Edublogs webinar overviews – two Serendipity and “What isn’t taught in school”

Posted on March 21, 2013 by johart1

Introduction

This overview is for three webinars – two Serendipity sessions and a FineFocus about “what isn’t taught in school”.

Serendipity topic – Instructional design

In this recorded session we talked about instructional design. There has been a recent discussion around instructional design in LinkedIn and it is a topic that arouses strong feelings. It was certainly at the top of my mind for two reasons:

I was about to start a temporary new role working on a project to develop e-learning for a Certificate II (Australian levels) vocational course. This involves being part of a team with specific designated roles eg designer, developer, SME, although mine is a bit “woolly”! A sharp contrast to my usual situation where I am often the sole e-learning designer/developer or the facilitator and main designer/developer for a very small team.
The second reason is my current involvement with others from my network in the development of deMOOC which is highly collaborative and informal without the narrow role designations of a formal team.

The discussion was wide ranging beginning with a look at “What is instructional design?” We also talked about the pros and cons of need for subject expertise in instructional design and other aspects of the process.

“What most schools don’t teach” – a FineFocus session

This was a session where I was unable to be present – I logged in but was unable to stay due to work commitments. So this is one of those recorded sessions where I needed to access the recording to find our what happened! This was a very small group so was more in the way of a two way conversation than usual.

One of the things that most schools don’t teach is coding! Those of you familiar with our webinars will know that my co-facilitator Phil is a programmer as well as a teacher. In this session Phil shared some ideas about the uses of teaching students to code. These are not just their resulting ability to write programs! However

I personally have some reservations about everyone learning to code – analysing systems and developing algorithms is one thing but writing good clean efficient code is very different. I think there are risks involved in that as is currently the case with building websites everyone who has learned by “playing” with the tools thinks they can do this to professional standards. The result with websites is many very poor quality websites built for organisations by amateurs.

Serendipity topic – the loss of GoogleReader

As always in Serendipity we began this recorded session with a whiteboard for topic ideas. The news that Google is to close GoogleReader was at the forefront and was the chosen topic.

This is the second Google product that I use personally where closure has been announced relatively recently, the previous one was iGoogle (due to close in Novemeber). In the light of this our first whiteboard was an opportunity to think about whether we, as individuals, have too many eggs in our Google baskets.

The consensus was that on the whole we probably do tend to use too many tools/apps from the one source. We considered briefly the “why?” and it usually comes down to convenience. You only need one login for your GoogleAccount and also the tools/apps often enable cross linking and cross posting to occur fairly seamlessly.

Links for a number of possible alternatives for GoogleReader were shared and we also added alternatives to some of the other Google tools/apps. Main takeaways from the session were that there are alternatives – we just need to look even though changing is a pain!

Conclusion

Three very interesting sessions with lots to think about. The Serendipity has given rise to the next FineFocus topic which will be an opportunity to share and explore some possible GoogleReader alternatives

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is a FineFocus session. Join us for “Replacing GoogleReader” in which we share and explore some possible replacements for GoogleReader. Join us on Thursday March 21^st 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 March 22^nd in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Edublogs webinar overviews – Serendipity (infographic homework) &FineFocus – “good” presentations

Posted on February 28, 2013 by johart1

Introduction

This post covers two webinars. A Serendipity session in which we shared and discussed our infographic “homework” from the previous session and a FineFocus discussion session about what makes “good” presentations.

Serendipity – infographic tools

This recorded session was a Serendipity (unconference) session with a difference as it continued the theme from the previous session. We shared our “homework” infographics resulting from the previous session and found that most of us experienced a degree of frustration with the infographic tools such that some of us had not used the online tools. @jofrei picked up on a need expressed in the FineFocus session and has created a visual for one of our participants in the USA – Jo has posted about this. In my case I did two infographics one with one of the tools we experimented with and one with Powerpoint!

I put my two infographics on the screen WITHOUT labels for the tools I had used and asked the group for comments/preference. The one made with Powerpoint was preferred. This one was quicker and easier for me to make partly because I am very familiar with Powerpoint. However I did find that consistently selecting and moving shapes in the other application was much more difficult.

