Digital Dialogues

November Overview

Well, the November conference flurry is nearly over - what a month!!!!

I'm still trying to catch-up on all the events that occurred online in NetWorking 2004 (participants have until 31 Dec to gather goodies!), and then of course, there's the recovery from the Learning Technologies 2004 in Mooloolaba!

I have to say that the LT2004 was one of the most inspiring conferences I've attended for a long while - it was so invigorating to be among such a committed group of learning practitioners who have been able to integrate exciting opportunities with technology that enhance learning - whether through access for remote learners or embracing technologies used by their students into their practice!

The award winners from LT2004 were terrific - and LTUG members will be able to hear about their practices through webinars that we will present in 2005! Watch this space for a calendar of events!

Thank-you to all presenters and participants at LT2004 for reminding me how important innovation is in our practice!

Welcome also to all our new members who took up the special offer from LT2004 - I hope you gain valuable insight and information from joining the LTUG community!

I know I do "blog on" a bit - but I'm passionate about getting my message across all disciplines and fields in the learning profession. A couple of events to mark in your calendars on blogging - see below in the Events section for more details - 14th December - LTUG webinar on blogs (free to members) and 20/21 May 2005 the first BlogTalk Downunder conference to be held in Sydney!

That's all for this month - there will be a December festivie e-zine - in the meantime...I'm back to marking final assignments for end of semester!

Learning to Blog, Blogging to Learn

Date: Tue 14th December, 2004

Time: 11am (Sydney - daylight savings time)

Duration: 1 hour

** Free to LTUG members **

Anne Bartlett-Bragg will explore the dynamics of blogging - both the technology and the social dimension - and examine some of the current uses in education.

*If blogging is a complete mystery to you then come along and find out what it is and how it can be used in education.
*If you are already blogging and looking for new places to go with this ..... you guessed it, come along to find out.
*This is intended to be the first in a series on blogs in education and is intended to introduce and examine the phenomena - greater detail
about how to start one, and how the technology drives how you use it will be the focus of workshop webinars in 2005!
Registration details to be advised shortly!

BlogTalk Downunder

** Advance Notice ** Initial expressions of interest **

The first blogging conference to be held in the southern hemisphere - incorporating Australia, New Zealand, SE Asia.

Date: 20 & 21 May, 2005

Venue: Sydney

Initial expressions of interest for referreed paper presentations (20 minutes + 10 minutes questions) or panel discussions can be sent to: [email protected]

Details are currently being finalised and a website set-up with more information - don't let that stop you sending expressions of interest though!!! The organising committee have some exciting international keynote speakers in mind and are determined to make this an event not to be missed in 2005!

Video-conferencing excursions!

Want some ideas about where to go for your next educational video-conferencing or virtual field trip? Then stop by this site - it's a HUGE resource for all sorts of places that have the facilities to conduct VC field trips:

http://www.kn.sbc.com/wired/vidconf/adventures.html

EdNA Online search engine!

Did you know?

You can incorporate EdNA Online's search into your website - a code generator http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/page2981.html will create the HTML code for you, to copy and paste where you want it to appear on your page. This will give you instant access to multiple repositories holding nearly 2 million records of education and training resources! For information on a number of options, visit
http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/page2996.html

As Gerry White from education.au told us in his keynote presentation at the Learning Technologies 2004 conference in Mooloolaba, Google only scratches the surface by searching about the top 15% of website - using the EdNA online search engine you get into some really deep, targeted results! Definitely worth investigating! Read more about Gerry's presentation and link to his paper!

Happy digging!

Learning Circuits 2004 Survey results

Rather than review a specific case study this month, I thought it may be of interest to LTUG readers to review the survey results from Learning Circuits - ASTDs (American Society for Training & Development) e-zine. In August and September of 2004, Learning Circuits ran two separate online surveys. The first survey, Learning Circuits Annual Trends Survey, asked LC readers about their general use of e-learning. It focused on respondents’ current level of involvement in e-learning and budget dollars dedicated to e-learning. The second questionnaire, Learning Circuits E-Learning Readiness Survey asked respondents about specific tools they were using and to indicate management and employee support levels for e-learning.

There are some interesting results:

eg. under the "Organisational perception of e-Learning" heading - 41.9% of managers report not preceiving e-Learning as "real" learning - not that's a challenge for us! With the cost to implement e-learning as the number 1 concern for 52% of managers responding to the survey.

From the employees perspective - the 2 highest ranking issues were time commitments and technical competence.

To review the results, go to:

http://www.learningcircuits.org/2004/nov2004/LC_Trends_2004.htm

Gerry White - education.au

"Getting the most out of online teaching resources" 

Gerry is CEO of education.au  his presentation on Day 1 addressed some of the issues confronting practitioners and how we would be able to navigate our way through the swamps of information available.

education.au has some of the world's largest repositories of high quality online teaching resources for lecturers, teachers and trainers in TAFE, industry, schools and universities. But to make the most of this vast and ever-expanding pool of quality digital content both educators and learners need services that respond to their expectations to search, explore, self-improve and participate via their web services.

And he's not talking about "googling it"!!!

They also expect quick, uncomplicated, intuitive and cheap access to online content and to one another via devices that are efficient, quick, uncomplicated, intuitive and portable.

