Transitioning between IP to free up content

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Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)

Tags: mediawiki

Intro to Camstudio and screencasts

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Formats available: Microsoft Video (.avi), Flash Video (.flv)

Tags: camstudio, screencast, howto

Moodle + Hot potatoes makes creating a summative student quiz a breeze

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Check it out. Moodle is easy, I have had many teachers exclaim 'This is just what I want' when I present the tools and this assessment technique.

Formats available: Microsoft Video (.avi), Flash Video (.flv)

Power-law distribution and openess - Be brave take the jump.

Have you heard of the 'Power-law distribution' law, it asserts that 80 percent of productivity within an organisation or company will be done by 20 percent of employees, or in other edu-blogging terms 80 percent of edu-blogging within an educational organisation will be done by 20 percent of edu-bloggers and that's being incredibly optimistic (80% itself could be quite low output!) Hold that thought.

‘You’ve got to be crazy if you want to start a wiki operation from scratch you have got to have a sustainable community’
Wayne Macintosh Wikieducator

As before with the LMS software, many educational organisations look to invest time and money into in-house systemisation of technology with the vision of staff collaborating and sharing information and creating learning resources with colleagues within the organisation, for example through an in-house installation of a technology such as media-wiki or wordpress blog on their own server.

Fair enough, but is this sustainable? Probably not based on ‘Power-law distribution’.

Why bother with in house software installs? Some valid reasons to...

• Enable closed environments for privacy
• Provide storage space
• Enable protection of IP
• Protection of staff from the open internet
• Market courses and service
• Aggregate staff as part of a learning group
• Have control off the content and who views it...

As Wayne Mactintosh of Wiki educator alludes in his above statement the reality is it's hard work, costly and difficult to achieve sustainable community interactions which continually motivate contributions from members.

No matter what technological solution the organisation invests it's time and money into as per the 'Power-law distribution' law they will still be reliant on a limited pool of enthusiastic innovators to develop skills and expertise and share with the rest of the organisation.

Whereby 20% of staff (If your're lucky) will do the edu-blogging work in addition they will probably want to forgoe the carefully executed in house system and do their own thing using whatever technology they choose to keep up with the ever changing e-learning market. This is a good thing for organisation innovation.

So where is the sustainable profitiable and quality educational solution to the 80:20 problem for the progressive education organisation looking to implement edu-blogging and networked learning systems for their staff?

Support for any of the open learning mediawiki systems such as http://wikipedia.org/ that have an active community base, contributors and flow of vistors look set to provide a sustainable and business solution for organisation's that recognise the benefits of taking the road less travelled and systematically going open.

For example, it's early days but the business oppportunities are out there for the early adopters of http://wikieducator.org/ which has:

• 4000 visitors per week and rising (Sep 07)- great organisational branding and marketing opportunities
• An active communtiy of techies fruther developing the wiki educator platform for free
• Free hosting of content
• Anything you add to wiki educator you actually own the copyright, wiki educator doesn’t own the copyright you still retain the copyright and your intellectual property rights
• Uses Creative Commons Share Alike licence. Which is a good thing because you get to leverage outside contributors innovations within your organisation saving time and money...

In terms of cost effectivess and achieving business objectives systemisating the use of open teaching and learning technologies such as wikipedia and wikieducator for accessing, marketing and developing your organisation's educational resources under creative commons is a sound business and educational decision.

'Its all about numbers'
Leigh Blackall - 'Otago Polytechic

I recommend listening to this recording of Wayne Macintosh's visit to Otago Polytechnic to discuss all things wiki educator for educational organisations.

Wikieducator and Otago Polytechnic

Currently the Illawarra Institute and Otago Polytechic is looking to implement a trial project with the Tourism and Hospitality Faculty to implement a business and education model using wiki educator (More to follow).

So why bother with time an money on house systems? Obviousily closed in house systems make sense in terms of protecting senstive information, managing aspects of child protection, managing assessment results, creating group learning environments...

From a business point of view will organisations with in house investment in edu-blogging technology enable co-creation co-sharing and co-collaboration on educational resource work in a cost effective profitable AND sustainable manner over a number of years? Maybe if the community members personal relationships are good... but probably not.

If the the vision is for sustainable collaboration and sharing of information within an organisation the future is open and networked using tools such as wiki educator and wikipedia and creative commons licencing networking with the other 20% of innovative edu bloggers from other organisations. Be brave and take the jump to openess.

