Many webinars – recording links

Introduction

A catch-up of the recording links for  our webinars over the last few months.

Fine Focus (13/14 March 2014) – “Lucky Dip”

In this recorded session we discussed where we find interesting links and explored a few that have come up recently

Serendipity 20/21 March 2014

In this recorded Serendipity session we briefly discussed and explored several topics;

  • the upcoming #RSCON mini-conference
  • Thinglink
  • Stocking up tablets with “goodies”

Fine Focus (27/28 March 2014) – “Inkscape – a graphics tool”

recorded session  in which we explored some of the features of Inkscape.

Serendipity 2/3 April 2014

In this recorded Serendipity session we briefly discussed and explored the following:

  • “About.me” as a tool for self-publicising
  • Risks of having your online “identity” hijacked
  • Curing “writer’s block”

Fine Focus (9/10 April 2014) – “Tablet apps for learning”

recorded session  in which we shared and discussed some tablet apps that may be used for learning

Serendipity 23/24 April 2014

In this recorded session we looked at the following two topics chosen by poll from several suggested by participants:

  • “How to improve relations with parents)
  • “Benefits of being a blog follower”

Fine Focus (30 April/1 May 2014) – “Museums online”

recorded session  in which we explored and discussed some of the wealth of resources available online from major museums.

Serendipity 7/8 May 2014

In this recorded Serendipity session we briefly discussed and explored three topics:

  • Using “Paper.li” why and how
  • Educator evaluations
  • Recording a holiday/tour

Fine Focus (14/15 May 2014) – “One page to tell about giftedness”

In this recorded session  Jo Freitag (@jofrei) talked with us about some of the characteristics of “giftedness” and shared many resources for educators working with gifted learners.

Serendipity 21/22 May 2014

In this recorded Serendipity session we briefly digressed into sharing some of the highlights of our (@JoHart and @philhart)  road trip from WA to South Australia. We also discussed the following two topics:

  • Our most important sites to visit each day!
  • The importance of play in learning

Fine Focus (28/29 May 2014) – “The Benefits of Learning to Code”

This recorded session  was led by Phil Hart (@philhart). Phil has extensive experience in coding (as a long term IT consultant, systems analyst and software developer) and is also an educator and so is well placed to recognise and share the characteristics of coding as a discipline.

Serendipity 4/5 June 2014

This recorded Serendipity session was wide ranging and we touched on a variety of topics including: what an online toolkit looks like, some potential future topics for FineFocus sessions and what makes a good picture.

Fine Focus (11/12 June 2014) – “Fun sites for learning”

In this recorded session  we took a look  at some sites that might be described as “gamefied” and so could be engaging for students to access for learning purposes.

Serendipity 18/19 June 2014

This Serendipity session was a general chat including an update from one of our regular participants on some recent PD, how we review and reflect mid-year, celebrations/parties with students and “Serendipity block” – like writers’ block but when yu can’t think of a Serendipity topic 🙂

Conclusion

Once again I am finally up to date with posting webinar links. Sorry again for the short session descriptions.

Our Next Webinar

SerendipitybsmallOur next webinar will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday July 3 rd at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday July 4th at 7:00 am West Aus, later in the  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”. We post these on the whiteboard and then choose the topic for discussion by poll.

Edublogs webinar overviews – Feb 2014

Introduction

A digest of  our recent webinars over the last few weeks. I am still hoping/planning to return to posting a fuller overview or each webinar every week.

Fine Focus (13/14 Feb 2014) – “Columbus Cheetah Myth Buster Part 2”

This was a fascinating, and very interactive, recorded session (the second of two). In the session @jofrei continued to share and discuss with us some of the myths about giftedness. Jo has recently posted a series about busting the myths on “Sprite’s Site”.

Serendipity 20/21 Feb 2014

In this recorded Serendipity session we discussed and explored:

  • the upcoming #OZeLive online conference, including some of the logistics, moderator roles and communication strategies through the Australia e-series Ning
  • some of the BlackboardCollaborate tools available to moderators and their potential usefulness for volunteer moderators at OZeLive.

