The 5 R's of Open Education and Eurocall 2105

Memories of Eurocall 2015 may be distant now. The warmth of the Italian sunshine and our new and old friends companionship lost to the chill of the winter and the demands of a new year. However the ripples remain in cyberspace and when the UK language e-learning community comes together again in a few days at #elearnllas in Southampton we will be returning to share the inspiration provided by Eurocall's keynote speakers. 

The playlist of videos of these presentations provide a helpful snapshot of the conference but also an ongoing source of discussion and debate as our field moves forward. Technology is fast moving and teaching approaches which embrace it's use have not always kept pace. I will be talking to the #elearnllas community about my experiences of developing a virtual learning environment for language teachers and sharing tips which I hope will help them in turn to support their communities as they navigate the digital oceans. 

I will be celebrating the 5 R's of Openness in order to reconnect during this event with the wider language community. My presentation will be multimodal and streamed on the morning of Friday 22nd January so participation at a distance is welcomed. The #elearnllas tag will help you find each other and maybe we can relive some of the warmth of Perugia, popping our heads out of our respective ponds to enjoy the sunshine. Please explore this interactive map of the terrain I will be sharing on Friday. You can even collect an open badge - but more of that on the day!

Eurocall 2015 through our social sharing

Melinda Dooly's presentation on socially constructed competences

The actual title for the presentation is in fact Connecting the Dots to put the emphasis and focus on linking our activities not only with theory but also with the participants and activities. Socially distributed cognition is a central concept in the approach - the dynamic nature of knowledge makes teaching more challenging as the content and in a way context are in a constant flux.

Melinda walked us through the PADS telecollaboration project with primary school students. The project connects the dots by including several "levels" of practitioners in the process. These are teacher educators, practicing teachers and student-teachers. The approach in the activities was based on the ideas of PBL and students worked through a multitude of teacher designed (note: not research designed) activities solving problems and communicating their acquired understanding to the others (both in the clasroom but also overseas with the partner class).

The preliminary results show clearly that the young students are quick to acquire skills, techniques and repertoires to communicate their thoughts to others. The aims of the project and the activities themselves sound very exciting and we definitely need to keep posted on the developments in the project. Melinda's website can be found at: http://pagines.uab.cat/melindadooly