Denise Nicholason and I have been working together to create a programme to celebrate Open Access week (18 – 22 October) here at Wits University, with a series of lunchtime seminars promoting openness – including Open Access, Open Educational Resources (OER), Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and Open Data. The seminars include the following …
Author archives: Derek
How do you do
Introduction To Personal Learning Networks View more presentations from Weblearning. For me it started with a diagram. After a decades worth of dulling down, the horizons of my educational web landscape suddenly broadened with Scott Wilsons’ Future VLE illustration. While I struggled to understand the ramifications of this shift from the funnel model for my …
Supporting learning in unexpected spaces.
I’m involved in assisting academics and teachers with the “reach” of their work. I come alongside them and contribute to the teaching and learning experience. The technologies that I tout and support are partly responsible for reshaping or traversing the walls of a classroom. By adding a new layer of technologies into an existing classroom, …
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New Learning Spaces
Mobile phones are transforming the way the world connects. Over 4 billion people have mobile cellular subscriptions, 450 million of these users have access to the mobile Web. Facebook (as of July 2010), has officially admitted that it has has a staggering 500 million plus members, each with an average of 130 friends. 150 million …
Unleashing Student’s Inner DJ
Joburg has about 40 community radio stations, and on Monday 12 July, another station is going to be added to the eclectic sound mix that keeps our Jozi airwaves jam packed. The VOW (Voice of Wits) is about to return to campus after a long absence. Its launch has been timed to coincide with the …
Generating ambient intimacy
Maybe it sounds a bit too touchy feely, but I’ve been thinking more and more that there’s a need for a place in an educational setting where there are opportunities for students and faculty to create a feeling of connectedness, a spot for sharing and belonging. The hyper public world has created such places. Intimate …
Where in the world is Witsy
This weekend, I thought I’d entertain myself with telling my weekends story to ..umm… well to myself. You know the the theory – location based social networking allows you to share your real-time location with those in your network. And since it’s geting harder and harder to stay disconnected, I decided to take out my …
My first week in Jozi
With the sound of afternoon traffic, an amplified African guitar and the evening sun inviting me to knock off from work, I thought I’d take a breath and reflect on the memorable, exciting and sad moments since being appointed to the eLearning, Support and Innovation Unit at Wits University on June 1. With the 2010 …
An inspiring knight in Cape Town
Schoolnet and the Commonwealth of Learning invited me (and a variety of highups in Education) to a day long seminar in Cape Town around the topic of ICT integration and teacher training. The key note speaker was the inspiring knight, Sir John Daniel. Not only did he take 25 years to complete a part-time Master’s …
Passing nodes on a network
What would make a normally sane person leave their secure and predictable routine, fly to another city (or country) and voluntary sit for days in meeting after meeting? A good meal, a legitimate excuse to duck family responsibility or the possibility that you might meet a person that could revolutionise your life. For me, probably …