The new place has a couple of remote operating garage doors. Naturally, my remote control pad lost its settings and I had little or no Internet access for the first 10 days of the move. Eventually I located an Internet terminal. I did a quick search for the manufacturer of the Australian door, found a FAQ section which gave instructions on re-coding the keypad. When I took the cover off the remote controller on the door, I was surprised at how complex the circuit board appeared. It definitely has the ability to do a lot more than previous generations of remote controlled doors in Australia.

Pressed the Door Code continuously, and at the same time pressed the transmitter button on the remote pad twice. Tested the remote out and everything was operational!

Part One:

• the moderator assigns tools like rights and permissions
• one should use the audio wizard first and at least once daily to make sure one’s system is functioning properly.
• avoid audio echo. Almost an etiquette
• it can be difficult to be a moderator and keep up with all the dynamic changing symbols
• if someone lags behind (out of syncronisation), accelerated playback kicks in & the person sounds like Alvin from the Chipmunks fame.
• when people are out of sync, it is just best to pause the use of the microphone for a few seconds.
• the whiteboard area is used exclusively to do a show & tell. Good for instructional type presentations.
• the whiteboard impacts everyone and participants can make changes
• powerpoint has to be converted first, loses all transitions and nifty effects.
• up to 6 talkers can talk at once, probably not practical, but two will suffice.
• application sharing is terrific but not available in Lite
• polling has impact upon the pacing, instructor can make sure participants understand, encourages interactivity and helps keep thing focused. Moderator can lock answers, hide answers, publish answers and some other options.
• video: seems to be used in a limited fashion due to the shyness of everyone. A still image is usually displayed as well.
• use of video is limited only by one’s imagination
• one video at a time is used – fine colour or medium colour can be used. If recording a long session like 3 hours, use medium colour to save storage space.
• a new moderator should practice with 2 computers side by side and / or with 2 people.
• vRoom can be used. A free version with 3 participants is available.

Part Two consisted of:

• whiteboard tools were explored
• objects can be locked on the whiteboard
• puzzles have to have individual pieces uploaded, possible games for chess
• one can create their own clip art
• explore screens, save sessions, moderators can cut, copy, paste
• screens can be copied out of breakout rooms
• screen explorer is very powerful
• one can save a screen, eg polling
• whiteboard can be protected, exported as pdf or png
• wbp (whiteboard protected cannot be saved NOR printed)
• screen group eg. 39 slides, current screen, selected screens

Sharing tools:

• one opens applications
• don’t minimise the application window
• windows are automatically resized
• start, stop, snap shot
• cntrl + spacebar == regain control
• select name, right click, give control, request control on top of window
• preview: bring up thumbnail, don’t put anything on top of application
• can take a snap shot of image
• copying and pasting from one computer to another will NOT work

Web Tour:

• shares a web browser
• opens a browser instance
• interacts individually, 12 participants can go 12 different ways
• Moderator can syncronise and re-syncronise when moderator clicks (tour guide)
• Moderator over rides and multiple students share the same web browser
• publish URL and the URL goes into the chat area (called pushing out).

Part Three consisted of:

• presentation mode can be used (one huge screen)
• presentation mode can be used with whiteboard or application sharing
• one can get back into default view by using the proper icon
• the yellow around the whiteboard indicates full presentation is being used
• application button can be difficult to see
• would use this when a specific focus is required

Breakout rooms

• one on one or do small group work
• one can create rooms manually or automatically.
• one can preload content onto the breakout room screens
• screen explorer allows one to move participants
• each breakout room seems to have one whiteboard
• students can’t move from room to room whereas moderators can
• announcements will be received in all breakout rooms
• a timer can be set
• can copy and paste each breakout room to the main room
• tools -> whiteboard -> explore screen -> expand tabs -> highlight participants -> copy

Notes:

• notes can be written and saved as text or eln (elluminate note).
• one can share notes or combine notes
• notes automatically saved.

File transfer:

• icon: folder with the green arrow
• when uploading a dynamic graphic appears, wait until 100% is indicated
• 10 mb upload limit
• green disk means saved, yellow in progress
• if file upload is not to be made public, untick the proper box (pre-loading)
• multi media content is downloaded to individual computers. Must have proper plugins

Record session:

• can be automatic or manual, can pause
• automatic save is probable
• the only human error that can take place is turning Record on
• erase is allowed
• indicator changes when recording
• when recording is finished, a link is emailed to participants?
• recordings can be converted (for a fee) for portability
• quick reference for each task is available

I was listening to an EdTechTalk interview that involved one Tom Woods.  Tom was the lad that allegedly hacked the Australian Federal Government’s Internet Filter software.  According to Tom, he did not actually hack into the system at code level.  He used different techniques to try to bypass the filter which he successfully accomplished.  The media blew the event out of proportion.  Tom and his peers developed different strategies for bypassing the internet filters used at their school.  Tom basically used the same strategies to humble an umpteem million dollar project.

