LearnShifting

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.

Three things rolled up into one blog entry...

• IE 9.0 Release Candidate available
• Finding out how fast your connection is and what ports are being used
• Partners in Learning links to applications and solutions

This is a bit of a Microsoft Entry. I meant to write about this on Friday and things go out of control. Firstly I downloaded and installed the Internet Explorer Release Candidate 9.0. It is quite good and now we have a complete set of browsers that support the <video> tag and most of HTML5.

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This entry was posted on February 14, 2011 at 1:31 PM and has received 433 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Sometimes you want to try out a piece of software or obtain a white paper or gain access to some content stored on the web and in exchange for access to this content you are asked to enter your email address. In the cases where you know the company and are sure they will abide by their "no spamming" or "no passing on your email address" policy then by all means enter your email address. For years I have always entered my active email address and have paid the price by now probably appearing on every spam list sold around the world.

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This entry was posted on September 3, 2010 at 9:58 AM and has received 256 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I received a request from a teacher the other day who wanted to upskill in the area of information technology. "Where do you start?" She asked. Surrounded by people who strum keyboards and use applications like a conductor with their orchestra, creating documents here, extracting information there - it must be head spinning to look at that and also have to listen to people rabbiting on about web 2.0, wikis, blogs, facebooks, youtube and iThis and iThat.

It reminds me of when I purchased my first computer - and if you click on the player at the bottom of this entry there is a little audio story about what went wrong that fateful day.

Back on topic... What do you suggest to get someone started with something that is good, fast and cheap (free is even better)

We have courses on offer that provide a formal qualification and can be, in some cases studied externally, these courses are great, but they take time and depending on your budget are not that cheap - they are good value for money though.

So I dug through the kit bag and came up with two suggestions... We could come up with 20 suggestions and I hope you add some via the comments button at the bottom.

read on to find out what mine were...

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This entry was posted on August 10, 2010 at 12:00 AM and has received 304 views. There are currently 3 comments. Print this entry. Download attachment.

Someone indirectly reported that they were unable to access Adobe Connect using Firefox.

Our Standard Operating Environment promotes IE as the corporate standard with Firefox as a backup for use at home without needing to reset proxy settings

Upon trying Firefox, I encountered a problem as well. The usually cryptic and misleading message said...

-code-

JRun Servlet ErrorI

413 Header Length too Large

-/code-

As it turns out, this person was having the problem in IE not Firefox and with Coldfusion which also uses Jrun - so this problem stretches across applications and browsers.

The fix?

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This entry was posted on July 30, 2010 at 10:01 AM and has received 609 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

We use software to deliver learning. That software runs on computers over networks. The software we use includes video conferencing, authored lessons and integration with our learning management solution.

Somewhere in that mix of technology are students, teachers and course designers. What happens when it goes wrong? What happens when there are 40,000 students using computers and they need a computer and program to be working for their lesson which lasts 45 minutes?

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This entry was posted on May 27, 2010 at 9:58 AM and has received 384 views. There are currently 1 comments. Print this entry.

These are two buzzwords that emerged from a great piece by Timothy R. Clark and Conrad A. Gottfredson

titled Agile Learning: Thriving in the New Normal. 

They aren't new, but they resonated with me at a relevant time. The article contained triggers regarding a key aspect of education/training/learning in the K-12 environment in the Northern Territory - Teachers. To be more specific, T 'n' T or Teachers and Technology.

Apart from buzzwords, I am a sucker for lists. One of the lists contained in the article mentioned above is contained here (because the fact this will land in your email intray I need to entice you to click and read the article). High-agility organisations support learners at the following five moments of learning need:

 1. Learning how to do something new for the first time.

2. Learning more based on prior learning experience.

3. Learning at the moment when learners apply what they have learned in the context of workflow.

4. Learning when things change in order to adapt to new ways of doing things.

5. Learning when things go wrong in order to solve a problem. 

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This entry was posted on December 30, 2009 at 12:26 PM and has received 302 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry. Download attachment.

For those folks rolling out their own Adobe Connect solution, there is an easily customisable html portal solution that you can download and deploy on your own site. With minimal fuss you can configure, customise and deploy this set of pages with your own look and feel along with links to support material.

You can download the package of files for customisation from http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=extensionDetail&loc=en_us&extid=1698100 You will need to create a free Adobe ID which you will probably already have if you are a Connect User.

Our site is located at http://ourcourses.ntschools.net/connect

This entry was posted on December 15, 2009 at 10:19 AM and has received 366 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.