Fine Focus (27/28 Feb 2014) – “Are ‘cheap’ tablets worthwhile for use in class”

This week’s very different style of recorded session was a look at some of the pros/cons and possible uses for cheap tablets in the classroom.  The session was facilitated by @philhart who reviewed a relatively cheap (AU$120) Android tablet and shared his thoughts throughout. This provided a “great” hook for discussion and enabled him to explore the practicalities of the device in response to points raised by participants.

During the session there were also a number of ideas for classroom use discussed (particularly in a Kindergarten environment). We also briefly touched on some of the pros and cons of Android versus iPad for the teacher during which I shared my iPad screen through AirServer and AppShare.

The consensus was that with careful research into the features provided there is lots of potential for using relatively cheap devices in a classroom environment to enable students to undertake varied activities. This was a totally fascinating session and is well worth catching the recording because of the very different style of session compared to our usual FineFocus.

Conclusion

Once again I am finally up to date with posting webinar links. Sorry again for the short session descriptions.

Our Next Webinar

SerendipitybsmallOur next webinar will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday March 6th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday March 7th at 7:00 am West Aus, later in the  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”. We post these on the whiteboard and then choose the topic for discussion by poll.

 

 

Catching up! Recent Edublogs webinars

Introduction

I am still well behind in posting webinar overviews So this week is a a catchup with topics and recording links for several recent webinars

Some iPad apps

This recorded session was a FineFocus session in which I used “AirServer” and BbC App Share to share, very briefly, some of the iPad apps I have on my iPad. This prompted great discussion, and sharing of apps they use, by other participants.

Serendipity

A very lively session – recorded as always in which our focus was on multiliteracies. We also touched briefly on: innumeracy in primary school teachers, vulnerabilities to hacking in some hosted blogging platforms and the best time of year to hold online conferences.

Small, small things!

A FineFocus session in which we took a look at some of the small tools and tricks that make our lives easier. This was a great recorded session with some terrific tools and tricks shared. We all have little things that we use to help us streamline our busy lives and it is always useful to find out what others use.

Another Serendipity!

This was another recorded session in which the consensus was to look briefly at all of the suggested topics which were:

  • how do you use PLN in your classroom
  • coding in the classroom
  • how to get busy people to join voluntary PD sessions

Conclusion

My apologies for not the very short topic descriptions! I hope to return to more complete overviews from the FineFocus mentioned below which was yesterday, and was “If it’s on the Internet it must be true!” with Phil Hart. I hope to publish the overview & recording link for that one tomorrow.

Our Next Webinar

Our next webinar will be an Edublogs “FineFocus” session on Thursday June 27th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday June 28th at 7am West Aus, later in the  morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate room.

Edublogs webinar overviews – Several recent webinars

Introduction

Over the last few weeks I have fallen very behind with overviews so this week is a double overview for four recent webinars. There will be less detail than usual about each webinar because I feel it is important to share the links which I have not yet done rather than write detailed overviews.

Exploring Sticky note walls

This recorded session was a FineFocus session in which we explored some of the online “sticky note” walls available. We started as we so often do with “where are you coming from” on the topic questions. These elicited that all but one of us had used sticky wall notes at some time.

We finished up with an opportunity to share our own preferences – several links had been shared earlier via text, a look at our “take-aways” from the session and some quick feedback!

Serendipity

A really interesting session – recorded as always in which we discussed several topics, this is something we do more often in Serendipity at the moment as we are often a small group. Topics were:

  • Sharing links – in which we shared links that had interested us recently
  • Hacking – concerns about our devices and information being accessed unbeknownst to us. This topic gave rise to the following week’s FineFocus – see below.
  • “Technology terrorising teachers – does it? what can we do about it?

As always time went too fast and it was the end of the session!

Keeping the “Black Hats” at bay

This was a terrific recorded session by @philhart (when he isn’t teaching Phil is a freelance computer consultant) who gave us a very thought provoking insight into the risks we take every time we connect to the Internet, and into some of the strategies for reducing these risks.

Phil dis a great job of demystifying some of the jargon. He also made the point strongly that there is no complete answer – all we can do is be vigilant. I certainly came out of the session with much greater knowledge and awareness than I had when I went in! I would suggest catching the recording to anyone who has any concerns about online security – and really this should be everyone!

Another Serendipity!

