When a learner is in an environment that is relevant to what's being learnt, the likelihood for effective engagement is high. Learning by doing is supposed to be one of the most successful ways to learn.
Both these factors – the relevant environment and the doing – are thought to provide jointly the greatest incentive for a learner to take interest in what is to be learnt. They form the basis for what is referred to as authentic learning.
For as difficult as such situations are to establish and sustain in face-to-face situations, elearning environments can present major barriers to authentic learning that are almost impossible to overcome unless the elearning vehicles are in situ.
Typical examples of these are online tutors for word processing, graphics applications or other computer functions where the learner is involved in using mouse and keyboard to operate a tutorial directly relevant to the application.
I cite the Southern Hemisphere planisphere with a built-in tutorial as one example of an in situ learning vehicle in a junior Science elearning resource.
The examples given above are all very well, but unless a considerable component of what is learnt is transferable to other purposes, the learning acquired by the learner has limited use elsewhere. One of the characteristics of authentic learning is the transferability of the learning to other situations or disciplines.
Two examples where generic and transferable skills can be learnt are online instruction in touch-typing, and the use of a flight simulator as part of training to become an aircraft pilot.
Kallan and Tuxedo presenting a session in building in SL
Recently I was privileged to share in the facilitation of a session sponsored by ISTE, teaching people online to manipulate and assemble prims, the building blocks of Second Life (SL).
As well, part of the duties I perform as an ISTE docent in SL involves assisting and teaching newcomers to that environment by the use of text and voice chat. The learning facilitated in these situations is authentic.
People who come into SL need to acquire new skills. Most who stay to use that environment want to learn skills that can only be acquired online. But other than exercising skills in associated disciplines such as art and design, the skills I teach to newcomers are only useful in Second Life. And here is the conundrum associated with authentic elearning.
Apart from learning that is directly associated with the elearning application or platform, how is authentic learning achieved online?
This week I was introduced to the beta version of an elearning application I thought I was familiar with and that I’d been using for the past 6 months. I’ve seen one minor upgrade in that time.
Beta is one of the stages of development in software release cycles when the application is made freely available to users, well before the general release date. This practice allows software developers to gather general feedback on design layout and functionality. It also assists with the detection and monitoring of otherwise unknown faults.
I prided myself on my competence in using the generally available interface (not the beta). I thought I was at least as capable using it as I am in using many other applications on my PC. But I felt like a newbie when I attempted to use the beta release, even when I appreciated that there were evident improvements compared to the accustomed version.
This scenario is not uncommon. I often find that my apparent expertise on a computer disappears. And it’s not failing memory either. It can happen overnight when a new application version is installed or a so-called upgrade is made.
Give and take
I concede there has to be a balance between the need for a more attractive interface to impress new users who may otherwise be put off with what may appear to be a less attractive interface, and the necessity for regular users, familiar with features and layout of an application, to be able to utilise the new environment with relative ease.
But experienced users have the knowledge of functionality and feature. Though they may not know where to find these on the latest version of an interface, they will know to look for them. I feel grateful when I have this knowledge.
When I go looking for a feature or function, the prior knowledge that such a feature or function exists in the old version spurs me on to keep looking for it. I always hope that it hasn’t been listed with other, perhaps unrelated options or features to do with a different functionality.
What's given
Take the introduction of Word 2007, for instance. My expertise with a word processing application literally became virtual when I began working with Word 2007. It took me several weeks of use before I felt reasonably comfortable using the menus on the new release.
Even now, there are some functions I know must exist in that application that I can’t find – even using the help menus. How do I know they exist? From my knowledge of feature and functionality my experienced use of past Word versions has given me, of course.
What’s more, I had to find out that the Word 2007 default .docx files that could then be created on my PC were unlikely to be readable by others when I sent them as attachments. So a whole functionality, new to me and many of my colleagues, had to be sidestepped in order to achieve necessary connectivity, despite that functionality being given in the default file type.
It’s one of the vagaries of change. Despite the best intentions, things will evolve that aren’t necessarily helpful or useful.
What's taken
In future, the watchword is concept not know-how. The future expert is one who can take forward the conceptual framework of ideas, features and functionality and look for their equivalents in new circumstances.
