We invite you to join our online festival taking place 9–20 July 2018. Our submission for proposals is now OPEN (Second call) and will remain open until 23 April 2018. For more information please see below. Please visit our festival website which contains further information about the theme, publication opportunities, timeline and registration information.

Festival Theme: Growing e-learning capacity together

After several decades of experience across projects rolling out educational technology it is well understood that the availability of technology is just one of several preconditions for success. Effective integration of technology to enhance learning and teaching requires the development and use of technical, organisational and pedagogical capabilities. This online festival is about the development of deep capacity for e-learning by African higher education in an increasingly networked world.

e/merge 2018 will convene a welcoming space and a diverse, dynamic community across multiple networks to discuss, debate, review, showcase and celebrate e-learning in higher education in Africa. Our focus is on e-learning in African higher education and on joining up the African and global conversations about e-learning research and practice. Presenters and workshop leaders from all continents who are working with or researching e-learning in Africa are encouraged to submit proposals. The presenters and conference interactions will be supported by a team of trained and experienced online facilitators from across Africa.

e/merge 2018 grows out of the series of e/merge online conferences in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2012, the Transform 2015 online conference and the e/merge Africa network for educational technology practitioners and researchers in African higher education which has presented regular online professional development events since 2014.

Publication Opportunities from e/merge 2018

All the e/merge 2018 presentations and papers will appear in the public online proceedings of the conference. Authors of the best presentations and papers in e/merge 2018 will be invited to submit improved versions of their papers for publication in the International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT). There are also likely to be other post-conference publication opportunities for e/merge 2018 authors.

Timeline
22/3/2018: Deadline for proposals (First Call)
23/4/2018: Deadline for proposals (Second Call) – extended – note new date
16/4/2018: Participant registration opens
4/5/2018: Feedback to authors and presenters
22/6/2018: Deadline for submission of papers and files for upload
22/6/2018: Unconference collaboration space opens
6/7/2018: Conference site goes live
9/7 – 20/7/2018: e/merge 2018

Presenter: Calkin Suero Montero (Ph.D.), University of Eastern Finland

Time and Date: Tuesday 6 March 2018, 1 pm SAST

Time converter at worldtimebuddy.com

Most uses of technologies in education and training today do not support 21st-century learning skills. In many cases, new technologies are simply reinforcing old ways of training and learning in current school settings and very often they are introduced according to a narrow perception as being suitable only for talented youth or only for Science-, Maths- or Engineering-oriented majors. Current developments call for a move from this elitism to the recognition that fluency with making technologies represents knowledge and skills valuable for every citizen.

The maker movement is a trend in which individuals or groups of individuals create (and market) products that are recreated and assembled using recycled materials including  electronic, plastic, silicon and virtually any raw material. Digital fabrication, complementary, is a process that joints design with production through the use of tools such as 3D modelling (computer-aided design) software and 3D printing. Nowadays, several studies assure that digital fabrication and making technologies, if coupled with proper learning methodologies such as Constructivism can provide learning experiences that promote young people’s creativity, critical thinking, teamwork, and problem solving skills, which are essential and necessary in the workplace of the 21st century.

The eCraft2Learn project will research, design, pilot, and validate a learning ecosystem for making computer-supported artefacts in both formal and informal learning contexts. The eCraft2Learn project seeks to establish digital fabrication and making as 21st century learning activities in formal and informal educational contexts; and to encourage a paradigm shift in technology education from black box and silo products – avoiding pre-programmed and pre-fabricated solutions which appear as black boxes – to the white box paradigm, so that learners change roles from consumers of digital technology to designers and makers of transparent problem solving artefacts.

In this webinar, Dr. Calkin Suero Montero will:

• Explain maker movement and digital fabrication
• Engage us in considering what this means for classrooms in educational contexts more broadly (formal and informal, school and university)
• Share PBL approaches that support 21st century skills through digital fabrication and making from the eCraft2Learn project
• Explain what a paradigm shift in technology education entails and why it is necessary
• Tips educators need to consider for using making in the classroom

This seminar has ended – for recording and resources presented please refer to the Facebook event page for this event

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Dr Calkin Suero Montero obtained her PhD in computer science at School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Japan. She works at the intersection of human-computer interaction, affective computing and ICT for development within educational contexts. She has ample experience working in multicultural environments on the deployment of innovative solutions to societal challenges with a particular focus on the application of educational technologies. She is Senior Researcher and H2020 eCraft2Learn Project lead investigator and coordinator at the School of Computing, University of Eastern Finland.

 

We will be running Facilitating Online twice during 2018. 

• 12 March – 4 May 2018 – Late Applications by 6 March
• 7 Oct- 30 Nov 2018 – Apply by 10 September

 

About the course

Facilitating Online provides a solid foundation for facilitating online events and courses. It is registered as a short course at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Facilitating Online was developed by the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) at UCT and is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York as part of its support for the e/merge Africa network. It is convened by Tony Carr and Nicola Pallitt and co-facilitated by facilitators from across Africa.

Recommendations by participants

“I learned many facilitation skills that I am now able to apply with my own students. I would recommend the course highly to anyone embarking on the online teaching and learning journey.”
Dr Judith McKenzie, Department of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Cape Town.

“This course doesn’t just teach you ABOUT online Facilitation, it actually gets you to facilitate … It’s a real opportunity to learn and develop. And what’s more? It has an African taste…”
Daniel Adeboye, Online Maths Tutor, Tutor for the Future

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