Closing summaries: Patsy

Here are my reflections as a contribution to a closing summary for the
online course. We have kept the course 'open' for the promised extra week
to enable final reflections to be submitted despite the downtime of
Brookes Virtual. In fact I extended this though will be closing off the
interaction this coming weekend so it will be 'read only' thereafter
though still accessible if you want to retrieve any material or
discussions until 31 July.

Lou and I do appreciate all your contributions to the course processes and
products as well as to the final reflections. I am attaching a word cloud
of the final reflections as a visual summary of participant summaries.
'Time' /'demands' 'pressure' are there reflecting some of the difficulties
that were faced in the short course with the presentation of a range of
new tools as is 'group' to represent that aspect of the course activity
across time zones and regions. There too are 'learning', 'useful', 'like'
and 'thanks' which we hope reflect the value that you take forward into
your practice.

From a tutor's perspective this course also throws up some challenges. One
is that much of the activity and exploration takes place outside of
Brookes Virtual in the online social spaces of blogs, wikis, Twitter etc.
Thus one is at times uncertain if participants are busy 'out there' or may
have left the course altogether (!) Also sometimes negotiating a balance
between providing encouragement for climbing the learning curve vs. being
too intrusive for those who simply want to be left to get on in their own
style can be tricky ;-) However it was rewarding to see the enthusiasm
expressed despite some of the hurdles encountered.

It seems that there was agreement that for your own practice that you
would focus on fewer tools with clarification of purpose and
appropriateness for the task e.g. blogs for individual reflections, wikis
for collaborative or co-operative work, Twitter for quick access to links
and comments. Learning and managing so many new tools in this short course
certainly reminds us of the need and importance of careful design of
learning activities.

Using social software in the public domain comes with its own challenges
in terms of privacy and security issues. As a result some of you have
decided for the time being to keep with the social software tools
available within your institutions' preferred virtual learning environment
applications.

Then there is also the - often frustrating/time-consuming - need to
register for different applications and the resultant mushrooming of
passwords and having to remember them all.

I was excited to see some potential solutions of this aspect while
watching the (some parts quite 'techie' but nevertheless most interesting)
demo of the introduction of Google WAVE that will be released later this
year . This is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web-
if you want to see the full 1 hour 20 mins demo it is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ

What I appreciated of Google WAVE- apart from the concept - was that
everything takes place within the browser, with flexible and comprehensive
inclusion of different activities e.g. email, instant messages,
collaborative writing, photo sharing, instant ' as you type' translation
(40 languages) etc etc . With the whole more than the sum of its parts
plus it looks like ONE login - dare we hope? -
plus the capacity to change access rights on the fly as to who can see
what within a 'conversation'. Now THAT's smart technology and with
potential as a tool for use in learning and teaching scenarios.

Another issue with Web 2.0 technologies in that new applications are being
introduced on a regular basis making it quite a challenge to keep up with
what is out there. Think how much time we spent on only the few that we
incorporated within this course. It is one reason I like to follow certain
practitioners in the field of learning with new technology on e.g.
Twitter. They are keeping an eye on new developments and thus saving me
time by providing short links there that I can quickly access and check
out linked reviews, related blogs etc. All helps to lighten the load!

Quite a few of you referred to the value of experiencing the course in a
'student' role as a reminder of what your own students experience. Always
a useful reminder! I think for some of you this was not an easy role to
adopt as there was some reluctance to admit and share difficulties
encountered with some preferring to do that in emails outside of the
course. There was also very little activity in the Cafe discussion space
despite that this is usually quite a busy discussion area where
participants share interests and swap emails and other contact details for
post-course follow up and communication. I suspect that the course timing
in terms of your work commitments and scheduling deadlines made this type
of engagement more difficult in terms of available time.

Despite the time factor it is very rewarding to see that some of you are
keeping up with your blogging about learning issues. I look forward to
keeping up with your postings.

For those who would prefer to provide shorter and anonymous feedback on
the course there is a questionnaire about the course available from the
course 'Assessments' menu. All feedback is appreciated and helps us to
make adjustments to future course presentations.

Thank you all for your participation in the course. I wish you well in
your learning and teaching practice and hope we meet again in the future
either online or face to face.

kind regards
--p@ c