Category Archives: CMM

Ed Tech must reads – Column 2

Originally published in Campus Morning Mail on 23rd Aug 2021

Current trends in online delivery and assessment in ANZ from @michael_sankey

The Australasian TEL world’s Mr Everywhere, Prof Michael Sankey, recently presented the findings of several ACODE surveys of HE institutions to the Blackboard APAC conference. Unsurprisingly, it shows the sector in the midst of significant change – not entirely brought on by the pandemic but certainly accelerated by it. This wide-ranging slide deck covers the variety of approaches to online exam proctoring, intentions for the lecture, micro-credentials and the kinds of communication and collaboration tools that institutions are using to support student learning.

Pearson unveils Pearson+ platform to address costly college textbook process from ZDNet

After moving from Disney (home of streaming platform Disney+), new Pearson publishing CEO Andy Bird has launched Pearson+, a subscription service for textbooks for US college students. They can either rent a single digital textbook for $9.99 per month or 1500 books for $15.99. What implications could this Brave new direction have for students? Might they find themselves losing access to books if authors get Tangled up in legal actions with the publisher? Will Pearson turn the textbook landscape Inside Out? Time will tell but either way, it’s good to see an organisation not Frozen in place.

Discussing the Stanford AI report on education from @BenPatrickWill on Twitter

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic in many spaces and education isn’t spared. University of Edinburgh ed tech research Ben Williamson examines a hefty report published last week by Stanford University about work underway to train computer models to ‘understand’ teachers, students and more in this deep twitter thread. Will an algorithm one day be able to meaningfully replicate the interactions at the heart of good learning and teaching?

Webinar: Rescued from HERDSA21 – Technology’s role in enabling feedback and assessment Thursday 26/8 12 noon AEST

This year’s HERDSA conference was sadly cancelled but planned presentations keep popping up anyway. The ASCILITE TELedvisors Network hosts two of these on Thursday, with Deakin’s Ameena Payne showcasing the benefits and challenges of audio/video feedback and Griffith’s Diana Tolmie discussing the use of ePortfolios among music students. These webinars are always free and recordings are posted to the TELedvisors’ YouTube channel. 

Creating art with AI from @artgallerai

On the less daunting side of AI, there are many new tools that let creators work with the bizarre imagination of computers to create beautiful and surreal images. The @GallerAi account on Twitter, feeds the VQGAN+CLIP algorithm random poetic phrases like “Deep space dive bar” or “Golden Trojan Horse love bomb” and shares the resulting otherworldly images.

Ed Tech must reads – Column 1

Back in the early days of blogging, content was largely an annotated record of the sites someone had been visiting and wanted to share, a web log. A couple of months ago, I started a weekly ed tech column in this tradition in Campus Morning Mail, an Australian tertiary education focused daily email newsletter run by the former Higher Ed reporter for The Australian, Stephen Matchett. It gets a few thousand views a day and I get to write what I like and people have been teasing me for being famous so it seems like a win.

Anyway, I thought I might as well share my work here too.

Why returning to the lecture only model is a bad idea from The Ed Techie

Martin Weller is one of the more interesting practitioners in the ed tech space and this thoughtful post breaks down recent discussion in the UK (but, arguably everywhere) about where we need to go with technology enhanced learning when we (eventually) emerge from the pandemic.

Education Technology Competency Framework: Defining a Community of Practice across Canada from Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology (Open Access)

What is an Education Technologist? What do they do, what do they know, how do they help educators to navigate the digital age of learning and teaching? This article from Sonnenberg et al. outlines recent work to describe their practices and proposes some useful ways forward for edtech teams in transforming “the academic experience for learners and teaching faculty”. While the focus is on the Canadian experience, the ideas translate very well to Australia.

Kevin Gannon thread about tips for first time lecturers from Twitter

Twitter can be a goldmine for ideas for educators and this recent tweet from Kevin Gannon (@TheTattooedProf) and the subsequent replies offers some invaluable practical suggestions for new lecturers (faculty). Among them, capture students’ attention early with a wicked problem that the unit will equip them with the skills to solve in time.

The Melbourne EdTech Summit 2021 from EduGrowth

The Melbourne EdTech Summit is a free four-day education technology and innovation showcase beginning on Tuesday 17th August. The first two days are K-12 focused and the Thursday/Friday relate more to Higher Education, VET and Industry. It offers an opportunity to explore new technologies from Australian EdTech vendors and engage in broader discussions about the emerging future of learning and teaching. EduGrowth is an umbrella body of education institutions, industry and edtech entrepreneurs. Speaker highlights include Martin Dougiamas (Moodle) on the Wednesday, Liz Johnston (Deakin) and Chris Campbell (Griffith/ASCILITE) on Thursday, and Belinda Tynan (ACU) and CMM’s own Claire Field on the Friday.

These Maps Reveal the Hidden Structures of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Books from Atlas Obscura

Branching scenarios and decision tree type activities are becoming increasingly popular in learning and teaching due to the ease of creation via user-friendly tools such as H5P and Twine. Some of us got our first taste for these through the popular Choose Your Own Adventure book series in the 80s and 90s. This article from Sarah Laskow describes some of the ways these branching stories are mapped, offering insights for our own work in designing them.