JISC Digital Media at DIVERSE 2012
Posted by Steve Hull on Friday 13 July 2012
Tags:
e-learning |
finding moving images |
video |
'Teacher Conservation Project', 6 July, 2012. With permission of KU Leuven - Dienst Media en Leren.
JISC Digital Media once again had a significant presence at the DIVERSE conference 2012.
DIVERSE focuses on the use of video in education. This year's event was held in Leuven, Belgium.
'Sharing Online Video for Education', 4 July, 2012. With permission of KU Leuven - Dienst Media en Leren.
Tim O'Riordan presented a paper about EdMediaShare, JISC Digital Media's curated site for educational video which has been organised with a pedagogical framework. The talk generated a very positive response and it is hoped that many more contributions to the site will be forthcoming as a result.
Along with Ingrid Bruynse of the University of KwaZulu Natal and Vance Martin of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I presented a progress report on the Teacher Conservation Project, an attempt to address the serious shortage of teachers in South Africa through the provision of educational video which can be downloaded onto mobile phones in rural locations. The response of the attendees was extremely enthusiastic and afterwards Peter Van Pareerren, chair of DIVERSE, proposed that the project be adopted by DIVERSE to ensure continued support and increase the provision of materials.
Over the three days of the conference there were five keynotes, covering topics as, er, diverse as a 35-part television series recreating the voyage of the Beagle with a clipper ship and the use of tweets, blogs and wikis to track the progress of students taking a computer science course. And many more fascinating topics were presented in the 12 moderated sessions of papers.
Perhaps the best part of DIVERSE, however, is the atmosphere. As a relatively small conference (just over 160 attendees), DIVERSE has a friendly, convivial feel about it; no surprise, then, that people keep coming back to it year after year. It does a wonderful job of promoting a sense of an international community all focusing on the ways that video (and digital media in general) can be used to enhance the educational experience.
Next year's event will be held in Osnabrück, Germany, 26-28 June. Perhaps we'll see you there!
