On Saturday February 3rd, I presented a workshop for In.tech.gration 2007: Teach & Technology in the 21st Century, offered out of Nipissing University. On the website In.tech.gration 2007 is described as:
“a technology in education conference for students enrolled in Nipissing University’s ITeach program. This one day event will include keynote speakers and many hands-on workshops. The goal of In.tech.gration 2007 is to give students hands-on experience and resource for integrating technology in the classroom.”
When the organizers asked if I would be interested in presenting, I don’t think they realized that I was half-way across the world in Sri Lanka, working on another project. But I didn’t hesitate to say, “YES!”. My workshop was entitled, “Open Source, Online and Oh, So Engaging!!”. I provided this description:
This is a different kind of workshop – your presenter, Sue Lister will be online, not in a classroom – coming to you from Sri Lanka! And you will ‘attend’ online not by going to a classroom! At the specified time of the workshop, you will access the workshop website and communicate first through a text-chat area and then as we proceed and get bolder, we will try voice, video and even shared desktops! Prepare to maximize your computer’s resources as we go on a virtual tour of education tools, resources, software and ideas. There will be some pre-workshop activities to get you set up and started on your investigation into collaborative, open-source education software. For more information and detailed steps for getting signed on, please visit the workshop website at: www.newmediaworkshops.com/2007/
.
In some ways, the workshop was pretty easy to organize but there were a few things that caught me off guard. I asked for the email addresses for all the participants approximately 1 week prior to the workshop date. I wanted to give everyone some preparation time to download the required software and get used some of the applications or environments we were going to use such as Moodle and Skype. Although I tried to stress the importance of downloading the software and doing tests ahead of time, PRIOR to the start time of the workshop – most of the participants had not done so…. I’m really not sure why and I wonder if I had started two weeks in advance if this would have been better.
Listed below is the software I had asked everyone to download and install:
Skype – www.skype.com/ (I asked for the Skype ID of each participant and if they did not have one, then strongly suggested they should take measures to install and set up Skype prior to the day of the workshop – I planned on using Skype
Free Mind – http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
GIMP – http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/
Audacity – http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
I wanted everyone to have Skype installed on their computers because I didn’t want to just use text-chat options for the entire workshop… an hour and 20 minutes. I set up a SkypeCast in advance of the Workshop with the plan that I would use a Web Huddle ( https://www.webhuddle.com/) for the demonstrations and then the SkypeCast for the audio. WebHuddle has audio capability but my tests showed that the quality was really bad – whereas, Skype is pretty reliable… it proved this (again) on the workshop day. I had used this type of set up a few months ago while I was training in the Worldbridges Webcast Academy…(some day, I’ll have to finish my training!). SkypeCasts are useful because you can have a large number of people participate at one time and as the administrator, you have ultimate control over the microphone. They can be public where anyone can enter or now you can have private ones – which is how I organized this workshop’s skypecast.
I asked that everyone meet me in the Moodle Course I set up. On the opening page, I posted a message saying that they should proceed to the Chat Room I had created for the Moodle environment. In the chat, I introduced myself and had everyone else report in about their experience text chatting, with LMS’s and webinar’s such as this one. We also worked out a few technical problems such as one person hadn’t received any of my pre-workshop emails. As it turned out there were about 4 people or so in the workshop conference room in North Bay while another two or three spread out around the university. In the second workshop, it was about the same….one participant from the first workshop decided to stay online with us for the second workshop, while he was ‘participating’ in another workshop!
I first talked a little bit about Moodle and then went quickly into how and why you would use a wiki – I gave everyone a few minutes to go in and try the Moodle Wiki I had set up prior to the workshop. In the second workshop, I asked one participant to use the wiki to capture any websites or additional information we could use after the workshop as things progressed. I would do this again as it took the heat off me and I believe, this helped show that I was not the only fountain of knowledge and skill in the group!
