Category: CLT

Posts published on the CLT Blog too

Twitter at LSE Teaching Day

Google Generation Panel DiscussionFor LSE Teaching Day 2010 we heavily promoted the use of Twitter as a backchannel communication tool and were very pleased with the results.  Twitter updates relating to Teaching Day were identifiable by the event tag: #lsetd10

Participation

The 249 updates* were made by 29 people, 16 LSE staff & students and 13 non-LSE showing how backchannel communication can extend beyond the walls of a face-to-face event. The event had 180 delegates.

A large majority of tweets came from a small number people:

  • Only 7 people reached double figures
  • One person, @tweeduizendzes was responsible for almost 1/3 of the updates
  • Top 5 tweeters accounted for 77% of the updates

Types of Updates

Tweets can be standard updates, replies (directed at someone in response to an update), mentions (an update referencing somone else) or retweets (one person re-posting another’s earlier update).

  • Updates 63%
  • Retweets 26%
  • Replies 6%
  • Mentions 5%

I have attempted to classify the 249 tweets based on their purpose with the following results: Continue reading “Twitter at LSE Teaching Day”

EduCampLondon: an ‘unconference’

A few weeks ago now I attended my first unconference.  For the uninitiated an unconference is a conference that is organised & delivered by the delegates.  For example, take the programme, it was complied in this Google Spreadsheet with the delegates simply adding a title to a slot.  No submitting of abstracts 6 months before the event and still a great quality & variety of sessions.   Other than that EduCampLondon felt pretty much like any other conference/event.  The format of unconference sessions is supposed to be less chalky-talky and more discursive or  off-the-wall but in practice many sessions, including my own, were fairly traditional.

My session, Audio Feedback: it sounds good, can we make it look good?, covered some work we’ve been doing at LSE with audio feedback and then looked at the potential for using screen recording tools for giving more visual audio feedback. I got my talk out of the way first thing (I do like this self-scheduling!) which enabled me to relax for the rest of the day.

The Student Viewpoint

I  attended a couple of presentations given by students and it was really interesting to hear their perspective.  One, by students from Central Saint Martins & UCL, was all about iPoodle an Moodle iphone App that they are developing, as part of a course project.  They hope it will be in the App Store soon.  The second student session was a Q&A with a UEL student simply chatting about how she used technology in her everyday studies (much more unconferency I think!).  What I took away from both was a stark reminder of the students’ love of content.  All the other stuff web technologies might offer is very much second fiddle to students’ desire for easy access to the PDFs, PPTs that their teachers provide them with.

I also attended talks on Moodle & Turnitin integrations, Google Wave , iTunes U and an interesting discussion on where Learning Technologists should focus their energy: developing a basic use of technologies by all or working with enthusiasts to experiment & innovate.  I know what the students would like us to be doing.

OERs: what’s stopping us?

The recent  M25 Learning Technology Group meeting focussed on Open Educational Resources (OERs).   Despite my somewhat limited knowledge of this topic it fell to me, as the meeting’s organiser, to provide an intro.  So here it is once again if you missed it.  OERs are teaching & learning materials available for reuse without charge. They are one element of a much wider Open Education movement (not sure that’s quite the right word but it’ll do). While reading about OERs I came across an interesting video lecture Openness, Aggregation and the Future of Education (50-mins) by David Wiley that’s worth a look.

In my introduction I gave examples of 4 different  OER-related areas as well as highlighting some upcoming OER conferences & UK projects: Continue reading “OERs: what’s stopping us?”

Testing Syndicated Posts

I’m experimenting with syndication and if it is working then this post, originally written on Reluctant Technologist, will also be published on CLT@LSE.  The syndication feature is an add-on called FeedWordPress.  It’s available in the version of WordPress that we are running at the LSE but doesn’t appear to be included on wordpress.com blogs.

It works using an RSS Feed.  I simply add my blog feed to the CLT@LSE blog and my posts are published there too.  Rather than publishing all the posts I write here I’ve set-up a category called Syndicated and added the feed for that category to the CLT Blog.  That’s how it works, in theory…

Finger-crossed it does as I’ve been neglecting this blog recently but writing over on CLT so hopefully this will help get me back here too!

Update: It worked, now I’m updating to see if that works too!

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