“I believe that if something like a political life is to remain for us in this world of technology, then it begins with friendship. Therefore my task is to cultivate disciplined, self-denying, careful, tasteful friendships.” —Ivan Illich
I live in Andersons Bay in Dunedin New Zealand with my beautiful wife Sunshine and our dog Mira. My professional interest is in education and networked learning. I currently work in Educational Development for the Otago Polytechnic and specialise in the use of socially networked media and communication and its relationship to socially constructed learning. I maintain the Learn Online Web Logand facilitate the Teach and Learn Online eGroup. Sunshine and I also design and develop multi media educational resources. Any spare time I find is spent with Sunshine and Mira. You’re welcome to view my photos for a pictorial combination of lifestyle and profession.
- eMail: leighblackallATgmailDOTcom
- Skype: leigh_blackall
- Phone: +64(0)21736539
- Second Life: Leroy Goalpost
- Blog: http://learnonline.wordpress.com
- Photos: http://flickr.com/photos/leighblackall/
- Videos: http://leighblackall.blip.tv/
- Other media: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=leighblackall
- Papers, books, work and education: http://wikieducator.org/User:Leighblackall
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January 18, 2007 at 9:18 pm
21stCenturyLearner » Blog Archive » Rob Curley Keynote
[...] to a link in a recent comment by Leigh on my april 7 2006 post just listened to a keynote from Rob [...]
March 15, 2007 at 1:38 am
Dan Wilson
Hello Leigh,
I’ve been checking out your “learnonline” blog and was excited to see that you’re an advocate of online tools for education. I thought you might be willing to take a look at our web 2.0 app with real potential for educational use.
“Coventi Pages” is a full-featured online word processor with discussion features that go way beyond current “comment” offerings and have the potential to change the way people work together on documents. At Stanford University, we’re finding that instructors really like it for giving feedback to students, and that students find it useful for peer reviews and group projects.
Our big insight is that collaboration on documents is a matter of attaching threaded discussions to sections of text as metadata. Teachers can start a targeted dialogue with a student by highlighting text and writing a note in the margin, just like pen and paper. Students can reply to comments, and/or make changes to the document while seeing the conversation in context.
Coventi was founded by Stanford Computer Science students and is advised by Stanford Profs. Terry Winograd (Advisor to Larry Page on the “Page Rank” paper) and Fred Gibbons (Founder, Software Publishing Corp.).
Here’s a link to a quick demo video:
http://www.coventi.com/videos/IntroToPages.aspx
Accounts are free right now so it’s a great time to give it a try. If you do, please let me know what you think!
Thanks so much,
Dan
March 22, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Leon
Hi Leigh,
I’m a passionate advocate of use of podcasting in education. I hope it will be of interest to you and visitors of your blog to learn about a new site Learn On The Go - education & learning podcast directory. It contains carefully selected educational and instructional podcasts covering wide variety of topics and aims to promote the use of audio and video podcasting learning materials for personal and professional development. Very recommended for students, teachers and everyone interested in spending his/her spare time for learning.
My best wishes,
Leon
March 27, 2007 at 3:27 am
simonfj
Leigh,
This is what i was looking at.
http://www3.open.ac.uk/contact/details.aspx?countryid=45
And this is what their vice chance was saying
http://www.open.ac.uk/vice-chancellor/Speeches_3a00_Publications/Speech/Challenges_and_Opportunities_For_The_Open_University_In_The_21st_Century.html
The thing i see is that there is probably an opportunity to use some of the content, including BBC’s, as a trigger to get people to go to an online place e.g. http://www.open2.net/discussing.html
which as the orientator to the local online communiies, and acts as a filter to the ”local’ polytechs courses.
June 19, 2007 at 2:39 am
Mike Riversdale
RSS feed?
Looked and looked and looked … no luck … can ya point me to it?
June 19, 2007 at 3:07 am
leighblackall
http://learnonline.wordpress.com/feed
November 12, 2007 at 9:45 pm
SimPa connecting stories and landscape « Computing for Sustainability
[...] spent the day at Ōtākou with Tahu, beginning to retell his story. Tori organised, Leigh and Sunshine drove the camera, and Phoebe helped while Vicky took pictures for modelling and I (perhaps less [...]
December 27, 2007 at 6:22 pm
TeachTech » Blog Archive » Leigh Blackall on Connectivity
[...] Leigh Blackall, an educational technologist that ’specialises in the use of socially networked media and communication and its relationship to socially constructed learning’ at Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand has written a telling post on connectivity. His post looks at the premise that content is king and he argues that it is connectivity that is important in education. Well worth your time to read. I could not agree more with Lee’s sentiments. [...]