And so it goes

September 29, 2011 by · No Comments · eLearning Technologies, Uncategorized

Here is the final post for Assignment 1 of E-Learning Technologies.  I have been trying to embed an Adobe Presenter file into the wiki that I have made for the learning process but can’t seem to do it.  I’ve asked around but no-one seems to know, researched on the internet and Adobe website. I loaded it onto Moodle which was the main thing I wanted to do and took a screen shot of it playing in Moodle but no-one can see the original file.  I am going to try to load it onto the blog instead.  Here goes….

 Can’t seem to do it – I’m very disappointed.

 

The wiki can be found at http://audiometryonline.wikispaces.com/Home

Social Media – making it work for you

September 24, 2011 by · No Comments · eLearning Technologies, social media

image by Ibai Lemon  AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike Some rights reserved

This week I went to a TAFE workshop “Using social media @ Sydney Institute”.  I was interested from the viewpoint of using something like Facebook for educational purposes in my own classes and I’ve talked about that in a previous post.  Interestingly most of the emphasis in the workshop covered using social media as a tool for information, marketing and promotion of courses in TAFE.

This is something that I had considered (promoting our courses through social media) but had no idea of how to approach it.  For example last year I started a section Flickr account where I could post photos of students in the lab, on excursions, visitors from industry and our recent State Medal Award winners (good stuff showing what were about and what we could do).  What I learned from this workshop is all these independent blogs, wikis etc that weren’t linked to the common Sydney Institute site were really missing the benefit of being associated with the main Sydney Institute page (http://www.sit.nsw.edu.au/).

From an outsiders point of view if you were searching for some information on a course you would probably google Sydney Institute, TAFE or a specific course and land on the Institute home page.  You would be unlikely to get any of these independent sites (blogs etc) on such a search.  If these sites were linked into the main Institute page however then the prospective student could access them from that one central landing page.  The emphasis here then is on building a co-ordinated site to give information to prospective and current students that can be used to highlight your section and the courses you offer, ie developing an online social presence.

In developing a strategy for this social presence it is important to listen to your students and engage them in conversations that are relevant to them.   Any content should be sharable and consistent so that you are able to build a sense of community.  The social media platform chosen should be appropriate to your capture audience, for example LinkedIn can be used to build professional contacts while a Facebook page is more likely to be effective with younger people who want an immediate response to their enquiries. Armed with this new knowledge I intend to develop a holistic approach to my sections social presence online to maximise the opportunities that social media present.  It’s what these professional development workshops are all about.

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Virtual Worlds – a Second Life?

September 18, 2011 by · No Comments · eLearning Technologies, simulation

My search for simulation technology has been difficult.  I’ve made inquiries at TAFE and universities, different departments, IT people at TAFE but I’ve not really been unable to come up with much information about its use in NSW institutions.  This has been extremely disappointing but probably not really unexpected.  Simulation technology is relatively new to education in Australia and because it has been perceived as just gaming technology and a time waster it’s been banned by DET up until June this year.  While there has been steady growth in the use of virtual worlds like Second Life for educational purposes especially in the US (see Second Life Education List) it requires solid senior management backing to get it up and going in the first place in any institution.  As with the introduction of any new technology we really need to make a business case for its support to show that is a tool for education and not just an imaginary world were you can act out your fantasies.

I have just finished reading a collection of essays on Second Life that could apply to all virtual worlds (Higher Education in Virtual Worlds, Teaching and Learning in Second Life (2009), edited by C. Wankel and J. Kingsley, Emerald, UK).  As in all virtual worlds individuals participate via avatars.  Students can choose their names and how they want to be represented (how they will look).  What could be some of the advantages of using virtual worlds? The learning becomes experiential.  One of the most important is what is called ‘once-removed participation’ that is, being able to fail without consequences.  Some of the examples cited included:

-       training trauma and nurses decision-making processes other than role playing

-       E-Doctoring virtual world allows medical students to examine patients, make clinical decisions, perform surgical procedures within safety of virtual world

-       Practice interview skills

-       Virtual Quarrying with explosions, dangerous overhangs, hazardous procedures

-        Mental or psychological conditions, schizophrenia, hallucinations, heroin and drug addicted individuals

-       can make scenarios available for a large number of students which would be impossible in a real world lecture room

Some problems include:

-       the time spent in learning how to control your avatar in the virtual world in the first place

-       bandwidth required (which should be fixed with the National Broadband Network when introduced, the instructor should introduce a FAQs sheet etc)

-       rogue behaviour (griefing) where individuals are disruptive (students should be made aware of the institutes code of conduct)

-       teacher interactions and social presence, this is probably the most important aspect that will impact on how successful the move into a virtual world will be.  Students need to feel the presence of the instructor – good social presence motivates and increases student outcomes and student satisfaction.  Some ways to do this are:

use vocal expressiveness (and vocal variety of pitch)

use avatar gestures and smiles

move avatar around location

position avatar to face students

There is a Second Life wiki to help educators manage the virtual world. A short (6 min) YouTube video on some uses of Second Life

Whether institutions are willing to put the technological and financial support into virtual worlds remains to be seen.

