Out of the Swamp

It has been quite some time since I put an entry here. It is now March 2007 and my continuation of the wiki project has begun. I have been given a new role – that of e-learning champion and more hours so I am as busy as ever. However, I have been given the task of introducing to or extending the knowledge of (whichever fits) technology to Diploma of Community Development students. The class is divided in half according to expertise in technology but as the term progresses we have had to make a few changes to better accommodate all the needs of the students and of the other tutor involved.

So far I have carried out a technology skills audit on the students and am pleasantly surprised to see the level of expertise. Those in the advanced group have looked at PowerPoint, and Digital Storytelling and have boned up on some of the wordprocessing details they may have been a bit rusty on. The others have spent a bit longer on Word and a couple progressed to PowerPoint. I set up a wiki called (very creatively I don’t think!) dipcomdev. Now everyone has been introduced to the wiki and been shown how to log on and edit the page. I am happy to see that several of them have managed to find their way in and either put up a comment in the discussion section or add something to one of the pages. A good start I think. One of the best things about all this is the heightened enthusiam of students as they learn new skills. The one student who was the least skilled with technology, managed to be the first to add something to the wiki. She was very thrilled and excited and so was I. I uploaded some smarties for her as a prize!

Next class we will be continuing with wikis and discussing how we can utilise the wiki for projects etc. Next week, we will look at edublogs so that students can get a feel for journalling the life of their project. I am still looking at ways for students to fully utilise the wiki so my EdNA groups have been invaluable here. There are so many links to look at, I am finding it diffcult to fit them in and my brain is nearly splitting with information overload. However, I recognise this symptom now and am trying to organise myself so that I can sift out the useless info and retain the useful.