Learning2gether Episode 57

Sunday July 31

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Learning2gether at the Reform Symposium e-Conference

RSCON3, took place from Friday, July 29 to Sunday, July 31*, 2011 and the announcement said “we hope you will join us for what promises to be our biggest yet global online conference for everyone concerned with education. With more than 75 presentations and 12 keynote speakers it is sure to be an incredible event! Organised by educators for educators, it is FREE but will offer more valuable and inspiring PD than money can buy!”

http://reformsymposium.com/

These people have gone to great lengths to present the schedule in any time zone you wish.  Here’s the one for GMT: https://spreadsheets0.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmiH3CkSSpYxdGVZbXJvc3ZBcW43OUJUcVpRb0d2WEE#gid=29

Only one of John Davitt’s three favorite devices was digital:

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8:30 to 9:30 GMT – Opening Keynote
John Davitt
Free Learning
John will explore five simple  access points for innovation and creativity in learning
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.90375ABE5ED61F289CE945E7DF8009

• John Davitt was talking about Freelearning:
  http://digiteacher.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/john-davitts-freelearning-creativity-matrix/

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10:00 to 10:30 GMT – Simultaneous Presentations

1. Bethany Cagnol
   Classroom Management and Solutions for Tertiary and Adult Education – English teachers are often left on their own when confronted with poor behavior in the language classroom. In this interactive talk, we will discuss the challenges and possible solutions to several discipline issues. The speaker will also ask participants to express their frustrations and encourage others to offer solutions. (UTC+2)
   https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.5173D27D8704999F474FB74B8C925C
2. Dina Dobrou
   WEB 2(too).0(verwhelmed)?
   Networking, Professional Development and Web Tools for classroom use are the three main topics that this presentation will focus on. Sharing my experience with tips on what to expect, how to get started and how NOT to get overwhelmed while getting a taste of all three invaluable areas. (UTC+1)
   https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.17552DA90C8D7B5B4ADB054AA46E59
3. Alastair Cameron
   Celebrating Learning Platform Best Practice
   A fly by look at ways learning platforms are transforming the lives of educators, students and families around the world. (UTC+1)
   https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.3605DB3CCA154FF9B12B2BCBFE7A42
4. Chris Mayoh
   Pupils as Teachers – Digital Leaders in the Classroom
   This session will explore how Digital Leaders projects in educational establishments help students to become independent learners, whilst developing confidence, ICT and leadership skills. Chris will outline the project he has run at his UK primary school and guide you through the process of setting up your own student-led project.
   https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.8318532520BC3AB0EAD33801049127

11:00 to 12:00 GMT Panel Discussion with Phil Hart, Jo Hart, Edna Sackson, Cecilia Lemos, Berni Wall

Assessing Assessment
What is effective assessment? Are their alternatives? How do we replace standardized testing? How can teachers forced to do standardized testing make this as painless as possible?
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.8CA1538FC7A0516A5D4FD30F7C7C02

Learning2gether

Our regularly scheduled program today will co-opt what is going on at http://reformsymposium.com/

Noon GMT, meet at http://tappedin.org and then fan out into …

12:30 to 13:00 there are 4 Simultaneous Presentations

1. Heidi Siwak
   App-titude For Learning: How Grade 6 Students Designed an App for the Iphone and Made the World our Classroom.
   Little did I know that Twitter would lead my class from Dundas, Ontario, Canada to Ian Chia in Australia and Cynthia Jabar in New York City as we engaged in a project-based learning experiment: creating an Augmented Reality tourism app of our town for the Iphone. Learn how we did it and how to connect your classroom to the world. (UTC-4)
   https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.45049C6A256C8981875FABF3CA54BE
   
2. David Warr
   Language Garden – making beautiful materials, like grammatical mind maps.
   Language plants are like grammatical mind maps. They look like little plants, or trees made of language. Words branch off from each other, so learners have access to a wonderful array of language. This presentation will show how you can make language plants, for free, using an online tool, and we will do some interactive activities, that are so much fun. Educational fun, let’s say. (UTC+1)
   https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.0DEC6F35BE1817FB48E2FD713FCC6D
   