Create digital stories using Photostory 3

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Rino's Pastry Video

Fotoflexer - Easily edit your photos for free and online

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People Learning Management: Learnscope 07 postcard

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A 'People Learning Management System' utilises a variety of Web 2.0 communication tools and real life meet-ups to aggregate people to come together around a particular subject, task, problem. A PLMS emphasizes the idea of the person as a learning object rather than the traditional LMS model where of the value in passive consumption of learning object resources.

• This active ad hoc hands on communicative approach to professional development and learning in general requires top down management and teaching that enables rather than controls the activities of staff and students.


• A structured framework of scheduled AND informal activities mapped against the curriulum and individuals learing plans. This to form a student's and teacher's e-portfolio of their learning within the organization.


• A People learning system is flexible and has both chaotic and organized communication using a flexible variety of ad-hoc tools agreeable to the community of individuals and their learning plans. The common denominator for ALL activity is the curriculum around which activity sheets can be developed for other community member to follow.

The screencast video is a prototype example of how we âre using an ad-hoc variety of Web 2.0 tools and processes to achieve this purpose based on some of the ideas from the Learnscope 2006 teacherConnect project see below.

Other underpinning links:

• Innovation in the Professional Development Process


• The importance of activity sheets (The glue that binds the network?)


• I am a Learning Object - Empowerment through each other


• Networked learning mind map

Summary

• Focus on authoring activity sheets within organisations.


• This is where the valuable IP and services are to be offered. Focus on linking to and authoring resources using free online tools on the open internet.


• This is where the valuable cost savings, quality, concurrency and professional connections with others and business will be made.
  
  

Faculty Professional Development issues and solutions - THED07

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Tourism and Hospitality http://thed.wikispaces.com

Google Calendar in Education

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http://google.com/calendar

Management , wikis and activity sheets

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Wikieducator activity sheets against curriculum - Tour Guiding - WikiEducator

Excellent example of mapping activty sheets against the curriculum from Leigh Blackall. Actiivty sheets can then be utilised in a web 2.0 community blog, wiki book, CD.... e.g. http://tourism1.wordpress.com/, http://thed.wikispaces.com/

I am a Learning Object - Empowerment through each other

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Conversation with Vicki Marchant around the concept of the person as a learning object and the systemisation of learning, top down management that enables rather than controls, a bottom up 'People Learning Management System' that aggregates people to come together around a particular subject, task, problem...when needed.
I'm lucky enough to be going to the ILTA Edtech conference in Dublin! this week. Looking forward to Don Dron's discussion on Designing the undesignable around the systemisation of social software where he'll be presenting on:
'A range of technical, procedural and pedagogical ways of influencing, rather than designing, learning ecologies are provided, so that the tensions between top-down and the bottom-up control may be resolved and social software can play a significant and integral role in e-learning.'
Hopefully this will provide me with a better understanding of how to address the issues, the cultural shift which is very much needed to make bottom up enabling culture work...

Madness -The price of property in Sydney - April 2007

The Sydney Morning Herald Magazine cover story was 'What does 400K get you within Sydney'. 400k+ gets you a two bedroom apartment, if you're lucky, that's 400k + for a two bedroom apartment! Ridiculous!

Here's a great of spitting image political satire from 1989, the time of the last major UK housing correction.



This guy talks about the factors leading to a property crash, very informative. :-( Aspirational home ownership for first home buyers has never felt so frustrating.

The importance of activity sheets (The glue that binds the network?)

I'm appreciatively following the implementation of Learnscope's new wiki and Leigh Blackall's participation in the Tectonic Shift Think Tank in Vancouver.

Am also looking forward to the education.au seminar 'Challenging how knowledge is created' with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia.
It seems Media wiki is set to become an embedded piece of software across the education sector (Fingers crossed).

MediaWiki (free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia) is a great solution as a central node for connecting educators within an education organisation.

I've worked previousily on using wikispaces to connect teachers as part of a central organistion node for networking ; The idea: link a profile to a network to a network , no boundaries...this had some degree of success, but little uptake and sustainability... now consider the importance of activity sheets for this aim.

I think media wiki has potential at a basic level as the central node for knowledge sharing; we're now looking to raise the value and advocate the publishing of activity sheets within an organisation node.

In particular through teachers using media wiki for authoring Activity sheets that achieve stated outcomes and link to resources from the open internet, a la, google docs , wikipedia, wiki university, wiki, educator, wikispaces…using any number of tools and resource freely available on the internet.

