You can have a break from reading my blog until late July as I will be traveling Europe until then. I know, it will be difficult but someone’s gotta it!

If you want to follow me, you can do this on Twitter or on my private blog: http://dishmoptop.wordpress.com

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ciao!

Is your organisation pushing or pulling e-learning?

E-learning is in high demand, let’s face it, and teaching and learning organisations are under pressure to keep up with demand.

Are teachers willing to embrace e-learning, or is it a constant struggle or ‘push’ to develop the skills in technology required to create engaging e-learning resources?

Is your organisation recognising the strengths of the e-learning champions to build skilled teams and empower those who have the capacity to develop effective online learning material?

I have long noticed that many teachers are not willing or skilled at developing e-learning resources. This isn’t to say that they are not great teachers!! There are some awesome teachers out there who are not cut out for technology, but they feel pushed into developing online courses in their teaching field. Understandably, this can be a daunting and disempowering task for some teachers.

Is your organisation utilising the expertise it has and embedding e-learning strategically?

A new report was released on 14th May 2009 called: ‘The impact of e-learning champions on embedding e-learning’

Some of the summary points are:

This report looks at the use of e-learning champions as a change management strategy and outlines common activities and guidelines adopted by e-learning champions to successfully facilitate the uptake of e-learning within their organisation.

It confirms that successful e-learning champions possess a defined set of characteristics, including:

    * Credibility – A champion is skilled in e-learning; shares knowledge, skills and resources; is passionate and tenacious; communicates well; is client focused; and problem solves.  

    * Support – A champion provides tailored, educationally sound solutions; encourages teachers/trainers to explore e-learning; supports teachers/trainers one-on-one; and reviews and adapts as required.  

    * Influence – A champion builds capable e-learning teams; creates communities of practice; facilitates peer-to-peer learning; recognises and showcases achievements; and nurtures influential advocates.  

    * Commitment – A champion makes e-learning part of the strategic plan; ensures e-learning is appropriately resourced; makes e-learning part of teacher/trainer performance plans; and provides opportunities and time to learn, experiment and review e-learning tools and products.  

The study has a firm message for employers looking to harness the benefits of e-learning, warning:

    * E-learning champions are often better recognised for their work outside of their organisation than within it. 

    * Champions of e-learning cannot alone embed e-learning in their organisation, industry or community. To sustain e-learning, managers and policy makers must assist and build organisational cultures and work processes that support innovation and the work of e-learning champions. 

http://apo.org.au/research/impact-e-learning-champions-embedding-e-learning

So what does this have to do with pushing and pulling?

E-learning needs to be embedded strategically into an organisation for the emphasis to change from ‘push’ to ‘pull’. By changing our focus from pushing to pulling, our approach is more in line with adult learning preferences and Adult Learning Theory. 

Making e-learning a part of the strategic plan; ensures e-learning is appropriately resourced; ensures the planning of professional development according to needs; that champions are patient with teachers who are not tech savvy, ensures that  e-learning tools and products are researched and reviewed regularly. 

If organisations strategically set aside funding for resources to be developed by people who have the skills, teacher stress is minimised and student learning will benefit. Recognise that not all teachers are e-learning champions and either ‘encourage’ them to develop skills or stop insisting that they develop them. Most likely, they are awesome teachers in the classroom and are best left doing what they do best!

Poorly developed resources, with little understanding of design and development strategies, will not do your organisation or your learners justice in the long run. WIthout the foundational understanding of development and design, often we are left with a Learning Management System which contains a bunch of Word documents and handouts. I have seen some online learning which has made me want to curl up and suck my thumb! 

In saying that, I encourage all teachers who have an interest, to develop their skills and their Personal Learning Network. … more about Personal Learning Networks here. We all have to start somewhere!

[from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Letter to My Colleagues]

Marketing and recruitment campaigns run hot in this competitive world. Do we deliver to our students what we say we will or are they left feeling disappointed with their expectations unfulfilled?

Just recently, I made a decision which seemed exciting at the time, but unfortunately things didn’t work out as I expected. It has got me thinking about how we can have expectations which are not always fulfilled. Sometimes these are our own high expectations and other times there is a ’selling’ of the service, which influences our choice. Could this be the case sometimes with our students?

Years ago, a friend told me a joke, which seems relevant to this blog post, so I made a little animation video for you to enjoy:

It is often difficult for students to understand the implications of enrolling into an online course. They often get into it and discover it is ‘hell’. Maybe that is a bit over the top… but it may be ’sold’ to them in an enticing way, only to discover it isn’t what they expected. Students may not have considered:

1. If they are suited to online learning
2. If they have the technology necessary
3. If the course will suit their learning style

They may enrol and discover that the entire course is delivered as text. This can be very BORING and they might just as soon get out a good book and read it!

So walk your talk and avoid disgruntled students! Take a look at these top tips for making elearning interesting.

I would love to hear your comments so please share your thoughts!

