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Edublogs webinar overview – the Global Classroom project

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Introduction

In this session, recorded as always, we heard from Michael Graffin about the variety of projects that have formed part of the “Global Classroom Project” (#GlobalClassroom) this year.

The Session

Michael took us on an incredible journey. He started with some background, firstly explaining how the Global Classroom came about and its reach both geographically and in numbers. Then moving on to the aims and ethos of the community.

For me the most exciting part was the project stories – Michael shared the project stories and some of the highlights of the year. We were lucky in that Lin-Lin Tan from Taiwan, one of the teachers involved in several projects was able to join the session. She told us a little about how the Global Classroom projects have affected her and her students.

Michael moved on to consider some of the impacts of Global Classroom on teachers and some lessons learnt. Finally he turned to the future with thoughts for next year’s #GlobalClassroom.

Conclusion

This was a fantastic session! Michael gave us a brilliant overview of Global Classroom and the projects. Chat was very lively throughout with many ideas shared and also links to many of the projects (thanks to Anne Mirtschin for her help in dropping links into chat). If you are looking to be both inspired and awe inspired then this is a MUST catch recording!

Next Webinar

Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday July 19th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday July 21st 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 – miscellany

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Introduction

This was a Serendipity session where we didn’t vote on a topic! As has been the case often recently we were a very small group. The session was recorded and discussion centred around three areas:

  • How can we encourage more people to attend/should we continue the webinars at all?
  • Possible topics and speakers for future webinars
  • Help/ideas for getting the balance of words and slides right in Pecha Kucha

The webinars

Our attendance has always been very variable, but from late 2008 when the webinars began until mid 2011 attendance was almost always well into double figures. However during the last year this has reduced. I think this may be due to a number of factors:

  • There are now so many free webinars each week that people cannot attend all they would like to.
  • A tendency for people to “catch the recording” instead of joining in. The highly interactive nature of our webinars means that fewer participants leads to a reduced range of ideas and opinions. Also if no-one joins then eventually there will be no webinar to record!
  • The many other e-PD opportunities such as #tag chats on Twitter of which there are now hundreds.
  • Not enough publicity, forward planning of FineFocus sessions, variety of topics and variety of presenters. My fault! Work pressure has been intense for the last year. I am hopeless at asking people to present for us – I just feel totally that I am imposing on them and also worry that attendance will be low and they will feel it isn’t worth doing.
  • Timing of webinars – our early participants were mainly from the USA/Canada where it is afternoon/evening and this is often a good time for people to join. However with the huge increase in available e-PD including webinars that originate in the USA our overseas participation has reduced. We now have more Australians attending, however the early/mid-morning time is not good for many.

We discussed the above issues and also @jofrei shared her blogpost on promoting the webinars with a great mindmap of ideas. This was an outcome from a previous similar discussion last year.

We also talked a little about possible topics and presenters. Topics are usually relatively easy as it is always possible to have a discussion session about a currently “hot” e-topic or to mutually explore tools for a specific purpose. However for me finding possible presenters is a real issue. As I said earlier I am just no good at asking people – I always feel so much that I am imposing on them. Also I lack the time to find and ask possible presenters – not helped by the fact that because of work pressures I have been less active in my PLN over the past year and so I have a lower profile than previously.

If you have thoughts or ideas about:

  • whether we continue the webinars
  • how to publicise better
  • topic suggestions
  • presenter suggestions (yourself or someone you know)
  • whether we change the format (from the alternate Serendipty/FineFocus) to something else
  • whether we reduce the frequency to one per fortnight or one per month

Please comment on this post or tweet me (@JoHart)

Pecha Kucha – getting the timing right!

In this part of the session we took a look at the Pecha Kucha that @jofrei is developing about “The Tweet Family” her story of the gifted Tweetlets.

One of the main challenges is being that of timing. and so we discussed the issue of timing. For me the rigidity of the 20 seconds per slide is also likely to be my main problem with developing a Pecha Kucha. We talked about some possible strategies to overcome the difficulty of some slides needing only a few seconds of talk and others needing much more than 20 seconds.

There will be more on Pecha Kucha in our next session – “Sharing Pecha Kucha” as we will share our attempts at Pecha Kucha and discuss the challenges we found as well as the content of our presentations.