Next, I wanted to do some demonstrations where everyone could see my desktop while I explained things using audio…. This required that we jumped to the Web Huddle space I had created prior to the workshop – No one had a problem entering the area and we all congratulated each other in the Web Huddle text area. I started first by walking around Moodle and talking a little bit about how a teacher who is presenting a course online, can edit and design the course within Moodle. But I really wanted to get onto other open source software so I asked that everyone watch for a bit while I demo’d some of the features. Next, I gave them some time to open the FreeMind software they had downloaded and try it out for themselves. The workshop, continued on like this with me talking and demoing… some others asking questions through Skype and others asking questions in the webhuddle text-chat area. This part worked quite smoothly from a technology and presentation standpoint… but if you did not have Skype installed, you can imagine without the audio instructions, this part would not have been very interesting.
Here is a video I created from the WebHuddle recording (3.5 megs – 2:30min – no audio):
One thing, that I found extremely helpful when doing this workshop, solo, was the use of another computer. It sounds like over-kill but had I not had a second computer, showing me what the students were seeing in WebHuddle, I think things would have been disastrous…there were many times when I had to re-arrange the application on my desktop so that what I wanted to be seen…could be seen over the miles.
Another change, I would make in the future, (besides DOUBLE emphasizing the need to download and become familiar with the communication software for the web conference), is to have someone assigned at the other end (in this case the Nipissing Room assigned for my workshop) to project the conference on a big screen as well as to hook up speakers. This would be an amiable work around for those who don’t want to get totally immersed but just want ‘to see’.
All in all, I will definitely do another workshop this way…it was fun – and I believe with preparation from the participants & facilitator, it can be effective as well!
On Friday Nov. 17, 2006, I went to the “National Workshop on Strategies for the Development of Performance Indicators for Higher Education†presented by the Distance Education Modernization Project and the Quality Assurance & Accreditation Council of the University Grants Commission. The workshop brought together many knowledgeable people and although informative, something else caught my eye there….
Tucked off to the side at the conference was a collection of computers, two hard-drives and two cameras. I discovered this set up was the domain of UniConsulting a company formed by a group of bright professors from the University of Moratuwa. They were hired by the workshop organizers to create a multimedia CD of the proceedings. I chatted with Dr. Chathura De Silva who described some of the equipment and software they use. Two digital cameras capture the live visuals and audio from the conference while one operator synchronously adds the powerpoint slides which were received prior to the day. Microsoft Producer (a freely accessible program, if you own Microsoft Office) is where all the streams are combined, live. The hard-drives capture a back up of the proceedings just in case though. UniConsulting has an efficient system whereby they say a conference multimedia CD can be reproduced within 3 days after a conference – depending on the type of content that needs to included. That’s impressive!
I was told the entire set up cost US $20,000 (including computers, cameras, hard-drives, software, switching board, wireless microphones, etc) but that they had to be very inventive to outfit themselves for so little. Here are two pictures showing how they converted a cooking pot into a diffusing spotlight for their cameras:
Recently, I had to update an online course I had worked on during the summer. One of the things I decided to change was the clunky “powerpoint to webpage” slideshows we had created. You know the ones… they are all over the net and usually take a long time to download, often don’t fit in the browser space and need to be scrolled and usually look something like this:
(Writing for the Web, Distance Education Modernization Project, Sri Lanka).
I decided that we needed something with a much smaller screen ‘footprint’ that loaded quickly.
I had read somewhere about openoffice, an opensource product sponsored by Sun Microsystems (it may have been led to this source fromhereor here) or perhaps here .
Open Office includes a product called “Impress” which I would describe as a notch above PowerPoint – Here is a screencast demo of impress from the openoffice website.
In Sri Lanka, where I’m currently posted, ‘open source’ is a definitely an eye-catcher so I decided to read more about this microsoft competitor and was pleasantly surprised in many ways:
-it will automatically read PowerPoint files
-I can export my slides for web pages as jpg’s or gifs (this allows me to choose the better option depending on content for size optimization)
-It easily creates flash swf files from a PowerPoint
These three points were enough to encourage me to give it try – It’s a slow download though, at 92 megs but all said, worth it!
