Pre-Conference Presentation: Museum Fun

Here, Tony Hall (NUI Galway) gives a presentation on some of his earlier work on making visits to museums a more interesting, interactive and exploratory experience. This was carried out as part of a major European project and Tony focuses on trials of a range of technologies placed in Limerick's Hunt Museum.

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Blogs, Wikis and Social Networks

I’m delighted to announce that Lucy Keating from Netskills is returning to NUI Galway to deliver 3 workshops during the parallel sessions, on Blogs, Wikis and Social Networks. These workshops have been structured to be independent, i.e. you can attend one, two or all three sessions. Places are, however, strictly limited, and are now being offered, to registered participants, on a first come, first served basis.

If you are interested in attending one of these workshops, just sign up by sending an email to Gráinne at celtconf@nuigalway.ie. Please do not reserve a place unless you intend to be there.

The workshops are:

Thursday 7 June, 10.50 – 12.30
Blogs and Wikis – Beyond the Hype

Thursday 7 June, 14.45 – 16.25
Social Software – What’s it all about?

Friday 8 June, 10.45 – 12.30
Implementing Social Software – Practicalities and Pitfalls

Conference Proceedings

Since our conference is about two things: (a) sharing knowledge and experience, and (b) technologies in practice and not just "in theory" then why not look at a new approach to publishing the conference proceedings?

A possibility that we'd like to explore here with colleagues, is that all those who have had a paper accepted, would be welcome to submit to us both a written up version of their paper and any pertinent powerpoint slides so that we could present both on the post-conference website. In addition, using a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike-Non Commercial licence, we could ensure the maximum dissemination of such papers. These contributions could also be submitted to the National Digital Learning Repository, under the same terms and conditions.


Finally, we would then be happy to collate and edit such contributions for submission to the lulu.com "print on demand" service, enabling anyone to purchase a printed and bound hardcopy if they so wish.

The advantages of this approach are that there can be a rapid turnaround as well as maximum dissemination, whilst also doing our bit in building collegiality.

If you want to participate, please email us your completed papers (usual academic format with abstract, full references,etc.) at celtconf@nuigalway.ie

Useful tools #1

As you know, organising events can get quite complicated and involves so many different dimensions that an excellent multi-tasking brain is needed. That's why this year I'm reliant on Sharon and her gang to make everything run smoothly. But for those of us who are limited to only being able to think of about 28 items simultaneously (I counted - it's supposed to be 7, but I have multiple personalities) sometimes the odd bit of paper and packet of crayons can come in handy. Especially for scribbling out mind maps (oops, that's probably (c)Tony Buzan, perhaps I meant "concept maps" or some other name) showing various processes and their relationship with one another.

But for the die-hard geek, this "old wood" approach is looked down on. Fortunately there are many software packages out there that can help construct such diagrams, but many are quite expensive. That's where Freemind comes in. It's a basic, but effective tool for developing concept maps, written in Java. Given that it's free, we can also get students to use it too and given than so many people like the concept map approach to learning about complex topics then by all means spread the word.

Conference Programme

A draft conference programme is now available at the conference website. Looks like a fun-filled, action-packed two days!

Video Update on the Conference Preparations

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A brief update on preparations for the conference on "Learning Technologies: from Pilot to Mainstream" which is being held in Galway (Ireland) on June 7th and 8th, 2007.

what is web 2.0?

It has become a youTube classic, Mike Wesch's neat little intro to the concept of Web 2.0 is worth a look as you start to think about the conference. Enjoy.

Update

Things are progressing well for the conference. We've exceeded our target number of participants, the conference bags and pens have arrived and the refurbishment of the main venue is completed with new technologies embedded in the lecture theatre. The book of abstracts is about to go off to the printers and the parallel sessions have been arranged!

It has been a busy few weeks for the organisers, but they seem to be bearing up well! Remember, don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any queries, by emailing the conference office.

Preview video ad!

Very simple promo.

The Venue

Arts Millennium building
Originally uploaded by celt_nuig.

The conference will be held in the Arts Millennium Building.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the NUI Galway campus, the building is pictured here - taken on a fine sunny day.

Fáilte - Welcome to the Conference Blog

You are very welcome to the blog for the 5th International Conference on Teaching & Learning in Higher Education: "Learning Technologies: from Pilot to Mainstream." This event will be hosted by NUI Galway on the 7th and 8th June 2007 and we'll be using this blog to keep participants (and lurkers!) up to date with the event's coordination as well as posting discussion and follow up during and after the event itself.

Prepare yourself also for the launch of "CELT TV" next week, in which we'll be exploiting the latest video technologies to provide you with more information and some insight into the underlying themes of the conference.

In the meantime, you are very welcome and we look forward to meeting you at the event!