eLearning at TIGS: Di Epoff’s Blog

Learning Technologies 2008 Conference

Friday 7th November

Polycom Product Demonstration

I am convinced that video conferencing is the way of the future! The technology has progressed so significantly that it seems quite simple, accessible and affordable. What excites me is the way it opens opportunities to develop and access new learning communities for students, anywhere in the world.

I would like to use it in 2009 to establish a photography network for my TIGS photography students and those from Wanganui Park Secondary College in Victoria. I am curently investigating ways I can work with photography teacher Kerry Short to get the project up and running in Term 1 2009. Students will connect with students from another school to collaborate and learn in an online community through video conferencing, engage remotely with like-minded students through discussion boards, blogs and online galleries and  maybe even collaborate using a wiki.

Kerry and I can access and share each others expertise with all students to expand knowledge, information and ways of learning. This is exciting!

The Polycom demonstration showed how different video formats can now talk to each other and showed an interesting desktop solution. I’ll investigate the options at the exhibitors stands later today.

Learning Technologies 2008 Conference

Friday 7th November

Sparking Up the Network: Tinkle, Bing, Boom

Karen Fainges’s workshop:

Karen talks about how we can get the most out of networks in the classroom.

She is witty and entertaining and provides a light-hearted approach to her topic, and tells us that Gen Y isnt the only ‘logged on’ generation. Grey nomads are some of the best users of the internet: they have the time to learn everything they can, they willingly share information, love belonging to communities and love new technology. They may struggle with the technical aspects but engage with and use the technology to its advantage.

Karen shows us how she has used an online learning management system to create a learning community of Business Studies students.

Her humour creates a nice window to shed some stress in relation to the serious nature of what we are trying to achieve here at the conference.

Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Friday 7th November

Nancy White:

Full Circle Associates: Stewarding Technology for Communities

This workshop was delivered via videoconference.

Nancy White started Full Circle to provide assistance to business through internet technologies. Her research and specialization focuses on how technology creates learning in communities.

Stewarding technologies for communities is all about learning together. During her research technologies have changed rapidly and she realizes the need to focus on pedagogies – the way people learn with technology, rather than the technology itself.

She outlines different ways of perceiving communities:
•    Learning communities
•    Knowledge Networks
•    Communities of Practice
•    Online Communities

Communities involve me, we and many:

Me: the individual (personal identity, interest trajectory
We: communities (bounded membership group identity shared interest
Many: networks (boundaryless, fuzzy, intersecting interests

These ideas have opened up new areas of understanding in relation to technologies:

Technologies enable people to:
•    Discover and appropriate
•    Build communities
•    Create identities

Key roles in forming communities:
•    Community leaders
•    Technology stewards: people with enough experience working with communities and enough knowledge of technology to support the community in using the technology. Selecting and configuring technology as well as supporting its use in the community. This role is about guiding learning, noticing things and making them happen now for individuals.

•    Network weavers
Read her great book “ Digital Habitat: Stewarding Technology for Communities”: an ecological view of technology in communities

Important polarities of communities:
Togetherness – Separateness: shifting engagement from the group to the individual
Interacting – Publishing: conversing, experimenting, practicing, learning, planning and the tools and processes used to publish
Individual – Group: designed for groups, experienced as individuals. Does not imply homogeneity: need for customization when individual outcomes are required. Multimembership requires attention to both.

Orientations - selecting appropriate tools to support a community:
Develop community activities oriented to:
•    Meetings
•    Open-ended conversations
•    Projects
•    Access to expertise
•    Relationships
•    Context
•    Community cultivation
•    Individual participation
•    Content publication
Steward the activities to nurture the community so that the technology becomes less of a focus and the community becomes the point of practice. Consider carefully the point of the exercise: what is it the community needs to learn, practice, collaborate on?

The technology should become invisible. Building communities is what its all about!

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.

Learning Technologies 2008 Conference

Wednesday 5th November

Kerry Russo and Mark Walshe’s workshop

No wonder all previous attendees I have spoken to at the 2008 conference rave about previous conferences. The quality of presentations so far is fantastic. Mind you, this is my second workshop!

Kerry’s presentation resonates with me and encourages me to reflect upon the things I see as important in my role as Director of eLearning.

She asks:

“In our rush to adopt new learning technologies have we become too focused on HOW to use the technology instead of WHY?”

Kerry explains that if we are to use technology wisely, and to the benefit of our students, we should “enhance (our classroom) delivery, globalise (our) classroom, create meaningful learning activities and equalise learning opportunities”

This might sound theoretical. However, I am inspired to unpack these points, and propose that, whilst they describe what we should DO to effectively embed ICT into the curriculum, they also underpin 21st century learning outcomes: enhance learning, globalise learning, create meaningful learning, equalise learning.

Kerry has developed a system for Blended Distributed Delivery: a method of embedding technology in programs built around students’ needs, rather than desires of teachers to use or ‘play’ with technology. This is a very useful starting point for educators: a real model to build enriching ICT-centred programs that meet the needs of students through curriculum development.

She describes two key choices that teachers can make to blend technologies for the best possible outcomes for their students:

1. Synchronistic (same-time interactions such as face to face lessons,tutorials, online conferencing, workshops etc) modes of delivery,

and

2. Asynchronistic (flexible-time interactions such as video streams, podcasts, blogs, wikis, email, phone, toolboxes etc) modes of delivery.

