This one day event at Sheffield Hallam University had a very practical focus, looking at different ways of engaging students, using our physical and virtual spaces. The day incorporated sessions that shared some of the most innovative and inspirational academic practices from across the University – keynotes, workshops, debates, teachmeets and lots more. Programme: Learning and Teaching Exchange Programme.pdf Theme: Using Learning Spaces to Actively Engage Students. Presenting I presented at one of the teachmeets which were strictly timed 7 minute presentations. I'd also submitted a poster which you can see below. This was created using Piktochart which is an infographic poster tool that enables you to build a poster in sections. The advantage to this is that you can the use the sections as a slideshow and therefore present directly from Piktochart. My presentation was on the Learning and Teaching in Higher Education tweet chat #LTHEchat. This is a weekly chat that takes place on Wednesday 8-9pm GMT. The virtual learning space for these discussion forums is Twitter.
Final edits are now complete and my chapter contribution to the Really Useful #EdTechBook has been signed off! The book is the brainchild of David Hopkins (@hopkinsdavid) who reached out to his professional learning network and 'commissioned' authors to write about their use of edtech and learning technology. I am delighted to hear that Catherine Cronin will be writing the foreword. I have written about the role of the 'Blended Professional' and my use of educational technology in the various roles I have. You can follow updates on Twitter about the launch of the book and interviews with the authors by following #EdTechBook. David interviewed me back in October about how the use of technology affects my daily working life. It was a fascinating conversation and took place online using Google Docs. David posted a question and I responded and so the conversation developed. Having access to Google Drive and Google Docs along with many other useful apps directly on my smart phone means that I can write, read and respond wherever I am. This interview took place using my phone whilst I was sat in the hairdressers!
Book description Technology has invaded our working and recreational lives to an extent that few envisaged 20 or 30 years ago. We’d be fools to avoid the developments in personal, mobile, and wearable technology. Even if we tried we’d still have to deal with other developments and distractions in classroom and learning technology like smart boards, blogs, video, games, students-led learning, virtual learning environments, social media, etc. More than this, however, is how the advances in technology, the economic and physical miniaturisation of computing devices, have impacted education: the students, the teachers, the classrooms, the spaces, the connections, the aspirations, etc.
‘The Really Useful #EdTechBook‘ is about experiences, reflections, hopes, passions, expectations, and professionalism of those working with, in, and for the use of technology in education. Not only is it an insight into how, or why, we work with these technologies, it’s about how we as learning professionals got to where we are and how we go forward with our own development.
In this book respected individuals from different education sectors write about many aspects of learning technology; from Higher Education (Sue Beckingham, Peter Reed, Dr David Walker, Sheila MacNeil, Sarah Horrigan, Terese Bird, Wayne Barry, Inge de Waard, and Sharon Flynn), Further Education (Rachel Challen and James Clay), to Museums (Zak Mensah), workplace learning (Jane Hart, Julian Stodd, Julie Wedgwood, and Lesley Price) and primary schools / early years education (Mike McSharry). With a foreword written by Catherine Cronin, from the National University Ireland, Galway, the breadth and depth of the experiences here are second to none.
The knowledge these leading learning practitioners, researchers, and professionals, share, under the same cover, is a unique opportunity for you to read about the variety of approaches to learning technology, the different perspectives on the same technology, and how technology is impacting our culture and learning infrastructure, from early-age classrooms to leading research Universities and from museums and workplace learning providers. It is about our passion for our work and our desire to make our work better through our own learning and development.
My Chapter abstract
The title of my chapter is: “The Blended Professional: Jack of all Trades and Master of Some?”
Within the last decade we have experienced
an unprecedented growth in the use of technology in education. The adoption of Virtual
Learning Environments (VLEs) for many universities has been widespread. Granted
the speed of which this has been integrated is influenced by local policy, the
academics themselves and the support available to learn how to use the VLE and
its suite of tools. However there has been a shift from just having a small
central eLearning team who reached out to encourage staff to use the VLE, to a
growing need for a wider pool of people to support colleagues who want to learn
why and how technology can be used to enhance their teaching practice. Today
the VLE is just one aspect; mobile learning and educational Apps, social media
and webinars are just some of the many examples being used to develop
communication, collaboration and social learning. Some institutions (or indeed
faculties within them) have looked to create roles for Learning Technologists
to support such development, and yet others have relied on the early adopters
and enthusiasts to assume this role. This chapter will look at some short case
studies and reflections of the ‘blended professionals’ who are advocates of #EdTech
and how the need to wear different hats to meet very different objectives can
present surprising results when supported within a community of practice.
Find out more about where you can purchase either the paper or ebook versions here: http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/books/the-really-useful-edtechbook/
Contributory authors:
Catherine Cronin: Foreword
Wayne Barry: "…and what do you do?": Can we explain the unexplainable?
Zak Mensah: “Why do we do what we do?”
