aug3workshopfeedback

**COLIN TYRRELL**
I think you can glean all that you ask from my blog: [|http://colinselearning.blogspot.com] (this is a record of my journey) The workshop day was GREAT. Thanks to all In brief: Session: - creating a PLE with Sean (really good because I asked all sorts of wacky (to me) questions and had time without student/staff interruptions to play and get something concrete PLUS the social interaction with the others there to encourage and challenge each other to achieve what I think we all desire – a better/more meaningful learning environment Tools: Blogger plus a couple of extras like wikis, flickr How to use: examples include Michael Nelson’s liveandletlearn.net and http://designwebsites.blogspot.com/ ; use of flickr and Google video/youtube for online video of skill sets Challenges: lack of internet link; limited mobile (wireless broadband/ or even dialup) ; lack of computer skills – both teacher and learner. That this is technology not necessarily for all. Issues: continual threats that we will not be able to use/currently unable to access the social software tools within DET/TAFE.

PHIL LANTRY
M Learning……..Tools and Uses The increased emphasis on work based and evidenced based assessments means that teachers need to be more creative in the assessment of student work. One such approach is to use Mobile devices such as PDAs and Smart Phones. The workshop looked at a number of applications that could run on a PDA. A lot of current thinking relate to uses in the field such as data collection, sensing devices or navigation etc. An alternate view is the more general use of PADas and Smartphones to push to and pull from the device in real time for examples: responses to queries, voting, simple tests, gathering of competency evidence, student assignment work, interactive content, MP3 files. The key issues currently are network capability, file size and image quality. The networks limit the size of files so a some point the device needs to sync to a computer network for file transfer….but with G4 such issues will be no more!



**CAROLYN LAYCOCK**
My workshop: Getting Practical with Web 2.0 Tools – Michael Nelson

The tools we looked at, and their uses for teaching, were:

Google Earth – Michael used this as his introduction and it went really well, he showed where he used to live, where he’d travelled, where he now lived now etc and it was a good ice breaker with the group Google Groups – you can use this to create your own class group – it works better than emails – it places all your emails in threads, you never have to deleter anything and you must be invited to join – so allows for teacher management of class/group Basecamp HQ – good project management tool for teacher to use for managing trainees or flexible students Del.icio.us – web-based bookmark site to store web addresses for ease of access. Can be used by the teacher for research or to get students to set one up for their class and can then check what others have been bookmarking that is relevant to class. Wikis and Wikipedia – wikis provide collaborative content development – each person can add to this – students can be asked to go in and provide a viewpoint etc. Wikipedia is like an online encyclopaedia. Blogs – is like an online journal and can be private and used for reflection, good when students are required to provide a learning journal as part of their assessment, or can be shared and invite responses from other students.

Challenges could include copyright, unsuitable material, participation (confidence to share their viewpoint. Issues may arise with the DET environment with firewalls etc.

Web 2.0 tools provide the teacher with a range of interactive tools that allow the teacher and the student to interact online. The tools provide the flexibility to read, write and contribute to content on the internet.

**Carmen Vallis**
Fantastic workshop! Basically, we covered the following voice tools for teaching and learning


 * 1) //Voiceboards//
 * 2) Audioblogs
 * 3) //Recording & editing Sound//
 * 4) Podcasting

**//Voiceboards//**
Voiceboards are possible less useful for the DET context because this tool would require organisational support for licensing fees. We learnt about Horizon Wimba – and used a [|test board]. At present a 20 user Wimba licence would cost around $5000 – Google and check if you’re interested……….We also experimented with [|Vaestro] which is free with registration and approval – potentially a good tool. Michael provided us with a [|test board]

**//Audioblogs//**
There’s excellent info and technical guide on [|Audioblogs] within the Beyond Text resource prepared for a 2005 AFLF project. What I learnt… It did take a few goes, a bit of perseverance to work out the audioblogging part. A lot of the primary phone numbers had already been used and it took a while to find a number it would accept. Write down your numbers as you go – you’ll need this number again and again and again! I found it also took a few goes to get through to the US number and make my recording. Practice makes perfect! If I were using it frequently I’d very carefully enter the long number on speed dial – especially if you have fat fingers and a tiny mobile keypad like I do!

I was worried at making an international (US) call on my mobile – but each recorded call I sent only cost around $1 – not bad if students don’t have access to a computer at all. ESOL teachers in my team were very excited about audioblogging.

Podcasting - **//Recording & editing sound//**
We used [|Audacity] to record and edit sound, as in previous workshops. We worked out that you need to unzip the [|LAME MP3 encoder] and save to the same folder as Audacity in order to export files to the compressed MP3 format. The great thing about Audacoty, apart from that it’s free (!), is that I could download it at work without firewall problems.

**//Podcasting//**
We used [|Podomatic] to upload our audio. It’s free and the audio can be stored and promoted as a podcast. You could use [|Odeo] for this purpose too. In fact there are many other tools around, software companies appearing and disappearing…

Below is our RSS feed for Audiodynamism: http://audiodynamism.podomatic.com/rss2.xml

For a summary, see Michael Couglin’s excellent wiki at http://nsw-voice-workshop.wikispaces.com/. I especially liked his section on [|troubleshooting] on sound basics.