Kingsbury Training Centre 1978

In a past life, (for 28 years) I worked in the disability field, more specifically, with people with intellectual disability and autism.  In the late 1970’s I left school in the country, arrived in Melbourne and began work in at Kingsbury Training Centre, a new ‘forward thinking’ institution for people with intellectual disability. I was one of 3 staff on shift at any time, with 30 small children aged from 5 to 13 years old. Amongst the concepts, which were futuristic for the times, we ran individual programs, mostly based around life skills for the residents. As time went by, this concept was developed across all disability services. My shift into Educational services for adults, saw the IPP (Individual Program Plan) delivered, by law,  across the state of Victoria. This has since been abolished and replaced by the ‘Person centred planning’ concept. The focus shifted from ‘helping and caring’ to ‘empowering’, although I admit that it is implemented with varying success across organisations. One of my greatest contributions to  the disability field designing the  ‘All about me communication books’ this whilst at EDAR and consequently, winning the Dept of Human Services ‘Best practice award’. These books embraced the concept of individuality and empowerment and have been used across Australia.

Management in the disability services embraced the same philosophy: Management supported Staff from below, as the foundation of the organisation, rather from the top looking down. I particularly experienced this at EDAR, where I eventually became a manager myself. Collaboration and learning come hand in hand in developing an authentic and sustainable organisation which will manage change effectively. By role modeling this to staff, the philosophy flowed through to the clients and became a holistic learning journey for all.

What has this got to do with e-learning?

Be patient, I am getting to it!

I began my career change by teaching Cert 4 in Disability across 4 TAFE organisations. It was a very steep learning curve which flowed into Aged care, Nursing, Business and many other areas. In fact, I taught over 45 different units of Competency in my first year of work as a teacher. It came as a surprise that program delivery was largely focused on students as a group and that personal learning concepts had not been embraced. Content seemed to be delivered at students rather than involving them in collaboration, by providing real world experiences and choice of delivery methods. Teachers from a disability background find it natural to teach in a collaborative style as they tend to utilise the skills they learned in industry. Of course, I am generalising. There are many many amazing and talented teachers out there who are from various backgrounds, who have become that way by both natural means and through trial an error. What I am saying is that it is easier for teachers when this style of teaching does not involve behaviour change or who have had the learner centred approached modeled to them personally.

Recognise and embrace difference

Diversity in the classroom

Some people have struggled their whole school life to ‘fit into the mold’ and only ‘blossom’ when a teacher recognised their strengths and encouraged them to learn by using them.

Many people come to a position in their lives where they disengage with formal school learning, despite the good work of talented and dedicated teachers. Some have learning difficulties, some have the capacity but are not interested.  Either way they separate from learning either physically or in their commitment. The path to re-engagement, if there is such a path, is individual and arises through linking learning to a passion or interest which in turn is linked to work life or purpose.

Perhaps the first requirement is a shared acknowledgement  that not all people learn in the same way.  Some like to  follow an academic path while others learn better by doing and applying skills to practical situations. Some learners succeed through formal study while others succeed through  engaging in work-like learning. Importantly both paths lead to success and should be equally esteemed.

Individual learning and e-learning

Many studies indicate the advantages of blended learning in terms of lower dropout rates and success in  achieving learning goals. There is obviously nothing wrong with blended learning, but its implementation can be even more challenging than the introduction of 100% distance learning. A model appropriate to blended learning must allow for individual path combining contact and distance learning. In practice this is hard to implement because of logistic constraints, especially on contact hours. Careful design is therefore essential.

I am teaching the ‘Design and Research e-learning’  unit in the Diploma of VET program at Swinburne. Most recently I have trialled the use of the Australian Flexible Learning Framework Learning design tool as a first step towards developing programs for online learning. The Learning Design Tool is a FREE online resource which guides you step-by-step through the four essential stages to write high quality, learner-focused course content, and to create your own learning design template. Using this tool has helped teachers to think more seriously about who they are pitching the learning to and how they will design it.

Tips for individual learning online

Encourage your students to develop a Personal Learning Network. EXAMPLE: The majority of my learning is done informally, mostly because I have a huge network of ‘Twitter people’ who are e-learning consultants and teachers. READ: Using Twitter to enhance your personal learning network (PLN)- How can Twitter be useful to educators?

