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Hi everyone, this wiki is the group journal space. Here you'll track all aspects of your project, including the software you've used, the topic or activity you've done, types of learners, the highlights and difficulties encountered and anything else I've forgotten! This is a wiki so please feel free to edit my work and add things you think we should cover. It is password protected but it is in the public domain - anyone can read it, if they know the URL or receive an invitation, but only we can edit it. So it is pretty private.

Each person has their own space to work in within the group space, but anyone can comment, add, edit anyone else's work so please assist each other to create some great work! Also if you aren't familiar with wikis take a few moments to look at the help area, especially in relation to editing - the commands are different. You can also integrate a blogger or typepad blog if you're using, or want to use one of those for your individual journal. Please remember to SAVE your work - in case of internet glitches, or work offline and then post it in. Have fun, Frankie and Jo.

Shaz's space

Ann's space

Hi everyone, you have no idea just what Judi and I have gone through just to get this far. Judi has spent the past few days constantly talking with our IT guys in Melbourne just to get us access to the programs that we need to use for this course. As I write this Judi is still trying to get us access to Learning Times so we can join the Elluminate session tomorrow. Have fingers crossed that we can make it.

Hang in there folks, I've sent you an email with some options just in case. Frankie

Thanks, Frankie, as we had no luck as at 5:00 last night, Judi did not come into the office, as she does not usually work on Fridays. I had an early appointment and did not read your email until after the session had started. I am not sure where to from here, I will chat with Judi on Monday, and maybe will have to withdraw from the course, it is just impossible for us to work through our existing network setup.

Sounds really frustrating all round. Let's catch up on Monday and talk this through. :) Just to add to this - Judi and Ann are now accessing Elluminate via my office's spare laptop. Frankie

Breakthrough at last, have managed to get a SCORM happening on our IGT moodle site, created a quiz, and added the discussion topics for the activities. Nearly ready to offer for trialling. Will need to talk to Frankie re access. Do we link to EFALCO, or access direct to IGT.

Well done Ann! - ok so it's up to you how you want to run this. Only constraint is that we need for participants in this course to be able to 'see' what you are doing. And we also need to be able to access so we can provide comment and feedback to you. So, my suggestion would be that we allocate you a 'box' in our Moodle site from which you can link to your site/activities, also you could create a discussion area in that box for any feedback on your project. - would that work for you? If you are ok with this I'll make you a facilitator and allocate you a space. Frankie

Thanks Frankie, we will use Pelion for the purposes of this course. Not having much luck using EDNA. Thought I was nearly there, but now will have to recreate on Pelion, OH well, practice makes perfect, so they say.

4.2.06 Frankie has been kind enough to allow us (Judi) and I to use her facilities so that we could take part in the Elluminate sessions. We accessed Elluminate from work via the payroll modem on my laptop for the last session. Took some setting up, but we made it in the end. The timeframe for this course is really challenging, given the stops and starts that I have had. My project is now ready for trialling, I know its not as good as it should be, but the quality of the LO is beyond my control. Have loaded other resources for the course as well. There is still heaps of reading and catching up that I must do in the next few days. Not the most popular person at work at the moment (with the boss man) he just can't see the importance of completing this project. So much of my work is being done from home, makes me think more and more about having broadband, it would have been so much easier.
 * 18.2.06** Now the course is coming to an end, and it is time to review and catch up on some reading. Still not sure where I should be typing this, but I will add it here anyway. When asked to take part in this pilot, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get something happening for our organisation with on line learning. As it turned out the organisation was the biggest stumbling block of the whole project, with all our techno probs it was not easy to continue on. But on I went, once I had decided which LO I would use, I then introduced a **Wiki** and a **Blog** as well. My assessor colleagues are new to using online tools, and thought I was talking a foreign language. Before asking them to trial the object, I had a f:f with them and explained the various tools and what they did. There was a certain amount of hesitation, and 'I have other things to do', but I thank them for 'reviewing' my LO. Comments can be viewed in the course blog, accessed from block 20 on the home page of EFACLO. All feedback has been valuable, and has enabled me to make the LO a more user friendly online tool. I will now endevour to get it working on our EDNA site and make it available for our assessors to trial with some of their trainees. I will then evaluate the project again.

