Vist to Outlook, Pakenham

Finally managed to connect up with Alison  from Outlook. She had arranged for the manager Di to be present and this was a good move as I could see she was solidly behind the project and also about extending the "e" in their organisation. They did not appear to have much idea about a project, however, after going through all the paperwork with them I was able to get them to think through what would be an achievable project.

Their two main client groups are seniors and clients with disabilities. The seniors do Intro and Next Step level computers including internet and email and the other group are divided into those with severe disabilities and those with higher order skills. The idea that came through from the conversation was that they would like a way for the seniors to communicate with each other outside of class time, a place for them (the centre) to post up links and other information and for them to share ideas. Of course a wiki was my immediate thought as it does all of those things easily and is relatively user-friendly.

The clients with disabilities (the higher level group) also do intro level computers and some are at the stage of wanting to communicate with each other during the class - but online. For instance, some kind of text messaging across the room would be exciting and engaging for them and may lead to communicating outside class time in the future. I also reminded Alison about my online session on Voki coming up and suggested she invite Alex (computer tutor)  to attend as vokis could be a great thing for the students with disabilities to have a go at as they are very engaging.

I felt that both of these mini projects were achieveable in the time-frame left to us particularly as the tutor for both groups was the same person - a young computer-savvy male with a lifetime of community development skills behind him as his mother was and still is a House Co-ordinator and has instilled in him a wonderful sense of community service and engagement. It appears Alex will probably pick up the wiki skills and the online chat very quickly and be enthusiastic about the ideas. He has already been approached and appeared to be open to it.

My homework is to find a safe online chat facility and Alison will set up a wikispaces account with the $60.00 PA single wiki option. She will get back to me with a date and time when she and Alex  will be available for wiki training and to discuss the project together. The timeline is for the wiki to be set up by the end of this year ready for new classes in Feb 2013. This will give the tutor time to introduce the idea of online communication gradually this year so they will all be primed and ready to start in 2013. I am happy that their project is small and achievable and I feel confident that it will definitely get off the ground.

Alison gave some good feedback about the online sessions - said they were really useful and will definitely attend as many as possible. She will also attend the PD day and Di hopes to get there for the afternoon sessions if possible.

Japara Visit

Lynne making sure Ros blogs before she leaves the building!

I spent some time with Ros from Japara this morning. I came away feeling very positive and excited about their project and it was great to see how organised and also excited about it Ros appeared as well.
 
The Project:
To build up an online community to link art students with disabilities  and other students and art lovers together to share, collaborate and support each other with folio development. The vehicle proposed is  a blog  - either a Wordpress or Blogger. The art teacher Lyn, teaches at Burrinja in Upwey as well as at Japara and is keen to connect the students from both centres online. She also wants to broaden it and invite other students, artists etc from anywhere to become a part of the community and share their art, experiences and expertise. Ros has already approached a similar art group in Canada to sound them out about the idea. Additionally, Ros would like the families of the students to be able to go online and view their child's work and comment on it. This would be beneficial for both student and family.

According to Ros, the art teacher is quite technology savvy and is keen on the idea. We set out a plan in steps, the first being to decide with Lyn  which blog she wanted to use, train her in its use, and get her to set it up. Ros felt that realistically, this might take until the Christmas holidays but that would mean the goal to start the student blog training and participation would be for the start of 2013 which is well-within the project time frame. I suggested that Lyn include the students in discussions about the blog, their ideas etc to keep them interested and excited and wanting to start in early 2013. It may be that she can start them earlier.

We also discussed ways the students might be able to use multimedia - eg film interviews with each other and post online and also audio interviews for those who feel shy about being filmed. We also addressed the issue of getting written permission from everyone involved  before putting either film or audio online.

I feel pretty satisfied with the session - Ros appears very excited and enthusiatic about the project and together we have set timeframes, dates, review dates etc. While I was there, I encouraged Ros to blog about the session and she had started this when I left. She had also not been able to access the dropbox folder from The elearning Showcase so I helped with this and shared a folder from my  dropbox account. She was really pleased with the result.

