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Edublogs webinar overview – e-learning jargon

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Introduction

This was a great session – Phil (@philhart) got us all thinking as we discussed our ideas and opinions about the jargon we all use in an e-learning context and how this jargon may impact on those new to the field.

The Session

The session was recorded as usual (please let me know if you access it) for those who were unable to attend.

Phil started us off by getting us to share on the whiteboard our understanding of “jargon”

JargonResize

Then we moved on to sharing some of our own experiences with “jargon” and looked at how we teach this for our oun subject areas.

Phil then asked if anyone had used a “Jargon Buster” and if so had they found it useful. One of the common problems with these is that they may often use “jargon” in defining “jargon” – very frustrating for the user! Phil has started a wiki experiment developing a dictionary of e-learning “jargon” where he is trying to use definitions written in plain language. We all had a go at trying to define a few given e-words in a simple easily understood way and also took a look at some of the “jargon” we ourselves have trouble with.

Phil moved on to look at the implications of “jargon” for those new to e-learning (both students and teachers) and thence to what we might do to try and help those new to the field. The wiki was started as an experiment but with collaboration has the potential to grow and could perhaps make a contribution to “unjargoning” the “jargon”. Phil invited all of us to join and collaborate whith him in building a “Dictionary of e-learning Jargon”  If you too would like to join this collaboration and contribute some definitions to the dictionary then ask Phil for an invitation. You can ask him by sending him your email either by DM on Twitter (@philhart) or by filling in the contact form on his blog

Conclusion

This session was fascinating, it certainly made me think again about jargon and how I use it and teach it. Like several of the definitions given in our look at some meanings I often use analogies that come from a (hopefully) more familiar context to my audience. I know I am sometimes guilty of using jargon without being sure that my audience understands this. I find this often happens when I am short of time or “characters” eg on Twitter where I often assume incorrectly that Tweeters will automatically be very “techie” people.

Next Webinar

SerendipitybsmallOur next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday June 9th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday June 10th 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 of the day. If you want to propose a topic in advance then visit the Serendipity Wallwisher and add your topic.

Edublogs webinar overview – Trouble with timezones?

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Introduction

This session was fun – we had old friends and new (including @tomwhitby a great Twitter contributor and creator of  EduPLN ning – part of the inspiration for this session through Twitter convs with Phil and myself)  who made it a great session through their input. The topic was timezones (TZ) – a mix of background about them and strategies for us all to be in the right virtual place at the right time.

The Session

As usual we recorded the session (please let me know if you access it) for those who were unable to attend.

For this webinar I added to the  “Where in the world are you?” map by including some timezones and also the equator. Should we keep this extra timezone info or does it make the map too busy? Let me know in comments or via Twitter (@JoHart).

We started with a look by Phil (@philhart) at some of the terminology of timezones. Phil teased us with a couple of questions about the International Date Line and a quiz about time for homework!

Then we moved on to sharing some of our own issues in working with timezones.

IssuesOrganisedResizeWe took a quick run through some of the strategies that I find effective in enabling me to be in the right virtual place at the right time. Some of these are also useful in helping to develop a “feel” for what time it is elsewhere. We finished with sharing some idas strategies used by others in working with timezones.

Conclusion

Timezones and the issues around working with them are one the topics that sometimes generate a “rant” from me. More specifically I find the parochial attitude often displayed by people assuming that everyone else is familiar with their particular timezone to be irritating. In my own very personal opinion we have a standard time that does not vary seasonally (ie GMT or UTC) so we should always reference back to that. It is then easy for everyone as they only need to know the relationship between their own TZ and GMT/UTC and not try to work out relationships betweeen their own TZ and several others.

Next Webinar

SerendipitybsmallOur next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday May 26th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday May 27th 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 of the day. If you want to propose a topic in advance then visit the Serendipity Wallwisher and add your topic.

Hurdl-e the barriers to online learning!

