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
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