Face to Face Workshop Report

L4C1 Solomon Islands
Date: Feb 18-20, 2008
Facilitator: David Leeming, Leeming Consulting, Honiara, Solomon Islands tel:76396 email: leeming@pipolfastaem.gov.sb

Participants

16 participants attended the workshop, including:
2 Curriculum Development Officers
1 Teacher Training Officer
The Director, Distance Learning Centre, Solomon Islands College of Higher Education (SICHE)
7 Distance Learning Centre (DLC) Supervisors
4 Champion Teachers from the schools hosting DLCs
The COL Focal Point for Solomon Islands

The gender balance was in favour of males by 14-2.

The full participant list is given in annex 1.

Preparations

The following pre-workshop organising was carried out by the facilitator collaborating with the COL focal point:

Finalising participants list and liaising with DLCP regarding their nominees
Finalising venue, liaising with Youth First Computer Centre, assisting them in configuring the room and establishing Internet access for 20 computers
Printing handouts, photocopying carried out by Ministry
Collecting equipment from DLCP and setting up multimedia projector etc

Handouts included:

The agenda
Cape Town Declaration
The 11 workshop lesson notes (about 70 pages)
A CD with electronic copies of the lesson notes, lesson slideshows and other useful items such as Open Office 2.3 was made available for participants to copy

This required a significant amount of photocopying – about 70 pages per participant. However the lesson notes were found to be very useful for the participants.

Workshop Agenda

The 3-day workshop schedule downloaded from the Toolkit was followed with some customisation by the facilitator to suit the local context.

In terms of timing, the first day started late and additional time was needed for completion of registration forms and learning contracts. In addition, some additional background discussion was found to be useful.

A quick summary is given below, with additions/deviations to the agenda in annex 2.

DAY 1

The workshop was opened by Bernard Rapasia, the COL Focal Point, a 10am. Introductions and giving out of handouts followed. The facilitator then followed with the following agenda:

Introduction to L4C - using the page http://www.wikieducator.org/Learning4Content
What you will learn and background - short PowerPoint slideshow prepared by the facilitator on ICT in Education and DFL in the region- objectives of workshop
Intro from COL http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Multimedia/Our_project- the “About Our Project” slideshow was shown to the participants
Cape Town Declaration- quick summary to the full declaration in the handouts, as background to OERs
Certification explained- http://wikieducator.org/WikiMaster- shows you have reached a certain proficiency and opens doors- http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Policy_for_skills_Certification

A session was added to complete the registration forms and Learning Contracts. To add dynamics and stimulate ideas, this was done in pairs with each participant “interviewing” their partner. A short explanation of the learning contract and the type of contributions that participants might make was given.

The lesson program then followed with the slideshows being used to introduce the lesson. The following Wiki and OER websites and related sites were pointed out to participants during the activity “What is a Wiki”:

http://www.wikihow.com
http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Wiki
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Solomon_Islands
http://www.picisoc.org and TIKIWIKI
http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/
http://www.oercommons.org (good example > maths > 345 triangle)
http://www.schoolnet.net.sb
http://www.wikieducator.org > Content
http://creativecommons.org/license/

The first day concluded with the lesson on basic text editing.

DAY 2

Day 2 continued with the lessons. All the lessons were covered except the “WikiEducator Advanced Features”. Advanced features including maths editing were explained to the more advanced participants on an individual basis. This was found to work well avoiding distracting the intermediate and beginner participants with too much information whilst they were progressing well.

It was also found useful to pair advanced participants with beginners on day 2.

An extended session was given on OERs, returning to the WikiEducator contents page. The participants were asked to explore them and then report back any content that they found particularly of interest.

This session also covered the subject of quality in regard to open and closed content authoring. This was done in groups with each group reporting back. Feedback is given in the section below. In this exercise, a summary of some issues raised in the online workshop was a useful aid in prompting discussion.

DAY 3

Day three followed the programme given in the annex, with each participant concentrating on their contributions. The contributions of each participant are linked to their user pages, and also are brought together on the Solomon Islands page of the WikiEducator. They are listed below in Wiki code:

[[Solomon_Islands]]

* [[ How To Make Tumariki Powder]]

* [[Worksheet for providing Basic Computer Training in rural communities]]

* [[Avuavu DLC]]

* [[HandOut for Clasroom Teaching in Mathematics]]

* [[Process of weaving a Polynesian custom Basket]]

* [[Teaching_Resources]]

* [[cultural medicine for toothache]]

* [[Usefulness of technology]]

* [[Tourism in Lake Tegano]]

* [[Sample Lesson for Year 7]]

* [[Different methods of cooking]]

* [[Day one English Teacher's Guide for Year 1]]

* [[Advices for professional teachers]]

* [[Pamua Mathematics Post]]

* [[Development Studies for Secondary School]]

* [[How to harvest Beche-de-mer]]The facilitator has also committed to completing a contribution:

* [[OLPC_Handover_Training_Lesson_Plan]]

The participants completed their content contributions to varying stages. However, it was most important to ensure that regardless of whether they had completed their content, they felt equipped to do so after the workshop.

Feedback from Participants

To be added later:

Summary of discussion on quality
Responses to evaluation

Observations of the Facilitator

The participants made a up a very interesting group consisting of technical facilitators for DFL (the DLC Supervisors), curriculum developers and DFL administrators including teacher training. This created some very useful dynamics. It may be useful to suggest a varied group for future workshops to help create these dynamics and to strengthen networking / collaboration in the country between organisations.
Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) was well represented with two CDOs including their best “techie”. They will be further represented in the second workshop. There is one immediate application, the trials for the One Laptop Per Child (Oceania) initiative, where CDC are collaborating with the DLCP, SPC, UQ and others (see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Solomon_Islands). CDC’s role would be to create examples of curriculum content in electronic/online format to be used in the OLPC trials. The collaborative feature would work well, as University of Queensland are also developing multimedia content for the trials.
Almost all of the participants saw the relevance to their own work. This was most noted with the curriculum developers. The school teachers saw less immediate relevance as they are not used to publishing their own content. It was useful to point out the content examples such as the biology lesson plans created by African primary school teachers in the WikiEducator, and also to help them see how they are already constantly creating content in their daily work , and how the WikiEducator can add value to that.
The DLC Supervisors, not unexpectedly, did very well and some of the more interested ones may be good candidates to become WikiTrainers.
The empowering impact of ICT was noted particularly with Hillmah, Director of DEC, which had been very run down in past years. She was very imaginative and creative – witness her contributions.
The notes and slideshow for the lesson on open licensing are a bit too much and a simplified introduction is needed.
In subsequent workshops, the following is recommended:
- Encourage mixed groups to create dynamics and strengthen networking in-country
- Pairing of participants
- A simpler introduction to open licenses
- A session where participants collaborate on the development of a single wiki page. The facilitator will suggest and try out some ideas and “set pieces” in the next workshop.
- Participants should be signed up to Gmail etc, and introduced to the “Alumni” email list and the main WikiEducator/WikiPacifika email list before the workshop, or at least during the first day. This is an important part of keeping those motivated participants supported after the workshop.

Costs and Contributions

To be completed:

Venue hire including Internet access upgrade to 256kbps (Youth First Computer Centre)
Lunches and refreshment
DLCP delegates travel and accommodation costs inc per deims
MEHRD per deims
Photocopying (estimated)