The successful future machine, application or interface is one that can mirror these ideas, features and functionality in a way that permits them to be found intuitively by the expert.
This week I submitted my plans for three Science learning resources that I will be writing this year. The expectation is that the drafts will have an online component.
I say drafts, for when the resources are built and accessible to the learner, the intention is to amend and refine them, as part of an ongoing process, dependent on analysed feedback from the learner.
Each resource set will provide teaching and learning material for a learner to achieve an associated NCEA Level 1 Science standard.
There will be no formal question-and-answer written tests for these. All of them include reporting of a sort – a way that learners can show their communication skills – as well as demonstrating their knowledge and understanding of the various aspects of Level 1 Science.
He kindly included a link to the Virginia Commonwealth University Online Teaching and Learning Resources Guide, which I read. It was a joy to see the inclusion of the terms formative assessment and summative assessment, with appropriate links given so that their use is unequivocal.
Summative assessment will take the form of teacher assessment, driven according to assessment schemes written against the NCEA Level 1 Science standards. But the formative assessment that has to occur before that will consist of an assortment of methods including:
self-marked booklet study
computer assessed interactive activities
teacher feedback
creating and maintaining learner engagement.
For those who are unfamiliar with the term, formative assessment is a means used by a learner to reflect on what’s been learnt and understood. A course of action may be followed to do further learning if required.
Formative assessment can involve a teacher who provides feedback to the learner. It takes the form of automatic computer feedback in interactive elearning resources. Or it can be a checklist of answers or explained processes to supplementary examples given in a printed resource book.
A rudimentary example of formative assessment is a list of answers to clues in a crossword puzzle. Down to Earth
One of the standards involves investigating an astronomical or Earth science event. When writing my draft resource for this standard, I will be pulling on all appropriate techniques in elearning that are available to me and my cohort of learners:
use of existing internet resources such as the wealth of specific webcam portals – these resources can be incorporated as a series of possible internet links
Southern Georgia teaching an intermediate session to ISTE members in Second Life
Isn’t it strange that we read, hear, and see a lot about elearning, but we so rarely read, hear and see as much about eteaching?
Pedagogy?
I keep coming back to this topic. It is so vital to everything to do with teaching. The term, and all that it implies, also embraces elearning.
Elearning?
By implication, the focus is on the learner, and this is fine up to a point. But it is as if what goes on in the teaching is silently implied in the word elearning. The teacher has become the silent participant.
Well I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that there is a need for a change in emphasis so that elearning also implies an appropriate involvement by a teacher.
I’m not campaigning for teacher centred learning – not at all.
I’m agitating for pedagogy to return to its rightful place where a teacher is involved in the learning, which includes elearning.
Digital indicator
A simple examination of my blog’s statistics shows that the posts on pedagogy are considerably less popular than posts on learning. Yet they were written with the same passion, care and attention I give to posts on other topics.
My hunch is that for some reason not yet too clear to me, there is less interest in the part played by the teacher than the technology when it comes to elearning.
In September last year, I ventured into Second Life (SL) to explore.
My purpose was similar to that of most educators whom I have welcomed in the short time I have been a SL ISTE docent. I wanted to find out what SL could offer as an elearning environment.
I now have a clearer idea of its worth and potential.
The near-reality of much of the 3D simulation offered by SL is a valuable element – it is a key quality of this elearning platform. However, its aesthetic charm may dull even an educator’s appreciation of the true value of what SL can hold for a learner.
I enjoy the fantasy aspect which is so often present when I’m in SL. The huge variety of costume, and the opportunity available for disguise, make it splendid for roleplay. This aspect of SL has great potential to extend the imagination of the participant. There are a number of features that identify SL's genuineness as an authentic elearning environment:
The people
Second Life is an environment that embraces people. This quality alone brings authenticity.
There is a wide range of ways of recognising the presence of people, wherever the participant happens to be in SL. Channels to engage in communication between those who are online are easy to use. They can be facilitated in many different ways and at different levels. They are certainly not limited to simple txt or voice chat.
Even body language can play its part in exchanges between people.
