The Jennifer Burke Award 2012

The call for nominations for the 2012 Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning is now open. The award is in memory of Jennifer Burke who the Irish Learning Technology Community lost in June 2007. I was a finalist last year, but sadly did not win. The award is co-sponsored by DCU and ILTA.

Jennifer Burke.
Image link.

I had great fun doing this last year and would thoroughly recommend that learning and teaching innovators from Ireland should consider nominating themselves or getting a nomination. The award is going from strength to strength and this year the finalists will get to show the learning technology community their innovation at the EdTech Conference which is being held at NUI Maynooth on 31st May/1st June. The call for papers for this conference is being issued in the next week or two.

There is so much innovation going on at all levels of education in Ireland and it is great that it is formerly recognised in memory of Jennifer.

EdTech 2008

I attended the EdTech 2008 Conference held in Dundalk Institute of Technology on Thursday 22nd May. The Conference is the main activity of the Irish Learning Technologies Association (ILTA). I have been on and off the ILTA committee over the past two years and did not take much part in the preparations for the Conference. I pulled back from ILTA activity when I took on the role of Acting Head of School for three months before Christmas last. This was also the first year that I did not submit anything for the Conference - I regret not finding the time to do this.

I picked up my colleague Stephan Weibelzal at 07.30 hoping to arrive early in Dundalk. However, we spent just over an hour between the M50 toll bridge and the M1 exit - literally inching forward. I can't believe that there are people who do this every day. I was in my car because it was raining - how I wished I had taken the Harley instead! Nevertheless, we were only about 5 minutes late for the opening keynote presentation by Larry McNutt of IT Blanchardstown.

Larry's presentation was one of the best I have been at in years - very entertaining and informative. The title of his talk was "An exploration of the habitus of educational technologists: What does the research tell us?". Lots for us educators to think about. At the end he presented everybody attending with a small gift - a "high-tech device" that he said we should all use to improve our teaching. It turned out to be a mirror! Fantastic!

The break out sessions were good - I attended the following sessions:

Developing educational screencasts – practical tips and pedagogical issues from the chalkface
Damien Raftery of IT Carlow.

Using an Interactive Whiteboard to Efficiently Create Instructional Multimedia to Support Student Learning in a Numerate Discipline
Seamus Ryan of Athlone IT

Using RSS Feeds to make your Lecture available on Moodle, iTunes and the Web
Brian Coll of IT Sligo

Voice: The killer application of mobile learning
Gavin Cooney of Learnosity

Conceptions of Digital Literacy: Implications for Research Design
Leo Casey of National College of Ireland

Usability and Behaviour Observation in e-Learning
Stephan Weibelzahl and Leo Casey of National College of Ireland

Afterwards I attended the ILTA AGM at which I was nominated for the committee again. I also successfully pitched for NCI to host the EdTech 2009 Conference next year - now the work begins!