Tag Archives: interactive

Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – “cool tools!”

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Introduction

We were a small group this week, however as usual the session was  recorded, so if you missed it you can catch the recording.

The Session

The session followed the usual Serendipity format with a whiteboard for topic ideas from participants and then a poll to choose the topic for discussion. The consensus was for us to merge two topics “Tech toys for motivation” and “Cool tools” and talk about and share some of our personal favourites.

A small group means that everyone has an opportunity to talk on the microphone and this is what we did! We started with a whiteboard on which we wrote some initial tools but soon moved the taking turns to talk about personal cool tools (mainly via audio but with some textchat particularly for sharing links)

When it came to my turn rather than just talk about a tool I Application Shared Wordle – one of my personal favourite “cool and motivational tools”. Then we took turns to have control of desktop so everyone could add their own choice of cool tools. Thus we were able to build a collaborative “Cool Tools” wordle of some of our favourites.

We had time for a further “round” of sharing. Once again each briefly talking about a tool of our choice, with some Application Sharing and links shared in text chat.

Conclusion

This session was a great one to be part of! As usual with sessions where we share favourite tools there were ones new to me, so I have new tools to explore.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session, in which we take a look at the contrasting examples of Diigo and Symbaloo for online/social bookmarking in “I’m sure I saw that somewhere!”  Join us on Thursday December 1st 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 December 2nd in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room

 

Edublogs webinar overview – Do you know Dabrowski’s Dogs?

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Introduction

This recorded, Fine Focus session presented by Jo Freitag (@jofrei) was fascinating and exciting. Jo coordinates the “Gifted Resources” information service website which includes “Sprite’s Site” where Dabrowski’s Dogs are regular visitors. She has intrigued us with mentions of Dabrowski’s Dogs in a number of sessions so it was particularly exciting to have a session devoted to them.

The Session

Jo started off by finding out where we were coming from on “Dabrowski’s Dogs”. She then gave as a great list of references so that we could find out more about the overexcitabilities for ourselves at a later stage.

Next we took a look at the dogs themselves as personifications of Dabrowski’s overexcitabilities. Jo gave us great character sketches of the dogs and also links to blog posts that explore the characterisitics.

Then it was our turn to do some work. Jo gave us slides on which to brainstorm the positives and negatives of the overexcitabilities in a classroom context and to suggest strategies for managing these.

The first of these slides is shown above. This activity was a great tool for thinking about the impacts of the overexcitabilities in the classroom context and for considering how they might be managed. As well as the whiteboard input there were also ideas shared in text chat. Jo also talked briefly about a teaching unit that can be used to help students better understand themselves.

Finally Jo asked us how we felt at this stage about Dabrowski’s Overexcitabilities which gave rise to an additional whiteboard activity for us to express whether we could see echoes of ourselves in the dogs.

Conclusion

This was a fantastic session – full of information and activities and with lots of interesting “homework” in the form of links to visit later. As always I learned much! It seems to me that a virtual classroom might have some advantages over a face-to-face situation for managing some of the negatives (particularly those characterisitics that prove distracting to others) posed by the overexcitabilities.

Next Webinar

Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday November 24that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday November 25th at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual Elluminate 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 Serendipity webinar overview – project based learning

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Introduction

For this exciting  recorded unconference session Tracy Watanabe (@tracywatanabe), who is Technology Integration Specialist at Apache Junction USD in Arizona, was our guest facilitator. Tracy is a regular attendee at both Serendipity and Fine Focus sessions and did a great job in keeping the session flowing smoothly and picking up on questions in textchat. A number of Tracy’s colleagues participated actively in the session and for most I believe it was their first webinar!

The Session

The session followed the usual Serendipity format with a whiteboard for topic ideas from participants and then a poll to choose the topic for discussion. The clear winner this week was project based learning (PBL)

This session had a great blend of textchat, audio and whiteboard contributions beginning with a whiteboard and discussion about ideas for projects that could form the basis of project based learning in difference disciplines. Participants shared examples of how they are using PBL with their students.

