Jay\’s Mutterings

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last night I went onto QUT virtual to see if I could get to the readings for my second subject, (eventually I will learn their codes and names)
I managed to link to the readings and saved some so that I could print out and read in a cooler part of the house. By the time I saved those, read my emails etc I was feeling really tired and couldn’t keep my eyes open. I think it was the heat as yesterday was really hot, around 37 degrees and with all the stress over the bushfires etc in Victoria where my family are and watching the news and bauling my eyes out because of the tragic deaths of so many people in Victoria I was not up to reading. So I have better intentions tonight. Because of the heat I am not going linedancing tonight and so I will have an early night to get into the readings. I hope to go into Cyberlearnings and check out the wiki and blog etc before I go home because my internet connection at home is really slow. So less blogging and more surfing QUT Virtual

Despite my best intentions yesterday things didn’t go to plan. I went scrapbooking in the morning and left early so I could come home and get some study done. By the time I got home it was quite hot so I jumped in the pool to cool off and then turned on my computer and made myself a cup of coffee. I was just about to look at Animoto, suggested in class as it can create avetars etc, Kristen and Carine came in. They were just having lunch. They were supposed to be canoeing but it was too hot so they came a calling. I still had my phone on silent from the Orientation sessions so I didn’t hear their calls on my phone. They even tried to skype me but I wasn’t at my computer when they were trying.
So I talked for a while and Kristen wanted to play games or start a jigsaw. I asked how long they were staying and they said till tomorrow morning as they were canoeing at Lowood Sunday.
I told them that I was going on a very early motorcycle ride and was leaving home around 4:30am. No problems so I really didn’t get a chance to do any study.

This morning I woke up around 4:00 and quickly got dressed, had a hot lemon drink and 1 piece of toast then jumped on my bike. It was quite dark so I had to take a torch to see where my bike was etc. then the headlight doesn’t really stay on until you are doing around 10mph which is really too fast to negotiate the muddy and bumpy driveway. Normally my light is fine when I come home at dark for most of the trip down the drive but it wasn’t working all that well this morning. I managed to get up the drive and then on the road it was fine. I was expecting around 40 bikes but when I got to the service station there were around 160 bikes and 200 people. It was amazing. We all left at 5:00am and headed through Walloon to Aratula then across to Mt Alford and Rathdowney. At one stage I could see no bikes from Maroon dam to Rathdowney. When I arrived at Rathdowney most of the pack were parked and finally the last bunch came in as I was in the queue for the loo.

After a short stop we then headed to Beaudesert then across to the Cunningham highway then Roadvale, Rosevale, Harrisville then Warril View, Rosewood and finally to Laidley Cultural centre where we were given a goodies bag with a T-Shirt, water bottle, cap and keyring. we then lined up for breakfast. A welcome sight and plenty of food despite our fears as they were way more bikes and people turned up than was originally anticipated.

After breakfast and the fundraising auction, raffles etc., of which I won a Spyder pack which consisted of a cap, a polo shirt and a keyring holder. I headed off home.

Got back around 10:30 and I was really tired so I had a nap until my phone rang. It was Wendy and Tanya to say that Bethany has had her baby. 1:00am this morning. It was a boy Xander Samson. and all were well.
I was still a little sleepy but jumped into the pool and then when I was more awake I made a coffee and logged on to my computer.

I checked out Animoto and it wasn’t at all what I expected. It is a free service where you send in your pictures and they will put some music on to it and make a great slideshow to the music. That is all, nothing else. It is free if the movie is less than 30 seconds. otherwise you have to pay $3.00 per video made. No two movies are the same as you can get them to recreate the music etc and the photos are mixed up etc.