David’s Space

I have tried to keep the whole process as simple as possible. Some of the feedback I received was quite valid though I took the perpective that the user I was aiming this at were already online and had done some web design of their own. I thoink the whole process has been extremely useful for me but I wish I had more time to commit.

Heather’s space

I though setting up an introduction site to e-learning would be easy. How wrong first brain storming ideas are. But it will not get the better of me. Problems set in fast.
 * size moodle would allow me to up load.
 * not being able to find what I wanted.
 * http://lor.netspot.com.au/ did not have anything relating to the Children’s Services area
 * http://toolbox.flexiblelearning.net.au/ only allowed me to download single pages at a time. Then even they had disappeared from the site as well
 * to take part in a discussion forum in moodle participants need to log in which defeated the purpose of an introduction site.
 * getting in-house participants that will really go in and take part in my trial.

Slowly worked through some of the problems. Our IT created a link from our web site where I could save my object then link from moodle to them. OK this is working. Finally found something I could use from Edna site so have gone ahead with that Thanks to Jo I have setup a Quick Topic site which participants don’t need to log in to use. Have also set up other discussion area that participants will need to log in as well, to give them the experience and over come some fears they may have of this process.

The feedback form other participants in this course has been great in ironing out or bring issues to my attention.

Getting in-house participants was going well they all agreed to take part in the trial but as time went by they went away on holidays or are working on other projects. I have approach two others and they have promised to complete the activities for me today (17/2/06) fingers crossed. Finally the trial has happened. Based on the feedback from Frankie I had lots to consider. I re-entered my site trying to visit itas a first time user. This is not an easy process as all I wanted to do was click away knowing just where I wanted to go. However I did make a lot of changes. One change was that students need to log in now and not use the guest log in. This made it possible for me to cut down on instructions in each section by removing "If you did not log in you will need to do so now...." I finally got the in house trial happening. Yes not before time. Colleagues feedback was very positive. I found that it assisted them in gaining a greater understanding of what I was trying to do plus they began to develop E-learing language, questioning me about the process and future possiblities. They were also suprised at how easy it was to manoeuvre around the moodle site.

Overall I have enjoyed this course and enjoyed the problem solving process while working with new learning tools. I am not the only one to gain from this course. Our organisation has benefited greatly throught this course. It has started discussion in the office and opened up the eyes of other staff members as to the opportunites available. We are currently considering different options for delivery and this course has given them an insight as to what is possible and what we can achieve.

I am a little sad that this is coming to an end! I will continue to work on the site but will miss the feedback especially from Frankie and Jo. After discussions with them I alway had a new way of looking at what I was trying to achieve. There is so many areas to be considered.

In this project I included a photostory consisting of photos taken from a previous f2f session and a Learning Object which I finally found on the Edna site. Participants were asked to take part in a quick topic, discussion forum and a wiki. The discussion forum came to life as everyone took part and some started to reply to other entries. I think it was to do with the questions around each of these activities and that is why the discussion forum appeared to be utilised more freely. My experience within this course will be showcased at our next staff meeting (14/3/06). I anticipate discussion on how e-learning/e-business can be applied to other apartments in the organisation.

Janice’ space What a major achievement I actually got here. After reading the other postings I have decided that I must be luckier than I thought as our IT guru has 'fixed' things for me so that I now have what ever I need on my pc. The session this morning gave me food for thought and has made me change my mind. I think that I was probably being over ambitious in what I wanted to achieve so have now decided that I will introduce some of my learners to using wiki's.

Sounds good Janice, once you've got the hang of it for the wiki topic then you can build on it in other areas. Frankie

Question 1 For those more knowledgable people than me - can I, and how do I link wiki's ?.ie if I have a wiki can I put links to other wiki's on that page - sort of like turning the pages of a book.

I reckon the easiest way is to use the link button 5th from the right in the edit button, or go to help and read their info. Frankie

Question 2 I tried putting an image into the wiki, I was successful but it was HUGE and I couldn't resize it. Is there a way to do this without image editing software?