Conclusion

An interesting session! The issue of continuing the webinars or not has been on my mind for a while. Also the related concerns about the need to find topics and presenters and publicise them better. So it was good to discuss this with others. Since Pecha Kucha came up as a topic in a recent Serendipity it has interested and intrigued me and others. I am unsure that it will ever be my strategy of choice but feel it is good to try it out and our next session gives us that opportunity to “play”

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session where we will be “Sharing Pecha Kucha”. In this session some of us who took part in a Serendipity where Pecha Kucha was a topic will share our “homework” and talk about the challenges. If you have a Pecha Kucha you would like to share let me know – a comment on this post or Twitter: @JoHart and bring it along.  Join us on Thursday June 28th 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 June 29th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Edublogs webinar overviews – catching up on three!

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Introduction

Once again I must apologise for my slowness in posting webinar overviews. I hope that from now on I will be back to posting after each session. The project that has taken almost all my time and energy for the last few months is complete! So I hope I will now have a little time for my PLN.

These three sessions were:

  • a Fine Focus – about using Symbaloo pages to help students keep on track in our online adult literacy course
  • a Serendipity in which we talked about and explored Pecha Kucha about which we knew very little at the start and much more by the end of the session
  • another FineFocus session – this one was delving a little deeper into some of the storymakers we tried out a few weeks ago through sharing stories and how we made them

 Online students staying on track

This session, recorded as always, was a look at one aspect of my now completed project where we have been trialling a new delivery strategy  for our online adult literacy students while also working to improve digital literacy and online study skills..

Issues that often arise with all students when using the Internet are those of: getting “off track” and becoming “lost in the surf”. These issues are a particular problem with online students as the teacher/lecturer is not “surfing” the physical room and so is unable to see when this might be happening and offer guidance.

The use of a project based approach with online students also has implications for teacher/lecturer time as students researching completely independently may all choose different websites of varying quality or even ones tht are not relevant to the task so the teacher/lecturer has to evaluate many sites.

This session looked at the combined strategies of “chunking” activities into “daily tasks” to help maintain focus, and then managing the links that students used by using topic based Symbaloo pages and colour coding the tiles for the different student levels and activites. Ownership was also provided through individual student choice of tiles for some activites.

I enjoyed this session – inevitably I think – because it gave me a chance to talk about the project that has been such a great success for the students and that I have enjoyed facilitating so much. Once my “mental dust settles” I intend to post more about the whole experience.

 Serendipity – What is Pecha Kucha?

This was a Serendipity (recording here) that “just happened” there was no vote on the topic which arose out of the chat before the formal start of the session.

The topic arose because one of our participants was considering submitting to present at a conference and the required form was Pecha Kucha. None of us knew very much about this as a presentation format (including the person considering using it). We were all interested to learn more!

This session was mainly audio and some textchat, with the whiteboard being used for occasional ideas and for some links about Pecha Kucha. We shared our preconceptions and then did some exploring individually to find out a little more about the method to enable us to discuss it more effectively.

Our discussion was wide ranging as we considered whether we might choose to use this ourselves and if so in what sort of context. There was some agreement that there were advantages for  some presentation where it could provide opportunities to “taste” several topics and then spend more time is Q&A with the presenter of the preferred topic. However this could be very frustrating if an attendee hd strong interest in more than one – or from the presenter perspective if all attendees focussed on one topic.

There was also some discussion about the merit of Pecha Kucha more as an art form than as a presentation strategy – an intriguing and appealing thought with which to end this great discussion!

Story Sharing

This recorded FineFocus session was a “spin off” from one a few weeks ago in which we took a look at some online story making tools in one of our “quick and easy tools” explorations.

In this session we shared stories we had made. The star of our show was @jofrei who is a great storyteller! See her stories about Sprite et al  She hadfantastic examples from Storybird, Storyjumper and LittleBirdTales for us. Phil and Sandra also shared stories. Sharing the stories provided opportunities to talk in more depth about the pros and cons of each tool and also to share experiences in storymaking generally. I was guilty of not doing my homework but shared a great story created by one of my students.

Next Webinar

Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday June 21st at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday June 22nd 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 – a lucky dip!

