digital lifeboat

Week 2 and 3 have merged somewhat. Took a few days holiday over the school half term as I will not get another break till June now. The crash of gears between the school and uni terms will be difficult throughout this semester and I am having to take pre -emptive action to send disgruntled child away during the two week Easter hols when we are in the middle of assessments. Glad that this next one will be the last holiday I have to study through as I should be able to work around the school hols next year.

Anyway back to business. Getting to grips with the project management software after a couple of abortive attempts, got a solution off. The reading in Software Project Management is very tough going, as it it also in some of E-learning strategies.

I am used to being in sole charge of my own projects which means that I work in a fairly instinctive way, and have had very little time to formalise my planning. I have invented my own systems for large projects such as replacing a computer suite and re allocating the old PCs, or equipping a new part of a building. It will be interesting to see where I have gone wrong if anywhere?

It will also be useful for me to learn from the others, working as part of much larger teams to bring projects to fruition, and see how the theory works in practice.

The E-Learning strategy document.- I am beginning to see this as a natural culmination of each of the coursework elements. I have written nearly 1,000 words on e-learning drivers in my organisation alone. If I have understood this correctly this project should not be too difficult provided I put detailed work into each of the elements as they arise. The task will then be mostly one of editing.

In that context I must investigate further some of the web 2. tools for citations and test them during this semester.

Interesting discussion in Flash meeting tonight. One area discussed was Cultural Change and on the prompting of Amanda looked up Change management. Found some interesting stuff at http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/change-management

which in turn lead on to the CAMEL project looking at building comunities of practice http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/camel

Terry asked the question what element of the strategy document is going to deal with Cultural change. To be explored.

JISC also had an interesting template for looking at change variables and what would happen if you did not or only partly implemented change.

Looking again at ideas for part one assessment.

I have several projects outlined for this next year, I would like to use one of them for this assessment as this would be a win win for the time investment for work and study.

One intial idea was to use the project to develop videoconferencing in school.

 Details here

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/01/11/eelip-unit-project-idea/

This does not involve using a VLE so I am not sure it meets the criteria for an “online distance learning project” or not and need advice on this issue.

Since reading about push and pull, centralised and personalised training programmes in Don Morrison, E-Learning Strategies I have thought about the roll out of training for using Moodle for all the staff at my school. I will be responsible for much of the delivery of this once a timetable has been agreed.

Following the recent classroom based training day for Moodle I am  developing a follow up course in Moodle revising and extending the information covered. I now plan to introduce courses within Moodle for all IT induction information for the school network, e-mail, library system, and adapting teaching resources for uploading to Moodle. I am also developing a specific course for my new IT technician. This could be linked to a building project which is in the planning stages which includes a room with the potential to be used for training.

Began posting into WebCT Vista last night and hit an issue whereby I was timed out after 20 mins. Of course there is no way of knowing that as you merrily write away until you try to post and everything is lost. I was pleased that autosaves are working in this wordpress. I intend to rely on this platform for the time being.

On a little research it appears that there is an issue with WebCT vista and the latest version of Java which I read is not stable in this enviroment. Java caused a great deal of problems with our work in knowledge forum so it is a shame to have it issues straight away this semester.

There are issues with pop up blockers, time settings on pc’s and a host of other minor irritations which might affect the users interaction with webct vista info here

 http://soolin.sunderland.ac.uk/WebCT/Vistawebform.htm