So Tina, one of our amazing English teachers at PRACE, comes in with our box of headsets, “Same question i ask you every Monday.. green is for listening?”

This is one of the things that used to drive me crazy when we were running our Can You Hear Us? projects.. (No, not Tina.. the computers!!)

(Beware: Rant Approaching.)

Most of the windows/pc boxes have a colour coding for the audio sockets (green for listening, pink for speaking), but many headsets use a different colour code for their plugs (orange or black for speakers, pink or blue for microphone).

How mad is that!

On top of this, the windows audio controls have always been terrible. The only way you can access the volume control is via a tiny grey “speaker icon” hiding in the system tray. And sometimes that icon goes missing, if someone’s been experimenting with the control panel.

i’m lucky, because i know how to make volume control easily accessible (eg put it in a Start Menu audio category, as in this image below).. but should we do this for students? If we try to make the windows operating system more accessible, will students find it difficult out there in the real world of windows-in-its-original-form (un-tweaked)?

Fraser and i decided it would be worth putting a Volume Control icon on the desktop for the students logging in on the “English” account.

What about you.. do you try and make the windows operating system easier and more accessible for your learners?

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(PS: leave a comment if you want to know how to do any of this, eg volume control icon on desktop.)

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i’ve just listened to the mid-year presentations for the Victorian e-learning innovations.. As well as our own “flexivet” project (flexible delivery in ACE), here are my highlights from all the interesting projects out there..

• Lynne Gibb presents: Coonara Community House using collaborative wiki, flip camera and mp3 players to build up resources for learning cultural diversity.
• Martin Bride from OnTrack in the Wimmera region: delivering literacy at a distance via wiki, with volunteer literacy tutors (Certificate of General Education for Adults (CGEA). A hugely challenging idea, given how difficult it can be to engage adult literacy learners who often have bad experience of schooling. (Some background: this link is worth reading: Martin led the AccessACE research for OnTrack in 2007, examining ways to deliver literacy at distance.
• David Cumming from VUT: trialling both flip cameras and pov glasses for enhancing learning in trades..
• Sean Norrey from Kangan told us about using Wii on a PC mixed with flash programming for teaching people the skills of spraypainting..
• Reece working with firefighters using wordpress to create reflective connections for learning after scenario play.
• Sarah Philips with Bendigo Health has seen plenty of alternatives to youtube, and needs to decide on 4 of them to evaluate and trial; YouTube just isn’t good enough for their clients who need content filters, safety options, branding, customer service..

Elluminate can be a good way to meet up with people.. and it can be challenging too.  One challenge is knowing whether you’re audible or not (hence the title here: Give me Smilies if you can hear me).

Another challenge: while there were plenty of interesting presentations, i struggled to work out who was talking and where they were from, because

• having multiple speakers switched on means that we don’t see the name of the speaker in the talk box, and
• several people didn’t say their name or the place they came from.

So i ended up switching between the Victorian projects page to decipher who might be talking at the time.

Hello dear reader: a question for you: What are the challenges you’ve experienced in live web conferencing places?

.. best regards, michael

Nancy White was spurred into action by Tony Karrer’s “big question” of the month: what skills do knowledge-workers (or “learning professionals”) need (as we head into the teenies). But Tony was disappointed that Nancy listed only 4 “meta skills”:

1. self-awareness,
2. generosity,
3. humility, and
4. willingness to risk.

.. because Tony was looking for the technical details, the actual “how do i learn” skills. So Nancy wrote a second version, this time elaborating on the abilities to:

1. scan and filter (manage the “river of information”),
2. connect with other people,
3. synthesise the streams of incoming data to create your own “reality frameworks”,
4. ask good questions, and
5. mentor people through technologies (“stewardship”).

i enjoyed both posts from Nancy. i like the way she writes, including images for every topic, keeping the chunks of information small enough to digest, adding in headings to make things more readable, connecting with her audience as she writes. i’m looking forward to tomorrow’s post on “network weaving” and “reflective practice”.

Others have weighed in..

• Drawing on a 2008 article, Harold Jarche suggests that attitude is the key: openness to sharing and constantly learning from people in your network: while it takes time to build up the trust required, he concludes that “it is now a significant disadvantage to not actively participate in social learning networks“.
• Jay Cross revisits the topic and covers a big range of teaching roles including: writer, presenter, designer, producer, moderator, connector and “learnscape architect” (i like that last one!!)
• Ken Allen reminds us to look back at the fundamentals of learning, for example Bloom’s taxonomy, and recall the importance of focussing on the learner, relevant application, available time and resources.
• Jane Bozarth tells us to first become comfortable with technologies so we can recognise them for what they can do for us, and secondly to let go of control.
• Michael Hanley reckons that learning professionals need to be able to do just about anything across these various job descriptions: communicator, consultant, learning innovator, learning technologist, human capital management strategist, business-savvy educator, learning & knowledge manager, organizational change agent.