This was another enjoyable recorded session in which we took a look at several topics:

  • linking/embedding webinars in posts
  • an update on “willing your digital empire”
  • how would you cope with NO paper available for class

Interesting topics – there will be a FineFocus coming up on “Willing your digital empire”, and the “no paper” question always raises interesting ideas. Of course we always assume that “no paper” means that we do have technology. 🙂

Conclusion

These were great sessions and my apologies for not doing them justice in the overviews!

Our Next Webinar

Our next webinar will be an Edublogs “FineFocus” session on Thursday May 30th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday June 1st at 7am West Aus, later in the  morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate room.

Edublogs webinar overview – Serendipity, ISS watching & Facebook apps

Introduction

In this recorded Serendipity session we actually took a look at two topics – “spot the station” and “Facebook apps”. For both we asked the proposers to expand a little before we decided this.

Spot the station

This intriguing title gave us a fascinating subject. The International Space Station (ISS) and related matters in the context of learning. “Spotting the ISS” was something recently discovered by one of our participants but unknown to the rest of us. So none of us had in-depth knowledge to share on how we could use this with students.A cartoon image suggesting the ISS as a teaching resourceHowever we all had snippets of information about the ISS and other space related resources, so we each spent five minutes exploring and then shared links and thoughts on the whiteboard, in chat and through audio. The NASA ISS webpage has lots of exciting content and the ISS tracker page shows the current position and track of the ISS. Lots to explore and huge potential for educators especially as the astronauts are on several social networks!

Facebook apps

We moved on to talk a little about Facebook apps, although inevitably there was some broadening of this into other social media. Concerns raised were about security issues and the increasing amount of advertising in one form or another. We all recognise that advertising is what enables Facebook to be free for us to use. However with Facebook and with other social media this seems to be on the increase and becoming more and more intrusive. In terms of security most of us are cautious about using apps in social media. It often seems that the security and privacy settings are far from simple to use and that they sometimes revert to defaults! This is a potential topic for a future FineFocus session.

Conclusion

As always Serendipity gave us much food for thought!

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is a FineFocus session where we will take a look at learning style inventories and their usefulness or otherwise. Join us on Thursday April 18th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning April 19th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – cool tools and other things!

Introduction

In this recorded Serendipity session our chosen topic was “cool new tools” – although this extended to cool tools, not necessarily new, that we use! We also decided to take a look at some of the other suggestions if time allowed.

The Session

We had some new tools shared and also some old favourites.

 

Always interesting to find out what everyone else is using and often even more interestingly HOW they are using it. We had a great conversation around these tools and how/why we use or in some cases don’t use them!

One of the best things about Serendipity is that we often look at more than just the one chosen topic. This gives people an opportunity to share briefly what is currently on their mind and get input from others. In this session we talked about the pressure imposed by assessment and reporting requirements, and an interesting sidelight on the need to translate a report into a parental first language. Yet another pressure that would not have existed 30 years ago! The topic of free live conferences was also discussed briefly – there are now many of these globally but not at the moment one that is at generally Australia friendly times. (Most of us in the session were Australia based).

Conclusion

A great session – Serendipity is always fun and enlightening!

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is a FineFocus session. Join us for “Accessibility Standards?” in which we take a look at some of the issues around accessibility of e-learning content and some of the standards introduced to try and make it more accessible. Join us on Thursday April 4th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning April 5th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Edublogs webinar overview – “Replacing GoogleReader”

Introduction

This recorded session was a FineFocus session where we looked at some of the possible replacements for GoogleReader. The topic was born out of the previous session which was a Serendipity discussion about the upcoming demise of GoogleReader.

This session was similar to our occasional ones where we each experiment with a tool or app that we might use with students and then feedback to the group on the experience. However in this case our concerns were more about the tool meeting our individual needs for a GoogleReader replacement than being suited to student use.

We followed out usual practice in these exploring sessions of each member of the group spending around 10 minutes exploring one of the alternatives and then feeding back to everyone else using audio, textchat, whiteboard and app share. As usual this worked well in providing first impressions! Checkout the  recording for the feedback.

Conclusion

This was a great session! One of the best things about this type of session is that it gives an idea about the potential usefulness of several alternative tools/apps in a much shorter time than it would take each of us as individuals to look at them all. This often enables us to narrow down our choices to one or two for deeper exploration.

