Page of Digital Storytelling Resources prepared for a workshop at MCLI
link to website
Denham Grey writes: "My thoughts around learning have been profoundly altered by reading Wenger, Brown & Duguid and von Krogh and focus on collective workplace practices. Have come to appreciate the role, value and importance of social learning, situated learning, learning in community and culture. That more is learned on the playing fields and in discourse with peers than from the sage on the stage. Even in very structured training situations, it is the breaktime conversation, the secondhand explanation from a colleague that situates the new concept, validates its importance and sanctions its legitimacy."
He argues that learning is a process in which interaction with others is essential. I think of the time that I spend learning that is a more solitary pursuit. I would argue that the type of learning, and the context of the learning would help determine whether learning could/ should be a solitary or communal task.
"Images Canada -- the gateway to images of Canadian events, people, places and things!
Search the collections of participating archives, libraries, museums and universities from across Canada. Type a keyword in the search box, select the number of images you want displayed per page, then press "Go". Follow an Image Trail or browse through the Photo Essays for search ideas."
This report by Roger Harris, Michele Simons, Berwyn Clayton is available online from NCVER.
Reading this report, many of the challenges felt familiar to comments I have heard in the VET sector. The challenges foreseen by VET practitioners who were interviewed haven't changed dramatically, but the importance of them in the 'urgency' scales has shifted. Predictions about the role of the VET practitioner in 1995 by Lepani (p12) sounded very familiar - talk of facilitation, consultant to enterprises and assessment specialists a few of those listed.
The report brings together a range of information sources, and one area of focus is the effect of change on work roles and relationships. One of the challenges is the dual roles of VET practitioners who 'are both subject to ... and being expected to support and facilitate" the dramatic change in Australian workplaces. (Waterhouse, Wilson and Ewer cited on p 17). A blurring of roles between that of educator and human resource development professionals is taking place (p18&22).
Change was felt to be coming from external sources such as government policy (p27) rather than being internally driven. Staff also feel a requirement to be outward looking (p66). Increasing the amount of administration, and the associated introduction of computer based systems was not seen to have been supported (p35).
Relationships with students, industry and each other have changed. Where students previously accepted what was offered, now teachers are expected to negotiate and 'please and accomodate' their students (p38). Some teachers felt a focus on facilitation was risking student's achievement in learning.
Communication with other teachers was seen to be difficult in finding times to meet and so on (p39), but also interestingly, they also found that there is greater interaction between teachers (p40). I wonder if the informal 'round the water cooler' conversations are less frequent, but ideas such as team teaching and collaborating with other subject areas to meet the needs of a business explain this apparent contradiction?
Links with industry are changing, with more emphasis being placed on these links (p43). Processes for industry validation and work placements, it was suggested in the report, are now more formalised and integrated into teaching practice. Also the links may now be more with specific enterprises than industry associations. And the conversations with enterprises was more likely to include issues previously the domain of the educator such as 'assessment, recognition of prior learning and qualifications' (p45). Links are also perceived to be stronger where service guarantees and performance levels are agreed.
Responses to Change
The overall attitude towards change was positive (61%), but rather worryingly all of the people who responded negatively were from public providers (p55). When asked to predict foreseen challenges, all were related directly to compliance with changes already in the workplace. In order to cope with the challenges, VET Practitioners nominated professional development about technology, and flexible learning as top priority (p58)
"Teachers and trainers can only act as change agents insofar as the working environments, management structures, policy settings are attentive to both the personal and process aspects of change and view change as an intensely individual process rather than as a depersonlised event that just 'happens' to teachers and trainers" (p72) Nothing ground breaking there, but combined with the perception that change comes from external forces, making change personal to each VET practitioner must be the greatest challenge.
link to website
As someone who has worked in virtual teams, some tools to do it better are always welcome.
Dave Pollard's article outlines different types of collaboration in the world of work, as well as a matrix outlining the advantages of various styles of tools (as opposed to naming software tools he talks about the categories of tools)
as he writes: "Collaboration entails finding the right group of people (skills, personalities, knowledge, work-styles, and chemistry), ensuring they share commitment to the collaboration task at hand, and providing them with an environment, tools, knowledge, training, process and facilitation to ensure they work together effectively. This is challenging enough face-to-face in real-time. It's doubly difficult virtually and asynchronously. But there are examples of great music, literature, invention, scientific discovery and problem-solving that have come from such handicapped collaboration. How did they do it, and can you improve the likelihood of brilliant virtual collaboration by using the right tools and media?"
link to website
From Steve Brooks at edugadget.com:
"podcasting tools are quickly evolving
What:Podcasting tools are evolving quickly and it may be time to stop panicking and start embracing it. I wrote about podcasting 42 days ago and basically said the tools weren't easy enough to use for non-techies. That is changing quickly and will continue to change even more in the near future. Here are some developments."
link to website
James Farmer discusses the alternatives to large systems for recording lectures. This comes from a Higher Ed background where the lecture is a common instructional method, but the issues have implications for the use of audio in all sectors. He writes:
"-A lecture delivered to a theatre is utterly and totally different to the kind of thing you'd broadcast as just audio (if it's any good it'll be interactive & unbroadcastable!)