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Introduction

Since I read Britt Gow’s post on her online class a while ago I have been trying to find time to write a post myself because I have been teaching using a fully online blend for some time and I have many thoughts on what works and what doesn’t work for me and my students. I am also continually “tweaking” and changing both to deal with issues that arise and to try and make it all work better. I am an adult literacy/numeracy lecturer working in the public vocational education and traning sector in the Wheatbelt of Western Australia. My classroom is 115,000 square kilometres of sparsely populated country with a scattering of small towns and even smaller communities so going online was a logical step to increase the accessiblity of our adult literacy/numeracy courses

Most of my online teaching has included a large Elluminate (virtual classroom) component. My other main thread for various reasons – these deserve a post of their own – is a course website in our organisation’s Learning Management System (LMS).  I also use email a lot. However I always use other e-stuff as well and this year have started a Facebook group. My current courses are three Certificates in adult literacy/numeracy – Certificates in General Education for Adults (CGEA). Students need to complete around 12-15 units for a full certificate and in a face-to-face context this would involve around 240-350 hours of class contact time. We have continuous enrolments and each student is enrolled on an individually determined suite of units.  My students are regionally based – unable or unwilling to attend on campus for numerous reasons including geographical isolation or family commitments. These students are highly diverse including: teens who have dropped out of school (youth at risk); mature age return to learn; those who must be undertaking training in order to get their benefits; and culturally and linguistically diverse learners. As well as the literacy/numeracy issues that are the reason for them doing CGEA many of these students have low IT skills My background is in sciences and in equine studies but I also had a literacy and numeracy component in my previous adult education role in the UK, I think that the diversity of my own background and experience is extremely helpful in working with such a range of students.

I could write reams about both the barriers encountered and the things that work so to try and keep this brief I will just talk about some of what have been key issues for me with solutions I have tried and the effectiveness of those solutions.

1. Diversity (and age) of student computer systems

For anyone teaching online in any way other than with the students all in one room on organisation computers that are very similarly configured this has to be one of the most significant barriers to success! It not only impacts on students getting online in the first place but also poses ongoing problems for submission of work or for students reading specific documents that may have been posted in formats that they cannot read. This diversity of systems issue is compounded by the low computer literacy levels of many of our students across all age groups.

StudentSystemsDiversityresize

Solutions to date

  • Start with getting students into the virtual classroom – it is much easier to problem solve once we can talk and application share
  • Do this with stepwise generic instructions for Elluminate configuration – this really means get the students to access the Elluminate support link because thankfully this detects the current situation and then steps the user through configure and audio set-up
  • If the student has problems at this stage (about 3-4% may do so) then get as much information as possible and use email with screenshots and phone calls if necessary to help them
  • Once students have accessed Elluminate we do an induction into Elluminate and also demonstrate the LMS (course website) through application share
  • Any later issues can be addressed by the student sharing their desktop I can then observe and coach the student through the problem process or if necessary be given control of their desktop

The above has generally worked well for me in getting both my own students and those of my colleagues online. Occasionally the problem solving can take time – one instance in particular was a student whose Java had become corrupt. There have also been one or two students who have been unable to get online  from their home computer because of hardware issues or age/sufficient free memory on their computers.

I am in the process of developing a DVD that we can send out to all students on enrolment that will include all the start up information (including some of the troubleshooting), an overall course induction and useful open source applications with links for downloading current versions.

2. Communication

When students are regional/remote and we never meet face-to-face communication strategies become a key factor for success. I certainly don’t think we have this one full solved by any stretch of the imagination. I think it is critical that there are several different communication strategies in addition to planned virtual synchronous sessions.

When students enrol we emphasise that most communication is through email. We ask that they have their own personal email address (recommending Gmail if they don’t have email already) and that they initiate contact by emailing me to tell me they are ready to start. They are strongly discouraged from trying to phone me if they have questions or problems (except if they can’t access their email) – there are several reasons for this:

  • Establishes the online nature of the course more strongly
  • Gives practise in writing emails and messages
  • Provides a written record of the communication so that students can refer back to it to check the answer they received to any questions
  • Allows me to provide “how to” instructions in a stepwise manner with supporting images
  • If I am online in Elluminate I don’t answer the phone but will see an email as my email is always open
  • I do much of my Elluminate work from home (better connection, quieter environment) so I may not even know someone has called until I check my work phone for messages

Currently students communicate with me mainly through email and Facebook although occasionally through the course website (LMS) mail system. They submit work via email, their personal journal in the LMS, completion of quizzes in the LMS and via the LMS mail system. The submission of work is very “messy”. Because much of the learning for these students is about process a piece of writing may be drafted and redrafted and thus sent electronically between lecturer and student several times. So we have multiple versions and now with a second lecturer joining me in providing feedback we are involved in multiple handling to try and track student work and ensure it all receives comment/feedback.

