as part of our web course last week we had a guest speaker Russ Wheatley. The students videoed the 1 hour session. The joy now is to make it into usable form that can be uploaded to YouTube or Google Video. At the same time I have been playing with the video files from the outdoor rec people and have a 37 second movie of a skill sample ready to roll. tie-in for climbing
Edit 28/2/2007 - to see the real postcard go here: http://www.nswlearnscope.com/?p=204
The LiFE team is an amalgamation of groups with a common goal: to improve the lot of our student's experience by investigating, and playing with, new (and not so new) tools to improve the learning experience.
So we have been out and about: on cliffs, in paddocks, in the field looking at plants, in computer rooms, students scattered all over the place, in libraries, and out and about, participated in workshops, joined with other teams, helped facilitate training sessions in related areas to other groups - and generally had a good time.
Outdoor Recreation Instructor, Gil, demonstrating to Laura how to tie-in before a climb. An example of a skill set that will eventually make its way to an instructional video. (Taken at Mt York)
We have taken the opportunity to learn new techniques/tools for our selves and then try them on the students. In one instance, Michael's web group got right into it using gmail chat to conduct a session that had been set down for a lab, but due to electrical problems, the students were scattered in and out of the college. The class went ahead - reinforcing what we knew - a college based class group don't have to be in the same place at one time to be an interactive group.
Michael Nelson running a gmail chat session with his Web students.
The major focus of part of the team has been on how we can take teaching/learning material out of the classroom environment. Often into places where there is no wireless internet, where there is no mobile phone reception (this really upsets some students), where there is no power (sometimes for several days at a time). We have gone forth with laptops and pdas, digital cameras and video cameras, (seen them run out of power), to take ideas and capture ideas about teaching and learning in the field.
Student doing plant identification in the field
But not to be left behind, our librarians, got together to work on how they, too, could come to the party and support those of us rushing around outside. So a word from them:
Life library team members are exploring technologies such as blogs, RSS feeds, sharepoint and (all the) wikis to share information between institute libraries and support teachers and students in their learning. We are also considering the implications of these technologies in the wider world of library services in VET when learning and information access is virtual, mobile and immense. Eg can libraries use social technologies to help people engage with the information explosion by being aggregators, filters and by weighing the importance of information for our clients? The workshop with NSWtox and Leigh Blackall opened our eyes to the exponential potential (!) of the web: first films filmed actors on the stage ~ look film technology now; first internet delivered text ~ now we are beginning to communicate and learn in totally different ways.
Our lessons: not enough time; and the technology doesn't always want to keep up with our ideas.
From
The Learning in the Field Effectively Team October 2006
due to technical problems I will put the images up soon
Last night saw night 3 of our current eBusiness course. It is about doing an intro to the world of eBusiness, and so has people from various small business from around the Blue Mts.
Last night we had a visit from a representative from eBay. She was great and also had one of her eBay shop owners (who just happened to be part of the group). They enlighten us to the way it works and the things that can be done as well as the management of the eBay store (thanks to Janine and Charmaine).
As part of the discussion during the course has been the issue of being seen on the WWW, and the importance of having links on other websites. We have also discussed the use of blogs in helping to increase traffic to the ebusiness site. So... I said Iwould put a link to the participants website on this blog.
The links will be in the side bar till the end of the year but I have also included them in the post.
Summit Gear
Resort House.Wandene
Wooldancer Yarn Designs
Wooldancer Yarn Designs blog
Entice Photography
Tortoise Tehnologies
Renostop
French Dressing
French Dressing (eBay)
Blue Mountains Holiday Lets
John turner Gallery
Last Tuesday saw Jude C, Michael N and I descend to Penrith for a time of playing with digital storytelling with Robyn Jay and Alex Hayes from the NSW Learnscope team. It was a great day with people from other teams based at OTEN. See the digitales wiki for mor info.
I played with making a walk through of a cave at Jenolan whilst Michael did a story of the first 12 (?) months of Miriam's childhood. All this in the name of learning.
As aways I wanted to stretch the limit of the software - not to be content with a frame by frame narrative, I want a continuous talk with music background across the lot. Well it is getting there. The finished version with sound will premier on google videos sometime in the not too distant future.
This was followed up with Alex showing us the uses of de.li.cous and other tools.
We even watched some home movies.
A great day - thanks Robyn and Alex
The last post (as opposed to a military one) was done to show a group of "intro to eBusiness" students how easy it is to create a post in the compose screen without knowing any form of html.
It took about 1 minute including logging in.
Some of them then started to think about the potential of the Blog to futher their business.
today is brought to you by the colour purple....
I finally got around to playing with flickr. This was another of the things I had listed as one of my learnscope objectives.
So, now my flickr account has images in it. And tagged - one for the caving club I am a member of and one for the Jenolan caves trip from the beginning of August (also tagged bmspeleos) and one for Annelise's textiles major work
So now to get my Outdoor Rec guys to upload their pics to flickr with a tag that they can all use for the groups pictures.
My Learnscope goals include the use of a personal learning environment and the things that can be used to enhance learning. (This blog is also a learning tool and journal of that journey). From Sean FitzGerald's PLE session wiki came the link to quikmaps.
A top little tool.
So ... here is my first go. It shows the first two locations in my forays into the field with Outdoor Recreation.
Today saw another day to play with toys ==> the digital video camera and mp3 player.
The plan: go to Mt Wilson where the continuing Certificate 3 students were in day 2 of a 3 day camp. The game plan was to video some of the activities being run by the students and to use the mp3 players (1Gb iRivers) to record some of the activity debriefs.