-It has become painfully obvious that even the most diligent of learners is not going to sit for 60 mins or more at his or her PC listening and focussing on what you produce
-The streaming server is great but the files are so large that it just doesn't work for anyone without a huge pipe, what you really want is quick 'n dirty .mp3s
And you come to understand that all you need to do is give each lecturer a decent mic to plug into their PC, pop a simple .mp3 recording device on their desktops (which they can use to edit if they like), ask them to record max 20-30 min talks on particular subjects and then get them to pop it in as an enclosure to the course blog (which is, of course, also framed in the WebCT or Blackboard course and on the open web so available for podcasts as required). That way you have:
-A recording made for straightforward audio and of far better quality than anything captured 'in the wild'
-A recording that can be simply aggregated or downloaded to .mp3 players and hence actually listened to at some point!
-Damn small files"
The comments exchange after the article are interesting also in the + and - of the alternatives.
Via James Farmer, a link to "(My) 7 guidelines for effective corporate e Learning" by Anol Bhattacharya.
The first being:
1. The business world is not about learning, it's about doing business.
link to website
Talsico makes a software product which helps generate 'picture process maps'. Material is represented in flowchart, step by step (text) and photo means. Icons and colour are used for common elements between process maps. The final output is a .doc format. From the samples on the website the section headinsgs and some layout is customisable. There is a 15 day trial available, but I am loath to download it until I have some real materials to prepare.
Applications: where process is important, where machinery needs easily understood instructions, where staff turnover is high, where tasks can be broken down into steps, where low literacy exists in workforce (or low-english), where documentation is required as part of regulation/ quality control.
in this article from the NorthWest Regional Educational Laboratory (US), comes a summary about skills that self directed learners which are: student motivation, metacognition, self-efficacy, self-regulation, locus of control, and goal orientation and what can be done to develop these skills through instruction (an interesting choice of words, but taken from the article)
link to website
From Jakob Nielsen
"Lower-Literacy Users
Summary:
Lower-literacy users exhibit very different reading behaviors than higher-literacy users: they plow text rather than scan it, and they miss page elements due to a narrower field of view.
We've known since 1997 how most users read on the Web: they scan text and pick out the pieces that interest them. Content usability guidelines have remained mostly the same since 1997, but now there's news.
We recently expanded our research to cover a big part of the population left out of earlier studies: lower-literacy users. As it turns out, their online behavior is radically different than that of higher-literacy users."
In trialling changes to websites to meet the needs of lower literacy users, higher literacy users benefited also.
link to website
From Derek Morrison at Auricle
"In previous Auricle articles I've alluded to the Internet and intranets as e-learning filling stations and, so, I thought it was time to engage with podcasting as one way of 'filling up'. For this article I was particularly interested in tracking down podcasts and raw MP3 files with high production values. I know, there's some real gems in amateur sites with access to limited production facilities or expertise, or in conference/presentation recordings, but some podcasts engage and involve because they have the listeners of the recording in mind and so 'speak' to their particular audience"
From Steve Denning's website at http://www.stevedenning.com I downloaded the first chapter of an upcoming book The Leader's Guide to Storytelling (pdf file ).
Having recently been in planning meetings and an initital meeting of a Community of Practice at which the need for 'new' stories was discussed, re-reading this today was timely. Denning highlights the needs for different types of stories to suit different purposes. The Springboard book mainly focusses on stories to spark action and share knowledge, and my memories of Squirrel Inc which I read at the end of last year are more of stories for sparking action and creating buy in and passion.
On page 20 of the book excerpt (see link above) Denning includes a table of 'eight different narrative patterns'. This provides a good summary of the detail explored earlier in the chapter, and I would recommend this to anyone who is a little doubtful about how storytelling can be used in the world of work.
I guess the need for some new stories comes from changes in the environment, and as it was discussed around the table, I thought of the chapter in The Springboard which explores the difficulties in going out searching for stories. With the extrapolation of types of stories, I feel our story gathering process will have a greater chance of success.
link to website
from Godfrey Parkin
"In recent posts I have talked about the power of informal learning, and wondered why learning professionals conspicuously ignore the potential for performance improvement that it offers. Now that the kind of human interactions that make informal learning so effective are being facilitated by the Internet, the relevance and impact of formal training may diminish even further. Do we as learning professionals stand by and watch our empires get sidelined, or do we try to take a leading role in defining and refining emerging learning paradigms?