There is a culture of sharing that is clearly evident among people in SL. This has possibly arisen through recognition of the need for assistance, sharing and collaborating when people first come into SL.
The cultural practice of sharing tends to be passed on. And it is accomplished at different levels, from a brief offer of situational help between two strangers at meeting, to organised sessions where experienced trainers can volunteer skills to others who are less competent. The music
SL presents music to its participants through various pathways, either live, pre-recorded or streamed directly from international radio stations. YouTube plays its part in all this, bringing music, new and old, as well as videos on many other themes to the eyes and ears of participants who have full control over audio levels within a full range of different sound channels.
The medium
Within the first few weeks as a visitor, I was able to engage in the construction of the digital stuff that is the fabric of SL. I don’t think there is another elearning environment where participants can so freely make use of the componentry and structure that comprise the environment they are in. Many of its cultural environments provide support for this engagement, through classes provided voluntarily by experienced exponents of the craft.
Two main techniques that contribute to this are building and scripting. They go hand in hand, employed in the construction of the simplest thing such as an item of jewellery, to the most complicated assemblage of the foundation of the environment itself.
For the motivated learner, there is a copious amount of well-laid-out tutorial material to be found in centres throughout the environment. Splendid examples of these are the Particle Laboratory Learning Centre and the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives, where a learner can acquire knowledge and skills on the fundamentals of building and scripting.
It is at centres like these that both beginner and experienced developer can visit and gather pearls of 21st century wisdom on the construction of the digital fabric of Second Life.
In 1972 I took my first permanent teaching job in an elite Edinburgh secondary school. Just the year before, it had been a private school. James Gillespie’s High School (JGHS) always prided itself on its high standard of education.
A maximum class size was among many standards that JGHS maintained. It strove to have no more than 25 learners per class. The belief was that a finer relationship between teacher and learner could be attained. Through this practice, significantly better educational successes were achieved.
The number of scholars who left JGHS to take up business careers, or went on to higher education, was proof enough of this accomplishment.
It was a fantastic start for me as a teacher to be with classes of this size. But it was certainly no preparation for the learning environments that confronted me in teaching positions I took up after that time.
In 1974, I had a form class of 36 learners in a school that maintained an average class size of 35.
An elearning counterpart
Almost 30 years later, research into educational achievement through elearning methods suggested that there was an optimum size for elearning groups led by a teacher.
In any group of elearners, there will always be those who can be considered ‘active’ – others who learn despite their apparent inactivity in engagement with a teacher or facilitator – and those who are neither active nor engaged significantly in learning. Time has to be distributed fairly in attending to the needs and wants of each these groups.
An e-teacher who has more than 15 to 20 ‘active’ learners in a group is always extremely busy. When the number of active learners increases much above 20, strategies have to be developed and practiced to cope with the constant learner-teacher activity that inevitably occurs in those environments.
Symptoms of stress and exhaustion are inevitable in any teacher who succeeds in engaging enough learners so that the active group comprises much above 25. My own experiences of this have been confirmed by those of my colleagues teaching in e-environments similar to my own. A recent experience
Recently, I’ve been actively engaging in discourse with groups of people in Second Life (SL). In the months that I’ve assiduously studied in this networking environment, the number of ‘friends’ in my Friends List has slowly increased. The size of my list is now well over 60.
Within that group is a sub-group of 15 to 20 friends who actively use instant messaging (IM) to contact me whenever I am online. It is a great experience to network with people in this way. Not all of this is done locally – that is to say, my avatar is not necessarily appearing on the same screen as the avatars of those who are IMing me.
Of late, I have found it difficult to be online while following any intended single pursuit. Two weeks ago, I became an ISTE docent, as avatar Kallan. In adhering to the expected commitment that comes with this office, I discovered that my group of ‘active’ friends caused me significant concern when attending to docent duties on campus.
At first, I was torn between being seen to be ignoring my friends, while attending to a duty which I enjoyed. Even sending messages of apology to IMing friends was an activity that I found distracting while attending to docent duties.
I’ve since learnt from other colleagues in similar SL situations that they often simply ignore the incoming IMs during the time that they are occupied with more immediate activities. Obviously they too have difficulty reading and responding to incoming IMs when engaged in other cerebral activity.
