ACAL and ACTA Exchanging ways of being.

Introduction

A few weeks ago (7th-11th April 2016) I went to a great conference! The “Diversity: exchanging ways of being” Conference was jointly organised by the “Australian Council for Adult Literacy” (ACAL) and the “Australian Council of TESOL Associations” (ACTA) with the local host organisations being the “WA Adult Literacy Council” (WAALC) and the “Westralian Association for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages” (WATESOL). It was fantastic to have so many LLN oriented people all together in one place, fabulous sessions and incredible networking!

ACAL ACTA conf

As always after conferences/events whether face-to-face or online I like to let my personal dust settle a little before I post my thoughts and reflections on the event. Now a few weeks later it feels like the right time to post!

I rarely attend face-to-face conferences – our own annual local WA Adult Literacy Council Conference being the only one I have attended for many years. There are several reasons for this:

  • I live in regional Western Australia, not too far from Perth but a long way from the Eastern states of Australia and the rest of the world so most conferences are not easy to get to;
  • I loathe flying – being both claustrophobic and not very good at heights – I find it frightening and stressful and it leaves me useless for a couple of days afterwards;
  • Large International conferences are expensive – I work in the public vocational education and training sector and my organisation has only limited funds available for professional development/conferences.

I do find it frustrating that with the multiple streams available in large conferences there are always so many sessions that I can’t attend! Online conferences by contrast usually record sessions so it is possible to catch up with any of particular interest later.

The Conference

I am just so delighted that I had the opportunity not just to attend the conference but also to present a workshop.

The buzz of all those LLN people gathered in one place was phenomenal and very exciting. Strictly it was two places – because sessions were in two Perth hotels just across a street from one another. However the need to move between buildings didn’t prevent the conference running (at least as far as I saw) extremely smoothly throughout, thanks to the efforts of the organisers.

The sessions I attended were all excellent and the Keynotes were outstanding. For me this conference “walked the talk” of “exchanging ways of being”. I think that combining the ACAL and ACTA conferences provided exceptional opportunities for networking and “cross pollination” of ideas and is something the two organisations should consider again, perhaps more regularly, in the future

The only downside for me was all those sessions I would love to have attended but couldn’t because they were concurrent with something else! In my opinion this is a huge and intractable problem with all major conferences. While providing concurrent sessions is a terrific way of catering for varied interests, it does also mean often being unable to attend everything that is relevant. Possible options for large conferences might include adopting some of the practices used in online conferences such as recording of some sessions so that they can be made available afterwards as videocasts or similar.

My own session

I deliver quite a lot of presentations/workshops on using technologies for facilitating learning to colleagues. This is in my own organisation, more widely in WA and Australia and also globally. Most of these in the last 10 years (with the exception of my own organisation and our WA Adult Literacy Council Conference) have been online. In all of these sessions (face-to-face and online I strive to use interaction and activities to keep the content interesting and illustrate the engagement potential of using technology as an adjunct to learning.

There were no computers available at the conference venue for session participants so I needed to make activities feasible for a “Bring your own device” (BYOD) context. A big challenge for me as in the majority of my past face-to-face sessions the participants were using desktop computers that all had the same operating system (ie Windows) and online they were mostly using their own familiar desktops or laptops rather than mobile devices. This made it relatively easy to be sure that everyone would be able to access the same tools, that we were exploring and using in the session. In this session we had a mixture of mobile phones and tablets and Android and iOS – some of the tools I use regularly with students are not compatible with one or more of these others need an installed app to work. So it was important to have illustrations of usage in my slides to minimise the frustrations felt by those who couldn’t easily access the tools via their device.

A further challenge for me was that I wanted the session to do two things: illustrate and provide opportunities for participants to extend their PLNs (ie exchange their own ways of being), and also introduce and explore some “tech” tools that could be used with students to facilitate them in exchanging their own ways of being.

