Author: Keith Aquilina

Currently my professional role is that of Education Officer (Quality Assurance) within the Directorate for Quality & Standards in Education in the Ministry of Education, Malta. After eight years teaching Computing and ICT within a state secondary school, I moved to the Department of eLearning where my role focused on the organisation of national educational events of which the national eLearning awards and conference, Malta Robotics Olympiad and student competitions. In addition to the work within the Department of eLearning, as from 2011 I have taken the role of ICT coordinator within the Directorate for Lifelong Learning where for 5 years, I was involved in the development and organisation of ICT related courses within the directorate’s adult education centres and collaborating entities. In 2012, I completed my Masters studies in Online and Distance Education from the Open University. This blog started off as an online reflective diary for my studies in the Masters in Online and Distance Education with the Open Univeristy. As may be easily deduced, my main interest is in technology, learning and anything in between. Linkedin; mt.linkedin.com/in/keithaquilina/

Core Activity 5.2: Professions and professional values

This is an article by Neal and Morgan (2000) in the European Sociological Review, arguing that occupations become recognised as professions in different ways. The writers compare the development of a number of professions in the UK and Germany. Although this piece is written for an audience of sociologists and includes a methodological discussion of […]

Core activity 5.1: eLearning and professional development

Look for implicit and explicit definitions of elearning professionals, and specifications for education and training aimed at elearning professionals. Make notes comparing these definitions and specifications (e.g. those from different countries or educational sectors) and with your own education and training as an elearning practitioner. The four key roles of a teacher involved in elearning […]

3. my Personal and Professional development

my Personal and Professional development These last two weeks have been somewhat intense as my private life (especially fever) took over studying and work. I have tried to keep updated with what was going on in H808, by trying to read my group’s forum posts and a couple of readings.This unit focused on important issues […]

2.2 – Collaborating online

Activity 2.1 is the first H808 collaborative activity where Lesley, our tutor divided us in 3 separate groups. In the group I was assigned to, silence reigned for the first couple of days. The pace of other groups got me a bit panicked. Therefore, I thought it would be better if I got the ball […]

Core activity 1.4: First impressions

As this is my third OU course leading to MAODE, I am feeling quiet confident in using tools such as forums and blogs as part of my studies. These should enable collaborative learning, which so far has proved to be very important in my studies. Actually getting insight into other students’ thoughts help me keep […]

H808 – the journey continues

September 4th is the official beginning of this new course. As for the previous courses I’ll be using this blog to post course answers and related writings. I’m eager to start although I know that it might become a bit of a rough ride due to the new job I’m starting soon.

Maltese Secondary School

Im Malta, as in many other countries the educational system emphasis is on syllabus completion and gaining a good mark in exams. Thus on short term success. What about gaining life skills? Having such rigid syllabuses means that they are catering for skills required when such syllabuses were published, at times 10 years old or […]

Rogers and Salmon

Rogers’ model and diffusion and Salmon’s framework of e-tivities are two important ideas which I’ve been reflective upon in the last couple of weeks . Is there a correlation between these two models? From a learning perspective Rogers identifies different types of adopters which are present and need to be catered for when any innovation […]

E-tivities

Salmon coins the word ‘e-tivity’ to describe ‘a framework for active and interactive learning’ (Salmon, 2002, p.1) which is done online. This framework comprises the following five stages are: Access and motivation Online socialization Information exchange Knowledge construction Development As found in other learning frameworks, these steps need to be taken as generalisations for learning. […]