Category: professional development

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 …

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 …

Has twitter jumped the shark?

Michael ChalkLeave a commentprofessional development

The comical folk at current.com have done another twitter satire. It’s funny. Disclaimer: i admit, i have been following some celebrities. Yes i am a twit. (aka miczl) My big issue with Twitter is this: Get A Room. .. if you’re having a private conversation, get off the public airways. Use Skype or messenger. Have a proper conversation. Stop leaving notes in the middle of the road for everyone else to trip over. But that is not how twitter works, so i will just get off my high horse right Read More …

on becoming a twit (or a flap)

Michael ChalkLeave a commente-learning, professional development

i was recently reading Lankshear and Knobel’s piece on Facebook as an environment for multiliteracies (more on that over here). There is some disagreement around these social networking sites, that you must be self-centred to use them, or that they will damage your brain (eg this article).

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 …

Synchronicity with Finkelstein

Michael ChalkLeave a commentprofessional development

Another course in online facilitation from Gipps Tafe. Missed this opportunity last year, and i want to make up for it this time around. No it’s not really about synchronicity, rather synchronous online facilitation skills (ie / live, same-time web conferencing sessions). Jonathan Finkelstein is good. He’s one of the real pioneers in this multi-venue seminar facilitation caper. But the first round of the course clashes with the ACE e-learning showcase. “Following on from Jonathan Finkelstein’s highly successful visit to Australia in 2008 GippsTAFE is pleased to announce in collaboration Read More …

digital literacies ..book arrives

Michael ChalkLeave a commentadult literacy, professional development, research

Very exciting news for me: a book landed on my doorstep. “Digital Literacies” edited by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel. Lynne and Sarah from Valbec’s “Fine Print” very kindly asked me to review it. The introduction sets out their agenda: Colin and Michele were looking for writers who would expound upon the notion of digital literacies as social practice, because: there is a huge diversity of understandings of “digital literacy”, which has an impact on policy around digital literacy; socio-cultural perspectives on “literacy as practice” are strong and useful, in Read More …

Workshop at Converge (Can You Hear Us?)

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

Reflections on the session for Can You Hear Us? .. at the Converge08 e-learning conference (5Dec). The workshop went reasonably well. Really interesting people in the room, and many of the people there had used some kind of audio technologies .. including Skype, language laboratory setup, Wimba voice boards. i came up with a kind of jigsaw / find your partner activity, that i think went well and was fun. (Each person opens a wiki page with instructions for what to do. Eg some people have to wink .. and Read More …

"ease" of Screencasting part ii

Michael ChalkLeave a commentclassroom, e-learning, professional development, technology

Well .. Lisa continued her brave and valiant exploration of screencasting in the MYOB classroom, as part of the Can You Hear Us? project. And it’s still not as straightforward as we’d like it to be. We discovered a few more things about this program known as Jing. We already knew that the application would not run without a login. Now we know it’s a challenge to log yourself off the system .. for example when you’re on a public computer. Lisa’s had a go at recording the in-class on-screen Read More …