When I talk about creating I think of the various media formats of sound, video, photos, artwork, animation and words. After many years of doing this work I still think that animation is the most time consuming and photography is the least time consuming providing the subject is available.
Before we start creating anything, we have to know why we are doing it, who we are doing it for and most importantly what we are doing.
So what is my “what?” I have been invited to present a workshop in Angurugu, 650 kilometres East of Darwin and the purpose of that workshop is to present ways in which teachers and students can get the most out of the laptops and computers that students now have access to through various government initiatives. The “who” in this case are about 85 teachers from the Angurugu region and by extension this training is relevant to another 2900 teachers across the Territory.
The “why“ is particularly important. Why I am preparing this as a series of blog posts is to provide a structured narrative as a lasting (but editable) record of what I will deliver. My customers (teachers, principals and students) will be able to look at what is written and provide feedback, letting me know if they believe it will work for them.
The “how” which I purposely didn’t mention above is what some refer to as the “treatment” and for the purpose of consistency I will call it the “Concept”, our ninth “C” – Here I am writing a series of blog entries and in Angurugu we will be running a challenge based workshop where teachers will be grouped, presented with either a mystery box challenge or invention challenge and mini-masterclasses will be run prior to the challenge beginning. At the end of the event, the groups will present their creations back to the gathering.
By structuring these blog entries around the workflow process of “Creating, Collecting, Contextualising, Compiling, Consuming, Collaborating and Confirming eLearning Content into Containers” I will be able to document the “ingredients” and implements a teacher may use along the way to engaging with students through the eDevices in our schools. The output here will be different to what occurs in Angurugu, but the structured execution of the program will be based on the elements of the eight or nine “C”s.
There is one important distinction I need to make here and I call it my plumbing and pedagogy example, but more accurately it is a tools in teaching distinction. What I cover is the how to use technology tools rather than how to teach using the tools. A teacher is a professional exponent of their ability to transfer knowledge. Their decision to use some of the technology tools provides me with a chance to teach them how to use the tools, but not to try and teach them how to teach using the tools. Said another way, I focus on the plumbing, not the pedagogy.
So although we may be involved in a social constructivist workshop learning about technology tools in Angurugu, and at the moment you are engaged in reading or listening to a piece from an Informal Learning Network, my focus is on getting my message across about the tools, not how to teach using them.
In the next entry we really look at the creation tools.