I am hoping to develop a more consistent structured approach by using individual student blogs as personal portfolios where lecturers and the individual student have admin access so that work can be submitted by posting to the blog and attaching documents as necessary. That would make the process much more transparent and keep all the versions chronological.

3. Lack of a social dimension to the class

SocDimresize

In my experience online students can feel very isolated, this happens even if they are not geographically remote but is more of an issue for those who are. Students in a face-to-face class will chat at the start and end of (and often during) class, they will share morning, afternoon and lunch breaks. Even if they are at a different course level or a different point in a course they will discuss, share ideas and collaborate to some extent. This is very hard for them to do during an online course (especially with rolling enrolments) even if they are highly motivated to complete the course, and in my opinion it is one of the major reasons for the reported low levels of retention and completion experienced by online courses in general. Collaborative projects are also hard to organise and manage in our online environment as we have self-paced, flexible learning that also has a degree of individual customisation in content. This means that we rarely have two students doing the same activities at the same time.

Retention in CGEA face-to-face classes is generally poor and completion rates are very low some of the reasons include:

  • Student motivation (lack of!) the reason for studying is often because students are required to be in education or training as a condition of receiving benefits
  • Previous negative experience of education – in my opinion this has extremely complex impacts with students intensly disliking/fearing a traditional “classroom” environment but also clinging to it as familiar and also simultaneously having negative feelings about a more appropriately adult learning environment
  • Lack of study/learning skills and no “habit” of study – these take time to develop and establish
  • Students often need more time than is available and so may have to re-enrol
  • Unrealistic expectations – younger students often expect that the course will be easy/quick to complete or that by simply enrolling they will automatically learn and gain the qualification

Low retention/completion is common for courses where the main learner groups are those disadvantaged in society for whatever reason. This is an added challenge to successful online delivery!

I use a a number of strategies (described below) to try and establish a “community” and develop positive group dynamics.

Elluminate inductions tend to be individual or small group because of our rolling enrolments so I use several activities that can be cumulative. For example I have a regional map for students to add their location), this is saved and added to in successive inductions to build a picture of student locations throughout the year.

Map2Resize

There is an “introduce yourself” discussion topic on the LMS which I had hoped would develop into a longer term conversation although this is not very effective. I think that the student perception of the LMS is of a “classroom” and that it is too formal an environment for them to chat, this is made more so by the lack of flexibility in the LMS.

I started a class blog last year and have trialled using this with a few students. I haven’t really worked out the best way to operate this with rolling enrolments as I haven’t found a good strategy for using this consistently – putting up a weekly post for comments when all students are doing different activities doesn’t really work.

This year I have initiated a Facebook group for students to participate in if they wish to do so. FB is an environment that is familiar to most (though not all) of my students so I am hoping that in time we will have a thriving group who can help and support each other in studying. This has already had some benefits in students who already know one another discovering that they are both doing the same course and in some increase in communication – mainly in letting me know that they will not be attending a drop-in Elluminate session or in asking for sessions times and questions about their work. I really need time to develop this and to put more posts on the group to try and initiate activities and start more discussions.

All of these have helped to some extent but none have been “standout” successes. I keep tweaking and adjusting how I do these, and I plan to try additional ideas as and when this becomes possible.

Our regular Elluminate sessions are “drop-in” in nature at the moment. I am available online for a number of timetabled sessions each week and students are very strongly encouraged to “drop-in” during these for help and to discuss their progress with work. This means that there are at most 3-4 students in the room at any one time and usually these just work on the LMS until I am free for them. I am working on developing some whiteboard and/or research type activities could be available for the students to work on collaboratively while they wait to catch up with me eg building a Wallwisher or making and sharing Toondoos. When the need arises I do topic focussed sessions for individuals/small groups and feel that if I can extend these this would be helpful for developing a sense of community. However my main enemy is lack of time!

