e-learning librarian’s toolbox

From the Townsville Bulletin on Tuesday:

Nogood form

WHAT is it with the impossibly difficult forms which have to be filled out by apprentices and/or their parents claiming reimbursement for TAFE study courses? Surely these forms can be made simpler. I don’t know how apprentices living in remote indigenous communities go about claiming their entitlements. It’s as though TAFE is deliberately trying to to intimidate people into not claiming what is their due.

Ouch!

Simon Brown, a TAFE QLD Stonemasonry teacher, is doing some interesting things with spycam glasses.

Check out
http://cafechat.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/recording-pov-video-in-the-training-workshop-3/

Anyone seen this site? Students can review courses and schools/universities.

http://www.hotcourses.com.au/australia/home.html

http://www.hotcourses.com.au/australia/university/bremer-institute-of-tafe-australia/115254/uni.html

Internet filtering is a hot issue at the moment. Site blocking in QLD TAFE has been bad for a while.

I especially like some of the comments, especially the second one:

“The education of students MUST include training on how to make a decision based on their moral compass and community expectations.

The more we “shield ” our children – the less likely they will be able to make considered and appropriate decisons in adult life.

We need to “teach” them how to identify right from wrong / how to identify good from bad / what to do when they don’t know an answer. “

Fremont Public Library District’s Web 2.0 page is interesting, especially the Mobile page, though I think as the term Web 2.0 goes out of favour they might like to rename it to something more meaningful, especially the link name. Not everyone would know what “FPLD 2.0″ means.

This Daily Herald article gives a bit of a summary of how mobile technology is being used in academia and libraries.

“A growing number of Americans are wireless and mobile and are participating in a whole range of digital activities on the go, away from home or work…

Since libraries are in the information business, among other things, many are already adapting library services to the small screen. As usual in library innovation, academics are leading the way. “

I’m not sure our Australian TAFE students are as tech-dependent though. Still, it would be worth looking into.

What an interesting partnership, and a great way to provide essential training to the community.

“YOU can learn just about anything at TAFE and now, thanks to the New England Credit Union, you can school up in Armidale on sustainable living.

The credit union sponsorship means that the sustainable living workshops at the Armidale TAFE campus will be free to attend for members of the community.”

Details in this Armidale Express article.

NCVER announces new adult literacy resource wiki:

“Generating and sharing ideas within the adult language, literacy and numeracy community is the aim of a new wiki developed by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER).

www.adultliteracyresource.edu.au brings together key messages from the Adult Literacy Research Program (ALRP), a comprehensive body of research that explores a wide range of literacy and numeracy topics.”

This blog post confirms my experiences with my e-learning project that rapid e-learning development tools are a life-saver, especially for quickly knocking up prototype systems.

“A current project of ours has us collecting PowerPoint slides and voice narrations from doctors in a particular specialty. They’re submitting their presentations to a small panel who will choose the best ones, which will be presented live before an audience of doctors in the same specialty.

With 12 submissions total, we’ve ended up with 78 minutes of  what could be argued is elearning content for doctors. Total production time? 11.9 hours. Run the math and it comes to 9.15 hours’ development time per hour of finished “seat time,” roughly 9:1. Compare this to high production value, interactive elearning, which generally takes 200-300 hours per hour (200:1 to 300:1).

So you could argue this rapid elearning takes less than 5% as much effort as “regular” elearning.”

What a great idea and innovative use of a library in the evenings. Can’t see too many of our teachers giving up their evenings though.

“Starting in December 2008, the district began hosting monthly Learning At Night (LAN) parties for its teachers in the Sutherland secondary library… The district is trying to incorporate Web 2.0 tools, such as Skype and blogging, into the classroom in a way that benefits both its teachers and students.”

Full article.

Queensland has the cheapest TAFE fees!

This AdelaideNow article says:

SOUTH Australians are paying the highest TAFE fees in the nation.

The maximum fee for TAFE SA students is $2050 for State Government-subsidised courses.

An analysis by the parliamentary library for the Opposition has found the next highest fee was $1456 in NSW, followed by $1100 in WA, $990 in Tasmania and $887 in Victoria. The cheapest fee was $776 in Queensland.

We’ll have to start promoting this.