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.
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