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Introduction

This was one of those sessions where we talked about several topics. As always the session was recorded and makes interesting listening. The consesus was to spend some time on each of several topics, these being: the vocational education system; online maths programs & making maths easy; and a quick chat about some iPad apps.

The Session

We used a whiteboard for each topic for a heading to help us maintain topic focus, but also to be available for ideas and sharing as needed. It was interesting that each of the topics was addressed differently in terms of the way we used BbC. This demonstrates well the capability of the platform as a learning space. The first topic (TAFE) was almost entirely discussed via audio and text chat. The second (online maths & making maths easy) made heavy use of the whiteboard for ideas and link sharing. Our third topic of iPad apps also used the whiteboard but to a much lesser extent mainly for sharing app names.

We were a small group – all Australian which  gave rise to one of the topics. Our public Vocational Education and Training system is currently the centre of much debate regarding funding. It is under pressure to compete for students with private trainers who do not have the same government imposed constraints – hence the heading of TAFE (Training and Further Education). I know I had far too much to say about this because it is my own sector and I care about it intensely! There were many comparisons to be drawn with other sectors and globally.

The maths topic – as is always the case with maths generated much activity. We had a whiteboard in two columns – for sharing links and ideas for making maths interesting. However so many links were shared that the second column was largely taken over by the first! If you access the recording and use the bottom scroll bar in it to scroll to about 3/4 of the way through you can access most of those links live from the whiteboard. These lead to a positive “treasure chest” of online maths!

Our final topic was a quick look, with short descriptions, at some of the apps that those of us with iPads have and find useful.

Conclusion

This was fun! As always (for me anyway) the great thing about our Serendipity sessions is that we never know where they will lead. Sessions where we range accross several topics are particularly interesting because of the diversity of information shared and views expressed.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session.   Join us on Thursday May 31st 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 June 1st in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Edublogs webinar overview – Exploring story makers

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Introduction

This session, recorded as always was one in which we took a look at some online story making tools in one of our “quick and easy tools” explorations. These are occasional sessions where I put up a list of a few tools and each participant chooses one (preferably one unknown to them) to explore for ten minutes and then give feedback to the rest of us. The first time I did this the tools were a mixture of different functions however more recently I have chosen ones with similar purposes.

My personal rationale for “ten minutes to explore” is that if it takes too long to “pick up” the basics of using any tool then the focus of the “lesson” in which it is being used may change from the educational purpose to the tech being used. In other words we risk using “tech for tech’s sake” rather than as a tool to achieve the educational purpose.

The Session

The decision to explore story makers for exploration comes from the fact that I have been investigating story makers for use with my own students.  When looking for possible tools to explore I was surprised at how few there were that did not have a very heavy focus on using audio. I specifically wanted text and images both: to meet the needs of my adult literacy curriculum; and to keep the process simple. I find that  digital story making applications with audio can be time consuming for students to learn if they want (as they invariably do) both voice and music in the audio. So this session only looked at four tools – these were:

We started with a have you used it and to what degree on the four tools to be explored. This revealed that most of us had some awareness of, or familiarity with at least one or two of them and one participant was very familiar with two of the four.

The next step was for everyone to choose one of the story makers to explore and then investigate it for ten minutes with the following considerations in mind:

  • how easy to learn the basics
  • how engaging to use
  • a lesson/context in which to use it
  • whether they personally would use it with students

After the ten minutes everyone came back and took turns in talking about the ease of use and other features of the tool they had explored. There were also some great ideas for use in class.

We finished with some feedback and a look at our best takeaways from the session.

Conclusion

This was great session! These are always great fun and much enjoyed by all. I have recently shown Storybird to my own students who are taking part in the ELFADA project. One of their projects is an online story that they will embed in their blogs and they have been exploring some different types of stories made with applications they are already familiar with (PowerPoint/Slideshare and Toondoo) as well as Storybird which is new to them.

Next Webinar

Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday May 24th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday May 25th 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 – in the “Moderator Sandpit”

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Introduction

This session, recorded as always was an opportunity to find out more about using BlackboardCollaborate from the moderator perspective including both features and strategies . As with the precursor Elluminate there are many tools and features available to the moderator that are not visible to participants. Although in my personal opinion there are a number of ways in which BbC is less “user friendly” and less conducive to smooth session flow than its predecessor. This is still my opinion after regularly using BbC as a moderator since its inception almost a year ago. In my work context I still use Elluminate – as this is easier for my students (adult literacy/numeracy).