Peter Reed: “The structure and roles of Learning Technologists within Higher Education Institutions”
Rachel Challen: “Learning Technologists as agents of change: blending policy and creativity”
Julie Wedgwood: “The skills and knowledge of a Learning Technologist”
David Walker and Sheila MacNeill: "Learning Technologist as Digital Pedagogue”
Lesley Price: “Times they are a changing ...or not?”
Sue Beckingham: “The Blended Professional: Jack of all Trades and Master of Some?”
Julian Stodd: “How gadgets help us learn in the Social Age”
Terese Bird: "Students Leading the Way in Mobile Learning Innovation”
Inge de Waard: "Tech dandy, or the Art of Leisure Learning"
Sharon Flynn: "Learning Technologists: changing the culture or preaching to the converted?"
Mike McSharry: “This is your 5 minute warning!”
Further chapters by Sarah Horrigan, James Clay, and Jane Hart.
In December I was invited by Professor Albert Sangra to visit the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain, to give a public lecture on 'social media and the digital scholar' and to run a workshop for his team in the EDul@bhttp://edulab.uoc.edu/en/?page_id=5. Edul@B is the university's Research Group in Education and ICT and is an educational innovation laboratory specialising in the application of new technologies for distance education. Teaching at the university is delivered online through the Virtual Campus. My visit was a wonderful experience and I had the pleasure of meeting Montse Guitert (Director of the Digital Literacy) and Teresa Romeu (Professor of Digital Literacy). I hope our shared interests lead to future collaborations.
The UOC: university of the knowledge society
The mission of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) is to provide people with lifelong learning and education opportunities. The aim is to help individuals meet their learning needs and provide them with full access to knowledge, above and beyond the usual scheduling and location constraints.
The UOC engages people who offer quality online university education and promote:
technological leadership that facilitates interaction and collaborative work,
academic research on the information society and e-learning,
the dissemination of knowledge.
Below is a summary of the talk I gave.
.
Social Media and the Digital Scholar
Social Media empowers us as individuals to become digital communicators, collaborators, conversationalists, critics, curators and creators using a variety of different mediums including text, audio, video and images. These open up dialogues online that may then continue face to face.
For many years we have continued to use established sharing mechanisms to share scholarly activity. For example journals, books, presentations, reports and case studies. To complement these social media as digital forums can be used to disseminate such work. This could be in the form of a blog post, a LinkedIn update or via Twitter. It is important to realise that these social spaces are being used more and more frequently by increasing numbers of people. With this in mind we need to reconsider where our audiences are when consuming information online. Short nuggets can be an ideal way to introduce a paper you have written or seek feedback on a project by writing these as blog posts. Readers can raise questions using the comments.
With nearly 3 billion people now online and social media featuring in the top visited sites world wide, individuals are increasingly using the spaces for informal learning.
"Digital Technologies are not only changing our communication habits and the patterns of our social interactions, they also create access to knowledge at any time and anywhere" - Vodophone Institute for Society of Communications
People often fear the thought of information overload when considering how much there is now is online. Clay Shirky however would argue that this is an issue of filter failure. We need to learn smarter ways to filter the relevant information. One approach is through the people that you follow or indeed follow you. You can help others by tagging related related information in posts and by sharing useful content they will also be interested in.
Providing bite sized links to your scholarly work can be helpful to others, highlighting topics of mutual interest. This can be done by:
writing a Linkedin blogpost
adding presentations to SlideShare and sharing also on your LinkedIn profile
adding your publications to your LinkedIn profile: articles, press releases, papers, books and chapters
adding projects you are involved in and add the names of those you are collaborating with
writing guest posts for other peoples' blogs, websites and digital magazines
writing your own blog
Citation sources of scholarly activity are also changing and educators are now taking note of blog posts and shorter articles and using these as references to quote aspects of the written work within their own work.
Something to consider when writing in these newer social spaces is to ensure there is connectedness between them. Make good use of the bio space and include hyperlinks to your blog or LinkedIn from Twitter, and vice versa. If you create a SlideShare presentation, share via Twitter and pin this tweet to the top of your profile for as long as you feel it is current.
Curation, collaboration and co-learning
Another useful way to share information is by curating. Web 2.0 tools such as Scoop.it, Mendeley, Diigo, ResearchGate and Pinterest are all worth exploring. These spaces provide valuable spaces to share and discuss a whole range of different topics by clustering information into curated groups.
Web 2.0 tools facilitate more constructivist approaches to learning, with greater emphasis on discussion and the creation of learning materials and knowledge construction by the learners. - Bates and Sangra
Collaborative informal learning include short courses and tweetchats. For example:
Both provide great examples of communities of scholars co-learning through open sharing of resources and information. They provide a space to raise questions and for others to answer these as well as share their expertise in their given area. Helping others find information of interest is a reciprocal activity that benefits many. Signposting others scholarly activity as well as your own work.
Impact
There is a distinction between reach and engagement. Whilst it may be considered good to have many followers in the social spaces we use, it doesn't mean that people are engaging with what you are sharing. Engagement can be measured by the ways people respond you the information you share. For example retweet, shares, mentions, replies, comments, likes, favourites and +1s. These will of course differ depending on the social space used. Those interactions and often conversations can provide rich feedback on your scholarly outputs and indeed lead to new opportunities for collaborative research or help to develop seeds of ideas into realistic projects.
