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Mark Smithers

Learning and Educational Technology in Higher Education

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  • BlackBoard, Sakai and Moodle – Point/Counterpoint at Educause 2009

    Nov 6th 2009

    By: Mark Smithers

    1 comment

    This very interesting discussion was held recently at the Educause 2009 Conference in Denver. Read More

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    Educational Technology, e-Learning

    black, BlackBoard, lms, Moodle, Sakai, VLE

  • Social and cultural aspects of the Internet (PhD scholarships, Melbourne)

    Nov 5th 2009

    By: Mark Smithers

    1 comment

    This is the content of an email that has been distributed about PhD Scholarships at RMIT University. For more information you can contact Read More

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    Educational Technology

  • Google Wave in a Sentence

    Oct 19th 2009

    By: Mark Smithers

    3 comments

    wavelogoWell it’s been a week since I was kindly sent an invitation to Google Wave. I have to admit that at first I was a little underwhelmed but since then, as I have started to add contacts, I I have started to see it’s potential. Before I talk a bit about it’s positives I would like to try and answer what I think it actually is in one sentence.

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    Educational Technology, e-Learning

    asynchronous communication, Educational Technology, Google Wave, lms, synchronous communication

  • Comparing the Horizon Report 2009 and Horizon Report 2009 for Australia and New Zealand

    Oct 7th 2009

    By: Mark Smithers

    No comments

    The EDUCAUSE Horizon Report for Australia and New Zealand 2009 was published recently. I thought I would just compare the findings for Australia and New Zealand with those for the US Horizon Report 2009 published earlier this year. Read More

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    Educational Technology, Open Education

  • Insidious Pedagogy – some thoughts on Lisa Lane’s article

    Oct 7th 2009

    By: Mark Smithers

    2 comments

    I have just read Lisa Lane’s article in First Monday entitled “Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems impact teaching”. I really liked her paper, not least because it raised some issues that I hadn’t considered before regarding default settings in an LMS and the idea of opt in and opt out learning management systems. It also described the way many academics use (or don’t use) the web in their work or play and how this effects their ability to use some of the more ‘advanced’ features of an LMS that go beyond an instructivist model of delivery. Perhaps most importantly of all it discusses the importance of emphasising pedagogy before ‘features and tools’ when working with web novices.

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    Educational Technology

    BlackBoard, lms, Moodle, pedagogy

  • Why my Personal Learning Network is Important to Me

    Sep 29th 2009

    By: Mark Smithers

    1 comment

    Personal learning networks and personal learning environments are featuring highly as topics of discussion in e-learning and educational technology at the moment. I thought I would take the step into public self broadcasting and record a short video about why my PLN is important to me and some of the tools that I used to both create it and manage it. I hope you find it useful. Read More

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    Educational Technology

    personal learning network, pln

  • Public LMS Evaluations

    Sep 20th 2009

    By: Mark Smithers

    32 comments

    Many universities are currently, or have recently, reviewed their enterprise LMS including my own employer. Unfortunately we haven’t made our review process public but many universities have been generous enough to provide information about their reviews. The following list are some of the publicly available LMS reviews that I have found. These were really useful in developing and informing our own review and I hope that by bringing them together in one place it will be useful for others. Read More

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    Educational Technology

    Angel, BlackBoard, Desire2Learn, Evaluation, lms, Moodle, Review, Sakai

  • Delicate Geniuses

    Sep 13th 2009

    By: Mark Smithers

    No comments

    I was having a look at the Times Higher Education site the other day when a post entitled “Students get marks just for turning up” caught my eye. The post describes how some universities have been accused of bribing undergraduates by awarding assessment marks simply for turning up. Read More

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    Opinion

    assessment

  • PLEs, PLEs Me

    Sep 8th 2009

    By: Mark Smithers

    2 comments

    I have just finished read a really interesting post by @mollybob on the growth model for personal learning environments (PLE).  This coincided with reading @catspyjamasnz post on the relationship between a PLE and a PLN (personal learning network). It’s a subject that’s close to my heart at the moment as we consider the implications of implementing an institutional ePortfolio that, in the trial phases, seems to be seen as a PLE for students at least as much as a portfolio tool. In fact there seems to be quite a bit of fuzzy thinking (not least by me) about the roles and relationships between these different concepts not to mention how the VLE fits in with all of this (though this video by @jonmott looks at that relationship). To try and help me clarify my thoughts I have developed the following diagram. Read More

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    Educational Technology

  • 22 Big Lists for Educators

    Sep 3rd 2009

    By: Mark Smithers

    No comments

    A bit tongue in cheek this post but here is a list of big lists that might be useful for people interested in education, educational technology and e-learning. A fully expect that soon we will be having lists of lists of lists but there you go. These are some of the big lists I’ve bookmarked on www.delicious.com during 2009. Read More

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    Educational Technology

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