CITE Seminar – Modeling classroom education with participative technologies

How collaborative technology can facilitate and enrich blended or flipped classroom activities

Message from Centre for Information Technology in Education within the Faculty of Education

Date: 6 January 2014 (Monday)
Time: 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Venue: Room 101, 1/F., Runme Shaw Building, The University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Dr. Michele Notari, PHBern University of Teacher Education, Switzerland

About the Seminar
The seminar will give an overview of the recently published book, titled ‘The Wiki-Way of learning’, which has been translated into Chinese.

The Wiki-Way of Learning’ was written by over 10 authors from different countries. It describes a theoretical approach of learning using collaborative technologies, scaffolding models and contains many hands-on examples of using collaborative Web pages with learners ranging from primary school up to university level. Target audience includes lecturers, teachers and pre-service teachers.

Following an introduction by Prof. Mark Guzdial, a pioneer in using Wikis in education, the book gives a theoretical overview of collaboration and the social implications of the participative. Two different scaffolding models for learning are presented. The book also includes a description of Wiki-engines as a flexible tool for collaboratively creating, linking, revising and regrouping hypertext content. Such description enables readers to look into Wikis with the focus on its content and content creation process. Last but not least, different examples of tested and reflected learning scenarios using the two models and the Wiki described above are presented. Three of the presented learning scenarios have been set up and tested in Hong Kong and Mainland China. A more ‘hands-on chapter’ delivers information around strategies for setting up a learning unit using the ‘Wiki-Way of learning’ and about how to choose the appropriate Wiki-engine for a particular education setting.

The original book in German has been produced under OER (open educational resources) license and is accessible online for free. Readers can contact the authors and submit comments on each paragraph (the online Chinese version will follow soon). This new type of cross-media publication format will be discussed at the end of the talk.

About the Speakers
Dr. Michele Notari is a lecturer at the University of Teacher Education in Bern, Switzerland and was an honorary assistant professor in the Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong. He has published articles in key journals in the area of technology-enhanced learning, a book and several book chapters related to collaborative learning using participative technologies. He is Editor of a special edition of the Journal of Educational Research and Evaluation, board member of Wikisym, the international symposium on open Collaboration, the international Conference on Mobile Learning, and International Mobile Learning Festival. He holds a master degree in biology and computer sciences from the University of Berne, and a master degree in educational technologies from the University of Geneva. His research focus is on using participative technologies for formative assessment and effective collaboration.

Please register at http://www.cite.hku.hk/news.php?id=510&category=cite