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.

You can visit the podcast site here.

Why?

For a better customer experience, a satisfied customer, to be competitive. The next generation is coming (Generation Z) and they are more fashion and design conscious than ever before. Be ready!

Observe;

| View | Upload your own

Here are some photo’s I took of the new Apple store in Sydney last week.

“Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories, and understandings. ” Wikipedia

How can Social Media help provide a better service?

Watch this great video by Commoncraft;

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

I know it’s been a while since the gauntlet was thrown (like October ‘07) and back then I set some weekly blog challenges for the Learning Technology Team. At the commencement of the challenge, the team mostly engaged. Towards Task 3, the team were not so engaged, or more to the point, had no time to put into this series of challenges and wanted some time to reflect and revise on their learning.

Inspiring colleagues

A couple of things have made me decide to finish this series of challenges. The first being regular gig for Regan Harding as guest blogger on the engageme.net/blog, Regan is one of our team members and her posts have been very inspiring and I would like you all to go visit them… and the second, a link to a very interesting blog that I received by email today;

Using Blogs to Promote Authentic Learning in the Classroom

What a great list of resources! In particular, check out the Student Safety and Responsible Blogging section

So let me recap on the challenge. The Tasks so far;

• Task 1 – created a blog.
• Task 2 – your “About me” page.
• Task 3 – comment on someone else’s blog.

Now for Task 4 – Email a Reader

This challenge is about thanking readers that commented on your blog and contributors from way back if you’ve been blogging for a while now. My suggestions would be to do it via a personal email.

This is something to adhere to in the future if you really want to get the most out of the relationships you have created through your blog. Responding to someone via email to thank them for their resources, comments, links or conversation is a great way to strengthen a relationship and encourage that person to continue reading and contributing to your blog and your blogging network.

I have really enjoyed my (Blog & Twitter) community that grew as a consequence of the 31 Day Blog Challenge I took part in last year. These connections are still there (although I have been quite absent so far this year) and these contacts support us in our daily roles and with our own personalised learning.

Before I post Task 4, I’d like to know where you are all up to in this blog challenge? I have looked at all your blogs and noticed that many of you have not completed Task 3. I seem to have lost you in this challenge.

Why?

What do you think about blogging in education? Why doesn’t it work for you? Does it work for you? Is it just another thing you need to do? Can you see any benefits yet? I’d like to invite you to comment on this post and start a conversation about it. What are the issues?

What can I do to engage you in this challenge?

In Task 1, you created a blog. You refined your profile, in Task 2 – your About page. In Task 3 you were asked to comment on someone else’s blog. Blogging is about conversation and connections and to start this off, you need to comment on a blog.

Where are the blogs?

You do not have to comment on a team members blog, so let me know if you’ve gone outside the team so I can join you.

There are other NCI staff with blog’s that are worth discovering, let’s find them and engage with them. There’s a plethoras of resources out there on blogs. These people can be really beneficial, helpful to you in your daily role and have resources you can share.

I mentioned Kaz Madigan in the last task. If you haven’t had a look at her colourful and wonderful blog, have a look now.

Have you been to the NSW Outreach blog?

Are there any more blogs you know of?

I’d also like to invite the wider community to comment on some of these blogs. It would be great if you could help us find the value in connecting with other educators.

Team Blogs (ready for comments and conversations;

• Linda Johnson
  
• Julie Robbins – Arts & Media, Soft Furnishings Blog
  
• Regan Harding - Byron Community Youth Blog
• Lynne Ridley
• Lisa Faulkner - Flexilearn Center Grafton

I look forward to the conversation and collaboration.

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.

Blog themes are usually free and as such we can’t possibly expect others not to use the same ones. You have to pay for that!

But what if that person is someone you know? What if someone who has a fairly strong virtual identity and is in the same professional field, and is someone who visits your blog?

What if someone that you knew changed their blog theme to something almost identical to yours?

Would you be surprised when you visited their space? Would you be annoyed or flattered?

What if you had carried that theme through to other spaces?

Would you change your theme?

What do you think?

How do you feel about your online identity?

]]> http://www.flairandsquare.com/wordpress/archives/177/feed 15 http://www.flairandsquare.com/wordpress/archives/167 http://www.flairandsquare.com/wordpress/archives/167#comments Sun, 07 Oct 2007 11:27:16 +0000 alex miller http://www.flairandsquare.com/archives/167 What is Social Networking?

See Wikipedia

A social network site allows people who share interests to build a ‘trusted’ network/ online community. A social network site will usually provide various ways for users to interact, such as IM (chat/ instant messaging), email, video sharing, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, etc.

