VUSSC/Trinidad and Tobago Boot Camp/Day 5 summary

Report on Day 5

Day: 5 Facilitator: Ravhee Bholah

Morning Session

Facilitator welcomed participants on the 5th day of the Boot Camp.

He started with the day’s proceedings by briefly reminding boot campers of the principles underpinning  the review exercise and requested the groups to complete the review of Unit 1 for presentation in plenary by the end of the day.

Mr. Paul West was invited to make his presentation. In his characteristically succinct manner, he spoke of the cutting-edge technology and its application to wikieducator. He gave important hints on the sustainable use of the COL flash drive. The software programs contained in the flash drive were extremely useful on account of the versatile application they can be put to not only for this particular workshop but also in the workshop situation back at home.

The particular programs that were referred to by the resource person related to Google’s Documents, Base Camp, Think Free, Second Life and Mozy.com. These programs are freely downloadable and can be used either for sharing web pages, simulating situations virtually, including self, in different contexts. Paul demonstrated the application of these software programs and there was general agreement that these could go a long way towards building capacity of participants for practical purposes as they added to the repertoire of skills and competencies required to be an efficient wikieducator user.

Cathie supported the presentation with another program called the Survey Monkey. This particular tool with an affordable monthly subscription is used for carrying out surveys, research and other studies requiring on-line data collection, sorting, item analysis and interpretation in a quick and reliable mode. This program is being used universally for research today.

The morning session continued with participants working in their groups on the day’s assignment.

Afternoon Session.

The afternoon session comprised the following: i.	Working with Images/Media ii. Instructional Design Template iii. Peer Review Presentation iv. Valediction

Philip made a presentation on the uploading of images. Developing this skill was very interesting and exciting as it paved the way to supporting the production of instructional materials with multi-media back-up. Participants had great fun working with their dogs and each one tried doggedly to enrich the learning experiences by coming up with more initiatives like uploading from their personal image files. The challenge, however, was the posting of the file to particular destination. Some made daring leaps. At the end the attempt was worth the venture.

Ava made a presentation on the use of the Instructional Design Template (IDT) provided in the COL flash drive. She explained how materials from Wikieducator could be transferred to the IDT for greater and more widespread use. The transfer could be effected through the simple cut and paste method and the materials could then become printable and usable by institutions and organizations.

The Peer Review presentation was the next item on the Day 5 session. There was an amount of discussion here about the destination where the comments by the different groups should be posted. It was finally agreed that wikieducator provided the kind of flexibility and the enabling editorial facility to make such a question irrelevant. This was followed by the presentations on a feedback of Unit One from the different groups. The observations made by the groups consisted not merely of negative but also positive points with hints for improvement. The review plan was carried out on the following lines Existing Group  :        1   2   3   4   5 To review Group:       2   3   4   5   1

Day 5 ended on an emotional note as Mr. Paul West was leaving us after one week spent together with the Boot Campers. The participant from Swaziland addressed the valedictory note and she was all praise for the dedicated commitment to the cause of open-source authoring processes and sense of professionalism with which he carried out his work. In spite of the cultural diversity of the participants, Paul did take time to bond with the entire group and provide his unflinching support. The praise was equally extended to COL for facilitating the process and getting such a medley of participants with varied backgrounds to work in common for the creation of content in life skills.

Day 5 closed with instructions regarding the Hospitality Tour scheduled for Saturday. Participants wrapped up for the day contemplating retrospectively on the week’s toil and progress but looking forward to a fruitful week-end.