More Impacts of e-Works project

Well thinking about the outcomes of our Learnscope journey this year I have come to realise we have effected more people than just our students.

On the 27th of September our Learnscope team was invited to give a presentation and show our Photo Story work at the Primary Industry and Natural Resources (PI&NR) Faculty Forum. This is where all our PI&NR teachers, part time teachers and support staff gather together to see what everyone else is doing from across our institute. (Which covers nearly half the state). We had a fair turnout of staff come to the presentation.Teachers ranging from Animal Studies, Horticulture, Agriculture and some of our promotional staff.

After the presentation there was a lively discussion on the uses of Photo Story 3 and other technologies and how they can be used in our classes.

This opportunity has enabled us to get the word out to other staff members that this new technology is not scary and mostly it is easy to use. Although like learning anything new some guidance may be needed to get started.

The make up of our Learnscope group which has included members from a number of sections within PI&NR has also been a positive thing. I also teach in the Environment section and I can see a lot of advantages in using software like Photo Story, ARED and Adobe Connect to improve our classes and create new learning material for our learners. I have been telling and showing teachers I work with what we have been learning in the e-Works project. These other teachers don't only work at the Orange campus but at a number of different campuses. Neil is also from a different section to earthworks. He has been able to see a number advantages to using the skill he has learned in the e-Works in his Horticulture classes.

So it is a bit like 6 degrees of separation. Learnscope has shown me/us a wide range of new technologies that are available to us to use. We have then taken what we thought was good and run with the idea and then passed it on to our colleagues around the state. Hopefully they will think about it and use any ideas they gain from us and use them in there own classes and so on.

Tales of Tibooburra

It dates back a bit now, but Greg's Tibooburra trip went really well - learners used the DVD pre-start check resource on the protable DVD players and responded very well.

Many were from the dog fence maintenance crews or National Parks. The "boss cocky" of the dog fence really liked the idea - he thought his crew could prepare ahead, spend less time in the classroom and less time away from work.

The assessor had a bit of an adventure on his way to Tiboburra, his vehicle swept of a causeway in a flash flood, follwed by some hours spent on the vehicle roof hoping that someone would come along (and that the flood would subside rather than rise). While his (near new) vehicle was wrecked, he continued on to Tobooburra and did the scheduled assessing!

Try it at Tibooburra

They're loading the gear on the truck right now and heading for Tiboburra.

Greg's got the portable DVD players, the DVDs with the team's movies and a microphone and laptop to record learner response. Good luck!

More than ok

The team did a fantastic presentation about their learnscope project to the PINR Full Faculty Forum last week. It was a very popular workshop selection. They showed the resource they have produced for students to use on portable DVD players. Then demonstrated how easy it is to create an instructional movie using Photo Story. They created one on "How to make a cup of tea"! We'll get it on podomatic when the team return from their well-deserved break. Unfortunately the attempt to record all the audio of the presentation on an mp3 player for podcasting didn't work - too many menus and steps to go through for recording voice - I'll have to get an easy to use digital voice recorder for this purpose.
Earlier this week I presented to the Regional ICT Conference on this Earthworks Learnscope project and led it into use of web2 tools in education. It seemed to go well - they asked questions, requested a progress report on web2 use for teaching and learning at their next conference and asked for URLs. I was also asked if I could talk about this stuff to the regional schools conference (yes). It was interesting that these people, the staff who support ICT for TAFE and schools in western NSW and must have great computer skills, generally appeared not to be particularly aware of what is happening on the internet and certainly aren't engaged with it. Their focus is on maintaining our hardware and supporting corporate systems. Only one or two have a background in education, so the potential of the internet for teaching, learning and assessment is not clear to them. But the Regional Manager is aware and interested enough to have invited me along to give the educational perspective and his crew responded well - cause for optimisim.

It'll all be ok on the day

The Earthworks Learnscope team met again yesterday evening. Tomorrow they will be presenting a workshop on what they have done to the PINR Full faculty Forum. So the purpose was to prepare for that - a great way to confirm their own learning. There was a lot of shuffling about with leads, a lot of laughs and I'm sure it will all be ok on the day.

