On 29th Aug, Anna and I went to a WSI Learnscope workshop run by Robin Jay and Alex Hayes.

The focus was on digital storytelling and web 2.0 tools with quite a bit of talk and sharing of skills happening as well. We are getting to know a lot of the Learnscope faces now. Lots of people are doing amazing things out there. Anna and I worked on the beginnings of a photostory using graffiti images and original music. We hope to include it in one of our ABE units. Time to try it all out is the biggest hurdle...

Heard about another free audiotool for sending messages of up to 2 minutes www.mychingo.com

Using mp3 players

Listen to our discussion about issues involved with using mp3 players (or subscribe to our Podomatic podcast).
These are the kind of pedagogical considerations that I imagine you will come across if you’re interested in producing/using podcasts in education. Technical considerations: for easy download I posted the 5.13 MB mp3 file instead of the 113 MB wav file!

BTW....Thx Andrew, audio-legend for our last workshop! I’m sure it was a lot of work cutting out the ums and ahs and my swearing!

More on Learnscope and ICVET Conference

Anna and I also went to the Learnscope Conference, feeling very fancy with our wireless laptops.

Anna went to Jo Kay's session called Second Life: Education in a Massively Multi-Player Virtual World. When we have some time, we hope to explore some comic making stuff to use with our youth students.

I went to Getting Practical with Web 2.0 Tools run by Michael Nelson. He was terrific. We checked out all sorts of tools including Basecamp ( http://basecamphq.com/ just the thing for setting up projects!!!) and http://librivox.org/ a great site where you can download free audiobooks. Lots of sharing of ideas and notes and everyone came away feeling energised.

The ICVET conference also included some presentations and discussions to do with using new technologies in teaching and learning. I attended :
Interactive Resources - the Way to Go, a terrific way to learn cooking skills
The Very Fast Train with No Destination: enhancing meanngful teaching/learning practices with selected technologies, a lively discussion ...
TaLe 1.5: Enhancing Quality Teaching and Learning - http://www.tale.edu.au/tale/index.aspx, incredibly impressive
The Mystery Forum was fun too.

ICVET & learnscope workshops

Back at ATP today...blogging in a lull between presentations, showcasing & morning tea.
Yesterday three of us from the Learnscope team (Audiodynamism, don't you know?!) came along to ATP for Learnscope workshops. Paula and I audioblogged, Wimba voice-boarded, edited and recorded ourselves silly and then bunged it all on Podomatic. Thx to Michael Coughlin! It was also fun to catch up with other Learnscopers (see whacky photo of myself and Beth).

I was amazed to find 4 emails the next day from Podomatic enthusiasts wanting to be 'friend'! The profiles of our new friends didn't seem to match our educational podcast! So, once again, I'm bemused about podcasting promoting. Subscribe to our Podomatic Audiodynamism account and see what all the fuss is about!!!! ;.)

Audioblog test

Audioblogs are amazing! Students can post/talk their comments to a shared blog via the telephone. It cost about $1 to phone the US number. It took me a few gos (and a bit of initial swearing, I confess), to get the right number in. There are fantastic technical specifications/guidelines in the Different Voices Different Spaces project, a thorough & comprehensive study of audio in e-learning funded by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework in 2005.