Participant intros
Hello my name is Leigh and I'm an educational developer for Otago Polytechnic. I try to keep up with developments in the field of education, tending to focus on the use of the Internet. I sometimes facilitate this course for Otago Polytechnic. I keep a professional blog at http://learnonline.wordpress.com which gets postings on all manor of things to do with educational development. My email is: leighblackallATgmailDOTcom. More info about me can be found by clicking my name in the little grey box below:
Hi, My name is Megan and I lecture in Nutrition at the Institute of Sport and Adventure and in the School of Midwifery. As a lot of my coursei n Midwifery is taught by online methods I have decided that this course will be of great help to me. I am looking forward to learning more about methods to enhance e-learning and flexible learning. I have now created my own blog - which was easier than I thought it would be. The address is http://megansmutterings.blogspot.com/
Hi
Raewyn Lesa here from the nursing school. This is all pretty new to me. I have 4 children and the oldest is 16 so between them all and there Dad I'm always the last to get on the computer. I've sneaked on before they get home from school. I'm planning to try and set up my blog shortly (if I don't get kicked off)Hubby and oldest son are off to England shortly so I'll have to make the most of computer time. I'm looking forward to expanding my knowledge over the next few months...I have really noticed lately how lectures don't always get the message across clearly, no matter how good you try and make it!I teach and coordinate in 2nd year courses and spend a reasonablr amount of time in the hospital setting doing clinical.
Hey that wasn't too hard its Raewyn again, haven't been chucked off computer yet. Anyway my blogg address is http://raewynbusymumof4.blogspot.com/
Hi, Steve Ellwood here I'm a Cookery Lecturer on the level 4 programe up @ Tennyson Street. We have various platforms we are delivering our E-learning from, Blackboard being the main site for all of our theory and communication with our enrolled students, our blog http://otagocookeryl4.blogspot.com/ and YouTube, as our video platform http://www.youtube.com/ We are also starting to gather information from students with I-pods which we have loaded with their assessment instructional videos and pictures. This is to see if in the future we could offer such a service for distance learners with the intent of having them come in every few weeks to be assessed in the kitchens. We still can't get away from tasting the food, nor should we try. I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's idea's on flexible learning have have no dought it will help us in improving the service we provide. Cheers, Steve.
Back again, I,ve just set up another "BLOG" so I can keep track of this course. http://flexiblefrying.blogspot.com/ Flexible Frying As i've got another 20 credits in my GCTLT this year I think I'll be using a few BLOGS to keep track of everything.
Good work Steve getting your intro up and your blog up and running. My mouth is watering with the lovely pics of food. Not fair! The cookery blog is just great and I can see I will be spending many a happy hour watching food. I am interested in how you are gathering information from students and would love to hear more. Do they have to provide an ipod or is this provided? Bronwyn
Thanks Bronwyn, We are gathering info (evidence if you like) in a video diary from our students, hopefully we could possibly use this in the future to get some funding to supply i-pods to our students, distance or not, as a means of demonstration. We aren't sure how to go about this properly yet, maybe you could suggest the right track to go down. They do provide their own i-pods or mp3/4s at the moment.
the video diary sounds very creative Steve . Is it like big-brother where they sit down at regular intervals and talk to the camera in a room? Maybe you could also record a focus group discussion about the experience at the end - either video or audio - using an independent interviewer. Someone not directly involved in the course who is good at extracting information and facilitating discussion. If you write this up it could form the basis for an external funding application 0 see AKO Aotearoa info below.
Otago Polytechnic has the new innovation fund ($5000) - the flexible learning development plan will help with this.
AKO Aotearoa is offering up to $10000 funding for innovative teaching and learning - and this would go a long way towards setting something up. You could run a research evaluation with another pilot group - supply ipods etc and use the funds for an external interviewer and researcher time. See: Wk 13: June 2-8: National and International support for flexible learning development.
Bronwyn
Hi, thank you very much for the info, we will be looking into that application straight away as we have just put together a distance package for Level 4, year One Part Time for a student. I've recorded what we have done on my blog and will be communicating with the student on a regular basis to see how he feels about the package.
Hi Steve Um yes YUM. I am interested in the sound of your information gathering project re improving on your service! Are publishing the info I'll visit your pages and ....watch that spot Susan
