Brad Beach on Online Facilitation (15Aug)

Here's one that's too good to miss: via the TDC (Tafe Devt Corp), Brad Beach from GippsTafe talks about Online Facilitation.

Brad has been one of the truly significant leaders in this field for some time, and GippsTafe have run great workshops in online facilitation.

Online facilitation is one of the major skillsets that i think people often overlook as they get into setting up online communities and networks. Whether it's real time web-conferencing (synchronous) or round-the-clock discussion forums (asynchronous), there are many strategies you can collect and develop to help you draw people in and engage your community.

Yes it costs $60 and it's only an hour, but it would be worth signing up i'd say.

Register here (link).

e-learning conference in Bendigo (join virtually)

You may not be able to attend the Bendigo e-learning LearnLocal conference in person, but you can attend virtually.

Happening Tomorrow!!
Friday 27 July

Via the ACE e-learning network, register for sessions.

Whether or not you've experienced web conferencing via the connection of "Blackboard Collaborate", you can always jump in and have a go. Attend a conference from your desk.

1. The main event page here [Link]. (login required, it's via the ACE e-learning network)
2. Sessions via the network event page.

Some great sessions on offer, more information via these links:

• Panel Session Online
• Session 2: Case Studies - Blended Learning Partnerships
• Session 3: Case Studies - What learners want - Current e-learning issues in regional communities
• Session 4: What Learn Locals need - Creating your Game Plan!
• Session 5: keynote - Facing the Future with Joyce Seitzinger

WIKIs: setting your Notifications and posting a Discussion

Following on from that exciting 'Advanced' WIKI webinar in which nothing seemed to go right, I decided to produce a screencast on the topic of setting your Notifications to receive emails when someone posts a Discussion.

Notifications are a powerful feature that makes your wiki interactive: everyone can follow the latest addition of content and discuss these collaboratively.

At CNLC when a new member joins the Staffroom I advocate that the Notifications are set so that the new person can join in to group activities effectively. However, we've fallen behind with such aspirations lately as competing priorities invariably push wiki PD to the side so now there's a screencast which hopefully anyone can follow to change their Notifications independently.



It's been almost two years since I've produced a screencast using Screencastomatic so I was pleased to see that I remembered most of the key features (although I could've set up the title screen - forgot to do that) and I like the Add Notes feature, allowing the viewer to head straight to a later section of the screencast if they wish.

I'd be interested to know if you've used the screencast successfully to manage your Notifications. You can reply here or send us an email.

Photos from the E-showcase12

Here are a few images from the very successful and superbly organised day at William Angliss Conference centre on 22 June 2012.
I'm quite impressed with the features of the photo uploader and photoshow tool at the Learn Local NING,  I'll grab the Embed code and see if I can share the Photoshow here.


Find more photos like this on Learn Local e-learning network
Well, it's worked: though as with all trials, there are a few hiccups. I'm not sure why the images autoplay in reverse order, and the captions have disappeared. Oh well, you can drop by the Learn Local e-learning network (AKA ACE NING) at: http://acenetwork.ning.com/ to view them properly.

e-showcase: follow from your desk

If you didn't make it to the e-learning showcase today, you can follow the twitter feed using the "hashtag" #eshow12
Ie: via this link
https://twitter.com/search/#eshow12

(I think)
Michael

Or, failing that, try this one: http://visibletweets.com/#query=%23eshow12&animation=2
A very novel tool for displaying all the tweets with a particular hashtag!
Thanks Michael and Leo

Here's a sample: 

I know how you feel, Dale. If there was a second ipad to win, you'd deserve to win it as much as me.... JK

More follow-up from face-to-face session

More follow-up from the May face-to-face session. Here's the presentation we started with. Of course, the discussion actually went in all kinds of other directions on the day.
And some notes from the discussion (after the break):

"Advanced wikispaces skills" session challenges presenters!

Jill and michael ran a session on the advanced aspects of wikispaces. Clearly nobody feels "advanced", because we were alone in the session.

However, we thought that some skills were worth demonstrating anyway. So we went ahead, intending to record the presentation for possible future value, and also to share some tips & strategies with each other.

Here's the menu we started with:

The large menu was designed to give people a choice (too much for one session) ..so we decided to focus on only 3 of the skills.

Okay the hilarious thing for us was that whatever we tried to demonstrated (for the recording), had changed since we last worked it out.

For Blended Learning, just add ingredients and press 'Blend'

This month we had the opportunity to spend some time with some North West Region e-leaders to explore a number of simple techniques to use Powerpoint in the classroom as an interactive teaching tool.

We were inspired by Rob Lewis from the British Council (previously blogged here) to have a go, and to work out what techniques he was using to speed up the production process so that we (humble educators) can, with little effort, become producers of e-learning resources.

Ha! Is it really that simple?

Let's review some of those techniques here so that you can mentally tick off what is practical and worth trying out - remembering that each time you make a Powerpoint presie, you'll get quicker and acquire new skills, be they keyboard shortcuts to speed the production process or clever ways to incorporate the presie into your teaching practice and/ or enabling students' access to that presie independently beyond the classroom.

Face-to-face networking

In spite of our need to keep in touch via various communication technologies (telephone, web conferencing etc), it's always great to get together in the same room at the same time. Face to face.

And there are so many people in ACE e-learning doing great work across the North-West region of Melbourne.

On the first of May, we were joined by some wonderful educators and managers from:

• Glenroy Neighbourhood Learning Centre, 
• North Melbourne language and literacy,
• Meadow Heights Learning Shop,
• Djerriwarrh Employment and Education Services,
• Carlton Neighbourhood Learning Centre (CNLC), 
• Community West,
• Yarraville community centre. 

We talked about a whole range of things: 

• What people have been up to lately, 
• Issues that come up, time and again, 
• Resources that people wanted to share, 
• Things to follow up.