Round-Up: Call(s) for Papers and Webinars

Call for Papers: NAIRTL / LIN Annual Conference: Flexible Learning
Deadline: 18th June 2010
Information: www.nairtl.ie/conference

The NAIRTL / LIN Annual Conference will be held on the 6th and 7th of October 2010 in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin. The title of this year’s conference is Flexible Learning and we aim to encourage and support HEI staff to undertake innovative approaches to their curriculum design and course implementation to meet the challenges of flexible learning.

Interested participants should submit a 300 word abstract for a paper, workshop or poster (including interactive poster), webinar and other suitable formats based on one of the following themes:
• Technology Enhanced Teaching
• Integrative Learning
• Innovation in Integrating Research, Teaching and Learning

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Event: Free Mahara Webinar - How ePortfolios represent a new wave of technology in Education
Deadline:29th June 2010
Registration: www.enovation.ie/index.php/component/seminar/ and click on the title of ePortfolio Webinar

ePortfolios represent a new wave of technology in education that allows students to build online resumes to show reflection, evolution of thought and continued professional development.
This session covers: (1) What is an ePortfolio; (2) Learning Management System v’s ePortfolio; (3) Why ePortfolio’s; (4) Use of portfolio; (4) Mahara Overview

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Call for Papers: ICERI2010 (International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation)
Deadline: 15th July 2010
Information: http://www.iceri2010.org/

The ICERI2010 (International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation) will be held in Madrid (Spain), next 15th, 16th and 17th of November 2010. This third annual event brings together professionals in the field of Education and Technology. It will be an excellent opportunity to share your experiences and projects with educators and professionals from all parts of the world.

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Call for Papers: MEDEA Awards 2010
Deadline: 31st July 2010
Information: www.medea-awards.com/home

The MEDEA Awards competition is all about recognising, encouraging and rewarding excellence and creativity in media in education. MEDEA aims to highlight the educational environments that reflect the media-rich world in which our learners live nowadays.

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Call for Abstracts Closing 8th June: The 2010 International Conference on Engaging Pedagogy

The ICEP 2010 (The 2010 International Conference on Engaging Pedagogy - http://www.icep.ie/) abstract submission is closing soon (see below). We would be delighted to have you participate in this year's conference by submitting a paper describing your pedagogical research and practices.

This year's conference is to be held in the National University of Ireland, Maynooth on Thursday December 2nd 2010. The theme of the conference is Engaging Pedagogy: research and practices for a new decade.

Relevant topics include but are not limited to:

• Novel teaching methods
• Educational technology as a means of engaging students
• Cultural diversity in the classroom
• Module and curriculum design for a new decade
• Assessment techniques
• Promoting student interest and participation
• Case studies

Submission information:

• Abstracts should be no more than 200 words in length in Microsoft Word or PDF format and should be submitted at info@icep.ie by Tuesday 8th June, 2010
• Intermediate feedback will be available to authors on or before the 22nd of June.
• Final papers are due Monday September 20th, 2010.
• Notification of acceptance will take place before or on Monday October 18th, 2010.
• Paper formatting instructions are available at http://www.icep.ie/.
• Questions may be sent to info@icep.ie

Kind regards
The ICEP 2010 Conference Committee

EDIN AGM Thurles May 6th

I was delighted to be invited to the Educational Developers in Ireland Network (EDIN) AGM at Tipperary Institute in Thurles last week as one of four presenter to discuss the topic 'eLearning: A Marraige of Convenience or Made in Heaven?'. My fellow presenters were Dr Kevin O'Rourke of the LTTC DIT, Catherine Bruen NDLR Project Manager and Morag Munro Acting Head of the Learning Innovation Unit at DCU.

The summary themes that I took from the discourse were:

(1) 'eLearning developers' are also 'educational developers' by default - these are not mutually exclusive roles and it adds little to the debate by imposing artificial demarcation lines;

(2) technology-enhaced learning tools must be driven by the value-added they bring to the teaching and learning experience e.g. facilitating geographically distributed students working on a group project. Pedagogy first - technology second!

(3) Ireland's competitive advantage is that we have a relativeley small educational developerment community. However, we should be more pro-active in sharing stories and strategies to support common goals - this can be facilitatied by technologies such as the ILTA web site.

Thanks to Martin Fitzgerald and Tipperary Insitiute for hosting the event, and to Marion Palmer (EDIN Chair) and the team for inviting us to the AGM.

Further EDIN information can be found at http://www.edin.ie/

EdTech2010 - Huge Contribution from NUI Galway

The EdTech2010 conference is being held on May 20-21 in Athlone Insitiute of Technology.

This event is the main annual technology-enhanced learning conference for the Irish user community and once again a wide diversity of NUI Galway initiatives will be showcased at the event.