My sessions always include a lot of link sharing – online this is very easy as links can usually be shared in chat boxes and/or on whiteboards. Not so easy in a face-to-face environment! However I have developed an approach that seems to work well – I put all the links I will need to share on a blog page – in this case ACAL/ACTA Conference 2016 – with some narrative, and then create a customised “bit.ly” link for that page so that people can easily type it into their device.

Integrating PLN development with tool sharing seemed to work very well. A lot of participants joined our FSTeach Facebook Group during the session and some tweeted with the #tag #FSTeach.

As is my wont in PD sessions I used a variety of tools and activities to encourage participation including online polling, online sticky notes and social media. I have posted the slides in Slideshare, and links to the tools and to the sticky not canvases are on the blog page ACAL/ACTA Conference 2016.

I really enjoyed doing this session – despite being quite nervous and apprehensive about whether the strategies I had planned would work. The participants were wonderful – so supportive throughout and happy and enthusiastic about engaging with the technologies. The two hours flew by and before I knew it the session was over!

Conclusion

When I was completing my workbased Adult Ed teaching qualification  in the UK over 25 years ago one of our lecturers was always telling us to “take risks” – she gave us a list of strategies and said we should try them all. I felt unhappy with this – my students were studying for national exams and I was unwilling to take risks with their learning. However when I looked at the list I had already used almost all of them! My whole life in teaching seems to have been about trying different things, or the same things in different ways. Always seeking to keep it interesting and to challenge students to get involved in their own learning. I try to do this ie “walk my own talk” in PD and conference presentations as well. For me this is particularly important, with respect to technology, and using the technology to support the learning – not as an end in itself. However, having said that, with the continually increasing significance of digital skills and digital literacy for future workplaces using the technology effectively, safely and critically is itself becoming one of the objectives!

I would love to see your thoughts (comments):

  • on the session – if you were there!
  • on the blog page and slideshare
  • on “taking risks”
  • on the increasing importance of digital skills and digital literacy to foundation skills/literacy/language/numeracy teaching.

 

Session on Blogging at WAALC

This post contains most of the content from a workshop session on getting started with blogging and its potential with students that I presented at the WA Adult Literacy Council Conference on 17/4/15. Apologies for the length of the post – I just wanted to put all the content in one place! The slides are now uploaded to Slideshare.

Writing for the world out there

Blogging for you & your students – writing for an authentic audience. In today’s session we will look at:

  • What is a blog/blogging?
  • Why should we and our students blog?
  • Why comment on posts?
  • Ground rules.
  • The mechanics of blogging – getting started.

What is a blog/blogging

  • personal place
  • work/professional space
  • online journal/diary – ideas, PD, reflecting/sharing
  • self-publishing online for a global or specific audience
  • place to share media, resources etc
  • networking – commenting
  • online portfolio – developmental, evidential
  • submit tasks & get feedback


A look at some educator and student blogs:

The following images are from student blogs created during completion of Certificates in General Education for Adults. They show some of the evidence gathering activities for which the blogs were used.

Student work1 550px Student work3 550px Student work2 550px

Why we blog

Reasons to blog

 The “mechanics” of blogging

There are many blogging platforms, personally I use Edublogs for a number of reasons:

  • educator/student focus
  • can create and manage student blogs
  • good personalisation options
  • mobile friendly
  • excellent privacy/security options
  • outstanding support/help


Getting your blog

Go to the Edublogs signup page

Complete the details and submit the information. Once your blog has been created you will get a “Congratulations” message. This will contain your:

  • Blog URL
  • Username
  • Password

Make sure you write these down!

Then you can “Login to your new blog” and start customising it. Here are a couple of posts that might help:

When you are looking for a theme to change the appearance, be sure that you use a “Mobile friendly” one.

Creating Posts

Blogs are very individual so what and how you post is very much your own decision, however you might find the following posts helpful in getting started.

Blogging is not just about writing/text,you can embed a variety of media and other tools including:

as described in this post on embedding media

You can also upload various file types including:

  • Word
  • Powerpoint
  • Images

These can be linked to from posts for:

  • Assignment submission
  • Evidencing competence
  • Drafting and feedback

If you have questions or need help then please comment on this post.

