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.

This site is by an Australian moodler Tomaz Lasic. Tom has some great little video tutorials on how to use and set up a range of resources and activities in moodle.

See them here - http://human.edublogs.org/moodle-tutorials-2-minute-moodles/

Thank you

A big thank you to Julian “Moodleman” Ridden for helping us sort out the issues with our NCTAFE Moodle theme. The choccies are on their way Julian!

Today I read an inspiring email from Donna, one of our fantastic team members, who is very excited about a Moodle project she has been working on.

The email not only reflected the growth her own capability and confidence levels with the Moodle platform, but highlights her ability to effectively collaborate with her colleagues and encourage resource sharing in the faculty.

General Education Moodle course templates

As the Faculty e-Learning Contact for the General Education Faculty, Donna has been working tirelessly with her team to create some great ‘template’ Moodle courses for all Gen. Ed. staff to use. While these courses already contain some fantastic interactive resources, they can easily be duplicated and customised for other teachers in the faculty to use.

You can have a look at a tour of the Moodle template course by watching Donna’s CGVE Moodle template tour here. Donna gives you a comprehensive look through the CGVE English course and at the interactive resources that are currently available to engage and teach students.

Feel free to contact Donna if you would like to use this course.

In her email Donna says:

“I have to say that getting moodle setup is going to be really exciting- today Lyn Connors rang me with a suggested resource for CGVE- to use the new government anti-binge ads- so with a net search  I’ve located them on a video, also a podcast discussing their effectiveness and many related articles on the net- am putting them into a little work unit with activities to add as a web page in the English moodle- good fun! I am getting less afraid!“

A Moodle winner…

Local Construction teacher Shane Johnston contacted me recently (approximately 3 or 4 weeks ago) regarding developing some courses in Moodle. He had previously used quite a few technologies in his classroom, but was keen to go a bit further.

Shane is now starting to develop teaching resources in the Construction area of our North Coast TAFE Moodle site. Coming to the end end of this two years project, his interest and support has really given me a boost and engaged me to work closer with him to progress our Faculty Moodle space.

Well done Shane, see you at the end of year bash!!

(sorry Paul, I had to put your photo in, it’s such a good one! Alex)

notes from the Moodle Moot 08 e-Learning Conference

The final presentation I attended at the Moodle Moot was presented by a couple of year 12 students. This was an extremely well prepared presentation, for which the two students had made a short movie interviewing other students for their feedback.

Here’s what the students said about Moodle;

• Let us customise our environment, we liked having the ability to change the themes ourselves, it engages us, we want more themes! “Finally, some choice for us!”
• We love having continuous access to support from our teachers in this environment
• We love getting instant feedback from the Moodle quizzes
• We sense the resistance from teachers to tackle new technologies and we feel limited by this
• Our teachers don’t know enough about the capability of these systems, which frustrates us, let us help!
• We like having extended deadlines (that is, we have up until 11.59pm to submit our assessments)
• Online exams in Moodle had problems, need back-up plan in case the system crashes
• We loved that our extra curriculum activities were accessible from the Moodle front page (e.g. notice boards, sport areas (courses) with timetables, etc. We felt this added value

… and what they said about Social Networking & learning;

• We don’t want to use Moodle like a Social Network, we already have the tools for that and we prefer to do that outside of school hours.
• We don’t want to communicate with teachers in these spaces, we don’t want them to know too much about us
• The tools we use (Facebook and myspace) have features that allow us to choose our audience (friends) and our own privacy levels
• We abused the chat functionality, so it got taken away, which was good. It’s back now with strict rules, we don’t bother using it now

… and what they would like to see improved

• More customisable layouts
• Access to our school files remotely, through this platform
• More warnings when there is going to be system downtime/ maintenance
• Most of our issues are not with Moodle, they are about the fact that the teachers are not able to use the system to its full capability – skill up!
• Lead by example, be competent with engaging us in this environment and create learning networks for us, or we’re disengaged

notes from the Moodle Moot 08 e-Learning Conference…

Another interesting presentation I attended was from Dr Danial Woo – University of New South Wales.

This session presented the outcomes of Moodle usability evaluation sessions using the eye-tracking software. The sessions were to determine ease of process and use of Moodle and a teaching and learning tool.

This software showed us (via Infrared) exactly where teachers were looking for information and buttons to click when creating a course in Moodle.  This provided me with a valuable insight into how teachers use Moodle and gave us some ideas on how we can incorporate the results into our own training at NCTAFE.

Moodle usability evaluation session

The Moodle founders and developers were also present in this session and keen to collaborate about some of the user results, some of which are listed below.