We moved on to discuss assessment of PBL

Again this generated lots of ideas, some captured on the whiteboard, others through textchat and audio. Comments from others brought home to me how lucky I am to be in the outcomes based Vocational Education sector here in Australia. Standardised testing is not something we have to do! Our students have to meet standards but the emphasis is on being able to demonstrate that they can do something and that they have the necessary knowledge to do this in a work context. Having said that, we are still bound by “curriculum” and time constraints into teaching/training to meet outcomes rather than to develop our learners.

Conclusion

This was such fun! I love it when someone else is the primary facilitator because it gives me a little time to participate in the session so I can add my “two penn’orth” (“two cents worth”). This was a great ideas sharing session where the diversity of participant experience ranging all the way from primary to adult education, of sector (school, non-formal and vocational education) and jurisdiction (Australia and USA) gave rise to a variety of project ideas and assessment strategies.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session, in which Jo Freitag (@jofrei) will tell us about “Dabrowski’s Dogs”  Join us on Thursday November 17th 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 November 18th in Australia – in the usual virtual room

 

Edublogs webinar overview – “Facebook won’t go away!”

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Introduction

This Fine Focus session, recording here, was similar to one I did recently with colleagues. I am currently introducing some Web2.0 tools to some of my colleagues and Facebook is one of these.

The Session

The session was fun! I used video and application share,I  had intended a web tour also but BbC wasn’t co-operating so the web-tour became another applicaion share. We started with some general discussion about Facebook and moved on to some of the uses and pros and cons of using with students – including the fact that it is a “place” where many students already “hang out”.

Next we took a look at some of the practicalities of using Facebook in education and the issues around privacy and confidentiality. This included a look at the practicalities of having a second account and the advantages of groups over fan pages. We finished with a quick look at the need for management by group owners to ensure that behaviour remains acceptable.

Conclusion

I felt that I talked too much in this session – something I often feel to be the case when I am the “presenter” as well as the facilitator.  However text chat was active and there was great input on whiteboards so the session seemed to be effective. Also as usual I tried to include too much! So the session was a bit rushed towards the end.

Next Webinar

Our next session facilitated by Tracy Watanabe (@tracywatanabe) one of our regular participants will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday November 10that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday November 11th at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual Elluminate 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.

Three Edublogs webinar overviews!

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Serendipity – Two topics UDL and information curation (13th/14th October 2011)

Apologies for not posting the last couple of overviews – pressure of work just got too heavy. I hope that doing three posts in one will get me back on track!

Introduction

In this recorded session we had two topics because we had a dead heat betweeen looking at universal design for learning and curating information. The consensus was to discuss both so we split the time between the two beginning with information curation

The Session

We initially used a whiteboard to gather some of the methods we use to manage (curate) information.

The conversation moved on using text and audio as we discussed some of these in a little more depth. There are so many tools that can be used for curating information, we all have our preferences based on the ways we think and learn. No one tools will ever be right for everyone!

We moved on to look at Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Initially we spent time clarifying our various understandings of UDL. The focus on accessiblity underpins UDL but there is some perception that it can be used as a way to make everyone conform.

Both topics are really deserving of full Fine Focus sessions – information curation probably needs as many sessions as there are tools and different ways of using them.

Conclusion

This session reinforced for me something that I already feel very strongly. That is the importance of giving learners and colleagues choice with respect to tools not just for information curation but for all aspects of their e-learning. This was particularly interesting when juxtaposed with the second half of the session on UDL which focuses on accessiblity. This sometimes seem be used as a justification for trying to make a tool or site “all things to all people” and thus removing “difference”.

“Regional Voices Crying Out To Be Heard” (20th/21st October 2011)

Introduction

In this session I told the story of Western Australia’s unique approach to participation in the national consultation for Australia’s new Foundation Skills Strategy. The session was as always recorded.

