1 December 2006 - TAA RPL, Spirit of Service Award

A momentous day in my year 2006 ... the day on which I completed my TAA RPL assessment (giving me credit in converting my old CertIV Workplace Training and Assessment to the new certificate replacing that one!). It was a mammoth job, and leaving work today without my bag filled with a huge fat folder and hundreds of documents providing evidence of about 88 teaching criteria gave me a rather light headed sensation.

Then tonight (technically last night since I am writing this at about 10 past 12, or 0010 using a 24 hr clock!) was the TAFESA Adelaide North Christmas function and award presentation! I was presented with a Spirit of Service award!!! ... 'acknowledging personal committment, dedication and exemplary service to customers, internal and external, in a professional manner'.

Many thanks to my fabulous Flexible Delivery Coordinator, Judith Fawcett inspirational, motivational and supportive; to David Bury Coordinator of Aged Care at Gilles Plains for including me HPI fully into the aged care team; to Pat Alexander Program Manager for her continued support of my participation in professional development activities. Thanks also to the complete Community Services team (awarded the Team of Team award!!) who are all so friendly and supportive, fun to work with. No award can ever gained by me alone, the award is reflective on all of the people contributing to my life.

Well, that could have been my acceptance speech, but I didn't have to give one! They weren't happening on the night ... and I arrived tooo late to be formally presented anyway. Sorry Judy and Cheryl for worrying you.

Next big event will be the 2nd 'From here to elearnity' gathering, to be hosted by me at Gilles Plains ... a presentation by Judy Fawcett regarding obtaining learnscope project funding, making changes in organisations (to allow for flexible delivery, blended learning and e-learning) and showcasing our flexible delivery in Community Services and Health ... followed by dinner together. I am looking forward to seeing every one again ...

Just playing ... www.piczo.com

Spent part of this afternoon, playing with Hattie on the computer. She helped me set up my very own piczo site ... www.piczo.com ... its a free web site development product. My site is at ...

http://pic7.piczo.com/sunnijaneruns

It's my running fun site!!

Good morning world!

... that is how I feel today!! I s u r v i v e d my Waterfall Gully run this morning, and I'm at work to tie up loose ends, feeling good!

Yesterday I attended my first QAG (Quality Assurance Group) Professional Development Day (Aged Care). And, I made my first ever presentation to TAFE peers! 30 minutes dropping pebbles in the pool and spreading those e-learning ripples a little further!

The purpose of the QAG was to review the Aged Care and Home and Commuity Care units that were unpacked in 2001, development of resource lists, development of assessment tasks and development of learning activities.

In this light I presented and demonstrated the use of three of the e-learning tools I have been using in my Inf8 Comply with the information requirements of the aged care and community care sectors competency:

Baronia Villiage - a CD which provides interactive learning of the documenation skills needed by carers in aged care facilities, develooped by a TAFE in NSW (possibly a Commonwealth project - no details on the CD). This is a great tool to bridge literacy and numeracy gaps and to introduce the key documents used in aged care, progress notes and care plans.

Data base files - These were developed by Anne-Marie Barnett and Judy Fawcett (Coordinator Flexible Learning, TAFESA, Adelaide North). The database forms are based on records from Lutheran Homes, who generously gave Judy copies to use for classes several years ago. These forms simulate putting a resident's information onto a computer database, the way of the future.

Inf8 web page - http://agedcaredocs.tripod.com ... my baby! I saw the need to put resources for the Inf8 students in a central location that they are able to access anywhere, at a time to suit them. The site was developed using Tripod, a free online web site development tool. Available at: http://www.tripod.com . I chose to use tripod, rather than set up a Moodle or a Janison site, because the students would not need a password to use the site, and may use it as a resource when they finish study. The tripod site also required me to get no permissions etc ... no red tape! The useful links page on the site is my favourite. Although maybe I should have set up a wiki so that students can add sites that they find to the page. It is a site in progress and there are several paged that I aim to add next year. I have kept the site very simple, so that it loads quickly for those with slower computers.

Anyway, in retrospect, I think that the presentation went well ... and that is why I feel so so good today.

... and it was good to see a good old Elearnity friend at lunch yesterday!

a l i t t l e bit disapointed ...

I have a group of Children's Services students. As part of their Inf2 competency (comply with documentation requirements in Children's Services facilities) I asked them to set up blogs, and gave them the option of using their blog for their assessment. Their assessment is to report on the documenation systems that they find used in their work placement facility. Usually I have requested students to write a report on their findings ...

Well ... they are on placement. It is Thursday of the first week. I have just checked their blogs, and no one has added a placement entry! These are genY students. What is happening? What have I done wrong? Am I being impatient? ...

Being a busy blogger (although not so busy blogging in the last few weeks) and a member of an online community (from which I have been sadly absent due to work/study committments, and a preference to literally run rather than to figeratively surf the net!!) maybe I am being impatient. Maybe I am assuming that they will have an interest/bent towards this technology because of their 'genY' membership. Maybe that assumption is incorrect ...

What do you think?? ...

Work today ...

I teach a group of Women's Ed students at TAFESA, Tea Tree Gully Campus. They are doing 'Women and the Internet' and 'Access the Internet'. As one of their activities I have asked them to blog the results of their internet searches. Here are some of their results:

http://ilovepinklots.blogspot.com

http://pixi-memyselfandi.blogspot.com

http://samjaneblog.blogspot.com

http://dance-the-nightaway.blogspot.com

http://shelsstudy.blogspot.com

http://evelynstafeblog.blogspot.com

This is the result of four weeks work, and I am pleased with their progress.

From here to e-learnity ...

... the name of our LearnScope StartUp 2006 continuing e-learning support/project/ networking group. An inspirational name, I think, Wilhelm!

