The Learning Technology Team

2009 is the year of Action for me

Supporting Colleagues

To reinforce and refresh my own learning I’ve started to roll out sessions with my colleagues especially in Retail, Community Pharmacy & Personal services.

This year I have had demand from colleagues who previously weren’t engaged are now asking me for help.  Which is fantastic because they knew where to go to for help.

Adobe Connect has been engaging my Community Pharmacy colleagues who are looking at viable ways to deliver workplace training especially in distance locations.

In Retail my colleagues are asking for help with: online resources, wikis, how to do powerpoint and use a data projector for face to face delivery to engage their students.

Personal services have asked me to help them establish units on Moodle.

This year has certainly started off to be a year of action!

Supporting Industry

Another exciting moment I had recently was being approached by a pharmacy. The business wanted to establish how they could learn to use technology because they would like to run instore health promotions in store.

After assessing their needs I was able to match a unit of competency to the desired training and incorporate it into Cert IV in Community Pharmacy traineeship for the senior staff member.  The unit is called ‘Select an eBusiness Model’. Initially, I put together a presentation of how they could use moviemaker as a stepping stone and to build their confidence in this area.  Last week they were so impressed, they can’t wait for me to show the trainee how to do this and then apply her learning to the pharmacy, they believe that both the business and the community will benefit from this.

It is so rewarding to share my learning from The Learning Technologies Team to our customers.

Being apart of this amazing team has given me so much knowledge which now I can share confidently with my colleagues and customers.

I have been totally inspired by Adobe Connect, our web conferencing software

Even though there has been a substantial learning investment into getting comfortable with it – once you’re off and running, it’s great. Really!!

The benefits are truly impressive.  They include:

• being green (reduces car trips, photocopying),
• being current (meetings happen in the here and now),
• being accessible (most of us have desktops, headsets)
• document development process is collaborative (+ organic)

One of the key satisfactions I’ve had as a FeLC is generating interest amongst colleagues to try Adobe Connect.  One of the faculty’s part-time teachers, who works with the division of General Practice, agreed to trial it. He was so impressed that he bought his organisation’s general manager into the virtual meeting room to meet me and talk about how useful Adobe Connect is.

This example of creating personal/professional interest in peers, leading to recommendations of facilitating organisational change and adopting cleaner, equitable practices shows the value of the LTT philosophy – don’t be afraid.  And how great is that!!

Things we covered in our Technology Session

This session was to support the LTT (Learning Technology Technology Team) in using this blog!

Have you done Connect Confidence 4 yet?

Here are the tasks…

connect_confidence_4

* Click to download

Yesterday my journey continued without even leaving my desk – that’s the beatuy of Adobe Connect. I was able to assist Steve Williams from Great Lakes create a wiki for his Sculpture students.

Steve wanted a space for his students to upload weekly images of their work for comment by staff and other students.

Coaching and Mentoring using Adobe Connect

From within my connect room Steve was able to, as a presenter, take control of the room and display his wiki. We were then able to practice editing his wiki navigation, editing pages by adding text and images and invite his students to the wiki.

The great benefit was that Steve was doing the alterations with me “looking over his shoulder” and offering direction and support. A much more valuable lesson for Steve than just watching how it was done or having it done for him. With the able assistance of his TA Rose, they will be able to have their students up and interacting on the new wiki soon.

In actual fact, there were comments left in the discussion space from one of his students within 15mins of our support session ending.

With Connect, I’ll be able to quickly demostrate/answer any futher queires as they arise as their wiki journey continues.

As an aside, another Connect story…

I had a desperate teacher phone me with a Moodle query last week. She was trying to upload an IMS content package and getting very frustrated. A 5min link up in a connect room and we were able to retifiy the problem.

As a result of my sessions with my connect buddies and support from Des and Alex, I’m feeling much more comfortable and able to assist other staff with this technology.

Hi, I’m Lisa Terry – Primary Industry & Natural Resources FeLC (Faculty e-Learning Contact). I’m also Head Teacher of seafood located at Trenayr campus (just out of Grafton).

The Connect Confidence sessions I have done so far have been a great learning experience. Averil Harris was my buddy for the first 2 sessions, we had a few laughs as we worked out where things were and how to use them. I was impressed with Averils preparation for the sessions and apprecitated the images, sites and poetry she shared with me.

I think the thing that I enjoy about the connect session is that it is a very personal connection which is not always the case with online communication tools.

My students (except for a group in Coffs) are all distance students and we have been using various forms of online support and delivery for many years with them. I am keen to trial using Connect as a tutorial tool with distance students. As they will be connecting from home. It will be intersting to see if bandwidth becomes a problem though.

Hi! my name is Greg Williams, I am the E learning contact for the Manufacturing & Engineering faculty. I am a Refrigeration & air-conditioning teacher at Grafton campus.

The connect confidence course has opened up a whole new potential for flexible delivery to my students who come as far as Port Macquarie & Tweed Heads. My connect buddy is Jason Vallely, but because it is still early days, we have not as yet spent time conversing.

At weekends I like to pump iron, surf & lay on the beach . I like to wear Tee-shirts until they fall off my back & I never make the bed because I cannot see the point. My wife is very lucky because even though I do not do any housework she gets to enjoy my hot body!

