Converge Conference 2012

Wow what a great conference! I learnt so much even though I had work committments that interfered with my attendance. Oh well...... However, I will detail what I did manage to pick up.

My First session 

"An Introduction to Responsive design" was presented by David Drinkall from V2 Training.

Check out the presentation at: V2 Converge presentation by David Drinkall

He has a lot of Quick Tips for E-learning at his blog: V2training Quick-Tips

In his presentation he spent some time discussing how you save your e-learning web content to a format that would be supported by all hand-held devices. To achieve this, he suggests Twitter Bootstrap as a free application. You can also obtain web templates from Twitter Bootstrap.

For a customised web theme at a really low price, have a look at Theme Forest and in particular the Synergy portfolio theme. 

Other information I obtained from Tweets and attendees:

Big Blue Button online conference and meeting software is gaining more fans. Have a look at what is on offer by clicking the link above.

PCP Remote: The essential tool for everyone using Apple Podcast Producer for recording of podcasts. Podcast Producer Remote (PCP Remote) can control several features of an Apple Podcast Producer Server

A great blog for animations, videos, images, graphics and fun: http://www.scoop.it/t/stuff-just-for-fun

A great website for infographics on e-learning, free music downloads for e-learning and social learning tools: http://elearningindustry.com/subjects/general/item/374-10-awesome-infographics-about-elearning

An e-learning template library: Only $299 per year for a subscription! http://elearningtemplates.com/elearning-template-library/

A great e-learning blog by Jenny Wood: Lots of tips, tools and hints: http://paper.li/jenny_wood/1314224354#

12 Tips and Tricks to spice up your bland e-learning courses: http://info.shiftelearning.com/blog/bid/246648/12-Tips-and-Tricks-to-Spice-Up-Your-Bland-eLearning-Courses

Twitter for Teachers - To Tweet or not to Tweet. A good video introduction: (There is also additional information on this website, but I have also inserted the YouTube video below: http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/twitter/twitter-for-teachers-video/

Top 6 Apps for flipping your classroom: http://www.avatargeneration.com/2012/10/top-6-apps-for-flipping-your-classroom/

An excellent website for all things e-learning. Including: The Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers and a social media guide.

Study an e-portfolio course on a MOOC at: sites.google.com/site/epcoplearnspace/

This is a session that I missed when I was presenting for ACPET with my beginner stream fellow participants:

Customising your course to suit overseas learners: 

A fun session I attended with Mick Gwyther and Leo included interactive iPhone app "Buzz".

Check it out at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gameshow-buzz-button/id368599059?mt=8

The final session I attended:

This session was presented by Julian Ridden aka "Moodle Man".

His presentation was excellent as it highlighted how you can make a Moodle course more engaging, entertaining and interactive for participants. Simple ideas like inserting small icons that were linked to an activity. The learner had to find each of these activities within the course, and once complete would earn a new "level" or "badge".

This is a great way to get learners involved and he noted that from doing this with his students that he obtained a 98% completion rate in that course. So simple but so effective!

In his presentation he also noted a large Australian medical organisation was able to improve student engagement from 15 to 75% just by changing the look of the course. I.e. Using icons to represent a unit or subject in a grid format, as opposed to the 'scroll of death'. Once each icon is clicked upon, this brings you into a new page with the course content. A great idea!

Julian may be found at: http://pukunui.com or by phoning 1300 466 635.

I spoke to Julian after his presentation to get more ideas on updating Moodle to a better 'look and feel'. These were some of his suggestions:

Use his theme "Rocket" for a modern looking Moodle.
Download and install Julian's Grid format plugin for Moodle to avoid the 'scroll of death'.
For free icons go to: iConspedia, Icon Factory & Icon Archive

Mick Gwyther's Articulate and other notes on creating content

Consider creating video with iphone and editing. Shot the video on the phone then edit it using iMovie app http://www.apple.com/iphone/from-the-app-store/apps-by-apple/imovie.html
Remember to export it out as HD video before importing into Storyline and your presentation.