Mt Wilson was surperb - lots of sun, almost no wind and mostly enthusiastic students. Videoing went well but when we tried the mp3 players all we managed to get was the sound of a couple of RAAF Hercules flying overhead and some muffled sounds that may have been people. O well back to the learning board.
Lessons learnt:
the students appreciated seeing themselves on the screen (dvd is finalised in the camera and then shown on the notebook) and they probably handled me filming because most of them were in my group last semester.
need to have a spare battery or 2 for the camera - 108 minutes is not long enough for a day out
need to have really good playtime with the tools before field time
with the mp3 player - Gary and I found the control buttons confusing and did not always respond in the way the manual stated.
Results: still a good day with teachers still interested in the use of technology.
(pictures to come later when I process the dvd)
As another part of the project I intend to plot the locations of the filming/play locations using quikmaps
Annelise (my daughter) is currently doing her HSC. She read the last post and said "learning should be fun? tell that to this stupid HSC thing."
She is more than slightly stressed because she has to finish her textiles major assignment by friday. A mighty work. A dress and amazing big black cape - complete with silver cobwebs.
It really is amazingly good.
Go Anna, go
The the teaching process - she did it through the Sydney Distance High school- left a lot to be desired. A way that certainly didn't suit her at all. Minimal support from the school and lots and lots of time with Judy (her mother and my wife (25 yrs in 2 weeks) ) doing lots to help.
:-(
Carmen (see comments to New Toys) makes an interesting point. People (including teachers) often have preconceived ideas on where and when you can use elearning techniques. So....
Why not for rock climbing? or even canoeing? In a cave may be a bit hard but I haven't considered how I can do that - yet. (me in Deep Hole, Walli - June 2006)
but lets have fun, anyway!!
eLearning can be used anywhere, any time. As part of the LiFE learnscope project we are going to look at various things in various situations: for our web students, in horticulture/land management, in outdoor recreation (obvious by the pics and comments) and by librarians to improve the lot of their clients.
As part of this, I attended a LearnScope learning day last Thursday (3/8) to improve my personal learning space. This was lead by Sean FitzGerald . Well, thanks Sean. It was a good day - and apart being somewhere to play with technology, I actually achieved some customisation of this blog.
Then on Friday, the ICVET Powerhouse of learning and the showcase of Cool Tools for elearning. The last post was about the trials getting the videos to work - well at about midnight that night I got the images into MPEG4 format and on a DVD. Those that visited the stand on Friday got to see some movies... and to talk to me about just where and how "cool tools" can be used. How far (or maybe deep) can we go? ... the imagination is the limit.
As an aside - I showed the Cert 3 students some of the movies on Monday in class - certainly gee-ed them up for the afternoon session. The next step - Google video here we come (well - when I get time to try it out)
Tomorrow - Mt Wilson. Another group of students and a few more teachers who have become interested in using some technology in differnet ways.
The issues: the camera only lasts for 108 minutes fully charged and the notebook around 200 minutes.
Over the past couple of weeks I have taken possesion of a few new toys as part of the TOL2 (TAFE OnLine 2) project. These have been HP Notebooks, some iPAC pda's and some MP3 players to be shared around with the project team.
For me - a notebook, pda and some times a couple of MP3 players. I will be using these in the field with the outdoor rec section at varying places in the field to determine how we can utilise the technoly to help the students.
Yesterday afternoon was spent at Mt York with the new Cert 3 as they had thier first go on the cliffs. I had the college's new Handycam. Some of the students wanted to be movie stars! Anyway, about 45minutes of footage later (about 1.75 Gb) I went home, thinking time to play with the movies. Didn't work - put the discs in the dvd player - but no luck. Nothing. File systems said no files! But I knew it had something.
So...as a matter of last resort...read the manual.
But I had the wrong manual. Had I lost it all? 
Rolling on - found an online manual - It said I had to finalize the disks - so the images survived to be made on to a single DVD for showing at the ICVET Powerhouse of Learning on 4/8/2006 at ATP.
So - step one has been solved - I can get the images.
Picture shows Gil showing Laura how to tie a figure-of eight knot attachment to her harness in preparation for a climb.
Mt York. Certificate 3 Outdoor Rec. 2 Aug 2006.
Now to find out about manipulating/editing them to be small enough clips to ship up to something like Google-video or youTube.
The objective: short training clips of required skills for outdoor rec activities eg climbing, abseiling, canoeing.
This week has seen me return to the blog. This was originally set up as part of a training course for encouragaing teachers to venture into the world of learning online. I leave it here to show the past.
The future beckons.
The technology changes, but does our learning and teaching change with it?
I did my original teacher training in the late 70's. At this time the use of videos was just beginning to get solid airplay in the classroom.
Last friday (23 june) I attended a get together on mlearning in Wollongong. Alex Hayes posed a question about the new technologies on offer: is it good pedagogy?
How can technology have a pedogogy? I don't think it is technology that is the issue - it is the thoughts, desires and passion of the teacher that dictates the pedagogy. How can we utilise these things to reach people? Re-engage the learner. But were they really disengaged? Probably it is the system of education that was disengaged, or the teacher. By definition - how can a learner be a disengaged learner? Disengaged from the world - I think not.
They are engaged - it is the teacher that is often are not engaged with the learner. A BIG difference.
To that end this blog will now reflect my thoughts and gleanings from 2 projects I am currently involved with (more on them later) and other things that interupt my thoughts.
Now - to think - about where/how to get the most from what we have - web 2.0? pdas? mobile phones or notebooks on a cliff top?
who knows where it will go...?
..................the holidays appear closer ==> time to reflect
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