Technology – Page 7 – Digital Learning Dispatches

Ireland’s reputation as a digital frontrunner continues to grow with news that Dublin City University (DCU) has been selected by the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) to host the 2019 World Conference on Online Learning. Held every second year the World Conference is the largest and most prestigious international event exploring new open, online and flexible models of education.

Gard Titlestad, ICDE Secretary General, reports, “DCU submitted an outstanding case to host the 28^th ICDE World Conference, which in November 2019 will attract to Dublin the world’s leading scholars, researchers, innovators, policy-makers, industry partners and practitioners working in the field”.

DCU’s success in winning the rights to host the 2019 event was formally announced on Thursday in a presentation to over 1400 delegates from 96 countries during the closing ceremony at this year’s World Conference in Toronto. The announcement was marked earlier in the day by an official signing ceremony, which notably was sealed by the DCU delegation sharing a glass of Irish Whiskey with the Secretary General and members of the ICDE team.

ICDE_wc17_-8872

Professor Mark Brown, Director of the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL), and 2019 World Conference Chair says, “Our successful bid in hosting the World Conference with a theme of Transforming Lives and Societies is recognition of DCU’s leadership and growing international reputation in the area of online learning”.

As Professor Anne Looney, Executive Dean of DCU’s Institute of Education, Ireland’s largest teacher education provider, reports, “DCU has a strong team working in the field of digital learning and is committed to opening access to education and providing opportunities for life-long learning through new digital technologies”.

WCOL Promo 1 Updated

Global demand for online part-time study continues to grow internationally, with currently over 6 million students in the U.S alone estimated to be completing some of their degree online. Professor Brown notes, “In Ireland, despite the current restrictive funding model, the demand from part-time mature students for more online and flexible learning pathways continues to increase as people look to earn as they learn”. This year DCU accepted a record number of new registrations for online degree programmes offered through the DCU Connected platform.

Professor Brown reports that more than 60 million learners worldwide registered for a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in 2016, and this figure is expected to continue to grow over the next few days. Notably, DCU will be launching its first official MOOC in 2018 on Irish Language and Culture through the FutureLearn platform. This MOOC initiative is part of the Fáilte ar Líne – Welcome on Line project supported by the Irish Government under the 20 Year Strategy for the Irish Language.

FutureLearn Purple 1

Associate Professor Mairéad Nic Giolla Mhichíl, Head of the NIDL’s new Ideas Lab leading this collaborative initiative between FIONTAR & Scoil na Gaeilge says, “Further MOOCs are planned over 2018 as DCU looks to innovate in new models of online learning and to provide access to engaging, learning opportunities to people living throughout Ireland, and beyond”.

Minister of Education

DCU’s commitment to promoting the Irish language and widening access to life-long learning was discussed at this year’s conference in Toronto with Hon Mitzi Hunter, Minister of Education, and further recognised at this year’s World Conference, with Professor Brown’s appointment by ICDE as a Global Ambassador for Open Educational Resources.

According to Professor Brown the World Conference in Dublin will provide an excellent platform to showcase both Ireland’s innovation in digital learning and global reputation in the IT sector. He says, “DCU is looking forward to working with both major industry partners and the Irish Education sector in staging such a significant world event in Dublin”.

DCU would like to acknowledge the support of Fáilte Ireland and Happening Conferences and Events in the preparation of its successful bid against other competition to host the World Conference. More information about the 28^th ICDE 2019 World Conference on Online Learning will be available from the following website:

http://wcol2019.ie

WCOL Promo 2 Updated

Several weeks ago DCU staff had an opportunity to experience first-hand the potential of Google Glasses. This blog post shares Dr Mark Glynn’s impressions after three weeks of “playing” with the technology and offers his thoughts on how Google Glasses could be used in an educational context.

Ease of use

The glass is quite easy to use, simply by swiping left, right up or down on the side panel of the glass allows you to easily navigate through the various menus. The short video below from Google illustrates the basics…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EvNxWhskf8

Glasses

I must admit like any piece of new technology it takes a bit of getting used to but after a few minutes you shouldn’t have an issue. I firmly believe that anybody would be able to use Google Glass, it is not just limited to technology heads like me. The Glass can be used out of the box and is very easy to set up. I found the instructions on https://glass.google.com/setup very easy to follow.

Part of the set up involves connecting Glass to the internet as illustrated in the relevant video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3ncmeGaKN0] and this is crucial in terms of the additional functionality that is available through the internet (e.g. sending messages, posting videos and pictures to your social media accounts or searching Google). You can also get an App for your phone (Android or iOS) but currently as it stands this app is only available if you have an American PlayStore or iTunes account. This is a bit problematic.

Applications for the classroom

In my opinion there are numerous education based scenarios where Glass could be used, including:

A lecturer could be wearing them in class and a student could send them a message during the class;
A lecturer could capture a video while conducting a particular experiment or procedure. The advantage of capturing the footage using Glass as opposed to a normal video camera is that you can see everything through the “eyes” of the lecturer. Furthermore it is much easier to use than any video camera that I’ve came across – after all it responds to voice commands.
Equally a student could capture their performance of a particular technique in the same way and submit it to their lecturer as part of an assignment.
A student could wear the glass and transmit the lecturer to one of their classmates that are not able to attend. This works very similar to “face time” conversations where you can see the other person on the phone. In the case of Glass, instead of seeing the other person on the call you can see what the other caller sees. If a student wants to broadcast the lecture, instead of a face-time call, they could open up a Google Hangout and invite their friends to join in.
Through using Google the user can use Glass to translate text they can see to another language of their choice.
Imagine a situation where you have individual photos of your class of 200 students and while looking at your students Google Glass presents you with your students name and selected details from their student record
The biggest potential though in my opinion is the integration of Augmented Reality (AR) with Google Glass. The use of AR in the classroom is well documented so I won’t open up that discussion here but Google Glass just makes it easy for the user. They don’t need to hold up their phone in front of their face -all they need to do is “look with their eyes”.

How other lecturers reacted

The level of excitement generated by the Glass was obvious for everyone to see. This was exemplified by the fact that I gave 48 hours notice for the workshop, the last week before exam results had to be submitted and we still had 46 staff immediately sign up to attend. We had to run two different workshops in order to give everybody the opportunity to ‘play’ and explore for themselves.