Our Next Webinar

Our next webinar will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday March 28th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday March 29th 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

 

Edublogs webinar overviews – two Serendipity and “What isn’t taught in school”

Introduction

This overview is for three webinars – two Serendipity sessions and a FineFocus about “what isn’t taught in school”.

Serendipity topic – Instructional design

In this recorded session we talked about instructional design. There has been a recent discussion around instructional design in LinkedIn and it is a topic that arouses strong feelings.  It was certainly at the top of my mind for two reasons:

  • I was about to start a temporary new role working on a project to develop e-learning for a Certificate II (Australian levels) vocational course. This involves being part of a team with specific designated roles eg designer, developer, SME, although mine is a bit “woolly”! A sharp contrast to my usual situation where I am often the sole e-learning designer/developer or the facilitator and main designer/developer for a very small team.
  • The second reason is my current involvement with others from my network in the development of deMOOC which is highly collaborative and informal without the narrow role designations of a formal team.

The discussion was wide ranging beginning with a look at “What is instructional design?” We also talked about the pros and cons of need for subject expertise in instructional design and other aspects of the process.

 “What most schools don’t teach” – a FineFocus session

This was a session where I was unable to be present – I logged in but was unable to stay due to work commitments. So this is one of those recorded sessions where I needed to access the recording to find our what happened! This was a very small group so was more in the way of a two way conversation than usual.

One of the things that most schools don’t teach is coding! Those of you familiar with our webinars will know that my co-facilitator Phil is a programmer as well as a teacher. In this session Phil shared some ideas about the uses of teaching students to code. These are not just their resulting ability to write programs! However

I personally have some reservations about everyone learning to code – analysing systems and developing algorithms is one thing but writing good clean efficient code is very different. I think there are risks involved in that as is currently the case with building websites everyone who has learned by “playing” with the tools thinks they can do this to professional standards. The result with websites is many very poor quality websites built for organisations by amateurs.

Serendipity topic – the loss of GoogleReader

As always in Serendipity we began this recorded session with a whiteboard for topic ideas. The news that Google is to close GoogleReader was at the forefront and was the chosen topic.

This is the second Google product that I use personally where closure has been announced relatively recently, the previous one was iGoogle (due to close in Novemeber). In the light of this our first whiteboard was an opportunity to think about whether we, as individuals, have too many eggs in our Google baskets.

The consensus was that on the whole we probably do tend to use too many tools/apps from the one source. We considered briefly the “why?” and it usually comes down to convenience. You only need one login for your GoogleAccount and also the tools/apps often enable cross linking and cross posting to occur fairly seamlessly.

Links for a number of possible alternatives for GoogleReader were shared and we also added alternatives to some of the other Google tools/apps. Main takeaways from the session were that there are alternatives – we just need to look even though changing is a pain!

Conclusion

Three very interesting sessions with lots to think about. The Serendipity has given rise to the next FineFocus topic which will be an opportunity to share and explore some possible GoogleReader alternatives

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is a FineFocus session. Join us for “Replacing GoogleReader” in which we share and explore some possible replacements for GoogleReader. Join us on Thursday March 21st at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning March 22nd in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

 

Edublogs webinar overviews – Serendipity (infographic homework) &FineFocus – “good” presentations

Introduction

This post covers two webinars. A Serendipity session in which we shared and discussed our infographic “homework” from the previous session and a FineFocus discussion session about what makes “good” presentations.

Serendipity – infographic tools

This recorded session was a Serendipity (unconference) session with a difference as it continued the theme from the previous session. We shared our “homework” infographics resulting from the previous session and found that most of us experienced a degree of frustration with the infographic tools such that some of us had not used the online tools. @jofrei picked up on a need expressed in the FineFocus session and has created a visual for one of our participants in the USA – Jo has posted about this. In my case I did two infographics one with one of the tools we experimented with and one with Powerpoint!

I put my two infographics on the screen WITHOUT labels for the tools I had used and asked the group for comments/preference. The one made with Powerpoint was preferred. This one was quicker and easier for me to make partly because I am very familiar with Powerpoint. However I did find that consistently selecting and moving shapes in the other application was much more difficult.

