Conference - June 5/6 2008

As Spring has sprung, time now to think of those gloriously sunny days in early June when each year CELT/NUIG hosts its annual conference. Last year's event of course was the impetus for this very blog, but this year's theme is a little different in that we move away from specifics to more profound general questions on the nature and future of universities! With an excellent panel of speakers and workshop facilitators we really expect to host a fascinating debate and unleash some creative and challenging ideas as Universities make the transition into this new era, carving space in the cultural, political and economic landscape and recapturing (or losing) their transformative potential in the lives of students and citizens. To book your place (and do it quick to take advantage of the discount rate) head over to http://www.conference.ie and to join in the pre-conference discussion visit our sister (gender?) blog at http://ollscoil.blogspot.com.

Irish Blackboard/WebCT Users' Group Meeting

It was great to attend the Blackboard/WebCT Irish Users Group meeting on Thursday last at TCD. The WebCT side of this group has been active for some time, but Ken Lacey (DIT) and others have identified the need/opportunity for greater communication and sharing between both platforms, particularly in light of the recent BB/WebCT 'merger'.

Vinny Wade (TCD) welcomed participants and Ken Lacey chaired the activities for the day. Barry McIntyre's (IADT) presentation on WebCT CE 6 provided an insight into how he is utilising WebCT in marketing courses, while Paul Gormley (NUIG) demonstrated the NUIG Blackboard Learning System (Academic Suite) and described the NUIG implementation of the VLE platform.

The open forum with Richard Borrows (Blackboard) proved very useful. Ken finished the day with a demo of SafeAssign.

Officers appointed to the Blackboard/WebCT Irish User's Group were: Ken Lacey, Muiris O'Grady, Theresa Logan-Phelan, Paul Gormley and Grace O'Leary.

If you wish to obtain more notes on any of the above, please contact Theresa Logan-Phelan at tlgnphln@tcd.ie.

Colleagues interested in signing up to the HEAnet Blackboard/WebCT Irish Users' Group list serve can email "BLACKBOARD-USERGROUP@LISTSERV.HEANET.IE" with the text “subscribe Blackboard‐Usergroup” in the body of the email. No subject description is required. For more detailed instructions on how to subscribe click here

IT in the Humanities 5th Annual Conference

Next Monday (21st April) the final year undergraduate BA students who take IT as one of their subjects at NUI Galway are having their “conference”.

To explain … one of their modules concerns Information Technology in the Humanities. Each student self-selects a topic that they are interested in, and spends the year doing some research in the area. They produce a conference paper (in a specific format, with strict referencing enforced) which goes into a conference proceedings. They also have to give a 10 minute conference presentation on their topic.

I would certainly encourage, if you are available on Monday at all, to pop along to a session that interests you. Pat Byrne, who runs the module, would be delighted to have a wider audience, and it gives the students a huge boost to present in front of a wider group.

The schedule kicks off at 9.15am in IT125 and continues, with breaks for coffee and lunch, until 3.15pm. Topics include (5 plucked from a list of 25):

• The application of Information Technologies to Sports Parachuting (Skydiving)
• Are Video Games Art?
• E-Learning: A Focus on Interactivity and the challenge of overcoming the lack of human interaction
• Social Networking and its Effects
• The Open Source Movement: Components of a Revolution

Blog IT

Jane Hart's E-learning Pick of the Day yesterday was Blog IT, a Facebook application that allows you to post to your blog from within Facebook. So, I thought I'd give it a go and it seems to work. This is coming from my Facebook space!

I'm not sure quite how it's going to be useful!

Digital whiteboards, three-D graphics and more for $40

From TED: Johnny Lee demos his amazing Wii Remote hacks, which transform the $40 game piece into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer.

Blogged to death???

From the Guardian today:

...in March, Russell Shaw, a technology contributor to Zdnet and the Huffington Post, died from a heart attack a few months after Marc Orchant, another US tech blogger, died following a massive coronary. Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting stress, sleep disturbance and exhaustion among members of the blogging community, and there is a question being bandied around: did blogging kill these people?

Read on....

Pangea Day - World Wide Film & video Event

Pangea Day - the first global event to link film, video and images across the world will take place on May 10th. To find out more about this exciting project visit the Pangea Day website and view the trailer below.

Spaces for learning, spaces for thinking?

In recent years there has been a lot of interest in the design of learning spaces with some really interesting examples appearing in educational institutions across the world of innovative approaches and greater recognition of the potential of group based learning. Some well known examples include the Saltire Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University in which students can even inflate little 'pods' to have group meetings, London Metropolitan's new science lab or numerous other new learning centres in what used to be called libraries!

Interesting to see then, that when Google unveiled its new headquarters building in Zurich, bursting at the seems with the expected wacky, cool workplace features such as a slide into the canteen and pool tables (try playing them all day and I wonder what would happen!), they also built a space modelled on a traditional library with comfortable armchairs, a fireplace and plenty of books! Perhaps a realisation that the design and decor of the environment sets a tone for the activities that take place therein and the importance of 'slow time' and space to think amidst the seemingly headlong rush towards a mass, large-scale, industrialised model of educational 'delivery'.

Miro's new campaign for support

I know we've mentioned Miro before a couple of times on this blog and at the risk of sounding like a persistent salesman, can I dare mention it again?? For those who don't know, it is an internet video player which is committed to open standards and is run by a non-profit organisation (the Participatory Culture Foundation) and its primary aim is to fight against the dominance of proprietary systems in this important area of media production and dissemination. A number of public service TV and internet channels have started their own branded versions of Miro and hence show their support, but disappointingly (and somewhat controversially in the UK) the BBC chose Microsoft standards instead.

Miro are currently campaigning for financial support by asking for donations as well as seeking volunteers to use their I ♥ Miro scheme for purchasing from Amazon whereby any purchases you make lead to a commission being paid to support Miro. It doesn't cost you anything and is the simplest way of showing your support - unless you wish to become a more generous benefactor!

All you need to know in one click!

Ever wanted to have a simple way of gathering together the latest news, articles, podcasts and videos in your area of interest into one simply organised listing? Well, as we've mentioned before, netvibes provides such a facility for anyone to do this, but to make things even easier, especially if you are interested in educational technologies, higher education and 'big ideas' we've even produced a pre-built netvibes 'universe' for you. As we come across other interesting sources and feeds we'll add these to the collection, but even at the moment you should find what we've gathered to be useful. Remember, this is based on RSS feeds and so anytime a new journal article, news item or podcast is published by any of the organisations to which we link, this page will update itself - so you never need worry about losing track!!

The link to "CELT's Launchpad" is here, but we'll also add it to the side of this blog.

Research Channel

The Research Channel produces and broadcasts documentaries on various aspects of university research on Cable, Satellite, the Internet and via iTunes or even youTube.

Over 3,500 programmes are available and you can browse through the collection by subject category. It's certainly an accessible and innovative way of getting across the range of research activity that is taking place in the member institutions. It is of course, currently essentially US universities and related organisations (e.g. the American Meteorolgical Society), but who knows, maybe more international members will appear on the scene soon?

St. Patrick's Day in Second Life.

As reported on the BBC website today, Tourism Ireland is hosting a celebration of St. Patrick's day (albeit happening on Sunday) in Irish spaces in the virtual world that is Second Life. SL's Dublin is a popular venue (mainly for all the shenanigans in "the Blarney Stone" virtual pub) and has a mock up of Trinity College, Bewley's Cafe (see picture!) and other locations in the city centre.