Naturally, there will always be a need for formal training and diligent learning management, especially where compliance or certification are concerned. But according to various recent studies, corporate employees, particularly knowledge workers, learn three times more from informal experiences than they do in formal courses. Those informal learning experiences include interacting with co-workers, modelling peer behaviour, trial and error, self-directed learning, social support structures, networking, ad-hoc mentoring, and so on. If so little that is valued by employees comes from structured activities, either we are not teaching what people need to know or the way we teach is inadequate. Or the world can get by just fine without us."
From the site: What's a PodGuide?.
"A PodGuide is a very simple thing. It's the combination of a map (PDF) of a certain place and a series of audio tracks (mp3) which you can download for your iPod. Think of an audio tour in a museum, but not limited to just that. You could have a PodGuide about the 10 coolest pubs in London for example, or a PodGuide which shows you the most known historic buildings in Bruges. But it might just as well be about the most strangest front doors in Kleit (no you don't know Kleit)."
I'm wondering how this could be used in education. Definitely for something like a tour of a Botanical Gardens. Or could be an induction to a workplace with major areas marked as well as evacuation routes. Location of equipment or where specific tasks are performed. What else could we use it for????
How about instead of a map, you could have an image with dots showing parts of equipment, and the audio would be explanation of the equipment, or an image of a form, and the audio provides explanations of the parts of the form.
A nice little bit of interactivity simply built, that combines visual and audio cues, without a huge literacy barrier. In areas of very low literacy, educators could download the audio to mp3 player and provide a printout of the map/diagram to the learner if needed.
The generator asks for the map file (I used a jpg rather than pdf and it didn't object) and the file names for the audio. You then move the tracks into the right folder manually.
pdf file (589Kb)
By Andy Smith and Stephen Billett
"The aim of this paper is to identify and discuss policy options for increasing employer contribtions to their employee's training and development" (P6)
This paper compares the approaches taken in Australia and other developed countries by employers and governments in contributing to employee training. From my reading, the paper finds, without knowing which goals are driving a desire for more employer contributions, it is difficult to recommend a policy approach to achieve that goal.
While partnerships between enterprises and VET providers are likely to encourage expenditure on training, this approach is not necessarily feasible for small businesses. In addition, the report found that VET provision is more likely to be directed towards the needs of large enterprises. (P16)
To encourage greater expenditure on training within Australia, businesses are likely to want a 'business case' as to why the training will bring benefits. Smith has proposed a formula for calculating a ROI ratio for investment in training. pdf file
Small business has been reported as feeling that the VET system did not meet their needs, but also that, interestingly I thought, 'those who had actual experience in vocational education programs valued them in quite a different was from those who had not'. (p40)
link to website
S5
From an initial play with the tool, this looks very useful. You create a single html file and through the use of DIV tags as many slides as are needed are created. You can also tag text/images as 'handout' which means that they will only appear when printed. You do require some basic html knowledge - eg about applying style tags, but to anyone who is familiar with heading styles in Word should be able to cope.
"SWiSHvideo lets you convert your video files into streaming Flash files. Now you can easily display your videos on the web complete with play controls and playback"
Also includes SwishMax for interactive flash, Swish pix for Flash based animated photo albums
15 day trials available from the site
Skills at Work is a Australian Commonwealth Government evaluation of New Apprenticeships.
Summary Report (pdf)
Full Report (pdf)
The summary report included the following findings:
The number of new apprentices has increased since 1998 when the scheme was opened up and promoted to a much wider cross section of industry. This has seen growths in proportions of female new apprentices, and older workers. The proportions of completions across qualification levels has also shifted (p7). Certificate 3 level accounts for around 2/3 of commencements. Part-time engagement has also increased from 2% in 96 to 24% in 2003. (p7) Females have higher growth in Cert 1, 2 and 4 than males.
Older workers who take on a New Apprenticeship are more likely than their younger colleagues not to have achieved Year 12 qualifications at school (p6).
New Apprenticeships have also become longer from 1996 to 2003. In 2003, 3/4 of training was between one and four years duration. There was not a breakdown of the length of contract in more detail eg durations of one, two or three years, even in the full report. (p9)
Various incentive schemes that have been introduced over the years have had the desired effect in increasing uptake of New Apprenticeships (p14-18).
Three industries are identified where the enterprise's expenditure on training has descreased where government funding for New Apprentices has been available.: Maining, Retail Trade and Transport & Storage. (p21)
As New Apprentices under the Existing worker scheme are likely to be permanent, fulltime, skilled workers, it is difficult to assess the employment benefits to them.