The discussion moved on to consider whether the proliferation of tools available for very specific tasks is necessarily a good thing, especially when there are more general tools that can be used very effectively. My personal thoughts on this are that the choice can perhaps be bewildering for those relatively new to e-tools, and can also sometimes produce a tendency to use the tech for techs sake. I feel it is important to remember that the “best” tool for a task is not necessarily the newest and trendiest but the one that suits the user best. I now realise that the reason I had not used infographic generators previously is that I don’t need them as I can create better ones with tools I already use. Of course this may change  – we live in an era of rapid change so I could feel quite differently in a year’s time.

“Good” presentations

This recorded session was one that arose from some comments in the Serendipity session above relating to appropriate tools for tasks. On this occasion we had a structured discussion about what makes “good” presentations and whether this varies with the purpose and audience. FineFocus discussions are differentiated from those we have in Serendipity sessions by the fact that they are structured in advance and that we often use pre-prepared stimulus questions and/or resources.

Ideas flew thick and fast on the whiteboards and in text chat and audio.

We took a look at presentations from several perspectives including:

  • checking out some posts on presentations,
  • considering audience and purpose
  • features of presentations as a continuum from boring to interactive
  • the ‘fine line” of getting it right for audience and purpose

Presentations in one form or another are something that we, as educators, do all the time. Using e-tools and strategies adds a new dimension and perhaps can help us to avoid a “death by ….” with whichever presentation tool we are using. We should always remember it isn’t the fault of the tool if we do a boring presentation!

Conclusion

Two lively sessions! Lots of ideas links and interactivity.

Our Next Webinar

Our next webinar will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday February 28th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday March 1st 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

 

Edublogs webinar overview – A cuckoo free Twitter nest!

REMINDER

It’s that time of year again! Over the next few weeks timezone chaos will reign. Half the world goes onto daylight saving and half comes off daylight saving. Except for a few regions such as here in Western Australia where we don’t have daylight saving. Just to make it even more complicated different places change on different dates. This is one of the main reasons we use GMT/UTC for our webinar times – because (like our West Australian time, but with much more “credibility”) it stays the same all year round.

If you have just lost or gained an hour then double check the times for anything trans-global in which you are involved. In the Northern Hemisphere you are heading back into winter so will “lose” an hour when your clocks are set back, thus our webinars will be an hour earlier “your time”. In the Southern Hemisphere you are going forward into summer so you “gain” an hour resulting in webinars an hour later “your time”

(For the link for live webinars and info about the times and topics scroll to the bottom of this post)

Introduction

It’s a long time since we had a session related to Twitter and as there seem to have been several waves of spam DMs around recently it seemed a good idea to take a look as some of the strategies we can use to help guard against becoming victims of the people in “black hats”. In other words to stop cuckoos laying their ph*shing eggs in our Twitter nests!

The session

In this recorded session I started with a few questions about how the group uses Twitter. Sometimes our own usage patterns can put our accounts at greater risk of attack – some of these patterns were raised in these initial questions. We then moved on to use the whiteboard to share some of our individual thoughts on the risks posed by attacks on our Twitter accounts.

Next we thought – again using the whiteboard about potentially suspicious Twitter activity that might set our own “alarm bells” ringing.

This included sharing my personal “alarm bells” that have emerged over 4 years and approaching 20,000 tweets.

Next came a look at what to do about these activities – the fake DMs and other potential issues. Catch the recording for the full strategies! One of my main concerns in this is that if you get a fake DM please don’t blame the messenger (ie DON’T block & report) – it could be you next time! We are all vulnerable to attack – if we take some precautions we become less so, but it only takes a moment’s inattention or just something that we don’t know about and those fake DMs could be going out from our accounts! For me personally I think my most effective strategy has been close management of my followers and being careful who I follow!

We finished up with a look at our best take-aways!

Conclusion

A good session – Twitter is a topic that I always enjoy discussing and I do have strong feelings about the community supporting one-another in combating the “black hats”. Over the four years I have been tweeting I have worked out my own strategies to deal with some of the issues that arise and I think it is important to share these widely.

If you have something to share either about Twitter safety strategies or anything you would like to present a webinar on please let us know (add a comment to this post, or Tweet us – @JoHart or @philhart). Then join us to facilitate a session about your e-edu passion! If you are not familiar with BlackboardCollaborate we can help you plan how best to do your session so it works for you.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session where we invite you to suggest your “hot” topics for discussion – we then select the topic by poll.  Join us on Thursday October 11th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning October 12th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.