Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – just a chat!

Posted on April 30, 2013 by johart1

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 2^nd 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 3^rd in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Edublogs webinar – Extraordinary Literacy Learning

Posted on January 31, 2013 by johart1

Introduction

This recorded session was a FineFocus session about how we delivered a pilot (funded by the Australian National Vocational E-Learning Strategy initiative – Partnerships for Participation) adult literacy course entirely online using virtual classroom, blogs and other e-tools.

The session

Due to time constraints the focus of the session was very much on the delivery model and strategies used rather than on the student cohort/reasons for adopting the approach. I began the session with a very brief scene setting and then moved on to discuss the delivery model. Initially this was from an overall perspective followed by a more in depth look at how the different aspects fitted together.

Blogs formed the core of the student work and we had an online audience poll on blogs which indicated that (unsurprisingly) everyone had some knowledge of blogs. Then we moved on using examples from the “Course Blog” and individual “Student Blogs to illustrate how we used the blogs in the literacy context to enable students to access “How to” information, write for an authentic audience and receive feedback on their work. Although blogs were the main core of student activities we also used a course website (built in the Institute LMS) and virtual class recordings to provide supplementary resources. Links for activities were provided via Symbaloo. The structure of the course helped us to “walk the fine line” between too much control of student activities and potential anarchy and the issues arising from this.!

We moved on to look briefly at the project outcomes including some student feedback via Lino.it.

This was followed by a “Roaming Challenge” – an opportunity for session participants to access a series of whiteboards individually add their own ideas on how they might use some of the tools and strategies for specifc activities with a particular student cohort. We shared and discussed the ideas briefly and I also shared the outcomes of the same activity from a face-to-face presentation that I did for my own organisation as part of an innovation workshop.

We finished up with a second online poll to gather feedback on the session and a “best takeways” board for any other comments.

Conclusion

I so much enjoyed doing this session. The project was so exciting to do and because (in my opinion) it was very successful I love to share how we did it. The only sad thing is that my Institute has now stopped all delivery of Certs in General Education both face-to-face and online because of increasing funding constraints brought about by the requirements for public vocational education to be competitive with the private sector.

If you have something you would like to present a webinar on please let us know (add a comment to this post, or Tweet us – @JoHart or @philhart). Then join us to facilitate a session about your e-edu passion! If you are not familiar with BlackboardCollaborate we can help you plan how best to do your session so it works for you. Our sessions are small and friendly – the ideal setting for your first webinar.

Our Next Webinar

Our next webinar will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday January 31^st at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday February 1^st at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual BlackboardCollaborate room. This is one of our fortnightly unconference sessions where we invite you to bring along your “hot topics” and “burning issues” for our poll on the topic

Edublogs webinar overview – Birdwatching with biblical binoculars

Posted on February 29, 2012 by johart1

Introduction

In this excellent recorded session we learned about “Birdwatching with biblical binoculars” (@jofrei) – Jo Freitag of the Gifted Resources information service told us the story of her exciting blogging project carried out with a group of Church School attendees during 2011.

The Session

Jo started with some background on how she had come to do the project – using the subscription to EdublogsPro that she won at the Reform Symposium in 2011. She then introduced the blog that she used.

Jo moved on to tell us about the wide range of activities that the group undertook and how the “biblical binoculars were used to find biblical references to birds that illustrated the topic under study. There was some exciting “just-in-time” learning and sharing by members of the group using their mobile phones to find and access references.

The range of tools that Jo used with her group was wide – some of which are shown below.

Many links were shared via whiteboard and text both by Jo and by other participants. Some of them we visited during the session and others were saved for later :). It is very well worth catching the recording for this session both for Jo’s great presentation and for the interactivity and links that she shared.

Conclusion

An exciting sesssion! Jo’s use of such a wide range of tools and activities was awe inspiring and led to a very high degree of engagement from her group. I found this particularly helpful given my own context at the moment of preparing for a project which hopes to better engage my online literacy students through adding media to blogposts and thus generating a simple e-portfolio.

Next Webinar

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

Edublogs webinar overviews – three in one post

Posted on February 9, 2012 by johart1

Why three in one?

Apologies all for very tardy posting! As usual the return to work after our long summer break meant a frenetic few days before returning and subsequently 2 weeks where I have felt more and more overwhelmed by the number of things I need to do.