If you don’t have an iphone or smart phone consider buying an iPad to shoot your video, take your picures for your resource along with editing and testing how your Articulate resources look on the mobile interface. There is not much discounting on them in retail so if you want it quick, order it from the Apple Store. http://www.apple.com/au/ipad/ If you are going to be using it outside the office (eg clients) get the WiFi + 3G model

For editing video from other cameras (eg portible HD or still digital cameras with digital video capability) take a look at Premiere Elements. Cheap and easy to use. http://www.adobe.com/au/products/premiere-elements.html

If you have a mac laptop or computer use the built in (and excellent) iMovie programme http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/

For editing audio you record on your computer, look at the free programme Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Consider Articulate Storyline for the self-paced components.

Download a trial from http://www.articulate.com/products/storyline-overview.php (click on Free Trials)

All Storyline tutorials are at http://community.articulate.com/tutorials/products/articulate-storyline.aspx

The critical tutorials around interactivity include:

Getting started with Storyline http://community.articulate.com/tutorials/products/getting-started-with-articulate-storyline.aspx (this is the video I showed you)

Inserting animations and interactivity http://community.articulate.com/tutorials/products/inserting-and-customizing-interactivity.aspx

States, Layers and Triggers - http://community.articulate.com/tutorials/products/working-with-states-triggers-and-layers.aspx

Enjoy!

Mick Gwyther's comments on using webinars in VET

Potential use of webinars in VET
Rather than see them as lecture tools, trainers can create rich interactions between learners that make use of their experience in the workplace by posing problems, sharing case studies, working through a workplace scenario, polling, student presentations and assesment and peer review. These are great ways for keeping learners engaged if you are relying less and less on face to face.

Virtual Classrooms
·       Software applications for remote live teacher instruction and feedback online with learners that enables real-time voice interaction, whiteboard sharing, and breakout sessions to enhance a student's learning experience. This provides students an opportunity to interact with the trainer as well as classmates by oral and written communication. While Blackboard Collaborate is the de facto tool of choice for most VET providers, a range of other products are available including Adobe Connect and Go-To-Meeting. An open source product gaining attention in VET Big Blue Button is currently the focus of a New Technology trial. Most virtual classroom products include:

o    live audio and text communication between trainers and learners. Participants use headsets to communicate through audio

o    graphic material like PowerPoint slides which is broadcast to all participants.

o    Capacity to run polls to gain input or feedback from them

o   Capacity for the presenter share an application (e.g. Word or Excel) running on their desktop so that the group can work together collaboratively on a document or other resource. The presenter can often hand over application sharing to another member of the group

o    a shared whiteboard space for text and drawing

o    can browse the Web and conduct web tours

o    Ability to share files with the participants.

o    Capacity for all users to display live video from a web cam

o    Potential to bring in an online guest presenter from anywhere in the world

o    A “break out” rooms that enable small group work online

o    Tools to archive or record to enable later reviewing of a trainer led session.

o    can be integrated into a learning management to automate sessions set ups, links and recording play back access by learners  (for example Blackboard, Moodle).

Rapid eLearning Software
Typical learning activities that can be created with rapid elearning software include templates to create Problem Based Learning, Case Studies, Simulations, Decision making Trees Quizzing, Multimedia (Video, Audio, Flash etc) presentations

Current popular rapid elearning software used by RTOs include:

- iSpring - Based on PowerPoint, iSpring e-Learning authoring tool enhances PowerPoint features with advanced e-Learning authoring capabilities like creating quizzes and video narrations. With iSpring eLearnng authoring software, you can rapidly create, reuse, distribute and track e-Learning and online training courses. There is also a free version for rapid conversion of existing PowerPoint’s in a flash presentation embedded into a webpage for easy upload to an LMS.

- Articulate Studio 09 – Supports non-technical users to create professional, interactive e-learning courses easily and quickly. Users can insert selected quiz slides into a course, interactive content, and set options for how participants navigate based on their assessment results. With the supplied video encoder users can import any video and convert it to Flash.

