I was delighted to contribute to the VocTeach FE Symposium – Aggregating High Quality Online Educational Resources for FE organised by the Open University alongside experts including Bob Harrison, Vikki Liogier, Caroline Wright and John Domingue. VocTeach FE Symposium kickstarted a broad community around this issue related to supporting the aggregation of high quality learning resources for online FE education. Specifically, we will bring together FE educational experts and practitioners, EdTech experts, awarding organisations and…
Category: FE
Last week I was invited to contributed to a symposium organised by Policy Connect for the Further Education Trust for Leadership (FETL), an independent FE think tank. The symposium was chaired by Lord Chris Holmes, Chair of the EdTech Leadership Group and APPG for Assistive Technology; and fellow panellists included Paul McKean, Head of Further Education and Skills, Jisc, Deborah Millar, Group Director of Digital Learning Technology, Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education and…
This week I am contributing to a conference called FELTAG 2017: Embracing Digital Technology in Further Education and I am pleased to have been invited to give a short keynote as part of the programme. My talk (slides) will focus on workforce development to maximise Learning Technology impact in three ways: first, I set out what questions we need to ask about skills and capabilities, second, I explore how and open online course can support workforce development and…
This talk is for the FELTAG 2016 conference taking place on 28 September 2016 in London. Having given plenty of talks about FELTAG in the past few years, I have been pondering what I really want to say to my audience in twenty minutes. Part of being the opening keynote is that you get to speak first and help set the tone for the day, but looking at the agenda of what’s to follow, it…
One project I am currently involved in is a course on FutureLearn called Blended Learning Essentials. In this short blog post I want to think about how this course, or others like it, can be used as tools for change. A bit about the course This is an open course about using blended learning for vocational education and it runs for a total of 8 weeks in two parts. The first part covers the ‘essentials’…
As part of finishing my #CMALT portfolio I have been working on completing a section on communication. The example I am using is leading a small team in delivering an online conference, in this case ALT’s first wholly online winter conference in December last year. Some of the things I have been reflecting on re communication are: delivering live events when you are not all in the same place and using online communication methods to…
“…On Tuesday 10 November I had the opportunity to give oral evidence to the Commons Select Committee for their digital economy inquiry. ALT had already submitted written evidence representing our members, and this opportunity to speak to MPs about skills and professional development in a digital economy was a rare chance to have our voice heard.”… Read my full FE News article here . Published 19 November 2015.
“There are a lot of competing priorities, not least of all the new area reviews of post-16 education and training that Bobbie McClelland, Deputy Director at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), spoke about at the recent ALT Annual Conference – you can watch the briefing here. For many colleagues the start of the new term and a whole new cohort of students will likely have stretched the capacity to its limit, and…
“August is usually the month where everyone is on holiday. For us, it’s the busiest time of year. So if you are keen to browse and think ahead of what this year’s Annual Conference of the Association for Learning Technology has in store, here is a personal preview. This year’s programme features an FE and skills track on Wednesday which I am really looking forward to (and if you cannot participate in person, you can follow…
“… Learning Technology is not generally in the headlines when it comes to politics. At least not explicitly. However, there are many reasons why learners, providers and employers would benefit from Learning Technology having a place in the early thinking of Sajid Javid, Nicky Morgan and Nick Boles. Here’s why…” Read my full FE News article here . Published 15 May 2015.