Follow me on Twitter

Don’t try to force feed content to your learners. Give them opportunities to learn collaboratively and experimentally. Use tools such as the discussion or chat tools in your LMS or  Wikis and Nings for collaborative learning.

Find out what skills they already have and allow them to ‘choose their own adventure’ to become competent and skilled at tasks.

Take baby steps:

1. Not all Gen Y are techno whizzes and often students in their advanced years are very computer literate. Gen Y are often fantastic at Facebook and SMS, but have no idea how to use email. Allow for plenty of support and learning.
2. ‘Taking baby steps’ also refers to yourself. You don’t need bells and whistles to be a good online facilitator. Just keep it within your area of skill but keep learning and progressing!

Don’t underestimate peer learning. Quite often students have asked questions in the online discussion forums and another student has answered it for them beautifully. This is meaningful learning for both students. Good facilitation will encourage this, providing they are not left without support or encouragement from the teacher altogether!

Engaging Gen Y

In this video, which is part of a larger project investigating learner-centered teaching with technology, the need for motivation and engagement with technology is highlighted. The use of the technogy advertisements is designed to highlight the engagement produced by technology and media. Part 2 is also available on You Tube if you find it helpful.

I would like to finish with my favourite, thought provoking video…

Your comments are always welcome and I try to reply to them as soon as is humanly possible!

How to use Facebook safely

I have had 3 conversations this week with people who are ‘afraid of Facebook’ because:

• They don’t want their identity stolen
• They don’t want the world knowing their details
• They think they will be robbed
• They believe their children will be kidnapped (from photos on Facebook)

Lets start by looking at how Facebook works…

If you adjusted your privacy settings correctly, the only people able to see your Facebook info, is your ‘friends’. I say ‘friends’ loosely. Friends = anyone you add to Facebook. YOU have the control over who you add as a friend and what they can see. If you don’t want strangers to see your information, don’t add them. It’s as simple as that. You can group your friends. This way, your students/workmates etc can only see the information that you want them to see. At the bottom of this post you will find some tips for setting your privacy settings.

It would be easier for someone to stalk your house and observe toys in the yard, notice that your car is not in the carport etc, than to see a photo on your private Facebook site and track down your address.

Just recently, I went to Europe for 6 weeks. While I was gone, I left my 25 year old son, who is a martial arts champion, my 23 yo son who is home during the day and 20 year old daughter, who is also home most days, in the house with my over protective dog who goes crazy if a leaf falls off a tree. Here I was away in Europe, posting photos of my trip in Facebook and unbeknown to me, someone could have robbed my house. Really?

Yes… bad things do happen, but lets put on our seat belts before we travel. Take the best precautions and enjoy the benefits of networking with long lost cousins, keeping in touch with friends and facilitating e-learning which reaches people in a more engaging and contemporary manner.

Tips for privacy

There is no point in me recreating the wheel, so I have found some postings from other bloggers about Privacy settings:

1. How to sort your friends into groups with different settings for each group eg: People you work with or your students could be kept from viewing your private photos. How to group privacy settings via the friends list
2. Adjusting your privacy settings
3. 10 Privacy settings every Facebook user should know
4. A guide to Facebook privacy
5. The risky business of using social media for teaching

Comments

Let me know what you think by writing your comments on the comments link.

What is it you ask?

Farm Town is an application in Facebook. My daughter insisted I would love it and she was right.

Farm Town is application that allows users to plow, plant, harvest, and sell crops. It is the latest fad among Facebook users, which I am a great fan of. There is some irony in running a farm because it IS just like running a farm… only cleaner. Not only that, but you can go and work for other people and build up your ‘money’ and experience points (sound familiar?). You can be hired in the marketplace or hire people yourself. I think it’s a great tool for building business skills with students, collaboration, strategic planning and the need for persistence. I wish I had some (Business students I mean) to work with. Instead… I will share my idea.

My farm (below) is currently being re-constructed. I am saving for the ultimate farm house so I am living in a hay barn. Just like real life perhaps? You can see my avatar in the photo, standing in the Sunflower patch… which is 83% ready for harvest.

There is plenty of information on the web about HOW to use Farm Town and tricks and tips for success, so I am not going to bother touching on that subject.

Using Farm Town for Learning

Students will need to create a Facebook account, if they haven’t already and then search for Farm Town and bookmark the application on their home page.

They will need to build a farm from scratch, making purchases from their earnings such as… seeds, houses, buildings, rivers, paths, fences and lawn mowers.