Further questions that were identified were included the need for more investigation of the benefits of New Apprenticeships for existing workers and whether alternative schemes would serve these employees and employers better. (p4)
The Summary Report concludes that overall the New Apprenticeship Scheme has acheived the goals of increased participation and widening the range of industries in which the apprenticeship model is alive and kicking. Incentives for target areas such as innovation and rural industries have promoted an increased rate of growth.
TheFeature :: Cameraphones as Personal Storytelling Media
"The cameraphone exists at this moment in that ephemeral, potent and confusing phase of its adoption cycle where people are still deciding what kind of social medium it is.
This happened to previous generations with the camera, the phone and the Internet. If recent observations from Keio University researcher Daisuke Okabe can be used to forecast future trends, we will find that the social role of the cameraphone is distinctly different from both the camera and the phone. And although these devices transmit images through the Internet, they are also turning out, rather unexpectedly, to be face-to-face media. It looks like this newly ubiquitous device could be more about flows of moments than stocks of images, more about sharing presence than transporting messages, and ultimately, more about personal narrative than factual communication."
TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE
Research paper
by Kathryn Moyle
Department of Education and Children’s Services
South Australia
from the Introduction...
"The aim of this paper is to contribute to the shared understandings we have about the respective ICT costs that jurisdictions and schools invest in order to provide students, teachers and school communities with access to the necessary ICT infrastructure to support learning and to enable ‘connectivity’ between people and computers. Identifying costs will enable more informed discussion about what place open source software may have in schools’ and school jurisdictions’ ICT portfolios."
Learning Lab UK has been set up to provide a centre of excellence to support all those involved in the design, development and use of learning technologies.
tagline: where technology enables knowledge
A Quick Look at Macromedia Captivate
A Quick Look at Macromedia Captivate
By Paul Clothier
brief intro to the capability of the software
incorporated subversion »link to website
James Farmer brings together a whole range of tools on incsub on Multi User Weblogging
* http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/tutorials
* http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/documentation
* http://www.transom.org/tools/editing_mixing/200404.audacity.html
* http://audacityteam.org/wiki/
Also of interest:
* http://mwgblog.com/archives/2004/12/27/podcast-about-the-podcast/
vimeo
via cogdogblog
"In a nutshell, it looks like a filckr for video"
includes link to mp3 of students talking about what their experience of eportfolios and several other resources.
Educating the Net Generation
A New EDUCAUSE e-Book
Celtic Knot
The Net Generation has grown up with information technology. The aptitudes, attitudes, expectations, and learning styles of Net Gen students reflect the environment in which they were raised—one that is decidedly different from that which existed when faculty and administrators were growing up.
This collection explores the Net Gen and the implications for institutions in areas such as teaching, service, learning space design, faculty development, and curriculum. Contributions by educators and students are included.
Entire Book [4,453 KB PDF]
Please Note: This PDF contains the entire book and thus has a very large file size. There are also no embedded hyperlinks. For smaller, more easily downloaded files with embedded hyperlinks, please see the individual chapter files below.
1. Introduction
Diana G. Oblinger and James L. Oblinger, Editors
2. Is It Age or IT: First Steps Toward Understanding the Net Generation
by Diana Oblinger, EDUCAUSE, and James Oblinger, North Carolina State University
3. Technology and Learning Expectations of the Net Generation
by Greg Roberts, University of Pittsburgh–Johnstown
4. Using Technology as a Learning Tool, Not Just the Cool New Thing
by Ben McNeely, North Carolina State University
5. The Student's Perspective
by Carie Windham, North Carolina State University
6. Preparing the Academy of Today for the Learner of Tomorrow
by Joel Hartman, Patsy Moskal, and Chuck Dziuban, University of Central Florida
7. Convenience, Communications, and Control: How Students Use Technology
by Robert Kvavik, ECAR and University of Minnesota
8. The Real Versus the Possible: Closing the Gaps in Engagement and Learning
by Judith Ramaley, University of Maine, and Lee Zia, National Science Foundation
9. Curricula Designed to Meet 21st-Century Expectations
by Alma Clayton-Pedersen and Nancy O'Neill, Association of American Colleges and Universities
10. Support Services for the Net Generation
by James Wager, The Pennsylvania State University
11. Faculty Development for the Net Generation
by Anne Moore, John Moore, and Shelli Fowler, Virginia Tech
12. Learning Spaces
by Malcolm Brown, Dartmouth College
13. Net Generation Students and Libraries
by Joan Lippincott, Coalition for Networked Information
14. The New Academy
by Carole Barone, EDUCAUSE
15. Planning for Neomillennial Learning Styles: Implications for Investments in Technology and Faculty
by Chris Dede, Harvard University
Index