electro-textual

There’s some amazing work happening in the NW region of Melbourne.

Jill Koppel and i have been on an adventure trail around the ACE providers involved in this year’s e-mentor projects, finding out what people are already doing.. and what they’d like to be doing. We’ve seen student-created zines and blogs, wikispaces built for course materials, computer labs filled with not only pc-machines but also iMacs.. and mini-projectors that would fit in your handbag.

So far, we’ve met with people at Yooralla in the city, Diamond Valley out in Greensborough, Thornbury Women’s NH, Carlton NLC, Olympic AE and Span in Thornbury.

There’s interest in building online spaces for staff and students, creating online courses to add more flexibility for new and existing courses, and adding more engaging use of technology to classroom situations. People want to learn about interactive whiteboards, online voice tools, wikispaces, organisational e-strategy.. and that big old challenge: how to choose the best technology for your teaching/learning purpose.

Overview and links over on the e-mentor wiki. http://ementors.acfe.vic.edu.au/northwest10
We’ll post more detail soon.

michael

(“North West” means the North West of metropolitan Melbourne – it’s a region for the ACFE board, which is similar to state and local government boundaries.)

Christine rang me on the phone, “michael i’ve done something to the (PRACE) web site.” She went on to describe how she’d lost her work and one of the pages had somehow reverted to an earlier version with last year’s brochure.

i have to admit i’m terrible at providing help desk assistance over the phone. i really need the visuals, because often i can’t make sense of the way people describe their screen. Maybe it’s my weak listening skills.. maybe it’s because people leave out important details. I think that in order to solve technological issues i need to see every bit of the screen. There’s a huge amount of visual literacy involved in screen-based communication and networking.

So we tried elluminate as a way to share Christine’s screen (it didn’t work). While we were waiting she mentioned she’d just been on skype with her family overseas.

What am i thinking? Skype has screen-sharing these days.

We found out how Christine could reveal her workspace over the skype connection, and as soon as i had the visuals i could be helpful again. We solved the problem together. In fact i think Christine worked it out herself, she just needed the confidence of having someone there to say, “Yes you’re doing the right thing.”

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[Screen-sharing: how? From memory, it's in Conversation => Video => Share your screen, but i'll have to double-check.]

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Possibly useful resources

• • • • Interestingly, the mac version of skype had screen-sharing before the windows version. On linux we’re still waiting (or maybe not).
      • All about screen sharing on the skype site.
      • Sue Waters gives a good overview of the basics of skype on the Edublogger.
      • Silvia Tolisano provides a very good set of ideas for using skype in the classroom, as part of her “around the world with 80 schools” project (Langwitches).

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photo credit: Sean Davis (thanks!)

Several people on the CAE 23 Things project wanted to know how to embed documents in their blog. There are a few ways.

(edublogs allows you to upload documents, but i’m not sure that blogger does. And David made the point that if he’s uploading all the time, he’ll use his storage quota in no time.)

The trick is to use an external service, eg Slideshare, iScribd, youtube, docstocs, yudu or google docs (your choice could depend on the kind of document).

1. sign up to another web service (eg scribd, slideshare, youtube)
2. upload your document to the other service, then
3. embed the document in your blog post, using an “embed code” from that other service.

• Dale Pobega’s Free ESL club (from Duke St Community House in Sunshine) has plenty of examples of embedded content, including the Banana ESL grammar book at the left (via scribd).
• Richard Byrne uses Yudu and Docstocs in this post from his Free technology for teachers blog.

Some other suggestions out there on the web:

• Digital inspiration links to some services, 
• Blogger help files suggest Scribd 
• eHow has more detail on how to do this at Scribd
• (so does Krishna De)
• Slideshare is a great service for sharing powerpoint presentations. They have their own help file for posting directly to blogger.

(digital inspiration goes further too, with a post called “embed almost anything into your blog”)

..okay. i wonder if that helps. We haven’t looked at these “embed codes” yet.. perhaps we need a help video. 

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Photo credit: thanks minifig from flickr (creative commons license).

