Author: Michael Chalk

"Skills" Victoria – one bite of the cherry thanks!

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace

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 Read More …

How hard is it to set Language (Australian!) ?

Michael ChalkLeave a commenttechnology

Whenever i glance over the shoulders of anyone on a computer in this place, i see red lines where they shouldn’t be. Microsoft word telling people, “You’re wrong!” “Neighbourhood House” gets a big red wiggly line. Which for literacy students is frustrating, and for an anti-imperialist language purist like me is infuriating. How hard is it for a tech department to set the default language to Local, ie Australian English??! Why should the tech department have to do it anyway.. microsoft knows everything about us, and we’ve told windows exactly Read More …

Get student feedback with google forms

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, classroom, e-learning

For the first stage of our project evaluation (the “flexivet” project for flexible delivery in ACE), we had paper-based evaluation forms. This was fine.. until i realised it meant i would be the one to input the data into a spreadsheet. Yawn. So i’ve set up a form at google docs.. which inputs directly into the spreadsheet. We’ve embedded the form on the student wiki, and linked to it from all over the place. Delightful! Just a couple of problems.. 1) Several students don’t realise they haven’t fully completed the Read More …

Jumping Ship.. microsoft begone!

Michael ChalkLeave a commenttechnology

Well the organisation may be upgrading to windos7 and ms office ’07.. but i’m jumping ship. Migrate to “The Ribbon“? Send people “docx” files that word’03 can’t open? i say no. (Ironically Open Office can open these word 2007 files, even though microsoft office 2003 cannot.) For operating system, i’ll try Linux and apple. For an office suite, i’ll continue to learn Open Office and google docs. Open Office has a portable version i can run from the USB drive. Every time microsoft upgrades, they try to make life easier Read More …

Double-check different browsers before sending feedback!

Michael Chalk1 Commente-learning, technology

Ha ha. Serves me right for not double-checking in multiple browsers. The screencast channel is working fine on firefox / linux, also in the Opera browser on windows xp. Problem is with java in google chrome browser. Duh. Now i feel silly. On the plus side, now i’ve fixed java on my linux laptop.. that means i can make screencasts and join elluminate from that machine too. Cool. Oh, and AJ from screencast-o was very rapid in supportive response. Thanks AJ. —————————————- So i had discovered something very distressing over Read More …