Elearning environment
In translating this to the elearning environment, I can see clearly how a teacher can become stressed and overworked. There is the part that is played by commitment. There is also the aspect of prioritisation.
Who gets priority from the teacher in a learning environment?
When a teacher is actively assisting several learners together, how does she cope when a learner puts forward, out of the blue, a desperate plea for help?
What strategies can she employ to ensure that this learner, who may well be one who has never before communicated directly with her, gets the necessary immediate support?
What provisions must administration provide in a school to ensure that the number of active learners in a teacher’s group is kept to a manageable level?
How can administration ensure that teachers are not forced to adopt strategies to disengage themselves from needy learners in order to protect their own stress levels?
At the beginning of last decade, I attended a session for teachers. The topic was pedagogy. There were about a dozen participants – teachers from early childhood through to senior secondary.
The facilitator asked that we consider what was meant by ‘pedagogy’. We each wrote a few sentences about it on a sheet of paper, to be read and discussed later in the session.
I was amazed at the diversity of ideas that were revealed. It seemed that from a significant group of teachers, no two had the same idea of what was meant by pedagogy. Some said it was to do with the lesson plan. Some indicated that it was about how things were taught.
A few spoke of proven teaching methods and theory. Others mentioned how the learner could be involved. Of course, it could encompass all of those and more.
But the miscellany of ideas brought forward was so varied that it was difficult for me to see any commonality among it at first. I wondered about this. I wondered that in a group of a dozen or so teachers, opinion about the meaning of pedagogy could be so disparate.
Pedagogy a practice
Fortunately, as the session evolved, things became more distinct. We agreed that pedagogy was to do with what was practiced and what was found to work best in particular learning situations. It was not some idea or strategy for teaching that was dreamed up on the spur of the moment. It does not work like that.
Pedagogy is the product of a cycle practiced by a teacher, and this has components that can be considered as part of an action research cycle: theory and recognised practice – planning – application – evaluation – reflection.
Wikipedia explains pedagogy as “strategies of instruction” and “the correct use of teaching strategies”. It gives the literal meaning from the Greek as, “to lead the child.” This description suggests a definite focus on how to go about teaching a young mind.
I usually have adults in my cohort of learners. Some of them are at least as old as I am. Is using pedagogy appropriate when teaching adults too?
Elearning resources and pedagogy
Certainly, pedagogy has to be involved when digitally created resources are being chosen for a learner – scaffolding – level – cultural appropriateness – timeliness of use. It could be argued that this is when the ultimate pedagogical decision is made – whether to use a resource or not, and if chosen, how it is to be used.
What relevance does pedagogy have in the creation of digital learning resources – of the type that may be designed and built by an instructional designer? Is pedagogy any use to the instructional designer? Should its application be restricted to the realm of the teacher?
The construction of a resource and its pedagogical usefulness does not happen by chance. If it is sound enough for a teacher to contemplate its use when applying correct pedagogy to a learning situation, then it follows that a fair amount of pedagogy also has to be considered when the resource is built.
What components of pedagogy also contribute to the considerations that are part of the creation of a resource? What pedagogy is appropriate? How much should involve both teacher and designer when pedagogical considerations are being made? What, if any, should be left to the teacher?
My prediction and hope for 2010 are tempered by what I learnt and gathered in 2009 and before that. However, my hope does not match my prediction.
I suspect that what I hope happens will not come to pass.
I’ll not dwell on the particular. That is too narrow for the future. Instead, I’ll attempt to look to the bigger picture of where a Nirvana in elearning might lie. Surmise
Commercialism and consumerism will rise with renewed vigour, despite the recent and global economic collapse that many experts say was brought about through, among other things, flagrant practices of commercialism and consumerism.
Rather than learn from past errors and misguided pathways, society will resume its hazardous journey and continue to career along a wavering and obstacle-strewn path to uncertain success.
Why do I feel this way? There are many reasons. I will cite only one elearning example here.
At the beginning of last decade (2000 – 2003) I watched the rise and fall of what might have been a brilliant concept in learning resource development – that of the learning object.