Win, Lin and Mac:

It’s true that Windows (TM, microsoft corp) occupies nearly all the computers in the known world, but there are other operating systems, and it’s been my side project over the last few years to find out more about all of them.

Thanks to the iPod and the iPhone, Apple mac has bounced back from the lean years to become a major player; everyone knows about apple these days. Their reputation says they care about beauty, elegance and simplicity in their design. The iPod comes with no instruction booklet because it’s designed to never need one.

Linux (GNU/Linux) is now the underdog. Because Linux is a free operating system, with principles of open accessibility and speech-like freedom as well as beer-like free availability, i’ve always thought that people in the community, without much money, should be more aware of it.

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So anyway: the competition

Now i have access to 4 tired old laptops at home and at work, 2 Windows xp, 1 Apple mac osx, 1 Ubuntu Linux.

3 main areas i need computers to work for me are to manage files, access the web and play sound & video files.

i may write about the first 2 categories later on, but the one that’s interested me lately is getting the laptops to play sound and video files across a network (ie the files are stored on a computer somewhere else in the network, not on the computer in question).

1) Windows on an old Laptop

Laptop A, a clunky old IBM thinkpad that was retired from work. It weighs 2.5 kg i’m sure, a pentium4.

With the magical audio app Winamp, this machine will play all kinds of audio files across a network. Win XP will happily map a network drive for me (remembering the location of the music files), Winamp scans the drive in the background* and plays the music just as i need it. No fuss. If my MP3 tags are out of order, Winamp will search Gracenote and fix them.

This machine will also play video files, but not wirelessly, because it has old style 11kbps speed. Not fast enough for VideoLAN (VLC) to catch up with the frame rate. Need to plug in a long blue cable. Forget about it.

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Update: July 10: something’s gone wrong with this machine since we upgraded to better security. This old machine now plays music haltingly, even with a long blue cable. Regular pauses are not ok. Fail.

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2) Windows on a new netbook

The second windows machine is a newish MSI-wind netbook (U100+, bought oct’09), running windows xp.

Plays video and audio beautifully from local drives, using Winamp and VLC**; however across the network, the wireless drops out regularly every 7-8 minutes, making any song or film hang with a repetitious da-da-da-da-da-da-da-. This machine may work better if i can find improved drivers for the wireless.

(I’ve tried running Linux on this machine, via a USB boot, which plays video across the network (using either VLC or Totem movie player). Updating the windows drivers hasn’t fixed the problem.)

Fail with windows. Pass with Linux.

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Update: July 10:

i was so happy with linux that i installed ubuntu 10 on this machine, but the wireless drivers are broken for the msi-wind (they were fine in version 9). So i went back to ubuntu 9 (full install), and it worked for a while, but then the video player broke.

On windows xp however, the wireless drivers magically fixed themselves.

Linux: Fail.

Windows: Pass.

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3) Apple mac on an old macbook g3

The Apple mac is also an old machine, a g3.

Connects to the network wirelessly, and will play music through iTunes. iTunes works much better on a mac than on a windows machine, but the application still wants to spend serious time (many hours) getting to know the music before you’re allowed to listen. No scanning folders in the background like winamp. And it won’t play an ogg music file without some plugin help.

For some reason (it’s an old computer) VLC and Quicktime both crash if i try to play a video.

Audio: pass. Video: fail.

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4) Linux (ubuntu) on an old laptop

The Ubuntu (Linux) machine will not play audio over the network with its main music player (Amarok). It refuses to play MP3 files even locally (MP3 is not a free format).

However there are 2-3 video apps (Dragon player, movie player, totem) that will pick up any kind of music or video file and play it happily. Once i found those program, Linux was the winner in this competition.

Audio: pass. Video: pass.

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Update: July 10: This machine completely died. Won’t boot.

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Overall winner:

Originally Linux ubuntu.

Update: July 10: tie between Linux ubuntu and win xp

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Postscript: this competition was in no way fair or balanced.

