Tag Archives: unconference

Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – moving towards e-learning delivery

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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 10th 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 11th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

 

 

Edublogs Serendipity webinar overview – Using Elluminate as presenter

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Introduction

This session was exciting! For me it also felt very strange as I had to leave half-way through so Phil (@philhart) was the main facilitator from the start, and I caught up with the second half of the session from the recording which is well worth a watch and listen. The reason for needing to leave early was an interview at work for a advanced standing as a lecturer – what is known in Western Australia as  “Advanced Skills Lecturer”. For those of you who were in the session when I mentioned this – I was successful!

The Session

We had several people who are due to present at “The Reform Symposium (#RSCON3)” who were keen to learn more about using Elluminate from the presenter’s perspective so this was the chosen topic at polling time.

We started with a whiteboard for people to add anything specific they wanted to know about and this informed the entire session. We made everyone moderators so that they could easily access the extra tools they will see as presenters. The session was terrific with masses of interaction, discussion and sharing – truly Serendipitous with everyone sharing their own Elluminate knowledge and with instant learning going on through experimentation. Takeaways were very positive.

TakeawaysResizeIn answer to a couple of the questions raised that were not fully clarified due to lack of time.

1. It is possible to use a YouTube video – there are at least three possible ways: a) WebTour which will just take everyone to the link via their own browser (usually but not always starts immediately); b) do it by putting the link into the multimedia library (in my experience this doesn’t always work); c) put the link on whiteboard or in chat for people to access (it is good practice to make the link available in chat/whiteboard anyway.

2. Using Prezi – not ideal it can be application shared but app share is not generally very good with anything that frequently updates or is “swoopy” and also not good for anyone with a slow connection.

3. Links can be shared on whiteboard or in chat. On the whiteboard you need to use the “A” tool the text edit one is not consistently clickable. Also the link needs to be “on top” ie if you circle it then it won’t be clickable

Conclusion

This was a fantastic session and Phil did a great job especially as he was “thrown in the deep end” with respect to the chosen topic. He is a very experienced and brilliant Elluminate facilitator but a little less familiar with all the tools and capabilities than myself.  If you are about to, or might in the future be presenting/facilitating and Elluminate session then this is definitely one to catch!

Our Next Session

FineFocusSmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session. Again this week (by request) we will be taking a further look at using Elluminate from the presenter’s pont of view in ” Oh and can I also do this virtually?”  Join us on Thursday July 14th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning in Australia – in the usual Elluminate room

Overview Edublogs Serendipity webinar – Technology in Education

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Introduction

For this  recorded Serendipity unconference webinar we had a great selection of topics with the final consensus being a blend three related ones chosen for the discussion. The topics were:

  • Are text books redundant?
  • High tech or low tech?
  • Role of technology in education?

For me and I think perhaps for most of us in the session these three are closely linked so considering them together was an effective strategy.

The Session

We decided to take a blended approach with one whiteboard containing all three titles for ongoing thoughts and ideas rather than try to split them up and keep flipping between whiteboards. There is potential in this kind of discussion for using three boards and enabling “roaming” so that participants can move between whiteboards at will and add their ideas to the relevant board.  However the several new Elluminate participants in the session would perhaps have been somewhat disadvantaged by this.

Whiteboard Resize

While the whiteboard gives a snapshot of the session the recording will give a much more complete and rounded picture of the discussion. There were several participants without microphones so the text chat was very busy, we also had great audio contributions.

Conclusion

A terrific session with lots of interaction and many ideas presented and shared

The session topics and link to the Elluminate/Edublogs Community Partnership Elluminate room can be found here and also usually on the following calendars:

Edublogs Webinars (scroll down for the calendar)

LearnCentral under Events or the Australia Series

The Educator’s PLN

Next Session

FineFocusSmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session. This week in “Face to Facebook” Jane Curry will Elluminate you with ideas on how to use Facebook with ESL youth. There are so many ways of collaborating on FB with a group of students, teachers, volunteers and social workers and other friends. Photography, discussions, posts, chatting, links to wallwisher, youtube, events and that’s not all!! Collaborative teaching and learning, ….we are all learning.

Jane is an ESL teacher at Swinburne TAFE (public vocational education) in Melbourne, Australia & is working with Migrant refugee youth. Jane developed an interest in media and literacy when working in remote bilingual aboriginal schools in the NT in both primary and adult edn. She is now transferring those skills and ideas for teaching and learning in a collaborative way to her youth class using Facebook, Edublogs and online Web2 tools. The Youth Program also have support from  Foundation House and CMY with a focus on employment skills and work experience.