Students can ask other students to be their neighbours and/or buddy, and as neighbours are away from their farms, students will have to tend to their farms as tornadoes strike, crops dry out, and weeds grow. The neighbours can also work on each others farms, earning money and experience as they go. What they grow and harvest, how they manage their money and employ people, will determine their success in the given time frame. Students would need to develop strategies for their business and reflect on them afterwards to cap it off.

This tool works as both a collaborative learning tool as well as a self reflective resource for individuals, which I think has great benefit to teaching and learning.

Now that I have justified my addiction… I am off to harvest my latest crop, or sit back and watch someone else do it.

If you think of any other ideas or student groups who this would benefit… feel free to comment below.

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!

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

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):

For those who haven’t seen the movie, Slumdog Millionaire is the story of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is about to experience the biggest day of his life. With the whole nation watching, he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”

Authorities challenged Jamal because they didn’t believe that a ’slumdog’ could possibly have any knowledge, especially since he had no formal learning in a school. It highlighted, to me, the fact that learning can be done in many ways… even on the streets! Life experience can be undervalued. Where can we record this valuable information and reflect on it as a learning process?

Experiential learning is the process of making making meaning from direct experience. For the adult learner especially, experience becomes a “living textbook” to which they can refer.

At the heart of all learning is the way we process our experiences, especially our critical reflections on our experiences.

What has this got to do with eportfolios?

Do you have lots of life experience and reflections, which aren’t recorded anywhere, and/or your formal learning experiences are in a cardboard box under your bed? This is where an eportfolio, could be valuable to you and to your students.

Last weekend I attended an eporfolio symposium in Brisbane. We looked at many types of both sophisticated and simplistic e-portfolios and observed that philosophically, they all serve the same purpose. Some of the options available are much more ‘polished’ (which is always a winner with me!), but basically it is all about the portfolio owner having ownership of their learning and control over their own eportfolio. What goes on it and who sees it is totally up to them. Keeping record of skills and experiences is a valuable tool for employment options and for accessing formal learning.

Here is a guide for eportfolio owners:

Here is one persons view on using a blog for an e-portfolio: Pros and cons of using blogs for an eportfolio

Did you see the parallels with Slumdog Millionaire?

Any comments? Feel free to express them or to subscribe to my blog.

]]> http://jennywood.edublogs.org/2009/02/11/slumdog-millionaires-e-portfolio/feed/ 3 http://jennywood.edublogs.org/2009/01/28/my-top-5-tools-for-digital-story-telling/ http://jennywood.edublogs.org/2009/01/28/my-top-5-tools-for-digital-story-telling/#comments Thu, 29 Jan 2009 04:13:01 +0000 jennywood http://jennywood.edublogs.org/?p=142 Why have I chosen these tools?

I just LOVE editing movie footage and have recently worked on a movie crew of an amateur production of a movie. Serious movie makers certainly wouldn’t have used any of my recommended tools! So why did I choose them? Because time is precious for teachers!  The tools have been chosen according to ease of use, but still maintain an effective outcome. I have purposely not rated the tools because all of the tools meet different needs, therefore one is not necessarily ‘better’ than another. You will find some are ‘quick and simple’ and others have more complex functions.

At the bottom of the page you will have the opportunity to contribute your own ideas.

Digital storytelling is easy and engaging for students …more about digital storytelling

1. Photo Story (free software)

Microsoft’s Photo Story is a very user friendly program that is available for free from the Microsoft web site. This program does not use a video camera or digital video recordings. Instead Photo Story creates the video from digital image stills, such as digital photographs. The program can also add narration, which will require a microphone connected to your computer. The Photo Story will turn your still pictures and sounds into a video at the end, creating video files which can be played using the Windows Media Player or any other video player with the capabilities of playing .wmv files.

You Tube tutorial: How to use Photo Story 3

System requirements: Windows XP; Windows XP Home Edition ; Windows XP Media Center Edition; Windows XP Professional Edition ; Windows XP Service Pack 1; Windows XP Service Pack 2

2. Windows movie maker (free software)

Windows Movie Maker is a little more difficult to use than Photo Story but is a free basic video editor available to users of Windows XP. Movie Maker allows you to combine full-motion video, still images, narration, music, effects, titles, and transitions to create your own movies. It’s a simple program but it allows you to make professional-looking movies that you can share over the internet or burn to DVD. With Movie Maker 2.1, you can create, edit, and share your movies. Build your movie with a few simple drag-and-drops. Delete bad shots and include only the best scenes. Then share your movie via the Web, e-mail, or CD. Using third-party software you can even take movies you’ve made and turn them into DVDs.