Gerry believes that we need to re-conceptualise our approach to curriculum and move from print to digital medias and within that framework there needs to be a global sharing of resources - across countries and disciplines.

Our new frameworks need to address the following issues:

• IP and how digital resources can be managed
• Teaching & Learning - and the acknowledgement of more informal learning occurring outside our institutions
• Our relationships with technology and how it is changing things
• Teachers may no longer be in total control

One of our biggest challenges will be the ICT skills of teachers - not the students - they already know how to do it! Gerry's advice? Just get on with it and use it! But remember - our business is to focus on the learning!!!! (A valuable reminder to all practitioners!)

A gem from Gerry was QECS - whatever we do, make it Quick Easy Convenient and Simple!

Gerry also referred us to a number of valuable resources (other than Google!) - Edna.au. For students - My Future - a career guidance site.

Thanks Gerry - you certainly left the audience with some thought provoking issues to take back to our contexts and apply!

Who wants to be an e-Learnaire?

Do you know what Bluetooth technology is; what the abbreviation CAL stands for; have you heard of Bloom's taxonomy; how the early internet came into being? If you do, then you should have attended the special event at LT2004, 'Who wants to be an eLearnaire'!

A gameshow quiz, facilitated by the use of KEEpad technology, concluded the programme for Day One of the conference. Touted as the traditional highlight of the conference, the event did not disappoint. Throughout the two quiz sessions the atmosphere was charged with excitement, as the players competed for that coveted prize - a mysterious package, rumoured to contain a set of car keys. There was dissent whether the keys opened a Mercedes or a BMW, so keep an eye on the parking lot in front of CSIT on Day Two! The game champion (Dr Graeme Salter from Uni of Western Sydney) also came away with an (additional?) prize of a framed certificate.

Throughout the game, it became obvious that some players must have missed their daily dose of caffeine, which resulted in 9% of the players voting for 'Cobb & Co' as the company Telstra originated from, while 4% of the audience opted for answer A - 'a very muddy part of Wales' - as the definition of a 'blog'. For me, the true winner on the day was the writer of the questions, whose initials, PC, cannot possibly stand for Politically Correct!

Overall, lots of fun was had by everyone, and I am sure participants will be eagerly awaiting an opportunity to play the game next year!

Thanks to Joanna Tarnowskan from Ectus!

And the winners are......

The winners of the awards at the LT2004 conference are....

Innovation category: Felicity Mandile - Virtual Schooling Service, Education Queensland

Multi-modal Delivery:  John-Paul College, Brisbane

Access & Equity: Central Queensland Institute of Tafe - Child Studies. (Or Thelma & Louise for those of us attending the conference ...!)

I'll give you a full run down on the winners entries and there were also a number of special mentions in the innovation category!

LTUG is hoping to have each of these winners (and the special mention winners) present webinars in 2005 - that will be a really exciting opportunity to find out how other practitioners use learning technologies!

Hey - have you noticed that all the winners are from Queensland??? Why??? What happened to all the other states??? We might explore that further and get back to you!

More reports to follow - I'm off to prepare my paper - I drew the short straw - delivering a paper on Friday morning after a HUGE awards night...great, most of them will probably be asleep!

LT2004 Kicks off!

Pre-conference Activities:

There was the pre-conf workshop - Connecting to Learning - which an intimate group attended where we discussed our teaching models, our learner readiness, our content or curriculum and then we went live...we Skye'd, we Webex-ed, we went out there....! A great group - committed to the integration of collaborative learning through technologies - thanks for a great afternoon guys!

Welcome drinks - down to Earth in downtown Mooloolaba!

Over 90 people attended the drinks down on the main drag in Mooloolaba - Carol forced the last person to leave the venue around 9.30pm - but I have heard of some participants that found themselves in the Irish pub until the very wee hours of the morning! Clearly they would have been discussing the potential to enhance learning with their products...? or not...?

Day 1 - bright and early

So which participants (obviously not the local Queenslanders) forgot that the sun rises at 4am when you're not on daylight savings...hmmmm...but nothing like a brisk walk along the beach - which is just one of those glorious Aussie beaches - stretching for miles....!

Some traffic challenges between "Moo" and Brisbane delayed the opening presentations so we kicked off with Graham Mirabito from Telstra.

Graham talked about convergence - particularly of IT companies and telecos. According to Graham, more than 60% of organisational IP belongs on the workers hard drives - wow - that's kind of scary isn't it....? Why aren't they using blogs - or should I say klogs - as knowledge management tools!

He reported on some current trends that include organisations moving they storage of data "out of the basements" and into alternative options. What about "push to talk" - like a CB radio on mobiles - evidently just introduced here and huge in the US!

Then there's the 18 million mobile phones in Australia, the 6 million home PCs connected to the internet...

Graham went on to illustrate how convergence will create "seamless integration" with "intuitive in-context user experiences..." great - about time!!

Graham stated that the mobile is now a collaboration device and how the standard tools (like the mobile) is where collaborations has to start...therefore effective learning is poised for acceleration through technology...

Interesting presentation - thanks Graham...remember to ensure that we all have access to these new emergent tools!

That's all for now - I'm off to the Awards dinner - there's going to be more exciting things to report later - some stunning case studies presented today - but you'll have to wait until I can get back to my computer...oh for convergence...wireless dinner plates perhaps...?