Contributor: Chris Rowell, Regent’s University London, rowellc@regents.ac.uk
Ingredients: A virtual learning platform (eg Moodle, WordPress, Blackboard Open Education)
Method: Twelve Apps of Christmas is an online programme which covered the basics and some more advanced tips on using 12 educational apps. Over the twelve days of the programme, a post was published with the day’s task at 10am, so that participants could work through it whenever they had ten minutes or more spare in the day. Each post contained instructions on a different app, together with tailored suggestions of how to use it with students and how it might work effectively for the participants in their professional context. Each task took no more than ten minutes a day (although there were ‘Further Tasks’, which took more time):
- Look at current examples of 12AoC
- Select apps that will be useful to your staff
- Complete Template
- Publish apps on Learning platform
- Publicize course
- Give it a Creative Commons licence
- Evaluate
Special Notes: Depending on how many staff enrole on your version of the course I would recommend that you run the course with at least 2 or 3 instructors. Also try and have a mixture of academic developers, learning technologists and librarians.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Mr. S. Claus for the idea!
References:
Rowell,C. (2015). Reflections on 10 Days of Twitter for Regent’s University London. In: A. Middleton, ed. ‘Smart learning: Teaching and learning with smartphones and tablets in post compulsory education’. Media-Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group and Sheffield Hallam University.
Horton, A. and Rowell, C., (2015). The Twelve Apps of Christmas case study [accessed 29/10/2015]. Available from: http://www.informationliteracy.org.uk/ portfolio/casestudy-12aoc/
Rowell, C. (2015). Reflections on the 12 Apps of Christmas. [accessed 20/1/2016] Available from: https://altc.alt.ac.uk/blog/2015/11/reflections-on-the-12-apps-of-christmas/
Rowell, C. (2014). How to set up your own ’12 Apps of Christmas’. Available from https://rul12aoc.wordpress.com/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
