Recording of Online communities Linda's meeting

The meeting last Monday night on Elluminate was very interesting, thank you Linda and everyone who joined the meeting. Here is the link to: Online communities Linda's meeting

It was a brief account and discussion about a "distance learning opportunity that was developed for Canadian and New Zealand Occupational Therapy students. The Blackboard site was called the Kiwi-Canuck connection." Linda writes in some depth on her blog about her experience in facilitating this community earlier this year.

We also had some very lively discussion around creative ways to stimulate online discussions and how to assist professionals to write reflectively. Have a listen to the recording and find out about some of the ideas we came up with.
Bron

Linda talks Canadian NZ tonight

Tonight Linda is going to share her online discussion experiences with us at 730 pm tonight 19 November. She facilitated an online discussion forum earlier this year with Canadian and New Zealand participants. If you go to Elluminate all will be revealed.
http://elluminate.tekotago.ac.nz:80/join_meeting.html?meetingId=1195442241302

Bron

Last week's Facebook, this weeks Second Life

I finally found some time to record and upload Ellen and Sarah Stewarts talk on Facebook and Bebo. So sorry for the delay. It was a good over view of the social networking platforms that sparked yet another lengthy discussion. Thanks Ellen for showing us your FB and telling us what we needed to hear. FB is too cool for school! :)

Here are the recordings of last week's talk.

1. Audio files on Archive.org
2. Elluminate recording.

This week we were to hear from Aaron Griffiths about Second Life. Unfortunately Aaron has gone missing and still no word. It is very unlike Aaron not to show to such things, or to be offline for so long so we're a little worried. I hope you're OK Aaron. It was a shame to miss Aaron's talk, I have heard him present with Clare Atkins at eFest this year and it was a quality presentation with a lot of in depth topics to consider. Hopefully we will get a chance to hear Aaron in the near future.

Thankfully Clare Atkins was there to fill Aaron's shoes, but getting her audio through on Elluminate was not possible. So we all met up for real in Second Life. We toured Koru, which is currently hosting SL spaces for NMIT, Open Polytech, Weltec and others I think. Clare showed us around the various projects and I couldn't help ask how much it might cost Otago to have a presence on Koru. Clare hazard a guess at around $NZ400 per year - which is well worth it I think. To have a presence in this platform that is attracting so much interest. To have a place where Otago people can meet and call "home". To have a place to put news and information on the various projects we are working on. I think it would be a good thing to do. I'd like Otago's space to have at least one mountain with a small club ski field if possible :)

As you prepare to facilitate, try not to teach

The technologies used in this course were never meant to be central I believe, but the dynamics in the questions around facilitation and online communities were.

I'm still ranting and raving to anyone who will listen about the differences I see between facilitation and teaching, and that post I wrote to my blog has attracted quite a few comments (thanks). The question is far from sorted in my head, and I get the feeling that it is not so sorted in the heads of those around me too. So it seems to me that we need to explore this for some time, and perhaps the questions will remain beyond the bounds of this course.

For anyone who may have tuned out of the discussion that sparked on my blog, it might be worth revisiting it. I'm hoping we can keep this issue in our minds as we all prepare to facilitate some form of online communication as part of the assessments in this course.

Some questions:
Why is this course called facilitate online learning communities and not teach online learning communities? Is teaching and facilitation really interchangeable? Is facilitation simply one of many techniques that a teacher employs in their work? Or is teaching just one of many 3rd party services that a facilitator might call on in their work? Is it possible to be both a teacher and a facilitator within the same group of people? What are the differences in the roles and what are the social dynamics in play when they function?

In some ways we debated a related issue very early on in this forum. Remember the ice breaker debate? I think I was wrong to dismiss the value of ice breaker activities. I think the thing I really should have been challenging was the often prescribed and teacherly way in which these types of activities are done. Ever experienced the trite and trivial discussion groups at conferences that people begrudgingly take part in? Or15 minute team building activities? These sorts of things are in my mind poor examples of attempts to build learning communities in short spaces of time. But attempts to create a sense of social bond that we might recognise as a community are important - especially in the online context. I suspect that Aaron Griffiths will be able to talk directly to this when we discuss some of his thinking about Second Life.

So, this post is just a little prompt. One of many that try to shake us from our comfort zones a little and into a zone of questions. Try to put the technologies aside for a spell, step outside them and look at them for what they challenging us with other than skills acquisition. To my mind the disruptive aspects of these technologies (in our profession at least) speak directly towards the facilitate or teach question and other issues to do with social power dynamics.

Assessments

All the detail about the assessments has now been put on the wiki page for Facilitating Online and Online Communities.

Wiki assessment - barn building
Several people have made a great start to their wiki page. I thought you might need a bit of help with it in preparation for the face-to-face session on wednesday 31 october 1 - 3 pm. If you can only come for part of the session that is fine. Venue to be announced. Auckland people - I am organising something with oriel and Lisa.

