Liegh Blackall, Gary Sewell and myself finished a learnscope project last year and given that the only educational technologies I was using before this was the white board I personally learnt heaps about the benefits of using, blogs, sms, internet as learning tools.

The interesting thing we found was that once we had given training to all students in using the internet, email and how top open an attachments was the completion rate for the work given to do outside of the classroom.

We are now sending all students to the libary to set up email accounts and to offer training in the hope of being able to move toward a more blended mode of learning or making the students more responsible for thier learning at TAFE.

I would make contact with our head teacher Gary Sewell, we would be interested in using this type of resourse, as you would know it is an absolute load of work and a shame to not use these tools once developed.

dean.h.gibson

For example: To interview participants for MP3 recordings, the key to success is to have 3 good questions that focus on a particular aspect of the PD. TALO could develop a list of good questions for the Learnscope projects to use, and in the end we will have a vast range of recordings on a certain topic.

Dean, if we do set something up, it’d be great to learn from some of the strategies you used… what worked, what was difficult etc. I will contact Gary when (if) things get going.

I might even try setting up a WikiBook for the moment, so we can start structuring our strategies, stories and experiences etc.

A few observations:

1) I think it’s important to make sure there isn’t already something like this out there so we aren’t re-inventing the wheel. There is already an overwhelming amount of info out there to trawl through.

2) It should be considered whether it is an international resource or focussed on the Australian experience. There is a tendency for a lot of current resources to be USA-centric. Making it about our exerience may be one way of delineating it from existing resources.

3) I think a WIKI is the way to go. I don’t necessarily agree with your view that is should not use WIKI code. Even though there are new wikis coming on board that use a WYSIWYG interface - such as Jotspot - http://www.jot.com/ - it’s worth considering whether regular WIKIs are here to stay for a while, and if that’s the case, then encouraging facilitators to use WIKI tags may still be worthwhile.

4) I think it should be hosted on an independent site that follows open source ideals as much as possible, and not on an institution’s or individual’s server.

5) It would be a great place to collect the sort of web tools I think Jock was asking for on the list.

First looking at your points Sean:
1) Yep, definitely needs to be a priority to check whether something like this is already out there… I did find Blogging 101 on Wikibooks, which may be useful to get some ideas… but it just currently looks like a list of links, and isn’t stuctured or complete, nor does it have an educational focus. I’ll spend some time next week looking specifically for related edu resources. Let me know if you find anything similar too.

2) I reckon it would be great to make it about our own experience, give it an Australian flavour without making it Australian-centric (if possible). Do you think that’s possible?

3) Excellent point. It would be great for facilitators who are feeling confident with other online tools to learn to use wikis for the main content of the resource. Although it would also be good if newcomers were able to provide feedback on activities that they try out without having to use WIKI tags. I’m sure that it is possible to have a simple comment system on WIKI pages, just need to look into it.

4) Totally agree. I’ve started toying with a Wikibook just to see what’s possible and what’s not. Anything contributed there is under the GNU Free Documentation License. I think that keeping the resource independent is necessary to get people involved in the first place!

5) Yeah, we could start doing that on the WikiBook as soon as we get the cover page up (working on it). Even if we don’t end up using WikiBooks we can transfer the content because it is in the public domain… how good is Open Source!

Jude, point taken: I’ll spend more time with my family You expressed what I was thinking but much more clearly!

Thanks again to both of you for your time and feedback

Firstly, I think we need to be having this discussion on a mailing list or a wiki - it’s getting a bit unwieldy using your blog comments! Time to set up a Google Group perhaps. I’ve had no experience with WIKIs, so I’m not sure if using WIKIs for collaborative planning will work.

I’m not sure why you are choosing Wikibooks as the host for either the “final product” or the planning site. It looks to me like it’s for textbooks that are in a fairly well-formed and close-to-finished state when they are put up. I expect what we are talking about would be an ever-evolving organic beast.

There are plenty of other WIKI hosts (WIKI Farms, they seem to be called) out there. It would be a good opportunity to do a bit of research to find what’s out there that would fulfill open source principles etc. that could be used in our teaching, with Learnscopers etc. We need to find the Blogspot of WIKIs.

Some starting places:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiFarms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_farms

I think it is possible to give it an Australian focus - by putting it the name and the mission statement. I’m not absolutely convinced this is the way to go though, and would like more discussion and thought on this.

btw - I didn’t mention: I’d love to help you out with this.

Sean, I hadn’t chosen Wikibooks for anything other than to experiment with structure and media content. Although Wikibooks do have this to say:

Up-to-the-minute changes

You will never have to wait months or years for another edition to come out that incorporates the latest changes in the field. The very minute a discovery or advancement is made the text can be updated to reflect that change.

so they do have some scope for keeping ‘books’ up to date (kinda like wikipedia’s articles that appear the day of the event!), but you’re right, they do want the book to be ‘complete’ before it gets a lot of attention! I’m definitely keen to survey _lots_ of options before we decide on any one, and I’m not leaning towards any particular system yet .

Lookforward to hearing more on the email group, and glad you’re excited about the possibilities too!

Anyone who wants to join the group can do so at: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/BlendedLearning/

First of all I should introduce myself. Leigh brought me into TALO when he took up the position of Courseware Designer with us. I have been a bit slack in posting given this is my first one! But I am definitely interested in your sugestion Michael of co-developing a blended learning resource.

But I would not be keen to promote that we ‘transition learning activities away from LMS’s to the distributed tools of the net…’ simply because I believe that good teachers have always engaged learners through active construction of knowledge regardless of the tool used and because LMS’s have a role here.

Not everything George Siemens say’s in his article is negative towards LMS’s for example he indicates that “Implementing an LMS as part of a holistic learning environment gives the end user flexibility and control to move in various paths (driven by learning needs, not by LMS design).” When a learning environment is created that is driven by good learning design, that utilises a range of software tools like flash, respondus, hot potatoes, some LMS tools etc..and is delivered through an LMS for learning management then the resulting learning experience can be highly engaging.

I guess I would prefer an outcome that wasn’t quite so dismissive of LMS’s, maybe something more like “building a teachers capacity to transform their teaching approaches to enable the development of engaging, community driven and technology-rich blended learning environments”

Leigh and I will be working on a resource for our institution which will seek to build staff capabilities in blended learning. Our resource will focus on:
the broad issues of why there is a need to change approaches,
- how to design learning environments that are flexible and technology rich,
- what to plan for (resourcing and scheduling),
- how to develop learning environments that are flexible and technology rich,
- how to construct and facilitate learning in these learning environments, and
- finally we will showcase what is being done re. the above.
We would be happy to share our work on this as it develops with you and others in TALO and of course to contribute to this resource and link to it from our resource.

And I agree with you - an inclusive approach is the way to go. LMS do have their place alongside distributed tools. Flexible learning also means flexibility in the range of tools used.

Perhaps you can bring this discussion onto the new list - http://groups-beta.google.com/group/BlendedLearning/.