I may be wrong here – I don’t think I am. But my feeling is that financially pushy commercial factors, far larger than the budgets for learning itself, launched into the sky and eventually nosedived to destruction what could have been a worthwhile elearning concept, in the form of the learning object. Pandora relic
I have one hope for this year and for the rest of time.
Sheryl McCoy’s recent post, Another Balkanized Technology Rip-Off, puts into words exactly how I feel about the way commercialism and consumerism have continued to hinder the betterment of society.
The drive to sell, through a strategy of planned obsolescence despite genuine need, continues to come in the way of establishing real expertise in the use of technology. It stymies creativity. It comes in the way of progressing to better things, while purporting to advance and progress towards improvement. It wastes time, resources and money.
I have worked through a decade of watching incompatibles, non-connectables, lack of connectivity and even incompatibility between different versions of the same commercial devices/applications/appliances.
I’ve wracked my senses, grappling with upgrades to versions of machines, computers and their applications. All in an attempt to continue to use these for the purposes that I had worked to acquire consummate ease in and reasonable expertise in.
What I discovered was that I was grounded, once again, when the latest version (of whatever) was released. It made me consider seriously and review any further dubious opportunities for ‘upgrading’.
Valuable opportunity
I hope that we can learn from the mistakes of the last decade, and of last century. Let’s not push mistakes into the past as history to be forgotten. Let’s not claim we are assured success by simply ‘moving right along’.
Let’s start putting to good use what can be salvaged in learning from our past mistakes and successes, and move to a richer and prosperous future.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet – William Shakespeare
Evening Standard columnist, Frank Furedi, believes that the educational crisis facing Britain today is in part due to the way objective academic standards are being defined and asserted in the classroom.
His claim is that society seems “to have given up on adult authority and the idea that the person who knows best in the classroom is the teacher.” He believes that “education requires the conscious and regular imposition of adult authority.”
I was reminded of Furedi’s opinion when learning recently of the debate over the move by principals and teachers in some New Zealand primary schools to have pupils call them by first name. Some teachers believe that learners bond better with their teacher when they call them by their first name.
Anthropologist James Urry claims that removing the age-based hierarchy empowers children before they have the social skill to cope with it.
Canterbury College of Education associate dean, Barry Brooker, was reported as saying that using formal titles develops a demarcation between teachers and students that gives teachers the authority to do their jobs properly.
Do teachers need authority to do their jobs properly?
At The Correspondence School of New Zealand (TCS), a distance education centre, learners always refer to teachers by first name.
When I first took up a teaching post at TCS, this idea was new to me. I’d taught in different secondary schools for many years before then.
In all the schools where I taught, in Scotland and New Zealand, students called their teachers by their surname: Mr Roberts, Mrs Gill, Miss James, etc.
When I graduated PhD, the principal of the Edinburgh High School I was teaching in announced to the school that I was to be called Dr Allan, from now on. I've been addressed as Dr Allan, or Sir, by students in every face-to-face school I’ve taught in since.
But I had no problem when my students called me Ken at TCS. The policy of the school was that students always referred to teachers by first name.
Other distance education centres do the same. And you know, it seems to work. I find that learners relate to me with at least as much respect as I had earned while teaching in face-to-face schools.
Are face-to-face schools so different that students calling their teachers by first name can damage the potential for effective student–teacher relationships? What do you think?
How do you tell if a learning resource is successful?
You have to use it of course! Or at least, it has to be observed being used by learners who may benefit from it in some way.
But there’s more to it than that . . .
A game-based resource can be seen to be popular and for this it gets a big tick in a check-box.
But does a learning resource need to be popular to be successful? Does the popular resource assist the learner to meet the target learning objective?
Extensive research on a whole series of resources might throw some light on these questions. But let’s just limit the discussion here to one resource.
How do you know if a learning resource is effective in helping learners reach the objective or objectives the resource was designed to meet?
This needs more than just observation. Learner focus
Attention must be focused on what the learner has gained by using the resource. This acquisition has to be very specific if the resource is to be regarded as a useful ‘learning object’.
Oops, I’ve used that term!
