We had a gathering for CITFLN at Reid campus on Friday with a number of things on our agenda, some of which we didn’t get to as time ticked away from us!
One highlight was a demonstration by Moir of a digital graphics pen which Moir has trialled with her Physics students (most of whom work in the AFP) in a tutorial fashion online.
Moir showed the pen in action and then showed an online whiteboard through which she encourages students to interact (if you have no pen you can still use a mouse apparently). The service is partly free and is called Skrbl. The possibilities for such interactions are endless – you could develop a floor plan with interior design students, map out an orienteering course for sports students, annotate images and graphs (as Moir does) – even animated gifs work on the whiteboard too! In fact, Michael Coghlan also blogged about a similar setup recently.
The bringing together of virtual and physical activities is the real key here. Connecting students with one another is one aspect, but connecting students to ideas and support is entirely different. Engaging in practice is paramount for students who are isolated from a classroom setting where a teacher is on-hand to offer timely pedagogical support. The interface between teacher-student communication and the ability to interact in the way the pen and online whiteboard show, affords much in terms of hands-on activities that at one time many said couldn’t be done online!
Update: There was a slight change of focus in this conversation. Check out Steven’s revised slides. More reflections on the session itself will follow shortly. Thanks to all who attended… and apologies to those who attempted to connect via Skypecast – it seemed the server was playing up!
The future of learning in a networked world, hive mind or free mind?
Let’s talk about ecological, economic and social/political forecasts, with some educational models in response, then ground it all in real practical educational development for Travel and Tourism Sector and Education. See link to slides for references to key global economists, environmentalists and political scientist and to innovative educational models.
THED have regular conversations across the state and across the Tasman so if you’re keen to hear what other teachers are doing online and elsewhere, AND want to share your own experiences, then this is your big chance! Jump into the conversations via the THED wiki, or get in touch with FLS (if you’re at CIT) for more info.
Moblogging, or mobile blogging, is an actviity that requires you to be ‘on the move’ (i.e. mobile) and that you can access the Web whilst on the move. You may also need a mobile phone and a blog set up on the Web. As for its use as a workplace assessment enabling tool, I’ll let Marg Bell tell you about the rest!
In this video, recorded at mLearn 2007, Gavin Cooney, CEO of Learnosity.com, provides a personal demonstration of an application that allows a learner to call in, authenticate themselves, and then verbally respond to various questions. The responses are stored for marking and can be retrieved and even podcast. YouTube link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=F3PkIdF1R04
Now we seem to be getting somewhere here! Thanks to Leonard for this great look into ways in which mobile devices can be used for assessment, using one of the core functions of mobile phones, the VOICE! It brings together the strength of voice communications with situated approaches to learning (and in this case assessment), favouring the connectedness possible between ’student and content’ + ‘content and teacher’ AND time + space!
Multi media overlay in a Jazz piano video makes a fantastic advanced teaching and learning tool! Im something of a jazz piano fan and an amateur player so was impressed to find Doug McKenzies work on Youtube. Throughout Doug’s video the viewer is able to analyse Doug’s jazz approach to the song Some Day My Prince Will Come not only by watching the performance, but by reading the brief , intermittent explanatory script that accompanies the performance onscreen and following along with the onscreen keyboard that is lighting up showing the chords as they are played. It provides a top platform for advanced analysis of the player’s interpretaion and jazz style!!
This could be a useful teaching framework to enable advanced analysis of a complex task…?
In fact, Michael Coghlan also blogged about a similar setup recently.
)