About Facilitating online course.

This is what I wrote for my Vocational teacher course at Haaga-Helia university for applied science, about the facilitating online course with Sarah Stewart. Unfortunately all links disappeared:

When Irmeli recommended me to participate in the online course “Facilitating Online 2010”,
I had no idea what a Facilitator was… never heard of it even though I have been an active
member in several organizations and have been participating in a lot of meeting since the
70’s.
This report is not about Facilitator, which is a kind of moderator or an active meeting support
member, that has the task of keeping the meeting or lecture run smooth. As the title, trying to
make things easy. For example introduce the presenter, and in the meeting have an active role
to summarize and help the participants to understand and make it possible for both the
teacher and the students to concentrate on the actual subject.
The Facilitator have the role of the chairman of the meeting, but is not the one who is the main
speaker.
Enough about Facilitator.The founder of this course Sarah Stewart, she is not a computer geek, nor an expert in
informatics, she is a midwife from New Zealand, that have very early discovered the use of
internet for sharing information.
At first I felt very confused about how the course is organized, there is no educational
platform involved, instead the base of the course is on a Wiki
We were using Elluminate and Wiziq as platforms for communication.
The good thing with this course is that Sarah bring the most out of the web, as you can see
here, there are a lot of links, and this is how learning take place, students get guided around to
different webpages to absorb information. She actively try to push for making the most out of
the web, such as blogs, wikis, lecture pages and all sort of interactive material.
The meetings were held within Elluminate and at one point Wiziq, and at every session there
are at least 2 students working as facilitators for the session, which is a part of the training.
The sessions are very relaxed , and get very well organized just because there are facilitators
that helps out with the practical things that can happen in a session, the main speaker can go
on and do what he/she is supposed to, and this creates a very good environment for learning.
Sarah who is a pioneer in the use of online tools and she is very much for the use of new tools
and she has been trying out a lot, make the sessions full of useful information.
When I understood the structure of the course, I changed from confused to love… this
concept is really amazing. it take the use of interactive learning to a new level.
The only thing that I noticed (not at all negative), its just that a course like this that make the
most of the web, it can be very difficult for a noob
It require some “web skills” how to surf and find information, otherwise it might be difficult
to see the structure… When the structure is understood, online learning cant be much better,
it combines the learning and absorbing of new information with the easiness in accessing
information from the web.
Thats one of the reasons I got inspired to create my moodle course about how to make a
guidance counselor to go from offline to online work, to make people ready for this kind of
activities

spring cleaning..

Hello again..
This time its time to dust off my blog.. There are so many things going on, we are in the last stage of the ivte course and I need to put eveerything down in writing. Also have a project coming up with Gunilla from the Ivtr course, and I just decided to give the facailitating online 2011 course a shot.. I will be back asap..

/folke

Folke writing from the real world on the BlackBerry.

Actions are better than words

One of my friends is very critical and doesn’t believe in anything that is said, only the action can make it.. And the thing that made that for me is WiziQ http://www.wiziq.com .

A learning platform for hold sessions,lessons, meetings, sharing slides and movies, chat etc…
So easy to use and much more reliable than the comercial products I have seen so far…
Got 5 folke’s (stars) from me 🙂

Folke writing from the real world on the BlackBerry.

Cultural competence…

Lately I have been involved in several discussions about the cultural differences and how to handle things….

I think this is very important since the world is shrinking and borders are erased, we are coming closer to eachother.  I still think its important to keep ones cultural identity, to be special, not only individual, but to keep traiditons and make the culture live within the subgroup of humans we belong to..

Seeing that in Sweden for example, it has been so much caring for keeping the cultures from immigrants that Sweden starts to lose their own culture… The discussion is about to change the traditions and the school system because its seen as offence to immigrants..   No wonder that the extreme anti immigrant party took a place in the Swedish government…

The question is not WE or THEM… its about preserving all !

This video is really funny, but it light up the question, specially about how to raise our kids 🙂

About my online identity….

I have “Googled” my name from time to time, and Among the 5 first hits is one that says: “Our dear Folke Wallberg have today passed away after a period of illness”  ….

Thats not a good Online identity 😦 , Luckily it sais the birthyear 1945 so its not me

And its all in Swedish so its not a major catastrophy, but still even if its not me, it might look like me since the hits around are actually most mine…

chipmunks in web chat

This morning I tried again to participate in the meeting from New Zealand in the Elluminate session. Even though I changed my local network I still had the sound cutting off for a minute at a time.
I went to work where internet is extremly fast (internet was born at Cern). At work I had no problems at all.
Even if the adsl in France is not too bad, I think the lag in the line is enough to cause these cuts. When most participants are from the Kiwi part of the world and their communication works well, as soon as my connection lag its clogs and I can’t participate well.
This might could be solved with a half second buffer or so.. But this is just my theory and it also make me think about the importance of infrastructure…….

Folke writing from the real world on the BlackBerry.

twitter conference (webference ?)

We had a real nice discussion on Twitter i real time, discussing about Twitter for learning and network building. Twitter is so easy to use, so when know the basics, its fun to use. Many other tools tend to have too many glitches and make the technical problems take the fun out of the discussion. 100 bonus points to Twitter.,,

Twitter :-)

I was asked as an assignment in the Facilitating Online 2010 course to create a Twitter account…  I must say I was very skeptic to this concept of sending small notes about my daily business…. and I must say it felt like it was going to be a burden more than a pleasure….

My savior was Twitter for Blackberry 🙂 ,  now its a real pleasure.  I think Twitter has a big place in life, because the small updates are very annoying to read in other social media, like “Im eating a ham sandwich” will only feel unnecessary in a blog or on Facebook, but on Twitter its perfectly ok to read about, since the style I use for reading is very different from a blog..   I am convinced 🙂 , and its fun to follow others too…..

http://twitter.com/folkew/

outsider

We had our weekly meeting yesterday morning in the FO2010 group, and I had so many problems with the sound so I couldn’t really participate.

There were a few things that I really wanted to comment about, but I couldn’t and I felt really as I was sitting inside a giant Bubble, everyone could see, but I was not there 😦 . I don’t blame anyone, the facilitators were brilliant. I just wanted to point out the sad feeling of not be able to participate… That’s an experience as well :-). Another thing that is important in online learning… The documentation/recording, so student that are victims of technical problems can catch up… I think that is biggest advantage compared to face to face learning… Not the sound problem, but the saving for the future part….

social networking

About social networking to promote and/or facilitate. Good or bad ? I think social networking actually is very good to form the online identity. It gives that personal touch that is needed to get closer to eachother…. I still think its wise to be careful, since the web is full of sharks. I actually had my first scam friend on facebook the other day, stolen pictures from a website and very poor profile, and that made me think how important it really is to maintain and develop within the online social network. Maybe not everyone likes to read about when I clean my bathrrom or see pictures from a scooter trip at the foot of the alps like the one here.
BUT
People and friends can see that I’m human, I’m not a scam. And employers and students can see that my life is 100% dedicated to my profession. Just that I can show that I’m a living person with hobbies and things to do makes other persons come closer to me even if I never met them IRL.

Actually a few of my best friends that I can talk about anything are people I never met for real, maybe just because that I dare to discuss matters that I wouldn’t talk about face to face.
That is all private, in the social networking I stick to the principle that someone said in the FO2010 meeting.

“Only put things on the web that I can accept to be put up on a public noticeboard”

Over and out ! 🙂