LTT: Weekly Blog Challenge – Task 4

Inspiring colleagues

Regan Harding Guest BloggerA 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

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.

Welcome to teaching and learning in 2008

So it’s the beginning of 2008 and it’s time to get back into it. But, before we do, and in case you missed it…. bumped into Kevin Rudd on Christmas Eve…

LTT: Weekly Blog Challenge – Where are you?

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?

LTT: Weekly Blog Challenge – Task 3

So you have a blog! What now? What can you do with it? How could it be useful in Teaching and Learning or even social networking?

Reviews of the LearnScope Regional Event ’07

Regan Harding shares some of her thought provoking experiences with Youth at Risk and Generation Y students and the treasures within. While Kate Jones had a clear message, there’s no need to recreate the wheel, there are plenty of great media rich resources out there.

LTT: Weekly Blog Challenge – Task 2

In these five short tasks, we’ll be exploring some of the techniques you can use to embed blogging into your work, engage your colleagues and your students…

LTT: Weekly Blog Challenge – Task 1

Embedding Blogging into your Educational Spaces

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….

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.

Team Meeting Time Survey

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. 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.

Supporting e-Learning Staff

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.

Linda Johnston is doin’ it for her faculty!

Linda is the Faculty e-Learning contact for the THRAPS (Tourism Hospitality Retail and Personal Services) faculty and part of the TAFE NSW, North Coast Institute’s Learning Technology Team. The main focus of this team is to explore the use of technology in teaching and learning and to increase staff capability in this area.

Not having a background in Information Technology, Linda seemed a little nervous about the task ahead. It was clearly evident at the start that she was excited by the challenge. Her enthusiasm to learn about, implement and explore new technologies and look at how they could enhance her role as a teacher has blown me away and impressed many of her colleagues.