Just a quick post to say that the presentation I used is below and if you want to see the link to the suggested tools from the kind people in my twitter network you can see them here.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AoTf6qWZwPKXdHgxalRwazdEWG5YOURMWXg5QWJpenc&hl=en
I’m running a session at 9.30am on Tuesday morning (29th December) on E-tools, E-learning and E-Communication for everyone and I need your help!
The session is being run at Limmud conference, an amazing and diverse Jewish learning conference. I’m hoping to share with people at the conference some great online tools they can use in their lives. I don’t know who will turn up at the session but as well as interested individuals there will no doubt be teachers, educators, rabbis and communal leaders.
There’s two ways you can help
1. Fill in this short online Google Form
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?cfg=true&formkey=dHgxalRwazdEWG5YOURMWXg5QWJpenc6MA
The results will be available to view at
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AoTf6qWZwPKXdHgxalRwazdEWG5YOURMWXg5QWJpenc&hl=en
2. Join our flashmeeting at 9.30am, pop in and say hello and share a bit of your knowledge to a captive audience!
http://flashmeeting.e2bn.net/fm/cb4639-8214
3. Tweet me your favourite e-tool – send a tweet to @nstone and I’ll collate them together.
Many thanks and I look forward to seeing people online tomorrow morning!
We started with Flashmeeting where Lisa and Mary said hi and told us about twitter and flashmeeting. (You can view the replay of the flashmeeting here). This is a summary and doesn’t include the great discussion and explanation we had at the same time.
Flashmeeting is available to UK schools though if you ask them nicely for a worthy cause they may allow you to use it. Other options are available – if you know of any do comment below.
Lisa mentioned a tool called voki and a few other tools were mentioned.
Next we looked at Twitter. www.twitter.com used by both Lisa (@lisibo) and Mary (@moodlehotpotato). I’m also on twitter as @nstone.
Next was blogging – we looked at www.posterous.com www.wordpress.com and spoke about www.blogger.com
Next wikis – we looked at www.pbwiki.com and www.wetpaint.com and mentioned sites.google.com
We had a quick run through google docs for creating documents and form docs.google.com
We finished off with a quick look at two virtual environments, First Class (commercial paid for service) and Moodle. For anyone wanting to try out moodle ninehubs.com offers free basic moodle pages.
We had a chat about what is best to create a basic webpage and wikis and blogs both came up as simple solutions.
Finally we watched the shift happens video!
Thanks for all the wonderful contributions both online and in the room – please keep contributing and let us know what you’ve tried, succeeded and even failed with!
Good luck.
All resources from the Limmud session “A beginners guide to Israeli politics” are up online at http://needlestone.com/limmud/politics.htm
Additionally as the February election nears it’s worth keeping an eye on Newspapers www.jpost.com and www.haaretz.com who will no doubt publish guides and advice.
A bit of a cheeky blog post or just making the most of my online network?
In about 6 hours from now I’m running a session described in our conference book as
The presenter will show some amazing and free e-tools that you can use for learning, teaching, networking, community building and communicating in your life, shuls, schools and organisations. If you’ve examples to show off please bring them along to share. Laptops welcome but optional. All levels welcome.
Below is a summary of the session of 28th December from Limmud Conference
Participants:
1x school e-learning person
1x organiser of business e-learning systems
1x open university professor using e-learning
1x enthusiastic user
1x English teacher in Israel
1x Director of Jerusalem cultural institute
Presentation of Ideas to get started
On limmud:
Streaming sessions live internationally
Resources from sessions (eg powerpoints)
Pre-session reading/resources
After Limmud:
Specific online discussions following on from sessions
Recorded (video or audio) sessions online
Year Round:
Online one off sessions video (webinars) or chat based
Series of online classes
Online chavruta discussion
taste of limmud discussions
Online Conference:
E-limmud one or two day worldwide online conference. Could be available in a range of time zones big or small.
Comments:
people don’t have to travel and it can be interactive
infrastructure – could be expensive and complicated but commercial stuff is available
copyright and licensing issues? Need presenters permission.
Lots of religious stuff online – not so much secular – limmud could fit in the non-religious side
Why do it? Need clear rationales and objectives.
People pick and choose different things – having a range of unexpected things online would be good recreating the limmud experience – interaction, creating a community.
Extending current online groups
building into what already exists – feeding limmud experiences in currently available networks
extending Limmud not competing
you go to great sessions on limmud and for an hour create a community, then at the end of the session your community ends and that’s it- a way of continuing what is going on.
Using a system of blogs, updating blogs before a session for “pre-reading” and then after the session on a blog.
Need to make sure it’s adapted to everyone. Keep it simple where possible.
Monthly online event. Webinar one off to try it out.
Website is very static – alpine plant website is more interesting as it’s updated regularly!
environmentally friendly
a series of milestones needed:
Situation in Israel would be of interest to many
Open university short course template – takes time but create something simple could be used.
Accessibility – print button available
webinars – what are the best presenters. What would they be willing to do online.
Taste of limmud
- discussion about this limmud
- Improvements to website to make it more interactive – blog online
Online community
rolling guest bloggers to allow for commenting.
Open University may be interested in collaborating long term but there is a way to go before Limmud is ready!
This post is a little out of sync to the rest of my blog but I hope it may be of interest to regular readers. I’m off from Sunday to Thursday to the annual Limmud conference. It’s quite hard to explain Limmud conference, I’ll try but I recommend reading this recent article from the Guardian education supplement. Limmud is a Jewish conference attended by over 2000 people each year. Though every session in the day is timetabled it’s not all that formal. Anyone can go to any session they choose and anyone can apply to run a session on pretty much anything they want. At the busiest times of day, in one hour, there can be a choice of 30 sessions to go to on anything from Jewish texts to a masterclass with a musician. See here for a random example from this year’s programme. What’s amazing is not just the diversity of learning opportunities and experiences but also the diversity of participants and of course the fact that it is almost entirely organised, every year, by teams of volunteers. The model has now caught on and has been replicated in over 40 communities worldwide. It is also constantly evolving and improving.
My involvement with Limmud each year has been slightly different. This year I’ve volunteered to give a number of sessions. One on e-tools for education and community, one aimed at building an international network of people to work on e-learning for Limmud conference, one on Israeli politics for beginners (a little side interest of mine) and two networking/support sessions for Jewish teachers.
Overall it’s going to be a busy and I hope fun week. I’ll be linking to some of my session resources here. Apologies for regular readers (if there are any!) looking for articles about e-learning in school. I’ll be categorising the short Limmud posts under the category Limmud so feel free to set your RSS readers to ignore them!
