Leigh Blackall
Otago Polytechnic (NZ)
Wednesday 10 September

Leigh lives in Andersons Bay in Dunedin New Zealand with his beautiful wife Sunshine and their dog Mira and cat Anai. Leigh and Sunshine enjoy renovating an old state house for energy efficiency around permaculture design principles. Leigh’s professional interest is in education and networked learning. Leigh currently works in Educational Development for the Otago Polytechnic and specialises in the use of social media and communication and its relationship to socially constructed learning. Leigh writes the Learn Online Web Log and facilitates several online communities for professional educators. Sunshine wants Leigh to give up work and go back to being a landscape painter - Leigh tends to agree.

Now that teaching is dead - how do we learn?

In this talk, Leigh Blackall will reflect on his notorious statement at Education.au's Global Summit in Sydney 2006, teaching is dead, long live learning. Leigh will give us a part 2: Connected learners. Leigh will draw on his experiences to date working at Otago Polytechnic with developing informal learning, open education, learning through social media, and online networked learning.

You can access an audio visual recording of Leighs' 2006 talk at http://blip.tv/file/89189/.

George Siemens
University of Manitoba (Canada)
Wednesday 10 September, remote

George Siemens is a well-known theorist on the changing nature of learning in a digitally-based society. He is the author of a widely cited article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age and the book Knowing Knowledge - an exploration of the impact of the changed context and characteristics of knowledge.  Born in Mexico, currently living and working in Canada, George is the Associate Director in the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba.

What is the unique idea in Connectivism?

Views of knowledge and learning are instantiated in the foundation of education. Technological developments of the last several decades has created new opportunities for learning, interaction, and democratization of information access and creation. Do existing views of learning – defined by the “big three” of behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism – translate sufficiently to this environment to continue to serve as foundations for education? This presentation will explore various views of learning and argue for a reconsideration of learning theory in light of  technological developments and current trends in how knowledge is perceived and how learning occurs in a networked world.

Update: Presentation slides