Edublogs webinar overview – 24/7 global connectedness – blessing or curse?

Preface

If you access the link to the recording it would be great if you could either tweet me (@JoHart) or leave a short comment on this post to let me know. I would really like to know if it is useful to people when I post the overviews & recording links

Introduction

This was a facilitated discussion session. It is always a bit difficult to plan these because if there isn’t a structure they end up like Serendipity sessions and I do try to make a clear distinction between the two. However I always worry that I have structured it too much and am not giving people enough opportunities to talk and to participate generally. As always I would welcome feedback both from live participants and from anyone who has watched the recording. The topic arose because in the last 2-3 weeks I have several times seen Tweets about, or heard people speak of, the disadvantages of global connectedness. This made me start to reflect on the pros and cons and it seemed a good topic for discussion by a group of highly connected people.

The Session

This recorded session was very interactive with lots of chat and audio as well as whiteboard brainstorming. We began in the usual way by asking what participants wanted to take-away from the session. The next step was taking a look at how 24/7 connnected we are, including a poll on how connected we perceive ourselves to be and whether we like the idea of 24/7 global connection.

We moved on to explore those aspects that we see as negative. This was done initially using the whiteboard, followed by audio and textchat discussion.

NegativeResize

Naturally, we then considered the positive aspects in a similar whiteboard that you can see if you access the recording. When compared it seems that we felt that the positive and negative aspects were about evenly balanced.

We returned to the negatives to consider how we can manage them to reduce their impacts. Suggestions were mainly around taking “time out” in some form and checking information before disseminating it further.

The overall consensus was that being 24/7 globally connected is both a blessing and a curse!

Finally a challenge! For anyone who reads this post, was in the session, or catches the recording.

Do one thing this week to either:

  • Reduce the impact of a negative
  • Increase the impact of a positive

aspect of 24/7 global connectedness

Then tell us about it either on Twitter with the hashtag #SerendipEd or with a comment on this post.

Conclusion

This session was great fun for me and hopefully for the other participants also. I do so much enjoy the discussions as I always go away with so many new insights and hearing lots of different perspectives on the impacts of being connected was particularly exciting. My main take-away was to keep myself  aware of the negative aspects and work to manage them. I so love the opportunities for getting a global perspective and having someone to talk to in the small hours when I can’t sleep that I sometimes forget that there are negatives!

Next Webinar

SerendipitybsmallOur next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday March 31st at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday April 1st 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.

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.

Edublogs webinar overview – Conferences are a’changing

Introduction

In this Edublogs Fine Focus session (recording here) We took a look at the way conferences have changed/are changing and the pros and cons of  the tradional compared to the new style for participants. This topic was triggered by the number of virtual conferences I have participated in as attendee or presenter this year compared with the fact that I have attended no face-to-face ones at all.

The Session
We started with a look at our own perceptions of what constitutes a “new” style conference in comparison to what typifies the “old” style conference.

NewAndOldConfsResize

We also did a quick poll on what sort of conferences (if any) we had attended this year. After sharing our various understandings of old and new style conferences. We moved on to consider what we felt were the advantages and disadvantages of each. This provided food for thought and certainly raised a couple of advantages of the traditional style that hadn’t occurred to me. Personally I love virtual conferences as they allow me to “conference” in comfort from home & make it much easier for me to attend global events.

Conclusion

This session was very active as everyone had lots of ideas about new and old style conferences. For the full “flavour” catch the recording. On a personal basis I’m not sure I did a very good facilitation job on this Fine Focus, I didn’t have much time to prepare and was also a bit distracted by the fact that I was due to present at the online Global Education Conference #globaled10 an hour after the end of the session. Of which I will be posting soon.

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 Nov 25th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (6pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday Nov 26th at 1am CEST, 7am West Aus, 10am 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 – Twitter Rules/GroundRules?

Introduction

This was an Edublogs “Talk Time” around whether Twitter should, or should not, have rules and/or ground rules. You can find the session recording here.

The Session

We started out by checking that we had a common understanding of the terms “rules” and “ground rules”. This was followed by quick poll to see how many people thought that Twitter should have one or the other or both.

The main part of the session was occupied with why there should or should not be “rules” or “ground rules” for using Twitter and with ideas on the rules and ground rules that people thought were particularly important or essential.

TwitterGrRulesSmall

The session finished with some encapsulations of Twitter in nine words and a revisiting of the initial poll question on whether Twitter should have rules and/or ground rules.

Conclusion

As always with discussions about Twitter this was a lively session. I find that “Talk Time” sessions are great for giving the opportunity for a more structured look at a topic than Serendipity. However I always have an underlying fear that I am being too “bossy” in structuring and keeping the session moving along. I suspect that this may be a result of consciously trying to ensure that these sessions are different from “Serendipity” and that they have a clear focus and direction in contrast to the unconference, go where you will, format of “Serendipity”.

