NSW LearnScope Blog & Podcast

Oh dear…..

It’s a sad day when advocates of rights and voice demonstrate such ignorance regardless of their age.
In her recent acceptance speech for the Nobel prize for literature Doris Lessing spoke of how the internet, has ’seduced a whole generation into its inanities’ and created a world where people know nothing.

‘We never thought to ask how will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by the internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that, once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging.’ (SMH 2007)

Having relatively good literacy skills despite my hours online, I knew of course that the media are selective about what they publish (online at least – I’m sure anything off a printing press can be believed) so I headed with trepidation further into the web…..

First I went to her retrospective website (yes she does have one) where she assured me that she is ‘so happy to be communicating with people on this newest of new wavelengths which to some older people must seem like a kind of magic’ and where we can find links to all her interviews, audio files and discussion forums. Perhaps we, her fans, can email her, engage in some debate, she could share pictures of her life?

Then I went straight to her Nobel Lecture …

Here she speaks of “getting books into the villages” of Zimbabwe. Books like the Mayor of Casterbridge and Anna Karenina. Reading is more than decoding Doris.

25 years ago I walked as teacher into a remote Aboriginal community where there were books. They spoke of pretty children in frilly dresses with their dog in the snow, not of gathering mangrove worms or crocodiles or Pukamani. Oh how I wish I had the internet then to supplement my camera and hand made books.

‘The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise … but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us – for good and for ill. It is our stories, the storyteller, that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, what we are at our best, when we are our most creative.’ (Lessing 2007)

You may ask, she says, ‘how that piece of the Russian novel ever ended up on that counter in the Indian store?’ ‘It would make a pretty story. Perhaps someone will tell it.’

Perhaps they will, a child with a plastic laptop who can speak to the world.

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Today I was down at the Learnatics Showcase in Building A, Flexible Learning Centre Randwick TAFE NSW where I met with a number of LearnScope team members and others who have been parts of project this year and in the past.

In the crowd was Tony Wittingham, Alison Wood, Brian McLaughlin and and many people whom I’ve met for the first time. This was a great way to see our teams in action and showing some great examples of networked learning spaces in action with clients.

Thank you to Viv Evans for her great review of the eLearning07 event in the current edition of ICVET’s eZine.

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Do you struggle to find time to edit and publish last week’s audio recording?
Well try 65 of them!!

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Stephan Ridgway has now has available on podcast every session from this years mLearn07 conference on Talking VTE.
Something to keep you occupied over the Christmas break : )

There’s an interesting looking e-learning PD opportunity coming up in Jan-Feb for practitioners interested in ESOL.

For six weeks , participants can engage with ESOL experts in collaborative, online discussion sessions or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and scholarly benefit. These sessions will bring together participants for a longer period of time than is permitted by the four-day land-based TESOL convention and will allow a fuller development of ideas and themes of the convention or of professional interest in general. The sessions are free and open to all interested parties. You do not need to be a TESOL member to participate.

True to form Jo Kay ( and a number of other key people ) have accomplished no mean feat by hosting the Edublogger awards in JoKaydia today.

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I arose at 6.30am only to find I was 2 hours early. An hour later and I’d played with Ethan, cleaned the car and showered only to find JoKaydia chock-a-block. A number of attempts later and I was in…to the familiar dulcid tones of Josie Fraser, Dave Cormier, James Farmer and a host of other northern hemispherecity.

Last week I watched Jo build an amazing city out pixels and data-bytes and with no one to bump into had a good look around this beautiful space so tastefully decorated with Christmas bumf……ok so I did bump into Ruby Imako…cool name

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This years awards have been met with a great deal of interest and some discussions as to the intent, sustainability and value of pitting bloggers with bloggers. I think the most important part is the recognition that we exist, that of course part of the idea is to sell online learning ware and yes…..there will always be upsets when we create scenarios that perpetuate winners and losers.

One of the biggest awareness raising things for me has been the attitude shift for a certain number of bloggers I read who have abandoned blogrolls for inhouse feedreaders  ( would have thought that this is the best form of recognition blogger/s can receive ), have taken up Facebook with storm and left their own musings to the open web….(dead conversations folks as you fight the widgets )and most importantly have become part of the connectosphere for the sake of being noticed.

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There has been a huge uptake of Ning, recognition of non-english speaking blogosphere’s, transition to bloghuds and a wealth of information coming out about how things are being learned and learnt.

It is important to reflect on how much blogging has changed the world and it is important to recognise those who have made substantial difference in their students lives by enabling learning to become a networked participatory conversation.

This year has demonstrated that there is a begining to new forms of ‘A’ listing ……and thankfully it has nothing to do with who you know rather what you’ve achieved.

Well done all involved. It’s been an interesting showcase for 2008.

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….and you wondered why we requested that teams do a final wrap up of what had occurred for them this year ? ….not as a word doc. because we are all far more competent than that !!

NSWTOX is no exception. A fantastic network and an amazing project.

Check out their brilliance over at ;

http://nswtox.com/open/general/learnscopereport16.mp3

http://nswtox.com/open/general/33report07finalbig.wmv

I’ve made this Animoto video to record an impression of the eLearning 07 event - which we held over a month ago now! I couldn’t resist this cool tool, and hope it brings back some good memories for those who attended. For me the memories of techical dramas, stress and hard work are fading, and I’m focussing on the conversations, new learning, connections and innovations that came out of the event. Thanks to everyone how attended, contributed, commented, criticized, praised and recorded the event!

As many of you know, we established a poster display and conference area on the Island of jokaydia in Second Life - which included the posters that were contributed by each of the NSW LearnScope Teams this year. This space provided online participants the opportunity to engage in some of the activities held at the real life event, and also allowed people from all over the world to connect to and engage with the outcomes and information provided by each of the LearnScope 2007 teams.

During the 2 day event (1 and 2 November 2007) the virtual display was visited by 217 individuals (avatars). Since the event, the Poster display has been visited by 766 Second Life residents (avatars) - allowing educators and eLearning specialists from around the world to connect with NSW LearnScope teams and learn more about what they are doing.

The posters will be displayed in Second Life until 5pm on the 6 December 2007, so drop inworld and check out yours and other team members posters. To teleport to jokaydia click here.

On Friday I will start pulling it all down… so we can prepare for our next adventure adventure…. hosting the International Edublog Awards 2007 in Second Life!