We're better connected

I recently presented at a conference with my Plymouth University colleagues Peter Yeomans and Oliver Quinlan. We had planned to present a version of this paper at the annual EDEN Conference held in June in Portugal, but for one reason or another, none of us were able to make it. This is probably the first time we have presented as a team, and I hope it is the first of many future conference appearances together. The result can be found as a 20 minute YouTube video - Connected: Supporting Student Blogging and Communities of Learning - complete with audio track and slides below:



Pete, Oliver and I spoke about the work we have been doing with undergraduate teacher students in Plymouth, using a variety of social media, including blogging and Twitter to support and encourage critical and reflective learning. The important concept we wanted to talk about was communities of learning, and how students can use social media tools to participate in them. Peter talked about the power of social media to create a Personal Learning Network (PLN) and also discussed the ways students manage their online presence. Oliver presented some case studies of how students have successfully harnessed the power of social media tools to gain a foothold in the teaching profession and promote learning. The final section of the presentation, which I presented, dealt with some of the pedagogical theory and implications. I talked about connectivism, paragogy, heutagogy and other emerging theories that seek to explain how we learn in new digitally rich environments. We hope you enjoy listening to the presentation and following the slides. We look forward to reading any comments you may have on the presentation.


We're better connected by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.