Organized by Lina Morgado, the master’s coordinator, and a very engaged and resourceful group of students from MPEL4, it proved, once again, a great opportunity for the community involved in the master’s – teachers, students from the several editions, people interested in the subject areas – to interact and learn from one another. It was also an amazing showcase of the work done by the students in the fourth edition, organized around a Pecha Kucha session that was, for the most part, awesome (with a couple pre-recorded presentations that don’t work so well in a live event). Reflecting on last year’s and this year’s conference, one of the best feelings I have is how this master’s is such an exciting environment for innovation and experimentation concerning online teaching and learning.

We had also major contributions from invited speakers: Pedro Caramez presented remotely, through Colibri, a compelling talk on LinkedIn; Luísa António got people excited about creative labs and innnovation rooms;  Helena Lopes and Ana Boa-Ventura, from Media Shots, wowed us with digital storytelling for education; and Vitor Reis brought a very interesting perspective on the contributions of distance education in the training of firemen. The conference was streamed live and had a very active backchannel on Twitter (hashtag: #mympel), so we had a lot of people (including some of our students) following the conference all over the world.

It was an intense, rewarding day, both academically and also because of the opportunity to have some great informal exchanges with students and participants.

Some of us teachers presented on topics related to the curricular units we teach. Here’s my presentation on Open Educational Resources (PT). This and other resources can also be found on http://www.scoop.it/t/mympel-2011/.

Recursos Educacionais Abertos: Potencialidades e Desafios

And here are some pictures of the conference.

Posted by +Howard Rheingold On Youtube and shared on Twitter

Writing on the London School of Economics and Political Science blog "Impact of Social Sciences", Martin Weller restates some of his compelling ideas on digital scholarship. Love this paragraph:

Similarly, universities are realising that their online reputation is their main brand, that the glossy brochure is not how they attract students now. Being recognised as a university that has online savvy staff is the new equivalent of having TV celebrity academics.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/10/14/universities-digital-scholarship/

Next time someone asks me (and I get asked that a lot) “Why don’t you have an iPhone” or “Have you bought an iPad yet” and look puzzled when I tell them “I don’t buy Apple” I can point them to this post by Boone Gorges. It’s the perfect explanation.

Teleogistic / Done with Apple.