So, recently I was on television, in my role as an ‘e-learning specialist’! (channel 31) Being interviewed was a bit scary, but the wonderful team at “A House around the Corner” have edited the whole thing very well. Definitely worth following their youtube feed, as there’s plenty of other great stories about LearnLocal in Victoria. (Edit: the site seems to be down in 2017.)
It’s been wonderful to meet people who are relatively new to e-learning, as well as to catch up again with those of you who are continuing your journeys. So far this project, we’ve discovered: => At Glenroy NLC, teachers are looking to connect students from different locations, using web conferencing software known as Lync (microsoft). => People at Richmond CLC are starting to explore mobile learning and introduction to tablet apps (the iPad). => Out at Community West, they’ve been investigating how to make powerpoint more interactive for students engaged Read More …
If you haven’t noticed already, there’s an e-learning Roadshow coming to you very soon. In Melbourne’s metropolitan region, we’re setting up the show on Friday 28 June, the last day of term 2.. at the CAE in the heart of the city’s coffee-scented Degraves street haven. Don’t miss out.. book now for this terrific opportunity to network with your colleagues, share your stories and find out what e-learning educators have been up to all around the state of Victoria. There will also be regional roadshow days, for example Mooroopna on Read More …
“We’re so far off online learning,” said one manager to me, implying that it was so difficult we shouldn’t even bother. My first response was to bring it all back to the classroom. “Online learning is only one part of e-learning,” I replied. I think people still see the two terms as identical, which is a problem. E-learning, step 1: some kind of technology in your face-to-face situation. For example, taking photographs on an excursion, or recording audio from student presentations. Having access to a local network drive folder for Read More …
Valbec conference, 17 May 13 Ah, it all seemed so simple:
Recently I spoke with Carmen Harris from Yooralla adult education. Carmen was involved in the North-West e-learning mentor projects back in 2011. She told me all about the amazing work they’ve been doing with literacy and technology over there, including blogs, facebook, email lists and zines. You can listen to the interview right here. I was aiming to edit down to 5-8 minutes, but Carmen just kept on saying interesting things. Highly recommended for an insight into creative classroom practices. [Tech notes:] We spoke over Skype and I recorded the call using Read More …
A wonderful project at Community West in St Albans, where Dinna Tayao has invited teachers to join a weekly session of exploration and sharing. I went out to visit Dinna and her team of investigating educators. They have been running a fantastic in-house exploration of all kinds of e-learning. Each week one teacher explores a new strategy, software or other resource, evaluates its usefulness in class with students, and then reports back to the other teachers. 2 hours a week. They’ve had visiting expert speakers as well. Brilliant work from Read More …
3 Questions: Are you using google docs? (aka google drive) Have you noticed that you can now access your google drive files and folders via your desktop? Have you noticed that you can share any kind of file via this cloud system now, not just google documents? Google drive is now a lot like dropbox – a place to share files and folders with people in different locations. You get 5gb of storage space, and you can access and manage the filing system via your local file manager*. [*eg: Windows Read More …
People often ask, “Why e-learning?” For me, it’s about providing a strong balance of flexibility and access. Ideally learners (and teachers) can connect with their peers and explore the learning materials outside of set class times and independently of location, in ways that are simple and straightforward. Wherever you are, at a time that suits you. At PRACE, people continue to explore these themes of flexibility and access in more and more practical ways. Here’s the quick overview of what’s happened at PRACE in the last year. Please tell us Read More …
Are we just going through the motion or are we making a difference in the classroom with the use of technology? The table below makes a good comparison. Here is the link to teachbytes blog
I decided to bring posts to this blog from other projects, such as: Digital Learning at PRACE Digital Learning at Lalor Living and Learning ACFE Learn Local Communities of Practice the North-West e-mentor projects from ACFE Learn Local iPad for Seniors at PRACE the 23 Things project from ACFE, CAE and PRACE. Having written nearly all the text in those places, i wanted gather it all together. It was relatively easy to export from Blogger, and then import into WordPress here. Unfortunately, now i’ve discovered several roadblocks, namely: the Read More …
You remember Mark Hopkins, the adult learner from PRACE who told his story so well, not only in our publication, but also on the SBS Insight tv program last year? Well, some of the stories from this Resilience collection have been translated into other languages for the EPALE* site, and the first story to be translated was Mark’s. *EPALE: Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe. https://goo.gl/XqROOX
Last night Tricia Bowen spoke about her experience of reconnecting with the adult learners who have shared their stories in this volume. I talked about how great it was to join with Tricia and Lynne in the whole creative and collaborative process of editing. Then Lynne Matheson invited us to launch the video into the world, so we all made rocket-launching sounds, and the champagne flowed. * It was such a good experience filming and editing these stories with Tricia. I would love to hear any feedback, especially related to Read More …
If you think Australia is a highly literate nation, watch this recent episode of Insight from SBS. This powerful and moving episode features Mark Hopkins one of the students from PRACE. I spoke with Mark as part of the “Stories of Resilience” project, and it’s really heartening to hear his voice in this national forum. All these adult learners show real courage and vulnerability, as they describe their experience for people who have no idea of the extent of this hidden problem. Over 40% of Australians experience some level of difficulty Read More …
If you’re involved with any kind of online facilitation, you may appreciate this article from The Guardian. They’ve done some research into the comment section, finding that much more abuse is directed at female writers than male. (Also, for web designers, some really good layout effects, especially the way they’ve integrated the graphs and the “how would you moderate this comment” bits.) There’s a whole series around this research, articles interviewing people who have experienced the maelstrom of massive online shaming and bullying.. and articles on ideas for making things Read More …
Here’s a copy of the printed materials we handed out during the course. It’s a pdf file that should hopefully open on your iPad. Link here: This post was originally on the site “iPad for Seniors” at PRACE.
Just sent out the latest PageTurners newsletter, letting people know that the new shopping-cart style website is up and running!! It’s taken me much time this year to get the site all updated and e-commercey, so i’m very happy that we’ve finally launched. Woot. You can read the newsletter here. Take a look at the site, tell us what you think. Oh, we need a feedback form don’t we. If you’re not subscribed to the PageTurners email list, you can join via the website.
I wondered if there are any iPad apps that would be especially useful for people over 55, so i searched the web for “best apps for ipad for seniors“. Sure enough, there are many many lists: “16 helpful apps for seniors”, “27 bet iPad and iPhone apps for senior citizens”. But are any of them useful.. and how many of these apps are FREE..? Well, some of them are designed to help people by improving things like: Visual accessibility: Silver Surf is a web browser with “large navigation buttons, dynamic text Read More …
Here’s a basic intro that Michael made – for low level students really (link: pdf stored in google drive). GCF LearnFree don’t have an intro to blogger, but they do have a great section talking about blogs in general, and an intro to Tumblr instead. Tumblr is much more visual than blogger, which can be text-heavy. Google themselves have a fairly decent help section. Grovo has a few videos showing the basics, including this overview. But they’re a commercial mob, and they’ll want you to pay for more. What good Read More …
What are the the basics of blogging? make new blog, with title & web address (URL) hopefully at a time when google is not policing your IP address make new post add & format text add images make links save draft / publish get people interested in reading your blog post knowledge you may need Ideas for engaging learners with online activities. Ideas for adapting your already brilliant teaching and learning knowledge into online spaces. On writing for the web keep it as visual as possible make your text very Read More …