The Session

The session really was more of a story than a presentation. I shared the slides I had used in my recent workshop/presentation via Elluminate at the 34th Australian Council for Adult Literacy Conference – Literacy on the Map about how Western Australia enabled our regional voices to be heard in the by using Elluminate for their regional focus group in the national consultation for Australia’s new Foundation Skills Strategy. The recording of that session plus the slides and an approximate transcript of content are available on the conference Presentations page under “Tuesday” Session D5 Regional voices crying out to be heard! I also posted on this blog about the consultation when it happened back in April under the title “Elluminate Your Consultation Process”

Those of us who took part in the consultation felt that using Elluminate enabled us to overcome Western Australia’s tyranny of distance and thus play a significant role in that consultation process.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed this session! It was very much a talk through the processes, both of:

  • presenting via Elluminate at a conference that was entirely face-to-face except for my workshop; and
  • the consultation process itself and how we met the consultants’ requirements via Elluminate

It was very satisfying to re-visit the processes in company with several experienced Elluminate users and to discuss some of the rationale behind the choices of tools and strategies.

Serendipity – Parent Education (because they seem so hostile to technology) – (27th/28th October 2011)

Introduction

In this very lively recorded Serendipity session the topic of choice was “parent education – because they seem so hostile to technology”.

The Session

A really great session! This is one of those topics where all e-minded educators seem to feel very strongly and that always gives rise to a good session.

We looked first at some possible reasons why parents give such an impression of hostility about technology in the classroom. These thoughts filled a whiteboard quickly and generated further discussion ranging into the educational “value” of some student use of technology. There were also several links in textchat relating to research in the area of parent education.

Having discussed why parents were negative we moved on to consider how they might be educated in the value of the technology in a learning context.

Again we quickly filled a whiteboard with ideas and more links both on the whiteboard and in textchat. There were some great ideas shared on the whiteboard and chat and then expanded on through audio. As always there was much serendipitous learning in the diversions into e-portfolios, blogging, QRcodes and other fascinating areas.

Conclusion

This was a buzzy session with contributions coming thick and fast. The best thing about Serendipity sessions is the unconference nature because we never know where we will go in our “e-xplorations”.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session, “Facebook won’t go away!” I take a look at Facebook – from the premise that if it won’t go away (and it won’t) we need to embrace it as a tool. Join us on Thursday November 3rd 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 4th in Australia – in the usual virtual room

 

Edublogs webinar overview – “e-Portfolios – what, why & how!”

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Introduction

This Fine Focus session was presented by one of our regular participants Sandra Stewart (@marndon) from New South Wales. Sandra introduced us to e-portfolios with fantastic illustrations from her own experience. The session was recorded as always and is well worth watching!

The Session

Sandra was a great facilitator keeping us busy & therefore engaged throughout! Initially she found out about our awareness/understanding of e-portfolios and then moved on to show a variety of examples using different platforms through Application Share (this is somewhat problematic to use in BbC as opposed to Elluminate).

Sandra encouraged us to think about the purposes of e-portfolios and gave us an activity to help us think about the potential for us personally! So agree with Sandra that to use anything with students we need to have a degree of familiarity with the “tool/app” ourselves!

I particularly enjoyed that the examples were not all using Mahara. Not that I have anything against it but it seems often to be the only option mentioned in Aus VocEd!

Conclusion

This was a GREAT session – so love it when our regular participants run a session as this is a very large part of what we are about!  Sandra has encouraged and motivated me to make more effort with e-portfolios. My institute has just got Edublogs Campus & we plan to enable students to use blogs as an e-portfolio. Part of the reasoning behing this is that I already know Edublogs blogging platform well – this will enable me to help my colleagues more than if we moved immediately to a specified e-portfolio platform.

Next Webinar

Our next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday September 29that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday September 30th at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual Elluminate 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 Serendipity webinar overview – fun, individualised, interesting & easier learning?

