OTN @ CIT

Today’s forum sessions were fun! There was Wink and wiki and audio, not to mention weird echoes!

Diana’s session on using Wink to capture your lectures and audio was a hit, as was Aaron’s discussion on using wiki in your classroom. Participants began to compile a list of ideas on how to engage learners in discussion on a wiki - a great collaborative activity in itself! I think a very useful guide will develop from this.

Moir’s session on adding audio lecturers to your online course was simple, effective and downright practical!

Image: http://www.tomrafteryit.net/

Sue and Kerry went to town on using ARED(v2) and this is now available for CIT teachers via a quick download to your log-in profile. ARED is a quick way to get your content looking great and is easy to use - no special web design knowledge is required!

Day 2 of the forum looks set to engage as well, beginning with your virtual presence at the CIT strategic planning meeting - jump into VET Virtual and have your say about CIT’s future. Colin will be facilitating the online aspects of this discussion.

Marg Robson presents some tips on getting interactive with VET Virtual, while Anne and Moir tell us about their e-learning innovations project. Following that, David bravely jumps into the world of quizzes, and then we finish up the forum with a look at the national LORN, with Kerry and Sue.

What a great way to see in the semester break, don’t you think!

See you online tomorrow…!

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!