4. The extra time taken to do almost anything in an online context.

Expect everything to take longer. This is true both in Elluminate and in the LMS and with written work

Although text chat can be very fast in Elluminate, it can also be very slow with students who have literacy issues and are not natural keyboarders;

The lack of visible body language in Elluminate slows everything down as does a lack of microphones (some of my less motivated students often have “not working” microphones). When using the whiteboard to explain maths I can’t just look at my student to gauge whether they are “following” thus I need to include additional checks by asking them for their own input on the whiteboard more frequently than I would in a face-to-face situation. This issue becomes less of a problem as I get to know the students better.

Time for developing/sourcing and improving learning resources for the LMS. The notional face-to-face contact hours for our three courses add up to over 1200 and we have to have a strong element of guided content in the first part of each level because of the literacy levels and the lack of study skills and motivation when students begin. Maintaining the content is also an ongoing activity (links change!). I strongly encourage my students to let me know if there is a link that doesn’t work and this helps immensely but it is a reactive rather than a pro-active solution

Responding/giving appropriate feedback (this usually means adding comments on texts to enable students to edit and return for further feedback) asynchronously. I find I have to give much more detail and think very carefully about wording as I am not there to explain if there is not enough information to help the student.

I’m not sure there is a solution to the time taken issues except that they all improve with practise and familiarity. I have already utilised as much pre-existing content as I can through weblinks. This has a downside in the changing of links and in the time taken to find good resources and good example texts but it is much quicker that having to develop all the resources from scratch. Some resources that have had to be developed as I have been unable to find anything suitable that is already available. For me it is critically important that managers/admin realise the extra time needed and this in itself can be a major barrier.

Conclusion

When I look at what I have just written (and those are just some of the primary barriers that we are tackling) I’m surprised that my journey into fully online classes has actually happened at all! Writing this post has helped me to stand back and get a better perspective on just how far we have come along this road in two years. I know there is still an incredibly long way to go and what I’m doing will never be perfect but at least we have made a start and have improved access to literacy and numeracy courses for students who live in regional Western Australia and for whom attending a face-to-face class was not an option.

I would very much welcome some feedback and especially ideas and suggestions for what I might do to make it work better! It isn’t only online students that can feel isolated – online teachers can also feel this way – although I have colleagues delivering courses with blends that include some online they all use traditional paper-based flexible learning and/or face-to-face classess/workshops within their blends. I would particularly love to to hear from others delivering anything fully online with a blend of platforms, buteven more so if you are a literacy/numeracy teacher/lecturer.

Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – social media in classrooms

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Introduction

This was a very lively session! Great fun with lots of whiteboard contributions and text chat – we had several people without microphones so there was a lot of discussion in text. As usual the session was recorded – please let me know if you access the recording.

The Session

We had an interesting selection of topics and combined two closely related ones “Social media in the classroom; strengths and weaknesses” and “how to talk your admin into using social media in the classroom”  for the poll. This combined topic was the outright winner!

We started with a quick whiteboard brainstorm to share our own understanding of the term social media in a classroom context. This confirmed that we all had similar perceptions.

Then, very much in the spirit of Serendipity sessions we diverted briefly to explore a question raised in text chat – namely when we use social media particularly text based “do we do the quiet ones a disservice by always allowing them an out from speaking up?” The consensus was that we need both with a strong awareness that the opportunitiy to text can build confidence. As a shy child myself I was incapable of “speaking out” in class or anywhere else and trying to force me just made it worse, so I identify very strongly with those who “lurk” and prefer to text. I very much regret that such opportunities for interaction were not available in my childhood as I think they might have helped me to manage my shyness much sooner!

The next part of the discussion moved back to the main topic and we took a look at the strengths and weaknesses of using socisl media in the classroom.

Str and Wknss resize

This whiteboard filled very fast with both strengths and weaknesses, giving us much food for thought and leading nicely into a very quick look at which of us are using social media with students at the moment and what tools we are using.

