Flex:Ed held it’s first Forum on flexible learning for the year, titled Developing Us…Online!

The sessions were short and sweet at half an hour and we ran these back-to-back over three days – full on! We tried out VETVirtual, the virtual collaborative space developed through the Framework as part of the Access to Bandwidth project.

HUGE thanks to Chris Richter from the VETVirtual team for stepping in to most (if not all) the sessions to see how things were running! Kudos Chris! We had a very annoying echo at the beginning which Chris sorted out for us in no time!

The sessions were facilitated by CIT teachers sharing their experiences in online learning and teaching, using wikis, slideshows, videos, even old man WebCT! We looked at game-based techniques for interaction, Toolboxes and learning design, virtual world (Croquet) and e-portfolios – the list goes on!

A HUGE thanks goes out to the faciltiators for devoting their time to facilitating these conversations! And thank you to all who participated in between their calsses, virtually or otherwise. The VETVitrual sessions won hands down over the face-to-face sessions – it has been a busy time of year too.

We will be running more sessions shortly, after much feedback about when the next forum will be!

Toolbox Learning objects are reuseable digital resources – mini web sites – that have been stripped from their parent Toolbox and made avaliable in the Toolbox learning object repository for free download. While this might sound unaccountably cruel for both the object and the Toolbox, for us teachers it means quick access to 1300 free, easily customisable, WebCT compatable resources from a goodly number of the 100 Toolboxes currently in use.

There are objects avaliable for example in effective communication; a clever and comprehensive sequence covering most aspects of communication in a office setting… and 1299 other objects covering topics too many to mention.

It is a relatively simple process to upload these objects to a content module in WebCT or if that sounds like too much trouble just link to the object live from The Framework site to your WebCT course page.

If you would like to know more visit The Framework Toolbox site and try a few searches or call me, Helen Lynch, 74031 for more details.

When: 9.30am – 12 noon Wednesdays Apr 4, 11, and May 2
Where: A108 Southside
Who: 5 teachers (from Faculty of SciTech and CITSol)
What: Communicating and Collaborating Online; a flexibly run workshops series that has 2 face-to-face sessions and 1 online session (and 2 extra weeks in between for the semester break).

We began our 1st session outlining what online communication and online collaboration were, why they were different to one another, and then looked into the how to. We considered an overall communication strategy and how online communications featured in that strategy.

We then looked more closely at some of the communication and collaboration tools available through CIT’s online campus and tested them out against our strategies and the ways in which teachers worked with their students across various subjects. We noticed that some worked better for certain communication needs while others didn’t, and that overall it depended on the task at hand.

We ran an online chat session one evening where some in the group were on dial-up from home while others used broadband. This activity provided us all a chance to experience chat in a real-world way, noting its effectiveness (or not) for certain learning activities and tasks.

We wrapped up our final session with some more hands-on activities, where we considered some of the planning and steps in setting up online activities that encourage communication and collaboration with, and between, students. We also discussed the potential of using “mobile” tools, devices and services as well, like Gabcast, GoogleTalk and others, to widen the communication “net” that also captures those serendipitous times for conversation!

Some of the resources we used during the workshop series included:

• Jonathan Finkelstein’s Real Time Minute blog (with niffy videos and audio clips)
• Learn the Net website:
  • Find information: http://www.learnthenet.com/english/section/digdat.html
  • Web conferencing and chat: http://www.learnthenet.com/english/section/conference.html
  • Using multimedia: http://www.learnthenet.com/english/section/multi.html
• Cats in the Classroom article by Kazmer (2005)
• Seven Steps to Building Electronic Communities (Philippa Gamse and Terry Grunwald)
• Part of Step 6: Tips for successful online collaboration
• Netiquette tips from the University of West Florida, USA
• Gilly Salmon’s 5 stage model for e-moderation

Just to name a few! Thanks to those who attended for your time and your input, and for your constructive feedback too!