Wednesday, 23 July 2008

• Second semester - what new learning will it bring?

     

  Well it is a month since my last blog and these are my sins.... oops wrong confessional got a little confused with all that publicity around the Pope's visit and World Youth Day.  Brought back memories of sitting as an eight year old comparing sins with my classmates before we went to confession.  If all this is gobbledy gook to some of you this is just a part of my catholic school upbringing.  I have been reflecting a little on this as part of some recent experiences and discussions with friends and it aligns somewhat with evaluation processes that I am completing across this program to meet audit and quality requirements.  I must say that as a lapsed catholic whatever that means it is nice to hear positive messages and media around youth instead of the constant bad news stories re drugs, binge drinking and violence.

  So what has been happening in our Diploma of E-Learning Community over the last month ?

  I am seeing lots of frenetic activity in the forms of emails, forum posts and blog entries from the current e-learning groups in terms of finalising assessment tasks,  undertaking new assessment task projects and completing induction activities. So our current community consists of

  1. An education cluster group of students (13 people) who are finalising their assessment tasks and education projects to be finalised by September 2008
  2. A multimedia group of students (8 students)  who are planning developing and designing their multimedia products to be finalised by October 2008
  3. An education cluster group (6 people) who will begin their program in August 2008 and work their way through the education topics and begin the development of their education project
  4. A multimedia group (11 people) who are half way through their mm cluster and are currently working on their assessment task 6 a collaborative web development project in a virtual team
  5. A new multimedia group (12 people) who have just started the induction activities for this program to get themselves familiar with the environment and orient themselves to this program.

  I am hearing through chat sessions and blogs and phone calls some of the frustration and agonies that come from people who work on this program as part time students and all the issues of work and personal lives that can have an effect on their study program in this online environment.  It is important that they hear from me as the facilitator some consistent messages and maintain a focus on weekly activities and a study schedule that enables them to keep on top of things and not feel overwhelmed by all of the issues that impact on part time learners. I am also hearing the feedback that students have in relation to the induction process in this program via a Janison survey process and reading some insightful reflections from the current students about the multimedia and education cluster via a written survey process sent to all of the 2007 clusters to inform my course review processes. 

   

  

  I am trying to get a handle on the new quality processes and documentation that our Institute is putting together to ensure a quality documented delivery and learning process for all training programs offered across the institute. This consistent approach is causing some agony for staff and highlights the fact that planning and documentation is vital to meet the AQTF processes that registered training organisations need to have as part of a quality vocational education system.  In an online program such as this there are many aspects of a program that need to be reviewed and refined and ensuring that this is an effective evaluation process is quite a comprehensive task. As part of this review I have developed three videostreams that can be placed on the cluster website to explain a little more about this program.  If you would like to check these out and give me feedback on their quality and content please check out these links.

  Overall Diploma of e-learning program overview http://mediasite.videolinq.tafe.net/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=8535d464-b1be-4627-a7d4-b278a5fa5f43

  Multimedia cluster overview:http://mediasite.videolinq.tafe.net/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=3494b89e-0b92-4c61-952a-d2861b03eacf

  Education cluster: http://mediasite.videolinq.tafe.net/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=5bf3965e-c47b-4b66-a124-b3eff7fa148f

  I have also just recently presented a videoconference  update on web 2.0 as part of a Ve Mentoring network that exists across the TAFE Qld Institutes. We will be conducting a web 2.0 self discovery pd program again beginning next week.  So if you would like to be part of this free pd program is is as simple as contacting me and I will give you access to these resources.  You can do as much or as little as you like and the topics for this 5 week program are: twitter, personal learning environments, ning, facebook and collaborative learning tools.  Tracey  an education cluster student will facilitate this program and is responsible for debveloping this promotional flyer below.

   

  The link below might also be of interest to you.  It takes you to a list of presentations that have been given over the last year as part of this VE- mentoring network.  The sessions are all about an hour in length so you might want to tag these and visit those that may be of interest to you, at your leisure.

  http://mediasite.videolinq.tafe.net/mediasite/Catalog/Front.aspx?cid=3e821da3-7686-4d2b-ac0d-06ea682b91f6 

  I love reading your blog entries so try and blog at least once a month and make it a priority to link to your peers blogs so that you can learn from their experiences and the high and lows they are working through as part of this Diploma program.  Because we are all online and may never meet face to face this means that we can lose this connectnedness and social learning if we don';t build it into our learning routine. Posting to other people's blogs iks a real buzz and really makes you feel part of a group.  So if you haven;t done this lately make it a priority over the enxt weeks.

  Finally I have been linking a few interesting things to my delicious account over the last month so check these out and share with me any other interesting stuff.  I really like this idea when doing a presentation.  Check out this idea via my delicious site under the tag presentations

  

  Happy blogging!

  PS My final University semester 4 begins this week so if you have any good readings on educational leadership and professional development let me know.  Back to reading theoretical stuff not novels ugh.....

   

   

   

   

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