Would someone like to assist Janice here? Frankie mmm, no takers... ok so Janice it really is best to resize in editing software first, most allow you to resize easily. Eg in Microsoft Office Picture Manager just go to Edit Pictures, choose Resize and then choose, Compress Pictures (for web pages) and that should drastically reduce the overall file size. To reduce the picture size go to Edit Pictures, choose resize and then use the percentage of original to make it smaller - play with it till it's the correct size and then click on ok. Hope that helps! Frankie

Janice's space - continued...

I hope this is where I am supposed to be putting this but if not too bad.( I don't mean that to sound rude but just that this is where I'm putting it any way.)

When approaching my learner guinea pigs I orginally asked if anyone wanted to learn more about communication tools and assumed that when they answered they knew what I was talking about. It became apparent very early on that some of them had answered because it was me that asked and they wanted to help me. This meant that I needed to find out what they thought I meant, the main answer being how to use email more effectively. This indicated to me that there were particpants who had very little knowledge of the other uses of the technology. I sent out an email asking who had heard of ........ On reply it appeared that only 2 of the 7 participants had heard anything about wikis and blogs. All 7 were in the mature age category ( over 30 ) and were trained assessors, some with an RTO, some with a community organisation.

This information led me to write my instructions very clearly in simple English realising that they would probably be stressed any way in using unfamiliar technology. I trialled my instructions first with the trainee in our office by getting her to follow the instructions without me giving any advice. I also made sure that they had my 2 email addresses so that they could contact me anytime and mobile phone number. I had thought of getting them onto Skype but ditched that idea as too complicated at this stage.

My main problem was actually getting them to edit the wiki and post comments to the blogs. Most to them looked at the areas and then sent me an email telling me that 'it looked' good. Again this indicates to me that they probably need more time and a little more encouragement to 'do' rather than look. They seem to be getting more interested now but as this course is coming to a close I have intentions of putting a link to the wikis from my edna group sites so that we can continue. In hindsight if doing this again I would prepare a self assessment questionaire for students to fill in before we start as I do in any classroom training I conduct.

Janice

Josie’s space

Well now the work starts. Originally I throught of doing something with podcasts but I am not sure how that might work. I am keen to follow up on David's work on this. Are there any educational podcasts out there that would be suitable for ESL students I wonder? Will have to check wiht my colleagues but I think I might pursue blogging.

I was wondering this morning about the " stupid question' - ie is there room for any facto face inthis particular e-facilitation unit? Obviously not when working with colleagues in this course but if I tried it out in the workplace. Most of the work I have done with teachers over the past few years has been a blended model - partly due to the bandwidth issues and the sector I work in. I suppose it goes back to learner preferences and technological constraints.

Off to do some investigation into which blog where...

Hi Josie, thought you might be interested in this, also there's a comunity of webheads in Learning Times with a focus on ESL and literacy - checkout.. http://home.learningtimes.net/learningtimes?login=1&uid=AB095A3786B94E6031AF7E5DD9757F26&cid=157024&go=235631

TO: Learning & Training Colleagues FROM: Elliott Masie, The MASIE Center Today, we are launching a new service and free software for the learning and training fields: LearningFeeds. Learning PodCasts and Learning Channels. [|__http://www.masie.com/learningfeeds/__] You can download our recustomized program called: LearningFeeds iPodder, which will allow you to automatically receive regular audio interviews with leading Learning Authors, Researchers and Managers. LearningFeeds allows you to listen to these short, audio segments on your PC and MAC, or to automatically and simply move them to your iPod or other MP3 Player. It takes no technical skill and LearningFeeds will always be FREE.

Thanks very much unkown person :-) for these fabulous links - will go and investigate. I have sort of settled on [|www.podomatic.com] and managed to send a voice email to Frankie and colleague last night. Took a bit of fiddling as they always do. But, I thin I will proceed and hopefully progress.(says she hopefully!)

Oh, and while I'm at it I reckon your del.icio.us suggestion is fabulous Frankie - makes such sense! My colleague and I at AMES have done the same - problem is that in the case of making AMES a tag we find that thereare all sorts of other people using that tag that has nothing to do with the type of learning that we are on about - but a challenge is a good thing- we will have to refine the whole tagging thingo!

