electro-textual

Great to be involved in a national e-learning network for Adult Community Education (ACE). Mary Hannan from Adult Learning Australia (ALA) has taken on the role of bringing together some e-learning people in the community sector.

Just got together with some people around the continent, in a meeting where

• Josie Rose told us all about the Victorian ACE e-mentor project, a regional approach that’s emerged from the ’07 Access ACE research trials;
• Georgina Nou (of Deadly Mob fame) showed us around Second Life, and inspired me to have another go at getting in and around;
• .. and i let people know about the Can You Hear Us? project.

Also we found out that

• funding for the national ACE e-learning network is now stable for the next 3 years (thanks Maria Amesz)
• Stuart Jones has been invited onto the eDayz reference group (South Australia) .. to help them get more ACE people at the conference. Go Stuart!

Plus: put this one in your diary  ;-]

Wednesday, 12th November ’08:
.. a network presentation at the national e-learning online event.

image and photo credits: licensed under creative commons at flickr: Thanks very much: Louise

Ah, delight!

The technology worked!

For our Can You Hear Us? project, we were lucky enough to get Michael Coghlan on our wavelength as guest speaker. He was in Adelaide, and we were in Melbourne. It was all done with the smoke and mirrors of skype.

i love that!

Michael told us about many wonderful tools for getting audio online, from voiceboards to podcasts and live conferencing. His slideshow is online on the project wiki .. and if we can get the recording to work, i’ll post that too.

Actually this was really satisfying; to have a conversation with people in five different locations seemed thoroughly worthwhile. Earlier in the week, michael and i had connected up in skype, to find out whether there was a whiteboard that would suit the skype environment.

We trialled a few, but ended up deciding to give everyone access to his presentation via slideshare, and to just share web links via the text chat. It worked fine; not as excellent as Elluminate, but very workable. In the end, we thought it best to keep things as simple as possible. Good strategy.

Thanks so much mr coghlan!

Here’s a gadget that looks like fun .. and is completely useless.
i just want to know if it comes in Dvorak flavour.

Speaking of gadgets, today we had the adult literacy classroom on their laptops for the whole session. i wanted to get students used to searching for images and videos, so a couple of activities focussed on these skills.

For example, find a video that interests you on how stuff works. Watch it, take some notes and then write a response (a description, an opinion or a set of instructions).

Seems to work so much better to have laptops around the table, than asking people to step away from the table and face the wall to use the desktop machines. You can still be sociable, keep in touch with other people, and get on with your work.

i wonder how other people use video or laptops in their classrooms?

So i’ve listened to some audio/video recordings, i’ve read a couple of articles, i’ve finally made it into the forum areas .. and most importantly, i’ve put myself on the map.

Rodd (the Clever Sheep ..from Canada i think) set up a shared map within the google-o-sphere, and created a neat screen cast to show the rest of us how to join in. Yay Rodd. (Yes i did have to watch the video to work out how it is done.)

A few fellow Australians already there, including Howard Errey, Alison Miller .. but strangely enough people who posted at different times appear on different “pages” of the map. So Clint Smith is on page one, but others of us are on page three. Still can’t quite get my head around it ..

But for some reason, wordpress won’t let me embed the map on this page. Such irritating behaviour from a renowned CMS .. i had expected better.

Last Tuesday was the mid-year reporting session for Victorian e-learning innovations. Some terrific work going on, especially Coonara community learning centre, and AMES who are both using wiki for students and classrooms.

Howard gave us all a three minute timer, and because PRACE was close to the end of the day, i finished 5 seconds inside my 3 minutes. Woot. i enjoy talking to a 3 minute timer .. means you just focus on the essential points.

Elluminated? We met in the elluminate live conference room. Always fun to meet that way.

Here are the overheads i took into the session (via slideshare).

Howard has given us the link to the recording .. just trying to extract my bit now to mp3. Unfortunately, had to record via the speakers, so it sounds awful. If you want better quality sound .. i’d recommend the full Elluminate session. Otherwise ..

[audio:http://michalk.id.au/txt/wp-content/uploads/michael-chalk-lo-res-presents-mid-year-report-in-elluminate.mp3]
Audio file: michael-chalk-in-elluminate

around 1mb (where’s the player, i thought wordpress would give us a player?)

kind regards, michael

Well this is extraordinary. Nearly two thousand people involved in a massive online course on Connectivism; a course that will go from now until November-ish, and takes place on thousands of different sites around the world. Have to join in, don’t i!

Stephen and George are among my favourite writers, and yes, i’ve missed a couple of courses i wanted to attend this year (eg Leigh on facilitating).. so it’s time to dive in and experience.

Got no idea what connectivism is really .. well it’s somewhere in there with Social Constructivism and Post-Structuralist, De-Constructionism .. Let me see if i can say:

Connectivism is all about the networks. Internal neural networks, and external social networks.

Apparently, we make sense of the world through our frameworks and structures, and knowledge is negotiated through socialising in our distributed networks. Connection creates meaning, the mind is a patterning agent, and all this takes place within increasingly complex spaces involving more and more technology.

(Mind map above links to full version.)

i may have heard someone say that knowledge resides in the network. Provided your network is working properly that is .. how many organisations suffer when key personnel depart?

It’s only day one, and already the goog has over 6000 links to CCK08+Connectivism.
Some of the many course links:

• wiki (week one),
• blog for regular updates,
• pageflakes (collecting all resources),
• getting started presentation,
• twitter for micro updates,
• Stephen’s Daily,
• people introduce themselves in moodle,
• Stephen’s intro on the Ustream TV site.

i wonder how long before i’m completely overwhelmed  ;-]

Yep, already.

image and photo credits: licensed under creative commons at flickr:
Thanks very much: fdecomite

Way back in February, Leigh Blackall wrote about his journey to Melbourne, and to Ceres Environmental Park. He raved about the luxury of having such a wonderful site so close to the city – and recorded a couple of interviews with the locals there.

Yes Leigh, we’re lucky here in Melbourne. i’m really lucky, i can go visit Ceres any time i like, and often buy my organic vegies there. They also have a second-hand market on a Saturday morning, and let me tell you i’ve found some real bargains.

However, people in a Reservoir Adult Literacy group haven’t always heard of the place. So it was one of the suggested destinations for an excursion earlier in the year.

They all said it was “different” .. not the sort of place they’re used to visiting. It was an adventure across cultural lines, but mostly these people enjoyed the place.

Another weekend i dropped by for my vegies, and was astonished to see Melbourne radio station 3AW in their mobile broadcasting caravan – for the launch of a new home ecology site, and composting week.

Ecology has really hit the mainstream when 3AW visits Ceres!!

(.. and yes, Leigh the ceres website although attractive and functional, has no blogging interactivity.)