Tama’s eLearning Blog

This edublog is written and maintained by Dr Tama Leaver. I’m a lecturer in Communication Studies at the University of Western Australia, and have previously worked as a a lecturer in Higher Education in the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning.

This blog is a record of my thoughts, opinions and explorations of the intersections between digital technologies and ideas relating to pedagogy. I’m particularly interested in the way participatory cultural tools, platforms and approches—be they blogs, vlogs, podcasts, social bookmarking, social networks and so forth—can be used in teaching and learning environments.

For my most recent foray into this area, feel free to visit my Communication Studies honours course iGeneration: Digital Communication and Participatory Culture, which was run from July to October in 2005 (and I’ll be coordinating again in 2008), the online presence of which was centred around a blog, but was also the first ever tertiary course (as far as I know) to feature student-produced podcasts as the major assessment item. iGeneration was nominated for a 2005 Edublog Award in the category “best example/case study of use of weblogs within teaching and learning“, and was also analysed by Burks Oakley, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Illinois, Urbana, in his Burks on Learning podcast series. I was also honoured to received the Excellence in Teaching: Early Career Teacher Award for 2005 from the University of Western Australia on the basis of units taught in 2004 and 2005.

For more on me, feel free to visit my personal blog or check out my online CV for details of things I’ve done and said wearing my academic hat.

This blog is archived by the National Library of Australia and archives are available via Pandora.

(For those who’ve asked, yes the iPod silhouette in the header image is a photoshopped image from an original photo of me in full academic regalia at my PhD graduation ceremony in September, 2006.)