The reasoning:

• Activity sheets provide the context and direction and importantly the process to participate in activities, link to resources and free media utilising a variety of media and publishing tools.
• Activity sheets can be mapped against learning outcomes and performance criteria and recontextualised by other teachers
• The language of education is about activity sheets, session plans and curriculum.
• The activity sheet does not have to be about a technology, it can be about any process, any learning outcome with or without technology a la the capability life based learning approach, (the media wiki being the central node and SIMPLE publishing tool for all, I think we have to divorce the value is in the utilisation of technology, it’s only means to an end).
• Provide simple standard activity sheet and session plan guidelines for your organisation staff. These can be utilised within hands on professional development for groups and individuals.
• Ideally all organisations publishing activity sheets should be advocated as policy on a central node with a searchable backend that links to curriculum documentation. Curriculum being a common denominator to connect all organisation staff.

Hands on activities are the glue that binds curriculum, people and their, application of technology and capability development processes. People using any number of tools, all linked to and authored from a central node, in this case mediawiki.

Innovations can occur as others continualy refine and improve the processes outlined within activity sheets on a central wiki.

Focus on authoring activity sheets within organisations. This is where the valuable IP and services are to be offered.

Focus on linking to and authoring resources using free online tools on the open internet.

This is where the valuable cost savings, quality, concurrency and professional connections with others and business will be made.

Making mentoring work across the faculty

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Planning for Learnscope 07

ZOHO Creator - Online databases made easy

For those of you desire to create that database you've always needed but would rather not wrestle with Microsoft Access tables, queries, primary and foreign keys relationships, reports and sql queries, ole data objects... along comes another free Web 2.0 application,to make your working life that little bit better ZOHO Creator - http://creator.zoho.com/

Have just had a play, simply create the required fields and specifying the data types. ZOHO Creator also includes a great 'Upload file' field and nifty calendar field.

When you are ready ZOHO Creator creates the online form with its own url, this can be public or private by invite only.

In addition ZOHO Creator provides

• Easy to use search criteria based on your form data
  
• RSS Form feeds to track the data input
  
• Embeddable code to insert your form into your blog, wiki...

I really recommend this tool.

Alumini graduate with insight for students and teachers

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Popped in for a coffee and met Bianca a graduate from TAFE now employed, we got to talking about a teaching event management exercise I helped out on. Jeanie a teacher got her students interviewing and recording their learning using an audio recorder and digital camera. Bianca commented on how fun it was and that it was important that the teachers where keeping up.

As an educator it was great for me to actually meet a graduate now employed and in particular get positive feedback on what they experienced using technology in their learning. Now that Bianca's getting on with her working life, current students could potentially benefit from her insight, what is it actually like? Through communication using new connecting technologies such as blip.tv and blogger.com graduates like Bianca can give current students context and meaning, the prospect of actually getting paid work from those hard yards of studying and submitting assignments could perhaps be a motivating factor.

As an alumni of TAFE she plans to keep teachers in the loop on changes in industry that she may be dealing which can then feed back to current students. Even posting videos of what she is doing in work!!...

Establishing Alumini networks offers real potential for learning, video blogs being one off the tools graduates students and teachers can connect with as part of day to day life...a trend I'd like to see grow as part of VET education in general.

George Siemens - The role of management in facilitating change within a learning organisation

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I recently spoke to George Siemens a leading theorist on the implications of technology and societal trends on learning and knowledge and recent Key note speaker at both the education.au global conference and elearning06, sponsored by the TAFE NSW management association.

'…I think most educators do have the desire to be excellent instructors that’s why we got into this field in the first place some of us aren’t here because we’re hoping to get rich we have a genuine passionate commitment to students. It’s the roles of managers to create an environment where that natural desire that teachers have to deliver excellent level of instruction can be nurtured. That requires removing barriers it does require building skills and extending an instructor competence so they can do the things that they want to do. That’s why I refer to an ecology being created by management so that instructors can do what they want to do I am quite convinced if management plays a role of removing rather that becoming barriers then the people hired by the organisation in the first place will be will capable in achieving the objectives that are required…'

In this interview he asserts that changing the work habits of an individual is a secondary trait to changing the working ecology of an educational organisation. What are the barriers to change? – The many pressures on teachers? - What is the role of management in facilitating change? -How can management remove barriers and create a work ecology that encourages an emasse spirit of innovation and experimentation by teachers? Have a listen...

'S-How could you sell this idea to management to really allow teaches the time to get together and start having conversations about their pedagogy their ways of working and using new technologies?

