Teaching without powerpoint - Using a website creation tool

There's lots to reflect on when you teach.  Rarely do we get a chance or have the inclination to do this fully.   For my role as a Learning Technologist in a Higher Education institution (Institute of Education, London, UK), I don't do a massive amount of teaching.  There is some but mostly the help and advice I provide is done informally in one-to-one meetings.  Anyway, I want to reflect on some teaching I did recently as I'm looking to improve and develop this particular session.

On Tues, 7th Feb, I ran a session called 21st century tools for teaching and learning.  I've blogged about the planning of this session before if you are interested -  http://tpreskett.blogspot.com/search/label/Web%202.0 .  There's much to reflect on, but I wanted first to think about how I structured and presented it.  The biggest challenge with this session is the amount of different websites I ask the participants to visit throughout the day.  There are lots of different types of tools to demonstrate and practice using.  To facilitate this process I have always create a website to act as the hub for the day.  In the past I've used a social networking facility like http://www.ning.com/ or http://www.grouply.com/.  However, this time I switched to a normal website creation tool.  The reason is that the social networking services are geared towards communication and don't present content particularly well.  As participants weren't really using the communication tools within the sites during the day (despite my encouragement) it seemed preferable to display the content as dynamically as I could using a tool more suited to this task.  I chose http://www.weebly.com/ mainly because I've used it before and it allows for embedded outside tools, videos, documents etc.  So I created a website with a different page for each type of tool I was teaching about:

• Backchannels
• Web 2.0 technologies in education
• Noticeboards
• Word clouds
• Drawing tools
• Mindmapping
• Collaborative bookmarking
• Tool exploration
• Multimedia Posters
• Digital Story-telling
• Choosing an online tool
• Creative Commons/Copyright
• Map Tools
• Timelines
• Game sites
• Quick Feedback tool
• Application first steps

Within each page I had a consistent structure of a short presentation, embedded or linked example and activities.  The activities were setup so that the participants could practice using the tool within a relevant context.  Unfortunately, I can't share this website with you.  It was paid for session so it seems silly to give away for free what others had to pay for.  However, I've duplicated the word cloud page and it's available here if you are interested in seeing how the pages were structured:  http://wordcloudtools.weebly.com/.

Overall, the system worked well.  Some reflections:

- Some of the ICT co-ordinators were interested in the tool I'd used to create the website. 
- I'm not sure the presentations I embedded onto each page were necessary.  It didn't feel quite right presenting from slides in this context and environment.  I would be better served simply talking about the subject matter from memory when I visited each page. 
- Having the weblinks on the relevant pages worked well and made the navigation and structure very clear for all. 
- The website serves as a resource after the session for participants.  They simply revisit the site to download anything relevant and revisit the tools I've highlighted.  They seemed to like that idea.
- I didn't give them much paper as everything was on the site.  Any presentations were added as files to download.
- The activities mostly worked well although I will reflect about specific tool-types in later posts.

Had I used a normal powerpoint I would be forever toggling between the internet and my slides it would have been chaotic.  I can recommend using a free website service like weebly to act as the hub of any workshop you do involving lots of internet based activities. 

Designing and Teaching an Online Course

The title of this post is the title of a consultancy one-day session I ran on 22nd July. Once I'd convinced the client that such a course would be good for their trainers as they looked to develop blended and purely online learning, I relaxed thinking that running it would be simply about bringing everything together from my working practices. This is largely what I did but it was harder than I thought.



To suggest that you can teach everything there is to know about designing and teaching an online course is ridiculous. What to leave out and what to focus on is the challenge. I decided to present via prezi again so that I could create a coherent structure to help participant get a broad picture of events. Using images and much, much more zooming gave me a better quality outcome than previously but it there's still a way to go with my proper use of this canvas presentation tool. The fruits of my labour can be found here: http://prezi.com/4t29bt5r_s7m/designing-and-teaching-an-online-course/. I also did a powerpoint backup with all the same words. This was valuable on the day when I changed the order around somewhat. I've not achieved a neat and tidy framework yet which really justifies the use of prezi quite to the extent I wanted. However, I still think there was added value doing it this way.



The main sections were:



- Strategic decision to make before the design process

- Structural points

- Scaffolding frameworks

- Discussions

- Blogs

- Wikis

- E-portfolios

- Webinars

I organised the bulk of the day around the above 5 communication/collaboration tools. which are common to most VLEs. It wasn't about usability but providing them with example activity types which were context free. For each tool I composed about 12 and presented them on individual small bits of paper. I then had them marry up each activity to a phase in the scaffolding process of the Salmon model as a small group activity (I nearly went with Walmsley's Best practice model). I thought it useful to give them this as a launchpad for discussion or to provide some structure if discussion was struggling. It proved successful in that for the later ones they were less interested in marrying up with scaffolding phases and more interested in talking about the tool and it's possible uses. This is what I wanted and it worked well. I have already agreed with the client that next time we will have the bits of paper laminated and more neatly presented.



In addition to the above, I did a slot on e-facilitation where I presented some actual examples of facilitation in asynchronous discussion and got them to critique. I've done this before and it's worked well both times.



I had a few other subject up my sleeve but only got a chance to do the ones on mindmapping, social bookmarking and glogster. For the latter two it was simply mentioning and showing them. For mindmapping I gave out some guidance and had a discussion but not using the same format as the other tools discussed.



At the end, I had them have a go at structuring a session or course and give them a context they were all familiar with. None of the groups really stuck to this brief but there discussions were still on topic and there was some good good feedback.



Overall, I'm pleased with how things went. But there are bits to work on:



- I wanted a freeness to the discussions around each tool and this is what I got but I should perhaps think about more specific topics to feed back on. I might also abandon the marrying to Salmon stages and get them to do something else in their small groups.

- Everything needs more time. I felt like I was constantly rushing and that's even after I culled a couple of sections.

- Although this deliberately wasn't a hands on practice type workshop, I need to include some look and feel stuff on the tools which some won't have encountered before. For example, I assumed too much with wikis and ended up showing a couple of working examples when it became clear they didn't really know what a wiki was.



If you look at the prezi be aware that like powerpoint each phrase is a launchpad for me to talk around it, I wouldn't recommend presenting from this without knowing the meaning behind everything.

Accelerated learning

It feels like the last few weeks I have experienced accelerated learning. This is mainly because I've had to create a lot of bespoke content for consultancy work lately. In many ways, this is the most rewarding work activity I have. I love to create and in my subject area I feel like I often have a blank canvas on which to draw together my experiences and knowledge. The creation process is about getting the message right - which is about broaching the subject at the right level - the subject being using technology in education.

I've always been a big picture kind of guy and recently I've been bolder in talking about the big picture with clients. This is vital and will never teach again without some reference to this topic. The big picture is basically about how the reality of the educator changes when delivering learning at a distance or through blended learning. When addressing nervous and disorientated educators this is good place to start because it shows empathy with their situation. In addition, I run through the basic arguments for using learning technologies. This is important because it forces them to reflect on why their company or educational institution is going down this road. The answer to the "why" question often gets lost. I also ask "how ready are you to teach using technology?" It's a good way of teasing out the problem areas and tenor of the group.

Much of what I offer to the educational world is still about giving people an opportunity to practice using different types of internet based tools which they may not have encountered and discussing their potential for teaching and learning. Where I feel confident of value is that much of what I see out there is either too technical or too pedagogical. I try to find the middle ground in an attempt to always be relevant.

This sounds like a sale pitch but it's written for me to help articulate my thoughts.