LearnShifting

 I went in to approve a new member to our facebook site and of course Pamela had beaten me to it... but I did quickly read a post that contained something that you might be doing already... Google Jockeying. There is a "how to" paper on the seven things you need to know about Google Jockeying,

But if you haven't got time to read that paper, Google Jockeying is simply where one person or a class googles the terms and topics being discussed in class and optionally displays them real time on a whiteboard as the topics are discussed. I like this because the students can ask about the terms, another student can google and the whole group can head down a serendipitous path learning about the topic of the day... 

...or maybe learning about something else. It is easy, it is collaborative and it is what a lot of knowledge workera use part of his or her day for in the working world.

Of course it can be teacher directed as well.

With my "Safety Sam" hat on, it might be worthwhile thinking about the terms you google in the class where it is being displayed up on your interactive whiteboard. The other day I googled "Honey Ant Readers" and one of the items returned was Honeypot... and I can tell you that it had nothing to do with Winnie the Pooh.

So there you go - Google Jockeying! I wonder what colour silks I will wear today?

This entry was posted on November 10, 2011 at 7:55 AM and has received 103 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Today is the day we celebrate World Teachers Day.

It wasn't until I started working in education and my own child attended school did I realise the importance of schools in community. Police stations deal with many events in community that are not joyous or filled with learning (although I am sure some hard lessons are learnt by folks in that environment). Hospitals and clinics treat the sick and injured, saving and giving life but even there people are exposed to a mix of pain and suffering. An exception is greeting your newborn child or seeing someone cured.

In school there are challenges to  be sure, but we are teaching, nurturing, guiding and trying to prepare children to be the best that they can be with a value set that makes them a citizen of the planet. So today we celebrate those people who do that job of helping mum and dad guide their child along a path of learning and maybe more importantly understanding the learning.

Today is also Bill Gate's birthday, a person who like Steve Jobs has had a profound affect on the residents of this planet.

Today also marks the day that I have been using computers for longer than I have not used a computer.

Today I also have a birthday and turning 50 is always a time for a little reflection.

Last night I compiled my first iPad application and transferred it from the Mac to the iPad. It is a shocker of an app, it doesn't really do much and half the buttons didn't work, however I don't mind because at 49 and 364 days of age, I was able to do it by myself.

So thanks to a combination of Mr Gates and Mr Jobs - my 25 year involvement with computers at a professional level is something to celebrate because like the very children we are trying to inspire, mentor and teach it is self satisfying to feel that at 50 I still have the urge to bash away at something new until I know how to do it and be excited by it.

Today is also Hari Sumpah Pemuda or national youth oath day in Indonesia and it is also Bandanna Day where you can purchase a bandanna to help  youth cancer patients.

So I apologise for a self indulgent post, but hopefully the message of life long learning comes through loud and clear.... on this rather special day for me and a few others.

Now to get those two pesky buttons working!

This entry was posted on October 28, 2011 at 5:15 PM and has received 121 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

We are currently holding discussions across various agencies about learning management systems and delivery of training. I will be providing a list of solutions here that are probably a best bet. Before I do that, let's look again at the problem we are trying to solve or the efficiencies we are trying to achieve.

Common forms of training like orientation, financial procedures, health and safety are delivered face to face, sometimes involving travel and often repeated. These forms of training are good candidates for conversion to eLearning.

Additionally, many of these courses are very similar in nature and content across agencies is also very similar which means that if we can gather a common set of technologies and skills, agencies will be in a situation to share courses and content for repurposing without having to build from the ground up.

We can divide the learning requirements into training and support.

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This entry was posted on October 21, 2011 at 1:58 PM and has received 233 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

 When we think about teaching something, we will normally look, from a formal sense at the outcomes required and then apply a treatment or method of delivery that will hopefully engage the intended audience. Some may call that contextualisation if they have a VET background.

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This entry was posted on June 22, 2011 at 8:36 AM and has received 320 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry. Download attachment.

Another great tip from Sally, a passionate teacher. The Northern Territory Library server has provided an online tutoring system for free for students. It is available 3 - 8 pm, Monday to Friday and you can go there online by visiting https://connect.yourtutor.com.au/default.aspx?GUID=ac00ff9c-bd60-46e3-9458-bb3969c73abe. There is a short explanatory video which will explain the service available at http://yourtutor.com.au/walkthrough/library/yourtutor.htm. Even though in the video it suggests that you need to enter your library card number, I didn't have to when I tried it yesterday.

So how good is that? You pick the subject, year level and your student, son or daughter gets a second way of explaining things which might resonate a little more with the child or even the novelty of having a teacher online might push them further.