Friday night's cocktails were a great way to send off StartUp 2006, or were we commencing the 'From here to e-learnity' journey on that night?! Loved the awards presented by Marlene, Sean and Elena. Wish I had some pictures of our group to load on my blog! I look forward to continued association with this group of positive, energetic and passionate e-people!

Next 'From here to e-learnity' event ... an invitation to Gilles Plains to meet Judy Fawcett and discuss potential LearnScope projects, funding, how to develop a submission etc. This will be the first ever 'work function' that I have initiated and 'run' (pardon the pun)!! I will keep 'From here to e-learnity' members up-to-date via email.

Book Recommendation

Evans, P., 1996 The Verbally Abusive Relationship, Adams Media Corporation, Massachusetts
Evans, P., 2003 Teen Torment, Adams Media Corporation, Massachusetts

LearnScope StartUp 2006 Dinner at Regency Park

The first social function for the now 'complete' 2006 StartUp group from Adelaide, and surrounding districts, was last night. On Wilhelm's invitation those available last night dinned at the Regency Park TAFE college restaurant. Thank you so much for organising the evening Wilhelm! The tour of the College was fascinating, the food delicious.

The formal proceedings for the evening was discussion of our group's direction, name and the focus of future gatherings. And we caught up on all of the e-learning e-xploring e-very one has been up to! And apparently some people have been e-scaping from work and e-vading others to e-learn!!!!

We have decided to call our new e-learning network group "From .... .... " (woops!! no beans to be spilled to avid RSS aggregator checkers [Marlene!!!] until tomorrow night's cocktail 'party'!! - more in the next post)

Thanks for teaching us the spoon trick, John!

Needless to say, we had a great night!

Web 2.0 Social Software Workshop

Yes ... for those of you watching your bloglines or your RSS Aggregators, I'm baaaccckk!

Last Thursday I attended a two hour workshop on the above (Web 2.0 Social Software). Allison Miller presented at TAFESA Gilles Plains campus.

Allison discussed the difference between Learning Management Systems and Personal Learning Environments, and the move towards PLE's - more life long learning friendly and allowing the student control.

She presented the theory of Connectivity and Learning Conduits http://learningcircuits.org/2005/nov2005/seimens.html

... and the question of how much learning do we actuallly have to retain ...
http://www.kineo.com.uk/audiodownloads/charles-jennings-interview.html

(note, 20 minutes later: I have just tried the above links and they don't work properly ... sob, sob! Another 10 minutes later: learningcircuits is now working!!!, haven't had time to check kineo. Off to class)

Educational web 2.0

• blogs or weblogs
• wikis
• social bookmarking
• social citations and social libraries
• mashup websites
• VoiP
• virtual classrooms/moodle
• podcasting/vodcasting
• digital story telling and m-learning

... were all mentioned briefly.

Links to Blogs/Bloglines

www.blogger.com
www.whitepage.com.au
www.adelaideblog.com
www.globeofblogs.com

www.bloglines.com - RSS aggregator for blogs.

Links to Wikis

www.seedwiki.com
http://pbwiki.com
www.wikispaces.com
http://en.wikipedia.org
www.writely.com - now google docs and spreadsheets

Social Bookmarking Links

http://del.icio.us
www.flock.com
http://www.youtube.com
www.flickr.com
http://www.bubbleshare.com
http://stumbleupon.com

Social Networking Links

... making a link to an Internet site so that you can share common interests

http://www.43things.com
http://43places.com
http://elgg.net

Social Citations, Quotes and Libraries

http://www.citeulike.org
http://del.icio.us/Mike_Malloch/social-citation

http://bigcite.com
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Main_page

http://discogs.com music
http://bibliophil.org books
http://stuffopolis.com all stuff


Thanks to Allison's powerpoint slide printouts for all of the above information.

More coming to this post soon ....
... back to the keyboard, some hours later ...

Mashup Websites

http://www.programmableweb.com/mashups
http://kapowtech.com
http://beerhunter.ca/ (used as an example!!)

VoiP

http://www.skype.com

Virtual Classrooms/Spaces

http://www.centra.tafesa.edu.au/main/centraTAN/pd
http://community/janison.com
http://www.ivisit.com
http://moodle.org
www.vetsa.net.au

Podcasting/Vodcasting

http://podomatic.com
http://podcast.net
http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts
http://poscast.com/home.php
http://www.abc.net.au/services/podcasting
http://www.vodcast.nl

Other e-tools/cool toys (woops, that word!)

http://www.coe.uh.edu.digital-storytelling
http://electronicportfolios.com/digistory
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/capturewales

M-learning
http://www.m-learning.org
http://mlearning.rave.ac.uk/mlearning/home/htm

Virtual Worlds
http://secondlife.com
http://www.whyville.net.smmk/nice

e-Portfolios
http://www.protopage.com/v2
http://www.protopage.com/coach_carole
http://pageflakes.com
http://www.eportfolio.org

Web 2.0 Ozzie Gurus
Alex Hayes
http://alexanderhayesblog.blogspot.com
http://del.icio.us/alexanderhayes
http://www.icvet.tafensw.edu.au/aboutus/team/hayes.htm
Sean Fitzgerald
http://seanfitx.wikispaces.com/2006networkoverview

The above gurus were those mentioned by Allison, in her workshop. I know that there are many more out there in blog world ... so ...

An open invitation here .... to all those other gurus, or otherwise, lanquidly lurking on my blog, to post a comment and/or a link to your web 2.0 info/favourites/suggestions for use in the educational context!

(Thanks Plu (one of my gurus) for visiting my site earlier today. Plu's blog is a running one ... but he also has a del.icio.us site that is full of great e-learning links, some web 2.0 is bound to be included!!)