The discussion moved on to consider whether the proliferation of tools available for very specific tasks is necessarily a good thing, especially when there are more general tools that can be used very effectively. My personal thoughts on this are that the choice can perhaps be bewildering for those relatively new to e-tools, and can also sometimes produce a tendency to use the tech for techs sake. I feel it is important to remember that the “best” tool for a task is not necessarily the newest and trendiest but the one that suits the user best. I now realise that the reason I had not used infographic generators previously is that I don’t need them as I can create better ones with tools I already use. Of course this may change – we live in an era of rapid change so I could feel quite differently in a year’s time.

“Good” presentations

This recorded session was one that arose from some comments in the Serendipity session above relating to appropriate tools for tasks. On this occasion we had a structured discussion about what makes “good” presentations and whether this varies with the purpose and audience. FineFocus discussions are differentiated from those we have in Serendipity sessions by the fact that they are structured in advance and that we often use pre-prepared stimulus questions and/or resources.

Ideas flew thick and fast on the whiteboards and in text chat and audio.

We took a look at presentations from several perspectives including:

checking out some posts on presentations,
considering audience and purpose
features of presentations as a continuum from boring to interactive
the ‘fine line” of getting it right for audience and purpose

Presentations in one form or another are something that we, as educators, do all the time. Using e-tools and strategies adds a new dimension and perhaps can help us to avoid a “death by ….” with whichever presentation tool we are using. We should always remember it isn’t the fault of the tool if we do a boring presentation!

Conclusion

Two lively sessions! Lots of ideas links and interactivity.

Our Next Webinar

Our next webinar will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday February 28^th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday March 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 overviews – Serendipity (“good” BbC sessions), infographic tools

Posted on February 14, 2013 by johart1

Introduction

This post covers two webinars. A Serendipity session in which the topic was a consideration of the ingredients for “good” BbC sessions and a FineFocus session where we explored some online infographic tools

Serendipity – ingredients of “good” BlackboardCollaborate sessions

This recorded session was a Serendipity (unconference) session. The topic chosen was “What makes a good BlackboardCollaborate session”. A topic about which there was plenty to share!

We extended the topic into a “playtime” towards the end of the session. This involved giving everyone moderator privileges and opportunities to try some moderator tools. As always this was fun, albeit slightly chaotic at times.

Each time we do this I am made aware of the fact that very few webinars of the many available across the globe provide much in the way of opportunities for participants to interact and perhaps more significantly the opportunity to try out moderator tools and practice developing interactive segments. This has given me food for thought and an idea for semi-regular sessions/workshops focussing on particular tools/interaction types where participants will have the opportunity to develop an interactive segment during the webinar and then share with everyone.

Online Infographic making tools

This recorded session was one on “Exploring online tools”. On this occasion we took a look at some online infographic creators.

As is usual with these sessions we started off with some of our individual thoughts on the meaning of the term “infographic”. This was followed by a look at how many of us used infographics. This revealed that as a group our usage was low with no-one using them more than rarely.

When we explore tools we have only a limited time within the webinar so it provides a good test for usefulness in a teaching situation. Anything that takes a long time to join and/or to pick up the basic use is not really practical for use with students. This is because if it takes too long for students to learn then learning the tech can become more significant in the “lesson” than the learning objectives.

We had four tools to explore – everyone chose a tool and went away to spend 10 minutes exploring. We then shared our opinions and ideas. This was a particularly interesting session because infographic makers were relatively new to all of us. Because we generally felt we needed a bit more time this week we also gave ourselves some homework – to make an infographic to share at the start of the upcoming Serendipity session. I have made mine and look forward to sharing it in the session!

Conclusion

Two fun sessions! Sharing virtual classroom tools is something I love to do so the Serendipity session was particularly enjoyable for me. Exploring tools because it involves high degree of participant activity is also something that I get a lot of satisfaction from.

Our Next Webinar

Our next webinar will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday February 14^th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday February 15^th 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 Serendipity webinar overview – moving towards e-learning delivery

Posted on January 10, 2013 by johart1

Introduction

Our first webinar for 2013 was a Serendipity unconference session – recorded here. The topic chosen by poll from ideas posted on the whiteboard was that of:

moving an organisation towards e-learning delivery of courses: organisational change strategies.

