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/

Week5 – A4 – The Machine is Us/ing Us

The video is very interesting as it immedietly makes the viewer aware of the differences between written and electronic text. Then it goes on explaining the evolution of the web from static text to today’s dynamic & interactive web. Whilst viewing this video I beganreflecting on the added value I’m gaining through the use of my blog for the H800 […]

Week 5 – A3 – The current wave of technology – Web 2.0

1. What is Web 2.0 ? Through his discussion on the evolvment of RSS, Google, Wikipedia, blogs etc. O’Reilly visualises Web2.0 as a platform where the user can have control on the data being viewed. In fact I am really enthusiastic about my recent Bloglines subscription. Moreover in Web 2.0 collective users participate in creating a ‘collective intelligence’, So these online services […]

Week5 – A2 – What is new about new technology?

McLuhan’s discussion of participation isn’t exactly convincing. He mentions the idea of having the audience act as the producer but at the same his idea of participation is linked to the use of different media to ‘view’ the same action. I don’t know if I am getting this correctly but here McLuhan is focusing on […]

Week5 – A1 – Forms of representation

OF MIND AND MEDIA Text is available all the time, detail is written down. Through the different education stages I passed through, there was a great emphasis on the use of books for studying and of paper to jot down notes. Even later, when doing my Cisco certifications, although all the material was available online , […]

Week 4 – A3 – Synchronous tutorial

As already refered to for other Elluminate sessions, its very interesting to notice the different type of participants involved in the discussion. V actively involved through speech, actively involved through texting, observants etc. 1. What makes an activity ‘authentic’? In the paper by Brown et al, authentic activity is defined as ‘the ordinary […]

Week4 – A4 – Engestrom

Expansive Learning at Work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization 1. What kind of theory of learning is offered by classic activity theory “Activity theory theorizes that when individuals engage and interact with their environment, production of tools results. These tools are “exteriorized” forms of mental processes, and as these mental processes are manifested in tools, […]

Week4 – A2 – Brown et al

Situated Cognition and the culture of learning The authors explain why activity and situations are integral to cognition and learning and how different ideas of what is appropriate learning activity produce very different results. Situated Knowledge and Learning: Learning from the situation rather than an out of context environment (which can easily be provided in […]

Week4_A1_Defining Learning

An individual being in a group or on his own acquires some type of knowledge which changes him as a person. This acquisition can be done in various ways such as a formal classroom setting or the environment in which the person is living. In my definition I have left out the idea of […]

Week3b – A5 – Cox

Cox (2006), Vicarious learning, case-based teaching and educational ICT Vicarious Learning – This occurs when one person sees another person positively reinforced or punished for a behaviour.Example of case-based teaching – PATSy – System were technologies such as web-databases of video clips provide a means for storing, indexing and disseminating such resources. 1. Can you see […]

Week3b – Elluminate Session

1. What were your experiences and feelings during the session? Using Elluminate helped me communicate with other students of the H800 course. Through such an experience doubts and problems are shared, thus I could see that problems I encounter are similar to those of other participants. This syncrounous experience provided a good ground to put […]