A word of warning
It is important that we all consider our own digital footprint and the information we share online. Being aware of the blurring boundaries between social and professional can help to make us mindful of updating security settings where needed. Realising the just like ourselves others will 'Google' a name to find information about an individual and their work. Making sure others find the professional work we wish to be associated with or at the very least a professional up to date profile on LinkedIn or a website is our own responsibility. Social media will rise to the top of a search so by populating professional information on LinkedIn, your blog or Twitter for example, has to be to your advantage.
No time like the present
The exponential growth of social media and the ubiquitous use of mobile technology has changed the way we communicate both socially and for many professionally. It is therefore timely to consider ho social media can be used to develop personal learning networks and through open sharing find opportunities to extend the reach and engagement of our scholarly practice.
A few weeks ago I was nominated for the Best Individual Tweeter in the Edublogs Awards. I have now been shortlisted. It is now up to the public to vote for individuals in all of the Edublog categories.If you would like to vote for me you can do so here:http://edublogawards.com/2014-awards/best-individual-tweeter-2014/ Thank you in advance! Best Individual Tweeter - 2014 Edublog Awards
I was delighted to be invited to take part as a presenter on the Student to Stemette webinar on the 19 November. The theme for the session was Social Media who to follow. I was invited as a representative from academia, along with two other presenters from industry and recruitment. We were each asked to speak for approximately 10 minutes to share our experiences of social media with students who are part of the Student to Stemette programme. My talk shared how social media can be used to connect, communicate, collaborate, curate and create. I spoke about the value of building a personal learning network through LinkedIn and Twitter, where we can engage in conversations, ask questions and share useful information. You can hear what I said in the video below (I am the first of the the three presenters).
At the end of our presentations we took questions from the participants. It was wonderful to see their enthusiasm and interest in how they can develop their digital presence. Student Mary Akinyemi who is studying maths at the University of Exeter writes a blog called QUIRKY RAMBLINGS & SEASHELLS - A great example of how we can all can develop our writing skills and share interesting posts. These can be personal interests or linked to the academic subject area we are studying or working in.
What is Student to Stemette?
Student to Stemette is bringing together girls aged 16+ and women currently working in STEM. A cohort of girls have been given the fantastic opportunity to build a one-on-one relationship with mentors. In addition a series of public webinars provide advice, guidance and connections from a network of other women working in STEM.
This first Student to Stemette mentoring cohort have been matched with 'Big Stemettes' currently working at Deutsche Bank. They all have STEM backgrounds and are helping their mentees explore the different paths on which they can use their STEM skillset. They will share their skills, time and their own networks. Student to Stemette is currently part of Deutsche Bank's current wider Born to Be Youth Engagement programme.
Links Below are just some of the channels you can learn more about the Stemettes: http://www.stemettes.org/ https://twitter.com/Stemettes https://twitter.com/StudentStemette https://www.linkedin.com/company/stemettes http://stemettes.wordpress.com/ https://www.youtube.com/user/Stemettes
The purpose of the Edublog awards is to promote and demonstrate the educational values of social media. The process creates a rich resource for educators to use for ideas on how social media is used in different contexts, with a range of different learners. It also introduces us all to new sites that we might not have found if not for the awards process. The Edublog Awards consists of three stages:
Nomination
Voting
Winners Announced
Nominations are now open and I have made mine:
Best Individual Blog: David Hopkins http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk Best New Blog: Chris Rowell http://regents10dot.wordpress.com Best Individual Tweeter: @timbuckteeth continues to inspire me Best Free Web Tool: Twitter as I use it daily Best Use of Media (Video, Podcasts, etc.): http://www.ted.com/ Best Mobile App: Hootsuite as it is the best way to view Twitter lists Lifetime Achievement: Steve Wheeler
I am very excited to ne leading a new collaborative project alongside Chrissi Nernatzi, David Walker and Peter Reed called #LTHEchat which is short for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Chat.
We are each from different higher education institutions: Sheffield Hallam University, Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Sussex and the University of Liverpool; but have worked together on a variety of other projects including Bring Your Own Devices for Learning.
The chats will take place in Twitter using the hashtag #LTHEchat and will run each week on Wednesday between 8-9pm GMT.
Each will tweetchat will have a specific focus and it will be up to the community to decide what comes next. We will be inviting guest chat facilitators too and hope that you will join us for some speed CPD linked to learning and teaching. Students are also very welcome.
The slideshow below is an introduction to tweetchats. To find out more you can also visit http://lthechat.com/ and follow @LTHEchat on Twitter
The first tweetchat is on Wednesday 29th October and will be led by myself and Chriss Nernatzi.
Our topic is: New ways to engage in bite-size professional development. This will provide us with an opportunity to reflect on where we are at the moment, individually and collectively and explore together fresh ideas to engage in new and exciting development activities that can be combined with workload and life and help us further develop our teaching practice.