This is a topic that recurs periodically – and each time we talk about it there are different ideas and insights shared helping us all to consider what we might do to move our own organisations in the direction of e-learning whether this is part of our formal role or because it is our passion.

The Session

We started with a blank whiteboard headed with the topic title for ideas about strategies. This wasn’t blank for long as we all had many ideas about encouraging change.

The whiteboard remained central to the session with ideas added throughout the session.

The whiteboard gives only a flavour of the ideas and discussion. These were expanded upon in both text chat and audio and included:

more depth on some of the strategies and how they have worked in practice for participants
a brief mention of models for change and technology acceptance.

To get the full picture check out the recording, then add your own ideas and suggestions as comments on this post.

Conclusion

This was a terrific session! The time flew by, and as always when we discuss organisational change there were many ideas flowing. This was a session that could probably have gone on much longer with more in depth exploration of strategies and their practical implementation and also closer look at the models for change and technology acceptance.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is a FineFocus session. Join Phil Hart (@philhart) for “E-portfolios – a personal journey” in which Phil will share his experience of developing e-portfolios to provide complete evidence for Recognition of Prior Learning in higher level vocational qualifications. Join us on Thursday Jan 10^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 Jan 11^th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Edublogs webinar overview – Characteristics of 2E students – Part 1

Posted on November 28, 2012 by johart1

Introduction

This recent recorded session was Part 1 of another of Jo Freitag’s (@jofrei) excellent sessions about aspects of working with 2E learners. For those of you as bemused by the term as I was when I first encountered it, this is “shorthand” for “Twice Exceptional” and refers to learners who have a disability/disorder and are also identified as gifted in one or more areas.

The session

Jo started with started with look at where we were coming from on 2E students and a recap on the meaning of the term. She then moved on to start describing contrasting (perceived positive and negative) characteristics of 2E students that can pose challenges to teachers.

Jo left lots of inviting white space around her images for us to add our ideas on strategies to overcome the weaknesses either by capitalising on the strengths or in other ways. The discussion on the whiteboard, in text chat and through audio was totally engaging! We “visited” around half of the characteristics leaving the remainder for the next session.

Conclusion

A fantastic session! Time flew by and we finished with appetites well whetted for the second part next week. If you missed the first session then catch up with the recording and join us for the second exciting episode (see below for time/date).

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 Session

Our next FineFocus webinar is the Second Part of this session on the Characteristics of 2E students where @jofrei will continue to keep us busy considering how we can best meet some of the needs arising from the distinguishing characteristics of 2E students. Join us on Thursday November 29^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 November 30^th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Edublogs webinar overviews – Pt 2 De Bono action shoes for 2E students, a Serendipity & shared tools

Posted on November 15, 2012 by johart1

Introduction

Apologies once again for the delay in posting and the need to do a three in one post. Too many things happening in life and work at the moment and I can’t keep up! The first of the two sessions in this post ws the second half of a FineFocus session on De Bono’s action shoes and 2E students by @jofrei. The second was a Serendipity session – I am particularly grateful that this was recorded as I was unable to attend so the overview is based on the recording. The third session was an “off-the-cuff” session where several of us shared a tool/application we have used with students – Voicethread (@poulingail), GIMP (@philhart), Linoit (@JoHart) and Voki (@jofrei).

De Bono action shoes for a 2E student on Gagne’s DMGT road – Part 2

This recorded session was the second part of the double FineFocus session presented by @jofrei – Jo Freitag, creator of Sprite’s Site and co-ordinator of the Gifted Resources website

Jo began with a brief recap of the first session:

Edward de Bono’s Six Action Shoes which are the follow up to the Six Thinking Hats;
Gagne’s Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent;
the Six Action Shoes in the context of the Feetspeak Quest Map;
a reminder of the six shoes and their relationship to the Gagne DMGT model.

The main focus of this session was a consideration of combinations and variations in the shoes. We had a great time exploring the possible combinations of two shoe types to produce modified action plans. Jo also shared some extra shoe types of her own that broaden the program possibilities including Sprite’s plaster cast that symbolises the support that may be available through eligibility for funding!

