Helenbis23's Blog

Glogster

helenbis23 — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:39:02 +0000

Deloitte Digital Blog: Melbourne Wave Meetup

helenbis23 — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:56:59 +0000

Deloitte Digital Blog: Melbourne Wave Meetup.

If you are interested in following what is going on with Wave and perhaps even working out what it is good for…

You can also follow this group on Twitter @melbwave

Blogush challenge

helenbis23 — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:25:56 +0000

The Blogush challenge is to take one of a number of sentences, ponder and blog it.

If given a choice, would students choose to come to your class?

I am working towards giving students that choice. As adult learners, they are able to choose.

When I first started teaching, I demanded students attend. I worked hard to make the classes valuable and managed to pack in a lot of theory, activities, feedback and stuff. After five years, I am wanting to be more flexible. I want them to have more control over their learning decisions.

So really, I want students to have that choice.

I want to provide them with resources so a missed class is not a missed learning opportunity. For resources to be available so they can read up before class, or follow their interests after the class.

To this end, I am pondering, reading, getting excited, moving forward, cold feet, standing still. Every time I feel as though I know where to start, it all becomes too hard and I leap down that road, too far and too fast.

I need to restrain myself. Either I need to develop a plan where I know what to fill in with elearning opportunities, or I need to choose an elearning tool and work with that over the next semester.

Thing 18

helenbis23 — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:26:12 +0000

Thing 18 is looking at Wikis. The task is to upload your photo to the Swinilearn wiki.

As usual, I am taking my own path to the same destination. I recently started a Ning which is my wiki sandbox. I am tempted to use Ning as a tool in our PR course. Each student would join. Any teachers who so desire, would also be welcome. There is a discussion to be had around opening the Ning to alumni. I see such a lot of value in this. Many want to give back to the course, and they would continue with their own learning through this involvement.

One of the other questions I have is: can my Ning post on member’s facebooks with recent activity?

Jing

helenbis23 — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:22:31 +0000

Using Jing

Jing is a tool which the students used easily. This makes it valuable!!

With only a short introduction to Jing, they were able to create short video/screencasts. They had fun, which also makes it valuable.

Jing captures what is happening on the screen as you talk through the process. There are a few settings you can tweak but it is relatively simple. In my book, this makes it a good choice.

Follow the link, it gives a good introduction to Jing, including its downsides (limited output formats).

Thing 17 and keeping it clean

helenbis23 — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:03:49 +0000

dental hygiene, originally uploaded by yryvu_py.

This post starts with Technorati but moves quickly to how I get through chunks of work without spending all my time lost in the lovely world of information and learning that is the web – business hygiene.

Technorati

I found my way to Technorati. Looked over the front page. Quickly found the search tool. Started with elearning as the word to search. It came up with a fabulous list of blogs.

I just rightclick the ones I like the look of and open them in a new tab. I now have so many open, my tab bar looks like squidgy blocks.

Problem is that as soon as I start reading them, I find other links and am interested in those.

Perhaps an important point here is about workflow management.

I am doing this blogpost in my business hygiene time. For the first time this week (Thursday) I have something resembling a normal day. So I started with my hygiene tasks and my coffee. (Working from home, so first task was a load of washing in the machine.) In my work hygiene, I rip through my inbox; answer emails, and sort those which don’t need answers but do need to be kept. Then to Twitter. Eight minutes of looking at recent posts and following interesting links. Then into my blog. I now have ten more minutes of blogging time left before I move to the next task. This time I will choose something from my to do list. So most probably finishing off a reflection for my Dip VET.

After an hour I am through a lot of chunks of work. Some are not completed tasks but they have had a bite or nibble taken from them which keeps them ticking over.

While looking over image generators, I found this Mosaic Image Generator. It is way cool. I will have to use it in another post.

Thing 16

helenbis23 — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:47:47 +0000

Digg. Hmm, it is definitely for the technogeeks. Possibly it is starting to mainstream, but is generally probably not as useful to those of us who are techno-challenged.

So on that basis, I won’t be setting it up here. I tend to find enough interesting blogs and comments to read without Digg. I do like to find my own way through that part of the web. There is a real joy in stumbling across interesting bits and pieces.

Yesterday I set up my first Ning. It is definitely a sandpit. Took very little time and the management of it seems to be really well set out. Had quite a bit of fun adding games and other apps. Stumbled across some great Ning apps which I will be playing with next time. I am looking at setting up a chat room style interface through the Ning but need to give that some thought as it takes it beyond the realm of public posting on the Ning itself.

Thing 15

helenbis23 — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:43:12 +0000

This thing is about RSS feeds. RSS is quite useful for keeping up to date with new posts in blogs. It means I don’t have to remember which blogs I like reading, and remembering to check if there is anything new posted on them. I have set up RSS feeds on a Facebook fanpage and also on my iGoogle page.

The Facebook fanpage setup is useful as they post on my personal wall. Makes it easy to check. I still don’t use my iGoogle page even though I spent quite a bit of time setting it up. I am sure one day I will find a use for iGoogle which makes me log into it, instead of my Gmail.

I know RSS feeds can be relatively easy to set up. For some reason I find them a little intimidating so I tend to slip past without doing it.

Thing 14

helenbis23 — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:30:51 +0000

Using Google to search for images is incredibly easy and I often use that specific function.

Where I run into problems is with copyright issues. The digitisation of images and the application of copyright to it are a potential minefield. Certainly it is something which I should pursue.

If anyone has a plain english guide that doesn’t run to 16 pages, I would be interested in a link.

Thing 13

helenbis23 — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:23:37 +0000

Darn. Google Docs. See previous post where I waxed lyrical about them.

I am interested in the idea of students posting drafts of an assessment for other students to comment on. I realise this would cause problems where their assessments are essentially the same. However, if the students have different topics or different focus for the assessment, this would be an interesting discussion.

I love the idea of collaborative learning. I am still working on where this stops and collusion starts, in terms of assessments.