Two staff from Good Learning Anywhere, Diane Altinbilek and Nida Doherty, presented at the ONLINE LEARNING 2018 Conference, which was held at the Westin Harbour Castle Conference Centre in Toronto on October 16 – 18, 2018. This conference is hosted annually by Contact North and the theme this year was Teaching & Learning in the Digital Age.
The event attracted over 900 delegates from across the country as well as delegates from North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia and Oceania.
Diane’s well-received presentation was titled, Embracing Technoculture in the New Educational Paradigms, and focused on the current monumental shift in education as it adjusts to the needs of millennials, an emerging generation of students who have been born and raised on technology. This phenomenon has significant challenges and potential for approaches to teaching and learning. Diane writes, “As this cohort stands to become the dominant demographic in colleges and universities and potentially in Literacy and Basic Skills as well as Post-Secondary Readiness/Upgrading programs, educators may find themselves unable to relate and finding it difficult to engage students in meaningful ways, meaning there could be adverse impacts on student success.”
Click here for further details of Diane’s presentation.
Nida’s presentation was titled Drawn to the Margins: Spoken Word and Indigenous Learners. This was co-presented with Jake Martell, who is the coordinator of Adult Literacy at Nokee Kwe London Employment and Education Centre in London.
Nida and Jake gave a spirited and also well-received presentation using a storytelling approach while outlining a blended-learning course proposal they are working on together that involves onsite First Nations adult literacy centres in Ontario and the Good Learning Anywhere live online platform. The proposed course focuses on Spoken Word prose and the goal of the course is to engage learners in First Nations communities in oral self-expression.
Click here for further details of Nida’s and Jake’s presentation.