What now? What can you do with it? How could it be useful in Teaching and Learning?

I’d like to invite any teachers reading this blog to comment on how they use there blog, why is a blog classed as a Social Networking tool? How can it be used with a class?

I use my blog to share my e-Learning/ New Technology learning and development with colleagues and family. It’s both a personal and professional space.

So how can a blog be useful for networking?

Here’s an example;

Yesterday a teacher within North Coast Institute contacted me and happened to mention that she read my blog and I was really thrilled.

Kaz Madigan has her own blog, which I hadn’t seen before and it’s wonderful. Now I have seen it, and we have talked about our blogs and have made a connection and are looking forward to meeting each other.

But that’s just the start…

I have since sent her blog to a couple of other teachers that have similar interests, work in the same area or a similar interest in web tools. I am hoping they might post a comment on her blog, or contact her and connect.

For me, the power of blogging is making connections. Connecting with like minded people in this way, you are able to develop a strong collaborative relationship virtually, an element of trust follows.

If you haven’t already met face to face, one day you might and the relationship strengthens further, as resources, learning, and experiences are shared. Through these people and their online spaces, you meet others and a strong network of ‘trusted’ friends blooms.

In Task 1, you created a blog. You refined your profile, in Task 2 – your About page. Now you are ready to experience the power of blogging. But, as always, to get something out of it, you need to put something in, so here it is, Task 3.

Task 3: Comment on someone else’s Blog

This challenge is about going on a blog hunt to find like minded people with a blog. Add a comment on to their blog and start a conversation.

There is a list of your team/colleague blogs already in the comments section of Task 1. You could also search for a blog relative to your faculty or area of interest. It’s up to you, but please take the time to make a comment, you’d be amazed by how much it’s appreciated and you’ll probably get a response back fairly quickly.

I know this challenge might seem pretty basic, but many successful blogs have been built on the back of these types of conversations and the task is worth getting your teeth into.

Tip: RSS Aggregator…

I can’t really imagine life before netvibes; managing all those blogs and wiki’s through an RSS Aggregator makes life so much easier. You can subscribe to the RSS feed on a blog to automatically keep following the conversation and posts.

Next week, in our Technology sessions, we’ll revisit RSS and their use to save you time!

Good luck and happy commenting!

We had three presenters from North Coast Institute, including myself.

The other presenters were;

Regan Harding

Regan shared some of her thought provoking experiences with her Youth at Risk and Generation Y students and the treasure within.

Her presentation explored personal identity and learning and how electronic mediums can provide young people with chances to be seen and be heard. Regan also covered what has worked for her and what might work for you. Regan showcased some of the spaces she uses to teach and engage her young students and the surrounding communities.

A couple of links from Regan;

Blurring Worlds Might Have Us Speaking Clearly – The Sydney Morning Herald

It’s Crunch Time – Raising Youth Engagement and Attainment

Kate Jones

Kate’s message was clear, there’s no need to recreate the wheel, there are plenty of great resources out there.

Kate shared some of the wonderful resource sites she has found. Many of which contain some fantastically engaging, media rich resources, often with accompanying teacher guides and lesson plans.

Both Regan and Kate did an outstanding job on the day and you can check out some reviews of the day, from Zoe Campbell here. Zoe also shares some great resources from the day.

Check them out!

Thanks Zoe for sharing your learning and feedback from that day.

In Phase one of the Technolog-e sessions, we looked at Educational uses of Blogs. Now, in these five short tasks (should take no more than 15 minutes each), we’ll be exploring some of the techniques you can use to embed blogging into your work, engage your colleagues and your students.

Looking back at Task 1

In task 1 (getting started), you set up your first blog and wrote your first post. What a great achievement!

Here are some of your new blogs;

• Lisa Faulkner (Acting WeLC – Grafton)
• Linda Johnston (FeLC – THRAPS):
• Julie Robbins (FeLC – Arts & Media)
• Regan Harding (WeLC – Ballina/ W’bar)
• Lynne Ridley (WeLC Kempsey)
• Donna Guiver (WeLC Tarree)

Well done… that’s a great start.

In some of these blogs, I can see real potential to engage and connect not only with your colleagues, but students, industry and community.

Task 2 – Spend some time on your About Me/ Profile page

The About Page of your blog is a VERY important part of your blog. It gives you a chance to connect with your readers on a more personal level. Here’s mine.

