Hello people who love designing for flexible learning practice :) We had our first face to face meeting for new comers to the course today, this is a round up of that meeting, and a notice to old timer DFLPers on what's going on.
For the old timers... we've started another round of study for this topic. Please feel free to stick around and have another go at DFLP informally if you like, even help out with answering questions and joining in discussion - that would be great to see! But if you would prefer to not be part of this round then you will need to visit the email list website and change your subscription settings. Please don't send an email to the list requesting changes to your membership, if you're having trouble adjusting your settings for yourself, send Leigh an email off list (leighblackall@gmail.com)
For the new comers... deep breath... ready...?
Welcome! We had our first face to face meeting today, with Emma and Sheryll joining us online through skype from Cromwell and Wanaka. We all discussed the many meanings of flexible learning. Terry, Bronwyn and Leigh described their experiences with the topic.
Next we read through some printed handouts and laptop videos. As we read through the piles of info we all added sticky note words to them just to practice the idea of tagging resources. This was to introduce the conceptual framework behind socially networked bookmarking - which is one of the projects you have been asked to do, using del.icio.us
Some of you asked to be directed to the Everything you need to teach and learn online resource, so there it is.
Other resources are gradually being saved to the group tag DFLP07, Leigh, Terry and Bronwyn are yet to update it with more current stuff - sorry. Please add any resources you like to that tag when you start using your del.icio.us accounts. Here's an 8 minute youtube video demonstrating the use of delicious in the classroom. It gets a good rating in youtube - try it out. (tip - you'll need broadband to watch the video and sometimes even that is slow. So click pause on the video and let it load ahead before you start watching it).
Next we looked at the DFLP course weblog, and demonstrated how easy it is to set up your own weblog. Setting up a weblog is one of your assignments to record your learning. Starting early with this is a good idea.
Here are some of the new timer blogs started today:
Matt
Sheryll
Emma
Daniel
Good job! It will be great to see some more posting coming into them soon. I see Matt has already added to his!!
Here are examples of blogs from some of the old timers in DFLP:
Francesca
Vida
Tony
So, your focus for the next week or so is to:
- Set up a blog. 3 free services for setting up a blog to choose from: http://blogger.com, http://wordpress.com, or http://edublogs.org
- Research Flexible Learning and tag DFLP07. Read read read and save good resource to your Del.icio.us account and tag them DFLP07. Use the wikiversity page for this course as a starting point for your reading.
- Communicate. Make contact with Bronwyn, Terry or Leigh. Start communicating with us online. Perhaps set up another meeting with us if you feel you need to go over a few things face to face. If you'd like to communicate to the group, then send email to flexiblelearningpractice@googlegroups.com
Remember, the course blog is the hub. Everything you need to know will be announced through it. Important announcements will also come via email, so don't worry - you won't miss a beat. Just focus on the 3 things you need to do.
A big start we know! But we are here to help all the way. Get past this start and you're home and hosed.