 

Edublogs Webinar overviews – Jan/Feb 2014

Introduction

A digest of  our recent webinars over the last few weeks. From now on time permitting I hope to return to posting a fuller overview or each webinar every week.

Serendipity 9/10 Jan 2014

In our first, recorded as always, Serendipity session of 2014 we talked about several topics. Often when we are a small group we choose to discuss more than one of the suggested topics. On this occasion we talked briefly about:

  • Password management programs
  • Getting organised and planning for the year ahead
  • Our thoughts about our own most memorable teacher

As sometimes happens one of the topics (password management) generated a lot of interest but none of us had very much knowledge so this became the topic for the following FineFocus with @philhart volunteering to facilitate the session.

Fine Focus (16/17 Jan 2014) – “Password Managers”

This week’s fantastic recorded session was a look at the pros and cons of password managers facilitated by @philhart we also shared a variety of links to password managers both cloud-based and downloadable.

Serendipity 23/24 Jan 2014

In this recorded Serendipity session we discussed:

  • are cheap tablets worthwhile;
  • illustration programs;
  • latest e-gadgets

The discussion on cheap tablets centred mainly around features available and intended purpose. Our look at programs we might use for illustrations sent us as always in search of free ones and the discovery of some that were new to us – this has resulted in a couple of us who participated exploring Inkscape In the remaining time we talked briefly about any e-gadgets new to us we had heard about, “played with” recently or that we wish for!

Fine Focus (30/31 Jan 2014) – “Columbus Cheetah Myth Buster”

This was a fascinating, and very interactive, recorded session (the first of two – the second part will be on the 13/14 February). In the session @jofrei shared her extensive knowledge of some of the myths about giftedness. Jo has recently posted a series about busting the myths on “Sprites Site”.

Serendipity 6/7 Feb 2014

In this recorded Serendipity session we discussed:

  • drawing on the PC;
  • some security issues

We shared some of our recent experiences of using drawing/illustration programs including Inkscape. The discussion on security was mainly about the phishing attempts of the “phone call from “a computer company”” and “email from “your bank”” type that still happen regularly with slightly new twists.

Conclusion

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

Our Next Webinar

FineFocusSmallOur next webinar will be an Edublogs “FineFocus” session “Columbus Cheetah Myth Buster II” in which @jofrei will continue her story of myths about giftedness. This session is on Thursday Feb 13th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday Feb 14th at 7am West Aus, later in the  morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate room.

Edublogs webinar overviews Oct 2013

Introduction

Still running behind on webinar overviews. A digest of  our recent webinars over the last few weeks.

Fine Focus – Presenting with Blackboard Collaborate

As always this session was recorded. The session was our last webinar before the Reform Symposium Online Conference #RSCON #RSCON4 and so we decided to provide a further training/practise/question and answer opportunity for presenters/volunteers.

Serendipity 17/18 Oct 2013

In this recorded Serendipity session we talked about the recent Reform Symposium Conference #RSCON #RSCON4. We were a small group and all of us had had some involvement as participants or presenter/volunteer/organiser, so the session provided an opportunity for us to share our thoughts, reflections and ideas.

Fine Focus – “Tech Smackdown”

This was another recorded session the intention was a quick tech smackdown type share of some favourite tools/applications that save time or that we use with students but we ended up discussing a variety of: tried and tested tools, some previously used with students and some new that we plan to try. All in all a great session with many shared links.

Serendipity 31 Oct/1 Nov 2013

In this recorded Serendipity session our chosen topic was “Blended Learning”. We started with a discussion on our understanding of the term blended learning, moved on to share tools that have been part of our best blended learning experiences, considered some of the advantages, and ended with a brief look at how/why we choose tools and strategies for blended learning.

Conclusion

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

Our Next Webinar

FineFocusSmallOur next webinar will be an Edublogs “FineFocus” session on Thursday Nov 7th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday Nov 8th at 7am West Aus, later in the  morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate room.

