We had our online session to try to come to grips with how the rest of the online sessions for the year should be scheduled. I surprised myself by realising that we only had 3 sessions left! Important that we make them count I think. A few technical hitches with lots of echo in our ears and Claire had some trouble getting her audio organised. Finally hit on the right combination so hopefully that will work for the rest of our sessions.
I really like our spirited discussions and free sharing of ideas and ability to critique each others' suggestions in a helpful way. I think we have a great team! We got the format for our next session down - mostly built around wikis again as nearly all of our eLeaders appear to want to make wikis. We will showcase a couple of Class wikis to give people ideas. I think this is important so that those who are creating wikis for their organisation can see what else they can do for their organisation and hopefully spark off a few ideas of their own. Quite a few of the eleaders have expressed an interest in learning about the Doodle so that will be on the agenda for the meeting after next. Christine has volunteered to demonstrate that during the session. Will leave the final session blank so that eLeaders can put in their own suggestions of what they want to explore.
Christine has suggested that the Nth Ringwood people might be up for using the poll this session. I suggested that we make all of the participants facilitators so they can see what the pollsters are doing and so learn through the process.
Even though Wednesdays seemed to be the most popular day selected by people to have the sessions, as only 5 out of all the eLeaders have filled it out and other people have indicated that Wednesday is not a good day for them, we therefore decided to change days for each of the sessions otherwise some people would not be able to attend any. Hopefully I will be able to send out the schedule today to give eleaders plenty of time to put it into their diaries.
I visited Rowville Neighbourhood House yesterday. They are keen to have a wiki website . I suggested that they start with that and include a tutor in our sessions so that he/she gets an idea of what wikis can do and to see any other tools we showcased during the project. They agreed that step 1 would be the website wiki and step 2 would be to set up a tutor resource page with tutor-only login. They expressed reservations about tutors participating as they were sessional and I pointed out that most tutors anywhere were sessional and that to get them to use the wiki there has to be a "what's in it for me". That would be that they do not have to make a trip to the centre to pick up paperwork etc - they can access it from home. They can also communicate with other tutors and staff via the wiki and this may help them not to feel isolated. They agreed that this might be the carrot that might lure them to participate.
Their ESL tutor will also be working at Mulgrave so I said that might be an advantage as I was hoping that Mulgrave might do something with ESL students as their project. I am visiting Mulgrave this afternoon so will wait on developments there.
Thinking about what and how we will showcase our projects at Converge. Probably a powerpoint of some sort - if I get time maybe I can create some sort of digital story - but that is probably a pipe-dream at this stage! OELP will have their wiki ready to showcase - at least in fledgling stage to demonstrate something. I am also hoping that Rowille will be up within a week or two and maybe Japara. Hopefully some of the other eleaders will have something to show as well.
Its now late afternoon and I can report on my trip to Mulgrave Neighbourhood House. I knew it might be a bit of a challenge, owever, the challenge came from the ESL teacher rather than the person I was expecting it from! The Co-ordinator just wanted a facebook page set up. I suggested that this could be done as part of the project but that it would really benefit the learners and the house if a small project could be done with the ESL students. MH, once she had worked out that she would get FB as part of the package came on board and was very supportive of the idea of using some form of audio with the ESL students. She even spoke about it being a direct result and lead on from the CALD learner project that was done there in conjunction with AMES and Coonara without me having to say that was why I thought it was a good idea! The ESL teacher was very hesitant and did not really want her students doing anything online. She was very fearful of disclosing anything about them in a public forum. I suggested that she could ask for volunteers and that as they were adults, they could say whether they wantde to be part of the project or not.
In the end, I introduced the topic of podcasts as something she could do for them - individualising podcasts that they could take home. Didnt go anywhere near saying that they could be uploaded onto a wiki - they are not ready for that. I just suggested they could be put on CD, memory stick or ipod and she seemed amenable to that idea. That is what it has ended up with - MH will contact a couple of other ESL tutors and ask if they would like to be involved and will set up another meeting with me and them to go over the plan and see if they can add any new ideas. I left it there but was happy that MH was very open to the idea and that she would support it. I am imagining that it will be very slow to get off the ground but will plod on with them. At least they are agreeable to being involved!
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