Joined the introductory Elluminate session this morning using mobile data connection as the work network fell over yet again. All working fine, and also able to have browser open at same time without lagging.

Participating in this course is going to be a ‘reboot’ on my blogging, well that is the plan anyhow. Committing to regular readings, writing, sessions and more feels a trifle crazy at the moment but it may be the thing I need in terms of inspiration.

George and Stephen are laying out their expectations about participation – asking that people set up/ use something that creates an RSS feed so they can be gathered and fed back out. Tag to use – CCK09. Will be fed back out through the daily newsletter. Suggestion – sign up for Google Alerts on CCK09. Comment from George that lurking affects other people’s learning – by making your thoughts available to others, that can add value and provoke thinking. Bounce ideas off others and see how they react.

What is a “course”? This course content is centred by aggregation of many voices, not centrally by design as normally the case. Sense making through networks.

Short and sweet session – just setting out the landscape and forward journey. Off to watch some of the video and read the readings.

University of Sydney did a trial in 2008 but the organisation as a whole is not actively pursuing, the Ed faculty is using both Desire2Learn and Pebblepad this year.

Types of ePortfolios: Assessment, Presentation, Learning, Personal Development, Multiple Owners, Working.

ePortfolios are challenged by a change of context ( eg institution, workplace, lifestyle) Multiple reflections of identity fragment the presence of the individual. In our project we’ve talked about this issue and tossed around ideas such as a eportfolio available to each Tasmanian, that can travel with them around their lives, work and study. The bonus of a ‘system’ is that it’s possible to support, guide and integrate more easily. For those that might not be self-directed and intrinsically motivated to establish their own online presence, the institutional model would serve as an entry point into this kind of learning behaviour.

There are several sites with eportfolio systems set up for trialling – www.edna.tv/mahara www.foliospaces.com And exabis through edna groups as a plugin to moodle.

ePortfolios can be an example of assessment AS learning, as well as OF and FOR. The range of formats that can be used encourages assessment of what has been learnt, more so than assessing the use of a particular format or technology (assuming of course teachers exhibit flexibility in their assessment practice.

Pru wrapped up the presentation with a range of quotes including George Siemens’ comment that there should be personal control of the learning history rather than institutional (reworded from my notes)

The handout for this session was quite handy with a great selection of links. Here it is on the edna site (doc format)

Question to the group: how do you go about finding materials for a new course/subject?
Group: Google, peers
Us 3: LORN, networks – peers, ask Dallas to do a search if unit code known.
Me.edu.au has social tagging feature now.

Then a whistlestop tour through creative commons, repositories etc.

Notes a bit thin as somehow I did not save a large chunk in flipping back and forth between Word and IE on the jasjam.

Unesco statement I think. I like.

Slides from Edna site on Slideshare

Handout from Edna site (doc format)

12 priority areas – hmmm, looks like everything is covered. So broad reach rather than tight focus.
Edna Site described as a mix of Web1 and Web2.
Suggest in RSS for Educators PD workshops we include the VET RSS feed as a suggested one.
(Pru just mentioned they might use the video footage to make a podcast – be interesting to see the sound quality from the flip camera in that setting)
Also another one for our own workshop program are the sector specific hot topics pages. And also to link from Elearning Central. Nice way to enrich our pages with little effort.
In advanced search you are able to specify media type eg audio, image, interactive, text, video. Yay! Didn’t know that one.
Everything on edna resources has to be available online, ideally free (include some not-free if not much on that topic free of charge, ideally non-commercial, available for educators)
Federated search has a good range of sources. AFLF but not sure if it includes LORN. Suspect not.
2 minutes to go and we’re onto the Groups area.
Promoted as space where you can have groups for discussion without hassles of usernames for non-staff/students.
Lists space available as well. (C4CL?)
Me.edu.au – online professional networks – space for online professional presence that can gather your varied online presences into one space that can then be passed on.

What is happening in the classroom is too far removed from the learner’s real world. We need to be looking at the literacies for real life NOW not last centuries problems.
What’s important?
Learning how to learn with passion and curiosity.
Innovation & creativity otherwise a robot can do it.
Critical thinking and problem solving
Technolgical literacy – if they can’t manage technology then they won’t survive.