Where do you get these sites from?

This post is a cross-posting from the West Australian Adult Literacy and Numeracy network newsletter, so apologies if you have seen it twice. I wrote it in response to a query on our network of literacy/numeracy practitioners in WA most of whom are quite new to online tools and strategies.

Introduction

This question was posed in response to a recent post by Phil (@philhart) on our Western Australian Adult Literacy and Numeracy (ALaN) network GoogleGroup – Phil shared a site called Visuwords, an online graphical dictionary that gives a visual representation of associations between words. Phil’s answer was that he gets many of these kinds of links via his Personal (Professional) Learning Network (PLN).

Like Phil I have an extensive, global PLN – mine is in excess of 4,000 educators globally with fewer than 20% of these in Australia and less than 10% in WA. I find this network invaluable in helping me to stay up to date and innovative in my teaching and learning. The inevitable next questions are of course “What is a PLN, how do I get one, and what are the benefits?”

A PLN is …

A PLN is a network of people often, but not always, with similar interests to your own. We all have a PLN of some sort even if it is just the network of colleagues we meet through our daily work. However the most useful and effective PLN is one which extends outside our own day to day physical environment, outside our own specialist teaching area and outside our particular educational sector.

My own PLN is global, cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral. It makes considerable use of social media and online tools in general. So my Personal Learning Environment (PLE) through which I access my PLN is largely electronic. The main point here is that no two PLN’s are the same! We all have our own preferred balance of people and communication environments/strategies. Mine (like most others) has evolved over time and now looks something like the diagram below.

PLN PLE 500I expect that my PLN will continue to change and evolve – I currently use a variety of platforms so that I don’t miss out on posts from people for whom I have enormous professional respect but who don’t use my preferred platform for the majority of their interactions.

Getting a PLN

There are many different strategies for developing your own PLN. Mine started inadvertently, when a fellow e-learning enthusiast who was also a Vocational Education and Training lecturer but in a different college introduced me to Twitter. This is still my “favourite” PLN environment although I now use many other social networks as well. Many members of my own PLN have been introduced to the concept and started developing their own PLN through PD activities. If you are thinking about building your own PLN there are a few strategies that can be particularly useful:

  • Start with one social media platform – find a mentor on that platform who is very experienced and has a medium to large network of their own.
  • Sign up to the platform – make sure you complete your profile and have an avatar, many potential followers/friends won’t connect with you unless they have a little information about you
  • Don’t rush it – allow your contacts to grow fairly slowly at least initially
  • Give as well as taking – join conversations, make comments, share resources and links
  • Be social, be human – the social interactions are important despite the derision you see levelled at some platforms regarding the triviality of some posts, social interaction – the personal relationship “oils the wheels” of the professional relationship.

If you are interested in further developing your PLN then leave a comment here and consider participating in some of our regular webinars because if enough people are interested we could do some webinars specifically on this. If you are going to take the plunge anyway and your chosen platform is any of: Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn then please feel free to follow/friend, or whatever the connection label is, me. You can find me as follows:

I do check out profiles before I connect back (because like all online contexts there are plenty of “black hats” out there) although if I already know you from another context I may not. I will usually connect back within a few days.

What are the benefits?

The benefits are many! The list below is just a few of the positive gains shared by members of my PLN:

  • Keeping up with innovation in education
  • Links to great tools and resources
  • Instant help with tech problems and other questions
  • Learning, learning always learning!
  • Support in coping with issues
  • Sharing, sharing and sharing again!
  • Opportunities for global collaboration on projects
  • Opportunities for PD through online discussions
  • Overseas “E-visitors” to classes (via Skype or similar)
  • Broadening perspective from local to global
  • Learning about other cultures
  • Never feeling isolated at a conference (someone from your PLN is almost certainly there!)
  • People (that you feel you already know) to meet up with when overseas/away from home
  • Someone to “talk” to in the small hours – there is always someone awake

Some members of my own PLN have become good friends without us ever meeting! When chance gives us opportunities to meet there is none of the awkwardness of strangers meeting for the first time. This is a huge benefit for me as, despite my advanced age and years of teaching, I am quite shy when meeting strangers.