A great session from Jo as always!

Serendipity

A lively recorded session that I was sorry to miss! I am writing the overview from the recording and although I am delighted to be able to catch the recording and to do this, I feel that the overview lacks the depth that comes from being there. This Serendipity ranged across several topics – Contacts for ESL; Which is better f-2-f or online; and why are outdated skills still being taught. An eclectic blend of topics which seemed to work very well! The conversation jumped around between topics often linking them together through context for example using online for ESL. The only way to do this session justice is to catch the recording!

Show and Tell about tools used with students

The third recorded session in this overview was a FineFocus in which several of us present gave a short “Show and Tell” about a particular tool that we use with students. This session was inspired by Gail (@poulingail) who had (the previous week) volunteered to tell us about her use of Voicethread.

Gail showed us the Voicethread site giving us the link for signing up. She also shared her own page and in particular a thread from her Kindy students about a visit to a nearby vernal pool, fantastic to hear such young students articulating their ideas about the pool. Gail continued – telling us about how she is using Voicethread to collaborate with other classes. One point she made of which I was only vaguely aware before is that you can give your feedback using other media than just plain recording on the site. This may encourage me to try again! A great “share” by Gail – I certainly learned a huge amount!

Next up was Phil (@philhart) who told us about the GIMP – his favourite image editor. Free and with similar features to those of Photoshop. This is the one that Phil always recommends to students who want something a bit more sophisticated than Photofiltre. Phil takes panoramic images – many images that are then “stitched” together. These inevitably need a degree of editing and to illustrate the advantages of GIMP Phil showed us how he can quickly and easily remove image flaws. Again a fascinating share!

Then it was my turn! My chosen tool was Linoit which is similar to Wallwisher. I have used this intermittently with students since myslf contributing to a fabulous global one instigated by Michael Graffin (@mgraffin) for World Water Day in 2011. I have used Linoit for students to give feedback on classess and also for short pieces of writing – often using an image as stimulus. Next year I will be asking students to write Haiku in response to an image stimulus. I enjoyed sharing Linit.

To finish off Jo Freitag (@jofrei) related her experiences with Voki (a talking avatar) and teenage boys in her blogging project completed last year. She emphasised how much the students enjoyed making Vokis and slso made the point that they didn’t, as could easily be the case with this age group feel that making Vokis was “babyish”. A terrific “word picture” from Jo to end the session.

This session was fun – it is always so interesting when different people share tools as we all gain so many insights from one another.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session where we invite you to suggest your “hot” topics for discussion – we then select the topic by poll. Join us on Thursday November 15^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 November 16^th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Webinar overviews – Edublogs Serendipity & De Bono action shoes for 2E students

Posted on October 23, 2012 by johart1

REMINDER

It’s that time of year again! Over the next few weeks timezone chaos will reign. Half the world goes onto daylight saving and half comes off daylight saving. Except for a few regions such as here in Western Australia where we don’t have daylight saving. Just to make it even more complicated different places change on different dates. This is one of the main reasons we use GMT/UTC for our webinar times – because (like our West Australian time, but with much more “credibility”) it stays the same all year round.

If you have just lost or gained an hour then double check the times for anything trans-global in which you are involved. In the Northern Hemisphere you are heading back into winter so will “lose” an hour when your clocks are set back, thus our webinars will be an hour earlier “your time”. In the Southern Hemisphere you are going forward into summer so you “gain” an hour resulting in webinars an hour later “your time”

(For the link for live webinars and info about the times and topics scroll to the bottom of this post)

Serendipity

Recorded as always, this session took a look at two topics: alternative assessment ideas and email newsletters.

Alternative assessment ideas rapidly gave rise to a whiteboard full of strategies! We were a very mixed group ranging from teachers of Kindy to Adult and Vocational education and having teaching, training or both qualifications. This made for some great discussion and it was interesting that similar approaches seem relevant whatever the age or education sector.

Email newsletters were discussed from the perspective of how best to create them (ie the medium: embedded html, pdf, simple word processed doc) and also the pros and cons in comparison with other ways of distribution such s using a blog or similar website.