We then moved on to consider one of the eternal questions for educators – how we get others whether they be educators, admin or policy makers on board with tools and strategies that can be fully justified in pedagogic terms but are threatening in some way because they are new and challenge long-held and conservative perceptions of what teaching is about. Again we filled a whiteboard rapidly with the overall opinion being that demonstrating the use in some waythat includes the doubters is probably the most effective strategy

Conclusion

This was a terrific session – so many thoughts, opinions and ideas shared. Though as always I felt I talked too much! I think this happens more when we have people without audio because so much of the discussion happens in text and on the whiteboard so I tend to try and provide a commentary to link whiteboard and text chat.

Our Next Session

FineFocusSmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session. This week in “Trouble with Timezones?” we will be discussing the issue of timezones,  sharing some of our own strategies for ensuring we don’t get event times wrong and that we can catch up with our global PLNs, and hearing from YOU about your issues and strategies around timezones. Join us on Thursday May 19th 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 in Australia – in the usual Elluminate room

E-ntertain, e-ngage, e-ducate?

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Introduction

I was thinking yesterday about a recent event where I found myself standing up for 25 minutes in front of a potentially negative audience of colleagues. My brief was to give them a look at what is “out there” in terms of future online/e-learning possibilties that might be significant for them.

The contemplation was triggered in part by elements of a long conversation between myself @mgraffin and @philhart when we met for lunch in Perth yesterday. As seems inevitable when “e” minded educators meet we touched upon the issue of encouraging our emphatically non “e”, non tech colleagues to at least explore the possiblities and dip a toe in the water.

Consequences of Shyness

Later on when Phil and myself were cooking dinner we returned to the theme and diversified into some of the underlying personality traits, ideas and strategies that inform how we interact with students and colleagues. As a child and teenager I was paralysingly shy, would rarely speak in any group situation, and always hid at the back. However I also took part regularly in school drama productions! I found I could do this by adopting a different persona, in a way I was standing outside myself and becoming consciously an entertainer. The shyness is still there especially when I meet face-to-face with new people although I can now mask it fairly well. It fascinates me that I am far less shy in my online persona particularly on Twitter and in Elluminate. There are many possible reasons for this that I should talk about another time.

ShyPresenterResize

The tendency to stand outside and watch myself has carried over into my role as an educator. I think that one of the reasons that I am not generally good at reflecting in writing after an event is because I am constantly operating a very short duration reflective cycle during a class or immediately afterwards. This is especially so with respect to “critical incidents” so by the time I get near a keyboard (trying to handwrite reflections kills them stone dead for me) and have time to write everything has already happened in my head so writing it seems unnecessary.

Educator as Entertainer?

Anyway enough of these digressions, Phil and myself were discussing how we work with students in different contexts. As an illustration of the way I adopt a different persona I talked about the recent two day professional development forum for lecturers in my organisation. In my experience across a number of organisations both here in Western Australia and formerly in the UK these sorts of events are generally disliked for various reasons including: information overload; the time taken; and the fact that not all of the sessions will be relevant or interesting to everyone. So to be asked to speak almost at the end of the two days about a topic that is certainly not “dear to the hearts” of many of my colleagues was a daunting prospect.

I decided right from the start that whatever I did: had to be fast-paced but also conversational in style; had in some way to entertain as well as to engage; and also had to have some degree of interactivity. Being up on stage with a microphone and data projector is not the ideal situation for generating engagement or including interactivity but it can provide opportunities to entertain! Because several colleagues expressed an interest in the slides and links I had used within them I have uploaded them to Slideshare.

Over the E-vent Horizon

View more presentations from Jo Hart

I work in vocational education albeit as a literacy/numeracy educator. Because of the context the vocationl skills of my colleagues are very highly valued and constantly updated so in my session I tried to draw a parallel between this and the need to have comparable skills in the teaching strategies and e-tools that suit the needs of our 21st Century learners. I also raised the issue that while we try to make learning as flexible as possible for our students using numerous blends often customised for the individual our own professional development is still tending to follow the old model of all sit in a room together and listen to speakers talking about subjects often chosen by others not ourselves. Developing and accessing a PLN, attending webinars and blogging about educator related topics are easily recorded and tracked these days so there is no reason why these shouldn’t form part of our recognised professional development. The session generated some interest from colleagues as several have arranged to catch up with me next term and talk about some of the possibilites for some of the “e” strategies in their own teaching areas.