3. 3
   Vicky Loras
   Multiculturalism in the Classroom
   “This talk will delve into the topic of multiculturalism in the classroom.  I will be speaking about the significance of integrating the beauty of diversity in their classroom, in order to achieve the inclusion of everyone and broaden the mind to accept difference and cultures from all over the world. (UTC+2) https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.E1C5C475C3E97E9EE4CEB915407B44
   
4. Cecilia Lemos
   Alternative assessment and electronic portfolios: sharing a successful experience and ideas
   We’ll take a look at different types of alternative assessment we can use with students, the benefits and difficulties of them. I’ll show the successful experience with electronic portfolios as sole assessment tool in my school and give ideas on how you can take the alternative route. (UTC-3)
   https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.7B8B9F9C74BA22527A17CE1CD4394E
   Vance attended this session:

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13:00 GMT, return to http://tappedin.org, compare notes, and then …

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In this session we engage in some real SpeedGeeking …

13:30 to 14:30

Technology Smack Down
Sign-up
Technology Smack Down
Anyone can present his/her favorite website or tool in 2 minutes.
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2008350&password=M.CC4DC066CD8F7E5FC0F9BDA37E6877

Presenters:

• Lisa Dabbs on LiveBinders
• Mark Barnes on Today’sMeet, an easy to set up ad hoc chat space
• Jan Roberston on Posterous + Voice Memo (an awsome combo) – record in Voice Memo and post right to Posterous
• Mark Barnes on Diigo
• MaryBeth Hertz was going to talk about Pic-Lits, Kelly Tenkely took over to describe it, cool tool for vocabulary and writing, and with IWB or even projector
• Lisa Dabbs talked about Wetoku, a great tool for interviewing, allows students to interview around the world, interviewee comes to a link (doesn’t need an acct)
• Julia Taylor was talking about Glogster
• Cecilia Lemos talked about Lingro, http://lingro.com, glosses words in Internet text
• Tinashe Blanchet – on Instructure Canvas LMS, integration with Twitter, Facebook, GoogleDocs, delicious, http://instructure.com
• Keley Tenkely on Otomatoon, animation easy for students, helps students conceptualize, create a visual glossary (and html5)
• Candace Townsley on TenMarks, free for teachers, set up a class for activities (Candace is a maths teacher, the site gives automated feedback on maths problems)
• Evridiki Dakos on Wallwisher
• Shelly Terrell on Mouth Off iPhone app, kids love it for showing wild mouths that speak on the phone
• Mike Hogan on
  • http://www.bigthink.com – Interviews with interesting people in short segments suitable for ESOL
  • and Entrepreneur App at http://entrepreneur.com – which Mark reads on the way to work and then uses it in class with students

Announcements:

• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/message/28010
• http://taedtech.ning.com/events/learning-2mooc-2gether-with-th

Learning2gether Episode 56

Wednesday July 27, 2011

Download: https://learning2getherdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/moocast-july-27-2011.mp3

was a big day in Learning2gether.  Three events were scheduled starting at 10 a.m. GMT, each just an hour apart.  Here’s the play by play …

The Eportfolio CoP MOOC launches August 1 and goes until Sept 30, 2011

• https://sites.google.com/site/eportfoliocommunity/epcop-mooc
• https://sites.google.com/site/epcoplearnspace/
  

EpCoP kicked off their MOOC with an Introductory Webinar on that evening 8 pm Sydney time.

In Elluminate / Bb Collaborate: http://tinyurl.com/29tyznz

The time where you are for this one might help you fix on the next one in one week’s time:

http://timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=EpCoP+July+27%2C+2011&iso=20110727T20&p1=240&ah=1

Takeaways from the slide presentation, which you can see when the recording is made available:

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Then at 12:00 GMT  

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Jeff Lebow Hangs Out with Graham Stanley on Google+

To join in, you need to have a G+ account and have added Jeff or Graham to one of your G+ circles.

