robyn jay

With the conclusion of yet another Framework iteration looming and what could be the possible demise of the Framework as a whole, I’ve been thinking about what worked and didn’t work with the old LearnScope projects.

While team-centred action learning projects were well loved, it was because they:

• Provided time to explore, reflect, practice, play
• Allowed members to focus on particular interests and needs
• Allowed freedom and space for diversion
• Had practical, concrete outcomes
• Fed/grew into future projects

It was NOT that the projects were scoped and facilitated by the teams themselves.

It strikes me that the old LearnScope model could be reframed at a local level at least, drawing on the strengths of the previous model but  tightening the design and extending the timeframe.

What if a TAFE Institute or cluster of small providers (as an example only) scoped and facilitated a series of action learning staff capability projects drawing membership from across all sections based on interest (and commitment)?

The scope of the projects, designed and facilitated by workforce development expertise, could reflect strategic directions, input from staff, national agendas (in a practical sense) and international trends.

The projects would be carefully designed around action learning principles allowing space for individuals to diversify and time for learning, trial and design. The diverse teams would offer rich cross-fertilisation of ideas and enable new connections and cross-industry collaboration. The team members would act as champions to demo their learning and ideas back in their sections. The extended time frame, if well designed,  would allow plenty of time for workshops, meetings, individual projects etc and the outcome would be concrete resources and case studies presented at a staff forum.

Just an idea. I’ll think on it more.

CC FlickR image by its*me*red

Jeff Utecht has an interesting post – Online Community Manager: A New Position in Education – that resonates. It overlaps a little with my now redundant position but better represents what SHOULD have been put in place.

Here are the core roles, adapted a little to represent any educational setting…

1. Community Advocate
As a community advocate, the community managers’ primary role is to represent the school/college/university/project community. This includes listening, which results in monitoring, and being active in understanding what community members are saying on both internal and external websites. Secondly, they engage community members by responding to their requests and needs or just conversations, both in private and in public.

2) Evangelist
In this evangelistic role (it goes both ways) the community manager will promote events, student accomplishments and updates to community members by using traditional marketing tactics and conversational discussions. As proven as a trusted member of the community (tenet 1) the individual has a higher degree of trust and will offer help and support.

3) Savvy Communicator and  Shapes Editor
This tenet, which is both editorial planning and mediation serves the individual well. The community manager should first be very familiar with the tools of communication, from forums, to blogs, to podcasts, to twitter, and then understand the language and jargon that is used in the community. This individual is also responsible for mediating disputes within the community, and will lean on advocates, and embrace detractors –and sometimes removing them completely. Importantly, the role is responsible for the editorial strategy and planning within the community, and will work with many internal stakeholders to identify content, plan, publish, and follow up.

4) Gatherer of Community Input for Future Product and Services
Perhaps the most strategic of all tenets, community managers are responsible for gathering the requirements of the community in a responsible way and presenting it to the leadership team. This may involve formal recommendations from surveys to focus groups, to facilitating the relationships between stakeholders (in an e-learning setting this includes between IT and educators/ students). The opportunity to build stronger relationships through this real-time live focus group are ripe, in many cases, education communities have been waiting for a chance to give feedback.

Jeff outlines a set of responsibilities (school focused) and indicates his willingness to apply for any position that’s established.

Me too – it’s very nice!

CC FlickR image by baratunde

Dear retail assistants,
I am now officially over your terms of endearment that you feel are an essential aspect of providing me with customer service.
In the last month I have been called:

• darls
• darling
• love
• lovie
• sweetie (by a 20 yr old)
• gorgeous (also by 20 yr old) , and
• dear

I’m just waiting for sweetie, cupcake, honeybun, sweetpea, sugar plum, princess, precious or perhaps poppet is awaiting me ?

Male assistants are a little more cautious:

• madam (well it’s an option if the consultancy doesn’t work out)
• ma’am (am I THAT old?)
• miss (has been a VERY long time)

or best of all…

• mate (by a young Indian guy)

The terms are typically used in conjunction with short queries – “chips or fries love ? (read any of the above options) and replace extended phrases such as “would you like ….” or “hi” …. or “excuse me..”

I just hope I can cope and my hormones don’t get the better of me. A  ‘ grumpy old woman’ moment in public won’t be pretty.

LOL

CC FlickR image by ginfox

Why is it that institutions think that it’s OK to position those who must participate in their business (as staff or students or patients etc) in soul destroying environments?

Day after day I walk down corridors and into rooms that do nothing but depress. Within these environments we expect people to thrive, to create, to innovate, to stay. If colour exists it’s dirty orange or polyester blue like the uniforms that successfully lead to uniformity. Florescent lighting remains on 24/7, air conditioning recycles the years viruses and windows are dirty or non-existent. We sit children on plastic chairs that can be wiped with disinfectant although a child’s natural position is on the floor. Hallways echo and lift-wells creak.