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 Aug 19th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday July 20th 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 – Tech for Tech’s Sake

Introduction

This session (recording here) was fast moving and seemed to work OK after a messy start. It was definitely “one of those days” with respect to me and technology! I had to log out and clear my Java cache because everything was freezing on me. I have had a few issues like this recently and I suspect that there is some conflict caused by the new client provided for remote access to my workplace network. I have also been having a few problems with font sizes changing when I upload Powerpoints to whiteboards. I have concluded that this could be because I am using a mix of 2003 & 2007 Powerpoint versions to edit and then saving in 2003 format but Elluminate is using 2007 version to upload.

Webinar Overview

We often hear criticism that those of us educators that are “into” technology use it for its own sake rather than to enhance learning. This seemed to me to be an interesting topic to explore, and one that would make for a good “Talk Time” session, hence “Tech For Tech’s Sake”.

The session began with a drag and drop activity to take a look at what we understand to be technology – this in itself showed how interpretations vary from person to person. We then moved on to consider whether we as individuals felt that we had personally used technology for its own sake. There were a majority of us who felt that we had! We moved on to a whiteboard to explore the underlying reasons beneath our perception that we were sometimes using technology for technology’s sake rather than specifically for learning enhancement.

Wordle

In fact most of the reasons we came up with seemed to be the underpinnings most of us use to enhance learning with just a few having different purposes. These included using the technology to: become eligible for funding opportunities; impress others; work paperless. Another reason that seemed not quite to fall into enhancing learning was that of providing access to remote or other students who would not be able to particpate at all otherwise. Following on from the reasons for using technology we took a brief look at which technology we use, with a consideration of whether we sometimes try and use too many different things.

Considering the “good” and “bad” possible impacts of using the technology for reasons not specifically related to enhancing learning gave us more “good” than “bad” impacts.The final conclusion was that almost everyone felt that there either were, or might be, good reasons for using technology in our teaching other than enhancing the learning.

Conclusion

I am never sure how well these kinds of discussion really work. I always try to make them very structured within a framwork of stimulus questions. Then keep them on topic and moving on quite fast. This is because in my opinion they otherwise become too much like the Serendipity Sessions which are intended to be fairly unstructured discussions and to “go wherever they go”. My usual problem (especially when there are several people not using microphones) is to get audio input from others and then to make that judgement call about how long to let silences go before starting to talk again. I have noticed that when there are 2-3 people without microphones or having audio issues then more people migrate to chat as the preferred interaction – the chat was very busy in this session. When this happens I often feel that I am (as usual) talking too much! However I do feel I have to keep some audio happening because: active chat is very difficult to follow for people relatively new to Elluminate especially if they don’t know how to change the windows for a larger chat space; long silences unless prewarned tend to give people the impression that their audio output has stopped working. So I have a continual juggling act with myself to try and “get it right”. I am very aware that I can’t possibly “please all of the people all of the time” but I am still trying.

Next week

SerendipitybsmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs Serendipity – unconference session so bring along your hot topics and burning issues (what makes you spit with anger or thump a tub with passion) and throw them into the melting pot for the poll to choose our topic in the first ten minutes.

Join us on Thursday April 29th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday April 30th at 1am CEST,7am West Aus, 9am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

.

Edublogs Webinar – Teach to the Test?

Wow! This was a session with a buzz! The Teaching to the test vs teaching to the learner’s needs debate is one of those perennial topics that always gives rise to a terrific discussion. Made even better by @philhart’s excellent facilitation, you should definitely catch the recording!

I don’t think Phil will mind me saying that he was a bit nervous. We have co-facilitated lots of times but usually with myself as lead doing most of the talking or in “Techie How To!” sessions where we took a section each. This was the first time that Phil had initiated and facilitated a discussion session, and in my possibly biased opinion he did a great job!

Phil has already posted about his feelings on the session  so it falls to me to give a bit of an overview.  The session included several polls and lots of whiteboard brainstorming, this combined with the strong contributions through text chat and audio made for a highly interactive session.  Whiteboards with stimulus questions were quickly filled with thoughts and ideas with the pace maintained by using the timer. This is not really the place to put up all those whiteboards but to whet your appetite for the recording I have made a Wordle  for one of them.  The question was looking for personal reasons for teaching to learners’needs.

ReasonsLearner

Feedback at the end was very positive and everyone seemed to enjoy the session immensely.

SerendipitybsmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs Serendipity – unconference session so bring along your hot topics and burning issues and throw them into the melting pot for the poll to choose our topic in the first ten minutes.

Join us here in Elluminate on Thursday February 18th at 23:00 GMT (6pm USA EST, Midnight CET) or Friday February 19th at 7am West Aus, 10am NSW, depending on your timezone.

.