Here are some questions which might help you formulate your ideas for your wiki page.

If you go to the wiki page (http://www.wikieducator.org/Facilitating_Online#Projects) you will see under projects what people have already started doing. If you need help with editing a wiki & wiki protocol please look at the tutorials and cheat sheet (in help pages) to help with this. use the following questions to help with what can go on your page.

• Who are you trying to help inform about being part of an online community? Is it students or other staff?
• what sort of information do they need?
• What information is specific to your discipline?
• How will you convey this information? For example, will it be part of some activities, will it be a list of guidelines or instructions, will it be audio visual?
• Do you need to create the information or link to material which is already available?

As part of wiki philosophy and communication within the class (online community), you also need to look at other people's pages and give feedback and suggestions. Remember to use the signature tool when doing this and to also use the discussion tab with signature and also to set your wiki page watch tab so it is on.

Facilitation Plans
The facilitation plans are past due so we will now make the date for submission 7 Nov so people have time to create them, discuss them and also see if you would like to use Second life as a venue for your facilitation event. You do need to hand in the facilitation plan before your event so the faciltiators can give you feedback on the design.

Timing of facilitation event
You will need to time your facilitation event for the weeks 12 & 19 Nov so you have time to prepare assessment 4 - reflection on the event on your blog. The following are excerpts from the learning guide on Blackboard.

Facilitation Plan
15 Oct	Planning to facilitate	How do I plan opportunities to participate? What is an engaging activity? Theory of online facilitation e.g. five stages (Salmon).	Discussions focussed around guest speakers and resources provided by this learning community. On Elluminate, group email and blogs.	Submit Assessment 3 Facilitation Plan

Facilitation
5 Nov	Facilitation		Facilitate and take part in groups Make notes as you reflect on this.	Assessment 4 Part 1 Facilitation
12 Nov
19 Nov

Bron

Our first venture into Second Life together, and a reminder about Facebook

Sarah Stewart initiated an impromptu meeting in Second Life this arvo - just for those who wanted to get their head around it a bit before we look at it more seriously the week after next.

Carolyn (pictured), Bronwyn, Sarah, Yvonne and I met up and just happened to bump into Aaron Griffiths from Nelson Marlborough Institute. Aaron's SL name is Isa Goodman (as in is-a- good-man :) and he briefly told us a bit about the NMIT project and SL generally, as well as helping the newbies get used to moving around and the like. Isa's a legend at helping people get used to SL, as well as a programmer and builder of environments in SL. He built NMIT and other places.

Pretty soon conversation moved to the "what can we do educationally in SL?", so with the little time we had left, and for those that weren't having technical issues (sorry Carolyn), we visited Virtual Hallucinations - a project from UCDavis designed to simulate everyday life for a schizophrenic. I was mighty impressed by it the first time I went through, but as Sarah pointed out - she was having a hard enough time just moving about in there before being able to appreciate the simulation, so as with all these things we need to have a good grasp of the tech before we can leverage the learning through them.

Isa started talking to us about the extensive community base in SL - much of it educational. (Well, all of it educational I 'spose - depending on your definition..). Isa pointed us to the Kiwi Educators group - who meet up in SL every Sunday to tour new venues or "sims" (simulations) as they're called. This Sunday they are meeting up to tour the new IBM sim.

You can subscribe to Aaron's blog to get updates on New Zealand projects in Second Life and the activities of the Kiwi Educator's group. I'd highly recommend connecting with Aaron and his work if you are at all interested in the potential and early adoption of simulations, virtual meeting spaces, machinima, 3D virtual worlds or any of the seemingly infinite applications for this platform.

More photos of our first meeting can be viewed here. Remember that we will be looking at Second Life as a platform for online learning communities starting week after next.

This coming Monday at 7pm NZST (that's Monday 6am UTC for our international followers), we will be hearing from Ellen Stewart, a young New Zealander who uses the social networking platform Facebook to stay in touch with international friends. Ellen will help us consider the question of whether Facebook has a sense of community within it, if it is or could be used for learning, and some suggestions on how we might consider facilitating learning through platforms like Facebook.

wikieducator development meeting / Barn raising

Our online meeting about our work on Wikieducator did not amount to a Barn Raising mainly because it was our first meeting between people who did not previously know each other and because the topic proposed for a concentrated collaborative effort is pretty broad and needing of explanation. An in depth discussion was had however, touching on a number of thought provoking topics. Links and notes for this meeting can be found at the Wikieducator Development Meetings page.

Here's the recording of the meeting in MP3 - 70 min, 12 meg.
Here's the recording of the Elluminate session.

Thanks to Sue Waters for providing us with an Elluminate meeting space at the last minute. The Otago Polytechnic's Elluminate meeting space is back online now so it will hopefully be smooth sailing from here on in.