EMR online PD - Familiarize yourself with Elluminate

Our first online PD went well. Karen did a great job facilitating the session with little help from Lynne and I. Not quite sure why but I kept dropping out - very frustrating but it reconnected and off I went again. Fortunately our participants did not have this problem.

Participants

We had 8 participants!! We were delighted and they were so keen. They all had a go at using lots of the Elluminate tools and were all talking, drawing, chatting and writing. They were smiling, frowning and applauding. Their hands went up and down. They participated in Polls and Icebreakers. It was good to see.

The Session

Karen did a wonderful job facilitating - she involved the participants and timed things well. She gave them enough time to play increasing their confidence and answered all the questions.

I believe that they will be very confident to attend Elluminate sessions in the future.

New Project 2012-13 - off to a good start

Tuesday 18 September 2012

Our first group f2f meeting with the new group of participants went well. Good to see them all with heads down thoughtfully filling out their e-Leader Profile forms. I was amazed later when I read the forms at how much thought had gone into them. They will really help us with defining a project.

Jenny and Pete concentrating hard on their forms at the first group meeting

Monday 24 September 2012

My first meeting with Jenny Carson at Pines Learning. We filled at the small project form but, on reflection they (we) are trying to achieve a lot, so when I got home and typed the info into the small project form, I decided to have a go at the medium project form. I suspect that we really should be filling out the large project form!
I think that what I will do is divide it into achievable chunks: one for 2012 and one for 2013. Pity we got such a late start as it will be difficult to achieve a project between now and the end of the year. Will catch up with Jenny again to see what she thinks will be achievable this year.

Next Steps

Will email Pete at MDLC and see if we can catch up in the holidays. Will try to catch Celeste as well. Will email Sandy and Sarah at Avenue NH closer to the end of the holidays as they do not work through the holidays and I don't want the email to get lost. Will try to catch up with them in the first week back.

QR Codes

I read with interest on the moodle Leo's post about using QR codes and that they were self explanatory. Not to me sadly. Good thing I'm pretty ok with researching :) I then talked to Lynne about it. Of course Lynne was on it!!

We played for a bit with our phones and the different apps offered to read and make the code. The ones we did use weren't really that user friendly. I did, however, find a site that allows for 255 characters to enable a bit fuller text.

I played further and printed a few out. I happened to be chatting to a Cert III Children's Services tutor and showed her my new gadget. Lynne had introduced the idea at a meeting so she sort of knew what I was on about. I told her Lynne and I had talked about how the codes could be used. She thought it sounded like fun. It takes time for things to gel as a good idea. Maybe that's what is needed......a two pronged approach. 1. Introduce...........allow thinking time 2. Re-introduce.

The codes designed purely for linking to websites are a great thing for advertising. I went home with my newly found skill/gadget and there, on my coffee table, was a magazine my hubby & son love to read. There were QR codes EVERYWHERE! Of course I had to test them out. All the while my son is shaking his head at his mother's geekiness. I must say though, who did he ask to help him with his eBay purchased laptop??

I have now produced some helpful QR code to support information for the E-mentor Showcase.

And the learning continues...............

Karen's Leader Catch Up

I have been sadly lacking in the follow up department with my e-leaders but have been in contact with two of them. The third, I am hoping to ring today.

Orana Neighbourhood House

I arranged an early meeting with Leeann, Karin & Lisa so as not to impact too much on their day. Their ongoing use of their private label wiki has been encouraging. There have been issues over time on how to do certain things and not because Lisa, their admin person, doesn't have the skill. Wiki keeps changing! A method learned has to be relearned by me and then retaught to our eleaders. Good thing Lisa is a quick learner.