G- That’s a good question I’m not sure if you can sell it to management. One of the point s that I’ve been making recently when I talk about learning and technologies and I’m talking at a higher education level is that it’s not the trends that are out there, its not the people like you that are agitating for change in an organisation, or people like me that go out and talk to others about making change, that’s not really where its going to happen. I think where it will happen is where an educator or administrator gets it and I’m afraid that the only way they are going to get it is when a student’s start walking with their feet let me give you an example…'

Photo source

Professional Development - The Usability and Empowerment Divide, Unconferences and the Role of Management

The Usability and Empowerment Divide is worrying in the context of the many thousands of teachers in organisations who may be currently being left behind in terms of the opportunities to develop skills and knowledge for today's knowledge economy.

Recently I was lucky enough to have attended a number of professional development events in New Zealand as part of the Future of Learning in a Networked World tour where the potentialities of unstructured professional group learning were revealed, that is the unstructured conversational - ad hoc tell me what I want to know - talk to me about what I'm interested in - nature of the unconference format.

'An unconference event begins with face to face schedule making which allows for emerging developments in the rapidly moving technology field to be covered. The opening includes time for attendees to introduce themselves and orient to the whole group. Participants are invited to write their name and session topic on an 8.511 piece of paper. They announce the title of their session to the whole room and then post it on a schedule on the wall. Once all the sessions have been posted, the community can stand in front of the schedule wall and decide which sessions they would like to attend. Sessions are about an hour long with 15 min breaks. Lunch lasts for about an hour. The day closes with all the participants gathering in a circle in one room and sharing for 2030 min the highlights of the day.'

Check out the feedback from participants from Auckland on the unconference format.

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Derek Chirnside takes a wander around.

Consider the following similar learning environment for smaller groups, in particular the use of open space for clusters of conversational activity for all levels of learning.

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I asked Jana Holly of http://mindesign.co.nz/ how she felt about her sense of participation.

• Me - So you're part of the circus called FLNW and you feel like a participating audience member?


• Jana - When I walked into this room I realised here where rings of activity going on, it was all very entertaining and exciting and I want to participate but I'm also more in an audience role.


• Me - Would you say you are participating in the style that Leigh is explaining to you (relaxed conversational show and tell)


• Jana - It feels to me like my very presence here contributes to the process even if my fingers don't touch the keyboard.


• Steven - Would you be able to take what Leigh has just shown you and use it yourself?


• Jana -I think with practice yes, I'll have to go to the circus summer school.


• Leigh - I think it's important thinking there that just by being here you are contributing alot of people even in our group feel like 'what am I here for?' because they are not very vocal, but just being here is enough.
  

The Usability and Empowerment Divide

For an explantation of the problem of the Usability and Empowerment Divide read Jakob Nielsens Digital Divide: The Three Stages , a very revealing paper on the barriers to the on the use of technology and lack of digital literacy skills across learning organisations. Ken Burgin of Profitable Hospitality neatly summarises the issues raised.

'There is:

• An Economic Divide - who can and can't afford a computer (and I would add, fast broadband). Less of an issue in Australia with el-cheapo PCs and $2 ph internet cafes.


• A Usability Divide - problems related to lower literacy and for difficulties in understanding for seniors.


• An Empowerment Divide - inability to use search, access to good software or participation in useful social networks.'

What role does management play within an organisation in addressing this?

Consider Don Perrin's assertions from his paper 'The New Knowledge Society and Higher Education' from 1996, ten years ago!

'Drucker, in his "Theory of the Business" published in the Harvard Business Review, postulates that for an organization to be effective there must be a balance between environment, in this case the students, employers, and extended community; the university mission should reflect client needs and expectations, and competencies, in this case relevant professional and teaching skills of faculty. The academy as we know it is being challenged in all three areas, and to the extent that these three areas are out of balance, effectiveness is reduced.'

'The luxury of having thousands of teachers researching and producing their own courses, many of which are essentially similar, is grossly inefficient. Students will be empowered to explore, inquire, and learn cooperatively and interactively, and undertake more creative tasks. They will have access to great teachers in a spectrum of learning styles and a variety of media. Consortia of institutions will share their best teachers through quality lesson materials for their virtual classrooms as well as for on-campus courses.'

'It is important to identify new markets and ways to market and deliver educational programs.'

The biggest untapped market for education is the non-traditional learner.'

Some schools are responding accordingly for example...

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Talks about 24hr school
related video http://heyjude.blip.tv/file/92772

Make the best of your organisation's assets - The teachers

Assertion: In Professional Development Make the best of your organisations assets, teacher's collective skills knowledge talents and energy enmasse?

