First meetings underway

What a great turnout we had last week for our "induction sessions" in at the CAE. Educators from nearly all organisations came along, and we talked about many things:

• what e-learning is, 
• what the issues are, 
• what you would like to learn about, 
• what you are doing already, and 
• various ways to stay in touch during the project. 

Here's the presentation from the day, including input from everyone in the room as we went along. You should be able to make this full-screen, and move through the slides. If you'd like to add or remove anything, please let us know via the comments or direct contact.

Common threads across the North-West

Common strands of e-ndeavour

From our perspective, joining a mentor program to improve your understanding and implementation of e-learning (or "e-business") isn't just about what happens in house. It's also about the connections you're making with the people and networks around you. Many people have been saying in recent years that professional development these days is about strengthening and expanding your "Personal Learning Network" (PLN).

So what do you have in common with the other organisations in the North-West e-mentor projects?

There are some clear strands emerging from our discussions with the e-leaders and e-participants at each of the 11 sites we have visited in the last month. We thought we would summarise these with you and perhaps feature one or two sites as a case study to show similarities in scope, progress and constraints.

Develop a staff communication and networking hub

• AMCS: using a combination of Google sites. docs and possibly Moodle;
• CNLC: build on Staffroom wiki from 2010 by integrating Google docs and calendar;
• Carringbush: a staff wiki to build skills and eventually store teaching resources;
• Djerriwarrh: investigate capacity of Sharepoint to have a wiki interface for communication hub;

September 15 and 23 Induction sessions: ideas for possible projects

Jill starts: 

I really enjoyed meeting the new project participants today, and, of course, seeing a few who are continuing from last year.

In the short time available to brainstorm the vast realm of everything 'e', we mapped our different students and contexts, identifying immediate needs and a range of 'wish list' skills and possible projects.

Centres and course covered: vocational and pre-vocational certificates, VCAL, ESL Certificates and a range of short courses (too numerous to mention). Needs included:

• communication technology for web conferencing (online staff meetings, verification meetings, VCE holiday intensives, PD drop-in, skill-focused workshop)
• some sort of course management system (CMS) for secure e-lodgement of assessments (eg. Moodle, Wikispace with custom permissions,