Learning Analytics can be used to assist your students to grow! How can this be true? 
Learning Analytics provide insights to about students and how they interact with students, content and other resources. These insights can be used to assist students to perform better.

The Blended Learning Journey continues...
It is interesting how people pick up the ideas and start to use them. After my presentation in KL, recently I found this article written by Theo about the ideas that we expressed:

Blended learning for adult learnersTHE rise of blended learning in tertiary education, in which face-to-face instruction is complemented by online components, is an acknowledgement of the rise of the non-traditional tertiary student.
While a large segment of blended learning students fall in the K-12 category, adult learners are also taking to “digitally assisted curriculum” which picked up pace in the late 90s, thanks to the internet, and today, mobile technology.
“Blended learning recognises the importance of catering to different students in increasingly different contexts,” says Swinburne University of Technology (Sarawak Campus) deputy vice-chancellor Prof Janet Gregory at the inaugural Victoria-Southeast Asia Higher Education Forum held recently in Kuala Lumpur.
“Online students are busy people. They are not school leavers. They are predominantly adults with jobs, families, commitments and they require flexibility in their part-time learning,” says Online Education Services (OES), Australia director of strategy Dr Kay Lipson, whose centre is a partnership between SEEK.com.au, Australia’s top job site, and Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
OES launched Swinburne Online in 2011, an online campus which today offers 21 undergraduate and postgraduate university courses and five TAFE courses to over 8,000 students.
Learning is entirely web-based and students are also provided with online support and social spaces to interact and engage with each other for the optimal student experience.
UNITAR International University, for example, rolled out its education management system, UNITAR Education Core (UNIEC), in this fashion. It is a student-centred learning experience where the entire university ecosystem, from the facilities to the faculty and management, serves to support the student Through UNIEC, students can access their enrolment, timetables, exam results, lecture materials and more.
“To deliver a more different and ultimately better student learning experience, we use a lot of technology to engage students in their activities,” says Monash College, Australia associate director E-Learning Dr Kulari Lokege-Dona.
But technology is, by itself, not always the answer to a better student learning experience, as private tertiary institution Kaplan Singapore found to be the case during the implementation of its blended curriculum project.
“There are a lot of considerations. You can’t look at Powerpoint slides on a smartphone on the MRT, for example.
“And it’s hard to blend straight-laced subjects like accounting,” says Kaplan Singapore School of Diploma Studies head
Christopher Harris, who has led such a project for the past four years.
After two blended trial curriculums, it was found that a 75/25 split between the physical and virtual classroom, where modular teaching includes quality video content and interactive activities, led to better pass rates among students.
Read more @ http://www.thestar.com.my/news/education/2016/11/06/blended-learning-for-adult-learners/

Pranav Mistry's research was impressive in 2009 - I showcased this idea by running the video when I toured Sri Lankan schools to engage learners in the education of ICT. We experiencing some of these ideas now, with lot more to gain the future. My personal favourite was where students information starts appearing.

Many more ideas can be found in Pranav's blog http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/#VIDEOS

MOOCs are considered to be a disruptive innovation in the western world, while developing countries like Sri Lanka, with higher English Language literacy rate are benefiting from the openness of the MOOCs. Higher Education Institutions like Sri Lanka Institute of Advanced Technological Education (SLIATE), in Sir Lanka, who has already considered and moved towards innovate teaching and learning taking the opportunity to build capacity and capability through MOOC engagement.

Sri Lanka Institute of advanced Technological Education (SLIATE) is one of the leading government institutions in higher education sector in Sri Lanka which has been established by the parliament act no 29 of 1995, and coming under the purview of the Ministry of Higher Education. There are 17 Advanced Technological Institutes operated by SLIATE island wide having conducted a broad range of multi-disciplinary programs targeting at A/L qualified students in Sri Lanka. (www.sliate.ac.lk).

SLIATE a government funded Higher Education institute, with limited funding opportunities, has taken the path of participating in MOOCs to educate staff to be innovative and disruptive in the education sector. Ten SLIATE staff members registered to the MOOC. The MOOC was conducted based on a social constructivist pedagogy (Salmon, 2012). Hence the participants were allocated into groups. By requesting, the MOOC team, they made special arrangements for the SLIATE team to be in one group with other international participants. The ability to be in one group made the SLIATE team to be more comfortable. However, it was evident that some participants were time poor and will not be able to commit 4-5 hours of contribution for the MOOC. Within the first week itself it was clear that two participants were not be able to continue, as the workload did not leave any room to accommodate time for the MOOC.

The SLIATE participants who got enthusiastic about MOOCs after completing the Carpe Diem MOOC initiated a research project to investigate about the use of MOOCs for developing countries. While they continue to research they have started planning on the use of Carpe Diem process in designing their teaching and learning.

Dr. William Cope from Illinois university is introducing the 7 principles  for learning and assessment as:
1. Ubiquitous learning -anywhere anything
2. Active knowledge making -designing meanings
3. Multi-modal meaning - text, image sound data
4. recursive feedback -formative assessment
5. Collaborative intelligence - knowledge you can reach for and use
6. Meta-cognition - thinking about thinking
7. Differentiated learning -each according their interest and need

Some interesting points form the speakers:
Situated learning
Maker movement and collective intelligence
Affinity spaces - learning at affinity spaces with distributed knowledge and complex relationship

http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-1-new-learning

I am trialling a new tool called Lecture Tools. It is a tool that enables chat, messaging and students can get notes, access slides, send questions etc.

Basically Augmented reality means enhanced reality. With the use of tools and technologies, we try to enhance our experience of different things about real life experiences.

Some simple tools such as Google Sky Map you can use the smart phones or tablets to gaze at the sky and locate and identify some of the galaxies, and stars that you could otherwise can not do.


Another simple tool is Tagwhat. This tool lets you find the details of new places and things that you come across. This is a handy tool for traveling and locating new places.

Creating a digital professional name plate is an important thing in this era. This means you create your digital business card with your contact details, social media handlers and other connections to show case who you are and how to get in touch with you.
Some of the Name Plate Sites are:

Aboutme:http://about.me/kularilokuge
Flavoursme: http://klokuge.flavors.me/
re.vu: http://re.vu/KulariLokuge

To be more productive and balance work and life we always search for methods and tools. Some tools that I have come across are personal development/management tools:
1. Goalmigo :http://www.goalmigo.com this lets you create your personal goals and track them
2. Team week is a tools that lets you manage your team with a team calendar and is able to create gantt charts and manage time critical events
3. Goal buddy http://www.goal-buddy.com/- this is a collaborative tool that can be used to set up goals and work towards achieving them
4. Week Plan https://app.weekplan.net is another tool that allow you to set up weekly activity in relation to your goals
5. Life tick seems to be one of the best tools to manage your goals and plans. http://www.lifetick.com however there is only a trial as a fee app, after the free trial you need to pay! http://getyourdayback.tumblr.com/post/2526592653/goal-planning-online is also endorsing the comment about the Life Tick being one of the greatest tools.
6. Toms Planner http://www.tomsplanner.com/ is another tool where you can create calendars and other team work activities and work loads

Gradeable Chalkup, Smart Sparrow, Edvantage and UClass.io are some new tools that are available to create and assess using technology that engages learners and make facilittators