• The Hangout link can be found on Jeff’s +profile page at: https://plus.google.com/105999634356572746040
• This was streamed at http://eflbridges.net/live
• Announcement http://eflbridges.net/event/efl-teacher-hangout-w-graham-stanley
• Some links that came up during the conversation
  • http://vastpark.com/
  • Graham’s projects
    • http://www.itilt.eu/
    • http://aplanet-project.org/
    • http://blog-efl.blogspot.com
    • http://digitalplay.info/blog/
• Recording
  • http://eflbridges.net/audio/efl-hangout-w-graham-stanley

And finally at 1400 GMT

MOOCast, http://edumooc2011.blogspot.com/p/moocast-studio.html

Week#5 MOOCast video, audio, & links posted at http://bit.ly/q5cMqe 

Convened, streamed, and recorded by Jeff Lebow and featuring +Rob Darrow +John Graves +Vance Stevens +Frank Stonehouse +Rebecca Hogue +Sanford Arbogast +scott lockman +Maizie Avihayil & +Clark Shah-Nelson in a great hangout.

Links shared:

Apart from those posted at http://bit.ly/q5cMqe Vance harvested these:

• We talked about the posts in this forum: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/edumooc/BgLg6dJK9Co/discussion
• Rebecca Hogue asked us if we were familiar with #lrnchat on Twitter
  • http://lrnchat.com/
  • http://edutweetups.com/2011/04/10/learn-chat-lrnchat/
• John Greaves
  • Created an iEtherpad at http://ietherpad.com/edumooc2011week5 so he could create a QR code from the URL that his phone could read so that it could then say what was in the ietherpad via the Wiki-to-speech Android app
  • Explained Open Allure responding to math, dictionary and scripted inputs in this YouTube video: 
  • introduced us to the concept of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy to characterize the way characters in a MOOC influence one another (in answer to Rebecca’s asking if we were actually creating knowledge here)

Recordings:

• https://plus.google.com/u/0/105999634356572746040/posts/V55gGP8fqDs

Learning2gether Episode 55

Virtual Worlds, Games and Interactive Fiction 

Download: https://learning2getherdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/virtual-worlds-games-and-interactive-fiction.mp3

View on screencast.com »

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On Sunday July 24, 2011 Baldric Commons (Graham Stanley) led us in a campfire chat at the Webheads HQ in Second Life about language education and developments in immersive online spaces.

Graham’s invitation was to “come and share what you know and are doing and hear what other people are up to in spaces such as SL, World of Warcraft, etc. If you are active in Second Life you are especially welcome to come share at this session.”

We added that those just interested in knowing more about the creativity for language learning possible in Second Life could come and interact or simply observe. “You don’t even have to come to SL for this one. You can peek through the window … We realize that Second Life can be difficult to navigate for some, so in order to make this event accessible to all, Gwen Gwasi (Heike Philp) will broadcast from Second Life in Adobe Connect, and you can come there as one of your options: http://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/sl. If you wish to join us there you can follow Gwen’s camera and see and hear what is going on passively in Second Life without actually entering that virtual space, All the while you can interact with Webheads in Adobe or TappedIn txt chat if you wish (or Skype, or Google+, or some other interactive space, if you care to nominate one).”

Meno Rich (Jeff Lebow) was also on hand to stream the event and make a recording as well. So you can compare camera work in the recording links below and help us decide who we should nominate for an Oscar 🙂

Where

• The campfire at Webheads HQ at Edunation in Second Life : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/EduNation/66/165/23
• or peer through the window: http://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/sl

Announcements

• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/message/27968
• http://taedtech.ning.com/events/learning2gether-with-graham-st

Recordings

• http://lancelot.adobeconnect.com/p900pgm3vx8/
• http://www.livestream.com/jefflebow/video?clipId=pla_028018b2-34e3-426e-9bac-f0cc070bb97f
• https://plus.google.com/u/0/105999634356572746040/posts/G7V3wmqFoGd

About the Webheads HQ

Working as always with Edunation owners Heike Philp and Randall Sadler, Dennis Newson has been energetic in getting the Webheads HQ in Edunation squarely on the map. An image of Webheads HQ is shown here:

Learning2gether Episode 54

Video streaming by Ustream

For a good idea what this will be like, check out the recording of

• the one that Jeff Lebow held last Wednesday (http://edtechtalk.com/node/4988)
• or this one the other day with Stephen Downes http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/16011207

If you haven’t tried Google+ it’s worth checking out Google’s latest big connectivity tool.