- Captivate - eLearning authoring software for rapidly creating and maintaining interactive eLearning content. Users can import existing Microsoft PowerPoint content and make it more engaging with rich media, application simulations, branching scenarios, and quizzes. In addition, users can create software simulations to demonstrate and assess software skills.

- Udutu - online learning software to produce media rich, engaging online courseware at minimal cost and without having to rely on programmers or multimedia experts. Users can build branching simulations and case-studies, interactive quizzes, and complex assessments Flexible templates allow users to present material to learners, engaging them with interactions, and immersing them in branching scenarios. All major types of graphic, sound, and video formats optimize automatically for web delivery. The authoring tool also extracts a .zip file that integrates seamlessly with any SCORM compliant LMS. Courses can be delivered from Facebook pages.

Industry Knowledge
In face to face courses, learners in most courses (and especially apprenticeships and traineeships) interact formally and informally around their experiences in applying VET course knowledge and skills to their workplace context. In addition, we know that learners learn through a variety of informal methods:

o    when they teach someone else/use immediately.

o    when they practice what they learned.

o    when engaged in a group discussion.

o    when they see a demonstration.

o    from audio-visual presentation

o    from reading.

o    from lecture.

Much of this opportunity (to make this knowledge explicit) is lost when an elearning approach is applied to a VET course. RTO’s need to be aware of complimenting E Learning approaches to ensure learners have access to industry knowledge sharing and building. Industry knowledge can be shared with learners through:

o    Discussions about workplace experiences in the context of problems or case studies

o    Guest Presenters from Industry, including ex students

o    Audio/Video Recordings with Industry leaders, including ex students

o    Group projects and presentations to share workplace knowledge

o    Video Demonstrations of workplace processes

Problem Solving/Group engagement with scenarios

Blogs (as an alternative to using a LMS like Moodle)
Wordpress, which can be either installed as an application on an organisation’s server to generate any number of Blogs for training, marketing and other purposes or hosted “in the cloud”, i.e. on the WordPress server. Blogs can also be created for education as the edublog site which also offers great ideas for using blogs in educaton. Free student and trainer blogs can also be created using Blogger, Google’s free blog tool.

Google apps and Google Education Apps
With Google, when learners set up an email account (also called Gmail) they also get attached to their profile a calender, online Office suite. You can share calenders and documents with learners - useful for keeping timelines and retrieving assessments. This is especially good for low language learners giving them a gateway to personal productivity. Mobile apps allow users to access all services from their phones. These services are free and are set up by the student.

Google Education (http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/edu/) takes this concept a step further by enabling the RTO to set up Google accounts for their learners.

RTO management magazine TV

This is an excellent example of the types of video and alert services that could be utilised in e-learning.

RTO management magazine have done a great job of creating an add on service to their magazine, RTOTV. The videos are available online to magazine subscribers as an additional resource and are published weekly. The videos are in the same format as daily TV news and are very professional. If you have a chance, check it out... Very innovative and clever.

NB: You will need to sign up to a magazine subcription to gain access, or you may also request a preview by contacting them and asking for a RTOTV video demo.

Online assessment. Overcome your fears with this myth busting guide.

Also another excellent document that I could not attach as a PDF to this blog. This document was created and published by RTO management magazine. You may subscribe to their magazine here: http://rtomanagement.com.au/#

 You may access this document here: http://velocityworx.com/attachments/article/259/Online%20assessment%20-%20RTO%20Management%20article.pdf

E-assessment guidelines for the VET sector

I was unable to attach the PDF file to this post. However, here is the link to obtain this document:
http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/shared/docs/e_assessment_guidelines_for_the_vet_sector.pdf
 
This is an excellent resource and document to read and review prior to the development of any e-learning content. This document covers many different outcomes and issues that need to be taken into consideration when developing your content. It also ensures compliance issues are considered when planning e-learning content and assessment. A long read but well worth it....