Learnscope Regional Event 1

Hey Everyone

Just thought I would do a quick post about this event while I am here. This is turning out to be a really interesting day. We have had guest speakers from South Australia, New Zealand and the United States. We have had some lively arguments about e-portfolios and whether teachers or students drive the need to create them.

It is the first time that i have actively used Adobe Connect and it seems like a really good thing to look into using with our face to face students and external students. May be a way to combine the students doing a class face to face and allow for the external students to listen in and participate.

Anyway hay to go now because we are starting again :-)

The latest

The Earthworks team met again yesterday evening.




The section has just purchased 4 portable DVD players to use with students, particularly at remote locations. Team member Greg had put the machinery pre-start checks movies onto DVD with professional looking titles and a great menu. Everyone was really excited to see their work on the DVD players the students will use.
The players also worked through a TV and data projector and can be used as mp3 players. Learners will be able to view the pre-start check movie for the machine then go out and walk around the machine while listening to the audio about the prestart check and do it.

Viewing their work to date this way members became more aware of some of the problems needing attention or improvements which could be made. These included improving the script to avoid repetiton (like "Check the ..." on many slides), getting a better balance between music and voice-over volume, better use of words on the screen and using slide animation to focus attention and place in context - but not too much. John gave some good advice here from his experience in media production. It's on a podcast at http://www.pinrpod.podomatic.com/ . He's spending a lot of time on the script for his movie.

The team will do a presentation on their project to the PINR Full Faculty Forum on 27 September at Dubbo. We'll meet again the evening before to finalise the presentation and, if time permits, do a basic intro to creating interactive Power Point presentations. Doing a presentation for others is a great way for the team members to confirm and review their own learning from the project.

I'll be presenting on the project to the Western Region ICT Conference in Dubbo the following week. It's a great opportunity as ICT have not shown a lot of interest in the past in how the ICT systems they support are used for learner outcomes.

I'm have a hard time trying to post to podomatic and blogger today - our systems keeps blocking - grrrr - very frustrating.

Evolution of Ideas

It has been quite interesting to watch the teams ideas and views of technology change since we started this project.

At the beginning of the project there were some comments along the lines of 'This isn't really going to be useful but we are willing to try something new'. Then 'Well actually yes I have some ideas of how i can use technology in earthworks'. Now once we have all had a go at Photo Story 3 and have seen how easy it is to use there is serious discussion and decisions being made about using this software to create learning resources for students.

These resources will lessen the amount of time that the teacher has to spend with new students catching them up on work the other students have already completed, but still giving the new student all the important information needed to complete pre-start checks of the machinery they are going to operate.

Oh and the other important thing is that we all are having a good time learning how to use different sorts of technology :-)

Just look at our movies!

At the team meeting last week members showed the Photo Stories they had created. They're not all finished yet but all were justly pleased with themselves. You can see these at our EdNA group site and vodcast on podomatic.

The consensus was that it would be very worthwhile to have a complete set of machinery pre-start stories: dozer, excavator, loader, crane, backhoe, skidsteer and forklift. These would ease the difficulties presented by the choice of units and rolling enrolment model. This allows every learner an individual program but is difficult for the teacher to manage. Prior to and during our next team meeting on 6 September each member will complete their particular pre-start story:

• Lindsay - loader


• Peter - dozer


• Cath - forklift


• John - excavator


• Wayne - backhoe


• Greg - skidsteer

There was much discussion of how learners would access these stories. MP4 players and PDAs were considered but cost and small size could make them easily lost. The section is now looking at buying a set of portable DVD players. The goal is to be ready to use these learning resources with a group of learners at Tibooburra in October.

Greg showed the interactive learning resources he had produced using the ARED tool. These were about whistle signals and rules for crane and dogging. Team members were impressed with what could be done but some thought the computer skills required were more than they are ready for and are going to continue with Photo Story. Three members are interested in giving ARED a go and took the user guides with them.

