Rest of LAMS Conference

Thursday and Friday

The workshop on Thursday was invaluable in seeing what new functionality is available in LAMS.

My Computer went belly up Thursday and Friday, Blue screen scary stuff.
Not sure why but seems to be working OK today, will keep fingers crossed

The Workshops I attended to be honest were underwhelming and I don't think worth reporting.

I will however relate the useful people and conversations I had as well as our own presentation.

The first Key note was really discussing the fact that a lot of tertiary people do not have a teaching training background and therefore have a number of gaps in the way they communicate in an educational setting. The key note was about what systems and arguments can be given to change this fact. Not really relevant for what we are doing. LAMS was of course said to be one of the most sophisticated tools that will help change some of these issues.

The second Keynote involved two teacher educators and their teacher trainees and their use of LAMS.
It was useful to see the process they went through as part of the program to see how they had developed their sequences.
However there was one flaw. They had not actually used this in a teaching context with students.
The sequences appeared to long to me and the advantage in making them shorter with more reflective breaks would have been great.
The very first breakout was probably the best:
Debbie Evans from the innovation Centre at Macquarie University’s E-Learning Centre Of Excellence. The NSW LAMS server had as of that day
103 groups and 3223 users. As explained some were heavy users and others weren't.
Debbie outlined the support they gave at the centre and also in the schools.
They are employees of the NSW Govt but have three year renewable contracts to offer innovation and PD.
To be frank I am not even going to mention the other breakouts as they were not really what I was looking for in showing in depth support an developments of LAMS sequences.

It was good to hear in casual conversations that people were using LAMS to reevaluate their own teaching practices and re think their teaching practices.