Here are some stats about file size and file format which helped me make up my mind to use Open Office Impress the next time I’m converting a ppt for internet delivery:
Size
End Product
Powerpoint File (*.ppt)
6.5 megs
powerpoint presentation
PowerPoint "Save as web page" method – size of folder (with images, web pages, etc)…
6.83 megs
website with slide navigation
Open Office Impress file (*.odl after importing ppt file)
6.3 megs
impress presentation
Open Office "export as html" method – size of folder (with images, web pages, etc)..
694 kilobytes
website with slide navigation
Open Office "export as swf" (no navigation available, though)
526 kilobytes
swf file (click on slide to move forward)
Open Office "export as pdf"
646 kilobytes
pdf file (typical PDF functions)
Open Office "export as pdf" then Pdf2Swf via Swift Tools to include preloader and navigation
620 kilobytes
swf file (simple navigation)
These experiments showed that I can make a better web page set up using Open Office – my final website was a smaller file size as well as smaller in the amount of screen real estate. I liked the fact that html wizard gave me control over whether I wanted frames, show notes included and a title screen as well the size of the final presentation (640×480, 800×600, 1024×768). You are welcome to view a copy of the final website that was added to our course on Moodle. Here is a screen capture of the set up:
OpenOffice Impress SWF and PDF Capabilities
I tried the OpenOffice export as swf capability and was very disappointed when the swf didn’t provide a navigation system. This is a screencast (google video) from Dennis Daniels explaining how to export flash files from an OpenOffice Impress presentation. View the same presentation from above as a swf here. I thought perhaps I’d be able to add a simple navigator to the swf file but discovered that the macro that creates the swf file makes this impossible. The recommended way to create a navigatable swf file from OpenOffice is to save the presentation as a PDF file and then use PDF2SWF, a command line program created by Rainer Böhme and Matthias Kramm to create the SWF which can then be combined using another program by the same pair to get a presentation that includes a pre-loader and simple navigation buttons. View a sample that needs some tweaking – it’s only 600kb’s so although there is a preloader, you probably won’t see it – also note how the default navigation covers up slide content so that will have to be changed and somehow I dropped some letters throughout the presentation, most notable the ‘l”… how odd?!
Admittedly, Open Office has a ways to go in the SWF realm but for creating simple web pages from PowerPoint or Impress files, I’m sold!
Recently, on a mailing list to which I subscribe, a technology instructor wondered if it was necessary to teach a group of ‘basic-skilled’ teachers the added technique of making an audio ‘subscribe-able’ (and therefore a podcast). Here was my response:
I did a podcasting workshop for a mix-skilled group of teachers last winter and found I had to emphasize the advantages of “audio in the classroom” rather than podcasting.
What the others from the mailing list are emphasizing about podcasting not being about the type of file but the delivery – I found was the exact reason why the group I was facilitating would have a problem getting their head around ‘podcasting’ – Their audience (the other students, teachers and parents) would not be subscribing to a class’ podcasted programs (and teaching that audience would be a whole new kettle of fish!)- so basically these teachers would be taking the extra steps of creating the subscribe-able feed for the rest of us – those who know how to subscribe. Facing reality, I downplayed the ‘casting’ part and encouraged the teachers to get out their voice recorders and start doing audio projects – there is much for our students to gain here!
I see this type of thing happening with my photo blog. Many of my friends love my photos and regularly visit the blog but they don’t have a clue about subscribing and how it would make their life easier…all in due time, I say. (However, since the majority of this group are email users, I’ve tried to help them out and subscribed them through an email service…treading on the line of “push” technology rather than user-pull.)
An interesting study would be to discover who are the subscribers to the typical Grade School podcast – is it the parents, the other grade 5 students – other grade school teachers – those people you want as listeners or just all us techy-types who have learned how to use an aggregator – don’t get me wrong, I think this latter group are worthy listeners (and probably the ones most likely to give online feedback) but if you asked the grade school that is podcasting, I’m sure that’s not who they are doing the show for.