YouTube tutorial: How to use Windows movie maker

Download Instructions:

You will probably find that WMM is already on your PC and you didn’t know it! Movie Maker 2.1 is available for download with Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). You can download SP2, Movie Maker 2.1, and all future critical updates automatically by turning on the Automatic Updates feature in Windows XP.

3. Sound slides ($39.95 basic)

Soundslides is a favorite of mine when I am in a big hurry. It is created for storytellers on a deadline, designed to make quick work of slide show production.

Soundslides operates in a single window on your Windows or Mac OS X computer, with a straightforward interface that leads you through importing your images and audio. Editing tools are familiar and behave the way you’d expect.

It cannot edit video or do complex tasks but what Soundslides does, is make it easy for you to present your images with impact, then sync them seamlessly with any audio track. With Soundslides Plus, you can even skip the sound and just focus on the images.

YouTube tutorial: Using Soundslides

Available as Mac or PC download.

3. Camtasia (or other screen recorder software)

Screen recorder software can be used for making digital stories very quickly and successfully, although the effects can be limiting and a little cumbersome (for the purpose of DST) compared to other options. If you are after a very quick way to narrate a PowerPoint show or images it is a good way to go. Camtasia will embed into Powerpoint, which definitely makes the process easier than capturing it in the usual Screen recorder manner.

Jing is a product which is free, but it doesn’t have as many options as Camtasia. It is highly recommended for a quick and cheap way of recording your screen.

YouTube tutorial: How to use Camtasia Studio

Camtasia has a free trial you can download:

4. iMovie (Mac only)

Being a Mac user myself, I highly recommend using iMovie, which is an alternative for Mac users, to Windows Movie Maker. iMovie is designed to work alongside iPhoto (a photo library) and iTunes (a music library / player). Any images in iPhoto and sounds in iTunes can be accessed from the Photos and Audio panes in iMovie. Like Windows movie maker, iMovie can edit video footage as well as still images. It has the capacity to narrate, import audio and is compatible with iDVD for putting onto DVD. iMovie has the capacity to upload straight onto YouTube and output into a variety of formats.

Once you get used to it, you will find it quite quick and simple, but it is more complex than other programs I have recommended here as it has ‘more functions’.

Read more here…

YouTube tutorial: How to use iMovie

5. Slide show movie maker (free)

Create AVI photo slideshows

Slide Show Movie Maker can create an .avi video slideshow from a series of .bmp or .jpg images. Images can have professional-looking fade-in and fade-out effects, plus attractive text overlays. The program lets you choose to save output using any one of your systems installed .avi codecs. You can choose to build your slideshow from selected pictures or entire directories. If you select any of the included effects, they can be previewed, using the built in viewer before you apply any of them. The program also lets you save your work as projects, so you can continue working on them at a later time. Additional features include pa color fading panorama scrolling and more.

System requirements: Windows 9x, NT, ME, 2000, XP, XP Pro with a resolution with minimal 1024 x 768 pixel

Bonus tool: Audacity (free)

This software is only for editing audio but can be used in conjunction with any of my top 5 tools. It is free to download and is primarily used for recording and editing sounds. It is easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
• And more! See the complete list of features

YouTube tutorial: Using Audacity

System requirements: Available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.

Anybody out there know of any other great DST tools to share?

I welcome your opinion and will always reply to comments! Just click on the ‘no comments’ or ‘#comments’ below.

Why Did I Start My Blog?

It was originally created to enable the participants of the DipVET e-learning units, at Swinburne University TAFE, Victoria or just for anyone to keep abreast of some of the technologies that are now being used for educational purposes online.

I have realised there is a bigger and greater world out there reading my blog so it has expanded to reach a world wide audience. Fundamentally, however, it is used to help teachers (mostly in Adult learning environments) to learn about emerging technologies and tap into support and helpful information about e-learning.

The mission statement for this blog:

“To develop and cultivate the importance of sharing knowledge and dissemination of information, particularly, but not entirely, around e-learning.  To be achieved through weekly/bi-weekly blog posts based on emerging technology, reports on conferences and newly discovered learning material.”