This page gets checked out to see who you are before they decide whether they want to read your blog or how much they are likely to engage with you. Rework it regularly. I have run some audits on my blog and this page does get as many visits as the front page.

Your task is to develop your About/Profile page, and here are some tips on how to get your readers interested;

• Talk about yourself before your role – examples: Sue Waters | Michelle Martin | Kate Quinn
  

• Try to avoid acronym’s and ‘techie’ words and phrases – like “new and emerging technologies”, “personalised learning environments” and “pedagogy”, unless you are writing to explain what they are

• Include your picture or a personal image, include some personal things that allow people to see what they have in common with you

• List any other online spaces that you have that your readers might like (e.g. myspace, lastfm, twitter, wiki’s, del.icio.us, etc)

• Spell out subscription options – RSS… so readers can be notified when you post something new (need some help?)

• Provide a way for your readers to contact you. Some free blogs have Contact Forms as part of the deal, check your blog settings and options.

* Remember not to put too much personal information here, it’s open web. Check our Team security & privacy page from our session with Sue Shelly.

In Phase one of the Technolog-e sessions, we looked at Educational uses of Blogs.

As part of this challenge, we will explore some of the techniques you can use to embed blogging into your work, whether that’s engaging colleagues, student, family or all of them (you get out of this as much as you put in) in the one space.

Your Challenge

It’s time to strengthen our network, collaborate more with our team, and email less.

So let’s start with our own Blog Challenge.

Note: One task a day (even a quick one) might be a bit much to ask of you, but you have some paid time for your role once a week. So I am asking you to take 10 – 15 mins to complete one task per week for five weeks.

To learn about the power of blogs, we need to start using them. There’s not much point me listing the blog challenges on our team wiki, so I’ll do it through my blog….

Task 1 – Write A Post

If you haven’t already

1. Set up a blog with Blogger and Edublogs .
2. Watch this video on how to set up an edublogs blog.
3. Your blog title and URL address is important, it sticks, consider carefully.
4. Choose a design/ template/ style – don’t spend too much time on this yet, it’s a later task.
5. Get started by writing your first post. Watch this video on how to write posts for Edublog blogs. This could be a welcome, an introduction to you and why you have a blog, it could invite other to comment on your first post.

For some tips withnumber 5, read Sue’s tips.

* image from here

Some useful Blog Challenge resources

• Sue Waters – 5 Blog Tasks (one per day) to get you up and communicating
• 31 Days to Building a Better Blog Challenge – some great techniques (some of which are not relevant) to implement in your own blogging
• Alex’s journey on the 31 Day Challenge

The focus was Youth and Social Networking in Education.

For the first part of the day, the presenters (and many attendees) came to us virtually via Adobe Connect. For the later part, the presenters were present at the event, it was intended that virtual attendees could watch and interact online.

This resulted in some interesting discussion at lunch time about both the content and the delivery method. Physical participants commented that they felt it was difficult to engage with the virtual presenters, and felt frustrated by being unable to log into the Connect room due to the wireless connection. These participants were able to engage with the presenters in the same room during the afternoon sessions, looking at the comments in the chat pod, the virtual participants seemed to feel some what cut-off.

Was this lack of preparation and time on my part?

Being my first attempt to coordinate such an event, I have learnt a lot about format (although international time zones dictate presentations to some extent), not to mention over committing myself.

On reflection, loading the afternoon presentations and hand-outs into the Adobe Connect Room would have enhanced the experience of the virtual attendees in the afternoon, but would the focus on the technology, the Adobe Connect room, have detracted from the event for the physical attendees? How can we make these event’s run smoother in the future? Are we ready? Technically, I would say we have a long way to go, but the learning from these experiences are good ones. How did the guest speakers feel, did it seem smooth to them? I wonder…

Guest Speakers

Guest Speaker #1 – Sue Waters

Our first Guest Speaker was Sue Waters, who invited her wonderful, international Social Network along. See her blog post. This was a very interactive and fun session. Dare I say chaotic?

Virtually, using Adobe Connect , Sue intended to lure physical participants to contribute to the discussion by using chocolate (what is it with Sue and Chocolate?). Sue led the discussion around the positives and negatives of Social Networking quite successfully at first, but after a while the participants became wild with sugar racing through their bodies and it became difficult for them to focus.