Introduction to Serendipity – Teachers and blogging

This recorded Serendipity session took a look at teachers and blogging – whether all teachers should be blogging and just what should be made public/included in a professional blog. We had thunderstorms during this session and I missed a bit in the middle (power outage) which took out my desktop and also temporarily my backup laptop internet (wireless modem). Everyone just carried on with the discussion – my idea of a perfect session is when everyone just carries on if the moderator drops out 🙂

The Session

We followed our usual format of putting our topic ideas on the whiteboard and then polling to choose the subject for discussion. The winner was a combined topic around “All teachers should blog” and How much private info/thoughs should we reveal on a professional blog.

We started with a whiteboard although, as is often the case when we are a small group who all have audio, the discussion was quite audio based. Discussion ranged around the pros of blogging for teachers, should it be compulsory as part of professional development and some privacy thoughts.

Conclusion

This session illustrated to me that sometimes you just can’t be sufficiently prepared for contingencies. During the session we had a major thunderstorm and I lost power. I had anticipated the possiblity and was also in the room as a moderator via laptop and wireless modem. However the strike that put the main power off also temporarily knocked out the wireless modem and thus kicked me out of the BbC room. Luckily the participants (all very experienced users) just carried on. In retrospect I probably should have made someone else moderator as well!

Introduction to “Do you Toon?”

The second webinar in this post was an Edublogs Fine Focus – Do you Toon? As always this was recorded. This topic happened because I have cartoons and animations on my mind at the moment. One of the mini-projects that I will be using with students in my National VET E-learning (NVELS) project “E-xtraordinary Learning For A Digital Age” (ELFADA) is for the students to explore some video and cartoon texts and then make their own and embed them in their blogs, so I am exploring the tools available so that I can focus on the easiest to use. It seemed a good opportunity for one of our occasional explore and share sessions.

The Session

When we explore tools in webinars one of the major considerations is how easy it is to learn the tool because we always have in mind the potential for using with students without them needing a long time to acquire the basics. We began with a list of 5 tools (including one iPad app which no-one explored leaving us with four). The first

activity was a look at whether we knew any of the tools. Then we followed a similar pattern to previous tool exploration sessions. Everyone chose a tool to explore from Go! Animate, Make Beliefs Comix, Pixton and Toon Way.

Having decided which tool to explore the group dispersed for ten minutes to explore their chosen tools. Then we reconvened to share ideas on: ease of learning the basics; how engaging to use; possible lessons/contexts; whether we would use with students.

Conclusion

These sessions are always both fun and informative! Exploring something new in a short time frame is always challenging but is authentic in terms of potential use with students. Students need to be able to grasp the basics of a tool quickly because it is a tool and not the primary learning objective of the activity. In my context, with often disengaged and/or not very ICT literate students, I find that tools have to be both quick and easy to learn in order to engage students and enable them to develop their “text” (visual, oral and written) creation skills.

Introduction to Serendipity – Strategies for overwhelmed teachers

Reaching the end of the marathon post with this recorded Serendipity session. This is an issue close to all of us who teach in any context. Teaching itself is demanding enough with the need to meet individual student needs across many levels, learning preferences and personal interests. Add the demands of curriculum and standardised testing or excessive audit requirements, and the increasingly heavy administrative load (this latter often the result of a requirement to justify almost every one of the myriad professional decisions we make each day) and it is unsurprising that the majority of good and conscientious “teachers” feel overwhelmed!

The Session

As always we started with ideas for the discussion topic of the week, and then moved on to vote on these. Perhaps predictably “Strategies for overwhelemed teachers” was the absolute winner. Certainly as one who has just returned to my role as a lecturer in public vocational education at the start of a new academic year in Australia I already feel overwhelmed, and for colleagues in the northern hemisphere that return to teaching after the Christmas holiday in the darkest, coldest time of the year can (as I well remember) be soul destroying in itself.

We decided to take a brief look at what it was that made us feel overwhelmed – inevitably the main culprits are those things we have to do that don’t directly relate to teaching eg admin/paperwork and also the ever moving “goalposts” imposed from outside.

Then we moved on to look at the strategies for dealing with these.

Between us we actually had two whiteboards of ideas – one is shown above. As always the discussion and sharing was not limited to the whiteboard and there were also many textchat and audio contributions to our thoughts making this a session where it is well worth catching the recording. One of the most significant things that several of us took away at the end of the session was the awareness that we all have the same issues wherever we are in the world.

