Barking at ants

On Wednesday 3rd February I gave a presentation to staff at the University of Brighton, on an invite from my old mate Asher Rospigliosi. His blog on learning using the Internet is worth a read. Below is the abstract of my presentation to staff in the Brighton Business School:

New Pedagogies for the Digital Age

The rapid emergence of new, participative and social media in higher education has caused teachers to question what they have previously believed about university teaching. Students also have different expectations when they arrive on the university campus. The proliferation of handheld and mobile devices, smart phones, ubiquitous computing and broadband networked technologies, interactive whiteboards, touch screen and wireless technologies is bewildering, and on the back of these developments, many academics also find it difficult to come to terms with the new digital cultures and values their students bring to the lecture room. In this presentation I will explore these tensions, discuss the potential and actual applications of new technologies, and examine how they are changing and challenging our traditional notions of pedagogy. I will speculate on how the digital age is causing us to reappraise and re-examine our own personal and professional values, and approaches to the business of learning and teaching. I will offer some simple, practical examples of how to integrate new social media into formal learning contexts and provide some insight into these processes from my own reflections on professional practice in teacher education.

Here is my slideshow:

New Pedagogies For The Digital Age

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

It has been a long time since I was in Brighton. When I was last in Brighton I was an undergraduate student of psychology. I studied at Lancaster House, the cognitive science centre of the University of Sussex. I remember vividly visiting the funfair on the end of Brighton Pier one evening, and took a ride on the waltzers. I had just enjoyed a rather large dinner at a local Tex-mex. It wasn't a smart thing to do. Spicy food, cider and fast whirling things is not a very comfortable combination. The inevitable happened. I experienced a technicolour yawn - I won't go into any more details. I managed to avoid barking at ants again by steering clear of all the fast whirling things when I was there this time.

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