The key to all this is that blended learning environments cater for the needs of our students and will increasingly do so!

“Students should not have to power down to come to class”

Young learners want to be engaged with new technologies: it is how they learn best. They need a range of technologies at their fingertips. It is our role as educators, to cater for these needs through our design and delivery of the programs we teach.

Kerry also discusses the benefit of project-based learning tasks - another of my passions. These tasks provide students with the “opportunity to do, rather than just hear about the subject of study. That is the key to active learning strategies”

So much research now confirms how 21st century learners need to learn in ways that traditional classrooms and programs cant match. I think its time we understand that our role is to provide them with the best possible, the most relevant means of learning available.

Kerry gives us a useful strategy to commence this process - an excellent scaffolded model of how to build a blended distributed delivery program.

Mark provided us with a valuable resource list of great websites.

Learning Technologies 2008 Conference

Pauls Rixon’s (Tandberg at TAFESA) workshop

In this workshop, Paul explains how he establishes connections for students living in remote communities using video conferencing.

He uses video as a tool to remove the barriers of remote learning. The visual connection allows students to connect with the classroom (called a meeting room) in ways that are  meaningful for them.

He has developed a highly intgrated system of learning using  range of toos and strategies: video, telephones, desktop computers, lecture rooms etc.

Paul demonstrated the ease with which the user can set up a new meeting room (video conference). He setup 4 feeds that appeared in 4 separate windows on the projected screen, in an impromptu conference to show how easy it can be. We saw:

1. Mobile phone camera capturing live video of us in the lecture theatre

2. Live video of Dave Sobey, in Adelaide

3. Live video of a classroom in Adelaide

4. Live video of himself talking

He also showed and demonstrated how he can also use video production techniques to create rich content for classroom delivery. By setting up video cameras in any number of ways (eg pointing at the teacher, pointing at students, capturing the screen) a range of resources can be used and developed in the classroom.

Whilst this looks great, it seems to me that this technology is quite complex to setup. Most teachers would need a lot of support combining the various elements needed. It is quite IT-support dependent.

Service providers such as Tandberg are providing the technology, software and support needed to create equal opportunities of learning for remote students. The technology they develop and support looks fantastic. I’m not sure how affordable it is? Such opportunities are provider-dependent.

I wonder how he can videoconference/capture live interactive whiteboard feeds?

Learning Technolgies 2008 Conference

Wednesday 5th Nov

Carol Daunt Skyring’s workshop

Carol’s energy and passion for the content of this workshop had us all champing at the bit to get back to our workplaces and try out audio conferencing, web conferencing, video conferencing and Skype.

This workshop explored the differences between these three different forms of online conferencing.

Online conferencing is used to provide learning environments for students who are off-campus. The online conferencing classroom can provide for multiple students from a variety of remote locations. However, because the ‘classroom’ is effectively a computer interface, the teacher needs to adopt new pedagogies to be effective in the  management of this classroom model. Learning in a remote location whilst sitting alone at a computer screen is not an ideal way to learn fro most people. The technology enables access only; it is the teacher who develops the learning environment to bring the various users (students) together in an effective learning community.

Whilst audio conferencing is relatively simple technology that’s been around for a while, it is dependent upon a ‘bridge’ operator (service provider) who enables the whole process.

Web conferencing is more complex, but offers the user exciting interactive options that facilitate student engagement beyond voice. The visual interface provides the teacher with what resembles an interactive whiteboard, where student responses can be noted and group comments documented. This opens the way to collaborative learning opportunities and can create a more dynamic learning environment for students, if used to its advantage. There are loads of good applications out there such as ivRoom, palBee, lluminate, DimDim etc

Video conferencing seems to be the way of the future however. It looks great and offers consumers a range of options. When introduced a decade ago, it was expensive at the top end and raw and clumsy at the bottom. Carol explained that current solutions are both affordable and accessible. Video conferencing does not have to be a high end solution to be successful! OoVoo, Skype, PalBee and iChat are some examples of applications.

Whilst it looks like TV, its important to note that if students use it like TV, they may fall asleep! An effective teacher will create a dynamic learning community: they will engage students and monitor their active participation and contribution to the online classroom. They will also pull apart what they might normally ‘do’ in the classroom and repackage it for the online elearning environment. This is a real skill that may require a bit of practise.

Carol threw loads of information at us, challenging us to consider useful ways of using these technologies in our teaching, and asking us to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of each conferencing technology, when setting up online learning environments. All in all, an exciting, informative and thought-provoking session!

A grey drizzly sky greeted me today when I stepped onto the tarmac at Maroochydore airport. I’m up here to attend the three day Learning Technologies 2008 Conference. Since my arrival at Mooloolabah TAFE for this afternoon’s workshops, drizzle has turned to heavy rain! Nonetheless I am excited about today’s workshops and the conference.

I’m anticipating a big learning curve this afternoon as the workshops I’m attending are:

Using Audio, Web and Video Conferencing for Teaching and Learning with Carol Daunt Skyring

and

Blended Distributed Delivery with Kerry Russo and Mark Walshe