 

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Presenting……

September 14, 2011 by · No Comments · eLearning Technologies

Had a go at using Adobe Presenter and it looks pretty straight forward.  Actually I had less trouble with it than I had with Audacity (that LAME code).  This looks like a great tool for those students doing a course online. It’s much more than just a powerpoint so they can get the full impact of a lecture (visuals and sound) which can appeal to both visual and auditory learners.  As the sound is integrated into the powerpoint the viewer doesn’t get lost in the same way that someone trying to guess which slide the speaker is on while they are listening to an audio file.  I had this problem myself when listening to a lecture from one of the classes I took last year  - trying to make sense of a powerpoint and try to co-ordinate it with the sound, a bit tricky.   You can either record onto an existing powerpoint or even import an existing audio file and co-ordinate it with the powerpoint.

Other features that I like are that you can incorporate a quiz to test students knowledge at the end – a great idea and I can incorporate video as well.  This would depend on the file size as I would like to load it onto Moodle (25MB limit).  At present my powerpoints are full of colour images that tend to make the files quite big anyway but its all towards giving the student a richer learning experience. A very straight forward explanation of Adobe  Presenter is given at this web site at Adobe TV http://tv.adobe.com/watch/learn-acrobat-9/using-adobe-presenter-to-augment-ppt-presentations/ Another site is at http://www.adobe.com/resources/acrobatconnect/presenter/  and another You Tube video from Shane Jeffery at SWSI about how to produce a SCORM compliant presenter powerpoint into Moodle here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VnCHJfsuRA and how to load a SCORM zip file at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_iBhcEd05E&NR=1 - good one Shane….  I’ll have to have a go and see if it works in our Moodle as well.

 

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Podcast and Moodle – the beginning of something good

September 7, 2011 by · No Comments · eLearning Technologies, mLearning

 

Success… I did my first podcast and embedded it in Moodle.  Even though I don’t like the sound of my own voice it was very satisfying to actually get to the stage of recording something, editing it and finally posting it on the Moodle site.  It’s something I have wanted to do for some time.  We are allowing students to do one of my subjects online for the first time this semester.  Yes I know we seem to be a bit late about this but TAFE is a very old institution (we’re celebrating 120 Years this year) and full of very conservative (read close to retirement) teachers who really don’t want to change the way they have been doing things for years (worked well in the past so it’s good enough now).  But the students are changing, most of them work so time is precious, and many have family and other commitments so that when I announced that they could do this subject online about 20% of them jumped at it straight away and there has been a steady trickle of those wanting to take the option up.

What I wanted was a way to ensure that my students could experience the lecture even though they weren’t there.  This serves several purposes:

1) access to information and detail – I’ve loaded notes etc onto Moodle but you can’t ensure that everything you are likely to mention in a lecture is going to be on the Moodle and students feel they are missing out.

2) the emphasis on what’s important (ie what’s in the test) that you get from a live lecture

3) the personal touch and feeling a part of the whole community of students you normally belong to in a classroom situation – I suppose this is something I hadn’t considered before I started this degree and certainly it’s been brought home especially by Garrison, D.R., Anderson, T. and Archer, W. (2000) Community of Enquiry model incorporating the social into the e-learning model.

My attitudes have changed also in that I used to want to load the whole 1 hour lecture in one go.  This is a problem for many reasons, most noticeable Moodle can’t take it.  One hour of lecture takes about 50 MB and Moodle can load 25MB.  I have spent a lot of time and effort in trying to compress it – then a revelation – I don’t have to.  I’ve decided to cut the hour long lecture into several logical bits, probably of about 20 mins long at the most.  I don’t know why I didn’t realise it before – no-one including me wants to listen to a whole hour.  Students probably just want to listen to a particular part to revise etc, they don’t want to wade through 60 minutes worth of talk.  Advantages for me (I don’t have to muck around compressing it), for the student (just listens to what they feel is important), can load onto Moodle (much smaller) and everyone’s happy.  By the way the H4N audio recorder was a dream to use, easy to record and copy to computer.