I then had a look at iSpring and downloaded my free copy to my external hard drive and my flashdisk. I was then going to start the program but I couldn’t find a powerpoint that has music and animation etc. ISpring will convert your powerpoint with music, voice, animation etc into a flash movie which is really what we want when we want to load powerpoints up into my.TAFE. I just didn’t have the energy to create a powerpoint with music and animation at this stage. I do have some at work so will wait till tomorrow.
Now I am going to tidy up my igoogle page and put in some links to QUT virtual and this blog from the one page.
That’s it for Sunday so far

Just thought I would put down some of the notes from the last couple of days as we had a 2 day orientation session at QUT
The Admin person that can sort out any problems that I have is Cian Rodgie phone 31383936

The library liaison person gave us a couple of links for msn if we need to contact her
qut_librian@hotmail.com (sometimes uses this one)
constancex90@hotmail.com (uses that more at home etc)
I can change my library profile and if I check the box to keep a history of what I have borrowed. This could be useful when referencing books or remembering what I have read etc. I will check it out a bit later.
Google Scholar is something I haven’t used but it can be found in my igoogle page under a blue menu called more>>
Google scholar is really good for referencing articles as well as EndNote. I think we have access to this at Bremer so it will be interesting to learn how to use this in more detail.

EDN610 Professional dialogues in education
two areas we are looking at. The first is looking at ourselves and what were the catylists for the changes in our lives and why we are doing what we are doing now.
Until you can lead you need to know how you got there. This topic is the first assignment. the lecture suggests that we don’t go too deep but some thoughts that came to me straight away were
change of schools
David’s influence
MLC
options - females/geology
maths - RMIT-Travel NZ
Computers family career, Richlands,

should try the personal style inventory by R Craig Hogan + David W Champagne

free software that converts Powerpoint to flash I-spring and it is free. Must tell Robyn as well.

One of the second semester units is EDM611 a research one.
We talked about Research is an organised and systematic way of finding answers to questions By organised we mean that research always has a definite sequence. Systematic means structured method, planned, focused. Finding answers means the reason for the research. Questions means the Central issues, provides focus and purpose. We will be looking at Research fallicies, ecological research where conclusions are made about individuals based on an analysis of group data. Also Exception fallacy where conclusions are made about a group based on exceptions or individual data.
Methods of acquiring knowledge.
Tenacity - based on superstition or habit
Intuition - based on a belief or faith
Authority - based on the strength of the source
Rationalism - based on logic and strength of reasoning
Empiricism - based on observation or experiment
Scientific - based on reality and repeatable proof
assignments in this subject can be uploaded rather than go through the Assignment minder (posting in )
CLN601 Cyberlearning
Weeks 1 - 3 general familiarisation of blackboard and using blogs and assignment upload. We also have to explore a new piece of software or technology, animoto (talking avetar - might be useful for me) or something like cloud computing.
We will be using a blog in blackboard and uploading our assignments into the blog. we will also be looking at a wiki to find out about each other and have discussions rather than the blackboard discussion board.
Assignments will be focued on “how does it work in a rpactical situation and How can I use this in my work”
we will also be doing some group work to develop a learning object this will be from week 3 - 9 This actually falls within the month that I am away in Tassie. Denise Morgan will alsob be away for those weeks as she is in New Zealand.

Digital Pedagogies
Michael, this was a litle disjointed and it didn’t help that a coupld of colleagues kept interjecting with trivial comments.
We will be looking at the policy that drives change within our organisations. things like enforcing blended learning with LMS’s etc.
There were other things that Micheal was talking about but I wasnt taking too many notes and unfortunately I have forgotten for the moment. Just as well this unit is in second semester so I can go over it again.

There were a few videos from Taylor Mali that would be good to do some more research on YouTube. He is a teacher with some powerful messages.

On creativity young kids “if they don’t know they will have a go. they are not frightened to make a mistake.

just attended two workshops today.
The first was on Audio, web and videoconferencing
Although I knew some information on videoconferencing and web conferencing there was some great ideas about interactivity and some extra things about audioconferencing that I wasn’t aware about.
The second, building a social web2 site was really good, I looked at webvibes and setting up a PBwiki. will add more as the session has closed

It is nearly a year since the last conference and what a blast that was, I am looking forward to this year’s conference.
There has certainly been some lively discussions on the ning site and some great videos already.
I am attempting to blog throughout the conference this time so I thought that I had better put some mutterings on my blog in readiness.
see you all there.

