon thread about tips for first time lecturers from Twitter
Twitter can be a goldmine for ideas for educators and this recent tweet from Kevin Gannon (@TheTattooedProf) and the subsequent replies offers some invaluable practical suggestions for new lecturers (faculty). Among them, capture students’ attention early with a wicked problem that the unit will equip them with the skills to solve in time.
The Melbourne EdTech Summit 2021 from EduGrowth
The Melbourne EdTech Summit is a free four-day education technology and innovation showcase beginning on Tuesday 17th August. The first two days are K-12 focused and the Thursday/Friday relate more to Higher Education, VET and Industry. It offers an opportunity to explore new technologies from Australian EdTech vendors and engage in broader discussions about the emerging future of learning and teaching. EduGrowth is an umbrella body of education institutions, industry and edtech entrepreneurs. Speaker highlights include Martin Dougiamas (Moodle) on the Wednesday, Liz Johnston (Deakin) and Chris Campbell (Griffith/ASCILITE) on Thursday, and Belinda Tynan (ACU) and CMM’s own Claire Field on the Friday.
These Maps Reveal the Hidden Structures of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Books from Atlas Obscura
Branching scenarios and decision tree type activities are becoming increasingly popular in learning and teaching due to the ease of creation via user-friendly tools such as H5P and Twine. Some of us got our first taste for these through the popular Choose Your Own Adventure book series in the 80s and 90s. This article from Sarah Laskow describes some of the ways these branching stories are mapped, offering insights for our own work in designing them.