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The Access Grid Linkup for the Launch of the FLLinNZ toolkit has now been and gone. This was both stressful and a lot of fun. Blog Link. AKOWiki page Link.
I did not have a clue what I was getting myself in in for. I have done a score of VC linkups, but never the Access Grid. I thought I had done my homework, but NO WAY.
The AG is a room, painted green with a computer at one end for the operator, and a wall at the other end with 3 data projectors. There are three cameras. When things are going we could see 8 windows:
- Auckland, Wellington, 2 of us and 2 of Dunedin.
- The powerpoint.
- Leigh’s shared web browser.
- The Blackboard
I lined these up in order Auck > Well > Dunedin. The picture was too fuzzy in Auckland to see expressions. I relied on the ‘tell‘ from Dunedin’s folk to see how things were going. 
Things I learned.
Time is needed to set up the ‘view’ of each group. I never managed to see all the Dunedin folk even though we had two windows for them.
I had this romantic idea that in between times (like when we were watching a youtube video) we could snack and socialise a bit. Hmm. Didn’t quite come together.
I was told we could have a “shared browser” and Powerpoint, so I based my entire presenation around this. However, a shared browser meant only the operator could press the buttons and use the mouse. And no shared sound. The AG version of the web was like silent movies. Apparently there is a problem to play sound: we ended up getting each of the four operators to load the podcast and play it sumultaneously.
This meant no Youtube.com or Podcasts . . .
PowerPoint kept crashing. (M$. Not unusual)
Everything is operator dependent, unless you have some software on a laptop. I thought “No problem, lets install it” but the software was not there in the room. Next time I will sort this.
Powerpoint slides could be visible to me and not them and vice versa. It could get out of sink somehow. But when it went it was fine.
Collaborative note taking is a MUST for sessions like this. There is not whiteboard (a fact I had forgotten) so we used a blackboard from the hallway.
Possible solutions: use one window as a sort of wiki, maybe a whiteboard opened up to a shared browser.
There is a document camera. This would be OK as well.
We tried a scenario where each group had a few moments to interact and answer a question – this worked well.
Basically it fulfilled the need – sort of. We had some dialogue over the main issues around staff development . . . in another post I will talk about this.
Confirmed. Ten minutes ago: 19th October 2007. Access Grid.
Venues: Auckland | Wellington | Christchurch | Dunedin
3.00pm. Snacks provided. 3 brief presentations, and plenty of chatter/feedback and conversation.
FAQ: What is the Access Grid? It’s a room somewhere in the uni with bandwidth to burn. Full duplex video.
How do I register? Details coming soon. Meanwhile, e-mail me. (derek(dot)chirnside(at)canterbury(dot)ac(dot)nz)
For more detail about NZ AG, go here.
Things are looking up at work. Educational design may yet feature in some of our institutional goals and priorities in a real sense. We provide a service that is difficult to describe. “We help with course design”.
What is course design? What is Educational Design actually?
I’ve had some really good chats with Mike recently basically around three questions.
- The first question he asked was this: Just what is Flexible learning?
- We can at present get lectures recorded.
The second question hew asked: If you were lecturing (F2F), would you want your lectures recorded? We have some interesting issues to face around this.
- The third question is the perennial question of staff developers: how do we connect with the staff in our institution?
We have a day long seminar coming up with workshops and a Keynote from Sandra Wills, CEDIR, University of Wollongong
Other News: FLLinNZ officially finishes at the end of this month. It has been an interesting experience over the past three years.
The last thing I am working on for FLLinNZ is a staff development workshop kit. Two themes:
- Online learning communities
- Facilitation
Both with a Web 2.0 flavour. Will be a Creative Commons thing, freely available on the web. This has proved much more of a vexing enterprise that I thought.
What is the best format for this sort of resource? If anyone is interested in having a look at it, let me know.
One: Sean McDougal: great story teller, 25 minutes of our small group time used up in a few questions, some of them well thought out, he used a remarkable small group activity much like that that we used in Portugal.
He reminded me a lot of one of my hero’s, Stephen Heppell, then when I Googled him, found he has worked with the old UltraLab.
- http://designmyschool.net/
- One of the projects he described: drawbots.
www.coin-operated.com
These are superb little machines, with the physics being anything from Y5 to Y13. Saw a great video. Some videos.
Two: Mark Nicholls.
A great talk. Change. Based on his 10,000 pages of reading during his FLLinNZ year, and “Common Sense”. We had a great 8 minutes for the exercise. Really needed a little more time.
He used started with CE Beeby:
“I began to understand in depth how an educational institution can be trapped in its own history, by an action it took fifty years earlier rather than by a judgment on current events, by the things it has come to take for granted even more than by the things it consciously believes.” (in the 1930′s)
Another of his presentations from E-fest last year. Institutional Change: Oxymoron or Opportunity.
Kotter: Change is lead, and requires teamwork. (“Lead, not managed” – my comment)
Kotter’s eight step change model can be summarised as:
- Create a sense of urgency – inspire people to move, make objectives real and relevant.
- Build the guiding coalition – get the right people in place with the right emotional commitment, and the right mix of skills and levels. A strategic aliance.
- Birth a vision - create a simple vision and strategy, focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency.
