Pictures in the sand....

From the beginning of human existence on this planet, we have communicated in many diverse ways by telling our story, or sending messages with pictures and graphics.  We have painted on the walls of our dwelling places, in the tombs of our warriors and leaders, left our mark and told our stories in our meeting places and in our communities.  We illustrate our stories, we draw pictures in the sand to enhance and enrich our tales or elucidate our teaching.  Where would we be without the picture in the book, our maps, our diagrams, our signs and symbols?  How much more vivid and memorable is the sound of a story told or read to us out loud, a poem recited, a song?   Our earliest memories of learning are often full of sounds, music, snatches of rhyme, images from story books or pictures on the wall.  Sound and vision.  Powerful, evocative, memorable and engaging.  Why then, do we too often, as teachers, inundate our learners with text, text, text?  Multi-sensory approaches are proven in successful engagement of learners.  We have the technology.  What are we waiting for?

Being a very, very visual learner/teacher, I love all these wonderful tools for capturing stories, telling tales, teaching, sharing and showing, engaging the disengaged, the disenchanted or the disinclined, lighting the spark and letting creativity teach and be taught.  We still need to draw our pictures in the sand..........

TTFN

:-)

Communication sans frontiers - breaking down the barriers

So the world is shrinking....we all know that, of course, but in others ways it has stretched, like a piece of chewing gum, and the danger, of course with that, is that all that stretching makes it a lot thinner and not as strong! (I could have used the analogy of elastic, as that would have been more tasteful and acceptable, but it doesn't quite carry the imagery of thin-ness, as elastic tends to just snap!) 

When I talk about this so-called shrunken world 'stretching', I mean that in my job, for instance, the boundaries of where we teach and who we teach have now spun out across massive spaces that can make the world feel far from shrunken.  It has become VAST - we are expected to teach and reach people in all corners of our own state and, at times, interstate which is fantastic, accessible, equitable and a far cry from the old days where you went to your local TAFE/training organisation and if they didn't have it on offer, you didn't do it.  You might, if lucky, have been sent a large quantity of workbooks to plough through and send the completed volume via snail mail or carrier pigeon back to your allocated tutor.  Now, however, the barriers are down and it's a massive, gigantic, and sometimes very scary, playing field!! 

I love it, don't get me wrong, but this teaching sans frontiers comes with associated frustrations, as do all new and innovative concepts.

Communicating with workteams that stretch across huge geographical areas, students scattered far and wide across the state, the nation or even overseas, planning and implementing, talking with and reaching out to colleagues and students in an efficient and effective way is not always easy.  Of course it is, I hear you cry - we have email, video conferencing, Skype etc etc........but wouldn't it be nice if there was something, somewhere, that meant that groups could 'meet', collaborate, communicate, create,  plan and share without constant e mailing, phoning, version tracking for collaborative docs etc?  There is. 
(e.g. Moodle, Centra, Elluminate, Wiggio)

Wouldn't it also be nice if there was some way of providing students in remote and isolated communities, far from any town or city facility, with a way of accessing realistic simulated situations and learning real skills for vocational and employment purposes?  There is. (e.g. Second Life)

We want to be heard.  We want to hear our colleagues, groups, students, learners.  We want to share, create and collaborate together to make sure those barriers stay down and the 'frontiers' remain open........the best we can do is constantly explore new and emerging technologies without fear, with open minds and the 'Why not....?' mindset that encourages the growth of innovation and change.  We must not be so stretched that what we provide is thin and weak (like the chewing gum!!)  - we have to ensure that our connections (both literally and figuratively speaking!) are strong and we offer reliable tools that our end users and peers will embrace with ease.

This has been a very sensible post tonight - so will now go and put on a clown's hat and tell a few jokes to lighten up before bed time!! 

TTFN

:-)

So where DO you put it all?

OK - It's Sunday night and I'm back again to do me blogging thing on what I've been delving into this week..........the fact is,  I have been busy doing something called work, so have had very little time to wander the WWW and dip me tootsies into all these exciting new pools of learning that are being tantalisingly offered up on a weekly basis!

However, one of the interesting concepts that I've been pondering since the last learning session is this - Yes, indeed, where do you put it all?, especially when you want others to be able to access it any time, any place, anywhere? (wasn't that the Martini ad? and aren't I showing my age?!!)

