Broadcaster Nora Young to deliver keynote at ABEL’s summer institute

Nora Young

On August 21 and 22, the Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning (ABEL) will host the 11th annual ABEL Summer Institute (ASI) at York University.

The conference titled ‘Changing Learning Cultures: Transforming Practice’ will investigate how learning cultures are evolving and transforming teaching and learning methodologies. The event will also introduce delegates to new technologies and tools to inform their educational practices. Registration is open and the agenda is available online.

ASI 2012 will investigate the importance of new web based and mobile technologies, their impact on learning culture and how they are transforming pedagogical practice through two days of hands-on learning activities, keynote speakers, and facilitated conversations.

Nora YoungKeynote speaker Nora Young (right), host of CBC Radio’s Spark, opens ASI with her talk “Forests and Trees: Making Meaning from Information in the Coming Data Boom”. Young will explore the shifts in information gathering from the onset of social media and web 2.0 technologies and how they have affected how we find, evaluate and create information. The implications for teaching and learning will be examined as teachers become front line guides helping students navigate this new digital environment.

The second keynote speaker Clarence Fisher is a teacher and consultant. Fisher closes the ABEL Summer Institute with his talk “The Edtech Food Chain”. Fisher will discuss how changing teaching practices enable students to be creative producers, community building connectors and passionate makers is paramount to moving education forward. His talk will seek to answer how educators can move from the ‘buying shiny gadgets’ model to one based on engaging student learning with appropriate learning technologies.

Some of the discussions and workshops on the ASI 2012 agenda include: Classroom in your Pocket, Edmodo vs. Moodle, Google Apps for Education, iOS – A New Frontier, Leadership in a Digital Age, Tech 2.0: Solution or Problem, Universal Design for Learning, Video Blogging: WordPress and YouTube for Teaching and Learning and Workflow with the Cloud.

To view the detailed agenda and registration, visit the ABEL Program website.