Starting on mLearning pilot

Nick Ford & I put in a joint application to the CPIT Foundation for funds to run the mLearning pilot. Our bid has been successful, so it is now time to put our pilot plans in place.

As a forerunner, the local paper did a write up about the project. The main goals of the pilot are to test out the various parts of our mlearning project with a cohort of first year apprentice bakers. It will be a bringing together of all the things we have learnt thus far with the various trials reported on this blog.

A couple of interesting items which I will explore in the next couple of weeks before adding into the pilot as possible eportfolio repository alternatives are:-

• Comic Life (via Thomas Cochrane’s blog that points to Joao Rivera’s blog on using comic life to chronicle boat building
• Mahara, the NZ open source eportfolio site and
• Slideshare, since a few apprentices have started to use powerpoint for their year three portfolios on gateaux / torten and breads.
  

It will be exciting times ahead!

NCVER conference - preparing teachers for elearning and elearning mentors

A couple of stimulating days at the NCVER conference in Alice Springs this week. There was a good collection of papers on various vocational education issues. Of note for this blog were a paper on web based conferencing (which also covered the need to prepare teachers for using the technology) and a paper on setting up a elearning culture within an institution (using elearning mentors).

Both of these papers remind me of the need to continually do the ground work before exposing tutors to the razzmatazz of Web 2.0 and elearning tools that I now take for granted. Food for thought as per usual.

Will extend more on the above when I get back to home.