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Facebook – my new best friend

September 3, 2011 by · No Comments · eLearning Technologies, social media

Facebook Merger by Asthma Helper, CC some rights reserved

Not so long ago Facebook was seen as the enemy of teachers, the site of great distraction for students, the scourge of all that was intellectual.  All social media that operated to connect people through sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Second Life was banned in schools and TAFE because it was seen as being detrimental to the educational experience.  Facebook was a forbidden site and access was blocked.  Across Sydney teachers were encouraged to employ technology in the classroom but not through Facebook.   Overseas, universities were using Facebook to connect with their students and extolling the virtues of social media.

In NSW one of the big problems with lots of educational policy in TAFE is that TAFE falls under the DET umbrella covering schools as well.  A small number of TAFE students are under 18 and now that some TAFE courses are delivered in schools policy has to be defined in terms of the impact on school students.   This is primarily the reason that social media sites had been blocked.

About three months ago the ban in DET was lifted but oh so quietly at Sydney Institute.   No-one knew initially.  I only found out through conversation with another TAFE teacher at South Western Sydney Institute that had advertised the change in policy to all their employees.  How times have changed.   Sydney Institute started advertising the new policy for the use of social media in the classroom, teachers are being encouraged to attend professional development workshops about using Facebook, VET e-communities are now discussing the role of Facebook in education, Adobe Connect sessions are bringing the conversation about social media to all who are interested in listening.

I recently read a paper (Selwyn 2009) that examined the type of interactions students at a UK college had while using Facebook during their course.  What was interesting to me about this paper was not necessarily that only 4% of the 68,000 interactions pertained to their university courses but it revealed the place Facebook played in these students lives.  I think parents and teachers have to be realistic and accept that this is now the way young people communicate and you can’t hold back the tide of change.  Each new generation adopts habits that their elders fear and think will cause them harm.  In the 1950’s it was rock and roll, in the 1980’s it was punk, in the 2000’s it is tattoos and piercings.   Educators need to tap into the Facebook energy and use it to their advantage.

I recently joined a closed TAFE Facebook group called Designing for Flexibility and have experienced first hand the ongoing conversation that such a group can generate.  Short postings, links, interesting papers, blogs, YouTube videos and podcasts are posted and relayed for instant communication amongst the members.  I know I won’t miss out on anything and that’s what I want for my students.  I suppose that’s the point of all this connectedness after all.

Selwyn, N., (2009), ‘Faceworking: exploring students’ education-related use of Facebook’, Learning, Media and Technology, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 157-174.

Useful links : 101 ways you should be using Facebook in the classroom 

every teachers must have guide to using facebook

DET policy on social media

DET NSW code of conduct

Should schools be teaching social media

Facebook as an instruction technology tool

Facebook in the classroom – seriously

Facebook safety centre

e-communities resource centre on social media

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The brick wall

August 30, 2011 by · No Comments · eLearning Technologies, simulation

Brick wall – Darlington by pigpogm creative commons

 One of the ways in which to make learning more interesting and engaging is to learn through simulations.  This is one of the areas that I was interested in pursuing for my learning contract however it has proven to be most difficult in obtaining any information about using simulations especially in the TAFE environment.  One of the biggest problems has been that simulation technology like Second Life has been blocked from TAFE computers until only recently.  This means that there is no workforce development training for teachers or IT support as yet for this type of technology.  I have sent feelers out to some university colleagues of mine but so far no returns as yet.  I may have to change my learning contract to accommodate this turn of events.  Of course simulation technology is likely to be expensive and custom made to the institutional requirements.  It  has been used quite a lot in Nursing and Health (mainly through mannequins) but this is not quite the usage I had in mind for my application in the hypothetical degree course. 

I have not given up yet but have essentially come up against a brick wall.  Discussions with the retired Head Teacher in Audiometry are not possible because she has left the country but her replacement is a good resource for elearning in the section in general.  Clark Quinn’s book on Engaging Learning – Designing eLearning Simulation Games (2011, Pfeiffer) has proven to be a good reference for online engagement overall (see the resources section of the web site associated with the book) .  One of the things that struck me about his philosophy for engagement is very similar to the TED talk (from eLearning Design’s Theresa Anderson) by Diana Laufenberg, How to Learn? From Mistakes .  Quinn also believes that failure is important to the learning process and that providing the story is interesting enough individuals will persist with the learning task until accomplished.  Perhaps I should grab this philosophy about my simulation brick wall.

