Sue Waters over at Challenger TAFE – Perth and a colleague, Jo Hart from O’Connor TAFE are running free PD sessions on Fridays. They are covering a wide range of topics, here are some examples:

• Using various features of Elluminate to make live classrooms more interactive (this Friday 14th Nov)
• What is a ….. wiki/blog/podcast/digital story etc and how can we use them with students
• Using ARED or Hot Potatoes (only one feature at a time)
• Using Photofiltre to make images appropriate size etc
• Creating Toondoos

The sessions will be in Elluminate (you can download the Quick Reference Guide from our NCTAFE eLearning Kit), 9:00am Perth time (time converter here).

There are more details on Sue’s blog, and you can subscribe to their Google calendar here as well!

In the meantime, here’s an interesting little slideshow;

Note: Embedded media will not work using Internet Explorer at NCTAFE (you can view it in the Firefox, Flock, Safari or most other browsers)

Congratulations are in order!

The North Coast Institute e-Learning Strategy

“engage, empower, enthuse!”

was the Workforce Development Category Winner at this years 2008 TAFE NSW Quality Awards. The Category recognises initiatives in professional development, self-paced learning, human resource development processes, workforce profiling and promotion of teamwork.

Well done to the entire LTT (Learning Technology Team) at North Coast TAFE, NSW. You all deserve a great big pat on the back for your efforts and hard work over the last two years!

The evening was a great success with North Coast receiving two out of the five awards in the major category (Workforce Development and Safety and Environmental Sustainability) and runner up in another award for sdonline (Planning, Processes and Systems). You can read about us in the 2008 Results Newsletter.

I’ve started to put some pictures onto our LTT Flickr site, so be sure to have a look there if you can’t see the slide show playing below…

What technologies have you used in the classroom?

• What kind of response did you get from students?
• Did you find it easy to use?
• What did you learn?
• What would you do differently next time?

Networking online for both professioal and social reasons has huge potential and will only increase in popularity as a way of linking ‘like minded’ people. As individuals, as teaching professionals and as part of a great Institute team we need to be exploring the advantages of these sites for ourselves and our students. This is a recent article I found related to just this issue:

“If you’ve been joining social networking sites and never taking the time to complete your profile — or if you’ve been hitting the delete button when friends and colleagues invite you to connect on a new online platform, now is a good time to start paying more attention. Here are a few things to think about as you take the plunge or take your social networking to the next level.

LinkedIn has taken hold as the standard for most professionals, but also consider spending time on sites catering to your own industry or profession. Keep up with the trade press in your field to figure out where your peers are congregating online. Specialized communities exist for just about any industry or interest group . . . . “

For more go to: Shifting Careers Blog for the New York Times

Do you use Flickr?

Flickr is a great tool for backing up your photo’s and sharing them with your friends and family. It integrates easily with Facebook, iPhoto (if you’re lucky enough to have a Mac). Flickr also allows you to do some really great things with your photo’s, like publish a photobook (blurb), business cards (moo), and so much more.

Check out the great instructional material on the NSW e-Learning Innovations wiki. You’ll also find the following video….

If you use Flickr, please leave a comment here with your Flickr address so we can add you as a contact in Flickr. That way when we next visit Flickr, we can see your latest photo’s.

notes from the Moodle Moot 08 e-Learning Conference…

The second day of the Moodle e-Learning Conference, MoodleMoot, attended by Tracy Young and myself, was brilliantly kicked off by a Keynote from Professor Erica McWilliam, Assistant Dean (Research), Faculty of Education, QUT.

I took so many notes during this session, SOME of which I’ll share at the bottom of this post, but I strongly encourage you to have a look at the attached presentation.

Special thanks to Erica for giving me permission to share her wonderful presentation with you.

Here’s a taste of the brilliant presentation from Erica:

1703 Complaints
Students can no longer prepare bark to
calculate problems. They rely instead on
expensive slate. What will they do when the
slate breaks?

1815 Complaints
Students depend too much on paper instead
of slate. What will they do when we run out of
paper?

1917 Complaints
Students depend too much on ink. They
can’t sharpen a pencil with a knife anymore.

1928 Complaints
Students depend too much on store bought
ink. They don’t know how to make their own.
What happens when they run out?

1955 Complaints
Teachers refuse to accept papers written with
ballpoint pens. A fountain pen is the only
acceptable instrument!

1960 Complaints
Take away students’ slide rules and they no
longer have the skills to solve a problem!

1980 Complaints
Can students even function today without a
calculator?

2000 Complaints
Students are totally dependent on their
computers. What will they do when there is a
blackout?

2040 Complaints
They have given me a mixed class of
humans, hybrids and transhumanists. How
do I deal with the various learning styles?