De Bono action shoes for a 2E student on Gagne’s DMGT road – Part 1

This recorded session was the first part of a double FineFocus session (next part coming up on Thursday/Friday depending on where in the world you are) presented by @jofrei – Jo Freitag, creator of Sprite’s Site and co-ordinator of the Gifted Resources website

Jo began by checking out our understanding of:

2E students;
Edward de Bono’s Six Action Shoes which are the follow up to the Six Thinking Hats
and Gagne’s Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent.

We then heard about the Six Action Shoes in the context of the Feetspeak Quest Map, moving on to look at each of the six shoes in more detail and to consider their relationship to the Gagne DMGT model. As always Jo kept us thinking by seeking our input on the “positivenesses”, “negativenesses” and “interestingnesses of each of the shoes.

We overran slightly to bring this part of the session to a neat conclusion with the last pair of shoes! In the next session Jo will extend our activities into a consideration of combinations and variations in the shoes.

This was a fantastic session – Jo always increases our knowledge, expands our horizons and makes us think through inviting whiteboard input! If you plan to join this week’s session try and catch last weeks recording beforehand but if you don’t have time for that join us anyway as Jo will recap the previous session at the start.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is the second part of of @jofrei (Jo Freitag’s) double FineFocus session (next part this week). Join us on Thursday October 25^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 October 26^th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – CC images “storing” for future use

Posted on October 2, 2012 by johart1

REMINDER

(For the link for live webinars and info about the times and topics scroll to the bottom of this post)

Introduction

The topic this week for our recorded Serendipity webinar was about how best to “keep” (appropriately Creative Commons licensed) images that we had found for use in presentations or other resources. The purpose being to be able to easily and quickly add them to future presentations. We also spent a little time at the end of the session discussing and looking at managing student Edublogs accounts.

The session

Before starting the discussion we asked the proposer of the topic to give the context behind the question. This was mostly an issue of time both to re-find/re-access a remembered image and to carry out any rezising and cropping activities necessary.

The great challenge of this topic is not in keeping or classifying the images but in finding a way to easily store/access them with the attribution and a live link to the original source integrated.

We began with a whiteboard brainstorm although most of the discussion was via audio and text chat. A number of ideas were shared and the pros and cons discussed. These related to platforms (eg DropBox, EverNote, Powerpoint). However there were fewer suggestions for ensuring that all the attribution information and a live link were retained.

Some thoughts on a strategy for the above

This has been on my mind since the session because of the difficulty I have myself in ensuring that students attribute and link when using CC licensed images. If I could find a strategy they could use that would tie the attribution and the link to the image for future use I would be very happy! My current thoughts on the issue would be the following:

Use Powerpoint as the platform/medium
Find and download an appropriate CC licensed image (from Flickr CC search is good and easy)
Check the license conditions, copy the attribution and the link to the image within the owner’s photostream & paste these to the Powerpoint slide
Edit the image as required (if permitted under the terms of the license) for me this is usually limited to resizing and occasionally cropping. I use PhotoFiltre because of its simplicity. See this previous webinar overview for more on PhotoFiltre and this post from the 2011 Edublogs Teacher Challenge on Free tools for more about PhotoFiltre and the importance of image size.
Save the resized image and then load into Powerpoint – alternatively you can frame as much as you want of the image and just copy/paste onto the Powerpoint slide.
Position the attribution and the link either just within the image boundary or below the image. Adjust the sizes of text boxes and font so that they are not significantly wider than the image.
Group the image and the text boxes together.
If you need to tag in some way then add a list of keywords to the slide – you should then be able to use the “Find” option in editing to take you to suitable topics.
Save the Powerpoint! You can then store it anywhere that suits you – including in the cloud.
To re-use, select the grouped objects (image, attribution and link), copy and paste into your new presentation. NB if you are uploading to a blogpost you will need to save the grouped image as an image file (jpg or png are good). Then upload as usual. To make a live link you will need to insert an additional link to the photostream see below.

Link to johartoz’s photostream

I would love to hear from anyone else with ideas on how to do this better and/or from anyone who has tried/is trying something similar. This post has turned into rather more than the usual simple overview & recording link.

