Digital Literacy Roundtable Event at the School of Art, Otago Polytechnic

Original post by Rachel Gillies

Hot on the back of a new course featured here on wikieducator; (Digital Literacy taught to all year one and two BFA students), Prof. Leoni Schmidt has organised a Digital Literacy Roundtable at the School of Art for this coming Thursday. This is great news, and something that I think many people at Otago Polytechnic have been thinking and wanting to do for a while, but we’re all so busy getting our projects of the ground, teaching, (and often fighting with the technology?) that it all seems a bit impossible to sit in the same room and chat… Well hopefully that will change this Thursday and we get an opportunity to develop some good habits around our teaching and learning, together at OP.

Info about the session below:

There will be a Digital Literacy Roundtable this coming Thursday (10th April) at 3pm, hosted by the School of Art. I will be facilitating the discussion but would very much appreciate input from anyone interested, with an aim to addressing polytech-wide issues, focusing on ‘Digital Literacy’. We hope to allow and enable discussion around the following points:

- success stories! What are you involved with that’s going particularly well? Or what have you seen around you that’s going well? e.g. Phil Kerr’s blog?
- technologies What software/hardware are you working with and how is it going? Are there commonalities? (e.g. wikieducator) Can we/should we build on this?
- challenges… Are there obstacles in your way that are stopping your digital literacy projects, learning and teaching? How can we start to address these?
- projects? Do you have a project you would like to share, promote, get feedback on? e.g. Scope: Flexible Learning
- collaboration I think collaboration can be discussed across most points in this agenda, but let’s think specifically about what collaboration we can facilitate and where there are real needs to do so. Should we be looking for industry partners? Other institutions? Are we doing this already?
- moving forward Are there practical next steps that we can take to help each other’s projects, and enable more digital literacy at OP?

I’m really looking forward to this Thursday’s session, and I hope that by getting lots of us in the same room at the same time, we can develop our projects, learning and teaching in this area.
Please note that we hope to run from 3pm to 5pm, and will be in room P201, Leith Block, School of Art.

See you on Thursday! Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me before then if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

Warm Regards, Rachel

Otago’s Anatomy and Physiology of Animals textbook is featured!

Original post on Learn Online

Otago Polytechnic lecturer Ruth Lawson recently published her Anatomy and Physiology of Animals text to Wikibooks, with worksheets on Wikieducator.

The work has been listed by wikibooks as meeting the Good Books Criteria and has been included as a Featured Book!

Visual design and layout was by Sunshine Connelly - who sourced theme images from the Flickr Creative Commons.

Bronwyn Hegarty offered advice, support and project management for the effort.

The project was funded by Otago Polytechnic.

I wonder if New Zealand’s Performance Based Research Fund will ever come around to recognising the criteria met, exposure and acclaim?

A printed and bound version is available through LuLu.com, and the Commonwealth of Learning is considering further work on the text to take it to a more global education readership.

Well done Ruth, Sunshine and Bronwyn!

Otago’s Travel and Tourism course on Wikieducator, and presented at PCF5

Original post on Learn Online

Hillary Jenkins, programme manager for the Diploma in Applied Travel and Tourism has been accepted to present a talk and panel discussion in London this July, as part of the Fifth Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning.

Hillary has been working hard over the past 6-12 months, developing open access course information and resources on Wikieducator, with course blogs to interface with the online resources.

At the moment the course runs mainly with face to face participants, but is gradually building the capacity to support distance learners, and flexible learning opportunities.

The wiki course is as always a work in progress, and Hillary’s team are doing a good job at keeping 2 steps ahead of their students (its a precarious life teaching!), but her paper is available here, where you can get a quick overview of the background, progress, issues and concerns.

Well done Hillary, and the Travel and Tourism team.. good luck in London.