i’d be interested to get comments from anyone in ACE: is e-learning still out on the fringes, a strange and wacky add-on only for geeks? Or has it begun to come in from the cold? Is e-learning becoming part of the mainstream in ACE?
For this live conference session (details below) Josie Rose started us off by leading some group brainstorming: what does ‘mainstreaming’ mean to you? On the whole, it was about normalising, acceptance, integration.
Josie then spoke of the wonderful “e-mentor” program that she has pioneered, and which ACFE has funded for ’08; a program which emerged from the Access ACE research of ’07. People in the session remarked that it was a brilliant model for other states to follow.
Lynne Gibb showed us an amazing range of applications for their in-house wiki system, over at Coonara Community House. Blended learning in the classroom, student e-portfolios, collaboration between teachers, main website for e-business .. and more!
Denece Sippo – one of the great minds behind the terrific 23 Things Community Engagement project in East Gippsland last year – told us about many programs happening in the local libraries around Victoria, including the local history project known as WikiNorthia. She also focussed on one project down East Gippsland way, known as “Talking Visuals“, for people with complex communication needs; (they use a blog for sharing information, plus live classroom sessions which are recorded and shared.)
Myra Cake from WA gave us a beginner’s perspective, describing the rollercoaster ride of an organisation taking its first steps into the whole e-learning adventure. moving from fear and trepidation, into excitement and fun.
Stuart Jones talked about how Milang Old School House (MOSH) has moved from strength to strength, engaging adult learners in the local community through innovative uses of technology. They started off in 2006 with a combination of different open source web development tools (moodle and joomla) .. and now they’ve built in other things like google calendars and regular skype meetings.
i told people about one of our (PRACE) new “e-business” strategies, moving the website from the old-style Dreamweaver/FTP model across to content management using WordPress. (Not yet launched, but a sneak preview here.)
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‘Mainstreaming e-learning in ACE: is it an impossible dream?’, presented by Mary Hannan, Josie Rose, Lynne Gibb, Denece Sippo, Stuart Jones, Michael Chalk and Myra Cake.
This Adult Community Education session with practitioners from across Australia was held 3.30pm Wed 12Nov. You’ll find a link to the recording via http://snipr.com/e-ace (registration req’d i think 🙁
It was part of “inspiring innovations” – a huge online conference on the Australian Flexible Learning Framework, 11-12 Nov.
(From the publicity blurb: Inspiring Innovations: national e-learning highlights online mini-conference ..showcase strategies and innovative examples for embedding e-learning ..across Australia ..include a program of 14 synchronous (live, real-time) web conferencing sessions ..
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image and photo credits: licensed under creative commons at flickr: Thanks very much: Andrew* .. and also 
photo credit: greyhound dad
Hi Michael,
This is a great way to help get the message “out there” and also to refresh those of us who were there on the great array of presentations. You have given me another blog to explore in my spare?? time!
Lynne
Hi Lynne,
Thanks so much for your message.
i have been enjoying writing .. and it helps me to remember what happened too ;-]
michael