3 online meetings this week

As part of the second phase of our project to explore with more people ways of creating their own connected learning communities we are having 3 short online meetings this week: Today Tuesday 31st at 7pm, tomorrow Wednesday 1st November at 12 noon and Thursday 2nd November at 1pm.

Please feel free to refer any beginners to online learning.

People will need a microphone headset and go to http://webconf.det.nsw.edu.au/omn/
Enter as a guest and write in the name you want to be known by during the session.

Next week we will be needing your help for the last stage of the project to write a paper on what needs to happen in order to make this kinds of informal communications accessible to more educators.

Online Meeting Today

We'll be having two short (30 minute) online sessions today at 1pm and 7pm (AEST) using Breeze to help people learn how to set up their own connected learning communities (see http://clcommunity.wikispaces.com/).

If you haven't tried the online conferencing platform Breeze (which TAFENSW is trialling) this would be a good opportunity for you to tune in from your office, classroom or home and say hello.

Plug in your microphone headset and go to http://webconf.det.nsw.edu.au/omn/
Enter as a guest and write in the name you want to be known by during the session.

Today we will be looking at how to "tweak" the sidebar of your blog to create links to the blogs of people in your class or personal learning network and (if we get to it) how to create a blogroll using Bloglines.

Look forward to seeing you online.

Wendy

Modelling Networked Learning

As you all know Sean has worked really hard to set up some great resources for the connected learning community but it order for us to really give the concept a fair go we need your help urgently.

Diana Khabbaz and I are presenting about the CLC on Friday and it would help us to demonstrate how it works if you could:

1) Post the address of the RSS feed of your personal web presence on the CLC members' page - http://clcommunity.wikispaces.com/members

2) Put a link to the CLC wiki http://clcommunity.wikispaces.com/ and the CLC blog
http://clcommunity.blogspot.com/ on your personal web presence.

3) Create a bloglines account and subscribe to the CLC blog, http://clcommunity.blogspot.com/ the del.icio.us feed and any other blogs - both CLC members and others - that interest you. You won't know if a new member joins unless you are subscribed to the CLC blog OR unless you embed the code for a members blogroll into your online presence.

4) Put a blogroll in your blog by using the bloglines blogroll feature. These instructions could help.

http://clcommunity.blogspot.com/2006/09/using-bloglines-to-display-blogrolls.html -

5) Occasionally comment on the posts of other people in the community.

I will be walking peoplefrom the OMN through the process of creating RSS feeds and using Bloglines tonight Tuesday at 7pm and 8pm using Breeze:http://webconf.det.nsw.edu.au/omn/
login as a guest.

If anyone is free to drop in and show us how you use RSS feeds you would be very welcome.

All good wishes,

Wendy

THE CLCOMMUNITY ENTERS ITS NEXT PHASE

First of all I'd like to thank Sean for the fantastic job he has done in setting up all of the resources and creating a model of how to set up a connected learning community. He is now stepping back from the project and handing over to Diana Khabbaz and myself as we move the project into its next phase.

For a number of years I’ve been setting up learning communities using online journals but I feel that the CLC model offers something far more sophisticated- if we can get people past the twin obstacles of lack of time and mastering the basic skills.

Over the next few weeks a few of use are going to be taking the model of the connected learning community and showing teachers fairly new to online learning and groups of students how to set up their own small connected learning communities.The one thing I have realized is that for the CLC model to work there has to be an immediate context and benefit from making connection that outweighs the time and frustration of mastering what for teachers is a steep learning curve.

Diana, Steph and I have been working with a group of 35 mainly beginners at Sydney Institute and as their “course” ends our aim is to show them how to use the non-hierarchical participatory CLC model to set up a network with family and friends, work colleagues and students.

We will be offering some very basic online workshops on Tuesday nights (in the old OMN timeslot) and at other times by request on how to create RSS feeds using Bloglines, how to tweak your blog template to include a blogroll, and how to deliver Del.icio.us feeds to your blog or Moodle.

Please let me know in the response section if you’re available to participate (either as mentor or mentee) using the Breeze platform and preferred times.