• More information at the MOOCast Studio: http://edumooc2011.blogspot.com/p/moocast-studio.html
• and more about Hangouts here:
  • http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=1257349&rd=1
  • Including how to join a Hangout: http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=1257349&answer=1349254 

When?

• Meet from noon GMT
  • at http://tappedin.org for further instructions
  • or at Jeff’s EduMOOCbridges studio
    http://edumooc2011.blogspot.com/p/moocast-studio.html 
• Start Hanging Out from 13:00 GMT
  • http://tinyurl.com/2011july17gmt1300  
  • http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Learning2gether%3A+Hang+Out+with+Jeff+and+Vance+in+Google%2B&iso=20110717T13&ah=1 

Where? We’ll be Hanging Out in Google+

Vance will be in http://tappedin.org to help people get connected.  Here are some things you need to prepare:

• If you’re not on Google+ yet you’ll need an invitation. We can arrange that for you via http://tappedin.org, where we’ll hold our usual back channel from noon GMT.
• You’ll also need the browser plugin from http://google.com/talk. 
• Finally, your experience might be a lot happier if you use Google Chrome as your browser.

Announcements:

• @eveweb “Very frustrated with the Google+ hangout attempt today 😦 @jefflebow @vances @nelliemuller ” wanna troubleshoot it Sunday 1300 GMT?

  — Vance Stevens (@VanceS) July 14, 2011

• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/message/27940
• http://taedtech.ning.com/events/learning2gether-hangout-in-goo

Learning2gether Episode 53

Wednesday July 13, 2011

There was a series of sessions on this day which we decided to archive as Learning2gether events. Most involved participants in each other’s PLNs, many of whom are brushing up against one another in the 2400 strong EduMOOC event taking place at the moment.

First up:

EPIC 2011: DEVELOPING NATIONAL E-PORFOLIO COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE (Australia Series)
Wed 13 Jul 06:00AM New York / Wed 13 Jul 10:00AM GMT / Wed 13 Jul 08:00PM Sydney
Coach Carole. During the 9th International ePortfolio & Identity Conference, 11-13 July 2011, a few presenters will be online to share their experiences in building and sustsaining eportfolio communities of practice in the UK and Australia: Sarah Chesney, Alison Felce and Emma Purcell will present:’ A Tribe Learning to Survive? An e-portfolio community of practice’. Allison Miller and Carole McCulloch will present:’ Developing a national e-portfolo community of practice to foster emerging e-portfolio practice’. The first part of this session will be beamed out live from The IET, Savoy Place London, UK and the second part will be cofacilitated from South Australia and Victoria. Come and join us to explore the national goals the key outputs from these two exciting projects.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/166023

Reflections:

• The session was recorded in Elluminate (hoping for a link)
• Vance put what he learned from the first of these events in a set of links here:http://www.delicious.com/vancestevens/epic

Next up, Jeff Lebow organized a pair of events:

Join Jeff Lebow’s Next Scheduled MOOCast: July 13 at 1400UTC, http://edumooc2011.blogspot.com/  . He has some ideas on the how we can use Google+ effectively, and mentioned some in this recorded event: https://learning2gether.net/2011/07/10/vance-stevens-and-jeff-lebow-will-lead-a-disc/

A couple of hours prior to the MOOCast, Jeff webast a discussion with Brad Patterson (of http://edulang.com/ , http://snapanda.com/, and the ELT Blog Challenge http://bit.ly/j6FpFO) that may be of interest to the language educators amongst us. We’ll start off around 1130GMT as we tune in to the week’s http://eltchat.com/ as part of the pre-show. Event takes place at: http://bit.ly/eWBoFL and additional info is at: http://eflbridges.net/event/ef​l-teacher-talk-webcast-w-guest​-brad-patterson.

The uStream Recording is here:
http://eflbridges.net/audio/efl-teacher-talk-w-brad-patterson 

To kick off his next initiative, Jeff left this message in the EduMOOC group on Facebook:

We’ll be MOOCasting again July 13 1400GMT at:
http://edumooc2011.blogspot.co​m/p/moocast-studio.html

All are welcome. We’ll be using Google+ Hangout for the gathering. As with previous MOOCasts, this will be an open-ended opportunity for EduMOOC’ers to share resources, ideas, and feedback about assorted eduMOOC topics and/or the MOOC itself.

