Sharing #eBreakthroughs

I was delighted to be involved in Teaching and Learning’s eBreakthrough Workshop facilitated by Peter Copeman and Jen Smith at the University of Canberra.
There were ten participants in the workshop hosted in the Teaching Commons.

The first presenter was Bernie Bissett. She shared her work with Voice Thread in Physiotherapy teaching and learning. Bernie discussed her emerging practice in her palliative care classes.
I really enjoyed the way she shared her learning journey with her use of the Voice Thread app.
Bernie triggered discussion in the workshop by demonstrating her use of Voice Thread and Powerpoint with a specific differentiated assessment task. Although this task was optional, all students chose to do the task.  Many invested a great deal of time in this project.
Lubna Alam was the second presenter. She discussed her use of social media, curation and co-creating. I enjoyed her exploration of Learning 2.0, Pedagogy 2.0 approaches through TPACK and communities of inquiry.

Lubna uses Twitter, Wikis and blogs. She discussed her use of #smatuc. I liked Lubna’s encouragement of student co-operation.
Lubna concluded her talk with some of the pedagogical issues raised by her approach including training, resources and scaffolding learning.
As I was listening to Lubna, I received this alert from DERN:

Negin Mirriahi, Dennis Alonzo, Simon McIntyre, Giedre Kligyte and Bob Fox, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia, titled Blended learning innovations: Leadership and change in one Australian institution outlines the strategic approach undertaken by UNSW in developing the capabilities of the teaching staff to design and deliver their own online and blended courses.

I wondered how to follow on from Bernie and Lubna’s talks. I think it helped me that I had shared my presentation with the group beforehand.
I did have a eMerging pdf copy ready in case I needed to use it. I decided to use the images in my presentation as the focus of my presentation. I edited my Google slides presentation during the workshop.
I spoke briefly about community, co-operation and connectedness. As I was presenting I was thinking how patient everyone had been. It was an intense couple of hours.
We were discussing fundamental issues about pedagogy. Bernie and Lubna prompted me to think about a Scholarly Kitchen post I had read earlier in the day. In it Joseph Esposito observed:

What we need are not new systems but new services. Services are not top-down comprehensive solutions to all the problems (and some of the merits) of scholarly communications but activities that address specific needs. They usually are conceived by one person, rarely by a committee, and have as their virtue that they come into the world with blinders, never turning their head to the left or right. It is precisely because they do not try to do everything that they are successful. They can be disruptive and unpredictable … What all of these things have in common is that they did not set out to change the entire world but to improve one piece of it.

I think Peter and Jen in inviting Bernie and Lubna helped us understand how personal action can enhance and transform students’ learning experience.
They are #eBreakthroughs.