Carol Daunt Skyring’s recent blog post on broadcasting high school ceremonies is interesting…. Sutherland Public School is following the lead of international schools by broadcasting their graduation ceremony live on the internet so that grandparents and significant others can watch the service from their home or workplace.
Carol’s blog is a great source about all things videoconferencing. Check it out here
Learning Technologies 2008 Conference
Friday 7th November
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
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!
