Literacy in the Digital University

Live blogging 2pm:
A talk given by Dr Robin Goodfellow for the Teaching and Learning Research Group of the Open University (TLRG).

Robins starts by talking about what literacy is. It is apparently not as obvious as it may seem. Commonly literacy is understood as reading and writing skills. Another definition is that in a digital environment [...]

The Technology Empire and the Struggle of the Educationalist

11:00 AM
This morning I set myself to explore some technologies to support the upcoming OLnet virtual workshops. The OU itself offers a number of them, such as Cloudworks, Cohere and FM. These are great tools that have been used successfully by a growing number of people worldwide. Nevertheless it’s important for us to keep an [...]

TU Delft Open CourseWare Seminar: The OUNL Experience

Live blogging, 10:00 AM – attendance by webinar
TUDelft University is hosting a seminar on open courseware today, mostly targeting the universities of the Netherlands. The idea is to bring together prospective and existing initiatives to discuss the challenges and the successes of OER provision.
The experience of the Open University of the Netherlands was presented by [...]

Explore, map and build: the 4 themes and their connections

Live blog post, 3pm
continued form previous post:
1) Models of technology:
All projects use a pool of technologies: social networking (e.g. Facebook, Ning, Cloudworks), repositories (OpenLearn, slideshare, flickr), mapping software (e.g. Compendium, Cohere).
2) Models of learning:
Common to all projects: an attempt to blend formal and informal learning;
Discussed: the individual and social dimension; structure and unstructured materials.
3) Models [...]

Explore, map and build: brainstorming questions

Live blogging:
2:15pm
continued from previous post:
What does each project think they can get out of this workshop?
What are the models of learning?
What do we mean by communities? What about collaborations?
In terms of technology, what are the experiences we have in terms of using different tools? How can we pull this knowledge together?
How can we use tools [...]

Explore, map and build workshop

Live blogging:
11:25am
This morning we are gathered together at the Open University, The Design Observatory, Observation Space, to discuss the connections amongst the various OER projects existing in the university. By ‘we’ I mean representatives from projects such as OLnet, Atelier-D, OpenLearn, SCORM, LDI, iSpot, the TERG research group and the OU Library.
We started by ‘building’ [...]

How to…OER

Live blog:11:25AM
New OER initiatives are popping out throughout the world. It is often the case that institutions are looking for answers on how to get started as OER providers, and how to get their staff and students involved in the process. Today I am in a meeting with some Dutch universities, which are either [...]

Research 2.0: research in an open world

At OLnet/TEL day workshop. The group discusses what it means to be a researcher 2.0 .
Martin Weller presents his session on Elluminate and and points to the importance of trying and exploring new media and innovative ways of publishing and sharing content.
‘Liberate the archive’ is Martin’s message to the Open University. The community could consider more [...]

OLnet – designing a network of OER research

The aim of OLnet (Open Learning Network) is to establish a network for information sharing about OER research. Questions such as ‘How can the design and reuse of OERs be improved?’ and ‘How can we build a socio-technical infrastructure to serve as a collective evolving intelligence for the community?’ are the heart of OLnet’s interests.
Launched [...]

TEL Away Day and SocialLearn

The TEL group (Technology Enhanced Learning) of the Institute of Educational Technology is gathered at the Accenture Conference Venue  today discussing the ways in which the use of social network technologies could be part of our communication strategy and work plan. The programme for the day is enriched by a super fresh  talk about SocialLearn by Martin [...]