Presenting at ULearn 2010

I was fortunate to be able to present at ULearn this month and really enjoyed the experience. As I am currently in Edinburgh this required additional organisation and communication with the organisers of the Conference. I have just completed my Presenters Survey providing feedback to the ULearn organisers and uploaded my Presenters Materials which finishes the process for me for 2010 and I am happy to say that the entire thing was a complete delight from start to finish.

The process began with my submission to present at the Conference on behalf of my school, Shelly Park, and the Eastnet Cluster we are part of. I was very happy when my submission was accepted and prepared my presentation with the idea of presenting in person in Christchurch. That changed when I had to return to Scotland but as I was still very keen to present I contacted the organisers and asked if it might be possible to still present via skype. Sherry Crisp was very helpful and supportive and assured me that this was very possible. I decided to first present at the Eastnet Cluster Expo to share my findings with other professionals in our Cluster and also as part of my preparation for ULearn.

Presenting at the Eastnet Expo (click here for the link to relevant post) allowed me to prepare for potential technical difficulties at ULearn.  I attempted to avoid these by giving my co-presenter, Ruth Aw, a copy of my Powerpoint Presentation along with the video clips I wanted to include and the handout for the attendees so that she had that with her in Christchurch.  We practised skyping several times and I successfully shared my screen and maintained effective audio and video contact throughout.  However, when it came to presenting the workshop the share the screen facility dropped off.  Despite re-starting and logging out of skype I couldn't correct the problem.  I continued with the audio and talked Ruth through the slideshow by asking her to click onto the next slide or advance the animations to accompany what I was saying.  This must have been a bit distracting for the audience.  I think it would have been helpful to have given Ruth my presenter's notes with the slides numbered beside each paragraph and then she would have been able to progress the slides without me.  Something for me to consider next time!

I found the audience absolutely fantastic and was thrilled that they had several questions for me at the end.  I hope that some will be interested in continuing the conversation either by commenting on this blog or in the Discussion section of the wiki.  The feedback about the workshop was very positive and some people said they were inspired to trial something similar within their own school which was encouraging.  It would be great to hear how they are getting on and I am happy to answer any questions or queries anyone has about the process.

Eastnet Cluster Expo 2010

I was fortunate to present at the Eastnet Expo last Wednesday. View the slideshow and supporting materials below. Despite some technical hiccups I thoroughly enjoyed presenting using skype and the share your screen facility. The idea behind my workshop was to share my recent journey into Action Research with other professionals.

Digikidz Workshop for Eastnet Expo 2010

View more presentations from Shelly Park School.

In organising this workshop I reflected upon my experience from last year's workshop eLearning for Little People at the 2009 Eastnet Cluster Expo and tried to progress from that experience.  I took a different approach when preparing my slideshow this year where I incorporated some aspects of Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds and also video examples to share with the audience.  The workshop began smoothly with the setting the scene clip Piano Stairs from http://thefuntheory.com/ :



The idea behind this being that when learning is fun, children are engaged.  Shortly afterwards the audio started fluctating on skype which was disappointing.  Possibly it was a bit ambitious to expect to be able to share my screen and talk for 50 minutes without any problems.  So we quickly went to plan B: I rang the classroom that the workshop was being held in at Elm Park School and spoke on speakerphone.  Once we'd turned down the volume on both my laptop and Belinda's, who was helping me at the NZ end, from this end it there was a bit of an echo but not at the other end which is a relief!  Fortunately this didn't mean I ended up running over time and I was pleased I didn't get flustered, probably because I'd already thought through all the possible problems and was prepared!  There's a lot to be said for practise and preparation before presenting.

I hope the attendees at the workshop found it worthwhile.  I am excited to see if anyone adds to the Discussion section of my wiki and have created a How to sheet to support them to do this.

XMind - Mindmapping Tool

I downloaded and used the XMind tool to help me plan out how to structure my presentation for the Eastnet Cluster Expo and hopefully ULearn 2010.  I am sure other things will occur to me as I go through the process but I am happy to have a plan.

Voicethread

Thanks to Di's Blog for this link http://voicethread4education.wikispaces.com/ I have worked with several colleagues this Term interested in voicethread and looking for purposeful ways to use this web 2.0 tool in their classrooms.

Thanks to voicethread for this presentation on web 2.0 tools which has some good ideas:




Thanks also to The Fischbowl blog for building on my thinking further about how to best support my colleagues with this helpful link about which tools could be used for what which is sometimes all teachers need to get their creatives ideas flowing! http://sites.google.com/site/ahslearningecology/tools

Eastnet Cluster Share 20.10.09

Just participated in the very worthwhile Cluster Share at EPS last Tuesday. Our ICT team leader KP put together an excellent and humorous powerpoint to share our journey thus far with the Contract and to look to the future. As she was on leave I was operating the slideshow. It was a bit nerve racking as we had quite a challenging presentation being the only school to ask for audience participation using laptops with an internet link to scribblar. That was definately one of my favourite parts even although it was a bit tricky to get all set up, thanks AS and BJ, but I think it was worth it. It was interesting to see that during the first task the adults got very involved in testing the capabilities of the tool without realising their ideas would be shown on the big screen! This illustrates things to be aware of when using this cool web 2.0 tool in your classroom! Thanks to JS and NB and the Senior Management team for helping hand out the laptops to people. (I will put the links to the scribblar rooms on soon but cannot view these at school at the moment!)

I am keen to use scribblar with a teaching group and some roving laptops and am looking at how I will incorporate this into my programme this Term. I might try splitting the class in half and myself and my teacher aide work with a group each to type their ideas into the room. Watch this space as I will no doubt have a few things to say after I've tried it!

I was also interested to note that all of the schools showed video in their presentations. Waimakoia have flip mimos and we have a couple of slightly inferior quality flip videos which the children love using as they are so simple. We did discover during the putting together of our presentation that the zoom quality and sound quality are not great on our flip videos and KP and I looked into the flip mimo at the IWB conference. However, I did notice that a lot of staff and students in all the presentations seemed quite nervous or unsure of being videoed and I am keen to find out this time next year what changes there will be in this area. KP and I definately want to create a quiet space which could perhaps be a media room which is not affected by bells ringing etc as it's pretty tricky trying to find a quiet, filming space with no interuptions here at the moment!

It was really neat to see what other schools have been doing but I must admit to being a bit preoccupied with making sure I had everything all set up for our part to properly pay attention! Congratulations to all the staff and students involved everyone can be really proud of their efforts. Thanks to EPS for hosting a great event and I look forward to the next one!