Thanks Josie, giggle, (alias the unknown person) glad you found the delicious idea useful! Frankie

For me the use of most of the tools I used in my activity were now – I had not used wikis before – and never produced a podcast. The wikis I found interesting – I think it has tremendous potential. But for my activity I do not think I thought it through enough nor did I make am instruction explicit enough,. The questions were indeed answered but I don’t know who posted what. I would need to go back to teach participant to find out if and what they produced. Will need to refine that one.
 * Project 3:**

Regarding my students learning styles – o I think that although my tow online students were invited in I cannot say that i know that their preferred learning styles are. I do know that they are very proficient online and enjoy the challenges and opportunities that online activities and tools bring.

I tried to create activities that would engage adults -based on adult learning principles of meaningful information, active learning, multi-sense learning and if not repeated practice, at least an opportunity to try for themselves. I hope I gave them adequate feedback. The fact that both of them indicated that they would have liked a script could indicate that they are primarily visual learners – but it could also because on works in an online disability project and the other is an ESL teacher.
 * Learning styles**

I think social software tools such as wikis and blogs will indeed make it eve easier for teachers to accommodate the range of learners and learning styles that present in a classroom online or face to face at any one time.


 * Learning objects:**

I think this course has also helped me clarify my thoughts on learning objects. I think I need to explore them more. Inherently they have great potential .I don’t think there is a whole lot out there yet for me in the area I work in, but the objects, in concert with the social software tools will indeed allow for some great collaborative online learning experiences – some of which we have seen demonstrated in this course. Although I did not sue one, I am glad I had the opportunity to learn more about them - I look forward to continuing that exploration…

Thanks everyone for your input!

Judi's space

This where I am going to journal my project, which is yet to be determined.

I have decided that I will undertake a unit from the Business Services Package at Level III. This will be created in Moodle and will be worked on in the Pelion Moodle site. Frankie has just made me a facilitator on the site so it is now all systems go! Having now decided what I will be undertaking I am keen to get started. I wish everyone success with their project and can't wait to see the end results.

OK I am now almost finished. I have found it extremely difficult due to time constraints, travel and IT problems, both at home and in the workplace. I also believe the time requiredto complete this course has been underestimated considerably. The reading alone is more than the expected course time, not to mention creating and implementing the LO.

I finally went with Business IV - Develop work priorities. I didn't realise I could only work on one element and have in fact covered the whole unit, however I am happy with this as I can get a good overview. Today I will be completing my guidelines and then asking a staff member to work on it so that I can get feedback from a new user. The staff member has never used E-learning and therefore her feedback will be invaluable. I will also have my Manager undertaking the course tomorrow. he is not available until then. Fingers crossed.

22 February 2006

I have today completed my project and feel very pleased to have done so. Although I had some hiccups along the way, I feel that what has been accomplished is someting that I will use with my trainees and is a valuable tool. I have learnt an awful lot and all of it has been useful. I have enjoyed reading what others have done, and my only regret is that I built too much into my site, but I now have a completed unit that can be assessed from the online material created. I am looking forward to facilitating this and building in more unitsto our Edna site using the format I have learnt. The staff members who tested my site were very impressed which gives me the confidence to continue. I am sure it won't be long before they are asking for sites to be created for the scope they cover.

Shirleys space Well i have finnaly made it here!!! My project is forming, evolving as we speak and I will have to be prepared by 9:30 next Thursday as I am starting with a group of people who are embarking on the Small Business Management Course using Byte-on. Whew that sounds very serious and scary. I am looking for a skills audit kind of tool for us to do a self asseement of wheer we are up to and help identify wher ethe best palce to start the course is and to identify what level of support they might need ie 1:1 mentor, groups sessions, online discussion????. I am also keen to explore learning circles as well. that it for me now Surfs up!

mmm any ideas anyone? Isn't there one in Ready Set Go (check it out in resources) FF

Stuart's Space

Here is a link to the SCORM object creating tool, eXe. http://exelearning.org/ this makes it really simple to create a learning object that you can upload into moodle or a number of other LMSs.

I see the value of these scorm object after playing around with them. Once a learner has access the scorm Moodle keeps a record of their access, you can see how much time is spent reading each section and I suppose if there are quizes ect you can see the results there too. Very handy.

I was unsure how you could get this kind of statistical data that the government likes so much. I'm still not quie sure how you would go about that...

