2008 - 2013 Flexible Learning Course

4 people came to today's open session. Most of the time was spent clarifying what we are meant to be doing and why.

What you should have done by now:

1. Set up a blog and posted an introduction to it.
2. Set up a Del.icio.us account and saved your blog to your bookmarks using the DFLP07 tag
3. Read through the wikiversity text for this course and posted your initial impressions and ideas about flexible learning to your blog.

Why are you doing this?

Blog:
Given that we do not all meet face to face on any regular basis, and we are trying to encourage a social learning environment online - we need to be able to see what progress you are making in your investigations and assessment tasks. If you encounter a problem, or make a discovery we want you to post about it to your blog so we can see it, and other students can see it.

As a guide... When you post to your blog it is usually because you have encountered a problem, made a discovery or made progress on a project. Try describing the situation that leads you to write to your blog. Then explain how it affects you and others. Then state what action you are going to take from there.

Over time, your blog will develop into a valuable resource for you to review this topic, and for others to learn from (there's the social learning bit). It is also a good way for us to formatively assess your and our progress in this course. Most importantly, it is YOUR space for you to keep and do what you like with.

Del.icio.us:
By now you should have set up a Del.icio.us account. You should also have read quite a bit about flexible learning, starting with the basic text on wikiversity. Hopefully you have followed a few links further, and searched new terms for yourself. As you find things that you think are worth keeping, you should bookmark them to your del.icio.us account for review later on. Things that you think everyone in the course would benefit seeing, you should add the DFLP07 tag as you bookmark it, that way we can all see your contribution on the course tag page DFLP07.

Del.icio.us is a socially networked bookmarking system. On one level it is much the same as your favourites folder, except you can access it wherever you have Internet connection. For example, here's a look at my bookmarks. From that you should be able to see why Del.icio.us is more than just a favorites folder. You just looked at my bookmarks, and I can look at yours, and we can look at everybody else's.. So at the very least, you can use del.icio.us to prepare reading lists for your students access easily.

Here is a useful blog post from a primary school teacher in South Australia who has been showing his colleagues how to use Del.icio.us: Del.icio.us made easy

So that was today...

If you are in doubt about what you should be doing, how, why, or what to do next.. make contact!