Here is a demonstration of a short (1 minute) movie I made with a free open source product.

If you would like to learn how to use it, we are running free PD online in Elluminate. Check out the calendar for the PD on http://theedublogger.edublogs.org/free-live-web-events/

The product can be embedded into html (as seeen below) or shared via a link, on Facebook and many other options. It could be a great tool for developing an engaging ’scenario’ for your e-learning course.

Enjoy this short demonstration. I apologise in advance for my strange sense of humour!

Here is something else for free (I am SO good to you all!).

Edublogs now offers free live web events to support the education community.  Session topics will range from different aspects of blogging to using a range of web technologies and e-learning options.

You can sign up to be notified by email of the upcoming free live events and professional development by selecting the link on the free live web events web page.

These real-time events are delivered using Elluminate complete with audio, chat and desktop sharing. Most of the time the session lasts for one hour and is fairly casual.

Here is a tool you can afford.

Try using Photopeach as a FREE, quick and easy interactive video tool. It is a perfect tool for giving students the capacity to comment and contribute to your video, or make their own and share it.

In just a few quick steps you have a nice product:

1. Upload photos

2. Swap them around to put them in order

3. Add some music (provided)

4. PUBLISH!

5. Add text to your slides

The exciting thing is that people can either comment on the slides OR at the finish of the Video. In the case of the latter, the comments appear at the end of the video in the credits. Comments can be deleted by the owner of the video if need be.

Here is my example (below). You will see there are comments at the very end.

There are various options for sharing the file, including the embeddable code I have used here…

Our trip to Egypt on PhotoPeach

http://photopeach.com/home

It is Ada Lovelace Day today. First, I have written my blog post about a woman who excels in technology.. Then I have a description and explanation of who Ada is and what Ada Lovelace Day is all about.

______________________________________________________________________

My Ada Lovelace day submission

Today (24thof March 2009) would like to nominate Sue Waters for Ada Lovelace Day. Why?… read on…

Sue Waters lives in WA and is an enthusiastic teacher of e-learning and a great blogger. Sue provides a range of useful and practical e-learning “how-tos”. See her tips, tricks and help with using Web 2.0 on the Edublogger site http://theedublogger.edublogs.org/.

Sue is an Australian based in Perth and works as an aquaculture lecturer. Her passion for technology has lead to a transition from aquaculture lecturer, to facilitating professional development workshops on elearning and web 2.0 technologies to her current role as editor of The Edublogger and working for Edublogs as Edublogs Community Facilitator.

Sue spends considerable time helping and mentoring others. I have found her incredibly helpful having particpated in the ‘31 days to a better blog‘ program and by following her on Twitter: @suewaters.

Sue also runs free PD sessions in Elluminate on Friday mornings which is terrific for those of us who are alone or needing interaction with like minded people.

Thanks Sue! You are a whizz and deserve to be up there with Ada Lovelace!

Image linked from http://www.eworks.edu.au/converge/images/sue_waters.jpg

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About Ada Lovelace Day

Who was Ada?

Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

More details about Ada Lovelace Day

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

It doesn’t matter how new or old your blog is, what gender you are, what language you blog in, or what you normally blog about - everyone is invited to take part. All you need to do is sign up to this pledge and then publish your blog post any time on Tuesday 24th March 2009. If you’re going to be away that day, feel free to write your post in advance and set your blogging system to publish it that day.

We will gather as many of the posts together on the day as we can, and we’ll let you know exactly how we’re going to do that nearer the time. For ongoing updates about Ada Lovelace day, please follow us on Twitter, join our mailing list or see our blog.

http://findingada.com/
http://twitter.com/FindingAda
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/findingada

Here is a fantastic video on the progression of information technology. With a world changing so fast, how do we hope to accommodate the up and coming generation/s if we don’t try to keep up with it ourselves? If you are getting left behind, I encourage you to take baby steps and try out some Web2 tools. For more on this, try reading: Getting a grip on your personal learning network (PLN)

My first experience with Twitter was 2 years ago when I was working on a film crew with an amateur production of a movie called Elindil’s secret. We used Twitter to contact each other during pre-production and production phases. It soon became a social interaction. In the past 6 months I have realised the potential of Twitter for developing networks in my professional field (elearning). By ‘following’ people from Janes list… see list here, I very quickly made friends and contacts who have been awesome networks for many reasons.

You will read in my last post, when Twitter almost made me a child predator, what some would consider a negative aspect of networking online, but I consider it to be something to learn from rather than something to stop me using Twitter. After all, I don’t stop driving a car because it might have a flat tyre!

Here are some of the things I use it for, apart from the social aspect and for keeping in contact with people:

• Sharing ideas or asking for help
• Notifying others of events and hearing about them
• Notifying others and receiving notification of new tools
• Sharing my blog post when it has been published or reading others

Just for fun, I have included the ‘Twitter love song’ for you:

More ideas for using Twitter in your Personal learning network can be seen on this slide show (thanks to Slideshare and Mike Romard):