The Session

This session was a “walk through” and “play with” some of the features available to moderators that are not available to participants. We were a very small group which provided opportunities for discussion and dialogue about the various features and their use. I started as I often do with a poll on where people were coming from on BbC and a “what would you like to takeway”.

In these sessions I always give everyone moderator privileges, this usually leads to interesting effects as people are unable to resist just “playing”. However with the small number of us this did not arise. Throughout the session we discussed some of the positive and negative aspects of particular tools/features.

During the session we discussed and played with:

  • whiteboard tools
  • whiteboard object menu allowing monitoring of “who did what”on the whiteboard
  • loading slides/whiteboards
  • layers on the whiteboard as a means of managing access to live links
  • saving whiteboards & chat
  • application sharing with particular respect to the least bandwidth/resource heavy strategy
  • managing access to tools for participants both as a group & individually
  • webtours, managing participant movement around the site
  • managing access to the session (eg removing a participant if necessary)
  • using the timer
  • managing screens through the Explorer window
  • polling

Throughout we were both demonstrating/experimenting with tools and also talking about how they can be used with students for: monitoring participation; estimating engagement; technical support and a variety of other activities.

Conclusion

This was an excellent session – despite or perhaps in part because of the small number. Many questions were raised and (mostly) answered. I always enjoy sharing my own strategies and how I use the tools to work with students as well as giving others the opportunity to explore the moderator features.

Next Webinar

Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday April 26th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday April 27th 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 – applied learning

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Introduction

This was one of those occasional sessions where I am writing the overview post from the recording  of this Serendipity session. I was laid low by a migraine! So Phil went “solo” doing a fantastic job as Moderator/Facilitator. On hearing the recording I was so sad to have missed this exciting session about something very close to my heart. The chosen topic in full was “Would teachers value professionals from the real world of work in the classroom to reinforce applied learning?”

The Session

This was a great session although for me as always when I listen to a recording rather than attend a virtual session of any sort it was somewhat frustrating! I kept wanting to type in text and on the whiteboard and trying to put up my virtual hand :).

The session started with a whiteboard of some initial thoughts. These included: clarification of the meaning of “applied learning” in this context; and some examples.

The first whiteboard  generated discussion that led to a second whiteboard about visiting experts – their presence or non-presence and their roles.

Again much more discussion took place with consideration of attracting learners into skill shortage areas, and reference to teaching for jobs that currently don’t exist through transferrable skills. This is a part where I so wanted to join in as I have a “bee in my bonnet” about transferrable skills and the need to teach generic rather than specific tool use, and of course critical thinking. Although I have a caveat on this because in my professional judgement not all students can learn critical thinking – we can’t all learn everything there are some things for each of us that we lack the capacity to learn! For me one of these is anything music related!

Conclusion

I really wish I had been there – I always hate to miss a session and in this one there were so many times when I wanted to join in! As a literacy/numeracy lecturer in Public Vocational Education (Australian TAFE) I am is a system that is based on experts from the real world of the industry or profession doing the teaching. However I often feel that the whole system focuses too much on industry expertise & not enough on the skills to facilitate learning. For me the use of team teaching and/or inclusion of guests still working in the industry is a great potential solution.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session. “A Moderator Sandpit” In which we will discuss and “play with” BlackboardCollaborate from the Moderator perspective.  Join us on Thursday April 19th 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 April 20th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.

Edublogs two webinar overviews!

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Introduction

Firstly, my apologies for the delay in posting such that I have ended up doing a “two in one” post of the most recent Serendipity overview and link and our “Desert Island App/Tool” FineFocus session. I have been totally overwhelmed by work for the ELFADA project. As well as being in virtual class for over 20 hours last week I have been finalising and publishing posts on the course blog.