He has become rather famous throughout Australia. During the interview, Tom came across as a level headed 16 year old teenager.  Others must have thought so as well.  He made mention that a huge amount of media has been clamouring for his input.  In addition, various government departments have invited him to join in evaluations / discussions of various aspects of the Internet.  Not bad for a 16 year old.

Can a person make a difference?  In this case, a 16 year old lad seems to be doing just that.

The Honours Programme is rolling along and is developing into something quite special. It would not surprise me that we are doing a “First” in NSW incorporating social networking software and student activities who signed up for the Honours Programme. (See Honours page on this site).

The Honours Programme co-ordinator was already doing a superb job with the students. My input advocating the use of groups found at yahoo and the option to create a blog has added another dimension to the programme.

Within the Honours Programme are a few genuine gifted and talented people. In the ordinary school structure, they usually are marginalised by their peers. According to studies, these type of people need some way to publicise their thoughts and ideas.

As the Honours Programme advances into the school year, the group has developed their own synergy and energetically help each other out. The genuinely gifted and talent people have created their own blogs which have been read by their peers and given positive, reinforcing feedback. These people are no longer ‘marginalised’. Wow. Great Pastoral stuff.

My Year 8 Technology group finished their animated gif tasks. The better students were able to upload their gifs to their blogs. The less able students created the animated gifs and were marked in their storage directory. I expected to see a couple of students zoom off with their blogs but it does not seem to have happened. Sigh.

It was made known to me over the week that students share the only computer at home and that they have allocated times as to when they can use it. Would you believe that is the first time I ever considered such a thing? that students have limited time on a single computer at home.

The Year 8 Technology students are onto their next task. Basically, they are to create a radio type commercial using Audacity and they are required to mix tracks. Needless to say, they are having a great time experimenting. The finished products are expected to be uploaded to their blog site as a mp3 file.

I am involved in assigning sessions at the Computing Studies Teacher Association (NSW) inservices which take place once a school term. Four workshops run at any one time and participants choose which workshop they wish to do (numbers permitting).

The committee lives all over the place. I started something new in May 2007. I uploaded the session assignment sheets and the agenda document to docs.google.com.

This way Committee members get to look at the documents as they evolve from one inservice to the next. They may make changes or comments as to how the evening should be guided. Hopefully, this will allow the Committee members be more involved in the assigning of sessions, hence, collaboration. Of course, strict deadlines over-rides everything else!

Elearning Web2.0 Technotriva

Below are listed some of the technical, behind the scenes, type details that have been happening and I have been involved in some way:

• Honours students have been sent invitations to join TIGHONOURS group the last day of Term 1
  • at the time of this entry, responses have been weak
  • those that have joined have already produced their own synergy as they collaborate with each other
  • as an educator, it is fulfilling to observe students create their own synergy
  • the Honour’s co-ordinator must be pleased
• The school has subscribed to a hosting service. URL: http://tigs.com.au/
• WordPress Multi-user Application has been set up by Andrew Greenlees who did this outside of normal working hours.
  • we tried other open source blog applications but they did not meet my criteria and I was most familiar with WordPress.  URL: http://tas.tigs.com.au/  will take one to the super admin site.
  • the administrator can interact with any blog created on the site (good)
• Some of my Year 7 Mentees have interacted with me during the April holidays via emails
  • the Python people do not seem to be making much progress during the holidays
  • the Year 7 workload seems to prevent them from extending themselves in other areas?
• The Junior School asked if a ‘discussion area’ could be set up.
  • I set up a Forum area at our new Moodle site. URL: http://tigs.com.au/moodle4tigs/
  • The initial setup went smoothly
  • I discovered the TIGS email system would not accept emails from the Moodle site (bad)
    • Andrew Greenlees again spent numerous hours outside of working hours finding a solution
  • The site has been thoroughly tested. Let us hope this is what the Junior School actually wants.
  • This is a newer version of Moodle from what I have used in the past.
• I experimented with Edumate2 from home:
  • the mark-book is certainly easier to use as compared to the iWise version
  • some of my class lists were inaccurate.  To whom do we report errors?
  • contact details seem to be lacking a lot of data, data that I would have thought would be easy to migrate across.  Heaven help the clerical staff if they have to enter the data by keyboard again.
  • the Relations within the contact list seem particularly good and should be able to handle any complex family scenario. eg. which parent has access to student records at school.