NUIG has seven papers/presentations across practitioner, research, Pecha Kucha and Technology in Action strands - the largest representation from any Irish university or IoT. So congratulations to: Peter Cantillon; Mary Flemming; Fiona Masterson; Mark Campbell; Niall McSweeney; Oisin Keelen; Andrew Flaus; Mary Dempsey; Paul Gormley; Liam McDwyer; Tony Hall; Bonnie Long, and Sharon Flynn.

We look forward to seeing innovative uses: of Turnitin to support student writing and feedback; the uses of wikis with Irish and German operational engineering students; mmolecules and movies in biochemistry; and the use of online meeting rooms to facilitate primary care clinicians' teaching and learning (to name but a few NUIG highlights at the event).

Registration for EdTech2010 is now open, and looks like being an inspiring 2-day event. Registration details available here.

Celebrating the Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning

I was honoured to chair the judging panel of the second Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning in DCU's Helix recently. The judging panel consisted of Karlin Lillington (Irish Times), Muiris O'Connor (HEA), Sheila Porter (IBM) and Brendan Tangney (TCD).

John O'Connor (DIT) won the award for his Second Life project 'Virtual Environments: Is one life enough?'. The four other short-listed projects were all truly innovative and captured the spirit of the Award perfectly. More information on the finalists and the process is available from the Award web site.

From a judging perspective, the decision making was very difficult due to the high standards set by the finalists. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience and Karlin has written about her take on the process in a lovely article in the Irish Times.

John will be presenting his project at the EdTech2010 conference in Athlone IT on May 20-21, and will be presented the Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Learning and Teaching to close the conference. Registration is now open for EdTech 2010. Click here for details.

Call for NDLR LInCS (Learning Innovation Community Support) Project Funding 2010

The NDLR (National Digital Learning Resources) is delighted to announce the call for applications to fund projects supporting the development of learning resources /materials for the NDLR Users over the next eight months (June – November 2010).

Further details and the application form are available from the newly launched NDLR website. The deadline for applications is the Friday 28th May 2010.

Funds will be available from 18th June to:
(a) Support projects that will create learning resources and
(b) Generate use and activity around these learning resources and the repository and portal.

The outputs of these projects will be showcased at a major NDLR event at the end of 2010.

Bids should focus on short, practical projects with clear identifiable outputs (i.e. resources and examples of use and reuse). The outputs of these projects should aim to actively progress and support the realisation of the new and dynamic streamlined SMART CoP model ( new CoPs and/or mergers between existing CoPs) over the next six months.

FAQ and a screencast with details for completing these forms are available on the NDLR portal (http://www.ndlr.ie). If you have any queries about the application form or the process for completion, please do not hesitate to contact the NDLR team at info@ndlr.ie.

Astell ddu Confernce Adolyga - Blackboard Conference 2010

Just back from the Blackboard Teaching and Learning 2010 in Swansea, Wales held from 12-14 April. If your idea of fun is seeing: how a Saudi university was built in 1000 days; how Welsh bilingual medium provision is being supported through technology-enhanced learning; or just watching a video of Blackboard employees dressed up as ladybirds and bees to articulate their common goal of ensuring highest quality standards (getting rid of bugs!!!), this was the place to be.

I presented a review of an NUIG 3-year project that aimed to embed Blackboard and other learning technologies as core mainstream technology-enhanced functions on behalf of our project team. Many international colleagues are in the same boat, so it was great chance for information and resource exchange after the presentation.

Blackboard had their US product development team onsite to present Blackboard v9.1, plus a number of new products such as Blackboard Connect (mass notification system), Blackboard Mobile, and Xythos (a content repository system acquired by Blackboard). Some interesting new features in Blackboard 9.1 including blogs, wikis and journals, although my impression is that many institutions are continuing to stick with Blackboard v8 until summer 2011.

Only myself and Ken Lacey from DIT were present from the Irish contingent, but we'll be feeding our observations back to the next meeting of the Irish WebCT/Blackboard Users' Group in due course.

The best session? 'Blended Learning: Principles and Planning Tools' by Richard Walker, University of York. Brilliant.

NDLR Fest 2010

On Wednesday the NDLR held their annual Fest in The Trinity Science Gallery. The day was a great success with many interesting presentations on the excellent projects that individuals and institutions have been working on over the past year. Many of the presenters showcased the RLOs they've been developing and there was a chance to speak with them and view the RLOs they have created. There was also a poster session held that gave everyone a chance to get up-to-date on what various NDLR CoPs are getting up to.

The event was attended by individual academics, groups of academics who have been working collaboratively through various NDLR initiatives and key stakeholders in the Irish HE sector.

Andrew Flaus and Oisín Keeley from the Dept. of Biochemistry at NUIG showcased the fantastic RLOs that they've created as part of a project to develop learning tools that would enable students to grasp conceptually difficult scientific topics and techniques and to create some new assets to aid revision and study for exams.

By coincidence there was a beautiful exhibition installed in the Science Gallery.
The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef (A Woolly Wonder) was really amazing and we got a chance to take a look around at the exhibition. If you're in Dublin between now and June you should certainly make time to pop in and see it.