• Tendency to focus on the big blue headings in the middle of the screen, which didn’t look click-able, wandering eyes indicated confusion as to where to go next, so user became engaged with the search box
• Users unaware that they were logged in
• Much confusion for teachers on the course setting page about what ‘Roles’ are
• After course creation, you are directed to assign people to a ‘role’. Once you do this, there is no submit or ok button, so users get confused, finally realising they need to use the breadcrumb links to go back to the course
• The link to/attach files dialogue is confusing, where does it actually upload the files? Note: this feature will be improved in the new version
• Limited to choosing one file at a time to upload
• Some confusion about how to add participants to a course
• No explanation of adding a hidden ‘teacher’ when you Assign Roles
• Some confusion of the editing icons, e.g. indenting a resource icon not that clear

There were also some great tips for Usability Testing;

• Use a quiet space to conduct usability testing
• To create true user-centered design, work with your users, get them involved early (it expensive to make the changes later)
• test early, test often (this will result in cost saving)
• Start designs on paper
• Treat it like a science experiment
• Start simple and then build on your course
• Don’t give instructions to users by using the exact language e.g. “click this button”. Give users a more generic goal, e.g. “Here are some files, upload them to the course”
• Track trends, not just one lot of results
• Analyze findings and create solutions
• Use a note taker, don’t be distracted by taking notes yourself
• Check out the Apple Human Interface Guidelines

What are the implications of this testing?

• Develop Moodle – we can all contribute to the Moodle community. Vote for issues that as teachers, we would like to see fixed first (you can do that here).
• Train more effectively, incorporate these issues into our training
• Continuous Improvement results in happier users, increased performance

notes from the Moodle Moot 08 e-Learning Conference…

After the Keynote from Professor Erica McWilliam, I went along to the Moodle theme workshop, presented again, by Julian Ridden - St Ignatius College.

This session was a very in depth look at some different ways to set your Moodle themes up, some schools allow their students to choose their own theme, which judging by the feedback from the learners I heard later in the day, was a very engaging and popular option.

There were a ton of tips and tricks discussed by Julian and I took loads of notes. Luckliy I don’t have to retype them because Julian has provided his presenation here. (sorry, it’s on YouTube, you’ll need to watch this outside the DET network!)

I did find out about some great tools in this workshop;

• mamp - MAMP installs a local server environment in a matter of seconds on your Mac OS X computer
• cssedit - CSSEdit is a fast and powerful little application for your mac, it allows you to easily design beautiful, innovative and fast-loading standards-based web sites.
• Flock - new browser, based on Mozilla Firefox and allows you to organise your media, social networks and even blog from your browser. Watch the demo.

Also got some great ideas on how to minimise the text at the top of each course using labels (in which images are placed and linked to the actual resources). here’s an example…

Cool huh?

notes from the Moodle Moot 08 e-Learning Conference…

The Keynote from Professor Erica McWilliam, Assistant Dean (Research), Faculty of Education, QUT. Was so inspiring that I had to do two blog posts about it.

Here’s the first part of this post, with the engaging presentation linked in there for you to have a look through…

And here are some of the notes I took…

Teaching & Learning

• Promote Peer-to-Peer feedback. Kids give great (honest) feedback to each other. These days, kids get rewarded for their first attempts at any task (this needs to change), because of this, they can’t accept negative feedback from elders. So using tools to promote peer-to-peer feedback is a really good idea!
• Promote errors - we need to make errors to learn or we will become a very ignorant society. Help students fail without shame.
• Balance - Too little or too much computing is NOT good learning, there needs to be a balance.
• Create self managing learners – In a more temporary environment, learners need to be able to assemble and edit their learning world. With technology everything is editable/ temporary.
• Passive teaching is bad. Don’t teach rope learning, don’t care about the answer, care about the learning. Our highest achievers aren’t always our best learners!
• Team work – The value of a networked community must be explored. Typically, kids hate group work. So, we need to explain the advantages of group work clearly, i.e.
  • A group of bike riders go faster than one
  • A Flock of birds fly high than one
  • Systemic randomness
  • Small groups working together look like one large group (bio-teams)

Attribution:   Image: ‘Flock‘-www.flickr.com/photos/86817324@N00/1752254341

Leadership

• Diversification – We need to build on our capacity to employ ‘co-habitate’ with people that aren’t like us
• Clear role definitions
• Incubate roles – everyone is good at one thing, utilise this in your teams
• Brokering – Across ’structural’ roles, making connections between departments, student groups etc

Attribution:   Image: ‘me on delicious network explorer‘-www.flickr.com/photos/26325011@N00/352439602

The future

• Let Go! - There’s too much information out there, we don’t need to know it all. We need to get experience, involvement in the communities based around our chosen field sooner. Let go of old ideas. Scientists don’t need to know the entire periodic table by heart before they are released into the science community, yet we still insist that they do.
• There is always room for improvement – we may master the functionality of things, but there’s always room for improvement aesthetically.
• Build Learning Communities - link people in powerful ways
• Find comfort in being ignorant, things are moving so fast, we can’t know everything. The place for ‘knowers’ is Noah’s Ark!

Attribution: Image: ‘Pony Disaster Diverted‘-www.flickr.com/photos/35468159852@N01/103897400

High Flying Learning Environments

• • Connective and Diverse
  • Co-Intervention/ Creation and Separation
  • Leading and Following

How do we get there?