I know! ’Learning Object’ is not a popular term among some educators. At least the term implies that the resource actually has an objective associated with it. Whether the resource assists learners to meet the objective is quite another matter.
In fact, some very good learning resources are often found to meet objectives that are not necessarily directly related to the objective or objectives that the learners were supposed to be reaching. That’s life! Sometimes it just happens that way.
So how do we know when a resource is meeting its objective?
It’s taken me a few hundred words to get to this nitty-gritty stage.
How do we know the resource is really achieving the learning that was intended to happen?
As obvious though the answer may seem to be, it is often something that’s completely overlooked when a resource has been planned, crafted and produced for learner use.
Follow up
One of the important stages in the development of any course module, or even one of its components, is the time consuming and difficult process of assessing its real worth. It’s one of these stages that teachers and developers would rather not get too far into, for it is both complicated and complex. And it takes a lot of time.
But it is obviously very important.It means that a series of analyses has to be performed involving the learners.
As well, it has to involve a thing called ‘learner assessment’. Oops! Another not too popular term.
That’s right! The learner has to be tested. And this is difficult, for how do we know that the assessment item designed to test learner achievement assesses effectively the objective that it’s meant to? This brings us more or less back to where we started.
Sorry folks! It’s the dogged chicken and egg story all over again.
Before we can be sure that the assessment item is any use, first it must be tested! And of course, this always means learner involvement.
Compounding problems
We now have learner assessment as well as learning resource design to deal with. It’s a bit like the collective effect of errors, if you’re familiar with how that works.
Small errors that occur at stages of a process tend to be cumulative. They add up to one significant error in the end. Often this error can be big enough to discount the whole process.
Catch my drift?
“What does it all mean then?” you say.
Frankly, it means that teaching and learning is a difficult process to assess. The learning that could possibly take place through the planning, building and subsequent use of a learning resource by learners is actually very difficult to assess.
Can you imagine the tasks involved in checking properly a whole course made up of multiple series of resources?
Time consuming? Yes! This alone is a factor that puts teachers and developers off the whole idea of attempting that all-important final stage of checking to see if it all works.
If you think that building a successful learning resource is a quick and easy thing to do, then maybe you should think again.
My colleagues and I have been writing learner reports this week. We follow convoluted procedures to ensure no parts are missed. The process is to provide effective feedback.
I reminded myself of the complexity of it all by sneaking a look at instructions that were circulating the office. The directions were clear, linear and easy to follow.
But I had a busy confusion going on in my head as I read them. I was looking at a block of text that filled a page.
Balance of objectives
In the days when printed instruction was it, squeezing as much text and other information as possible onto a page met some objectives. There is merit in only one page of instruction. Selecting a smaller font-size was a trick I’d seen for ‘getting it all onto one page’.
But at that time, the Science and Art of developing easy-to-follow learner instruction was well known by experienced educators. They knew that ease-of-reading and learner-interest didn’t necessarily follow when information was packed so tightly into a page that you couldn’t put your finger down on bit of white space. Extremists
White space became a prerequisite for a ‘good looking’ page of instruction. Born out of the look and colour of a blank sheet of plain A4, the ‘white space’ practice was carried, almost to extremes, by some writers and designers who actually shunned text – minimalists who’d trim even a brief, well written instruction.
Margins were widened, headers and footers were deepened. Text quantity was limited per page.
Tricks and impressions
One trick often used, when no more text culling could be performed on an important block of text, was to emulate the impression of white space by selecting a very pale font colour.
In this way, otherwise unwanted text could be merged into the background. Of course, it defeated the purpose of providing instruction, for it was almost impossible to read.
No, I’m not knocking white space. It works well when used properly. It lends itself to good web design and elearning resource design. The look and form of a blog post page can even be improved by applying it.
Techniques I’ve found that reduce the busy look of a page of text are:
short paragraphs –most readers find spaces between small blocks of text easier on the eye
double space around blocked text or images–an image can be aesthetically framed by a border of text-free space; the effect is more pleasing and restful on the eye
brief subheadings –these create chunks of text-free space by default.
You may have other techniques for improving the look of a page.