Are all learning communities dependant on ‘telepresence’ technologies?

What if your learning community is not from the remote corners of the globe?
What if they live 2 streets away from your college but don’t attend.
Can an asynchronous group of individuals be a learning community?

What do we mean by a Learning community?
One of the leaders and pioneers of online learning is Stephen Downs. Stephen works for the Institute for Information Technology, in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada and is one of the leaders for the Canadian National Research Council.

According to Stephen, there needs to be a number of factors present for learning communities to exist. 1

The most important factor is that the community must support improved learning, collaboration and discussion that expose people to new ideas and outlooks. The idea is that a group of people can create a more complete understanding than a single person working on their own.

A learning community can generate a sense of commitment to continue the learning process that doesn’t always follow when you are working individually.

If the members of the learning community come from a variety of backgrounds then the learning can be applied to a wider variety of situations and contexts.

There is not always just one member of the community providing the instruction. People can help each other. This is a good example of peer learning.

The community must be centered on some topic or activity. The on-going exchange that takes place develops a web of relationships between members and a sense of belonging to the community.

The content and communication must be integrated and members should feel that their contributions are appreciated. The communication and interaction are the primary objectives of the learning community therefore assisting members to develop their learning.

The learning community must have an educational orientation and needs to be structured with a pedagogical purpose.

Finally the learning community should have a sense of history that new members can build on and feel part of.

The Wikipedia is a classic example of a learning community that works collaboratively and supports discussion and higher learning.

The Wikipedia doesn’t just focus on one activity or topic but covers any topic the members wish to contribute to.

The aim was to provide a knowledge resource that was up-to-date, accurate to the level of its contributors and readily available to anyone with access to the Internet.

The Classroom
The type of collaboration that occurs in these communities is exactly the type of collaboration many teachers aim for within their classrooms. Teachers will focus on topics, subjects or activities and encourage discussion to assist students in the learning that can occur in Learning communities.

To quote the theme of the conference “These telepresence technologies have facilitated the emergence and rapid growth of learning communities whose members interact from remote corners of the globe.”

What do we mean by ‘telepresence?’According to the definition used to promote this conference Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present at a location other than their true location. This generally involves images of life-size participants with mirrored environments where participants feel as if they are in the same physical space.

Encyclopedia Britannica 2 describes Telepresence as

“A computer-generated environment which simulates reality by means of interactive devices that send and receive information and are worn as goggles, headsets, gloves, or body suits. The illusion of being in the created environment (telepresence) is accomplished by motion sensors that pick up the user’s movements and adjust his or her view accordingly, usually in real time.”

The Wikipedia 3 states that
Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance that they were present, or to have an effect, at a location other than their true location.

Telepresence refers to a user interacting with another live, real place, and is distinct from virtual presence, where the user is given the impression of being in a simulated environment. The main functional difference is the entity on the other end: a real environment in the case of telepresence, vs. a computer in the case of virtual reality.

The wikipedia gives a range of applications for these telepresence technologies such as the inspection of pipelines for example Alaskan oil pipeline, Hazardous occupations such as underwater exploration, theatre of War, aircraft simulation and remote surgery to name a few applications.

Video conferencing
Michael Venditte, Vice President of Engineering of Telanetix defines Telepresence as a human experience of being fully present at a live real world location remote from one’s own physical location. Someone experiencing video Telepresence would therefore be able to behave, and receive stimuli, as though part of a meeting at the remote site. The fore mentioned would result in interactive participation of group activities that will bring benefits to a wide range of users. Application examples could be sited within emergency management and security services, B&I, entertainment and education industries (Wikipedia 3)

Online Learning communities

It is interesting how Wikipedia defines an online learning community as a common place on the internet that addresses the learning needs of its members through proactive partnerships. Through social networking and technology, people work as a community to achieve a learning objective as defined by the educator. An online community is also where people can talk to each other via microphones and other related sources via the internet. 4

When Stephen was writing about learning communities he wasn’t always referring to on-line communities. He was talking about learning communities without a ‘telepresence’

As I mentioned before the Wikipedia itself is one of the best examples of a community that supports collaborative learning but it in fact, it was not set up to achieve a learning objective as defined by the educator. Although the creators still have an administrative and a limited controlling influence in what is developed in the community contributions are developed, edited and revised by the community as a whole.

