Watch it now (<15 minutes) in a new window: Stand alone Adobe Presenter Overview

Stand alone 15 min Adobe Presenter JISC ONline Conference

Published by the E-standards for Training business activity of the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework), the Digital Video Principles guide is essentially a summary for practitioners of the Video Standards Report – 2011 and aims to provide a theoretical foundation to a range of digital video production issues. Worth a look.

Madison-Wisconsin Workshop 3 Aug 2011

24 colleagues from Distance Providers across the US, including form sectors with which we were less familiar such as Military Instructional Education, joined us for a DiAL-e workshop  in Madison-Wisconsin. A half-day workshop on the first day of the 27th Annual Distance Education Conference in Madison-Wisconsin ( #dtl2011 ) provided us with an excellent opportunity to explain and explore the work progressed since 2006. In retrospect we might well have spent more time on the underlying theoretical frameworks and contextual issues which underpin the DiAl-e, but we were excited to discuss video in a broader digital context with a focus on distance education. We took the opportunity to discuss how digital video might be optimised in distance education contexts using Web 2.0 technologies. We discussed and demonstrated the opportunities for using video as the basis for asynchronous discussion using VoiceThread, (about which we have already written elsewhere), for using subtitling not only to translate but annotate and punctuate video using Universal Subtitles, and the opportunities for using embedded segments of existing YouTube clips with ChopTube.   We ended with an insight into the role of emerging Semantic Video engines and the HTML5 format. The focus was very much on how teaching and learning can benefit from these emerging technologies. Details of the workshop are available here.

Our session is: DiAL-e Framework: Optimizing media for engagement at a distance and is a half-day workshop on

Wednesday, August 3; 1:00-4:00

advertised as

“Despite the abundance of digital media and communication tools now available to educators, it remains a challenge to use media effectively to promote learner engagement and higher order thinking skills. Join this lively, interactive and hands-on workshop to learn the Digital Artifacts for Learner Engagement (DiAL-e) framework for distance learning design and how to adapt it to your particular discipline and institutional setting. Through exemplars and problem-solving scenarios, you will explore how digital artifacts from a range of worldwide video archives can be used to develop higher levels of engagement, critical thinking and student independence. This workshop will also demonstrate how Web 2.0 tools support effective interactions around digital artifacts. Finally, you will develop your own ideas and exemplars for immediate application. Laptops will be helpful but are not required for participation.”

We are very excited about running this worksop, which we’ll endeavour to capture here at dial-e.net too.

Any questions lease feel free to ask via the comments.

Tweet tweet #dialeUS

DiAL-e Poster ALDinHE

It was a pleasure to join some 120 colleagues at ALDinHE 2011 at Queen’s University Belfast. From a range of different HEIs, and a diverse set of professional roles, participants came to share insights and good practice in a range of learning development related activities.  The conference theme ‘Engaging Students – Engaging Learning’  was so closely related to the work the we have done on using digital artefacts (notably video) to support higher order thinking skills in students a submission was a must.

I presented to colleagues Wednesday 20th April. I had a 90 minute workshop entitled ‘Engaging Learners with Digital Resources’. I opted to use a single webpage on this site to support the workshop, with links to the relevant resources and exemplars, static images and the YouTube channel. So a PowerPoint free zone! After providing a bit of background on the thinking behind the framework I demonstrated a simple example of how what it NOT said or shown in a resource might be the catalyst for the ‘what else’ question that can, as Phil Race said in his keynote, be the most powerful learning question.

Participants then had the chance to consider how two other examples might support non-subject related thinking amongst academic staff. The focus is on what the student is to DO with the clip, not what the clip is ‘about’.

There was some useful discussion and significant interest in the poster on display (available to download from the workshop page). It was also, on a personal level, a great chance to meetup with former colleagues form the Open University and the University of Hull.

Can you spare 5 minutes?

Participants will have an overview of the framework before getting the chance to use it in earnest and consider how it might support their colleagues in more effective use of digital content.

The workshop will be run using this website and resources at the Workshop Webpage and we’ll be tweeting at #dialeALD as we plan and review the workshop. We hope some of you will join Simon.