M is for Movable Object Built Into Learning Environment

August 25, 2011 by · No Comments · eLearning Technologies, mLearning, mobile, simulation

 

by jisc_infonet

photo by  jisc infonet  under creative commons

One of the main aims of the present project is to introduce myself to the concept of mobile eLearning or mLearning.  I’ve been more concerned with content in the last few years rather than looking at access of that material for students.  With the explosion in use of mobile devices (students recording my lectures on their phones) and bringing iPads into the classroom (I don’t see laptops much these days) it seems a normalcy to move much of my content into a form that can be utilised by these devices and listened to by students anywhere, anytime.  Initially I thought it was just a matter of recording lectures and placing them on Moodle but now I realise that’s just not really good enough.

I found a great resource for mLearning which I will probably use as one of the five resources we need to nominate for our first eLearning Technologies assignment.  A post on the Social Learning Community Network on Yammer directed me to Clark Quinn (see his blog at http://blog.learnlets.com/) an advocate for mLearning.  He has recently published a book on Designing mLearning and has some great resources at http://www.designingmlearning.com/resources.html which will take some time to check out but so far I’m very impressed.  One of the first things I have learned is about breaking down the audio recording into bite sized bits or sections.  This serves two purposes – not only does it take up less memory space on a device, it also allows the student to listen just to the bit that they need to – not the whole thing.  As they can listen to what they want to in a reasonably short time they will be more likely to listen to it at all (which is the name of the game).

Clark Quinn has also published a book on games and simulations, Engaging Learning, Designing Learning Simulation Games (have a look at the first chapter at http://www.engaginglearning.com/) another area I am increasingly interested in.  My content at TAFE can be quite dry and needs some peppering up so I am looking at this resource as a good place to start.

I’ve decided to post at least twice a week as I learn and find resources.

 

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And so it begins….

August 19, 2011 by · No Comments · Uncategorized

image by Nico Kaiser and Creative Commons

While progress has been slow early this week it all looks as if it is starting to come together.  I now have several contacts in Audiometry and Optical Dispensing in TAFE here at Ultimo and in OTEN to probe for information especially about distance or online learning.  That should give me a good start in framing the proposed hypothetical course and investigating whether some of the simulation technology is feasible.  I have now refined my learning contract to something I think is realistic.

The major technologies I want to learn are Audacity (to record my lectures) and Adobe Presenter (to add sound to the powerpoints).  I found this great set of podcasting tutorials on the net (free) that show how to do editing for Audacity, very clear and I’m just itching to have a go.  There are also some free tutorials for Presenter so I don’t think that that will be a problem and I found that you can do quizzes as well so I’m tempted to put a small quiz in after my short powerpoint for assessment.  I have the added impetus of wanting to do this now in my real classes as I have more and more students wanting to go online with my subjects.  As they record my lectures now I think there is a real need for this type of technology.  Of course the stumbling block is Moodle with a file size limitation of 25mB but now we have EQUELLA so that file size should not be so much of a problem.

It’s all exciting stuff and while I’ve been meaning to learn this technology for some time now with assessment being tied to it I might just have to do it.

A New Start of Sorts

August 15, 2011 by · No Comments · eLearning Technologies

 

 Photo by dkuropatwa under Creative Commons License some rights reserved

Well it has been a while since I last posted and I thought that maybe I should use this blog for the current subject that I am attempting in my MEd in Adult Education degree at University of Technology Sydney (UTS).  The subject is eLearning Technologies so it seems appropriate that I should continue this blog as it was started to introduce myselft to all sorts of new technology.  It will give me a chance to practice, do new things and chart my development as an eLearning user. 

Our first block class was on Sunday 7/8/11 with our teacher (the guide on the side) Lynne.  Having access to the subject material the week before gave me a good opportunity to have a think about what exactly I was going to attempt in the assignments.  It has to be relevant to our workplace and we have to learn new technology.  There is a myriad of technology I don’t know but it has to be something that could actually be used in one of our courses.  I’m afraid my intial plan was a little over ambitious so taking Lynne’s advice I will pare it down a little to something I can actually do in the time available.

I have decided to continue with my wiki I set up when I did the 23 things course in 2010 as a repository for my resources 9you know all those online tutorials, instructions etc).  The wiki is also called expand the brain (I think it’s wishful thinking!!).

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