Conclusion

I think this session will resonate with teachers everywhere! I certainly found it helped me with my current sense of being overwhelmed. In common with others I find/have found that my global PLN has been a phenomenal support for me in helping me to survive and manage all those pressures that overwhelm me. Often the the support comes in practical help, advice and suggestions. Sometimes it is just that with a global PLN there is someone I can connect with and chat to via Twitter in that “dark night of the soul” when once again I am up at 3am working because the “overwhelmedness” is preventing me from sleeping!

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session. This will be a fantastic session with Sue Wyatt (@tasteach) who will tell us about (and invite you and your students to take part in) the Global Student Blogging Challenge that she has now been running twice a year for the last few years. Join us on Thursday February 9^th 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 February 10^th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – blogs, wikis, twitter for classrooms

Posted on September 3, 2011 by johart1

Introduction

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

The Session

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session, this week in: “Why? When? How? Social Media With Students” we will take a look at why, how and when we do, or should, use social media with students. Join us on Thursday September 8^th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning September 9^th in Australia – in the usual Elluminate room

Edublogs webinar overview – “ESL with e-stuff”

Posted on August 17, 2011 by johart1

Introduction

For this session we were joined by Jane Curry, who is @parrpakala on Twitter, and a group of her students. Jane and her students talked with us about some of the “e-stuff” they use in their English language learning. The students also told us a little about their backgrounds and former school experiences. Checkout the recording to hear and see this exciting session.

The Session

The session was informal and was very much a conversation with Jane telling us about some of the e-activities her students undertake and then the students joining the conversation and answering some of our questions about their learning.

Jane uses her “Youth Class Blog” as a thread for the activities and Web2.0 tools she uses with her students. Recent activities include a VoiceThread.

Jane also records her students and uploads the videos – fantastic for language learners to see and hear themselves speaking the language. We watched one of these videos where Lan talks about the school she went to as a child.

This session was itself another Web2.0 experience for Jane’s students who overcame their shyness to join in, answer questions and tell us a little about their own thoughts and experiences.

Conclusion

For me this was a really exciting session! I love it when we have students involved in webinars in some way and would be delighted for it to happen more often.

Next Webinar

Our next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday August 18^that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday August 19^th at 7am West Aus, mid morning Eastern States Aus depending on your timezone (check yours here) – in the usual Elluminate room. This is one of our fortnightly unconference sessions where we invite you to bring along your “hot topics” and “burning issues” for our poll on the topic

Edublogs webinar overview – Who’s that on my blog?

Posted on May 8, 2011 by johart1

Introduction

This session happened at rather short notice. Our guest presenter had to pull out at short notice. So as I recently had a spate of spam comments on my blog and had used my visitor tracking to confirm to myself that it was indeed spam – this led me to think about how much we know about visitors to our blogs. I thought this might be a topic of interest to others.

The Session

We were a very small group this week and as usual we recorded the session (please let me know if you access it) for those who were unable to attend. To start with we took a look at whether we all had blogs – we did, and whether we monitored visitors – I was the only one who did so. We touched a little on monitoring comments and conversations in comparison with the automatic monitoring that was the focus of the session.

We talked about the uses of visitor tracking/monitoring. I myself mainly use three different systems allthough I also access the standard statisitics automaticially available on all Edublogs blogs. My three systems give me different levels of information from the broad totals of visitors to the blog broken down by country, down to much more specific when, where from and which post they arrived on as well as whether they arrived as the result of a search & what that search was. I find the last very useful in helping me to confirm if comments are spam. Anyone who arrives on my blog as a result of a search for “leave a reply” is almost certain to be a spammer!

I used AppShare to illustrate how I use these tracking mechanisms on my own blog and how I use them to inform (to some extent) how and when I post. The last part of the session was, as usual, a look at our best “takeways” from the session

Conclusion

This session went very well even though we were so few and the topic was planned at short notice. I certainly find that using the different visitor tracking systems is very helpful for me in lots of different ways & hope that these thoughts are useful for others

Next Webinar

Our next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday May 12^that 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday May 13^th 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 – Blog or wiki? Pros & cons

Posted on February 13, 2011 by johart1

Preface

If you access the link to the recording it would be great if you would just 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 great session with a lot of sharing and plenty of “take aways” and insights into how and why people use blogs and wikis in their teaching. We had a really good blend of audio contributions, text chat and whiteboard interactions with lots of links shared in text and through web tour. We did a session once before (in late 2009) comparing Nings, Blogs and Wikis and I have found the recording link and added it towards the end of the post. So this week you get two recordings for the price of one!