You can replay the recording of this event here:
http://edtechtalk.com/node/4988

Sunday July 10 

Vance Stevens and Jeff Lebow lead a discussion on eduMOOC, the Massive Online Open Course running at this URL: https://sites.google.com/site/edumooc/

• Vance is organizing his small corner of this MOOC here: http://www.scoop.it/t/edumooc/
• Jeff is organizing his MOOCbridges site here: http://edumooc2011.blogspot.com/

Announcements

• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/message/27900
• http://taedtech.ning.com/events/learning-2mooc-2gether-with
• If you can access this thread:http://groups.google.com/group/edumooc/browse_thread/thread/f8fe4762de0514f6#
  then you can read Vance’s invitation to the EduMOOCosphere to join us on Sunday 🙂

• Latest in #learning2gether & #EduMOOC podcast series with @jefflebow is available for download http://tinyurl.com/2011july10L2pod #taedtech

  — Vance Stevens (@VanceS) July 10, 2011

Recordings:

• Elluminate recording:
  • https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2011-07-10.0603.M.7AE801FFB697DA460D4BF25AA8C21B.vcr&sid=75
  • http://tinyurl.com/2011july10L2g
• uStream recording:
  • http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/15910387#utm_campaign=synclickback&source=http://edumooc2011.blogspot.com/2011/06/edumooc-live-studio.html&medium=15910387
  • or http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/15910387 or (http://tinyurl.com/2011july10L2pod)

Learning2gether Episode 51

Video streaming by Ustream

July 6, 2011

View on screencast.com »

An enjoyable open-ended discussion revolving around EduMOOC 2011
Participants: Jeff Lebow (Korea), Vance Stevens (UAE),  John Graves (New Zealand), Rob Darrow (U.S), Dave Cormier (Canada), & Osvaldo Rodriguez (Argentina)

http://edumooc2011.blogspot.com/2011/07/moocast1-july-6-2011.html

Jeff Lebow has announced that MetaMOOCast #1 was scheduled

• at http://t.co/5JsM2Ho
• a.k.a. http://edumooc2011.blogspot.com/2011/06/edumooc-live-studio.html

Vance’s view on Skype:

View on screencast.com »

Rob Darrow’s reflections:

http://robdarrow.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/do-you-mooc/

At http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/message/27682 David Winet writes:

I made this clip after watching a video film review with my students and realizing that watching the trailer while listening to the reviewer is much more engaging to the student than just hearing or reading the review.  I “ESL-ified”  the review by speaking slowly, using simple vocabulary, and glossing words and expressions both orally and using Youtube’s annotation feature (which can be turned on or off). Exercises, discussion questions could easily be added.

The technique I used is as follows:

1. Go to http://www.hd-trailers.net to download a trailer (I was unable to download this POC clip using the more common Youtube download methods — perhaps there was some kind of block on commercial movie trailers)
2. Convert the downloaded trailer to .avi (if it’s .flv or .mov, etc.).   Use http://www.Pazeera-software.com tools or find your own  free ‘something to .avi converter’ online.
3. Load the .avi file into Moviemaker version 2.6  (available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=d6ba5972-328e-4df7-8f9d-068fc0f80cfc   )
4. Click Tools/Narrate Timeline to add your spoken commentary on the voice track (over the video sound track). Prepare some notes so it flows better.
5. Click Tools/Audio Levels to make the movie soundtrack softer than your voice.
6. This is key! Save the movie as .avi (Save to my computer)
7. Upload to Youtube (you’ll need a Youtube account – free)
8. In Youtube add annotations as desired (see Youtube help for how to do this, it’s not hard)
9. Get the link and post it on Facebook, Twitter, here, etc.

Recordings

• Eluminate:
  • https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2011-07-03.0621.M.7AE801FFB697DA460D4BF25AA8C21B.vcr&sid=75
  • and the TinyURL is: http://tinyurl.com/2011july3l2g 

Announcements:

• http://taedtech.ning.com/events/learning2gether-with-david
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/message/27790
• and for July 3: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evonline2002_webheads/message/27879