Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

2.13.12 | The Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) 2012 Annual Meeting starts today in Austin and online and runs through Feb. 15.

The conference is focusing on the challenges facing teachers and the learning community. From the website:

Just within the space of the past year, open educational content and the ubiquity of even smarter mobile devices have shifted the teaching and learning landscape and the way we think about what constitutes learning environments. Increased reliance on cloud-based resources has created new opportunities for innovation but also presented us with important policy and privacy issues. There is new emphasis on evaluation, learning effectiveness, and accountability.

Some of the questions confronting us include:

* What are the new challenges and opportunities associated with digital literacy, especially in light of the arrival of mobile computing?

* What are the methods and ways we have to assess the effectiveness of our innovations, practices, and programs?

* How does an institution address and incorporate the emerging field of learning analytics?

* Are social media and social networking living up to their potential to accelerate our progress toward active learning engagements?

If you haven’t packed your bags for Texas yet, you can register for the online component, which will be broadcast live via Mediasite and include:

* Webcasts of all 4 general sessions, as well as 6 featured and 14 concurrent sessions; interactive discussion sessions with experts on current topics; and exclusive interviews and question-and-answer sessions with a selection of speakers.

* A Virtual Conference Center that includes an auditorium, networking lounge, and an interactive ELI game.

In addition, 10 webcasts, including four general sessions, will be open and available to the general public.

Visit educause.edu/ELI2012/network for more on using social media to network during the conference and how to contribute to the ELI 2012 backchannel.

Plus: This year, New Media Consortium teamed up with the Educause Learning Initiative on the latest NMC Horizon Report. Released earlier this month, the report describes the annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, a decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education.

Six emerging technologies, reduced from 12 selected by the Horizon Project Higher Education Advisory Board (visit the board’s wiki), are identified across three adoption horizons: electronic tablet computing and mobile apps are identified in the one-year horizon; learning analytics and game-based learning in the two- to three-year horizon; and gesture-based computing and the Internet of Things in the four- to five-year horizon. 
 
“Identifying the key emerging technologies for learning is vital at a time when all institutions are forced to make very careful choices about investments in technology,” ELI Director Malcolm Brown said in a statement. “The Horizon Report goes beyond simply naming technologies; it offers examples of how they are being used, which serves to demonstrate their potential. The report also identifies the trends and challenges that will be key for learning across all three adoption horizons. This makes the Horizon Report essential for anyone planning the future of learning at their institution.”

“Campus leaders and practitioners across the world use the report as a springboard for discussion around emerging technology,” said Larry Johnson, chief executive officer of the NMC. “As this is the ninth year of the project, the report also offers an opportunity to think how some of these technologies have unfolded over time. What we see is that there continue to be long-term channels along which educational technology is evolving. These have affected, are affecting now, and will continue to affect the practice of teaching and learning in profound ways for some time.”