The Wikipedia doesn’t require telepresence technologies to survive and thrive. Contributors and readers would not know each other at all but they still contribute.

One excellent example of a learning community is the Edna forum, made up of Flexible Learning leaders and other interested and practicing e-learning educators in both the TAFE and Private education arenas. It is only recently that the community has used web conferencing to present innovative e-learning practices to the wider community. Before that the community thrived on discussion boards and occasional seminars and conferences.

There are a lot of ‘learning communities’ that thrive without telepresence technologies. They thrive because there is a strong focus on learning about a topic or activity and the members have a wide variety of knowledge and are willing to share with other members. For example, the various software application learning communities such as Photoshop, Adobe applications – Captivate, DreamWeaver, etc. and the program developers all have learning communities that you can participate in if you are interested in that topic.

Computer games such as War craft have huge ‘learning communities’ that thrive without the telepresence technologies.

These online learning communities are no longer the domain of the computer geeks. Housewives are now competing with the rest of their families for spare computer time to spend time in online learning communities.

These communities use only discussion forums to promote their hobbies or interests. WeightWatchers, art appreciation, music, crafts, scrapbooking to name just a few.

Sue Kilpatrick, Margaret Barrett and Tammy Jones in the faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania put together a paper “Defining Learning Communities’ 5 and they stated that

Learning communities are usually divided into two categories. The first focuses on the human elements of communities where a group of either linked geographically, or by shared interest, collaborate and work in partnership to address their members’ learning needs

The second is focused on curricular topics as the means to developing deeper learning of pre-determined content.

It is this second category of learning communities that I will now focus on.
Teachers in classes have been encouraging deeper learning with their students long before a ‘telepresence’ was imagined and long before computers were invented. The problem of how to continue this ‘deeper learning’ in an on-line environment has required different strategies.

Any Time, Any Where, Any Pace
As a response to student needs, colleges, universities and other training providers moved to a more flexible environment and the motto was to learn “Any time, any where, any pace”. Materials and teaching strategies had to change; there had to be stand alone curricula that students could enroll, work through the materials, complete the assignments and pass the assessments with very little interaction with teachers except for explanations of materials covered.

In most cases it was extremely difficult to get a cohort of students together for discussions and collaborative learning at the same time.

The telepresence technologies have given back our ‘Classroom’ again. The telepresence has allowed students to work collaborative together again but instead of in the classroom it is now on the Internet or in a video conference room.

But it has come at a cost. For this style of delivery to be successful we have to adapt the motto of “Any time’, any Place any Pace. To ‘Such a time, Any where there is a computer or video conference room, Any pace - so long as you can keep up with the rest of the group.

So how can an asynchronous group of individuals be part of a learning community and still be able to learn Any time, Any place, Any pace?

Asynchronous learning communities
There are a number of tips for those embarking on the contrived ‘learning communities’ in education.

I have set up various models of learning communities with various cohorts of students over the years using discussion boards, videos, pictures, videostreaming sessions and occasional online chat meetings. I haven’t used videoconferencing or web conferencing.

Question and Answer model
The first model I used was the Question and Answer model. This was a very structured environment in which the student had a number of specific response tasks. I would post a question and expect all the students to post their responses to me. In most cases there was little to no interaction between myself and the students or between the students themselves. I would then post a summary of what was posted at the end of the week and then look at the individual students input at the end of the unit.

Plus 1 model
The second model I implemented was what I called the “Plus 1” model. This model had some limited interaction. Students were still required to respond to specific questions but they also had to provide at least one response to another student’s posting. I made it a priority to be more proactive in responding to each student’s responses. Many students still tended to only post the one obligatory response to one other student. Others tried to engage in more discussion with varying degrees of success.

One – many model
The third model I used was more dialogue intensive. This model is easier to implement if you have a number of students studying within similar timeframes but can still be effective with students studying the unit at different times.