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Introduction

In this session we took a look at making learning: fun, individualised, more interesting and easier! A very tall order – but it seemed to us when we looked at these suggested topics that they were closely inter-connected so a unanimous decision was taken to consider them all at once! As always the session was  recorded and is well worth catching. We were a small group – all of whom have participated in many of these webinars. There were many whiteboard and chat contributions with everyone also taking part in the audio discussion.

The Session

Just for once we didn’t have a proper poll! Because the topics were so closely related we chose to  encompass them all within our discussion. Also unusually there was not a heavy focus on the “e-” components we might include, although I think we were all aware that that “e-” components are great tools for making learning more fun, individual, interesting and even easier!

As we often do we began with a whiteboard having the chosen topic as the heading and simply added our own ideas about the topic. This was a mixture of strategies, ideas and practices.

Each of us then chose ONE of our contributions to the whiteboard and expanded on it through audio (these are the ones enclosed by red rectangles on the image). This is something I really love when it is feasible – really only possible for everyone to do this when we are a small group and when we all have microphones. Each of these gave rise to questions and further discussion.

In the remaining time we looked a little more at “making learning easier” with some debate about whether it should be always easy and indeed if it is possible for it to always be so. The consensus seemed to be that there are some things that require a degree of repetition and or  practise to learn them to a degree where they are useful. My own particular take on this is a feeling that by always making it “easy and fun” we may be setting students up to fail later in life in workplaces and in life. There are dull, boring, routine tasks that we all need to do in life and in our workplaces, there are also many things which are not easy. If we lack stamina and the ability to be persistent to some degree then we risk not achieving our goals.

Conclusion

This session was fun – this group of “old hands” are all great contributors giving rise to a great  feeling of collaboration throughout the session. I so much enjoy Serendipity because we never know where we will go!

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session, this week in: “e-Portfolios – what, why & how!” Sandra Stewart from New South Wales will take us on a journey into the understanding and  use of e-Portfolios. Join us on Thursday September 22nd 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 September 23rd in Australia – in the usual virtual room

Edublogs webinar overview – Social Media With Students?

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Introduction

This Fine Focus session was really a spin-off from last week’s Serendipity session where we touched on using Twitter with students but didn’t really have time to explore the issues. This was a great session with lots of whiteboard activity and as usual the session was recorded.

The Session

Although the session title refers to “social media” this is such a massive topic that I focussed on social networking with students and chose what are probably the two most well known and widely different from one another social networks – Twitter and Facebook. I then added in GooglePlus because although this is very new I suspect it will ultimately be extensively used with students because of the way circles can be used.

We started with some polling to find out where everyone was “coming from” on using social networks with students. Next we set the scene with a brief look at some recent items on social netwroks with students including two short videos. This led on the the quesion of whether we should use this type of tool with students – the poll result was a resounding “Yes” and we quickly filled a whiteboard with the positives and negatives.

The next considerations were the contexts and circumstances in which we might use social networking with our students. This was followed by sharing how (if we currently do) we use one or more of these with students. We finished with a poll on whether we now felt it was more likely that we would use these with students. There is also a slide with live links for the videos and some other items of interest for social networking with students.

Conclusion

This session worked well – it followed a similar pattern to most of the other discussion type topics that I facilitate in Fine Focus sessions. As is often the case I felt that I talked too much, however everyone seemed to enjoy the session. The use of video was something I don’t do often – although I have recently been showing colleagues how to incorporate it via the multimedia window. It worked fairly well although the videos did not play for one participant despite being mp4 and so likely to be playable by the majority of people. This is one of the reasons that I tend to avoid video the other is bandwidth and download time issues. Even though both videos were small files they still took considerable time to download to participants after they joined the room, so it isn’t a good idea to play videos very early in the session. However I will be trying to include more video because I feel it is something I need to become more familiar with.