• • Enhancing constraints and removal of inhibitors (creating better guidelines)
  • Recognise that low percentile groups ‘flock’ together (and consequently give and get bad/ negative advice from each other)
  • Connect low percentiles with ‘high flyers’ (online systems give us fast and accurate access to this type of information, like we’ve never had before. We can now see who’s disengaged and needs help and intervene earlier. As an educator, this is your opportunity to use your skills.
  • Creativity is now measurable, we need to model creative dispositions

The Creative Workforce

If you want to know more about Professor Erica McWilliam, you can read about her here.

or here….

She also has published a book titled, ‘The Creative Workforce’, which you can order here.

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…

notes from the Moodle Moot 08 e-Learning Conference…

The final Moodle session of the first day, Rich content for Moodle on a Budget, was enthusiastically and entertainingly presented by Rhys Moult, of BJ Network Consulting.

Rhys (an ex-bartender and sommelier who smoothly seduced his way into the hearts of his audience with a glass of Shiraz) looked at various tools (free, media rich, Web2.0 tools) that can be used with Moodle to enhance learning resources and courses.

You can view the session presentation here, or just check out some of the tools Rhys highlighted for easy integration with Moodle below.

GoAnimate!

GoAnimate is a web tool you can use to create animations (learning activities) to embed into your course web space or Moodle course. Here’s an example:

Udutu

Udutu is a tool that represents “a drastic change in online learning and training, allowing anyone to offer training through the already popular Facebook social network”.

From Udutu:

Social Networks as Learning Management Systems

To create a learning organization where knowledge is passed from experts to newcomers and where personal growth is encouraged, you need to create a social learning network. You can impose your own and hope they’ll participate, or you can leverage the one they already use. Chances are many of your people are already signed up!

Don’t fight technology, Leverage it!

Our applications can turn existing social networks such as Facebook. Into a powerful Learning Management System, (LMS, LCMS) and retain all the rich communication and scheduling tools that these applications offer.

Better yet, there’s no upfront investment in either infrastructure or software licensing. You can be up and running tomorrow in the interface your learners already know and use.

Udutu and Moodle

The myUdutu Course Authoring Module for Moodle allows you to easily insert your myUdutu courses into your running Moodle installation. You can download the module from the Moodle site here.

To find out more click here.

I’ve seen a demonstration of Udutu and Moodle, it basically allows you to create and embed your own learning objects, structure the learning, easily add audio and video, navigation and much more.

Well worth a look!

Jing!

Jing is a tool that some of us have been using already to quickly and simply record audio over screen demonstrations or create screen shots with captions. It’s a free tool, with limited server storage, but you can save the instructional movie as a flash file to your computer.

What is this thing called Jing? Video tour.

I have written a blog post about how I use Jing in the past, but here’s my first attempt at a recording using Jing…

Flexible Learning Framework Toolboxes

Download Learning Objects from the Toolbox Repository for easy upload into Moodle.

You can find out more about this on our Institute e-Learning Kit’s Resources Page, or our join our Moodle Toolbox Course for a walk through How To.

Slideshare

Slideshare is a place to upload and share (if you like) PowerPoint presentations. You can even add audio to your slideshow.

Here’s an example of one we created last year for the Institute’s e-Learning Strategy project.

Videos and Voki’s

And of course there’s;

videos to embed

• teachertube
• blip.tv – here are some edu examples
• skillsone videos - search by industry categories

voki’s

• used for our blog welcome, top right
• used through various Moodle courses for course intro’s
• used with students for practising language skills

Have a look at some voki examples from our teaching staff, or visit our Web2.0 page for more ideas.

What tools do you use with Moodle?

Let me know what great Web2.0 tools you use in Moodle by leaving a comment here.

notes from the Moodle Moot 08 e-Learning Conference…

The session follwing the session from Bronwyn Campbell of Active Learning Partners, was dynamically presented by Julian Ridden - St Ignatius College.

After a very amusing video that was meant to explain what podcasting actually is (…it didn’t actually explain much, but had everyone laughing and engaged)… Julian demonstrated some great ways of how teachers could use Moodle for Podcasting and some good reasons as to why they should!

Julian has explored two Moodle ‘modules’, the Podcast and the iPodcast module (the activities you select from the drop down box when you’re editing your Moodle course)

Here’s the presentation… (you can watch the version with audio here, which I recommend).

notes from the Moodle Moot 08 e-Learning Conference…

The session follwing the informative Moodle Gradebook presentation, was from Bronwyn Campbell of Active Learning Partners.

Her session was called ‘Diving into e-Learning’, it was a case study about building capability and enthusiasm for using a ‘low-budget’ online learning environment, Moodle.

The course – http://elearning.adas-online.org is for the Occupational Diving Industry, the clients are mostly mature-age, time-poor and experienced in the field.

Image: ‘Jenny is taking the video’ – www.flickr.com/photos/26598370@N00/97206526

Getting divers out of the water and into a classroom proved to be a bit of a logistical nightmare and Bronwyn’s presentation explored some of the benefits, challenges and issues involved in moving the classroom online, into Moodle.

The attached PowerPoint presentation from her session is jam-packed with statistics and data gathered from students of the online course. Grab a cuppa and five minutes to take a look at their journey and statistics!

Next Moodle Moot blog post will be about Podcasting through Moodle, a session presented by Julian Ridden a.k.a Moodleman.