Neil, working on a story on assessing a site, suffered a digital disaster when the folder containing his carefully collected images was deleted. At least he knows now where to take the images. We're looking forward to seeing his story next time.

Hear all about it - plans and ideas

At our recent session team members explained what resources they'd like to create for their learners using Photo Story 3. Hear what they thought on our EdNA Group site.
Later in they evening they each spoke about how they thought moblogging could be used for teaching and assessment in Conservation Earthworks. Listen to their ideas on the Learnscope NSW blog site.

They really got into it!

Our team session on 26 July was a great success. Aftre team members each spoke about the sort of learning resource they would like to create, Lindy and Mel, from the 06 Racing into eLearning team, demonstrated on the SmartBoard how to use Photo Story 3.

Then the team members got stuck into having a go at it themselves and were amazed at how easy it was and what good products they'd created in only an hour or so.

After the dinner break Alex Hayes showed the team moblogging and recording for podcasting. The team members came up with some great ideas about how they could use moblogging:

Examples include:

• learner visual diaries


• recognition candidates evidence


• teacher in field conferring with colleagues on assessment evidence

People were also impressed with the ease of recording and podcasting.

Many thanks to Alex for pushing the boundaries a bit - a risk that's paid off.

Catherine has a plan

Catherine came to our discussion with a very clear plan. She'll be looking creating learning resources for the unit Implement revegetation works which is in courses across three of our training packages - Conservation & Land Management, Horticulture and Rural Production. She's already mapped out what performance criteria each of 4 or so Photo Stories would address. The movies generated will later be put into a single interactive learning resource for the unit using ARED. She also has in mind working on a learning resource for GPS use.

Wayne's on the wiki

Wayne is now on the learnscope wiki with a brief intro to himself and what he hopes to get out of Learnscope. Good on you Wayne - first team member after Cath to do it.

Neil and Peter's plans

Neil and Peter are thinking about creating a learning resource for the unit Assess a site. They'll be able to show learners a range of site types and features without having to actually visit all of them with the learners. This could be useful for Earthworks as well as other Conservation and Land Management, Horticulture and Agriculture learners. Neil has a great digital photo library.

Easing assessment fears

Greg's been thinking it over since we met last week and has decided to start with creating an intro to the course and an overview of the assessment tasks, using Photo Story initially. He's chosen this because many of his learners have fears about being assessed and the written material they're given about assessment doesn't really help.
Extra news: Greg has done plenty of video and sound editing at home and has a studio microphone.

Craning to learn

Team member Wayne teaches crane and dogging (among other things). His learners often struggle with reading and interpreting the critical load chart/table for cranes. Having looked at it with him this morning I can see why and no one would want a crane driver to get this wrong! So Wayne's Learnscope goal is to create resource/s with images and sound to assist learners with this tricky task. He can already use a digital camera and has some image editing software. So before our meeting on 26 July he'll be planning and creating the images he needs to start.

John's a goldmine!

Team member John has just been in to register on the Learnscope wiki and discuss what he wants to do in the Earthworks Learnscope project. He's going to start with a Photo Story about the machinery pre-start checks. He'll be teaching at Brewarrina next week and will get the students to help him capture the images he needs.
Best news: John worked in production with the ABC for some years and has great skills and understanding of the media production process to bring to the team. WOW!

Greg's Going Great

Greg's already got good skills with digital still and video. He's keen to try the ARED tools. ARED needs video in SWF format so the converter at Xilisoft might be useful.

Wayne's Worldwide Web

As Wayne is on dial-up only we're hoping that Audacity and Photo Story 3 will be downloadable.

Lindsay's first digital image

Intended to be a pic of the John Deere cap next to the key board - but it's a start!

Are buttons getting too small?

Here is team member Lindsay holding the new digital camera.

First post to Earthworks blog

This site will follow the progress of the Earthworks Learnscope team.