I’m Donna Guiver, the FeLC (Faculty e-Learning Contact) for the General Education Faculty within North Coast TAFE. I’m lucky to have had two great Connect Buddies, Lyn Connors from Gen Ed and Alex Miller from the Hub in Coffs. Learning together with Lyn, as two novices, was fantastic- we had the Connect Confidence Challenges and guidance from the fantastic Des Osborn whose entire training for Connect in our institute has been amazing!

The best thing has been having our own rooms in which to play and have meetings. I’ve used it for meetings mainly with our Gen Ed staff- mostly planned, but sometimes spontaneous when a staff member needs to see a process or system online immeditely to get their job done.

Our Faculty works very much as a team and Connect means we can get over the two major problems with networking i.e. distance and cost!

We’ve discussed Assessment Validation, how to use Moodle, tours of SharePoint and demos of how to make Vokis and use wikis. Following the Connect Confidence training format I’ve experienced as part of the Learning Technologies Team in North Coast I am now starting meetings with the Head Teachers to build their confidence in using Connect.

This is a big cultural change and without Connect confidence I just wouldn’t feel ready for this.

Hi my name is Graham Armstrong.

I am the FELC (Faculty e-Learning Contact) for the Construction and Transport Faculty. I am located at Wollongbar and can be found under a bonnet working on vehicles.

Connect for me has been a very new exciting experience. The connect courses have been terrific and my buddy lifesaving and patient. (Thanks Alex)

Using Connect with students

I have attempted a one on one session using Connect with a student who missed some important theory notes due to injury. it was as simple as going through a powerpoint with him. He found it useful… for me it was a learning experience. With that I hope to be able to encourage my colleagues to give it a go.

It is a new concept that has potential. “Great Stuff”

Hi, I’m Averil, a Librarian and the new Workplace eLearning Contact (WeLC) at Coffs Harbour and Macksville campuses.

The Connect Confidence course has been beneficial in building just that – confidence in using our connect rooms and building the skills to start utilising the potential in a learning environment.

I’m keen to use Connect to provide online tutorial support to our off campus students, for example advising how to access our very popular e-books, http://www.ncistudent.net/tic/ElectronicResources/Etexts.htm.

As a WeLC I’ve been demonstrating my new skills with teachers. As librarian I have already participated in several Connect meetings with librarians across the institute and participated in new systems training, via Connect with TAFE Library Collection Services, Sydney.

Lisa Terry is my Connect buddy who is the Natfish Head Teacher of Seafood. I really enjoyed exploring the features of the pods and had fun devising a session for Lisa with photographs of fish, the poem “Sea Fever“ by John Masefield and a link to a dodgy website, http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ .

It’s great having a buddy to figure out the next move when you get stuck and to share your new discoveries with.

don’t be afraid…

Yesterday I interviewed one of the teachers at North Coast Institute, TAFE NSW about the current use of technology to engage trainees and industry.

Linda Johnston, a Community Pharmacy Teacher and e-Learning Contact for the THRAPS Faculty (Tourism, Hospitality, Retail and Personal Services) was happy to share her experiences with me.

This podcast covers the use of Adobe Connect as ‘Virtual Classrooms‘, the use of various Social Networking and collaboration tools, such as wiki’s, blog’s and Facebook to engage trainee’s in industry.

Linda also talks about the mutual benefits to TAFE and Industry and the importance of these tools for life-long learning.

how we made it…

We used an iPod with a microphone to record this interview and Audacity to edit the audio recording. I then uploaded the audio recording to podomatic. I also took some photo’s which I animated using Photoshop.

You can visit the podcast site here or click the image to listen to the interview.

Hi, I’m Julie Robbins.

I’m the FeLC for Arts & Media for the NCI – that’s from Great Lakes to the QLD border – a great part of the state, but so big, it’s difficult to assist staff without lots of travel.

Then along came Adobe Connect. I’ve been lucky enough to have 2 great connect buddies – Lynne Ridley & Lexie Stephens. We’ve had fun exploring this new tool, making mistakes and learning along the way. Thankyfully our sessions are designed in such a way as to keep building on our knowledge, ensuring the motto “don’t be afraid” dosen’t come to fruition. It’s also given us the building blocks to assist others to try Connect.

I’ve already been able to use Connect to great advantage – working with Fashion staff creating their Moodle sites. We’ve been able to work on the same page together even though they are in Wollongbar & Kempsey.

Using Connect to work with my online students is the next step – running tutorial sessions to assist with their study and to overcome that isolation of distance study.

1. Hi All, my name is Kate and I am a science teacher at Great Lakes (in beautiful Tuncurry) and Taree. I am also the Workplace e-Learning Contact (WeLC) for those campuses.
2. The Connect Confidence course was really useful. It was great to have the levels of introduction to the tools available in Connect so I was never overwhelmed. It also gave me a good model for how to introduce others to Connect and how to run successful meetings with Connect.
3. I have started to use Connect for staff meetings because I have staff that teach across campuses and live in far flung regions and we are never all together in one spot at one time. we are able to meet in Connect, share files, discuss issues with students and courses and then post out the minutes immediately.
4. Helen Poynten is my Connect buddy and we have had a great time practicing and making some mistakes, laughing and learning as we go.