Conclusion

For more ideas about PLNs checkout this post “What the heck is a PLN?” by a West Australian teacher with a global presence who is part of my PLN and is now a good “real face-to-face” friend that I first “met” online via Twitter.

For me personally the global nature of my own PLN and the opportunity to be involved in learning from such a diverse group are the “icing on the cake”! I have been immeasurably enriched by many people in my own PLN and can only hope that I am able to “pay this forward” in some way.

Recent Edublogs webinars Aug/Sept – summary

Introduction

As has been the case for the last few months I have not been able to post overviews each week. So this one is a digest of  our webinars over the last few weeks.

Serendipity (1/2 Aug 2013)

This recorded session was a Serendipity session in which considered two topics. We brainstormed some way of enthusing teachers to use technology in class and then moved on to think of “5 minute fun fillers” not necessarily involving technology use.

Fine Focus – digital literacy in an adult ed curriculum

As always this session was recorded. The session was based around content from a recent webinar that I did for our Western Australian State Adult Literacy and Numeracy network. One of the main curricula used for Adult Literacy in WA has recently been re-accredited and now includes many references to digital literacy and digital texts. So I have been presenting a short series of webinars to help adult literacy teachers think about how they might come to grips with the new requirements.

Serendipity 14/15 aug 2013

In this recorded Serendipity session we took a look at supporting older people in using technology and learned about an exciting new free online course in teaching maths available through Stanford University. The course itself is now finished but is intended to re-run from March 2014 and resources from it are being made available on the “youcubed website”

Fine Focus – Playing in the Moderator Sandpit

This was another recorded session in which we took a look at some of the tools available to moderators that can be used to add interactivity to BlackboardCollaborate sessions

Serendipity 28/29 Aug 2013

In this recorded session in response to a participant question we took a look at blogging with a class of students, specifically how to get started in doing this with Edublogs.

Fine Focus – PLN? PLE? How have they changed

As always the session was recorded. We discussed and explored the terms PLN (Personal Learning Network) and PLE (Personal Learning Environment) and considered how these have changed for us as individuals over the last few years.

Serendipity 12/13 Sept 2013

In this recorded Serendipity session we looked at two topics. The first was a guided tour from @jofrei of a series of recent posts on her Sprite’s Site which followed the adventures of the Tweetlets during their Work Experience week at the Twitter Stream. Our second topic was a discussion of how we might be able to prepare training materials more efficiently.

Fine Focus – “This house is resolved …”

In this recorded session we did something a little different – I am always trying to come up with different formats and themes for Fine Focus sessions so that we don’t have “just a presentation” each week. So on this occasion I had been thinking about some of the controversial statements related teaching and learning with “e” and decided to present four of these for discussion. The four statements were:

  • Face-to-face conferences are a ‘has-been’
  • BYOD is a fad that wont last
  • You have to have a ‘maths brain’ to do maths
  • Qualifications are outdated, they should be replaced by digital portfolios

All four prompted lively discussion despite considerable agreement on each by the participants.

Serendipity 3/4 Oct 2013

There was no session on 26/27 September so Serendipity was a week later. In this recorded session we briefly discussed four topics:

  • We are Connected Educators. Anyone feeling the need to do more
  • What is involved in acting as a volunteer for the Reform Symposium (#RSCON4)
  • A success story from working for Broadband for Seniors
  • To share or not to share, how do you decide?

Conclusion

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

Our Next Webinar

FineFocusSmallOur next webinar will be an Edublogs “FineFocus” session on Thursday Oct 10th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday Oct 2th at 7am West Aus, later in the  morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate room. In this session we will look at moderator tools from the presenter and session facilitator perspective.

Yet more catching up!