It was an interesting session and lots to be learnt from both the content and the delivery. As usual, Sue’s happy and bright personality made the session fun and engaging.

My questions are;

• Was it too much to be Social Networking at the same time, sending our questions out via our Twitter networks?
• Is there only a small percentage of us that actually mutli-task like this? Or is this what it’s really like out there for our students?
• Do we need to learn and teach this skill?

I am looking forward to Sue’s comments on the session. Until then, a big thanks to Sue for her time and chocolate, I have since put on 5 kilo’s!!

Guest Speakers #2 - Alex Hayes and Jacinta Gascoigne

A discussion into the use (and abuse) of social networking technology in education not restricted to VET, inclusive of all community based settings, flexible and home schooling. Jacinta presented to people attending both virtually and physically via Adobe Connect while Alex Hayes manned the chat pod, asking and answering some interesting questions.

Thanks to you both for sharing your thoughts.

Afternoon Sessions

Kate Jones presented some excellent information on interactive, engaging resources that are readily available to engage younger learners. No need to create engaging material from scratch, check out some of these sites;

• ABC Radio & TV Podcasts
• Wikipedia Spoken Articles
• Project Gutenberg, Audio Books
• Australian Screen – Downloadable clips from Australian films, documentaries, historical footage and TV shows.
• Film Australia – Download interactive digital learning material. Lesson worksheets and teacher notes also available.
• Teachertube – Safe videos for school
• Slideshare – Download and share PowerPoint presentations online. Find presentations on any subject
• TaLe – Teaching and Learning exchange. Resources for teachers, parents and community. It’s worth delving deeply into this site.

Thanks Kate for your generosity.
Regan Harding inspired us with her Gen X & Y ‘treasures within’ presentation, provoking discussion about the exploration of personal identity and learning and how electronic mediums can provide young people with chances to be seen and be heard.

Regan graciously shared her journey and Youth at Risk projects with us. She shared what has worked for her and what might work……

• Blurring Worlds Might Have Us Speaking Clearly – The Sydney Morning Herald
• It’s Crunch Time – Raising Youth Engagement and Attainment
• We Reckon – Byron Bay Community Campus Youth Blog

I am hoping that Regan will grace this blog with a guest post on this topic very soon.

Kristin Teece from New England joined us at the end of the day to discuss Social Networking, engaging the Disengaged… flexible and real learning… literacy and numeracy skills, IT skills, self development and creativity… Building positive educational experiences and relationships on the social networks (specifically myspace) and what to be aware of in a professional educational settings.

Discussions over a beer…

One of the most interesting conversations of the day was about the communication methods, language and perceptions of youth (Gen X & Y). How do they communicate with peers, bosses and teachers? What they expect, what they ‘don’t get’, what their elders ‘don’t get’. Mark Keevers, our official Gen X person had some great points to share and it was over a beer, at the Nautilus bar, at the end of the day, that this discussion got really interesting. The discussion was recorded by Padmini Sampathkumar on an mp3 player. I am hoping to get some clips of this discussion to share with you here. So thanks Padmini for recording that one.

Thank you

Thanks to all our guest speakers and attendees for their hard work and contributions for the day. A special thanks to Luke Hodges from the AFLF who was our technical expert and support guru for the day. You are a legend!

Elsewhere on that day…

Speaking of Social Networking, blogging fits into this category. Interestingly, in Brisbane on the same day, there was an Australian Blogging Conference at QUT’s Creative Industries Precinct.

Tama Leaver writes some great notes on the conference on his blog – “Reflections on the Australian Blogging Conference and Blogging in Education“. This is really worth a read, there are some great examples as well.

Kate Davis, a Gold Coast Librarian, also took some notes on “Building a Better Blog” at the event.

Well, the survey results are in!

As you know, I used a web tool called WuFoo to create a poll to determine times that would be best for you, for the Technolog-e Sessions. Once the form is created, a step-by-step process, WuFoo provides the code to embed the form into your blog (it’s just like adding media [slide.com] into your wikispace).

WuFoo tool also allows you to create basic, graphic reports for you to easily view the results.

I have taken a screen print of the results, as you can see, but, you’ll need to click the image below to view the graph;

So it looks like our sessions for Phase 2 will now be:

4.00pm on Wednesday and 9.30am on Thursday.

