Category: ace

23 Things – intro to blogging

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, professional development

Ancy, Soheir and Megan all valiantly posted their first blog messages to the world. Well done all three of you !! After nearly 40 minutes of michael talking about this mythical “Web2” experience.. it was truly time for some hands-on activity. Interesting to read people’s first impressions of blogging: Ancy said she could see they might be useful in some professions for communication, Soheir said she would need to explore the tool before deciding if it could be useful, Megan’s first impression says the blog wouldn’t measure up to email Read More …

Victorian e-learning innovations: mid-year sessions

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, e-learning

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 Read More …

e-mentors set to soar

Michael Chalk1 Commentace, e-learning, innovation, professional development

Amazing work from the network of Victorian ACE e-mentors. Each (ACE) region across Victoria has one (or 2) mentors to support teachers and organisations learning to develop their plans for e-learning at strategy and classroom levels. On Friday there were demonstrations of “all things google” – how to chat with gmail, how to synch your google calendar, use the reader for following student blog feeds .. set up groups and sites, use the gmail app for your domain. (Coach Carole, Michael Gwyther, Sarah Phillips) .. and a session on gadgets Read More …

ESL teacher uses "Online Banking" resource

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, adult literacy, classroom, e-learning

Inspiring adventures from Dale Pobega of Duke St community centre in Sunshine Victoria, who has recently started using blogger to engage and educate his English as a second language (ESL) students. Great to see Dale using the tremendous resource “Online Banking“. This resource came out of Olympic Adult Education about 6 years ago, and remains one of the best online resources for adult numeracy. There’s a few broken elements on the site (eg the bulletin board no longer exists, and the sim bank doesn’t work).. but much of it works Read More …

Colleagues diving into web2 with gusto (flickr)

Michael Chalk2 Commentsace, e-learning, how to, professional development

Imagine my delight when Jane the wonderful VCAL co-ordinator at Preston Reservoir Adult Community Education (PRACE) said she wanted to try out flickr for building a slideshow on our website!! 1) Jane had already chosen the photos to go online, and copied them into a folder on her desktop. We used a free image editor called XNview to re-size and optimise for the web. XNview is great because you can do the whole folder in one “batch process”. .. (More details about xnview over on my wiki page .. including Read More …

Ways to publish "flip-style" magazines

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, e-learning

Ann H, one of the amazing ACE e-learning practitioners on the research circles adventure, wrote that she had had some progress with blogs and wikis in her classroom. But the learners weren’t so happy with the look of a wiki, they wanted something more like a print-style magazine. A couple of ideas emerged for someone wanting the “look and feel” of a magazine. 1) the visual book (“MyEbook“)that Dale looked at a few weeks back 2) a site called Issuu gets good reviews: example showing optical illusions. (That second review Read More …

Yummy Web2 Session

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, classroom, e-learning, innovation, professional development

At the recent ACE e-showcase, Michael Gwyther from YUM productions gave a great account of how they have used web2 technologies in one of their multimedia courses. Here’s the list of tools they’ve used: Blog Social Bookmarks (delicious) RSS Feeds Podomatic Slideshare Flickr Video RSS Feed reader! (Bloglines) The key for Michael is RSS feeds. As multiple students post their course reflections and assignments to their blog, he is able to read the updates from a single place .. his RSS feed reader. For a feed reader, i like google Read More …

real-time collaboration

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, e-learning

Just had a great meeting with the one and only Lynne Gibb from Coonara House. We started out in the new Access ACE Victorian elluminate room .. moved across to a new wiki near the e-showcase ACFE wiki .. and then realised we couldn’t edit the same wiki page at the same time. So moved over to google docs, where it was easier to collaborate, because the system is set up to auto-save the work of all people editing. Really great to watch someone else typing as they talk you Read More …

Help: can we "flexibilise" certificate ii in IT?

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, e-learning, technology

Our adult education co-ordinator at PRACE is looking to develop a flexible learning unit for the certificate ii in information technology – ie self-paced with support. i’ve had a thought to do some kind of blended digital imaging course using web applications and social software. However Robyn Jay says the Cert’s in IT are far too desktop-bound for that, and that we’re better off looking at communications skills or a media unit. i think we’re going to try and run it past the curriculum managers anyway (because we don’t have Read More …