If you know how to access it, you can find most of what you need to know about almost anything online.

Open Courseware avaialable online – got to MIT for the interaction with the people who designed the courses and those also stdying.

OLPC – opportunity to explore and experiment – designed for learning learning. for the children to control the machine not be controlled and strutured by machine.
Scratch website, picocrickets, gamemaker, squeak etoys, free the goat (curriculum corporation)

Model for 21st Century education

Pedagogy has to go – teacher centred concept.
Excitement about learning is the key.
Fundamentals
Learners to be active particpants, learning how to learn, unrestricted by time place age. creative with skills, work independently aand with others, flexible and adaptable, working with and control tech to achieve their goals. (byo laptop schemes evidence of that – control laptop to make it do what you need)
Q: what is the ebay of education?

(click for larger image)

As facilitator the group’ s responses comments suggested to me:

• We need to do some hands on in using these tools so that there is some professional development for participants
• The project team environment and dynamic is open for all to contribute
• Project team members felt we were making progress
• The links of what we want to achieve to today’s current workplace reality in Tasmania may be tenuous – we may be leading more than catching up.

by michale

Starting Point – Standing Still: Assume an organisation with no engagement with elearning, and what training capacity exists is in a face-to-face presentation pattern. The organisation is spread around a state, with many regional and rural staff and volunteers, and turnover is such that repeated induction sessions are needed on an ongoing basis. Senior Management are interested in the possibilities of elearning, but at this stage it is unknown of their level of awareness of the possibilities.

My responses:
As I see it, the critical first stage is “Gaining Acceptance that elearning is OK” and creating the sense that “This is possible”.
The key personnel need to be introduced to, and experience:

• What is this thing called elearning?
• What’s in it for me. To illustrate this point I made up a very possible scenario – The trainer, who is a volunteer themselves, gets up early on a frosty Saturday morning to travel 2.5 hours over to a site where some new volunteers have come on board. Three of the five people expected turn up to sit in a cold community hall. The trainer is bored because it’s the fifth time since summer that he’s run this session and it all feels a bit dry. At the end of the session, the trainer faces the drive home wondering whether he made the session interesting enough to entice the volunteers to stick around.
• What’s possible and what’s exciting in elearning.

Now we’re Walking: Then, with some interest developing, the next stage is to introduce them to rapid development tools. In this case, having heard a little more about the context of the organisation, I suggested ARED as the first tool to introduce. Depending on the cohort’s skills and enthusiasm, next I’d add eXe, Audacity, MovieMaker and basic picture editing through MS Office Picture Manager. These tools add the layer of variety to a text-based resource.

As people are learning the tools we’d use the actual content (induction program) as our basis for practice. So ideally we’d have drafts or finished product that can actually be used. Thus making the process seem quicker, easier and giving tangible outcomes.

To avoid the dreaded “Computer Assisted Page Turning” model of elearning, we’d need to touch on the following topics as well. Sort of a “Learning 101″ program:

• How do Adults Learn?
• Building Engagement (Multimedia, visuals, links to the real world)
• Determining (Assessing) Learning Retention (self tests, applying, games, assessment)
• Chunking and Sequencing Information
• The Curse of TMI – Too Much Information (Avoiding just-in-case, choosing ‘what needs to be known now’)

Engagement is probably the most critical one. If we can provide an engaging induction training/ learning session at the start of the workers and volunteers time with the organisation, we’ve a much better chance of improving retention of them in the organisation. Some concepts within the area of engagement:

• Interactivity
• Multimedia for non-text based learning styles
• Self tests and application of learning in the real world
• Using Story and Authentic Voice
• Relevance of Images to the topics around them
• Serious Fun

Through the life of the project Phase 1 we’d use some webconferencing tools to start forming the group without needing to get everyone together f2f (budget cuts anyone?). This may also stretch their conception of elearning – it’s not just about the content on screen.

All this works towards … Phase 2: 2010 – We’re off and flying

by eschipul