James Farmer - Sponsored by Ako Aotearoa
CEO Edublogs.com, Australia
Tuesday 9 September

James Farmer has been a teacher at La Trobe and RMIT Universities, a lecturer in education design at Deakin and the online community editor at The Age.
He is currently CEO of the largest education blogging network on the web, Edublogs (http://edublogs.org), and is co-founder of the WordPress MU development firm, Incsub.

While not in a symbiotic relationship with his laptop he enjoys a spot of red, interesting opinions and playing classical guitar (poorly).

Welcome to the Student-free Zone

Odds are, over the course of this conference, you'll attend a heap of sessions detailing brilliant classroom achievements, wonderful pedagogies and inspirational teaching.  But sometimes, somewhere along this route, we can lose sight of what really should matter above all of that, the thing that determines - more than any other factor - whether education works or not. Namely, you. The teacher.

In this keynote we'll explore how you can use the social web, as a professional, to enhance what it is that you do each time you come to work. We'll look at the opportunities for connecting with other like-minded people, sharing ideas and experiences, organizing and managing yourself day-to-day and finding what it is you want and need, when you want and need it. It's digital 'self-help' for educators, and we could do with a bit more of it than we currently have.

You'll be invited to consider the opportunities and challenges implicit within this, brainstorm how you might best use the web in your own personal context and ask and discuss some of the bigger questions around 'web 2.0'.  With luck, participants will leave with a broader understanding of the possibilities available to them online and few useful tips!

Dr Wayne Mackintosh
Commonwealth of learning (Canada)
Tuesday 9 September, remote

Dr. Wayne Mackintosh is a committed advocate and user of free software for education. He was the founding project leader of New Zealand's eLearning XHTML editor (eXe) project (www.exelearning.org) and responsible for establishing the Commonwealth of Learning's (COL) WikiEducator (www.WikiEducator.org) - a website that provides free eLearning content that anyone can edit and use.

Dr. Mackintosh joined COL as Education Specialist, eLearning and ICT Policy, on 1 May 2006. Formerly, he was Associate Professor and founding director of the Centre for Flexible and Distance Learning (CFDL) at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Wayne has extensive experience in the theory and practice of open and distance learning (ODL). Prior to moving to New Zealand he spent eleven years working at the University of South Africa (UNISA), a distance learning institution and one of the world's mega-universities. At the University of Auckland, he was tasked with eLearning strategy and leading CFDL's professional staff team. He has participated in a range of international consultancies and projects including work for COL, the International Monetary Fund, UNESCO and the World Bank. Wayne also serves as a member of the Editorial Board of Open Learning and publishes regularly in the field of flexible and distance learning. Wayne is a member of the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation
(wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Advisory_Board).

He has a keen interest in pedagogical innovation for sustainable development. "I look forward to my new role assisting countries of the Commonwealth realise their educational potential through ICTs for development. I firmly believe that the future of multi-modal learning in a digital world will be pioneered by the developing nations of our world. Together with COL's vision for the future and a team of experienced professionals, we can make a real difference in the lives of people throughout the Commonwealth.

Connecting WikiEducators through Heywire8: Kiwi innovations seeding a quantum shift for sustainable education futures?

Higher education systems around the world are challenged by increasing costs of provision. Consider for instance the USA, where increases in student fees have exceeded the national inflation index for the last decade thus raising questions about economic sustainability of higher education systems -- even in the industrialised world.

The Open Education Resource (OER) movement shows considerable potential to reduce cost, improve quality and widen access to educational opportunities. Facilitated by the power of social software in a connected world as evidenced by the phenomenal success of the Wikimedia Foundation projects and the WikiEducator initiative, educators can now take command of their own destiny by returning to the core value of education, namely to share knowledge freely.

This session will reflect and report on progress of two Kiwi innovations. First, the WikiEducator (link for the website: http://www.wikieducator.org ) project which is a community resource supported by the Commonwealth of Learning for the development of free educational content. Second, the Heywire8 initiative -- a new innovative concept to leverage the potential of business and sustainability models for a national OER collaboration in New Zealand.

These examples are a testament to New Zealand's  burgeoning leadership role in seeding what promises to become a quantum shift for sustainable education futures.