E-Learning and edmedia08

Report on ’Sharing Learning Designs: Lessons from the LAMS Community’, presented by James Dalziel, Macquarie University, Australia

I'll begin by noting that James’s presentation was not designed for an audience of ‘specialists’ or LAMS practitioners - many attendees were totally new to LAMS, or else use ED-MEDIA as their annual opportunity to glean news on the latest updates. James began by introducing LAMS, explaining that it is a toolset for adding structure / scaffolding to the learning process, and in particular, building a framework for educational activities "that a simple list of course resources on a [web] page [or LMS site] doesn’t have".

Greetings from Vienna, where I'm attending this year's Ed-Media meeting. The conference is being held in possibly the ugliest building in this beautiful city of Vienna - but the surroundings are fabulous, the weather warm, and there is a good buzz among the throng of delegates. There have been various administrative hurdles to overcome (I've overheard several conversations muttering about lengthy queues, especially at registration this morning) - in particular, our Pathfinder Cluster symposium on embedding e-learning, which was supposed to be a two-hour event, was unfortunately carved up into two separate sessions with a coffee break in between. We eventually managed to rearrange this, thankfully, so at least all the presentations from the five participating institutions (Brunel, London South Bank, Reading, Cambridge, and the Open University) are all grouped together.