Next Webinar

Our next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday September 15that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday September 16th at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual Elluminate 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 Serendipity webinar overview – blogs, wikis, twitter for classrooms

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Introduction

The chosen topic for this session was a look at blogs, wikis and Twitter for classrooms, this was a clear leader in the voting. This session was very interactive with lots of audio discussion as well as text chat and whiteborad contributions. As always the session was  recorded although I was a couple of minutes late starting the recording and so went back to the start and reintroduced the topic. This happened in part because when loading slides I had accidentally clicked record for a few seconds – in the new interface the record button is right next to load content and is not red! As a result of this the excellent “Recording Reminder Window” closed.

The Session

The poll was between 5 topics with blogs, wikis or Twitter for classrooms combined with privacy settings on blogs and wikis being the chosen option. This was a very active discussion. As is often the case we started with a whiteboard for ideas on the topic

and this led on to a very productive audio and text disscussion around the points on the whiteboard with people talking about how they use the tools in their classes and sharing ideas and links.

With only a short time left we moved on to look briefly at privacy issues  and particularly the need with younger students to maintain confidentiality for their safety. This was linked with the need to establish good digital footprint habits. We also talked briefly about Twitter with thoughts about social media for rural students and also backchannelling and its various facets – a subject that perhaps deserves a whole session for discussion!

Conclusion

This was a great session with many thought provoking ideas. Something I really love about Serendipity sessions is that no matter how many times a similar topic is raised the particular participant mix in any one session drives the conversation in different directions so that there is always something new to learn and new aspects of the topic to consider.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session, this week in: “Why? When? How? Social Media With Students” we will take a look at why, how and when we do, or should, use social media with students. Join us on Thursday September 8th 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 September 9th in Australia – in the usual Elluminate room

Edublogs webinar overview – Quick & easy online tools

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Introduction

This Fine Focus session was a little different from usual! I am always trying to think of new topics and different ways we can approach these in our virtual room. As most of you know I have a permanent “bee in my bonnet” about the webinars being participative and interactive and I try very hard to avoid sessions where I talk too much! This session was (I think) very interactive as well as exciting – checkout the recording and see what you think.

The idea behind this session comes out of my desire to always have some – easy to learn, quick to use and no need to register – online tools at my fingertips. Many of my students (previously face-to-face and now online) lack motivation and engagement – they are often unwillingly in education/training – so being able to give them a task that involves using a quick to learn tool to create a visual outcome can be an effective engagement strategy.

The Session

For the session I collected together ten links to what I hoped would be small easy to learn and use online tools. Some of these I was already familiar with, some I had heard of but not used and some were completely unknown to me and found through a search for a type/function of tool.

We started with a series of quick polls to gauge familiarity with each of the ten tools. The degree of familarity ranged from some people using a particular tool quite regularly to at least one tool with no-one having any experience of its use.

The main part of the session was based on a quick exploration of a chosen tool by each participant. For this we had a table of the tools and everyone put their name beside the tool they were going to explore.  We then allowed a timed ten minutes to “play” with the tool – the rationale being that if it took much more than ten minutes to use at the most basic level then it would not be very useful with students as a quick re-engager.

The Tools – Function and links (these are in no particular order)

The “playtime” was followed by quick evaluations from individuals of their chosen tool against the following criteria: ease of use; how quick to learn; potential usefulness with students.

Conclusion

This different way of running the session was exciting for me and seemed to be very much enjoyed by everyone. I really loved the evaluations and comments from everyone on the tools they had explored. It felt like a very valid way to investigate tools that we might ask students to learn and use very quickly. I am well aware that if I can’t use the basics of a tool in 5-10 minutes then it is unreasonable of me to expect my students to do so. I think if we have a favourite tool that we use often we sometimes forget how long it took us to get started with that tool when we ask our students to come to grips with it in minutes!

Feedback on the session was very positive with suggestions that we do something similar again and also some terrific ideas for variations such as small groups evaluating a tool and feeding back or taking a tool away and then coming back to a later session with a more detailed evaluation.

Next Webinar

Our next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday September 1stat 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday September 2nd at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual Elluminate 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