Conclusion

When I consider how I work with my regular students I think it is critical to try and engage them but it is less important to entertain them. However when I am trying to bring colleagues on board with something new being entertaining becomes vital in order to generate a positive memory of the message.

Edublogs Webinar overview – Twitter 201

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Introduction

This session came about because I have noticed lot of  relatively new Tweeters following me recently & also had to do a very quick “Twitter 101” of the basics for a colleague just starting to tweet. This started me thinking about what happens next, once people have started to tweet, know about @, DM and RT and have joined conversations. It seemed to be time to talk about Twitter again. Twitter is one of our recurring themes, we have had 3 former webinars on Twitter, two of them back in November of 2009 where we looked at managing your Twitter account for security in “Twitter – a clean nest” and Shelly Terrell gave us a session on using Tweetdeck. In 2010 we discussed whether there should be “rules” for using Twitter. So in this session we looked at Twitter just little beyond the basics of tweeting.

The Session

As usual we recorded the session (please let me know if you access it). There was a lot of discussion throughout – especially in text but also with audio. We started with a look at what people would like to take away from the session and moved on to where we were all coming from with Twitter. Most of us already had quite a lot of Twitter experience, but that some were very new to Twitter.

We moved on to look at desktop clients, using Twitter from a phone. I App Shared my own Tweetdeck for illustrating and discussing some of the planned points and those raised throughout. This included putting out a #SerendipEd tagged tweet to my PLN for their top Twitter tips that were instantly displayed in the #SerendipEd column on Tweetdeck for everyone to see.

The discussion moved on to lists, how we use them how others use them, the usefulness or otherwise of automatically generated lists. This moved us into a quick look at account security and management to reduce the risk of scams, hacking and phishing.

TakeawaysWordleResizeThe last parts of the session were:

  • a challenge to do something different with Twitter this week and tweet about it using the hashtag #SerendipEd our tag for the Serendipity and FineFocus webinars
  • a look at our best “takeways” from the session

The “takeways” is always a really interesting question as it is sometimes the unexpected as in this session where the security aspect was the best “takeaway” for several people .

Conclusion

This session seemed to go extremely well despite my own doubts as always that it might be too “me centric”.  I always enjoy discussing Twitter and its potential because I use it so much and have gained so much from it in terms of establishing, and learning from, my own PLN.

Next Webinar

SerendipitybsmallOur next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday April 28th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday April 29th 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 of the day. If you want to propose a topic in advance then visit the Serendipity Wallwisher and add your topic.

Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – 14/15th April

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Introduction

In compensation for the last Serendipity, where I was a bit late starting the recording, this time I started it early so you have some of the initial conversation!

As always here is the recording link for the session – please let me know if you access the recording. We had a dead heat for choice of topics so as we often do in those circumstances we elected to look briefly at both. The topics were:

  • “How to drag the bulk of trainers (kicking and screaming?) into teaching in a way that our students now need?”
  • Using Xtranormal to make animations for scenarios

We started with the first of these allocating 25 minutes to each.

The Session

We started with the discussion question posted on the whiteboard. then we spent a few minutes brainstorming ideas that we might use to help get colleagues onboard with e-strategies for teaching.

ReluctantAdoptersWordleResize

We then moved on to discuss some of the individual suggestions with those responsible talking about their ideas and thus generating further discussion. The 25 minutes ran out all too soon!

Using Xtranormal was a complete change not only of topic but of exploration style! While several of us had “dabbled” in Xtranormal in the past, only one of the group had really used it. She was able to show us one of her first animations and also to tell us some of the pros and cons. We each visited and briefly explored the Xtranormal link. This of course generated more questions and discussion. Again we ran out of time far too quickly and it was time to draw the session to a close.

