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1: Newsletter 68, 7th Aug, 08
08/06/08 06:09 PM
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3rd International LAMS & Learning Design Conference in Sydney, December 5th

The 3rd International LAMS & Learning Design Conference will be held at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University on Friday, December 5th, with training workshops available on December 4th. The conference website is at http://lams2008sydney.lamsfoundation.org/ - initial information is available now, and more details (including paper/presentation submission deadlines) will be added soon.

I'm delighted to announce Professor Diana Laurillard from the University of London as a Keynote Speaker for the conference - Diana will be joining us in person to share her latest thoughts on Learning Design and Pedagogic Planners.

The theme for this conference is "Perspectives on Learning Design" - we're keen to explore many different approaches to Learning Design. As past LAMS conference attendees will know, LAMS Conferences have had a broad Learning Design focus rather than just being about LAMS. We're changed the title of this (and future) conferences to "LAMS & Learning Design" to acknowledge that the broad range of approaches to the field are always welcome at these conferences.

Advanced Notice: 2009 European LAMS & Learning Design Conference

While it's some way to go into the future, I'm pleased to announce that the 2009 European LAMS & Learning Design Conference will be held in the UK in conjunction with the Open University. The exact venue and dates are yet to be decided, but the dates will most likely be in late June or early July - more details in the coming months.

We're also considering conducting some one day national LAMS workshops elsewhere in Europe around this time - please let me know if your organisation would be interested to help host one of these.

2008 European LAMS Conference wrap-up

On the subject of conferences, the 2008 European LAMS Conference in Cadiz, Spain was a great success - our thanks to the University of Cadiz and everyone who helped make this event so enjoyable. We've started to add slides and audio for presentations (where we have them) to the Program area of the conference website - see http://lams2008.lamsfoundation.org/program.htm (if you were a presenter and would like your slides added, please email them to me).

New LAMS International partner in the USA - Solution Grove

At the 2008 European LAMS Conference, I announced a new LAMS International partner in the USA - Solution Grove. Solution Grove CEO Caroline Meeks and her colleagues have worked with the LAMS team for several years, particularly around the technology that support the LAMS Community. We're delighted that Solution Grove will now be providing hosting, support and training for LAMS in the USA. We'll have a press release about this out on the LAMS International website in the new future - for more details of Solution Grove, see http://www.solutiongrove.com/

Great new introductory LAMS article

Dr Christopher Alexander is Language Laboratory Coordinator and Assistant Professor at The University of Nicosia in Cyprus. He has just posted a link to a great introductory article about LAMS which includes many embedded links to additional resources. While the article is a useful introduction for all areas, it has a special focus on the potential of LAMS for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages). See http://www.iatefl.org.pl/call/j_web32.htm

Oxford University report on Simulation Tool Integration with LAMS

Ken Kahn and colleagues have been working on the JISC-funded "Constructing 2 Learn" project at Oxford University. The project summary is:
Computer-based modelling is playing an increasingly important role in scientific topics as diverse as ecology, epidemiology, economics, sociology, animal behaviour, and climate. There is a growing awareness that university students in these fields need to learn how models are built and how they work, and yet they do not typically have computer programming skills. The Constructing 2 Learn (C2L) project aimed to remedy this by developing a tool that enables students to build models by composing high-level pre-built components, by integrating the tool with a learning activity management system, and by creating and trialling a few computer model construction learning designs."

The simulation tool was integrated with LAMS using the LAMS Tools Contract. A summary of the project (with a link to the full report) is available at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/Home/publications/publications/constructing2learnevaluation.aspx

Sakai Conference Learning Design presentation recording

I was an Featured Speaker at the recent Sakai conference in Paris, and gave a general presentation about Learning Design and its potential for the future of e-learning. The video of this presentation is now available at rtsp://video.cpm.jussieu.fr/Archive/visio/sakai/ad080701_2.rmvb (requires Real Player). This is a useful general introduction to Learning Design with some examples from LAMS (but it is not just a "LAMS talk"). The slides (which are a little blurry in the video) can be downloaded at
http://www.lamscommunity.org/dotlrn/clubs/educationalcommunity/lamsresearchdevelopment/forums/attach/go-to-attachment?object_id=635570&attachment_id=635572

Posted by James Dalziel

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