Thanks everyone for participating.

ask your readers to do some self promotion.

So… “I’d like to get to know you well…” (sing it)

As well as giving you the opportunity to promote yourself on this blog, I’d like to take the opportunity to get to know you, on a more… personal level. Yes, I’m going to ask you to share something personal with me.

If you’re not comfortable with that, then share something that you use to strengthen your networks, encourage collaboration and, or resource sharing. I’d love you to post a comment, include a link to your Flickr/Facebook or other social networking site…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/flairandsquare

If you use Flickr, I’d like to know more about how.

• Do you really utilise all the tools that this site offers?
• Do you use it for teaching and learning?
• How can we get the most out of this tool?

Thanks to JoKay, I recently discovered MOO. Moo loves to print beautifully designed products with the photos in your Flickr stream. For just $25 I got 100 funky little business cards printed using the images of my choice. I used five images of my avatar, Spinner Mills. Click below to see them on my Flickr space.

www.flickr.com More of millerspin’s photos tagged with closeup

In an effort to minimise inbox overload, and in response to your great feedback, enthusiasm and determination, I have decided to dedicate this blog post to you.

I agree with the comments Arabella Hay made in a recent email to you all;

“…you are all doing a fantastic job and thoroughly enhancing the skills and knowledge of your Faculties and Campus’s….”

“…it’s time now to consolidate, refresh and explore embedding new ideas and practices. So, perhaps entering a different phase with a different ‘look and feel’… ”

Accepting the role as a Faculty or Workplace e-Learning contact is a massive commitment considering how busy you all are. I am aware that you are all devoting more hours to this project than allocated and I am seeing some wonderful blog’s, wiki’s, Del.icio.us pages, Moodle Courses, etc as a result. I am also getting some great feedback from teachers, head teachers, faculty managers and our Institute Director about the wonderful support and work you are all doing.

So thank you all for your effort and hard work so far!

Welcome to Phase 2

Arabella has succinctly captured your feedback in the comments above. Having taken your feedback and suggestions on board, we are now busy preparing for Phase 2 of our project.

Let’s revisit some of the technologies we have explored to date and focus on ways to embed these technologies (as appropriate) into your Faculty or Workplace. In addition, let’s explore a couple of tools that you can use to engage colleagues in using the technologies you have explored so far; Jing, Bridgit and Adobe Connect.

I hope you’ll join me next week for the first Technolog-e session of Phase2.

In this session we will create quick some demonstrations that you can upload to your wiki/ blog or email to your colleagues, using the program Jing (you will need to download and install Jing prior to this session – you may require the HelpDesk for this).

We’ll follow this up with some Adobe Connect training for you, and we will use these sessions to look at ways to further embed the technology you have already explored. Technolog-e Session Schedule

Times

It’s always going to be hard finding times that suit you all. So I invite you to make some selections on the survey below. The most popular times will be selected.

This form was built using the Web2.0 tool Wufoo, it’s a great tool, easy to use web based form builder. It’s well worth signing up for a demo and using on your wiki’s and blog’s! Have a look at some example forms here.

<a href=”http://flairandsquare.wufoo.com/forms/whats-the-time-mr-wolf/” title=”HTML form”>Fill out my Wufoo form!</a>

Please feel free to leave a comment on this blog.

Sue Waters raises some interesting and very valid points in her latest post that are definitely worth some discussion;

What can we do about policies that are stifling innovation in educational uses of technology?

This is a very interesting topic and perhaps worthy of further exploration.

The above blog post couldn’t come at a more appropriate time for me. I am currently witnessing, first hand, a substantial growth in the use of open websites in the form of wikis, blog’s and other social networking sites/web tools for the purpose of educational resource and corporate knowledge sharing.

I am also, today, feeling quite disturbed by the number of stories I am hearing about cyberstalking, cyber and text bullying and harassment of young people.

Please Don’t stop the Innovation

The availability and access to these tools and this technology has resulted in so much innovation, collaboration, creativity and excitement from teachers, students, community and industry. While this has been very inspiring, there is obviously material out there, on these spaces, open to the world wide web, that legally shouldn’t be, may be against policy, unsafe, breach privacy and child protection legislation and therefore, those websites get blocked inside the DET world.