To enable this model I had to clearly outline my expectations with each student.

The WIFM factor.
The students need to know “what’s in it for me” If I told them they are doing it to gain a greater understanding of the subject matter or that ‘deeper learning” then they wouldn’t participate. Deeper learning is not something visible; there is no way of measuring it until you get a student to reflect their experience at the end of the course, unit or program. and even then some students are still not aware of this ‘deeper learning’ until much later.

I sometimes received feedback from students that had gone onto University or other studies and they found that the skills they learnt in my learning community had helped them to analyse, debate, discuss and research more fully topics that they were studying.

Setting up the level of engagement
I needed to be up-front with just how much engagement was required for the expected grades. Because the units I was facilitated were competency based units then the tool I used was PLA

ADM502A Manage meetings is the unit of competency that I will to illustrate this model.

So that students became familiar with the discussion forum I used it as a teaching tool. I would upload a short video of a meeting. The students had to view the video and discuss particular issues. I was not looking for students to particularly to respond to other students responses at this stage, so in fact I was using the Q & A model.
After a couple of weeks I introduced the Plus 1 module. Students had to post a response and reply to at least one other students post.

After four to five weeks I discussed any issues the student may have had with the discussion board. What was easy, what was inhibiting to them and then I went over my expectations for the rest of the course.

Occasionally I was running the unit with only 1 or 2 students. This was more labour intensive on my behalf as I was posting “Student” responses as well as interacting intensively with each student. From the feedback and their reflections at the end of the course the students had similar experiences with the discussions as those that participated with a larger cohort of students.

It was important to set the parameters for discussion. I originally asked for around 5 postings each week. This was not quite as effective as students tended to either put all their postings on the first day or typically they would complete all their required posts on the last day, leaving no time for effective discussion to ensure between other students.

To ensure that there was some effective discussion going on I needed postings to be spread out throughout the week so I asked for a minimum of six postings to be spread out over 5 days. Students later provided feedback to say that they were able to get into a routine of logging onto the discussion board each day/night to post a response and in most cases there was more interaction because once they were on they didn’t just post one response but several.

Before we started with the “Video” discussions I used to post a “sticky note” that outlined various discussion “Etiquette” points.

Usually this was enough for most students but occasionally I had one or two that would forget so I sometimes posted another “sticky note” to remind them as we started into the more intensive discussion and as yet I have had no further issues.

I have certainly become more experienced with the initial discussion questions. The idea is to provide a good question or statement that covers a learning objective but allows students to talk about personal examples or references to other material other than the class materials. I would try to encourage the ‘real life’ examples as they often provided the best discussions.

It was not enough just to initiate the discussion I had to engage in the discussion. Initially I would guide the discussion and then always wind up that particular week’s discussion with a summary of points made. If there were some excellent postings then I would acknowledge those students.

Sometimes I would play the Devil’s advocate to stimulate the discussion but always I would then provide some follow-up to keep the discussion on a respectful keel.

Dealing with lurkers
The advantage of being the teacher I could easily see who was active and which students were lurking so every now and then I would pose a question to the particular student at the same time I found it invaluable to at least chose one or two students each week so it didn’t always look as if I was just picking on the lurkers.

Every 2 – 3 weeks I provided individual feedback to each student. The feedback focused on their discussion activities as well as their portfolio submissions.

Generally a student has between 12 – 14 weeks to complete this unit. It is a fairly intensive, interactive course and does wonders for your typing ability.

When I have a cohort of students studying the unit ‘on-campus’ then we have face to face meetings which I video. (with the student’s permission) Depending on how the meeting pans out I will edit various sections of the meeting and either use the short video clip for future discussions with different students. Sometimes I might just use segments of the audio and not the video footage as discussion points. These snippets are especially useful for the times when I only have very small numbers of students

If I have a group of Off-campus students I might run a couple of online chat sessions in the chat room on the LMS. This allows small groups of students to respond more effectively. Sometimes I rope in a colleague or two to come on line to fill in the numbers so the student/s doesn’t feel like they are the only ones.