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(* unlike iTunes which can take hours to register the files before i’m allowed to play them, and then doesn’t play ogg files)

(** and the screen of the MSI-wind may be small, but windows will let me plug into an external big screen. Perfect.)

Relevant inks:

• VLC is my favourite video player. Free and open source software (foss), you can rely on VLC to play just about any video file. Plus it runs off a USB stick, and has versions for all the major operating systems.
• Winamp is easily my favourite audio player. Quickly scans all your music files (in the background, unlike iTunes which won’t play music until it’s built the library), plays many different formats including video if you want. Will also manage your iPod for you.
• Full list of michael’s preferred software applications on the wiki (ooh it needs updating already).
• Ogg is a free and open source audio format (foss), an alternative to MP3 for people who prefer open standards and higher quality.
• Get the xiph plugin for iTunes so you can play ogg files.
• There are many new ways to install a live Linux system to a portable USB stick, including this one: via windows with the pendrive app. (more in my delicious links.)
• Ubuntu Linux, a free and open source alternative to apple mac and microsoft windows.

photo credit: catzrule99

photo credit: sk8geek

photo credit: giuseppesavo

Exciting news.. Ann at the college of advanced education (CAE) is bringing some of her Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) teachers along to learn about web2 via the 23 Things course. (The Victorian ACE version of it.)

Here we are at the CAE in the heart of Melbourne’s central business district (CBD), with Ann, David, Fiona, Gillian, Eileen and Parama. Most people are choosing blogger to set up their reflective journals, except David who’s investigating edublogs for the first time.

The idea of a public reflective journal is central to the 23 Things approach: you experience the web2-based social network, by sharing your discoveries with your peers.

(Edublogs is a Melbourne company that’s become popular with teachers around the world. They use wordpress as the application to run their system.)

• Ann’s at anntimess.blogspot.com
• David’s at mrihooper.edublogs.org
• You’ll find Parama at lunchadventure.edublogs.org (maybe?)
• Eileen is at learnbeforelunch.blogspot.com

There’s a mix of enthusiasm and nervousness. Will we have time for this lunch-time learning adventure? Will it be manageable, and what will we discover?

Some questions came up already:

• Can you upload documents in your blog?
• Short answer – you need to use a second service.

 (ok, searching for more detailed answers.. back shortly..)

Very exciting news!
PageTurners series 4 has arrived.

Anne Dunn, Chris Malakar and Moira Hanrahan have done it again, produced a delightful collection of funny and engaging stories for beginning adult readers all around the world.

pageturners.prace.vic.edu.au

My personal favourite stories in the new series 4 are:

• Can you read this? – about a woman returning to learning,
• Tooth Fairy – about a woman in a retirement home who loves to be helpful, and
• Red Dog – a true story about a wandering dog in Western Australia.

The fun part for me is that i got to do the layout on one of the books this time, which means learning about scanning images for print (black and white not greyscale, i discovered after the first draft). Yes i got to publish Moira’s book about the Tooth Fairy, which is hilarious!

i’m also working on editing the website and the audio books, which will be up next week sometime. (update: 16 March finally got audio for Red Dog online).

The style sheets on the website need some tweaking because it’s all a bit grey at the moment, whereas the books themselves are very lively and colourful.

i always forget how finicky and time-consuming the whole web development thing can be, when you’re editing CSS style sheets, PHP includes, Dreamweaver templates etc etc, and constantly uploading and re-uploading to try and get things exactly right. But the perfectionist in me loves that repetitious kind of thoroughness. i bet there’s a few mistakes in there still.

We also need a shopping cart of some kind, because it’s ridiculous asking people to print and fax PDF documents in this day and age! It’s the shopping cart that could be most challenging i think, although there are plenty of open source options around.

Anne’s keen to have a blog on the site for regular updates, so we’ve installed wordpress.. but haven’t published that section to the world  yet. And one of the books is now out of print, so we’re talking about making that an online multimedia / audio book instead.

Have you ordered your copies of PageTurners series 4 yet?

Certificate of General Education for Adults (CGEA) level 3 is considered “foundation level training”, under the new regime.

However, Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) Intermediate is considered “Skills Creation”, and comes under a different set of funding criteria.

The fact that i’m struggling with here is that intermediate VCAL is based on CGEA level 3. In many respects they are the same.

If you already have a Certificate 2 in Anything, the Victorian government will fund your study of the CGEA 3.. but they will not fund you to study the VCAL intermediate. Apparently.

i’m confused.

i’m not alone in that.

i’ve heard that the briefing meetings are full of officials who say things like, “i’ll have to take that question on notice”, because even they can’t find their way around the morass of contradictory regulations.

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The real catch with this new “demand-driven” policy framework is that the government will fund their demanding citizens to study only one course at any certificate level above “foundation” (ie above certificate 2). If you have done a certificate 2 in horticulture, you will not be funded to re-train in hospitality, unless you can start at certificate level 3.

Even if you can only get 2 days work gardening and you need to supplement with some evening bar work, and your gardening income is all going on the massive Melbourne rental rates, or you’re living in a boarding house where the operators are taking all your invalid pension and more.

One bite of the cherry.

No more life-long learning.

User pays. And pays. Or is left at the bottom of the heap.

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For those who don’t already know, the Victorian adult education sector is grappling with a new funding regime. Adult Community and Further Education (ACFE) has been quartered (its funding reduced to 25%), and Adult Community Education (ACE) organisations must now go through “Skills Victoria” to fund their accredited programs (the ones that lead to official “competency-based” certificates recognised by official training boards).

For many years, ACFE has pushed the ACE sector toward accredited training, away from the non-accredited programs* – now known as “pre-accredited” training. Now they’re pushing the other way, because it’s the only kind of training they’re allowed to fund.

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Good on the Victorian government for attempting to change the sector. Change can be really good when it’s informed by compassion, understanding and the need for balance. Maybe there is a need for change here:

• Maybe there are some unscrupulous education providers who take the money and don’t deliver. [They're in the minority.]
• Perhaps some Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes smudge the funding a little, by packing classes so full that people withdraw, but still taking the money for all who enrolled.
• Perhaps some ACE providers need to think about expanding their funding options, and increasing their full-fee-paying loads.
• Perhaps some students keep studying for years without returning to work, because they’re lazy and incompetent. [Most are struggling with our "post-capitalistic" economy which is increasingly weighted against people with low-level education.]

However this set of changes is giving every impression of being a massively foul bungled operation, with rules that exist only inside the heads of whichever operative you ask at the time.

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(*Non-accredited programs have traditionally been denigrated by economic hard-heads in blue suits as airy fairy macrame and water aerobics for middle class retired citizens.. however these pre-accredited programs are accurately recognised by community development workers and adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) teachers as vital to strengthening community cohesion and providing a means for disadvantaged and marginalised people to re-connect with community, employment options, as well as their own ability to learn.)

[These statements do not reflect the opinions of my employer or any of my colleagues. i wouldn’t want to suggest for a moment that the ACE sector is seething with rage.

In fact the Victorian ACE sector is well versed in responding to change and adversity with an extraordinary level of level-headed creativity and flexibility.

Some people have said that this could be a time of great opportunity for organisations prepared to be creative and flexible.

Okay fine the glass is half full.

But why is the glass locked in a glass cabinet?

..and who set the glass on fire?

Links:

• AceVic response to the initial reform proposals
• Skills Victoria, formerly known as OTFE or office of training and further education
• Adult Community and Further Education (ACFE)
• Cath Campbell from the Australian education union (AEU) tells us how these changes are impacting in TAFE too, at TAFE4all.
• (ACFE is now part of the former Department of Victorian communities (DVC), currently known as Dept of Planning and community development (DPCD))
• The AQF is the Australian qualifications framework, from which we derive all the information about certificate levels: (a) direct link (b) on wikipedia
• Photo credits: (creative commons at flickr) Thanks:  photo credit: roberthuffstutter,  photo credit: Jeremy Brooks, photo credit: ?ellie?