.Join us on Thursday Nov 4st at 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight CET) or Friday Nov 5th at 7am West Aus, 10am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

In the Future

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

Serendipity Webinar Overview – GoogleDocs With Students

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Introduction

As usual our Edublogs Serendipity session was recorded and is a great example of Serendipity in action. As often seems to be the case we had an initial tie for the topic but a second poll resolved this into the topic of “Using Google Docs”. Luckily for us we had Rachael Colley @burntsugar with us. Rachael uses Google Docs all the time with her students and is very knowledgable about them.

The Session

Rachael gave us a brilliant impromptu introduction to some of the features of Google Docs through a unique blend of Application Share on Elluminate and creating a Google document and sharing the link with us for us to “play”with a live document. Catch the recording to see how this worked.

GDocPic

This was very effective for several reasons including:

  • it didn’t matter if people joined the session after Rachael had shared the link or couldn’t access the document themeselves for any reason as they could still see anything typed in by the rest of us
  • it was possible for Rachael to indicate/demonstrate features/tools on the App Share so that we could see where they were and how they worked.

Rachael told us briefly about how she uses GoogleDocs with her students & how she and they experiment together.

Conclusion

In the very short time available Rachael whetted our appetites for more and I hope she will soon be coming along to do a whole Fine Focus session for us on Google Docs. Watch this space!

Next Week

TalkTime smallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session a “Talk Time”  session on “Twitter – rules or ground rules?” There are differing ideas on how Twitter is/should be used, what is “allowed” or “acceptable” or “unacceptable” behaviour. We would love your perspective on this for our discussion this week.

Join us on Thursday Aug 12th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday July 13th at 1am CEST,7am West Aus, 9am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

In the Future

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

Serendipity webinar overview – Are those huge expensive conferences outdated?

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Introduction

This recorded session buzzed from start to finish. We had a very lively group of participants with an initial dead heat for topic with the final choice being to discuss the continuing relevance or otherwise of the very large (often sponsored by businesses but nevertheless very expensive for participants) conferences .

The Session

I feel that the topic was in part inspired by the upcoming Reform Symposium 48 hour onlince conference at the end of this week, and the juxtaposition of this with some of the very large expensive face-to-face conferences that have happened recently. The discussion flowed along using our usual blend of audio, textchat and whiteboard and began with some consideration of what we might consider to be large paid conferences and also some clarification of what we  understood by “unconference”.

ConfInComfortResize

We spent some time considering the pros and cons of the large, sponsored, but often still very costly for participants, conferences. Discussion then moved on to explore why these were so expensive for participants particularly when they are often ponsored by businesses and how they might be made less expensive.

Conclusion

As is usually the case when we have a session the buzzes along with lots of audio input you will get much more from the recording than frem reading this overview.

Next Webinar

ToolsStrategiesSmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session a “Tools and Strategies” “YouTube in the Classroom” when Bill Genereux, associate professor of Digital Media and Computer Technology in the Engineering Technology Department of Kansas State University, joins us .  YouTube is powerful because it is popular, but it is widely prohibited on school networks. Bill will discuss his recent efforts to learn how students and educators are portrayed on the social media video website YouTube using digital ethnographic research methods pioneered by Michael Wesch.

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

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Serendipity Webinar – convert resources for e-learning

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A very lively recorded Serendipity session this week in the Edublogs/Elluminate Community Partnership room. The topic chosen was “helping people to convert materials for e-learning”. As usual in these sessions the discussion was wide ranging not just narrowly focused on the precise wording but including many stories from participants of e-strategies that they use and that provide terrific examples to help those needing to convert materials for e-learning. The microphone, text chat and whiteboard were all humming with activity giving us many ideas to consider.

WordleConvForE

Comments throughout and at the end suggested that much serendipitous learning had indeed occurred this week, and that we had lived up to our name. I think that the sessions always provide learning, food for thought and are engaging but it’s very exciting when we get a “Wow!” session such as this one. In my opinion these happen mostly when the topic chosen is broad, and links very strongly with the passions of participants.

ToolsStrategiesSmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Tools and Strategies” where guest presenter Tomaz Lasic (teacher, coach & mentor) will present “Teaching with Moodle”. Currently at Moodle HQ where he is an interface between educators and Moodle developers. Tomaz has many Moodle stories to tell – today he will give us an overview and then throw the session open to questions (not-tech) about using Moodle “on the ground” Join us on Thursday March 25th at 23:00 GMT (7pm USA EST, Midnight CET) or Friday March 26th at 7am West Aus, 10am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room.

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