Our short look at managing student Edublogs blogs was around the different ways that blogs might be set up for students and how the teacher might be able to access the blog with some admin control/rights if the blog was set up independently by the student rather than by the teacher using the class set up process.

Conclusion

This ws a great session with many ideas shared. Storing CC images for easy re-use was not a topic I had ever really considered myself so I found it particularly interesting. Mostly I use my own images – either photographs or screenshots, although I do occasionally source an image through Creative Commons search on Flickr. If I need to re-use one of these I just go back to wherever I previously used it (usually Powerpoint) and copy/paste the image with associated attribution and link.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session. It’s a long time since we talked Twitter” and there seems to have been a recent spate of h*ck/ph*sh/sp*m attacks so this week in “A cuckoo free Twitter nest!” we will take a look at some strategies that might help you evade these. Join us on Thursday October 4^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 October 5^th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Two Edublogs webinars – Serendipity and Prezi

Posted on September 25, 2012 by johart1

Introduction

Two overviews in one this week – a slight improvement on last time. (For the link for live webinars and info about the times and topics scroll to the bottom of this post).

Serendipity

In this recorded Serendipity the topic chosen was “How to ratchet up the rigor w/o killing the class”.

The topic was inspired by the continuing concerns over enforced curriculum and the heavy focus on standardised testing even for Kindy age groups.

The discussion was wide ranging and, probably because we had adult educators as well as Kindy teachers, there were parallels drawn between:

the “teaching to the test” scenario raising its head in Kindy as well as throughout the rest of the the school system and;
the similar need in adult education situations for learners to be following a designated curriculum leading to some sort of certification in order for courses to attract funding and be viable.

Also raised were issues around the high profile of educational publishers in testing and in teacher training as well as in resource provision. This giving rise to concerns about being “locked” in to publishers who might eventually dictate the entire who, what and when of teaching in some areas.

A very lively session with much discussion and sharing in text and by audio. I think we were all left with much food for thought!

Give yourself a Prezi

This recorded and very interactive session was an exploration of Prezi – the zooming presentation tool. We all learned much about Prezi as a result of the session!

I followed my usual practice of trying to get some idea of everyone’s current knowledge of the tool – we had all seen or tried it out.

In my experience peoople either seem to love Prezi or dislike it strongly and often reasons for dislike seem to centre around the zooming issue which can make people feel queasy. Certainly that was my first reaction to Prezi, and although I played with it a little a few years ago I have avoided it until very recently. The reason for trying again was to give students an engaging alternative to Powerpoint/Slideshare that they could also embed in their blogs.

We took a look at a simple Prezi I had made for students using App Share to share this. Then we looked at a slightly longer one using Prezi’s option to present by sharing a link so that everyone else was able to see as I moved through the presentation. In retrospect I should have kept the App Share open at the same time because if you watch the recording you will hear and read in text what is going on but be unable to watch. However the top link on the page should take you to the Prezi.

Then we moved on to had some discussion/comments about what might be unlikeable or likeable about Prezi, and why you might use it even if you don’t like it yourself. I also shared the links to a couple of Prezis made by two of my students.

We then collaborated on a Prezi. This was fun, exciting and chaotic! We started in App Share and then I shared the edit link.

Once we got started I closed the App Share, however about halfway through I realised how unhelpful this would be to those watching the recording so I re-started it. For me this sort of experience is one of the best ways to explore the strengths and weaknesses of a tool and learn about it.

This was a great session for me because I learnt lots more about Prezi as well as getting my head round the need to keep the App Share open for the benefit of people watching the recording. I have always remembered in the past with Elluminate (a very memorable one for me being playing with G+ hangout in its early days) but for some reason I find it more difficult to remember in BbC.

Conclusion

Two excellent sessions! I enjoyed them very much. The Serendipity was a subject very close to my heart that I am always happy to discuss. As for the second – as most of you probably know I love playing with tools online and collaboratively so I found this great fun, and learned so much from the mistakes I made as we went through! I do hope that I didn’t bore everyone else by being slow and getting things wrong.