I do NOT however, think the solution is to block everything.

So what can we do?

Who’s responsibility is it to guide young people in these spaces? Their parents? Do they understand it themselves? How can we, as teachers, coaches and mentors, guide them in these spaces, prepare them for use of this technology in the workplace if we can’t access them?

There’s an obvious effort by educators to “engage youth, get on their wavelength” (article by Khyiah Angel from the NSW Teachers Federation), there are generation studies emerging at a rate of knots as the Baby Boomers and Generation Jones try to embrace technology, get their head around the effect that video games have had on Generations X & Y, and how this all might affect us in the workplace. How can we do this if we can’t access the technology that our children “live” in and work with?

Maybe we need to change our thinking?

Unless we raise our own awareness about these issues, and start being more proactive about privacy, copyright legislation, etc, then unfortunately, I think we are likely to see more sites getting blocked and there’s probably very little we can do about it.

I have had many conversations recently regarding the above and whilst there is some awareness of privacy laws, legal requirements, corporate policies, there is, evidently, a substantial lack of knowledge, not only about how the technology actually works, but also about copyright, licensing, child protection laws, privacy legislation, compliance issues, etc.

I believe that we must very quickly engage in discussion about building and sharing knowledge around the above issues. We need to start developing policies and guidelines in a friendly language that are supportive and start a framework for building capability in our workplaces.

Perhaps then, we might start to see some positive changes.

What are your thoughts?

Please comment.

Some Resouces

• The Copyright Kitchen is a user-friendly resource for those working in vocational education and training (VET). It breaks up copyright information into categories built around who you are, where you work and the task at hand. Check out their list of Resources!

• Youth Privacy Issues
• DET Child Protection Training
• To see if a site is blocked at DET, run the site through the web filter here. You will need to use your DET username and password.
• Gmail Warning to students and teachers by Frances McLean

Here latest blog post about why and how she uses PDA’s in the classroom is really worth a read – Why I use PDAs in the classroom.

Besides her blog, she also has a couple of other Mobile Technology in Education online spaces;

• Sue’s podcast site has lots of great audio and video podcasts of interviews with people using the technology.
• Sue’s wiki site documents how the technology is being used and provides “how to” tips.

A training day with a small group of Faculty and Workplace e-Learning contacts was an ideal way for each staff member to catch-up with where the rest of the team is, collaborate and support each other. Looking at one relevant technology and focusing on it’s application for teaching and learning with colleagues seemed to be an extremely succesful way to get engaged and motivated.

What we learnt

1. One thing at a time - focus on one tool that you feel will be relevant to your workplace/ faculty and set it up
2. Connections and teamwork – make connections and network with each other, share ideas and resources and look at what other team members are doing.
3. Ask for help - don’t be afraid to ask for help, exploring problems and solutions together is a great way to explore technology.

What next?

1. Look at your personal plan. How are you going?
2. Communicate with you Faculty about what you can offer
3. Keep in touch withme, I can help you, give you some direction and connect you with each other

Here are a few of the tools and sites listed on – Librarian Chick that I thought were good:

Resources

• LearnOutLoud.com – offers the Internet’s largest directory of audio and video learning resources. Browse the catalogue of over 10,000 available titles including audio books, MP3 downloads, podcasts, and free educational audio & video…
• FreeLoadPress – Free online textbooks
• 4Teachers – Integrate technology into your classroom with free online tools and resources
• PlanetPDF – Huge archive of free PDF books
• SuTree – An index of free video lessons, video tutorials, lectures and how to guides

Tools

• Awesome Powerpoint Tutorials – Tutorials on how to create text-FX, transparencies, DVD’s etc.
• Create A Graph – Quickly create graphs and charts
• PowerPoint Templates for Teachers – PowerPoint resources for educators
• Thumbstacks – Create and share presentations on the web
• i-Lighter – The yellow highlighter for the web
• GroupLoop – Simple web-based software to organize your group
• MindMeister Basic – Hold online real-time brainstorming sessions with friends and colleagues

And one tool that isn’t listed;

Tiny URL – Have you noticed a lot of the links that come via the Australian Flexible Learning Framework start with http://tinyurl.com? This web tool allows you to transform lengthy URL’s that often get broken up during a copy and paste, into a shorter more manageable URL. Check it out.  There’s also a Firefox extension for this.