So I guess the expanded question is – if your audience aren’t typical ‘subscribers’ or aggregator users should you bother taking that ‘next step’ and making the audio a podcast? Why not just post the mp3 file – as you have suggested? I say GO FOR IT!!
I think getting basic-skilled teachers enthused about using audio in the classroom – is good all around – and hey, if you can get them to post it (not podcasting) and make it public, even better! Eventually they’ll come around to the need to have it podcasted and not just posted.
When a basic skilled teacher is asking “Can I do a Podcast?” are they really saying I want to broadcast my audio and allow people to subscribe to it… I don’t think so. They probably just want to make a radio show, allow their students to do audio projects or do an audio interview. But the Podcast hype is upon us…The cart is before the horse.
To me, it’s not the ‘casting’ part of this craze that’s so exciting for education and learning – it’s the audio part.
On the “Pilot Course for E-Learning Policies†there were two school visits – one to the University of Colombo (http://www.cmb.ac.lk/)and the other to the University of Moratuwa (http://www.mrt.ac.lk/). Both of these schools showed a variety of elearning projects they are working on. While UC introduced us to their Elearning Centre and stepped us through their process for web-enabling their courses for a Swedish LMS which is supported by THEducation AB, in Stockholm – Uof M showed us several student projects – one of which caught me quite off-guard…..
A bit of background – When I was teaching multimedia at Dubai Men’s College we were focused on project-based-learning. About 5 years ago, one of the student projects used live streaming video but the students wanted to take it a step further and have visuals showing at particular times to support the video. We ran into a major roadblock – no matter how we tried to have the visuals synchronize to the streaming video, we could not get the proper visual to show if someone signed on to the streaming site after the show began.
Fast forward to the E-Learning course and our visit to UofM. Three students in their final year of their program showed a project they have partially finished. They have produced a streaming video presentation tool that includes both video of the presenter and their slides (exactly what we were trying to doin Dubai, 5 years ago!) – the students have the product working where the slides automatically advance under the control of the presenter (I’m unsure if the slides can be programmed to advance at specific intervals but I don’t see why not). The viewer can also advance the slides but once the presenter pushes a new slide, it is immediately shown on the viewer’s desktop. Basically, this young group of innovative students have solved the problem I had come up against over 5 years ago! This team is now looking at incorporating a white board application and porting their product to java. (here is the product’s website: http://www.cse.mrt.ac.lk/projects/batch02/project11/index.htm – They call it “Online synchronized Multimedia Deployer”)They said when they are done, they plan to give the product to their university and they hope to make it open source, as well! Here are the students (minus one player) beaming from their accomplishment:
When I took their photo and congratulated them on the excellent project, I also said I would share with them a few other products I know of that do the same kind of thing – in the hopes they might get some ideas on the development issues they are currently facing. What’s a bit strange is that I was planning to encourage the students to check out the likes of – Elluminate – http://www.elluminate.com/ , Horizon Wimba – http://www.horizonwimba.com/ (both of which I’ve used for an application like they are preparing for- here is a sample of an archived illuminate session.) and GoTo Meeting – https://www.gotomeeting.com/ (which I haven’t used) when I’m twigged to a new yet similar product in “Jane’s Elearning Pick of the Day†blog. It’s called Vyew (http://vyew.com/content/) and it’s free (not like the others I’ve mentioned).
This makes me think there are many more options out there for streaming presentations and webinars – perhaps the thumbstacks product that right now makes easy powerpoints from pictures is worth following as it evolves : http://www.thumbstacks.com/
During the last week I was lucky enough to participate in the “Pilot Course on E-Learning Policiesâ€. It was held at a very well-equipped distance learning lab (www.dlcsrilanka.org) and had over 30 participants from several institutes and private organizations from around the island. The course was sponsored by the Asia Development Bank (www.adbi.org) so it’s not a stretch that the information and set up of the 7 day workshop was top-notch!
