A New Blogger

I was working in my business for a change to day (learnscope is working on my business), and inducting a new workplace trainee.
A standard technique for some time has been to get these students to keep a diary of the new things learnt from other workers.
In the early days of a new job, this is quite a large amount of often small 5-10 minute "training sessions". Documenting this has always been a problem. We were discussing ways in which to make this recording efficient (diary, paper list with dates etc) when I threw in the suggestiion of a blog.
The student had vaguely heard of blogs but had no experience with them. The worksite manager liked the idea that it was paper free, the trainee is at a terminal most of the day anyway and it was keeping up with technology.
I was amazed - it is a conservative, well established rural business with mainly older workers and the stereotypes were working fulltime in my mind. (She later quizzed me on other ways that it could be used - by herself!).
The best part is for me - I have this blog on my RSS feed so can keep contact with this student this way even though she is a 30 minute drive out of town. And it is all documented.

Elke's Learnscope Journey

the Knowldge Tree Table of contents
http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/toc

Reminder
There is a long list here of articles which need to be sifted through - start at the bottom and work backwards in time.

The interview with BarbMcPherson in issue 7 E-learning: what's in it for business is already up in the readings forum.

Telemarketing on skype

The telemarketers have found my skype - that was quick! But I like the ignore button - you can see who is calling you and and push the ignore button! Caller ID is alive and well. I wonder how long it will take for Skype to make available a caller id shield - I hope that it does not happen.

Are young learners swinging to technology to learn?

What do youth prefer when it comes to learning styles and technology and what are the barriers?

http://knowledgetree.flexiblelearning.net.au/edition05/download/Dwyer.pdf

Some quotes:

"It's more about an ability to identify with kids rather than an ability to dazzle them with technology."

"While it's easy to interest teachers in something new, getting them to change the way they teach is a longer term professional development task, requiring ongoing commitment and support."

" ..face to face and fun experiential training is still the best."

blended learning at distance - case study

A case study from 2004 on blended learning for distant learners sounds related to what I am interested in.
http://community.flexiblelearning.net.au/ProfessionalDevelopment/content/article_6700.htm
Need to follow this through and read it in full.

The Project plan

Now that the dust has settled, the project plan is in for consideration, here is a synthesis of the main ideas. (Tried to do this last Fri but Blogger was offline for the afternoon.)

Several trainers in this region are in varying stages of entering the online delivery world of training and assessing. there is much that we do not know that others have already discovered. We can re-invent the wheel ourselves one at a time through trial and error or we could somehow use the existing knowledge.

This project is my attempt to reveal some of this information and organise it somehow into a handbook for those still to start the journey. Mainly to save the time researching in the wrong areas.

This"handbook" could end up having four main components:

• a "technical" guide to managing the server and website side of an Learning Management System, maybe in the form of "this is what I learned through trial and error."
• connecting with students online in the training arena
• asssessing online training
• underlying theory of training and assessing online - or at least a guide to some good current readings if there is not time to enrol in a full course anywhere.

The problem of distance is one we face regularly. As much a possible of the will be done in an online environment, with some old fashioned face to face communication just to help with the transisiton!

834 tips for online instruction

http://www.elearningguild.com/pbuild/linkbuilder.cfm?selection=doc.1114
food for thought to start with from an SA learnscope newsletter.

If you are local I have printed a copy . It is certainly worth flicking through on the screen over a cup of your favourite beverage.

Will explore the e-learning guild (American) to see if they have anything else to offer.

skype

I am online with this. Elke5291 is my callsign.