College development day

The college has taken everyone off site - Newbury Race Course - for the day to talk about teaching and learning. Frank Coffield is here as a keynote speaker and is running learner voice workshops. He's down to earth and an excellent facilitator. I'm not sure that support and admin staff are happy with the day and will look forward to seeing the evaluations.

Fruit takes precedence over social software

I'm going to try very hard to take care of all the fruit in the garden that is demanding my attention. In fact, I feel guilty for going to work or for being online now (though I just had to check Twitter...and my email). Off to deal with the glut.

Student induction - any suggestions

Next week I'm holding a meeting to redesign our student induction period. We want a 1 hour self access induction (which can also be delivered to a group) which covers logging on, online behaviour, avoiding plagiarism, useful software and an intro to research skills. Are we mad? Any ideas or links to share?

It's nearly the end of the week

I seem to be spending a lot of time on trains at the moment which is a useful time to catch up if I have the dongle and the signal is good. Yesterday I tried to get up to speed with Diigo, which Ihad seen a while ago but couldn't think how I could use it at the time.

I am sorry to see that you have to download a toolbar because that excludes it being used and demonstrated at college. It would be useful for people - Level 3 + but there's no way it could be added to the groaning system. And of course, that is what this is all about - balancing out the needs of the institution and the individual. We have only had access to Google Docs for a year. Before that, Websense blocked it and we were deprived of a great set of tools for students to use.

I've always been a great believer in the transformative power of technology having worked with dyslexic students for years. It's interesting that the use of technology to overcome difficulties is still not widely recognised. For example, we have text to speech software installed on every computer in the college but I know not many people use it - lecturers don't show their students, even when they can see that if the student used it, it would be less work marking assignments. Sometimes I think we have tried to run with techology before we have walked.

Definately near the end of the week. Time for a nice picture - this is an Amstrad emailer that I saw being used as a telephone in a lovely art gallery in St. Ives on a weekend break.

My wormery blog

http://firstwormery.blogspot.com/
Comes with photos and a Voki.

Googling myself

Good grief! I seem to have a lot of entries on Google - through college, JISC work, and things I had completely forgotten. There are photos as well - I don't think I can hide anywhere. If I want to be positive, I could see this as an affirmation that I've done some interesting things in my life. If I wanted to keep myself up at night, I could worry about the less responsible students I teach who might not like the last mark on their assignment.

I've just caught up with things on Twitter as well. I'm following about 16 people, all related to technology in some fashion. I'm sorry to say that I went onto Twitter to follow Stephen Fry and not for any other reason. Of course I'm glad now that I got hooked because I've learned quite a lot since then by reading posts and following the links that people share. Have you ever tried to explain Twitter to anyone?

I presented a session to the training teachers today on using online resources. Each pair had 2 websites and then reported back on ease of use, purpose, level, etc. The person who works in a prison had her head in her hands since no technology is allowed in. Others in the group were introduced to Tag Galaxy, Pixton, Delicious and VideoJug along with NLN, Google Docs, etc. The range of reactions was useful, including the point that many in the room, young and older, still don't quite get how useful it is to juggle websites and have small online activities and resources available. They are still looking for whole lessons from one place. And after a while, the prison educator took her head out of her hands when her colleague showed her Wordle.

I'm rambling. Night.

Online life toggling

While trying to keep up with this course - do the reading and the posting - means that I'm expiencing speling problems (;-) there have been difficulties with toggling all the pieces of my life over the last few days. This, I am thinking, is helpful because it will come in handy when I try to introduce something new in my next teaching session. I will then recognise the look on some of the faces when people start thinking, "When can I learn to to do this, practice it and write up my thoughts?"

I realise that I already use some of the software that we're being directed to - Twitter, Delicious and I have a blog on my first wormery, complete with pictures. I don't think I'm using any of them particularly well and certainly not pedagogically well.

So, I now need to block off some time and catch up with the reading, both paper and online. I need to remember that learning online is actually NOT the 'easy' option and that 6 hours a week is optomistic!

I am thoroughly enjoying myself and am also looking forward to some collaborative online work. In an hour, I'm going to trial a DimDim session with a colleague on another campus. http://www.dimdim.com/ - free online conferencing when you can't skype.