Very occasionally however you enter a space that inspires productivity and creativity and conversation. I entered an office like this this week. It wasn’t expensively decorated. It had large windows that looked out onto trees and allowed natural light in, the windows opened to allow fresh air to enter, there were potted plants, a few prints on the walls, fresh clean colours, inviting workspaces that were comfortable and practical enabling personal work and collaborative conversations. It was a beautiful space.

We are burdened with the heritage of factory focused schools and workplaces and lecture theatres. Yet instead of redesigning and rethinking the spaces in which we learn and work, we continue to pump them out. The colours may be a little fresher but on the whole they do not change.

In a recent podcast Ken Robinson noted that if you are doing something that does not resonate, 5 minutes will feel like an hour. In the same way we cannot expect creativity, productivity, happiness, well-being, collaboration and innovation in toxic environments of ugliness. In fact for many jobs and tasks we should not be demanding face to face presence at all… but that’s another post.

It was suggested to me yesterday by a senior manager that we should not focus on the new and emerging technologies that only 5% would embrace but stick to the ‘basics’. Unfortunately the ‘basics’ do not include the new and emerging tools and applications that provide ease of mastery, or which enable multimodal spaces for creation, engagement and collaboration… instead think LMS, anti-plagiarism and assessment.
It’s a depressing state of affairs that promulgates antiquated teaching practice and unengaged learners.

But even where contemporary applications are promoted and supported there is poor take up. Why?
In some cases support mechanisms are ineffective, in others there is lack of policy level encouragement, lack of time, lack of resources, etc etc – an endless list of excuses that does not explain why a small number DO take up new approaches and opportunities. Even in an ideal context where excellent applications are carefully chosen, and time and resources are allocated to mentoring staff in their use I suspect take-up would remain low.
I’m starting to wonder if the key issue comes down to culture and personal philosophy.

The underpinning philosophy behind many of the contemporary learning applications is openness. They support a collaborative learning community that positions the learner as a valued content creator; that values sharing, discovery, connections, opinion, reflection, partnerships. Unfortunately however openness and collaboration are threatening and foreign to many educators. They are not a part of their lives and they are not a part of their teaching practice. It’s a very difficult task to live one set of values and to cast them aside at the workplace gates.

In higher education academics are part of a system that dictates the PhD hurdle be jumped to obtain permanency; a PhD that in essence requires secrecy and non-collaboration lest ideas be stolen and which results in a piece of work that is read by 1.8 others. Without knowledge of contemporary education practice they lecture, providing content and grading papers. They teach as they were taught in a system that prizes paper publications and revenue generation, not which celebrates and expects innovative teaching. So presented with, and trained in the use of, social media/software spaces and applications the focus is on two things: content and assessment. Wikis look good (if kept private) because they allow PDF uploads or easy authoring of lecture notes and are used for such until the users is lured away by LMS assessment and grading admin functionality. Blogs and podcasts (if kept private) might be used to post concepts. FlickR is used to illustrate course content (we’ll use the work of others but not put anything back). And that’s as far as it goes until told that you can do all of those things together in one place via the LMS and its automatically private – no risk, no exposure.
The few that do embrace new applications and approaches I suspect live that life of openness and collaboration. They gravitate towards technology that supports their core values; that position learners to embrace (or at least be exposed to) what they themselves are passionate about; a different way of living.

How can the minority reculture the majority? Should they?  The developers of collaborative/ social applications and open content, and the few that can model effective use, are change agents. They are laying at the feet of the masses a new approach to life and learning and working but what does it take to value what is offered in its entirety?

CC FlickR image by anmuell

I ran a digital storytelling workshop this week for the first time in several years.

I have to say I spent time pondering whether a) the emergence of easy to capture and distribute video had superseded the digital story medium (largely still images + voice over) and b) the extent to which the digital story methodology had reached mainstream in a learning facilitator’s toolkit.

I remember clearly my first exposure to the concept. I was sitting at an ACAL conference keynote by Glynda Hull with adult literacy/ESL colleagues late 2001. For 10 years I’d been experimenting with the means to engage learners the education system had failed and to give them a voice in a world of written text. It was one of those aha moments. Exploration of the concept was pivotal in my 2003 FLL research and travels (including visits to Daniel Meadows and the Capture Wales project). Despite early frustrations with the lack of easy to use non-MAC software, we’ve seen technology increasingly become more accessible and supportive of multimodal user-generated content. In this weeks workshop, being in a Windows environment, we were using Photo Story 3 (with recommendations to progress to Premiere Elements). I continue to find PS3 very clunky and limiting but it remains a good entry point for non-techies.

The 15 participants yesterday came from all areas of VET- hospitality, business studies, adult basic ed, English language, child studies etc. The broad mix enabled some fruitful brainstorming around potential uses.

In addition to my planned agenda (largely hands on in PS3) a few things arose and were covered. I’ll build these into future sessions:

• how to identify image size
• how to resize images in Photoshop
• how to create plain coloured title slides/images
• how to find creative commons images in Flickr using FlickR CC
• how to document image attributions

It was a great session. The digital storytelling methodology has not lost its appeal;it still has a place in an engaging learning design.

Thanks to SWSI and the group for making it possible. My slides used are available in slideshare.