I had a look at some of these marvellous online storage places, like Dropbox, Boxnet etc and was about to leap into these spaces so I would be able to abandon my wilful and arbitrary filing system which only I can navigate, when I realised two things -

 a) the people I wished to share my documents with would have to have a degree of techno savvy or a willingness to learn how to get to this filing 'room' and

 b) I would have to be sure that these sites weren't going to be blocked at work!!!!! Hmmm.....

 a) was OK - I think I can teach them if they haven't done this before as it's pretty straightforward.
 b) on the other hand, could be problematic - or at least, take some time to solve.

A simple solution was found  - use the online storage space supplied with MSN/Outlook through work (I remember reading something about it some time ago, but chose to ignore it as didn't have time to explore it)  So, all done and dusted - Skydrive is set up, my profile completed, a group set up and invitations extended to specific colleagues with whom collaboration on documents is vital for training materials!  I've even uploaded all the documents and filed them in their own little folders - now all I have to do is explain to everyone what it is I've invited them to participate in! 

It certainly beats e mailing docs to everyone (once I've remembered where exactly I've put the latest version.....) and then awaiting their replies with changes made, saving it all into one version....and then emailing the final version to everyone........and so it goes on

The only thing I would miss aboutt the good old days is meeting up by the communal filing cabinets for a rummage, a gossip and maybe even a cup of tea and a biscuit whilst working around the table on a set of documents.........all things must pass :-(

So long, and by the way, I never did get around to communing with the little blue birdies........maybe in the Easter holidays when I have a spare bit of festive crumb to share with them...?  

TTFN (Ta Ta For Now to the unenlightened............!!)  :-)

My Blackberry Is Not Working

My Blackberry Is Not Working

The loneliness of the long-distance blogger....

Frustration has driven me to write here tonight, as I have spent the last 4 hours (at least) attempting to get my brain wrapped around more e learning tools - not a pleasant experience as I struggled to create a Wiki and also research some of the finer points of how others have used Skype in the classroom.  Nothing wrong with that, I hear you say.....and I agree with my readers, of course, except that all this stuff is great - if it works and runs smoothly!  Due to some dormant gremlin awakening in my machine this evening, I have experienced a series of 'glitches' with saving information and visiting links - the page containing all the links looked fantastic (looks, of course, aren't everything, as I was about to find out!) but very few of them actually worked.  If they did work, they weren't all they said they were........or weren't worth visiting!!  Hmmph!! Grrr!

And we won't even contemplate exploring Twitter right now, lest those cute little tweeting blue birds decide to poop on my picnic, as it were...(you're right - that's why I have a plastic shopping bag on my head!!)  I have decided to call it a day for it's getting late - the birds must wait for another day, if, indeed, I choose to commune with them at all in the future.

In the meantime, I will persevere with my Wiki, explore the myriad of ways I can use Skype by talking to other people (as opposed to clicking on broken links!) and dream of the days when all one had to learn in order to harness technology was how to control an electronic typewriter keyboard or drive a wordprocessor!  Night all........... :-)

Just settling in to my home and arranging the decor a little!!

Have had a wonderful time finding interesting quotations about technology and some great links to photos on Flikr!  I got to pondering the history of communication systems and found the 'futuristic' portrayal/fantasy (circa 1930) of how we might be talking to each other in the future!  VERY interesting, because it really is not far from the truth, bizarre as it may have seemed in its time!

Similarly, the fantastic representations of tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype and YouTube as seen from a retrospective viewpoint, are food for thought indeed!  How our e learning tools and technology would have been regarded in the 1950's (or even beyond) is fascinating when seen in the context of that era!

I remember how 'high tech' machines such as word processors (oo-er!!), Telex machines, fax and eventually the PC appeared to be sophisticated and the ultimate in labour saving (!!!) and technological advancement when they first appeared to change our lives and streamline communications!!  Compared with what we are using in our daily lives and in our teaching and learning contexts, they now seem quite outmoded and almost museum pieces!

I haven't written a lot about my curving learn tonight, as I have been so busy working on the visual decor of this 'room' - but a picture paints a thousand words (particularly for me, a highly visual learner!!) and the pics/links and quotes say a lot more than any bit of prose could!

Sweet dreams - off for me cocoa and midnight biccies :-)

First past the Post.

Well here I am, posting on me own blog, having avoided blogging for many a long year!  It's part of a learning curve, or a curving learn that I am undertaking - exploring all these tools for e-learning and boldly going where I certainly haven't been before.  I am not in jest - I have discovered how much there is to discover and am in serious danger of having to be surgically removed from my PC whilst I am undergoing this voyage of discovery and enlightenment.  All this, despite the fact that I've been apparently embracing online teaching and learning methods in my job for the last 2 years.........alas, I have been sadly lacking!  More anon...I must tear myself away from this machine and get another cup of tea and a Mars bar