Introduction

Again, I am still lagging well behind the events in posting webinar overviews. So as with my last post this week is a a catchup with topics and recording links for several recent webinars

If it’s on the Internet it must be true! (27/28 June 2013)

This recorded session was a FineFocus session in which @philhart took us on an exploration of the quality of information on the Internet. We shared our own concerns and Phil highlighted some of his. Phil also shared some the ways he assesses/evaluates the quality/credibility of information he finds and invited us to share our strategies.

Serendipity

A very active  session – recorded as always in which our intention was to look briefly at all three of the suggested Serendipity topics. However discussion was lively and extended about the first two, so we didn’t actually reach the third! The two topics were:

  • How do you re-charge your batteries? (prompted by end of school year for several of us)
  • Who gives PD to those who give PD? (this extended into a look at the ways we access PD).

Both topics gave us full whiteboards and we ran out of time before reaching the third topic “Is numeracy and maths really a poor cousin to literacy?”

Curation tools

One of our semi-regular FineFocus recorded sessions in which we explore a few apps with similar purposes and share our ideas on their ease of use, potential for engagement and possible use with students. These sessions are always great fun and very practical as we each find out about a different tool and then share our thoughts.

Another Serendipity!

This was another recorded session facilitated by Jo (@jofrei) and Sandra (@Marndon). Both the other Jo and Phil went AWOL to present at a conference! The topics explored were digital stories and ideas for “five minute fun fillers” for whiteboards.

Why/why not? Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn

In this recorded session we discussed why or why not we each used one or more of “the big four” social media platforms and also looked at our activity levels and our particular likes/dislikes for each of them.

Conclusion

My apologies for the very short topic descriptions! I hope to return to more complete overviews soon!

Our Next Webinar

SerendipitybsmallOur next webinar will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday Aug 1st at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday Aug 2nd at 7am West Aus, later in the  morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate room. This is one of our fortnightly unconference sessions where we invite you to bring along your “hot topics” and “burning issues”. We post these on the whiteboard and then choose the topic for discussion by poll.

Catching up! Recent Edublogs webinars

Introduction

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

Some iPad apps

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

Serendipity

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

Small, small things!

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

Another Serendipity!

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

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

Conclusion

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

Our Next Webinar

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

Edublogs webinar overviews – Several recent webinars

Introduction

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

Exploring Sticky note walls

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

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

Serendipity

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

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

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

Keeping the “Black Hats” at bay

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

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

Another Serendipity!

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

Our Next Webinar

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

Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – just a chat!

Introduction

This recorded Serendipity session was really just a chat rather than a more formal session. There were only three of us so we just talked about the ideas we had on the whiteboard and digressed into other areas.

The session

The ideas on the whiteboard for this week were “Crowdfunding” and “Teaching basic numeracy in primary schools”. However we diverted into several other areas.

We only had a brief chat about each of the  topics this week. Just sharing some of our own thoughts and ideas about them rather than an in depth discussion about any one topic. We started with a heads-up from @jofrei on the recent conference of the Victorian Association for Gifted and Talented Children. Jo had not got links to hand at the time but later sent these – one specifically relating to the VAGTC EmpowerEd conference program. The second is a link to a white paper – New opportunities for the gifted and talented – directions paper

Our next flying visit was to the concept of crowdfunding – what it is and some potential issues around copyright and Creative Commons licensing that might arise with crowdfunding online projects.

Then we talked about the accessibility, or lack of accessibility, to outcomes from gifted education research. This being largely because such research is published mainly in journals that are expensive to access. The discussion expanded into comment on the pressure to publish now on academics.  We also diverged into issues around obtaining recognition (eg for blogs) and funding for projects in areas that are perceived as of interest only to minorities.

We finished with a short discussion about maths with particular reference to teaching in primary school and student confidence issues.

Conclusion

A slightly different Serendipity this week but still as always engaging and interesting!

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is a FineFocus session. Join us on Thursday May 2nd 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 May 3rd in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.