Conclusion

This was an excellent session with much sharing. The contrast between the two topics and the different ways in which we explored them highlights the truly serendipitous nature of these sessions. I have taken away an intention to explore Xtranormal further! I will try and do my “homework” this week and produce an animation – if I succeed I will tweet the link with #serendiped

Our Next Session

FineFocusSmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session. This week’s session is “Twitter 201” So you are on Twitter – you Tweet, @, DM and RT – you are past Twitter 101 so what comes next?  Join us on Thursday April 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 in Australia – in the usual Elluminate room

In the Future

If you are a regular visitor to our webinars you will know that we alternate “Fine Focus” sessions on specific topics with “Serendipity” the unconference sessions where we choose a topic by poll at the start of the session. Sometimes the very fact of being asked for “hot topics” or other ideas for discussion or learning tends to make our minds blank. This has prompted me to start a Serendipity Wallwisher for topic suggestions. Please visit the wall and add your ideas for Serendipity topics so that we have more choices to consider. Some of these ideas might also form the basis for future “Fine Focus” sessions.

Webinar Overview – Going Live & Paperless with GoogleDocs

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Introduction

This fantastic Edublogs Fine Focus session (recording here) was a follow up to a quick and impromtu look at GoogleDocs in a Serendipity session a few weeks ago when we were lucky enough to have Rachael Colley (@burntsugar) with us when GoogleDocs was the chosen topic. In that short time Rachael gave us a quick look at some of the GoogleDocs features and whetted our appetites for more! So this week she was back with us to give us a more extended look at how she goes live and paperless in using GoogleDocs with her students.

The Session

This was very interactive and great fun! Rachael set up a doc for us to play with – she gave us a link for a fill in Google form so that we could submit our emails to enable her to give us access to the doc. This gave us all an opportunity to add our own comments to the sample doc – Rachael has now made this doc public for us and locked the editing so you can see what we wrote! We were also writing in the live chat and comments on the doc, so with the Elluminate chat as well it felt as if we had four backchannels all going at once. As usual the Elluminate chat window was scrolling fast with comments, questions, tips and ideas.  Throughout this Rachael also application shared through Elluminate – very useful for anyone who had not been able to access the doc for some reason – and also great for showing us where to find features such as the live chat.

Composite resizedAgain through application share, Rachael showed us examples of how she has all her course resources in GoogleDocs and uses a blend of the available tools to give her students different levels of access depending on the purpose of the resource.

Conclusion

This was a terrific session with so much going on that the time flew by even faster than usual in these webinars. I learnt so much and will definitely be using Googledocs with my distance students. I try to avoid anything with my students that is locked into a particular word processor as they don’t all have up to date word processing on their computers and I have been struggling to find a good practical solution (other than a word processed doc with spaces) to filling in questionnaires that enables them to keep a copy and also to submit the doc to me. Now thanks to Rachael I think I have the answer! It is well worth catching the recording as there is so much to see.

Next Week

SerendipitybsmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session, 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 of the day. If you want to propose a topic in advance then visit the Serendipity Wallwisher and add your topic. Then join us on Thursday Sept 16th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday Sept 17th at 1am CEST,7am West Aus, 9am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

In the Future

If you are a regular visitor to our webinars you will know that we alternate “Fine Focus” sessions on specific topics with “Serendipity” the unconference sessions where we choose a topic by poll at the start of the session. Sometimes the very fact of being asked for “hot topics” or other ideas for discussion or learning tends to make our minds blank. This has prompted me to start a Serendipity Wallwisher for topic suggestions. Please visit the wall and add your ideas for Serendipity topics so that we have more choices to consider. Some of these ideas might also form the basis for future “Fine Focus” sessions.

Webinar Overview – Your PLN, what’s in it for ALL of us?

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Introduction

This recent recorded session was a “Fine Focus” follow up to the preceding Serendipity session where we had looked at two topics. The second of these – a fleeting glimpse of PLNs was a bit “short-changed” in terms of time, so it seemed like a good idea to have a session on the significance of PLNs and some of the tools we each use. It must be emphasised that this was not a session on developing a PLN but very much a sharing of how our own PLN works for us and an opportunity to take away different ideas and tools.

