In a recent project meeting, we were tossing around ideas for workshops to conduct in 2007, and I've taken on a series of topics that could be loosely described as "new tools and strategies". Here's the current short list of workshops I'm planning to develop (and later conduct) through the TLC. Any glaring omissions?
- Creative Commons (copyright and IP in general, and how they affect sharing and reusing available work)
- Flickr. As a source of Creative Commons images for use, and as a potential tool for teaching and learning.
- Google Earth. Basic overview, as well as an intro to some of the cool add-ons (geology, politics, etc…)
- eXe – eLearning XML editor (for ePortfolios or personal websites)
- WordPress.com (setting up a blog for free in seconds)
- weblogs.ucalgary.ca (participating in the blog community on campus)
- Drupal for websites and communities
- Moodle (? this might be counterproductive, given Bb's role on our campus…)
- Social bookmarking (del.icio.us for distributed tagging of resources)
- Google Docs
I've left off a couple of items on purpose because I want to be doing things that aren't already running in full hype mode (podcasting and secondlife are fine on their own). I'm hoping to be showing stuff that might be flying under the radar (at least to most faculty on campus – many of the items on my list are completely taken for granted by tech types)
In a recent project meeting, we were tossing around ideas for workshops to conduct in 2007, and I've taken on a series of topics that could be loosely described as "new tools and strategies". Here's the current short list of workshops I'm planning to develop (and later conduct) through the TLC. Any glaring omissions?
- Creative Commons (copyright and IP in general, and how they affect sharing and reusing available work)
- Flickr. As a source of Creative Commons images for use, and as a potential tool for teaching and learning.
- Google Earth. Basic overview, as well as an intro to some of the cool add-ons (geology, politics, etc…)
- eXe – eLearning XML editor (for ePortfolios or personal websites)
- WordPress.com (setting up a blog for free in seconds)
- weblogs.ucalgary.ca (participating in the blog community on campus)
- Drupal for websites and communities
- Moodle (? this might be counterproductive, given Bb's role on our campus…)
- Social bookmarking (del.icio.us for distributed tagging of resources)
- Google Docs
I've left off a couple of items on purpose because I want to be doing things that aren't already running in full hype mode (podcasting and secondlife are fine on their own). I'm hoping to be showing stuff that might be flying under the radar (at least to most faculty on campus – many of the items on my list are completely taken for granted by tech types)
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Like most educational experiences there are many factors. I’ve had good and bad experiences being totally hands-on (which I still generally prefer) and with a lot of presentation and preparation. The obvious factors are time for the action and the tech abilities of the audience. The ideal experience (for my money) is a sequence of shared activities so you can alleviate both the technical problems of diving in and the passivity of being the sage on the stage.
I don’t think people in a training session ever get the bigger picture that drives most of us– that takes time and personal integration. That’s where it comes down, in part, to charisma and personality… it ‘s more like used car sales than anything else 🙂
I’ll break out my Herb Tarlek plaid jacket for the sessions…
I just delivered a workshop, Is software irrelevant? (desc) I plan to write up more about it later, but I felt it was one of the most successful ones I’ve done. It’s not that I’ve not tried to get folks interested in social bookmarking, aggregators etc. before, but it was always a hands-on, howto setting. This time, I spent an hour talking and demonstrating, and I stated up front the themes I wanted them to walk away with were access, sharing, and collaboration. The second hour, folks signed up with del.icio.us and google and were playing with del.icio.us, google docs & spreadsheets, and google reader. I think these participants are much more likely to actually use these tools compared to those that attended my single-tool, howto-oriented workshops I’ve offered before.
Todd, I think you may be onto something. All of the workshops I’ve done on this have been rather hands-on, and in retrospect I think that was paradoxically a Bad Idea™. Too much of the session is spent debugging logins and browsers and assessing familiarity with technology, and not enough is spent actually showing what this stuff can do. The end result is that the people who could get the most from the session wind up with a lame newbie intro, and the ones that need the most help are still flustered and frustrated by the technology. I’m going to try the session as more of a tour/demo, maybe following up with a series of screencasts to help people out as they try the stuff out on their own later…