eLearning For Teachers: Di Goodman (Epoff)

Learning Technologies 2008 Conference

Thursday 6th November

Using social networking tools to connect with clients

Simon Brown’s Case Study

Simon showed us how he teaches and uses video streaming technology when demonstrating techniques and skills with his stone-masonry students at TAFE .

He also uses VeMentoring to expose students to professional industry experts.

Simon builds strong networks through his teaching. His teaching is student-centred and focuses on creating interactivity between students and himself, and employers in the workplace.

He has used ning.com to develop an interactive learning community for his students and has posted photos of the class members on the front page. Each member has their own page. Students have varying degrees of input into the site. The blog post keeps them informed about their work and things like how one of the students who now lives in England is going.

He embeds videos from YouTube about stone masons into the site, and from one of these, he has established a great professional contact for the class.

the tomas ning site

Simon regularly checks out who visits the site through Google Analytics

This provides him with some interesting feedback.

This workshop showed us a real application of how social networking can engage students in the learning process. Simon’s class were a challenging bunch - they werent interested in writing and reading, but preferred ‘doing’. Once they began participating and contributing to the ning class site, their focus changed and most of them eagerly contributed to the class online community in very meaningful ways.