- Communicate vision for buy – in – Involve all key stakeholders, communicate the essentials, simply, and to appeal and respond to people’s needs. De-clutter communications – make technology work for you rather than against.
- Empower broad-based action – Remove obstacles, enable constructive feedback and lots of support from leaders – reward and recognise progress and achievements.
- Create short-term wins – Set aims that are easy to achieve – in bite-size chunks. Manageable numbers of initiatives. Carefully start new initiatives in the context of ld ones.
- Don’t let up: generate gains and produce more change – Foster and encourage determination and persistence – ongoing change – encourage ongoing progress reporting – highlight achieved and future milestones.
- Make change stick: anchor new approaches in the culture – Reinforce the value of successful change via recruitment, promotion and new change leaders. Weave change into culture.
Links:
Efest. Have a workshop today with Leigh Blackall. Not quite finalised yet. Some facilitation tomorrow – 2 x 45, 2 x 30 minute sessions. Workshop on Wednesday.
Keynote 1: Terry Barnett, Kerene Strochnetter NorthTec
A relaxing and enjoyable presentation. . . movies, Google maps
- Nice greeting from NorthTec Tangata Whenua. Still
- “Had a plan, but at times we had to make do with what we had”
- Hacker got into systems in one little loophole – had to build frm scratch – this is now one of the best IT systems in the country: now viewed as one of the best things that could have happened to us.
They decided at one stage to run an online event that included a teleconference powhiri. Then the question arose: who is the Tangata Whenua. They decided it was the group with the main telephone system.
Their Elearning definition:
Kerene Strochnetter: Cluster Chair (Active Health & Wellness) and Regional Mentor, NorthTec, Tai Tokerau Wananga – to take the nursing qual online.
“I started with a workshop to air the problems and worries of the staff”
Comments on change:
- Listen: change course if needed.
- Be aware what you should do vs what you can or with technology
- Lead with your people . . .
CeLLD: Certificate in eLearning Development and Design.
Hmm. Creating blogs, using wikis
Library. Interesting to note they have some innovative student support through the library.
Philip Roy: Massey University.
Theme: Online Videoconferencing and video streaming. (And it’s not all ‘online’) – a quote: “Videoconferencing compares favourably with other methods of teaching”
Contacts include: Ectus – Edith Cowan – University of Adelaide
Has met up with Michael Coghlan (His Blog)
Had fun with a webinar on May 27th 2005, the first in a series: “This series of interactive webinars will explore the characteristics of the “Net Generation” and how they learn; provide an opportunity for us to hear perspectives from an international panel of students; and foster a discussion on how to develop faculty to meet the challenge” http://tdu.massey.ac.nz/pdfs/NetGenPromo2005.pdf
His website: http://elearning.massey.ac.nz Quite a nice little ‘add a bookmark’ facility in the research section.
plus: http://nzmac.com/ (Phil’s spare time activity)
From Paul Left: “Professional development using a contextualised narrative approach”
How’s this for a simple model . . . Almost makes this seem easy, instead of a brain damaging activity.
- Developing plans (with management)
- PD with staff (online and F2F)
- Assistance and support in resolving technical issues
- Mentoring and coaching
Sometimes I’m a bit slow with new technology. I’ve now had a cell phone for a year, a laptop for five weeks and wireless for two weeks, which means two wired events..
Blogtalk Downunder was the first. Checking out a website being referred to, or in the case of Blogtalk, Googling all the many things I didn’t know about (del.ico.us, technocrati, tinderbox etc etc)
The FLLinNZ end of year workshop: Had good Wireless at the Hamilton Airport Inn. Really enjoyed using it. Laptop, pendrive, “sweaty pitchers of iced water”, coffee, mints and great company. What more could one want?
We had a great session of sharing our favourite tools. I’ll post a list of this sometime.
My FLLinNZ year is is nearly over. This week is the end of year workshop and presentations from each of the 15 FLLinNZers. Some highlights . . .
Merrolee. Dunedin Poly.
Communities of Inquiry – not a private journery, Learning ‘with’ not ‘from’.
I was interested in her connectedness with the Occupational Therapists who are the target of new Government certification requirements.
“Keeping up with what’s going on is not easy”
Bronwyn. Dunedin Poly.
“Six months in a leaky boat” and this neat little animation – http://www.goodtobesquare.com/
Aussie Flexible Learning Leaders: focusing on client engagement and embedding flxible learning
Etienne Wenger: Got to cause a little chaos.
Plus lots more. A remarkable summary of the key researchers she encountered over the year. If her presentation goes online, I’ll post a link.
Nicki: CPIT
“The year was about finding priorities and sorting out what is important”
E-fest: coming back and figuring out “What is the one thing you would like to tell your CEO?
Peter Cammock (Self care – other ways to reframe our lives) and mentoring (“powerful, an authentic professional development strategy”) a highlight.
Leadership insight: “you can’t be all things to all men” More to come . .
(From Stephen’s FLLinNZ presentation) Leadership:
 Leadership and learning are indispensible to each other” (Stephen Harlow) A leader is anyone who wants to help (Meg Wheatley)
The key to leadership is effective communication of Stories (Peter Senge) (Helen Barretts digital story telling links)
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