Irish Human Computer Interaction (iHCI) Conference - Call for Papers

For the fourth year in succession, the iHCI conference is inviting papers on a wide range of topics, including submissions exploring, discussing or challenging the many boundaries within our community today: the traditional boundaries between academia and industry; the physical boundaries which influence our work; the boundaries between creativity and code; the boundaries between research and real-world use; and the boundaries between 'traditional' desktop systems and mobile, tangible, or ambient interaction; and pushing boundaries into novel or challenging spaces. The event takes place at Dublin City University on September 2-3 2010.

Contributions are also welcome that include, but are not limited to, any of the following topics of interest:
- Accessibility & Universal Access
- Case studies
- Collaboration, groupware and social networks
- Context-aware systems
- Ethnographical and field studies
- Evaluation methods and frameworks
- Group interaction, collaboration and social media
- Human-centred design practices, tools and methods
- HCI Theory and Practice
- Information visualization and presentation techniques
- Novel user interfaces, interaction techniques and technologies
- Mobile, Ambient, Augmented or Tangible HCI
- Multimodal interaction and interfaces
- Interaction in multi-cultural settings
- Ubiquitous, pervasive, and mobile interaction
- User-centred design
- Usability investigation and evaluation
- Wearable computing, smart clothes, new devices and sensors

The iHCI 2010 Programme will follow the theme by including an Industry Session (Co-Ordinated by the IxDA Dublin and Limerick Groups), a Student Forum, a Poster and Demos Showcase. We are also delighted to announce that Professor Richard Harper (Microsoft Research Cambridge) will deliver the opening keynote address.

Contributions that advance the theory or practice of any aspect of HCI are welcome. This includes for example theoretical papers, practice case studies, empirical evaluation and methodological work. The conference proceedings will contain all papers (Full, Short, Student, Demos and Poster overviews) and will be published with an ISBN. This will also be made available online.

Web: http://www.clarity-centre.org/iHCI2010/index.html 
Follow the event on twitter (@iHCI2010) for regular updates.

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. ~H.G. Wells

It's a bit off topic for us here on the CELT Learning Technologies blog, but we've all been taking part in a challenge with a technology of the non-networked kind... you know, that two wheeled thing stuck in the back of your shed at home? Yes, the bike- that (t)rusty steed. Thanks to Sinead Higgins, the environmental officer at NUI Galway, we've gotten involved with the 10 minute cycle challenge and have been peddling to work, come rain, hail or shine for the past two weeks. Why? Well, because it's huge fun, and just to see whether we could all do it.

I'll admit, with the bad weather this week and the low traffic volumes on the roads with the schools on holidays, it's been very tempting to sit into the car and use my right foot to propel me in my metal tin container into work. But, it's too much to give up the happy feeling of whistling down the road with the wind at my ears, feeling that relaxed sense of calm of being on my bike.

I can't describe the sensation as well as Diane Ackerman who writes, "This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart."

So if you see us pass on our bikes, be sure to give us a wave hello! Especially if you are passing by on yours!

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing...

I was lucky enough to attend the launch of the wiki Das Auslandsjahr in Deutschland yesterday evening, on a dark, cold March evening at NUI Galway. Despite the bleak weather beating against the windows, inside the classroom of AM205 a heart warming tale unfolded of collaboration and triumph for an engaged class of third level students. The evening was initiated by Doris Devilly, a lecturer in the German Department at NUI Galway, and her students in the B.Comm with German programme who showcased their own hard work on an carefully crafted wiki resource, packed with useful information to pass along to next year's students.

It was a really fascinating to hear the stories behind their Erasmus experience. Each member of the class stood up in turn, to confidently speak about their overseas adventures, and show us their contributions to the wiki detailing their progress (and occasional misadventures) in a new land.

Doris - all I can say is congratulations on a truly inspirational evening! Thanks for the invitation for us to come along and experience the infectious enthusiasm for ourselves.

BComm German Wiki Launch

Doris Devilly, a lecturer in the German Department at NUI Galway, and her students in the B.Comm with German programme, are launching a wiki aimed at second year students of German in preparing them for their year abroad.

Doris says:

As part of their final year project in "Creativity and New Technologies" BComm (Int.) with German students have set up, designed and created a wiki for second year German students Das Auslandsjahr in Deutschland (The Year Abroad in Germany). This wiki is entirely written in German and the rationale behind it was to assist second year students of German (from all faculties) to prepare for their year abroad and to familiarise themselves with German culture, academia and society. It also encouraged my students to work collaboratively on a class project and to publish their effort on the internet.

As the final year students had only 10 class hours in the multimedia lab available, most of them worked from home or in the computer suites - all of them meeting virtually with me in the social network "Ning".

The wiki Das Auslandsjahr in Deutschland will be launched at a small reception tomorrow evening.