Well my blog didn’t get voted Blog-o-the-Month for September. But I reckon I had a good shot at it. I learnt a lot into the bargain. I found Second Life to be a lot of fun and certainly worth a second look.
The winner
The blog, e-Clippings (Learning As Art) won Blog-o-the-Month for September. I heartily congratulate Mark Oehlert on this distinction.
I have to admit that this blog was a new one on me. I didn’t know of it until Scott Merrick drew my attention to its existence in his announcement at the beginning of September. Blogger Mark Oehlert maintains a mean blog. I recommend you check it out.
Michele Martin’s blog has been in my RSS Reader and blog roll almost since I first wrote a blog post. In May 2008, Michele not only convinced me I should get into blogging, she also furnished me with nearly all of the blogging skills I possess today. (I am indebted to you Michele.)
The posts Michele publishes on her blog make me think, and I salute her ability to solicit thought by her incisive choice of topics. If you have not already done so, I’d recommend you hop over to The Bamboo Project and check out what’s happening there.
Donald Clark, of Plan B fame is another whose blog has been in my RSS Reader and blog roll since I began blogging. I have always viewed Donald as a bit of an icon in elearning. He is an icon in elearning!
Donald’s blog provides topical conversation with a variety of topics that I so much enjoy. Whether you have a plan A or a plan B, I advise you to check out Donald Clark Plan B.
Thanks to ISTE and to Scott Merrick for the nomination and for delivering to me a new and interesting topic for posts in the month of September.
I had intended that the post Connected World in Second Life would be my last in the series on Second Life (SL) this month. Well, I just have to squeeze in another.
Being a new ISTE member and an avid enthusiast for learning, I happened to touch down on ISTE Island yesterday and met up with friend and fellow educator, Louise Borgnine.
She was assisting with the first of a series of intermediate sessions for educators in SL facilitated by Southern Georgia.
The objective was to learn how to do things that will enhance teaching presentations in SL. The venue was over at Brahma.
Being new to all of what is SL, and in much need of the associated skills, I accepted Louise’s advice to teleport to the workshop.
The number of attendees was impressive. I must say that I found the facilitators extremely helpful. When I got stuck (and I did!) there was no end of assistance ready at hand. That’s what good keen educators are like I guess. Always ready to help a willing learner.
Something else impressed me, and that was how wonderful it was to arrive at a distant venue, be attending a session with people from different countries, and be greeted with the customary formalities without having to shift out of my ergonomic chair.
Kallan, wearing his ISTE student badge
There were other features that made me feel welcome. It was a participatory session. I was recognised by the facilitator by name, and he acknowledged me being there more than once. That was something special for one who is so new to SL and feeling a bit anonymous.
Then there were the facilitators, among them docent Tuxedo, who was kind and helpful. She was especially helpful when I dropped my laptop and got left behind. Tuxedo helped me pick it all up, and got me started again and following Southern’s instructions.
This was no ordinary workshop, yet it had the presence and feel of a real life workshop.
I learnt a lot. I even got some session notes to take away, as well as a free digital TV presentation screen, which I managed to get working.
“What’s with SL?” I hear my readers say. What’s possessed Blogger in Middle-earth to let himself be led astray by all this virtual reality stuff? I read some comments to that effect on a post only a day or so ago.
No. I don’t think I’m being led astray here. It is the reality of virtual conferencing – no less contrived than video conferencing, with a lot more freedom to move about and participate.
We had a participatory session at the end when Southern rallied us to flex our new-learnt skills in a game of look and see – an active finish to a rigourous session in using the camera facility in SL.
A transparent dice box, suspended in mid virtual space, rolled the dice for us to observe and call. It wasn’t easy, for we had to navigate our cameras in which ever direction was called, to declare the numbers on the dice. It was fun – as much fun as I have had at many well run training sessions in real life.
Next day, I dropped into the ISTE Conference Centre to be greeted yet again with a welcoming smile, this time from docent Mo Hax. He was kind enough to chat and pass on to me his useful site on SL.
These people are volunteers. They are trained educators and they are teaching their hearts out in SL. I might just drop in on another session some time soon. What do you reckon?
Kallan and Tuxedo presenting a session in building in SL
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