This was the first time I had the experience of using “canned†presentations on CD-ROM’s in a ‘face-2-face’ environment. The CD’s used a “Microsoft Presentations†mode of delivery where the presenter is shown as “talking head†video while powerpoint slides of content support the presenter. The videos were of experts from around the world – too many American’s if you ask me, but alas… Each topic started out with an short introduction by the Sri Lankan facilitator – he would identify which CD/video we would all need to watch – then everybody would start up their CD’s on their own computer (or view the content from the intranet Moodle site. In this way, the content was excellent but not as expensive as paying the people to come to the island to present – also each participant could control the delivery – if I wanted to stop the video and make notes… I could, without bothering the other participants. Lastly, after we finished viewing, the Sri Lankan facilitator would discuss the content from the Sri Lankan perspective. In addition to the CD-ROM’s and classroom discussions there was also a Moodle forum available to further discuss content.
I found the talking head video more of a distraction than a support to my learning in this situation. I would have been pleased having a picture of the presenter and straight audio – I didn’t see much value in the occasional hand gesture and ‘eye contact’ from the video of the presenter.
This was a truly ‘blended’ workshop with its use of Computer-based training, live presentations and a moodle support site. I believe there would have been more action on the Moodle Forums had it not been hidden behind an intranet and therefore only accessible when the participants were at the workshop. I’m unsure why things were arranged like this – it seemed a bit counter-productive since there was only time prior to the start in the morning, the end of the day or during the lunch when a person could contribute to the discussions. Nonetheless, when I used the forums, I found I gained good insight into the island education culture. One particular time, when I asked the participants to provide feedback on a courseware rationale I proposed, I received information I would otherwise not have received without a lot of trouble. In the later situation, it was imperative to have access to the Sri Lankan point of view because for me to create a product rationale for a country I’ve only been in for three weeks, would be a bit presumptuous. After I presented, “The Instructional Design Course for E-learningâ€, my courseware development plan (each participant had 5 minutes), I explained I needed feedback on the rationale part so I would post it on our Moodle site – by lunch-time I had several opinions and a full discussion in place about the role of instructional designers in Sri Lanka’s elearning initiatives. Without the Moodle Forum available, I believe this discussion would not have happened.
All in all, the workshop was a wonderful opportunity for me to mix with those interested in elearning on the island of Sri Lanka.
Another low-tech. thing I used a lot during my classes in China was personalized ‘whiteboards’. I discovered that rigid plastic sheets and whiteboard markers were relatively inexpensive so a class-set did not put me much out-of-pocket. I wanted a way to have students quickly share responses while at the same time not taking too much of my time to access the responses. As well, I love the fact that the writing surface is RE-USABLE! I found that the students did not have a lot of money for supplies so to ask them to use a piece of paper for an in-class exercise seemed wrong (also, teacher supplies were limited so forget about chart paper, blank paper and worksheets for the students). Once the students realized what I was doing with these plastic slates, they also seemed to appreciate my approach to having a ‘green’ classroom.
The idea of using personalized whiteboards is a throw back to the days of slates with a slight twist. I saw the technique used by a British Exchange Teacher on my first Teacher placement. The British teacher said it’s a common technique in British classrooms – yet, I have not seen them in use much throughout the classrooms I visited in Ontario – the Grade 4 students I saw using them, were certainly excited about learning and participating.
The boards could be used for a variety of teaching strategies – I used them for group work and individual work – anytime, I wanted information sharing (and perhaps checking). I used the plastic slates for an activity where I had one student listen to a conversation between two other students and then share their critique of what they heard Here is a photo of the students completing this activity (I have blurred faces because I am awaiting permission to post the students’ pics) – without using the whiteboard technology, there would have been a wasted piece of paper at the end of the conversation – this way, the students just erased the comments with a tissue (this, they supplied) and things were fresh for the next round. In other exercises, I’ve had the students share their work as shown here:
Here are a few photos showing students working in groups with the boards (Again, I have blurred the faces of students since I am waiting permission from the students to show their pics.) One might say, “Well, you don’t need the white boards to do group activities like these, but what I found using the plastic sheets and markers did was change the learning environment a bit – and it also saves the environment!:
One time I used the fake white boards to do a quick spelling bee of all the incorrectly spelled words I had collected from the students’ work on the blackboards and exercise books. I wanted to share the correct spelling so I had one group of three come up to the board to write their responses while everyone else had their ‘whiteboards’ and markers. I said the word, used it in a sentence, said the word again and then gave the 5-10 seconds to write the word. After a short 3-2-1 count down, the students shared their responses. Very quickly I was able to assess the student’s work – with three students on one word up at the board, they always produced the correct answer so all the students could also check their work…. admittedly some ‘checked’ their work from others while they wrote.
