Wiggio - Making it easy to work in groups

Wiggio is a free, online toolkit, developed by students at Cornell University to support groupwork. From the site:

Wiggio lets you use the following group tools, and it's all for free!

• Messages— send mass text messages, voice messages and emails from wiggio
• Calendar— keep a shared group calendar that will send you text message reminders before all your meetings, practices, rehearsals, games and other events
• Poll—survey your entire group and get their responses as they answer
• Folder— dump all your groups’ files into one folder and never send another attachment
• Meetings— never walk 15 minutes through the snow to get to a 10 minute meeting again… setup free conference calls and web chats on Wiggio
• Links— keep a shared favorites folder

Watch the demo on YouTube.

Using Blogs to Enhance Education

This is a nice post on using blogs in the classroom, on Openeducation.net. It is based on an article by Ruth Reynard at Campus Technology, Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students.

What is said, in both articles, makes a lot of sense. The context has to be authentic and should be aligned with the desired learning outcomes. A blog can be very powerful when you want your students to reflect. At the same time, the blog needs to be carefully planned and managed by the instructor. The students need clear expectations and guidance, in particular if their contributions are to be assessed.

On assessment, Ruth Reynard gives a useful classification of statement types that could be used in a grading rubric:

• Reflection statements (self positioning within the course concepts);
• Commentary statements (effective use of the course content in discussion and analysis);
• New idea statements (synthesis of ideas to a higher level); and
• Application statements (direct use of the new ideas in a real life setting).

Both articles are quite clear that blogs are not always the most appropriate tool for collaboration, but provide an "individualised" space for students to reflect on topics and to find their own voice.

Having just started using blogs in my own teaching, I found that these articles have confirmed my own thoughts and support (to an extent) the approach I have been using.

Learning Innovation Network (LIN) Conference - 10 October 2008

The Learning Innovation Network (LIN) held its first annual conference in Athlone on 10 October under the theme of 'Fostering Learning – A Student Centred Experience'. The LIN project is a 3-year SIF funded collaborative project between the 13 IoTs and DIT which aims to enhance the delivery and quality of core educational activities through common infrastructures and collaborative activities.

It was great to see large numbers in attendance from the IoT, university, industry and government sectors. A wide variety of interesting student-centred initiatives were showcased in the following stands: 'Innovation in Teaching and Learning'; 'Working Within a Modular Environment'; and 'Assessment Within a Modular Environment'.

Prof. Ray Land's morning keynote investigated threshold and troublesome knowledge concepts in the context of curriculum design; Dr. Richard Thorn addressed current economic concerns with regards to workforce education and lifelong learning under the banner 'Somebody Should, We Could, We Can'; while Prof. Sarah Moore gave an inspiring and interactive closing keynote 'Fresh Approaches to Learning in Third Level Settings' discussing the complexities inherent in the expert/novice relationship and calling for a 'less is more' approach to allow for student reflection and self-analysis of their learning contexts.

Keynote podcasts and parallel session presentations will be available shortly from the LIN website.

another virtual conference!

"Learning in the Digital Age - are we prepared?" is the title of this year's JISC e-learning conference on November 4th - 7th. Delivered entirely online (but not completely in Second Life, unlike the NMC event I last posted about), the programme is almost a "who's who" of UK-based e-learning research.

Should be interesting, but like all such events, the lack of physical attendance can often make it difficult to carve out the time from a hectic diary but to get full advantage of the discussions and debates you really need to be able to do this, locking the office door and shutting off the phone whilst you're online at the sessions.

Virtual Symposium - November '08

The New Media Consortium (www.nmc.org) has announced its latest Virtual Symposium entitled "Rock the Academy: Radical Teaching, Unbounded Learning" which will be taking place in Second Life and over the web. The event runs from November 4th to 6th and details plus a registration form can be accessed here.

Broadband for Rural, Irish-speaking areas

A new high speed telecommunications network, which will result in high speed broadband services, is being brought to the Galway Gaeltacht as a result of a joint initiative undertaken by NUI Galway, HEAnet and Údarás na Gaeltachta. 

For more information visit NUI Galway's website.