And it Begins...

Student-Directed Inquiry has begun for 2009 and students have some great project ideas - more on that later... I'm team teaching the course this year with Heather Banks and we will also be using the skills of Dirk Koudstaal who I taught with last year.

This year I've been using SMS directly to student mobiles from my desktop - all in one batch - and including a link to a Google Site I set up to provide course info until everyone is registered in Moodle. Having somewhere to save information that doesn't require registration is proving very useful as new students continue to join the class so I may keep using it.

I've decided to keep posting in last year's journal so people can see what's happened before. Over the next few weeks I'll add new pictures and links so that it becomes the 2009 class journal :-)

Yesterday half the class of 25 students met to hear about the course and talk about their project ideas. All the slides, audio and handouts are now on the class Moodle (for students only). I've also uploaded the slides and some video to the web so that it can be shared on this journal.



There probably isn't much point in showing the video - it's better to see clear slides and hear the audio - but I'll add one anyway.



Tomorrow we will meet the second half of the class... and hopefully the IT issues that have prevented students from using email and any Web 2.0 tools on campus will have been resolved.

Some students have started their activity logs using Twitter and as well as following them I've collected everyone together using Twitter100. I hope to see the whole class on Twitter - with regular updates - within a week.. Nudge... Nudge... :-)

Birds Eye Views

Sometimes the best laid plans... WORK!

Although some students have been a little frustrated with the first week of classes with multiple registrations/passwords/emails... it's starting to come together - well for me at least :-)

With all students in Gmail I can see who is online, hover over names and see faces, initiate chat, organise groups... Great for matching names and faces for the 50 new students I have...


With all students in Twitter I get an over-view of class activity - and easily click to read individual 'activity logs'. This will also enable me to gauge participation and levels of engagement.


With all students in Moodle I can see who has accessed tasks, viewed resources and submitted assignments... and MUCH more.


With all students in 43Things RSS'ed to Google Reader I can keep track of each person's learning goals and targets...


Now that these are set up I can sit back and relax while online services and RSS do all the work... OK maybe not... but at least I can now realistically work on the personalised learning and teaching while the ICTs look after the data management side of things.

In the Dark?

The 40 Interactive Media and Digital Project students who sat in a darkened theatre today were hopefully enlightened about the aims of this new course - and how we will manage learning that is both personalised and flexible. The half hour fast-paced presentation was an example of one way that students will meet in physical space... although most of the presentation was about how we will meet in online spaces.



We began with a look at a stunning machinima production by Travis. Love Harvest was filmed in The SIMS2 and won second prize in the international SIMS99 competition. I have subscribed to The_Enigmartist's (Travis) RSS feed to make sure I don't miss his future productions... BTW checkout Dwayne - very funny!

The PowerPoint explained the purpose and thinking behind the Student-Directed Inquiry course - a new TQA syllabus designed to stimulate learning skills and ways of thinking for work, study and life in the 21st century. (PowerPoint with notes - click/hover top left corner icon on each page - for those with access to our Moodle.)

I introduced some of the online services that we will use to help us keep the learning personalised and flexible. After the session students moved to computers to register for Twitter, Google Reader and 43Things.

Dirk and I then spoke to individual and small groups about their project ideas. Some people have definite ideas about what they want to achieve and others are still thinking... which is fine.

One thing is known... the course will be challenging for both students and teachers! Hopefully after today though we are all a bit less in the dark :-)