One thing that was a bit disturbing in the spelling bee exercise, was that the students at the front would laugh at any incorrect spellings they saw – I was used to a more humble approach to a peer’s misgivings in a classroom. In the future, I decided that it was best not to have students at the front viewing everyone’s work – until I get a chance to talk a little bit about class etiquette. Reflecting on this scenario though, I realized that the students may have indeed been genuinely laughing ‘with’ their peers since in the spirit of our ‘fun’ spelling bee – many teams started to draw pictures and happy faces along with their words!
There was always lots of energy, interaction and sharing when I used the ‘whiteboards’ – I will definitely add them to my ‘teacher tools’ in the future!
During my stay in Nanning, China, I presented three education technology workshops – two at the Chinese Traditional Medicine University (CTMU) while the third was held at the Sino-Canadian College of Guangxi University(SCC). At CTMU I did an informational session about education technologies ESL teachers may be interested in using in their classrooms – Podcasting, Blogging and Hot Potatoes. The second workshop was more of a hands-on session where I reviewed how to create learning activities with hot potatoes and then went step-by-step over the process of recording and uploading audio. I also showed how to publish a powerpoint to the web. For the Sino-Canadian folks I looked at podcasting or more specifically incorporating audio in the classroom.
A few very positive things came out of these workshops – two teachers started class blogs and I became aware of the possible use of screencasting for grammar training. (As a follow up to that idea…I have started work on an action research project on the topic here: )
Here is one teacher’s take on their new blogging experience: “We encourage you to visit [our blog site]- it represents less than
two-hours work on our part and probably has the
errors to verify that fact! However, we wanted to
share this information with you and the other
teachers, since it represents a readily available
high-tech tool that can help all of us in our
teaching.
It is interesting to note that thousands and
thousands of sites like this have been created around
the world, helping teachers from universities to
kindergartens.
And below you can view a picture of me doing a presentation at the Traditional Chinese Medicine University:
I was lucky to spend 1 month in China for my final teacher-placement option for the Bachelor of Education with Nipissing University. While there, I was mostly touted as an English Teacher which I found a bit perturbing but even in that role, I attempted to utilize as much technology in my lessons as the sparse classrooms would permit.
One of the things that I tried to promote was the use of podcasting for the students to get access to native English speakers. Most of the students hadn’t heard of podcasts but about half in every class had mp3 players (not Ipods as I was told those are too expensive).
One of things I was asked to do was to help students prepare for an upcoming speaking/listening exam. I was guided in a specific format by the director of the school which maximized student involvement – part of the process involved 24 students all at once talking to their desks as if there was a recorder in front them. The director was right – maximum involvement- but it was hard for me to listen to any one student so I tried several modifications throughout the week as I worked with different classes.
I decided that my tiny voice recorder could be my best friend and asked for a student volunteer to allow us to record and then analyse their practice attempt. The students were used to having other students listen to them since they typically only had one or two students tell their stories aloud in front of the class while the others listened. Therefore, with the addition of the voice recorder, all students ‘told their stories’ but we also could review and analyse one particular story. The downside of this technique was that my external speakers weren’t powerful enough to be heard from the front of the room to the back – I’d change that in the future.
I also gave the opportunity for students who had MP3 players with them to record their stories in the session and then copy them to my desktop so that I could listen to them at home and provide feedback by the next class. Several students took me up on this opportunity as well. They did not have any problems with the technology and seemed pleased that I would use technology they were familiar with.
