Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Nothing Ventured ....

Here I am at ALT-C (the learning technology conference) in Manchester, again inspired and provoked into taking back something useful. It seems like the perennial problem at each annual conference is how to encourage, motivate and enable more of the teaching staff to use the technology in their teaching and learning. In some ways it doesn't matter what the technology is because we are still always left with a substantial number of staff who we need to reach and who we want to get on board. One of the provocative sessions at the conference was 'The VLE is Dead' and there are a number of proponents who would want us instead to use the Web 2.0 tools with our learners. I'm not going to do that at our college. We have an increasing number of staff taking on the use of Moodle and there's no way we are going to throw that away.

... But there's always something else they can do, whether that's to use Moodle tools they have not used before or to use any of the web tools that are out there.

... But there's so much and all the staff are at different stages both in their capabilities and in their desire, so how can this be communicated?

Well I'm hoping that I can use this blog and other tools (e.g. Twitter) to keep up a steady stream of advice, information, examples of practice, suggestions, ideas, etc and that I can encourage the teaching staff to make use of.

... But can I keep it up? ('it' being the steady stream and up referring to my ability to sustain this in the light of my inability to maintain anything for any length of time).

Well we shall see

2 comments:

James Clay said...

I found that blogging initially requires a commitment and a dedication, however once you get going you find it a very useful tool.

I use my blog as a repository of information and links which I can then pass to people as and when they ask for it.

James Clay

Dave Shearan said...

Thanks James. I've got this germ of an idea about drip-feeding tips and advice to the lecturing staff but if I'm to do that I need to keep having the ideas or discovering them from other people. Do you have any advice for me about linking up with other people?