The keynote today was Nancy White from the USA www.fullcirc.com who provides us with a ramble through her thoughts on bridging web 2.0 to people 2.0 along the theme of learning leading technology not technology leading learning. A woman after my own heart. Nancy is also a chocoholic (much like me) and has the nick name ChocoNancy.
Nancy’s slide featured a lot of images off flickr (with attribution) and this also appeared on another presenters slides too. I’m not of the school however that random images add value to any presentation, so I’m hoping this is a trend that doesn’t spread.
There are some interesting developments at Otago Poly (presented by Leigh Blackall) where they are turning their IP policy round to give staff control rather than the institution and actively encouraging the use of platforms like www.wikieducator.org/Otago_Polytechnic. Leigh has his own blog at http://learnonline.wordpress.com. Erik Champion (Massey Uni) is doing some interesting stuff on using games for learning and Ben Kehrwald (also from Massey) shared some of his research online student peer support. Some students have had some bad experiences in this area and are surprised when they get good ones. In my view it all comes down to how teachers set things up. No different to any other learning setting. At the Open Poly Glenda Oliver and Caroline Rawlings shared their work on supporting students, Caroline talked about supporting Maori students with telephone support at critical times during the semester (near the beginning – "how are you getting on?", near the first assignment – "have you opened your books yet?" and near the end. They are getting better semester completions that the overall average. Glenda is working on online study skills workshops for 1st years.
Nancy’s workshop completed my conference day. Very interactive, chocolate provided (what else!). For me this emphasised the diversity of where people are at with web 2.0. One person for example had only just discovered wikis 2 weeks ago. Some people blog a lot and some don’t even read a blog. For a 1-2-4 exercise Nancy had us thing about an instructional design exercise we are working on (share it in pairs and then in 4′s) useful as the others comment on what you are thinking. Gave me some things to think about with a client’s project – more background work before doing any creating.
At the AGM we have a new President (Bill Anderson), with continuing VP (Derek Wenmoth), Secretary (Anna Wetherstone) and Treasurer (Nick McGuigan). Sally Rawlings steps down as President but is continuing on the committee. Joining the committee will be Ben Kehrwald and Leigh Blackall.
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