I am pleased to announce six e/merge online seminars and workshops with several more in the pipeline for 2014. Further details, Facebook event pages and registration pages will follow shortly. We welcome further proposals particularly for the second half of the year. Thanks to all the colleagues who will lead workshops or seminars this year.

18 March – 26 March – Digital Story Telling Workshop: Presenters: Jolanda de Villiers Morkel, Senior Lecturer at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa & Daniella Gachago, Lecturer at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa. Please note that a maximum of 25 participants will be accepted for this workshop.

31 March – 4 April – mLearning Seminar: 1) How to use tablets for effective adult education in Africa. Presenter: Batseba Seifu (Project Manager, The Africa Peace and Security Programme, University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) and 2) mLearning via audio and GSM/feature phones. Presenter: Christopher Pruijsen (CEO & Co-founder of Sterio.me )

14 April to 16 May – Learning Design Workshop. Convenors: Jolanda de Villiers Morkel (Senior Lecturer, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa) & Professor Gráinne Conole (University of Leicester, United Kingdom)

30 April – 5 May – Inclusive Design of e-Learning Environments: A Global Agenda (Seminar). Presenter: Associate Professor Denise Wood (University of South Australia)

18 June – 20 June – The Web in Africa (Seminar). Presenter: Nnenna Nwakanma, Regional Coordinator for Africa, World Wide Web Foundation

15 October – 17 October – Presenter: Professor Gilly Salmon (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia). Title to be announced

This post follows up on the survey report and an executive summary from the e/merge Africa Needs and Priorities Survey which are available for reading , download and comment in Google Drive.  The report concludes with a list of priority topics for e/merge Africa 2014 events which appears at the end of this message.

There are so many forms of deep expertise and rich professional experience across diverse contexts within e/merge Africa and our events should reflect this depth, richness and diversity. Please consider yourself as a potential online presenter or workshop leader and let us know what you would like to offer.  

Call for Proposals: You are invited to propose an online event for e/merge Africa in 2014 which shares your expertise, insight and practices with colleagues across Africa and the world using our online proposal form or feel encouraged to address more preliminary or speculative ideas to us at [email protected]. We will give preference to events addressing one or more of the priority topics for 2014 activities but will certainly consider other areas as well. Please submit proposals by 24 January if you want to be considered  for events from February to April.

Call for Nominations: You are invited to nominate a potential presenter from Africa or another continent for an e/merge 2014 event using our online nomination form.

The Needs and Priorities survey ends with a list of 21 topics in clusters focused on pedagogy, African context, technology, and evaluation and research practices. Calls for event proposals and nominations of presenters will be issued in early January 2014. 

• The Pedagogy cluster  includes Designing online and blended courses;  ICT Integration; Use of Open Educational Resources; Teaching and facilitating online; Using Social Media for teaching and learning; Application of new learning theories for blended learning ; Using mobile technologies for teaching and learning; Innovative new ways to teach and learn;Gamification (Horizon Report 2013); and Digital Literacies (Glister, Davidson and Goldberg)
• The African Context cluster includes Design for our African contexts; and MOOCs in Africa
• The Technology cluster includes Creating course content; Capturing and editing images and audio; Communication tools; and Practices from Low Tech
• The Evaluation and Research Practices cluster includes Using social media for research;  Using ‘open tools’ for research; Innovative practices in educational technology research; andLearning Analytics (Horizon Report 2013)

Graphic by Rondine Carstens