Michael Hanley :: Blog

Hallo
I have uploaded on elgg community site new language pack for Georgian language.
Dear Administrators, please look http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/highlander/read/9324/georgia
and add it to eduspaces too.
Thank you much in advance!!!

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/11/13/week-4-and-5/

Week 4  was working on the research design. It’s been slow going and I felt bogged down and wanting to start work on the course building before I run out of time.

In the middle of all that took a few days “out” by way of a diversion to do a bit more family history research. Anyway as sometime happens, when busy at work and study, a ”mental break”  renews one’s energy to get back to the task at hand.

So to week 5 and a bit of excitement the first tangiable object resulting from the project, the results of my training needs survey are in.

Here the beauty of using Moodle comes into its own. The survey was done on line and the built in reporting tool has already done all the analysis work for me and provides the results in graphical and numeric form.

 

Comparing this with the effort of the last piece of research I did on the pupils on paper I recall the hassle and inaccuracy, double checking, inputting all the data into excell and then figuring out the correct equations to get a meaningful result.

 

Granted it took me several hours to build the questionairre, but it was a fraction of the time I spent on other recent paper based surveys. The last time this survey was issued the results were looked at briefly but never analised at all statistically.

 

All I had to do this time was observe the number of participents entries rising until after a couple of e-mail reminders all but one of my study group complied. I deliberately did not look at the results until they were all in having learned from my previous research that the full picture often looks different from the interim result.

 

Here is an example showing the way the results are presented for a rating question.

  

I found that by scanning through the 16 questions I could quickly identify the gaps in knowledge, and those areas where a whole topic was not well understood. For a busy teacher with several hundred pupils this must be of great benefit.

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

Has the ability to post by email been removed? I've used it in the past, but not for ages & was trying to test it - and had forgotten what random address I'd set up. I can't find where I entered the details, though, now.

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/10/29/week-3-time-constraints-and-

Terry King highlights an issue which affects my project in her paper “Some Ethical Issues Arising in Educational Research”. Here she describes a problem of researching in the field of education where the research subjects may only be accessible for a ‘one-shot’ opportunity to sample the target group.

The “one shot” I am mindful of is the next INSET day in January 2009. This will be my only opportunity to use some of the schools directed training time to get subjects to access and evaluate a course in Moodle.

The short lead time to this deadline means I have to look at ways of accelerating the design process in order to have some material ready for evaluation. A timely blog post by Michael Hanley leads me to The Rapid Guide- How to Rapidly Identify Training needs, by Stephen Walsh of Kineo. Here I have a perspective from industry from which I can extract some tools.

The guide outlines three methods of speedily gathering initial information, surveys, focused interviews and virtual workshops. 

I already have an assessment of training needs survey in progress. Interviews with key staff could be arranged. Virtual workshops would not be an option for me as staff are not yet in a culture of working on-line.

Having gathered my initial data I need to work out what my criteria will be for deciding which courses to implement first.

Using the survey I expect to discover a wide range of potential topics for course material, and give lower priority to those which are not of immediate use to my sample group. Some topics will obviously stand out by being relevant to a higher percentage of potential users.

The Rapid Guide identifies a number of criteria for ranking training opportunities which would be relevant to my study. These include, alignment with strategic objectives of the organisation, external deadlines, return on investment, compliance driven requirements.

I will be returning to the “Rapid Guides” again to see what perspectives inform the different stages of design and implementation.

Huge bank of free resources available at

http://www.kineo.com/elearning-reports.html

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

Eduspaces seems to have a flaw.  You can only add to it.  How can I delete a community that I created?

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/10/25/week-2-research-methods-refl

Week 2 a bit of a blow out due to illness. A lot on at work managed to hold things together there but had to drop the study ball. Have half term week 3 to move forwards again.

Have more or less finalised my informed consent letter, hope to get this delivered and signed during the inset day at the beginning of term. Lots of discussion and thought about all the info that the study subjects need to have to give informed consent.

 

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/10/17/reflections-on-week-1/

As I have been working on my draft specification, I have been thinking around the subject of how to engage the motivation of the teacher students on the courses I will be developing.

In my report last term and in the project specification, are lots of questions which focus on identifying the problem to be solved. The answers are biased towards the technical, and practical issues. Work is already in progress to identiy the gaps in knowledge that the training materials need to address.

There needs to be a corresponding Why? to the What of all the above.

I want to make sure I give attention to the motivational areas, the needing and wanting area as in Race. If the teachers gain a few skills, but do not gain any concepts which they find personally relevant to their own teaching I feel I will not have served them well.

I have been thinking in general terms about the introduction areas of the courses. Here is where I think I should focus on motivation, by making sure that the relevance of the topic in question to their own teaching and learning is explored.

Christopher Sessums extensive research into teacher education leads him to this observation

“I have seen teachers absolutely panic over having to learn how an application works (unlike their students who willingly push buttons to see what happens) rather than looking ahead to see how such a medium might be useful.”

He also askes the question

“Is it possible or realistic to expect teachers who do not want to enhance their basic computer skills to be compelled to do so without any incentives? What’s in it for them?”

Cultural Implications of Social Software Teaching and Learning, Ready or Not

http://eduspaces.net/csessums/weblog/144604.html

In his blog post “Web Learning about Web Learning for Teachers”, Terry Anderson notes

But I wish we could learn to spark interest in the most exiting and revolutionary technology ever to be used for formal instruction, in ways that were just a bit more designed to fire the imagination and engagement of users – both as learners and as teachers.

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/09/08/108/

Here is my motivation if any were needed to ensure that the benefits of understanding how to use a particular piece of software or employing a particular tool are stated very explicity in the course materials. Now to think about the means of achieving that.

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

http://carolt.edublogs.org/2008/10/15/research-methods-course-init

As the research methods course gets going so does my preparation. Attempting to organise my research using the Zotero FireFox plug in. As I usually use IE this means setting up another browser and beginning to separate my research and leisure browsing. Not a bad thing perhaps, less confusing and vital as the project rambles on to capture references and reduce the workload on the writing stage. 

Pleased with my initial efforts with Zotero. A quick trip to Amazon puts all the bibliographic info in place and I can get down to attaching notes as I read. I will need to look at ways of backing this up however before I get too carried away!

In Victory posting building up as we get our teeth into the work. Good to hear from everyone again. The course is now reduced somewhat again, but those going on seem determined and ready for the fray.

 

Authored by carolt. Hosted by Edublogs.

Hello.

I'm currently the administrator of an e-learning community available at http://eduspaces.net/cnocml08g1

Once logged in and when I click over the community link, I keep getting the same error and so do the other community users:

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(
    [20452] => Array
        (
            [owner] => 20452
        )

)

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(
    [20452] => Array
        (
            [owner] => 20452"
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We would like to use this community as means of suceeding to achieve oficial school certification for our students. As you can see it would be of vital importante to solve this issue, could you assist us?

Thanks in advance,

Helder Touças

Since about Friday no one can see my blog, including myself when logged in.

http://eduspaces.net/stevelee/weblog

In Firefox we get a strange 'redirect loop' error and IE just hangs.

My profile is OK http://eduspaces.net/stevelee but messages also so dead so I'm wondering if a rogue message has caused it though I have not got a notification email.

Can this be fixed for me? Or at least can I get a dump of  my blog as I can't get to that either.