The Session

As usual the session was recorded and we started with a look at what participants would like to gain from the session

and also a look at where everyone was coming from in terms of using blogs or wikis both with their students and for their own use. Interestingly all participants in the room at that point used blogs but not wikis for their own professional development and/or resource sharing with other teachers.

We then moved on to take a look at some of the reasons for choosing either a blog or a wiki and how these characteristics relate to each of the two tools. Next we shared through whiteboard text and some fascinating audio input some of the reasons we use blogs and/or wikis with our students. From my personal perspective it seems that the characteristics are increasingly overlapping with time as the providers of these tools expand the available options for users and also as users become more inventive and knowlegable about them.

Although the session was about blogs and wikis we also took a brief foray into alternatives to these as there are an increasing number of alternative ways of publishing on the Internet for both public and closed group contexts.

We moved on to web tour a few great examples of blogs and wikis used for specific purposes including: information and “how to” sharing blogs; blended reflective life and work blog; professional and personal development blogs; multiple author blog; resource sharing wiki; and collaborative planning wiki. If you checkout the recording the links for these are live on the relevant whiteboard and there are many other shared links in text chat.

Lastly we took a look at what we might do as a result of the session followed by feedback and “take aways”.

Here for anyone who is interested is the recording link for the session comparing Nings Blogs and Wikis that we did back in late 2009 – when Nings were still free!

Conclusion

We had a really good blend of audio contributions, text chat and whiteboard interactions with lots of links shared in text and throughweb tour, so if you missed this session it is well worth catching up through the recording. Also interesting to compare with the older session from 2009.

Next Webinar

Our next session is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday Feb 17^that 23:00 GMT/UTC (6pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday Feb 18^th at 1am CEST, 7am West Aus, 10am NSW, depending on your timezone – 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 Serendipity webinar overview – class blogs

Posted on January 24, 2011 by johart1

Preface

Introduction

This was a timely session, recorded as usual. The choice of topic was class blogs and there are two blogging events relating to this that are either underway or soon to start. The first of these is the Teacher Challenge the current challenge is getting started with blogging – its not too late to join this challenge right now if you want to! The next challenge will be getting students started with blogging in preparation for the Student Blogging Challenge itself.

The Session

We started the session by sharing the links to our own blogs, and talking a little about class blogs. In my opinion (and I think that of many others) no-one gives better or more comprehensive information about blogging with students than Sue Waters of Edublogger fame. So logically as we didn’t have Sue with us the next step was to use Application Share and share some of her fantastic posts on class blogs and student blogging. The posts gave us the answers to many questions on the whys and wherefores of class blogs and students’ own blogs.

Conclusion

A really interesting session where the focus was very much on knowing where to find what we wanted to know rather than anyone knowing a huge amount about the topic.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session. This week in “Graphic Organizers – Stimulating Our Learners’ Minds” Shelly Terrell will give us a heads up on some online graphic organizers and cool websites for collaborative mindmapping. She will also share tips on integrating graphic organizers to stimulate discussion and support discovery learning. Join us on Thursday Jan 27^that 23:00 GMT/UTC (6pm USA EST, Midnight CET) or Friday Jan 28^th at 7am West Aus, 10am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

In the Future

Serendipity webinar overview – Connections made!

Posted on July 11, 2010 by johart1

Introduction

As with a session a few weeks ago I was laid low by a migraine and find myself writing an overview for a session I didn’t attend – as I said at the time recordings are a wonderful thing! My overview is written from listening to the recording but really this is one you need to hear for yourself.

The Session

The two suggested topics of: 21st Century Skills in the elementary classroom; and getting started with blogging in an education context seemed to merge quite easily into one. This was a very relaxed conversation in a small group discussing ideas and where each person is currently with their students. It developed into planning the basis of a future classroom collaboration between participants.

Conclusion

This was a fantastic example of Serendipity in action! A group of people looking for similar outcomes and actually starting to develop their classroom collaboration in the session.

Next Week

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session a “Techie How To” – “Layering with GIMP!” an interactive session in which we invite you to explore using layers with the GIMP. This is for those who want a rather more sophisticated (but still free) image editor than Photofiltre (our topic a couple of weeks ago) .

Join us on Thursday July 15^that 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday July 16^th at 1am CEST,7am West Aus, 9am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room