Specifically talking about her journey through virtual worlds, and. Her discoveries about their potential for education, beginning in the nineties through to the present time.
Background as a drama consultant, first experiences were in The Palace (1999) which was then later part of PhD research practice (2005). The text transcripts were showing both the participation in the world and and awareness of the ‘performance’ of the scene through asides as narration comments. Happening through 2005. Seems to have heavy associations to script writing and film production with imagery and scene development activites. Students maintained character blogs to track their journey and weave the different elements of the story together. Fan fiction was one of the outputs from the participants (10-18 year olds) in Angela’s PhD research. Also significant off-campus work by students.
Then moved her work into Second Life.

Showed video “Second Life – educational uses” from You Tube www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOFU9oUF2HA

NMC did the SL Build for her of Virtual Macbeth. virtualworlds.nmc.org/portfolio/virtualmacbeth/ This was OzCo grant project to bring gaming, drama, multimodal experience to work with post grad students showing what could be done with a text from the literary canon in a new media world.
Angle then gave a preview of various elements of the virtual physical space and how they relates to scenes and states of mind in the play and experienced by the character.
Feeds any images or other media tagged with specified tag fed into the Virtual Macbeth wiki.

back to the question “Are we there yet?”
At the moment second life is probably the best space for educators. Yet there are issues also – eg technical, cost, set up, some limitations, on campus use… So some people are starting to look elsewhere such as Open Cobalt which is in alpha.
Slides from this keynote www.slideshare.net/anya

This was an interesting day – I was pleased to hear about the activities underway in other jurisdictions and some great case studies. I’ve recorded my notes in graphic form – click on the thumbnails for full images.

This shows my current thinking about a way forward for wikis at the polytechnic. I’ll test it with some colleagues, project team members and through the student evaluation coming up.

Draft recommendations

1. A combination of external and self-hosted wiki pages will give the following benefits:
   Branding and online presence as a leader in Open and Connected Learning.
   Participation in a wider, global community of educators and learners.
   Support with technical issues and ongoing maintenance. and so on
2. Teachers use Wikiversity/WikiEducator to create and host their learning materials. Student group and collaborative work is also done on Wikiversity/WikiEducator.
3. All materials from the Category “TasPoly” to be mirrored on a Polytechnic hosted wiki.  This builds in risk management as well as raising our profile in the global education community.
4. A blog platform for learners and teachers to be hosted by the Polytechnic. Support also given to those staff and students for a limited range of externally hosted services eg Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, Edublogs…
5. Staff and learners supported to use RSS readers to streamline accessing information from multiple points. This can be achieved through Outlook and/or Google Reader.
6. Policy will support teachers releasing learning materials through a Creative Commons Attribution – ShareAlike licence.

Comments welcomed!

Recent Changes Camp was held at the University of Canberra, and organised by Leigh Blackall. It was held as an ‘unconference’ which means that the schedule and agenda are framed by the participants at the start of the day around a central theme, in this case, wikis. The group formed a list of potential sessions and then placed names against which sessions they would like to attend.
URL: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/University_of_Canberra/RCC_Canberra
Through the day there were four sessions held:

• Usability and accessibility
• Wikiversity
• Wikis for learning and education
• Conversations and community behind wikis

My expectations prior to the event were to learn more about how other individuals and organisations were using wikis, both for learning and other purposes. I was also seeking wisdom about implementation and hosting implications.

During the sessions I captured my notes in mindmap form on my iPad as shown below (click thunbnails for larger images). The process I used is documented here.

One happy feature of an event like this is the shared note taking – notes were taken on the events Wikiversity pages (http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/University_of_Canberra/RCC_Canberra) and also in Twitter (link to hashtag archive for #ucrcc)

What came from the event for me?
1. I was able to start making decisions about our wiki solution for the Tasmanian Polytechnic. More here -
2. A recognition that the names Wikiversity/WikiEducator may actually be a barrier to teachers and students in our VET context or maybe not. This needs to be tested in student and teacher consultation.
3. Initial research suggests that an alternative to wiki pages is needed for student reflection/ journal type information for privacy, ownership and longevity.
4. A recognition that with the wiki work underway at the Poly we are actually a fair way down the path in terms of organisational approach, and there is much further we could go.
5. It would be useful to have a program on net safety and digital literacy that teachers could adopt and also be available to all learners. This is not just related to wikis, it is broader.
6. Participation in future events will be very useful as we move forward, and in terms of organisation it may be fairly simple to host a RCC event ourselves (plan for 2011?)
7. It reinforced the direction that we are taking with this year’s project, and that it is of strategic importance in relation to the development of learning activities and support materials that we adopt an open approach to facilitate collaboration.