At the meeting we spoke about continuing with the project and there was the same concern that most orgs have."There is only the 3 of us...time is a huge factor". I am sure others have said to them that the role could be passed onto a tutor or other suitable person. This time it clicked. We discussed ways of utilising technology such as another wiki. They then informed me that they have gmail set up for their garden group and that they wanted some sort of calendar. Bing! Google calendar and docs to link in. The group had wanted to keep a record of their plantings and jobs to do so again, we could use the google doc system for them to share information. They suggested a computer teacher who may benefit from the use of technology and I also see her as being the internal 'go to' person in the long term.

Leeann felt inspired to apply for a grant for a laptop for the group to take outside with them to take notes etc. She was even so grateful for our chat, that while ringing Coonara for another reason, asked to speak to me to purely thank me. Very, very excited about her response :)

Waverley Adult Literacy Program (WALP)

Trish & I had been playing telephone ping pong for a few days and I finally got to speak to her.

She had been working with her photography students using a wiki. Their course work was there with instructions for an activity/assessment. The students had to send in a photo they had edited to a certain size. Trish gathered the photos and put them into a video using Windows DVD maker provided with the Windows 7 package.

Trish expressed how excited she was about uploading her movie. I viewed it and it's wonderful!!!

Trish is a quiet achiever and has been plugging away with the wiki. She would now like to learn how to make individual student pages for the students to upload their images. I will visit and teach her this.

Trish has been attending the online sessions regularly but without a microphone to speak. I will look at her set up when I get there.

Some great outcomes within a relatively short space of time considering Trish is very much a jack of all trades in a very busy centre.

Wavlink

Sadly Judy has gone home sick so I will catch her some other time. She is booked to attend the E-mentor showcase tomorrow so I am hoping she is well enough to attend.

State Wide PD 7 June 2012

I enjoyed our state wide PD.

iSpring Free
I covered ppt and iSpring Free - recording a narration to ppt and converting the presentation to a flash movie. Then uploading to wiki. This is something I do often to create extra learning resources for my learners.

Embedding Video
Karen showed us how to embed videos into a wiki. I had been doing this by downloading a video from YouTube then uploading the file. Karen showed us an easier way to use the code in the Video widget. As I had a video that was too big to upload to wiki I was thrilled and couldn't wait to try it - 2 minutes after the session finished I had embedded The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard to my Sustainability wiki. Great stuff - thanks, Karen

Uploading Audio
Lynne showed us how to upload audio to a wiki. This was also very timely for me as I am delivering Cert IV TAE units next semester and hope to use audio files as learning resources. I liked the way that Lynne did an application share to show us then reinforced the instructions with her ppt.

Reflection
I found the planning and preparation was painless - could have to do with the wonderful team I work with!! We each did our bit of the ppt and Lynne collated them. Thanks, Lynne.
Tech Room
I like the Tech room that Karen created, though we didn't need to use it, it is good to know that it is there. The idea is that Karen has created a breakout room where one of us can take any participant who is having troubles eg: with their audio. Hopefully the problem can be solved and the participant returns to the session without the other participants losing 10 to 15 minutes of the session while problems are sorted out.
My Feedback
Lynne had asked Debbie to give us constructive feedback on our presentation. Debbie missed my presentation and gave me later feedback after she watched the recording.
Debbie gave me very positive feedback:
"Christine, I just watched your presentation back and it was so well paced and so well explained that I dont actually have anything constructive to feedback to you."
She also told me that she has downloaded iSpring Free and completed a quick trial - she intends to use it in the future. One convert already!
Attendance
A bit disappointing. We had five participants, surprisingly only one from Eastern Region. We did receive some apologies. It was good to see Jen from Sandy Beach and Andrea from Robinvale (why do I feel that they travelled a long way to attend?). Unfortunately most of our participants did not have microphones but they participated well in the text chat and writing on the whiteboard.
Overview
I enjoyed the presentation - painless to produce, interesting to attend (I learnt new things or was reminded about things I have forgotten), great to see attendees from other regions. Good idea to get some feedback on our presentation - we can always improve!