2023 Complaints
They have implanted the
Library of Congress in their heads. What are
we supposed to teach them now?

Are you interested?

Then check out the presentation from this session, and stay tuned for my next blog post, which will include some great notes from this session about leadership, creative problem solving, team work and diversification, teaching and learning and much more…

Web2.0, Web3.0, Libraries, Literacy and Life!

This slideshare presentation from Cool Cat Teacher (Vicki Davis), from the Conference of Media Organizations held in the state of Georgia, is a very intersting presentation about challenging our definition of literacy and encouraging others to be a part of the redefinition of literacy…

I’m sure it will be of particular interest to our wonderful librarians… and many of our teaching staff.

Are you new to Blogging?

Are you new to being a contributor of this blog?

Check out the blog tips from Sue Waters – edublogger, listed on our Blogging Tips page. This page will always be changing, so be sure to come back for more ideas…

Here’s a great blog post to start with;

Sue’s First Five Tips For Writing Better Blog Posts

Hi Guys,

Welcome to the new look blog.

I didn’t think that the blog was quite as readable before, but I think this is an improvement.

What do you think?

You can click the ‘Responses’ link at the bottom of the post to leave a comment.

Moodle Moot 08 e-Learning Conference

This month Tracy Young and I attended a Moodle e-Learning Conference, called MoodleMoot (view conference photo’s on Flickr).

The conference was held on the beautiful grounds of All Hallows’ School in Brisbane.  The Moodle conference ran over two days and was jam packed with educating and informative sessions.

I’d love to share some of the notes I took and discoveries I made with you,  on our Team blog. I’ll start with the first Keynote;

Martin Dougiamas

Martin Dougiamas – Founder and Lead Developer of the  Moodle LMS

Here are some of the main points from Martin’s presentation;

• In a truly collaborative environment, we are both teachers and learners
• We learn from the act of creating/ expressing
• We learn from observing the activity of our peers, this help to build a culture (within a course)
• Constructivism - (understanding the contexts of others)
• Learning environments need to be flexible and adaptable and quickly respond to participant needs

The Typical Moodle Course Progression

1. Used for distributing handouts online
2. Use a Passive Forum
3. Use the Quiz and Assignment functionality (= less manual management)
4. Wiki, Glossary and Database functionality (the Database functionality allows you to create your own fields – more info)
5. Active/ Graded Forums
6. Combine Activities into sequences
7. Deeper thinking about learning activities
8. Use of survey module to study/reflect
9. Peer-review modules (workshop, student review & feedback)
10. Collaborating, sharing ideas, research

Exciting new features coming for Moodle2.0

Although it’s probably a good year away, there are some great new features coming for Moodle 2.0. We saw some of them in action at the MoodleMoot;

• File Management improvements (e.g. between courses as well as within one course)
• Greater usability with Web2.0 tools. E.g; The File repository window will look different, more like the Mac finder window. E.g. When you insert an image, you will have more options, your hard drive, the file repository, Flickr and other online image sites, you will be able to upload an image from online spaces.
  
• Ajax drag and drop functionality
• Plug-ins for Mahara e-Portfolio’s, Flickr, Facebook and myspace integration and many more
  
• Greater portfolio capability – ability export your learning from Moodle to publish to your own space when you move on. Export options will be HTML, XML, PDF, etc

Did you know?

• If you have created a glossary within your course, every time you use a term that’s in that glossary, Moodle will automatically link that term to the glossary entry?
• You can download ‘Moodle Anywhere‘ , a fully fledged Moodle install for your Thumb drive ( for use on Windows software only).
• You can join the Moodle Community and vote for functionality/issues that are on the list for resolution and submit your own issues at http://tracker.moodle.org
• The most powerful technique for online education is asking questions
• http://dev.moodle.org will be released soon. It will be an online community for Moodle developers to share best practices and demo courses. If you have a great course you would like to share with the Moodle community as an example of what can be done in Moodle, the Moodle dev team will ‘anonymise’ the course for you.
• The Moodle Community plan is to eventually create a course for every subject for teachers to enrol , share resources and communicate in.
• The most recent release of Moodle is 1.9.3. It has been officially certified for SCORM 1.2 and SCORM functionality and bugs have been fixed.

Next blog post will be about the Moodle GRADEBOOK functionality, a session presented by Shane Elliot from Pukunui Technology

Hi LTT bloggers !

I’ve put together a little wiki and I would love you to check it out, and let me know what you think.

I would also like to know what is happening in your Faculty/workplace…all I need is one link from you…a wiki, a blog, a podcast…anything to show those IT geeks what others are doing with Web 2.0 tools.

Thanks and have a great break!

Cheers,

Neal

Team Work

Team work: “Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work.”

“Don’t be afraid” to do something new!