It's Roadshow Season! Please join us. Friday 28 June.

If you haven't noticed already, there's an e-learning Roadshow coming to you very soon. In Melbourne's metropolitan region, we're setting up the show on Friday 28 June, the last day of term 2.. at the CAE in the heart of the city's coffee-scented Degraves street haven.

Don't miss out.. book now for this terrific opportunity to network with your colleagues, share your stories and find out what e-learning educators have been up to all around the state of Victoria.

There will also be regional roadshow days, for example Mooroopna on Wednesday 17 July.

And yes we are coming to the end of this 12 month e-learning mentor project.. but never fear, you will be able to re-apply for the next 6 months, for more individual support from your local mentors.

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;

Getting started

Consider your e-learning needs

First thing to do is take a look at your own teaching/learning or centre/course management practices and decide where and how you may want to improve them using e-learning strategies such as:

• networking with others in your field
• communicating in real time online
• storing and sharing resources
• creating or sourcing innovative learning resources
• exploring relevant web 2.0 tools for specific purposes
• getting help with an e-learning project
• setting up a learning management system