Three keynote presentations were made at CELebrate 2016 last week. These are available as Panopto videos using the links below:
This talk explores the tensions and forces that are impacting on the role learning technology teams choose (or are required) to play in changing institutional culture and pedagogical practice.
The focus on tools, packages and platforms can serve to reinforce a number of unhelpful paradigms about technology; that the use of technology is the exclusive privilege of the technically adept, the young or the innovator; that technology is a ‘nice to have’, not an essential, integrated part of the action (the ‘action’ being curricula, assessment or pedagogy); that technologists are there simply to support technology not participate actively in integrating or innovating; or that learning has been and always will be the same, and new technology simply enhances and builds on the successes of the past. This talk explores the tensions and forces that are impacting on the role learning technology teams choose (or are required) to play in changing institutional culture and pedagogical practice.
Biography
Pete is the Head of Learning Technology and Innovation at the London School of Economics. His pedagogic research interests include digital identity and social media, the emergence of digital pedagogies, learning spaces in the digital world, institutional resistance to technology, DIY education and edupunk and the education and training of independent arts makers. He has researched and published extensively in community and third sector governance, the uses of community and public media for the promotion of arts and network formation processes amongst arts practitioners.
Technology as a tool for inclusion: use and abuse in ‘classroom’ settings – Professor Jane Searle
Explores technology’s role in the lives of people with learning disabilities and the factors that influence or sustain the digital exclusion of disabled learners.
This keynote focuses in particular on the role that technologies play in the lives of people with learning disabilities and the factors that influence or sustain the digital exclusion of disabled learners. It explores how the inclusive practices of teachers and support workers might be enhanced through the development of ‘positive risk taking’ looking at the intersections between disability, technology and inclusion.
Biography
Professor Jane Seale is a Professor of Inclusive Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Exeter. Jane has developed a national and international profile in the field through key roles such as President of the Association for Learning Technology (2006-7) and Digital Inclusion consultant to the ESRC funded Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) programme in the UK (2009-2012). Jane’s methodological interest is the development and evaluation of participatory research methods that promote voice and empowerment for disabled research partners.
Informal learning in the workplace: Opportunities for educators – Professor John Cook
This talk gives an overview of how the EU Learning Layers Project developed technologies to support informal learning in the workplace, with a particular focus on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) within Regional Innovation Clusters.
The mobile and social technologies unlock and enable peer production within and across those SMEs. These technologies also act as “scaffolds” for the individuals so that they can learn in the right context and at the right time. Scaling informal learning then means that shared meaning of work practices emerge at the individual (workers and practitioners), the organisational (SMEs) and the interorganisational (cluster) levels of the network.
The talk highlights the opportunities for educators to harness the technologies to use in their own contexts, and highlights the potential for collaborations.
Biography
John Cook is Professor of Learning Innovation at the University of the West of England. He is a member of the Centre for Moving Images Research where he leads the research stream in Hybrid Ralithy and culture.