How is it designed to be Used?

Anyone can, and is encouraged, to comment on posts or pages on this blog. You can use text, video or audio to make your comments. Providing I am not in the Sahara desert without any technology to save myself, I will always reply to your comments!

Take a look at old posts and information pages for useful and easy to understand tutorials and tips.

How Can Users Connect/Subscribe?

There are a number of ways of following the blog:

• Bookmark it - many of our readers simply bookmark Swineblogger or set it as their homepage so that every time they log on they see the latest post

• RSS Feed one of the most popular ways that people follow what goes up on the blog is via a ‘news feed’ or our ‘rss feed’. This technology lets you subscribe to this site and be notified of updates on a variety of tools such as Google’s ‘Reader’ tool, iGoogle, MyYahoo and many other news aggregators and feed readers. If you want to use these to subscribe to Swineblogger you’ll need to add this feed. More instructions here…

• Daily Email Updates – if you don’t use RSS you can still get updates sent to you once a day by subscribing to our feed via email. You can do this by entering your email address on the top right corner of the page ‘Subscribe by email‘.

• Social Bookmarking – The last way that people are using to keep track of the latest posts on the Swineblogger blog is via a variety of social bookmarking tools. You’ll notice at the bottom of every post on the blog that there’s a little button like the one below with the word ‘bookmark’ on it (this button isn’t on the front page of the blog – just individual posts). If you put your cursor over this button a little window opens up that allows you to bookmark the post on one of a variety of ‘bookmarking’ sites. Some of the more popular ones are Diigo, Delicious and StumbleUpon. In bookmarking our posts you have a way of finding them later when you need them but you also spread the news about Swineblogger a little and help it continue to grow.

Where Should You Start?

A starting point to read is the ‘The best of Swineblogger‘. This page has some of the most popular posts on it to get you on your way.

Have you ever considered checking your online learning courses for accessibility? How much do you know about ‘disability friendly’ online course building?

Take this quiz…. and see if you get any surprises.

Why must I?

Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 agencies must ensure that people with disabilities have the same fundamental rights to access information as the rest of the community.

Apart from the law…. don’t you want all of your students to have their needs met, succeed and feel satisfied at being involved in a fully inclusive learning experience?

“Good design, is accessible design.”

Make sure, as you begin your online learning design process, that you understand the principles and techniques of making your course accessible. Consider this aspect from the very beginning of your project.

Consider all individual needs in your design

• Cognitive Learning

• Auditory

• Visual (including blind, low vision, and color blindness)

• Motor/physical disability

For each disability, consider possible barriers to be avoided in your site design.

Basic tips for designing online learning:

• Use serif fonts for print, and use sans serif for screen reading.
• Use high contrast for text on backgrounds.
• Images & animations: Use the alt alternative to describe the function of each visual.
• Have text alternatives for video.
• Hypertext links: Use text that makes sense when read out of context. For example, avoid “click here.”
• Keep your pages tidy and clutter free.
• Keep content simple and clear to read  more on this……

More ideas for good practice:

• Interview people with disabilities about likes/dislikes concerns/suggestions.
• Find examples of web sites in production that already use techniques required for proposed design.
• Run example sites thru WAVE.
• Test using a screenreader and a screen magnifier.
• Test with monitor set to greyscale to ensure color blindness accessibility.
• Attempt to navigate site by keyboard alone (no mouse).
• Attempt to navigate the site using the mouse and your non-dominant hand.
• Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off.

Remember also, to consider students who have English as their second language, generation and gender specific differences and culture when designing your course.

The standards we need to adhere to

Australian and the US have adopted different standards to determine accessibility.  U.S. use the section 508 standards, we use Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Section 508 is effectively a diluted version of WCAG, restricted to those things that can be objectively measured (and therefore prosecuted).  For instance they do not include “Use the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site’s content. ” ….. more on this. It is important to note, that many Learning Management Systems used in Australia are USA developed and comply with the USA Section 508.

Test Your Site’s Accessibility

Choose any of the following tools/techniques to test the accessibility of your site.

Testing Tools – automatically check for 508 compliance, as much as possible. Help you know what manual checks need to be done.

Hands on Accessibility Testing

Assistive Technology – An important part of accessibility testing is attempting to use your own site with assistive technology. Download a demo version and see if you can navigate your website.

JAWS for Windows by Freedom Scientific

Other resources:

Flexible Learning checklist