Serendipity 29/30 March

There were only three of us in this session, we chatted a while before starting to give others time to arrive, and with only three we didn’t do a poll we just chatted about education issues. The recording is thus only about 45 minutes. We ranged across a variety of topics including:

  • Use of the term “blended learning” and its perceived meaning. My personal feeling on this is that the frequent use of the term to refer only to delivery that includes face-to-face is now totally outdated.
  • The need for empathy with students and the frequency with which those who perform very well in job interviews are often unable to “walk the talk” effectively once in contact with students.

This was a great session – so nice to just chat about “edu” matters with others!

Desert Island Apps/Tools

This session, recorded as usual, arose from my continual quest for slightly different approaches to the webinars. I have noticed in the past that when we ask for “a” favourite anything even if we say JUST ONE we always end up with most people putting in a list of several! This led me down the pathway of wondering how to emphasise the “ONE”. I remembered a radio show from my childhood in the UK – “Desert Island Discs” – where guests chose the 8 records they would like to take if they were to be marooned on a desert island for the rest of their lives. They were also allowed to take only ONE book! So I used the marooned concept as a way to focus our minds on the one app/tool we felt we couldn’t live without.

We started by assuming that we had our device of choice, Internet connectivity and access to cloud-based apps/tools so that the focus was entirely on apps/tools that needed a download. Then we had a whiteboard for people to jot down a few of their favourites from which to choose that final one to take to our desert island and to talk about!

Once we had some ideas we discussed further – we thought that some of our “must haves” were browser accessible so perhaps we didn’t need an app/tool. The next step was for each of us to decide on our ONE app/tool and then for us to talk a little about it an why it was our choice. Probably the most ingenious idea was for “Java IDE” enabling the maroonee to build his own tools.

This session was fun! The desert island concept seemed to work in focussing minds on choosing just one tool, and I think we all got interesting insights into each other’s preferences. Definitely a format to repeat.

Next Webinar

Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday April 12th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday April 13th 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 – a look at some avatar makers

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Introduction

As always we recorded this session in which we took a look at some avatar making tools in one of our “quick and easy tools” explorations. These are occasional sessions where I put up a list of 5-10 tools and each participant chooses one (preferably one unknown to them) to explore for ten minutes and then give feedback to the rest of us. The first time I did this the tools were a mixture of different functions however more recently I have chosen ones with similar purposes.

My personal rationale for “ten minutes to explore” is that if it takes too long to “pick up” the basics of using any tool then the focus of the “lesson” in which it is being used may change from the educational purpose to the tech being used. In other words we risk using “tech for tech’s sake” rather than as a tool to achieve the educational purpose.

The Session

The tools explored in the session were:

We started with a have you used it and to what degree on the five tools to be explored. This revealed that most of us had some awareness of, or familiarity with at least one or two of them and a couple were reasonably familar with all.

The next step was for everyone to choose an avatar maker to explore and then explore for ten minutes with the following considerations in mind:

  • how easy to learn the basics
  • how engaging to use
  • a lesson/context in which to use it
  • whether they personally would use it with students

After the ten minutes everyone came back, added their avatars to the whiteboard and talked about the ease of use and other features of the tool they had explored. We did have someone drop out and be unable to rejoin when trying to add their avatar – the avatar is still in the composite image.

Throughout the whole session there were lots of links shared in text chat and on the whiteboards: to avatar making sites, to sites which list avatar creators and to sites which illustrate many creative ways of using them. After the session Jerry Blumengarten (@cybraryman1) added a “My Avatars page” to his already amazing collection of pages of useful education related links.

We finished with some feedback and a look at our best takeaways from the session.

Conclusion

This was great fun! Everyone always seems to enjoy sessions like this. Those of you familiar with the webinars will know I have something of an obsession with making them as interactive and “hands on” as possible and from that perspective these tool explorations work really well. Avatars have been on my mind a lot at the moment as I have been looking for an easy to use creator that my not necessarily very techie distance students can use. I would love to give them a list and let them choose but needed to fix on one so that I could do a stepwise process as in this slideshare for them to refer to. The challenge with wholly online students is very much that the lecturer (teacher) is not there standing behind and able to coach them through the steps. I do do this individually with Application Share in BbC/Elluminate however my students are often working asynchronously so we are not in virtual class at the time they have the problem!

Next Webinar

Our next session will be an Edublogs “Serendipity” session on Thursday March 29th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (Afternoon/Evening USA) or Friday March 30th 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.