Twitter

Twitter for the academy

/ Rachel Buchanan / 1 Comment

Academics and Twitter: the good, the bad and how to survive out there

By Amanda Heffernan and Rachel Buchanan

This article was originally published on EduResearch Matters. Read the original article.AARE

Twitter is the social media of choice for many academics. At least one in forty academics in an institution is on twitter, contributing to the 4.2 million tweets about education every day. If you are involved in education in any way it is probably a good idea to get on there and see what is happening.

In today’s world of academia where it is essential to show evidence of impact Twitter can be invaluable in helping academics establish their larger digital identities, share their research and publications and mine for data that can assist with their research projects. Continue reading →

The researcher’s digital footprint

/ Rachel Buchanan / 2 Comments

Today I gave an information session on building an online presence for PhD students at the School of Education, University of Newcastle. The although the session was informal and I talked through the possibilities and how to’s of building an online presence, I did prepare some materials that pulls together research and advice. I also asked twitter and got some great responses which were added to the presentation. The latter exercise neatly demonstrated the power of twitter in terms of the usefulness and power of having an online network.

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If you’re not busy on Wed Dec 6th

/ Rachel Buchanan / Leave a comment

come and join us at Newcastle for a discussion about EdTech.

We are searching for the middle ground. So much of the discussion regarding technology in education is either evangelical (technology will save us) or pessimistic (nothing will change). Often the educators most enthusiastic about technology are also the most critical. The DICE research group are hosting the EdTech Talkfest – a chance to confab about the contradictions, emotions, optimism and problems of the EdTech field.

If you’d like to come please email Erica Southgate ~ erica.southgate@newcastle.edu.au The EdTech Talkfest will take place on Wednesday 6th December, 2017 9:30 – 4pm, Room X803 NeW Space Building, University of Newcastle, cnr Hunter & Auckland Sts, Newcastle. The event is free but places are limited.

Screenshot 2017-11-14 14.06.45

A belated update and some links of interest

/ Rachel Buchanan / Leave a comment

So I arrived back at my home institution in early July, to the pleasant discovery that I’m featured in our faculty’s research showcase publication. Not that I’ve had much time for research since finishing sabbatical. As I’m coordinating a rather large foundational course this semester, my time has been spent organising the teaching for that. We have over 1100 students enrolled in the course (all of our first and second year early childhood, primary and secondary teaching students) and it is being delivered in a blend of face-to-face and online modes. Which means I’m coordinating a large teaching team to deliver tutorials (seminars to use the UK parlance) to 41 classes per week for the semester, organising the lectures and building the online content. And there’s been marking.

Being a blended course, I’m combining lectures; (yes, an old fashioned notion, I know, but it’s not without its defenders), with classroom discussions slated for the tutorials; and chunked resources that provide background information, and neat definitions, concept explainers, and contemporary perspectives (new stories, blog posts and the like) that link to the academic readings for the online components. This course is certainly stretching my teaching and admin skills and I’ve even starting using Adobe spark to make little videos (yep, even got my own youtube channel, something I never thought that I would have the guts to do) and memes for the LMS. Continue reading →