The Session

As always with Fine focus sessions that I facilitate I gave the session a clear structure to differentiate it from Serendipity which are deliberately unstructured unconference sessions. Firstly we spent a few minutes sharing our understanding of the term PLN, and then highlighting its most important aspect for each of us.

MostImprtntNext we shared our own particular key tool – the one we felt played a pivotal role in our own PLN. Then we moved on to a look at how our PLNs look in our own minds. For this I tried out an experiment in using Elluminate slightly differently as I am always looking for alternative ways of doing things. Instead of using individual breakout rooms the group used their individual Elluminate work areas to draw a diagram/picture of how they perceived their PLN.  We then transferred these to the whiteboard with limited success. As an alternative to breakout rooms (when there are bandwidth issues  or time constraints) I think this has the potential to be a useful Elluminate strategy. I just need more practise and to be much clearer in how I explain the “how to”. We finished up with sharing the one tool or idea we felt we might take away from the session.

Conclusion

This was (for me) a really interesting session as I always enjoy finding out about how people use their PLNs. I also very much value that these sessions give me the opportunity to maintain and extend my Elluminate skills as well as to learn about other tools and strategies . I also had a great “take away” from the session in Yammer.  I have now explored this and begun a network for my workplace with several people already joining.

Next Week

SerendipitybsmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session, 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 of the day. If you want to propose a topic in advance then visit the Serendipity Wallwisher and add your topic. Then join us on Thursday Sept 2nd at 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday Sept 3rd at 1am CEST,7am West Aus, 9am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

In the Future

If you are a regular visitor to our webinars you will know that we alternate “Fine Focus” sessions on specific topics with “Serendipity” the unconference sessions where we choose a topic by poll at the start of the session. Sometimes the very fact of being asked for “hot topics” or other ideas for discussion or learning tends to make our minds blank. This has prompted me to start a Serendipity Wallwisher for topic suggestions. Please visit the wall and add your ideas for Serendipity topics so that we have more choices to consider. Some of these ideas might also form the basis for future “Fine Focus” sessions.

Serendipity webinar overview – Your Web2.0 tools + PLN thoughts

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Introduction

This was an exciting Edublogs “Serendipity” where we found out a little about some of the Web2.0 tools used by others. You can find the session recording here – my apologies I was slightly late starting the recording. We started as usual by putting some topic ideas on the whiteboard. Although this was done a little differently as we now have the Serendipity Wallwisher for topic ideas as well as those “on the day”. After some suggestions from those present I also shared the wall through application share for us to add topics from there.

The Session

The poll on topics gave us a tie between Which Web 2.0 Tools Do You Use and “What is a PLN”. The group decided to look briefly at both as they seemed linked to some extent.

We started by using the whiteboard to list the tools we use individually whether personally or professionally.

Web2ToolsWeUse

We then highlighted those that appeared only once and invited the users of those tools to share the purpose of the tool and how they use it. In this way we were able to get an overview of several tools new to most of us. I certainly took away several that I will be exploring in much nore detail in the near future. Looking at tools in this way also led us into some discussion on our second topic about the nature of PLNs where we very briefly shared some thoughts about “What is a PLN”. We didn’t really have time to do this topic justice.

Conclusion

This was a great session – the best thing about our Serendipity sessions is the spontanous sharing and learning that happens.

Next Session

SerendipitybsmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session. Following on from the Serendipity session above we are going to ask YOU about YOUR PLN in “Your PLN – what’s in it for all of us!” We ask you to share: how it works, why it works, what tools you use, and your ideas about what makes a great PLN. Join us on Thursday Aug 26th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday July 27th at 1am CEST,7am West Aus, 9am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

In the Future

If you are a regular visitor to our webinars you will know that we alternate “Fine Focus” sessions on specific topics with “Serendipity” the unconference sessions where we choose a topic by poll at the start of the session. Sometimes the very fact of being asked for “hot topics” or other ideas for discussion or learning tends to make our minds blank. This has prompted me to start a Serendipity Wallwisher for topic suggestions. Please visit the wall and add your ideas for Serendipity topics so that we have more choices to consider. Some of these ideas might also form the basis for future “Fine Focus” sessions.