Hmmmm, these could also be the last notes depending on how much I drink at the conference dinner tonight ;o) But I thought I’d be optimistic.
First up I’d encourage anyone interested in education technology to visit the proceedings which are now online and well worth a look!
Me, things that have been of particular interest were:
Duane Varan’s keynote into interactive television and in particular the idea of choice. Prof. Varan in particular pointed to the impact on advertising and viewing patterns of expanding numbers of channels and TiVo-esque technologies. While the idea of more TV and advertising becoming even more powerful through choice fills me with dread, it’s interesting to know where we’re going.
If you remember my ‘Choosing a Wiki‘ posting back at the old Radio site you can now check out a paper resulting from the same project, Naomi Auger et al’s Teaching and Learning Online With Wikis. Naomi’s a PhD student / tutor and I think her exploration and work with this has been exceptional. Well worth a look for people coming from a less WikiExpert background.
I’d also like to highlight, at the moment Christine Armatas, Dale Holt & Mary Rice’s “From online enhanced to wholly online: Reflections on e-learning developments in teaching psychology” and Martin Valke’s “ICT in higher education: An uncomfortable zone for institutes and their policies” (this is well worth looking at if you’re interested in learning organisations – great speaker too :o)
And, check out the dissatisfaction with DISCUSSION BOARDS!!! and other interesting results in Susan Shannon’s “Questioning the teacher’s comfort zone with online learning: A 4 year case study of students’ perceptions of online learning” (which I’m sitting in now!)
Finally, big up ASCILITE, how cool is this having all the papers up in .pdf and .html as the conference is taking place. Respect! Now all we need is a feed for AJET……………………………………….. (believe me, I’ve tried to persuade ;o)