Introduction
Firstly, my apologies for the delay in posting such that I have ended up doing a “two in one” post of the most recent Serendipity overview and link and our “Desert Island App/Tool” FineFocus session. I have been totally overwhelmed by work for the ELFADA project. As well as being in virtual class for over 20 hours last week I have been finalising and publishing posts on the course blog.
Serendipity 29/30 March
There were only three of us in this session, we chatted a while before starting to give others time to arrive, and with only three we didn’t do a poll we just chatted about education issues. The recording is thus only about 45 minutes. We ranged across a variety of topics including:
- Use of the term “blended learning” and its perceived meaning. My personal feeling on this is that the frequent use of the term to refer only to delivery that includes face-to-face is now totally outdated.
- The need for empathy with students and the frequency with which those who perform very well in job interviews are often unable to “walk the talk” effectively once in contact with students.
This was a great session – so nice to just chat about “edu” matters with others!
Desert Island Apps/Tools
This session, recorded as usual, arose from my continual quest for slightly different approaches to the webinars. I have noticed in the past that when we ask for “a” favourite anything even if we say JUST ONE we always end up with most people putting in a list of several! This led me down the pathway of wondering how to emphasise the “ONE”. I remembered a radio show from my childhood in the UK – “Desert Island Discs” – where guests chose the 8 records they would like to take if they were to be marooned on a desert island for the rest of their lives. They were also allowed to take only ONE book! So I used the marooned concept as a way to focus our minds on the one app/tool we felt we couldn’t live without.
We started by assuming that we had our device of choice, Internet connectivity and access to cloud-based apps/tools so that the focus was entirely on apps/tools that needed a download. Then we had a whiteboard for people to jot down a few of their favourites from which to choose that final one to take to our desert island and to talk about!
Once we had some ideas we discussed further – we thought that some of our “must haves” were browser accessible so perhaps we didn’t need an app/tool. The next step was for each of us to decide on our ONE app/tool and then for us to talk a little about it an why it was our choice. Probably the most ingenious idea was for “Java IDE” enabling the maroonee to build his own tools.
This session was fun! The desert island concept seemed to work in focussing minds on choosing just one tool, and I think we all got interesting insights into each other’s preferences. Definitely a format to repeat.
Next Webinar
Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday April 12th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday April 13th at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate room. This is one of our fortnightly unconference sessions where we invite you to bring along your “hot topics” and “burning issues” for our poll on the topic.