catherinecronin

Please note that this blog is no longer updated! My previous and current work can be found at: HTTP://CATHERINECRONIN.NET/BLOG
September 9, 2014

Navigating the Marvellous: Openness in Education #altc

For three days last week I participated in #altc (the Association for Learning Technology Conference) at the University of Warwick — attending in person for the first time after participating virtually for several years. It was a joy to meet so many online friends and colleagues for the first time and to take part in such an inspiring programme of events.

I was very grateful to be asked to give one of the keynotes at the conference. It was an honour to keynote along with Audrey Watters, an educator whose work, integrity, and friendship I value greatly. And a privilege also to speak along with Jeff Haywood. The innovative work being done at (and shared openly by) the University of Edinburgh in the area of online and open learning is important for all of us in higher education.

My keynote was titled Navigating the Marvellous: Openness in Education, drawing on a metaphor from Seamus Heaney. Links to the keynote and related items are included here.

Summary of the keynote [Medium]
Summary of photos, images, tweets [Storify]
Presentation slides [Slideshare] (also shown below)
Video recording [ALT YouTube channel]
Times Higher Education article
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Many thanks also to Bryan Mathers @bryanmmathers, Simon Thomson @digisim, and Sheila MacNeill @sheilmcn for creating several beautiful images during the keynote. These are included below, with links to Bryan’s, Simon’s, and Sheila’s sites. Please check out these sites for other wonderful work, both from #altc and other events.

Finally, thanks to all of the organisers, the co-chairs, the presenters and participants for such a warm welcome and for making ALTC 2014 such an enjoyable and stimulating learning experience. It will stay with me for a long time to come.

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“Catherine Cronin keynote” by Digisim is licensed under CC BY 3.0

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“Education is Changing” by Bryan Mathers (Flickr) is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

“Education is Changing” by Bryan Mathers is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

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“The Learning Black Market” by Bryan Mathers is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

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“Catherine Cronin #altc 2014 keynote” by Sheila MacNeill is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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October 2, 2013

Teaching with Twitter (this week)

Student views on Twitter (September 2013)

Student views on Twitter (September 2013)

I’ve used Twitter for over four years and have integrated Twitter into my teaching for the past three. The practice evolves with time, and with the preferences of different groups of students, but it’s been a fascinating learning experience. A few examples:

We use Twitter in a 2nd year BSc Computer Science and IT course, Professional Skills, which focuses on research and communication skills, digital literacies, and social media. We use #ct231 as a course hashtag for our Twitter conversations. I also tweet from a course Twitter account @CT231 — this allows people to easily find our course on Twitter (and thus our course website) and allows students to Direct Message (DM) me, which has proven to be a popular alternative to emailing for many students.

Yesterday, Thom Cochrane posted this dynamic image, made with TAGSExplorer (thanks @mhawksey!), showing the activity on the course hashtag #ct231 for the past week (click the image for a dynamic version).

click image for dynamic version

click image for dynamic version

It’s still early in the term, but this is a fascinating glimpse into our interactions on Twitter. In addition to the expected heavy activity from @CT231 and @catherinecronin, many students appear in the network, mostly as a result of our Twitter conversation in class yesterday. Well done to all!  @sharonlflynn (from CELT at NUI Galway) and @fboss (Education Officer and moderator of #edchatie) were active participants in our conversations, as well as several other educators in Ireland and beyond.

Also appearing in the #ct231 Twitter discussions this week are the participants in #icollab, an active network of students and educators who communicate and learn together across institutions and timezones (Ireland, UK, Spain, France, Germany, New Zealand, Australia). CT231 is happy to be a part of this great network. Thanks to #icollab participants: @ThomCochrane, @heloukee, @mediendidaktik, @marett, @averillg and our newest and welcome additions, @topgold and @spacelyparts.

Finally, thanks to Nathan Jurgenson (@nathanjurgenson) and Alice Marwick (@alicetiara) who popped into our Twitterstream yesterday after learning (via a tweet) that we were studying and discussing their work in class yesterday morning; we aim to engage with you further during the term. Using Twitter, some students shared their summaries of key points from the articles, others posted their own thoughts. In any case, live interactions with authors whose work we are studying is one of the superpowers of Twitter, so we thank Nathan and Alice for joining in.
https://twitter.com/tommy15994/status/385004737130553344

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There’s much more to say and to study about teaching and learning with social media tools like Twitter. This quick snapshot of one week is one small contribution. Many thanks to Thom Cochrane for running and sharing the TAGSExplorer analysis.

Interestingly, just after leaving our class yesterday, I saw the following tweet from Sharon Flynn, sharing an interesting study by Chris Evans.

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My answer to the question is yes.

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NOTE:

Texts studied in CT231 class and discussed via Twitter (1st October 2013):

The IRL fetish by Nathan Jurgenson (2012)

The public domain: Surveillance in everyday life by Alice Marwick (2012)

Teens, social media and privacy – Pew Internet & American Life Project (2013)

George Saunders’s advice to graduates New York Times article by Joel Lovell (2013)

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