The main types of social networking sites have a ‘theme’, they allow users to connect through image or video collections online (like Flickr or YouTube) or music (like MySpace, lastfm). Most contain libraries/ directories of some categories, such as former classmates, old work colleagues, and so on (like Facebook, friendsreunited, Linkedin, etc). They provide a means to connect with friends (by allowing users to create a detailed profile page), and recommended systems linked to trust.

Here are some of the more popular Social Networking spaces:

Popular Social Networks (widely used in 2007)

• Facebook – A social networking website. Initially the membership was restricted to students of Harvard University. It was originally based on what first-year students were given called the “face book” which was a way to get to know other students on campus. As of July 2007, there over 34 million active members worldwide. From September 2006 to September 2007 it increased its ranking from 60 to 6th most visited web site, and was the number one site for photos in the United States.
• Twitter – A free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, email, to the Twitter website, or an application/ widget within a space of your choice, like MySpace, Facebook, a blog, an RSS Aggregator/reader. More
• MySpace – A popular social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos internationally. According to Alexa Internet, MySpace is currently the world’s sixth most popular English-language website and the sixth most popular website in any language, and the third most popular website in the United States, though it has topped the chart on various weeks. As of September 7, 2007, there are over 200 million accounts. More

Click here for a more extensive list.

Can I have it in English please?

Sure. Watch this movie from Common Craft;

Coming soon…

Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to explore Social Networking with you. I’ll invite you to join me in my Social Networks, if you don’t already belong.

We’ll look at some options for creating and maintaining Social Networks for educational purposes, and some examples of education focused Social Networks.

Let me know if there’s anything in particular you’d like to see covered, or please ask any questions and I’ll endeavor to get some answers for you!

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.

Watch this movie now!

*Special thanks to Des Osborn for pointing out this movie after a recent Elluminate Session… e-Tools ‘n Tips

There a few more of these “in Plain English” videos by Lee LeFever at CommonCraft

• Social Networking in Plain English
• Wiki’s in Plain English
• Social Bookmarking in Plain English

There has been a lot of interest in RSS lately. What is RSS, how can it help you and save you time? If the movie above wasn’t enough, then check out some of the links below…

Looking at my blog statistics and reader clicks, the RSS information seems to be the most popular, so here is a list of posts and resources from the archives;

• Netvibes Vs Google Reader – Aug 14th
• Alex’s demonstration of netvibes – August 13th
  
• Netvibes ‘How To’ – June 14th
• RSS in education - April 18th

Other good RSS feed readers;

• netvibes – this site is really cool. Your feeds are loaded into pods that you can click and drag around your homepage. You can also add To-Do lists, weather, search engines, calendars (very Mac friendly), video searches, and more…
• pageflakes - here’s another site you can personalise with your favorite news, weather, sports, entertainment, photos, videos, music, email…and much more, all in one place!
• bloglines – another useful site that once you have an account, you can add RSS feeds… I find this hard to use in comparison to netvibes and pageflakes

Every time I check my netvibes (RSS Aggregator), I am astounded that there is one or two new posts from Sue Waters. I’ve mentioned Sue a few times throughout this blog and her content often inspires me to write a post in response. Like this post I wrote in response to Sue’s article about innovation being challenged by all the constraints currently on us, like blocked sites within DET.

Sue is a Aquaculture teacher at Challenger TAFE in Perth. She trials a lot of new technology with her classes, on her blog she provides useful examples, guidelines, tips and much more. If you are interested in m-Learning, PDA’s, mobile phones, spy glasses, etc, and you don’t already read or subscribe to Sues blog, you’re missing out on loads of good tips and advice.

As a busy blogger myself, I know how hard it is when you have limited time and it can be so rewarding when someone leaves you a positive or constructive comment. It seems to make all that work worthwhile. This was highlighted by the Day 21 Blog Challenge – Make a Reader famous, which is what this post is all about. So here’s to you Sue!

Think about this – Do you like recognition for good work? Of course you do. So why not pick one of Sues posts listed below, have a read and leave her a comment, and tell her I sent you!

A few good posts worth reading;

• How to Read Blog posts on a Phone Using Mobile Friendly Google Reader
• SlideShare Needs Our Support — Lets Help Them Out
• STOP, LOOK, THINK – What Is Material Really Going To Look Like on A Mobile Device
• How are we going to effectively use the mobile devices in our student’s pockets?
• For all the lovers of creating comics ToonDoo has added ability to make ToonBooks
• You Need Spyglasses – Are you Serious?
• Mobile Web Usage is Increasing – How Will You Use It With Students?

Thanks for all your efforts Sue, there are some great resources on your site that I’m sure many teachers will find useful. I certainly have!

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