Edit: Update links in post

• Adobe Ideas ($free) Nice tool, smooths lines so looks better when you zoom. Brush controls are harder to control than Sketchbook Pro. Free form drawing. Can’t type text in. Blank Canvas.
• Popplet ($free for Lite version) Text, drawing and images in boxes that can be moved around, resized and linked to each other. More mindmap-like than others.
• Sketchbook Pro ($9.99 AUD) Recommended by several reviews. Multiple (too many?) brush options, fine level colour controls, multiple layers, ability to import images, flexible output options.

I also tried, in no particular order:
AirSketch free, iBrainstorm, Stickyboard, Draw, Paperdesk LT, iPocketDraw, MindMash ,Idea Sketch, Iditia Free and some other ones I’ve since deleted. Some are better for different styles of recording than I’m talking about here.
My basis for comparison
What is important to me:

• Ease of use including quick colour change and eraser tool access
• Zooming in and out intuitively
• Cost
• VGA output option
• Export options and formats

Preparation for Use
I knew I’d soon want to use this approach for a real event, so I tested out tools and got to know them through doing graphical records of TV shows and evening conversations around the house – low risk and I wouldn’t be annoyed if I accidently deleted the lot! Through this process I settled on Sketchbook Pro because of the zooming, layers and colour changing speed possible. So I ended up with some pretty random images but it was fun. I played around more with a visual note taking approach, more so than my traditional mindmap technique and appearance.
Real life Use
Recent Changes Camp came up in Canberra and that was it – my challenge to myself was to use the iPad for note taking.
What I discovered:

• Found not typing/ writing with a pen shifted my focus from capturing words as such to capturing thoughts and ideas.
• The freeform conversational approach of the unconference gave a starting point to the notes, and suited my default mindmap style. I reverted pretty quickly to my standard style – you could put my handwritten maps from months ago next to my iPad ones and they are definitely both mine!
• When in a session where I talked a fair bit at the start I wanted to capture what was being said but graphic recording required too much brainpower to allow for talking. I relaxed when I reminded myself that other people were taking notes and I could access them later.

Usability session

Wikis in Learning and Education

• Use of colour and brush controls still requires conscious thought, much like picking up a different colour texta when starting a new subtopic.
• I found I captured what was for me the right balance of quality and quantity of notes while still participating reasonably in the discussion.

After the event
After the formal sessions I wanted to pull some of the overarching thoughts and issues into a more graphic style than my mindmaps. I planned it out roughly on paper and searched for visual cues to suit the topics. Being able to colour in areas of the canvas on a layer to allocate space and arrangement, and then put my actual text and graphics on another layer meant I could end up with a well organised output. I simply deleted the ‘underlayer’ when I was done.
What I learnt:

• I didn’t save often enough. Sketchbook Pro would crash occasionally and I couldn’t see a pattern as to why.
• Learnt about the layer transform tool and how that could be used to manipulate or edit an image you’ve imported from elsewhere.
• I would like to spend more time playing with the brush options
• Practice of large lettering styles would add more visual interest and variation.

Summary of my notes from #ucrcc

I love it!

TAS10EL161: OPENING UP EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
IN ONE SENTENCE…
Learners will access, use, create and contribute to wiki based materials throughout their learning programs, with a focus on open educational resources.
PROJECT SUMMARY
This project is to embed the reuse, remix and creation of open educational resources (OERs), specifically those based on a wiki platform. This follows from the successful 2009 investigation that demonstrated the suitability of wiki platforms for our context. Many Polytechnic teachers have already heard about the successful wiki trials and are interested in pursuing this approach in their own areas. “The OER movement seeks to stimulate, facilitate and catalyze growth of the pool of learning resources on the Internet which circumvent barriers to access and lift restrictions on usage, thus improving education as a social good” (WikiEducator). This philosophy of education being open and accessible to all is in alignment with the mission and values of the Tasmanian Polytechnic.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Space-Case

Lots of arm waving and diagrams on whiteboards and on the back of bits of paper went into conceiving and planning this one.
Fingers crossed

Not-so-Rocky-Road: ePortfolios – focussing more on the journey than the end point, more about learning process than learning product.

Choc-Chip: Info Literacy – workplace scenarios are the bursts of flavour in this Learn 23 Things inspired project

Macadamia Dream: MeInTassie wiki – for newly arrived migrants learning English, a digital campus approach (to borrow from this document on Designing Elearning

Chocollo (Chocolate icecream for when you’re not really having icecream): eTag Learning for nursing students – a simulated workplace where learning is embedded into the objects, bringing Stephen Downes’ idea of a jam jar teaching you into reality (scroll down to the paragraph headed “embedding”

With Sprinkles & Toppings : Learners will film each other performing tasks, review the footage as part of the learning process. DIY learning resources for immediate consumption.

Toffee Swirl: not just plain vanilla, this online course (the only one flagged to use an LMS hence the vanilla base) combines asynschronous and synchronous learning opportunities, blended to perfection.

Why am I hungry?