NAIRTL funding award for Wikilingua.ie!

Michelle Tooher of CELT, along her colleagues, Berit Carmesin & Doris Devilly of the German Department, have become successful recipients of the recent NAIRTL funding scheme. The scheme aims to support research studies related to teaching and learning. It received a huge number of applicants, making the selection process intensely competitive. The full list of worthy project winners has just been publically announced on the NAIRTL Website.

Their project is entitled "WikiLingua(.ie): research and idea exchange on the use of Web 2.0 in language teaching and learning".

In its own words:

"This project will support teachers with little or no experience of Web 2.0 and their more experienced colleagues. The project will encourage the use of applications such a blogs for reporting and expression, wikis for project work and discussion boards for constructive discussion in an effort to develop an element of peer review within the classroom. The project aims to build critical review skills in students that are necessary when pursuing research. The project will be aimed towards integration of innovative teaching practice in the disciplines of language and literature and should be easily transferable to teachers of other disciplines."

Congratulations! We'll be looking forward to hearing about their progress over the coming months...

The Open University launches new 'OU View' channel

The Open University launched their 'OU View' YouTube channel today.

There are over 300 videos available to view, along with series of video blogs where Open University staff and students talk about what they’ve learnt from YouTube.

OU View (http://www.youtube.com/ou) acts as a portal to other Open University channels, such as OU Learn, and OU Life. The Open University also plans to launch a research channel later on in the year.

Institutional social networking sites

Two UK universities are exploring Ning as a space for institutional social networking. The University of Bradford are using this for their campus community, facilitating conversations relating to living in the area, life at the University and students' studies and academic progress. The University of Wales Newport have adopted this approach for new or prospective students.

Michael Web, from Newport, discusses why they choose Ning, and the potentials and pitfalls they encountered. Read more from his blog...

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

Michael Wesch, the man who brought us A Vision of Students Today and Web 2.0 The World is Watching Us, delivers this talk at the Library of Congress. It is an interesting watch, but at 55 minutes long, make sure you have enough time. I watched it over two days, dipping in and out.



You can find out more about Michael Wesch's Digital Ethnography group at Kansas State University over on his blog.