This reminds me of a fabulous cartoon i once had with the job description of a teacher.. along the lines of: “curriculum designer, facilitator, mentor, coach, newsletter editor, publisher, film director, morale officer, police officer, nurse, sandwich maker, bus driver..”

i did like Clive Shepherd’s point that many regular teachers have decided to delegate the technical side of things to the experts. “Twenty-five years ago, every l&d professional ..would have been familiar with every medium then available, i.e. overhead projectors.. black/whiteboards, 35mm slide projectors, VCRs, etc. At some point since then, as new learning media began to proliferate, they backed out and started leaving the job to specialists. Big mistake.”

Do you ever feel like people ask you to do things because you’re the “tech person”? Things that shouldn’t be so difficult?

Michael’s list:

My overall take on skills for a “learning practitioner” is this:

1. find ways to manage the incoming flow of information (eg use some tools to manage torrential flow from blogs and micro-blogs, forums, news outlets and other sources, synthesise the information for ourselves and others);
2. build our ability to interact with people across a range of environments (participate in discussions, filter information flows for others in our networks, engage colleagues in the world of possibilities, improve written and spoken communication skills, share more of what we do ..eg the help files we create in our role as “technology steward”);
3. remember to get things done as well as responding to the outside world (is your twitter, blog, ning etc really as important as that project timeline?) .. and
4. constantly adapt to change (in our relationships with people around us, in the projects we’re doing each year, in the technological tools we need to do our job even better, in the time available and the outcomes required).

..

• photo credit: theloushe
• photo credit: Another Pint Please…
• photo credit: markrabo

Most people enjoy getting some feedback on their inner “nature”.. some better idea of who they are in different contexts.

Surely this is why horoscopes are so popular, as well as identity quizzes (huge on Facebook – eg “Which Buffy character are you?“). A symptom of our Western cultural heritage where self-knowledge is not explicitly taught, leaving people hungry for any basic clues to who they might be.

For any kind of structured learning, self-knowledge can be vital to your effectiveness. i know that i learn best when i have multiple sources of information – mainly visual, with written text (and audio an optional extra). i know that i need to build up a visual mind-map to really cover the holistic ground, and that i must create a structured written text if i want to fully understand the details.

Howard just sent around a quiz for determining your “Creativity Brain Balance”.. and i am pleased to report that i am 52% right-brained. That means that the creative and holistic aspects of my mental workings are only slightly more prevalent than the structured and logical bits. i’d call that very close to balanced. Woohoo.

Plus, the learning styles online test gave me a fairly balanced view across multiple intelligences too (visual, spatial, social etc):

Is this really me, or does it show that i know how to manipulate a test?

And do quizzes that cover learning styles and strategies really give you more insight than your average astrological reading?

Other self-test sites include:

• The NCSU learning styles questionnaire,
• Learning styles online dot com (RTFP: you must register on completion to get your results)
• Creativity Brain Balance Test
• Article about Facebook quizzes: “The good, the bad.. and the one that told me i’m Xander” from entertainment weekly.

i wonder how many teachers use this kind of tool with their learners at the start of a course..?

At PRACE, Tina created a learning strategies booklet for all the English as a second language teachers to use with their students.. because learning strategies are a required component of the ESL Frameworks.

Here’s an interesting idea.. if you’re running a dozen apps, from web to word, audio, visual and social networking.. and you need some thinking space.. you could:

a) close some apps, walk away from the computer and take a break, or
b) try a virtual multiple desktop program.

Linux has always had this built in.. (along with their far superior “Start menu”) but i’ve never been busy enough in Linux to use it.

i was browsing through this list of “40 awesome apps” which are all tiny downloads (2mb or less).. and found one virtual window manager. At first use, it’s potentially quite useful. Easy to manage, and comes in a portable flavour for people who like to take their whole suite of applications on the road with them.

Plenty of options for customising..

and you can move programs from one desktop to another, via the System Tray icon (left click).

Or maybe it’s just a gimmick i’ll get sick of. Who can say. So far, i like it !!
A great way to hide those background applications (eg the music player).

i’ve just been interrupted at work again!!

.. by a terrific little app called “Workrave”, which lets me know when i’ve been sitting Staring at the Screen for Too Long.

After installing the program, you decide how often you want to take breaks, whether you want micro-breaks or just regular ones .. and what’s your time limit for the whole day. You can skip or postpone if you’re really busy, or you can sit back and do the recommended exercises for good office health.

Honestly i prefer to be interrupted by colleagues asking for advice and assistance, but this is a good and timely replacement. Time to go outside and enjoy the rain!

If you want to keep sitting in your chair, the program offers exercise suggestions too.

Links: workrave: download, screenshots.

What do you think? Would you like to be reminded to Take a Break?