Weekly Learning Technology Digest... 29

Image by Michael Chen, under a
CC BY NC-ND 2.0 license

Well, well... would you look at that?  Friday appears to have snuck up on me!

It has been a jam-packed week and I'm absolutely positive that there must be a lot of stuff that's passed me by - so apologies if I've missed something obvious but as ever, please drop off a comment to share any resources / links that you know about!

Okay, here we go...

• From the Educational Technology and Mobile Learning site comes YouTube's 4 Official Channels for Educators which if you didn't know are the main Educational one, there's one for Schools, one for Teachers and one for Curriculum.  They're all linked to from that one site.  Useful!
• I also thought you might find the Live-tweeting at academic conferences: 10 rules of thumb which I spotted in The Guardian's Higher Education Network.  Lots of excellent tips there, and it reminds me that I should probably get around to writing up my list of tweeting tips some time!
• Related to tweeting is another article from The Guardian, Facebook and Twitter could be asked to increase moderation of networks - and although this is about the criminal end of the spectrum of use, if you're after a case study to get your students thinking about the impact of not considering their digital footprint, then this is a handy one.
• Since we're now on the 'dark side' of stuff, how about The dark side of the online struggle against plagiarism which appeared in ReadWriteWeb? From consideration of ethics to the use of technology, this is a thought-provoking article.
• More about plagiarism? Is that a 'yes' I can hear?  Rightie ho... Higher Education plc: cheating in the marketplace of ideas is the one for you.  It asks about the moral issues surrounding plagiarism - if you can buy an education, is it okay for you to buy an essay? The comments are excellent too.
• Y'know, I'm obviously under a cloud today because here's another 'oo-er, look at the consequences of that' article which came in the form of When Social Media Gets Ugly – The 20 Biggest Brand Disasters - now, these aren't specifically about education, but they are things to consider when using social media in learning and teaching.
• Okay, something more positive - Educause put together a good set of resources about MOOCs (massive open online courses) and together they form a nice primer on the subject from discussion of the pedagogy to examining the issues.  Very handy.
• And if you'd like to stay safer online, JISC put out a podcast on e-safety for online learning and it talks about work done by TechDis supporting online safety for learning disabled adults which if you have 6 minutes is worth a listen.
• Finally, Radical rethink: how to design university courses in the online age appeared in an Australian publication as part of a series they've been writing on the future of Higher Education.  The dynamic model they present is an interesting one and again, if you fancy a cuppa and to read something that might just spark a bit of reflection on your own approach to curriculum design (and who doesn't, right?!), then this is a goodie!

Oh, and I have a video for you today - it's not an educational one but it is an example of what you can do if you give students access to the kit and support and give them a learning experience which inspires creativity.  It's from one of our students who used our creative media facilities and is a little bit of inspiration for a Friday!

Aren't our students excellent?  And what an interesting approach too!

So, that's me done for another week.  Have a great weekend!

Sarah