Many educational technologists including myself are making the obvious assertion that the latent knowledge talents and skills needed that need to overcome the Usability and Empowerment Divide already exist within educational organisations. Innovators and Mentors can be harnessed to support educators with basic to intermediate skills working with them in groups, both online and face to face.

• Learning from each other in short intense bursts of group activity


• Discussing what technologies teaching practices and relevant to them and off intertest


• Connecting together using technology


• Using show and tell in the context of their teaching


• Asking questions off each other continually over time.

In his paper Jakob Neilsen asserts 'Almost 40% of the population has lower literacy skills'. If this is the case in educational organisations then what is needed is the awarenesss and will of management to strategically identify mentors and innovators and enable those with low level digital literacy skills to get together enmasse when needed. (in terms of raising awareness in this context the concept and ideas of the unconference seems appropriate).

Group learning events will will not solve the vast digital divide immediately they can energise and can catalyse the interest and awareness of those people who wish to become informed with the implicit aim that attendees start to ask question each other, become familiar with group learning and support each other in developing their skill development and shared knowledge OVER TIME!!!!

To enable this what is needed is management support and strategic programming of regular organisational professional development events in day to day activities that enable group learning and communication between teachers and that are driven by the learning needs of teachers.

In this context Management's role and responsibility is to enable teachers the time and resources to autonomousily organise PD events. For example helping motivated teachers to get the numbers and attract interest from peers to make an unconference PD event economically viable.

Why not?

• Fund short professional development events which enable interested teacher's of all skill levels (basic to advanced) to physically and freely come together in large groups for a few hours, to gain skills, freely communicate with each other ask questions and figure things out together in an ad hoc manner as part of day to day business.


• Identify existing Mentors and support and enable them to show their peers how to communicate and connect with each other online


• For those with lower literacy skills Mentors can demonstrate what's possible. The group supporting each other and instilling confidence in those who lack confidence individually.

The Teachers responsibility following PD

The individuals responsibility is to connect their resultant work with their students, learning group and peers after the PD event so that others can learn from their activity over time.

Teacher's with lower level literacy skills can also seek more focused structured professional development if required. It is the Educational technologist's responsibilty to enable people of all skill levels to access open professional development and be able to connect and ask questions of each other.

This is all nothing new but the reality is it's very difficult to sustainability implement these ideas within an organization without Management continuing to promote teachers ongoing participation in day to day teaching

Conclusion - Top down support for bottom up networking of teachers enmasse.

Top Down support for bottom up networking of teachers is required to bring about organisational Change.

Managers and Head Teachers need to drive and facilitate this change change in order to begin to address the the problem of the Usability and Empowerment Divide. Participation can't obviousily be enforced from all teachers, however a culture of networked innovation in day-to-day activities will promote participation and sharing practices as part of a wider sustainable professional development model. More research has to occur into processes to achieve the following outcomes:

• Sustainability - Follow through with the support of the implementation of mentor networks at an organisational level through PD- Professional Development.
• Adaptability Be flexible and responsive to the emergent needs of the Teacher Innovation Network. Eg: Recognising the time and equipment needed to adopt new innovative practices that work.
• Enablement - Give teachers ability to self regulate what gets filtered through firewall, and take on the development through to the students and Teacher Network.

As the pace of change ramps up in the knowledge economy many teachers will be unable to remain informed and keep up. Without innovative professional development action enmasse it appears the Usability and Empowerment Divide in relation to technology and new teaching practices may become so difficult to overcome that many people, teachers, students and management alike will fail to relate to each other's professional working world thus impacting on the business of the 'educational' organisation.

Creative Commons - Wanna Work Together

Great video
explaining the reasoning behind Creating Sharing and Adapting content openly in education using the creative commons licence...

What to do when the technology doesn't work like it's meant to!!!

powered by ODEO

ooh panic
Originally uploaded by l es l ey.

Good conversation with Ian Perkins and Beth Evans from the http://learningwithoutborders.edublogs.org project with advice on how to cope with the tendancy of technology not to work the way it's supposed to...

Water Logic
'de Bono contends that traditional logic is static, based on the solid foundations of 'is' and identity. In contrast to the traditional 'rock logic', he proposes 'water logic' which is based on 'to' and the flow of the mind: 'What does this lead to?' as opposed to 'What is...?' This new logic is surprisingly easy to learn and to use, and results in a visual 'flowscape', which allows you to lay out and then look at your thinking.'
http://www.edwdebono.com/debono/wl.htm