Any way, I have found eXe really usefull, and am in the midlle of creatng my own package for online collaboration using [|Writely].

17/2

I packaged up my SCORM earlier this week and put it to use on Tuesday with my learner group. The flow of the pages seemed to work well and (as I has most of my learners in the smae room at once) I heared a couple of "Ah! Thats sounds interesting" and "That would be really useful", unfortunatley as we use the schools computer room, the writely site is blocked... aaaarrggg! No matter, I was hopeing they'd access it from home anyway, so gave them a quick look back at the Community Centre at what they'd see and sent them off...

Later that day, they began to access the writely document, and make additions. Next day one of my learners was having trouble accesing the document and rang me. Good chance to practice my phone support! I took him through clicking the link in his invitation email, logging in and eventually he managed to sign in. From there he needed little help, and found using writely quite easy. He also logged out and in a few times to make sure he could do it, and wrote down step-by-step for himself what to do.

The story has turned out really well, it's quite funny and the group had a great time doing it. They shared it with the writers group on wednesday, and they want to do some more work with writely and collaborative fiction.

I think I did what I set out to do, introduce the group to working collaboratively online, and it was a great success. If I were to continue from here outside this course (and I hope I will) I think we would look at some of the issues of collaborative writing like editing, rather than leaving it at just adding content.

I have certainly started something for those involved, as they have been thinking about other ways they could use this technology with family/friends/work.

Thanks all! Stuart.

Wendy’s space Judy and Ann, I know exactly what you are going through! Been there done that! To use Skype at work I have to use my own laptop and bypass the server and to use Elluminate well - I just do it from home because I can't get in from work! I tried to add to this wiki this morning but it wouldn't let me do anything - did you fiddle Frankie? I did some work in there but that shouldn't lock it up. Give it another go W, cheers Frankie I am having a great time with all of this - the action adventure man is getting frustrated as I keep running to my computer to check on things - haven't had the laptop in the boat yet - he won't let me have wireless broadband - wonder why???? Have been adding to my blog every day and am looking forward for the real stuff to happen. I have just about blown out my dialup account - oops! Have been looking at broadband accounts - need to see what happens with the job situation first. I have got permission to use the existing Moodle site to work from and have started laying the foundations for my mini course - it will involve my learners using Skype, contributing to a groups Wiki and setting up their own blog.

Hi Wendy, my last contact with our IT guru, did not give us much satisfaction, he does not want to give us access to Skype through our network server. Like you I am on dialup at home, try to do a bit at night, but after putting in a full day at work, really can't get stuck into it. Today I have been trying to get access to lor.netspot.com.au to look at some scorms, but as usual nothing is happening for me. It won't beat me, I will keep at it and hope to come with something soon.

My moodle site is slowly progressing and I really should have done more - great celebrations yesterday, some of you will alrweady know but I can wait to share with everyone on Monday! I now have some very tight timeframes and won 't be able to participate in the final Elluminate session :-(. I'm glad it's too hot to be outside - great opportunity to sit in the cool and do this! But will be out in the boat later.

I have had a very trying time adding scorms. Chris (IT guru) has worked out that the company who is hosting our server is blocking some of the graphics!!! So this means I have text but no graphics - interesting trying to find a LO with no pictures! But other than that I'm finished and will start trialling soon. Looking forward to feedback from my colleagues - hopefully it won't be too bad.

Well had to use plan B - tried another LMS - nuvvo. It was quite quick and easy as I was able to cut and paste everything from moodle into nuvvo but then had a zip problem. The scorm does open but in a round about way??? Had the big farewell from TransTrain - drank far too much champagne and then broke a tooth! Missed the elluminate session and a planned skype session with David as I had to go to the dentist in Launceston. Hopefully I will be able to catch up with my learners before the end of the week.

Had some feedback from Jo which was very helpful - was able to communicate on skype and make the changes online. Jo made me realise that I had to think about some tasks very differently and therfore my approach needed to be adapted. It was great to get into the nuvvo site and see that 'learners' have actually gone it! It was a mini sense of achievement. I'm not going to be able to put in the hours from Monday - start the new job. Will try to log in for 30 mins each day.

Vicky's space


 * The end**