This made me think of using our own extensive video conferencing solutions to deliver a breakfast session once a week using Adobe Connect or OCS. I would pick one of the 23 items I want to teach my son and present a 15 minute starter presentation and take any questions for the next 15 minutes. The time I am proposing is 6:30am to 7:00 for those wanting to view from home (you'll need ADSL 2 and live close enough to school not to miss the first bell), or 7:15 -7:45am. This would be once a week on the least maddest day of the week. Let me know if you think this is worthwhile and the topics are the ones I posted in this previous post

This entry was posted on April 13, 2011 at 5:54 AM and has received 417 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

 Australia Day this year was great! I got to take my sister in law Tina and one of her three daughters Cecilia for a flight in my ultralight (next time for Bianka and Ashley when they are a little taller) and then after that we went to the Australia Day celebrations hosted by Gerry Woods, the local member for the area who has been described as a chicken farmer with enough power in our local parliament to turn a rooster into a feather duster.

The kids got to play cricket, run around, go for a ride on a classic fire engine, have a hot dog, a cool drink and fell asleep minutes after we had left the event for home.

In between the trip to the airfield and the Australia Day event I had the radio on in the car and came in part way through a speech being made by the unmistakeable voice of President Obama.

Those who know me will know that I have about as much interest in politics as a vegetarian in a butcher's shop, however I will not shun any valuable offerings that they have. In this case it was Obama's inspirational speech to congress that had me listening to it and reflecting on how I could map some of the talking points to our own situation here in Australia and in the Northern Territory. He spoke of the economic situation, how Americans had fallen behind, how education and health along with infrastructure and unemployment were big issues... and then he went on to describe how it was going to be fixed.

America has been hit hard by the recession. A friend of mine who just returned from the US said that 350k houses in Las Vegas now sell for less than 150k. That must be heartbreaking to find that your house is worth far less than the value of the mortgage you have... and then you lose your job.

Out of this grim set of circumstances, Obama crafted a speech which genuinely gave hope.

Why am I writing about this in an eLearning blog? Four reasons.

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This entry was posted on January 30, 2011 at 9:30 AM and has received 253 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

In my previous post I mentioned that eBooks can be published to a variety of platforms and for distribution purposes, the more devices that can read your books the better. An organisation that prepares and distributes your eBooks to channels like Amazon and ITunes store for free is Smashwords. Using their Microsoft Word template (actually a document I edited from one of their books) and AFTER reading and understanding the free how to guide on how to publish on Smashwords.com.

As I am writing this, I hope that smashwords is quietly working in the background converting my small two page book into an eBook. Don't forget that you will need to create a book cover. With the template above, you get a free Mark Christie chilli recipe thrown in - my TLC sauce.

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This entry was posted on August 6, 2010 at 6:35 AM and has received 247 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

My eLearning colleague from Health sent me a link that I really need to share. At Health they are evaluating some different authoring products and between our group in Education who use Presenter and Captivate and Health who are using Articulate and Lectora, we have some of the more popular tools covered.

The link sent through was an eLearning course about building eLearning. It even comes with a small pdf that is worth keeping just a shortcut away... like this

http://www.articulate.com/community/showcase/Avoid-Death-by-Elearning/data/downloads/elearninghandout.pdf

The presentation can be viewed here and is a real credit to the creators, the authoring tool and also Trish who contributed by sharing. Please look at it and thank you Trish.

http://www.articulate.com/community/showcase/Avoid-Death-by-Elearning/player.html

There are more examples of eLearning created for an online showcase of Articulate content here...

http://www.articulate.com/community/showcase/

...and although this is included in the presentation, another link for the eLearning locusts :-)

http://beyondbulletpoints.com/

This entry was posted on July 7, 2010 at 12:06 PM and has received 209 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

A good friend of mine recently had problems with the Lesson Activity block in Moodle. I hadn't used it before and reviewed content from Moodle.org and even dialled a friend (our partners from NetSpot who manage our Moodle installation).

http://70.86.170.226/en/Adding/editing_a_lesson (information on the Lesson Activity)

I was excited by the prospect of being able to import PowerPoint slides as we can with other authoring tools like Adobe Presenter, Camtasia and Adobe Captivate.

Alas... disappointment.

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This entry was posted on May 4, 2010 at 4:42 PM and has received 640 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

There are a lot of tools we can use to create online learning. Everything from MS Word through to Articulate's range of products. What I have at the following link is a ranking of tools by satisfaction. http://elearningtech.pbworks.com/ToolSatisfaction These charts group tools into authoring, rapid elearning and simulation and include another chart of how many people responded, suggesting usage rates for the tool.

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This entry was posted on April 13, 2010 at 10:56 PM and has received 256 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.