I really enjoy sessions where someone else is the main facilitator. If you have something to share please let us know (add a comment to this post, or Tweet us – @JoHart or @philhart) and 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 Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session where we invite you to suggest your “hot” topics for discussion – we then select the topic by poll. Join us on Thursday September 27^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 28^th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Three Edublogs webinar overviews – e-publish, Serendipity, don’t lose data!

Posted on September 13, 2012 by johart1

Introduction

Three overviews in one this week. At the moment I seem to have no time for anything and so once again the previous two week’s webinar overviews were postponed.

(For the link for live webinars and info about the times and topics scroll to the bottom of this post).

E-publish or be e-damned!

In this recorded session Phil led us through some of the tangled web of e-books, beginning with some discussion on what they are.

From the plethora of formats (file types) and different publisher standards that Phil told us about, it seems that the world of e-books/e-publishing is at that stage in development where the publishers are attempting to “lock in” both writers and readers to their particular format. They are fighting to corner the market so that eventually almost everyone will be working with one format – that of the “winning” publisher who will “own” that format!

Phil moved the discussion on to consideration of e-books/e-publishing from the perspective of the author looking at factors around: saleability, preparation format – prepare in a common format and convert or author directly in the format for publishing. We also took a look at deciding on a publisher/format.

Producing a great (and successful) e-book is not just about having great ideas and content. Understanding the medium, having some knowledge of mark-up languages, presentation and marketing are all important and the whole process can be hard work!

A great session which certainly made me much more aware of the ramifications of e-publishing and also very conscious that many e-books are not presented or sometimes even written particularly well. Perhaps e-books are currently in a similar stage of development to that of Science Fiction as a genre in the era of the “pulp” SF magazines last century!

Serendipity – what are, and how we use, wikis

This was a very lively recorded session with lots of audio and text chat interaction and not much on the whiteboard, though we did share some wikis and blogs through AppShare.

Initially we tried to get some clarity on wikis. I remember my own early confusion with wiki and Wikipedia when I first came across wikis and this is potentially even worse now with a multitude of online projects prefixed by the work “wiki” giving a variety of different impressions of what wikis are about.

Discussion then moved on to uses of wikis in a teaching contexts with some sharing of wikis and later blogs by participants to show how they are being used. There was a lot of side discussion ranging across many related topics particularly with reference to blogs. I think that the functional crossovers between wikis and blogs make it almost inevitable that if you discuss one you will also include the other.

A true Serendipity session with lots of serendipitous discovery as well as the chosen topic exploration.

Don’t lose your data!

As always we recorded this session and my personal opinion is that this is a “must” for anyone who has ever lost any data – and that means all of us! Again this session was led by @philhart who gave us fantastic insights into risks to our data and some of the ways to combat these. When Phil is not involved in edu activities he is a computer consultant who works with a variety of personal and business clients often advising on data preservation strategies as well as developing software.

Phil kept us busy throughout the session starting with a few questions to get us thinking about what we understand by the terms “data”, “risk” and “consequence”. We then moved on to consider the possible impacts on ourselves of losing data with consideration of where we keep our data and what risks we ourselves see.

Then Phil moved on to discuss some of the detail of what he sees as the three primary risks to our data: theft, loss and corruption. The risks can’t be eliminated entirely but we can control them to some extent. We need to do what is effectively a cost/benefit analysis where we balance the likely “cost”, not necessarily in material terms, of data loss against the “cost” of backing up.

Phil asked us what we do for our own data security – for most of us the focus was on some degree of backing up to reduce the “loss” element of the risk without much upfront consideration of the other . However it was interesting that when Phil shared his own strategy this was a blend which addressed all three areas of risk much more broadly!

To finish Phil asked us what we might do differently in the light of this session – for most of us this seemed to be a variation on the theme of find out more about what we already have and do more backups!

I found this session incredibly useful – despite living with “a backup obsessive” ie Phil it still opened my eyes to more risks that I need to consider!

Conclusion

Three fantastic sessions! I enjoyed all of these as always. I particularly enjoy sessions where someone else is the main facilitator. If you have something to share please let us know (add a comment to this post, or Tweet us – @JoHart or @philhart) and 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 Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Serendipity” session where we invite you to suggest your “hot” topics for discussion – we then select the topic by poll. Join us on Thursday September 13^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 14^th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.