PREPARATION
I facilitate 2 statewide Learnscope teams. The NSW Startup team (A collection of participants from RTO's across the state) and the NSW ACE Diamond team (A online community of ACE English Language, Literacy & Numeracy teachers)
Leading up to the Cool Results conference I endeavoured to prepare participants with emails, live chat discussions and supporting any technical issues etc. The first image shows the results of one of 3 live chats I facilitated.
As I work at TAFE as well I worked with IT support staff well ahead of time to get access to Elluminate working & we managaed to enable 5 computers to have Elluminate up and running the Thursday before and get IVocalise to work on my computer as I was presenting in this room as part of the Cool Results conference. Thanks Tony for your time!! :-)
I also invited staff on the campus to a session and showed interested staff members how to participate/engage in the live chat.
ACAL's Ivocalise room was new to me so I had a few practice runs with Robyn & Dot before hand (both from home and TAFE covering all bases)
ENGAGING IN THE EVENT
* Monday I had a full schedule teaching so was unable to engage but dived into some discussion late in the evening re reporting on my experiences (hence this page) I think I am too late to win the bottle of wine on offer - oh well!)
* Tuesday I had decided to engage in my first live event with Nigel Payne from the BBC at 11am as I had a admin morning at TAFE... after all I had Elluminate all working for me thanks to Tony's help.
TOWN BLACK OUT
Now my home is out in the bush & we our home runs on Solar power... When i got into town I discovered that Coonabarabran and the wider district was in complete blackout and had been since midnight!
Aha I thought I can manage this! Excited at taking the challenge on. I have a laptop and a personal dialup so can swap phone lines.. so I managed to get online and operating via the laptop battery dived into the Elluminate room 1/2 hour ahead to make sure all could work.
NO LUCK!! Tony had to connect me to the Elluminate room via TAFE proxy's so here I was unable to connect via my dial up.
WHAT TO DO NOW???
I dilly dallied deciding whether to race home to reliable solar power (a 20 minute drive) or miss the chat live... I was getting frustrated and a bit cranky so thought I know I will calm down have a cup of coffee and check the recording out later. But I couldn't have a cup of coffee there was no power!!!!
So I informed other staff and raced home to log in late... what a brilliant session though!! Saw lots of colleagues amongst the 65 other participants :-) I revisited this chat later in the motel room.
2nd session I tried had a few technical problems and the presenters were obviously not familiar with using the virtual conference room (this took the shine away from their content)
Then I raced back to work to teach (power was back on in town thankfully as I was teaching Digital Story telling) and then back home again to co present 'COOL RESULTS AND COOL TOOLS IN ADULT LITERACY PROVISION' in the Adult Literacy session with Robyn Jay, Dot Waterhouse & Julie Essons.
This session was fun though technology hiccups were occuring with participants varying bandwidth. I enjoyed learning new ideas from Dot & Julie. It was really fast paced with 3 of us presenting ideas.. Robyn was a great time keeper :-) Reflections from some of my team members were positive and we even had a participant from China!!! Which impressed us all.
Late Tuesday evening I joined in my 3rd live chat 'Collaborative Project Based Learning. This session was well presented with lots of supportive 'sandpits' for us to play. Though interesting I could not yet see a direct application for me with the programs.
DAY 3 - WEDNESDAY
I had lots of online commitments that day and was racing off that evening for the remainder of the week going to Live events F2F (see links below) I did dive into connecting online in the motel room but realised I was too late for the very last session... DISABILITY STUDENTS STUDYING MULTI-MEDIA.
Ordered in dinner in my motel room and checked out some of the recordings.
FOLLOWup
The following week I facilitated 3 live chats with the STartup and ACE Diamond teams - see images of Highlights & Frustrations.
The ACE Diamonds are also diving into asynch discussions in our Communityzero room so we are sharing events that hit a chord with Literacy teachers. Some of the highlighted sessions were
* Nigel Paine's keynote address
*Cool Results and cool tools in Adult literacy provision
*Disability Students studying Multi-media
* Learning objects and MS Photostory
*Employability Skills - What? Why? How?
* Knowledge sharing with Distributed Networking Tools
I will be back for more... as I find time to listen to other recordings
Cheers Vivian Evans
For the continued discussions and recordings of the live sessions.
Enabling Adult Literacy Students to create their own pages on the WWW
This website has samples and links of websites students have created using MC2 as preseted as part of the Cool Results conference using the Literacy Live forum
Breaking the Safe with Marie Jasinski
I had a big learning curve the week of the Cool Results conference (along with lots of other people) Here are some reflections on the NSW Learnscope workshop I participated in on the Thursday of that same week.
Yes I followed up with more learning this time F2F at the beach :-) Follow this link to discover more
More reflections re Cool Tools from the NSW startup team Blogspot
For future events like the Cool Results... follow this link for upcoming Australian Flexible Learning Framework events - online & offline
Vivian Evans vivevans@hwy.com.au
Brainstorming How to effectively engage in the Cool Results Online Conference
Engaging effectively in an online conference takes some preparation... I faciltated 3 live chats in the weeks leading up to the Cool results conference. This brainstorm was the resulting key points raised by the NSW Startup team Learnscope project. The NSW ACE Diamond & Friends Learnscope team also got ready for the big event as well in the weeks leading up to the big event.
|
Connecting from home - yes I'm in my tracky
The joys of connecting in a virtual conference is that you can work from home and wear your comfy gear...
|
Motels, room service and enjoying recordings
What I love about the Cool Tools & Cool Results conferences is that you can go back and revisit the live recordings... or check the ones you missed out on. I checked into a Dubbo motel, logged in via my dialup, ordered room service and revisited Nigel Payne from the BBC's great session
|
A Screen Grab from Nigel Paine's Keynote session
65 people engaged in this session and here is a grap of the collaborative whiteboard activity triggered by one question - What can we do to make a difference!! Brilliant result don't you think! Nigel was presenting at 2am in a Glasgow motel & I was in my log cabin just out of Coonabarabran - What a brilliant world we live in! TALK ABOUT COOL RESULTS! :-)
|
Diamond reflections of Cool Results
Brainstormed reflections by 9 of the ACE Diamonds in their DiscoverE Virtual conference room 1 week after the event. Highlighted sessions were 'Building Learning Environments that work with Nigel Paine's (BBC) key note address, Cool Results & Cool Tools in adult literacy provision using Ivocalise platform and the last session 'Disability students studying Multi media' session by YUM productions where the students presented the whole session!
|