The demographics of my students is generally anywhere from 5klm to 150klm radius of Ipswich and they vary in age from 17 – 55 years. There is a fairly even spread between males and females.

To make the forum a success
It has to be easy to use. So the orientation has to be thorough. It needs to be easy to post a reply, edit it either before or after it appears on the forum. To help students keep up with the postings I have encouraged them to set up email flags that indicate if others have made new postings or replied

If you have different forums for different topics they must be easy to find for students.

If possible encourage students to upload a photo or avatar as this helps students to visualise others that participate. Most students will post photo but some will only use avatars.

Emotive icons in a forum discussion are like the body language in a verbal conversation. Written text doesn’t always allow you to say exactly what you mean. To a reader it may sound abrupt, rude, condescending, authoritarian and often things can mean different things to other people.

The emotive icons can make the text real. If someone finds something funny then they use the various smiling icons. If they are surprised, shocked, confused, wink, wink, nudge nudge, sad, crying, roll your eyes then people can easily see where you are coming from.

They do create a much more relaxed atmosphere between students and the teacher. I have always had positive responses from students where we have been able to implement these emotive icons.

Once students are relaxed and have a sense of trust with the group then discussion is more forthcoming. We all encourage students to think collaboratively but we still in a majority of cases will only assess students individually.

Bibliography
1 Downs, Stephen Learning in Communities 4th March 2004
http://community.flexiblelearning.net.au/GlobalPerspectives/content/article_5249.htm

Stephen Downs Webpage Home page
http://www.downes.ca/me/index.htm

2 Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Telepresence
http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9382073

3Wikipedia online Telepresence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepresence

4 Wikipedia online Online learning communities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_learning_community

5 Kilpatrick, SI, Barrett, MS, Jones, TA, ‘Defining Learning Communities’, AARE 2003 Conference Papers: International Education Research Conference,
www.aare.edu.au/03pap/jon03441.pdf

All photos displayed are made available under the Creative Commons Licensing agreement.

Over the last 6 months I have gone back to blogging to keep track of my journey while I am learning and developing my skills using Adobe Captivate. I find it easy to have the blog in the background while I am working in Captivate and everynow and then I will add some comments in my blog about things I should remember, lessons learnt and a To-do list for the following week. I only have one day a week to work on this software so I read over last week’s blog to see what I was up to and what I had planned to complete that day. It has certainly helped me to remember quite a few techniques and idiocyncracies about the software that I might otherwise have forgotten.

I am finding lately that if I write things down on paper then I very quickly lose them and can never seem to find them again. The blog is always there and if I am prepared to take the time to read through my notes I can find the things I had forgotten. I am thinking that it probably is an age thing as well.

Now my biggest problem is remembering all my passwords and user names for all the different applications I am using.

Just thought I would list a few I am using at present, It may be interesting to look through later and compare.

Forums
VLM forum
Edna Groups
EMM
Captivate
Ning

I use
Del.icio.us
Google Reader
Flickr
Wikispaces (private, High school)
Podomatic
YouTube (at home only)

That’s all for the moment - TFL

As you can see it has been awhile since I set to and started to blog. I first came across blogging as part of the study requirement for the Diploma of eLearning with Tropical North Institute of TAFE. My facilitator was Alison Gotts. It was a very interesting and challenging course. How I managed to complete it, work full-time and cope with teenage kids doing year 11 + 12 I’ll never know but at least I did.
To me at that stage blogging was a bit of a chore. It was supposed to be a reflective journal of my studies but most of the time it was a space that I could vent my frustrations. Sound out ideas and generally yap on about nothing. Well at least when I look back on that blog now it seemed like I yapped on about nothing. Not sure I really got to the “Deep and meaningfuls”

Once I passed the course the blog languished as I could see it suiting no good purpose. I couldn’t for the life of me see what was so exciting about writing stuff when I was always so busy doing other things. Most of my day is spent either in front of a classroom, emailing my students, uploading materials onto our LMS and learning new software applications that would help me develop some eLearning content for my students. The last thing I wanted to do was then blog on a computer.