Using Elluminate for student support

We had a really great informal session on Elluminate last night. My new laptop was the business, the audio worked a treat and nothing was going slowly. As I said on Twitter, the session actually changed my perception of Elluminate. It's a really valuable tool for getting together with fellow students and sharing experiences, concerns, laughs and giggles informally. I also loved us discussing possible dimensions of 'ownership' and drawing diagrams on the whiteboard at the same time - that's so powerful.

Keeping up in H800

I mentioned in my 'Visual representations' post that I am a visual learner and often think in diagrams. We have just read a paper at the end of Week 24 that mentions the 'collaboration, creativity and enjoyment' involved in online learning. Here's a diagram I made just to relax and get creative, about the time pressure issues I felt last week, and that I believe we have all been feeling to some extent. It's about keeping up as the H800 train rumbles on.

Each week we have to read, watch, or listen to materials or carry out other activity instructions. The prescribed time for the activities is 16-20 hours per week. Many of us find it difficult to keep pace with the activities, let alone share with the rest of the group, consolidate and apply to our own individual contexts. Every so often there is a double week, with two weeks of activities packaged together, and that can afford us some more spacious working and reflection time, as the diagram illustrates.

I particularly have been finding insufficient time to pause, review and consolidate, as I have commented here before. My earlier attempts at summaries were very rewarding and I would like to be able to complete those. The weekly cycle depicted here is how I organise my learning, but it is being compromised by what is, in my view, too many activities, especially at the end of the course when most people need a breather before ploughing into the final TMA. The learner's affective (emotional) response is another important aspect of learning ownership that we have been discussing, and I am sifting out the various dimensions of ownership here in my blog, before writing about it for the TMA.

Using Elluminate for learning

Saturday was the last scheduled Elluminate (audio-conferencing) session and more challenges. My audio disappeared and Elluminate always seems to work slowly for me and sometimes freezes up. Is this due to low bandwidth - Elluminate is supposed to be tolerant of such conditions? We sometimes record 1/10 of our promised access speeds on speed tests.

Later that afternoon however the audio disappeared completely from all applications on my laptop. Everything was set up fine and we couldn't figure out what was wrong. I made a decision, raided a hoard of nuts as it were, and invested in a brand new laptop. I'm sitting writing on it now and it's really great so far. We'll preserve the old one as the family games machine....

Overall technical problems and slow access speeds have been quite a serious issue for me on H800. Tuesday is our next informal chat on Elluminate so I'm keen to see how things behave then.

Meanwhile fellow tutor group member Tracey comments that 'sometimes I'm not sure what the objective of the session is or what outcome if any has been achieved by the end of it'. I personally question the practice of pasting extracts or summaries into text boxes on the whiteboard - my own whiteboard jumps around remorsely when this is being done, so much so that it's very difficult to look at. The whole session for me then becomes dominated by what the technology is doing rather than what I'm supposed to be learning. The best Elluminate session that I attended was when Julie made a record of what we were saying in a separate word doc and posted it in the forum afterwards. We didn't have to worry about what the whiteboard was getting up to and just spoke freely.

I will be researching use of Elluminate for low bandwidth conditions for my ECA, and also how to use it for the most productive and enjoyable learning experiences. It's a great tool with loads of potential.

On teamwork

Week 24 was a real roller coaster ride. We are in the second last week of activities, and I had been really hoping to implement my new skimming strategy, skirt over the last three weeks material and quickly identify the material necessary for TMA04 and the end of course assessment (ECA). I came rather unstuck as the material in both Weeks 23 and 24 has been very challenging; there is no let up in the pace or pressure of the course. I am not a natural skimmer (more a natural plodder actually; well at least careful and methodical).

I'm travelling to the UK in 10 days time for a family wedding. My husband is giving away his god-daughter and I'm doing the bible reading, so it's pretty important for us. However TMA04 has to be finished early to fit this in. Couple this with school holidays and a laptop developing strange glitches in line with my rising level of desperation - and boom!!! Panic set in when I read the forums on Friday and realised there is still so much I should have understood.

However two fellow students came to my aid - Julie and Alan, thanks so much for identifying with me and offering some words of support. It meant everything. John stepped in with some helpful advice to get to grips with the difficult paper by Etienne Wenger about Communities of Practice, and together we showed what a great learning community we have for ourselves. Each person brings their own capabilities, viewpoint, insights, and sometimes listening ears. Together we attempt to construct meaning and move forward in our learning.

I'm still feeling really pressurised but so thrilled to be part of our group - we've come on a long journey and have built some strong connections together.

Visual representations

I like this Tag Cloud of terms associated with Education 2.0 from Week 23. Still have to do a little more research to find out what all of them mean. I enjoy visual representations and find them to be a vital part of my learning. I learn best when I am looking at something stimulating and often think in diagrams or pictures. Technology affords us the opportunity to communicate learning in a variety of media - one way that a unique learning environment can be created. We musn't forget this power of visual representation when we are busy trying to replicate paper based teaching techniques!

PS I found out from Wikipedia that a 'haptic device' is one which interfaces with the user via the sense of touch, such as a joystick or steering wheel.

ICTs in Education in Africa: infoDev website

At the end of Weeks 21/22, we were asked to look for documents that address the future of technologies or set out strategy and policy with respect to technology, perhaps for a given context. My immediate thought for the African context was to look at infoDev.org, which is a World Bank co-ordinated website concerning the broad topic of ICTs for development, and dealing with education as one of its topic areas. There is more material in here and things to explore than you could wish for; for example if you follow the link from the Education page, there are details of an ICT in Education Toolkit. In the 'Reference Handbook' of the Toolkit, there is an interesting animated powerpoint presentation dealing with ICTs in Education and development. A list of requirements is included for moving 'from potential to effectiveness', including the crucial need for training and support of personnel which John also highlighted in his recent blog post on this subject. As a trainer and consultant, I can certainly vouch for this requirement, and am interested in whether this can be effectively achieved to disparate and distanced audiences by utilising the technology itself.

More on ownership & learning and teaching approach

I found food for thought in a further two slides in the infoDev ICT in Education presentation that I referred to in the post above. As I continue to reflect on issues of ownership of learning for TMA04, it struck me that another facet of ownership is to what extent the learner's role is passive or active, and the teacher's role provider or facilitator. Almost at the end of the course, I am 'analysing, evaluating and constructing' as we move towards TMA04 and the ECA project. I'm not too interested in passively reading any more papers; the reflection and construction I'm doing here in my blog seems to be far more satisfying.