Series 12 Flexible Learning Toolboxes (Toolboxes), expected to be available for purchase in early 2010, are now available for preview at: http://toolboxes.flexiblelearning.net.au/preview/byseries.htm

The Toolboxes are currently being developed in consultation with Industry Skills Councils to support the delivery of nationally endorsed training packages and address skills shortages and e-learning resource needs in priority industries.

Toolbox Business Manager Harriet Wakelam said that the Series 12 Toolboxes add to a collection of more than 100 existing Toolboxes across a diverse range of educational and industry areas, helping deliver over 170 qualifications and supporting approximately 930 units of competency.

“Toolboxes are highly visual, hands-on education and training products. They are ideal for just-in-time learning, either on-the-job, in the classroom, or in remote locations”.

The Series 12 Toolboxes are:

·         Licensed to Plumb (12.01) will address a shortage of e-learning materials for the plumbing industry, providing an engaging, media-rich, interactive learning experience to support five units of the Certificate IV in Plumbing and Services. It will focus on core skills and knowledge for licensed plumbers, including drainage, water, gas, plan sizing, and layout of plumbing systems.

·         Satellite City (12.02) is designed to support four units from the Certificate IV in Spatial Information Services, and the Certificate IV in Surveying. It will guide learners through the processes involved in reading and interpreting spatial data, conducting a field survey and managing, storing and presenting data, in line with industry practices.

·         Indigenous Spiritual Wellbeing (12.03) will cover five units from the Certificate III and Certificate IV in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Primary Health Care. It will provide training for health care workers in Indigenous communities, focusing on supporting and assessing clients with mental health, alcohol and other drug issues.

·         Electrotech (12.04) will support five units from the Certificate III in Electrotechnology (Electrician). Learners will complete hands-on activities and challenges to develop problem solving skills while learning about basic electrical concepts, electrical occupational health and safety and fabricating electrical components.

·         Timber (12.05) will cover five competencies from the Forest and Forest Products Training Package and support a wide range of Certificate II and Certificate III qualifications including sawmilling, merchandising and manufactured products. Timber will deliver crucial e-learning resources for workers in an industry that has traditionally relied overwhelmingly on face-to-face training.

·         Retailer 2 (12.06) will extend the Series 10 Retailer Toolbox (10.05) by covering the core units of the Certificate II in Retail, as well as five selling, merchandising and marketing electives. Rather than taking a traditional unit-by-unit approach, learners will complete activities guided by a range of customer-focused scenarios and case studies, which will be mapped back to core units. A skills recognition pathway will be available for new and existing resources.

·         TAA (12.09) supports delivery of 13 units from the new Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. The learning design of this Toolbox places the learner as a trainer/assessor for Optimal Learning Solutions (OLS), a fictitious registered training organisation providing training and assessment services to a range of government, private and industry organisations.

·         TAA E-learning E-lectives (12.10) supports delivery of three units from the e-learning stream of the new Diploma in Training and Assessment. It also acts as a useful professional development tool for trainers or assessors that would like to develop their skills as an e-learning facilitator and/or designer of e-learning resources.

·         Cybertots (12.11) supports delivery of the Certificate III in Community Services (Children’s Services). The revamped Toolbox immerses the learner in a virtual child care centre allowing them to experience the role of a caregiver. Through problem-based projects and communication activities in which they will ‘interact’ with the workers and children at Cybertots, learners develop skills and knowledge necessary for working in the child care profession.

·         Small Business Management (12.12) covers 10 units of competency from the Certificate IV in Small Business Management. Each competency provides a variety of information and activities to support qualifications in managing a small business.

To view the Framework’s full range of Toolboxes, visit the Toolbox website. Alternatively, you can access learning objects from past Toolboxes for free through LORN.

Toolboxes are high quality, cost effective, interactive e-learning and assessment resources featuring scenarios, images and activities. They are funded and supported by the national training system’s e-learning strategy, the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework).

Toolbox Champions are employed in every state and territory to support the implementation of Toolboxes. To contact your local Toolbox Champion, call or email Peter Shanks: 6233 4617 - peter.shanks@skills.tas.gov.au or visit: http://flexiblelearning.net.au/toolbox/champions

Here’s an interesting short film looking at how social web tools are being used in the University of NSW…

What does 21st century learning look like?

Hi folks, today I’m sitting in the Redfern tech park in Sydney listening to a few folks describe their vision of the future of learning. To make the whole thing a little more interesting I thought I’d write up my impressions as the day progresses with occasional updates to this post. This could mean long periods of inactivity while my mind wanders off, but by the end of the day it might turn into a regular post on the event :^)

Of course, you don’t have to take my second-hand word on the get together… you can hear it for youself or view the twitter stream live on the education.edu.au web site (see http://www.educationau.edu.au/jahia/Jahia/edausem_stream)

First bloke on the mike: Dr Evan Arthur, Group Manager, Digital Education and Youth Transitions Group, DoE, Employment and Workplace Relations. His big message: the Australian school system is moving to a National curriculum (something the VET sector’s had for a decade) and that this will make online delivery that much more pertinent (not to mention that they’re interested in using it for bringing teachers up to speed).

The opening presentation: Mark Pesce blog.futurestreetconsulting.com

Mark’s a futurist, predicting changes in the flows of communication and power. Sees mobile phones moving into peoples lives more and more. For example, most 8 year olds now have a mobile (?) initially this is for security and basic communications, but increasingly being used as a recording device for life streams (told a great tale about a student in Victoria who broadcast his teacher berating him for a poor effort in class).

Talked about how ratemyprofessors.com is affecting how universities and colleges in the states are running their courses and hiring policies.

Showed a new online university straighterline.com where you can study and have professional feedback in as many courses as you like for a flat $99 a month

He then introduced industry participants, who each had 8 minutes to present their view of what 21st C learning looks:

Michelle Sellinger (CISCO)
Neil Jackson (Microsoft)
Susi Steigler-Peters (Telstra)
John Paull (Adobe)

Michelle focused on the National Curriculum and motivation (hinting at lifelong learning) and community involvement to encourage informal learning. She also talked about how existing assessment does not address what she sees as today’s essential skills (knowledge filtering and group problem solving). Finally she pointed out that classrooms were not conducive to social networking, which she sees as the way that people will not only work but how they will interact socially in the years to come. In her vision of the future a ‘connected classroom’ will have experts, family members and community members visiting their virtual space.

Neil would like to see one to one learning models using computer technology, as well as using I.T. for teacher’s professional development (around computer based development tools and classroom management). Although he didn’t say it outright I got the impression he thought that students were much more engaged with technology, and likely to experiment with tech and it’s uses much more than their teachers - especially in the areas of collaboration and networking. Like Michelle he predicted the demise of the 4 wall, 9 to 3 classroom (although he said 9-5,  which made me wonder which school he’d been taught it). He finished by noting that half the 9-12 year olds surveyed in Australia said they’d welcome more online learning, but that only 1/5 actually received any.

Next up was Susi (who comes from a K-12 teaching background, but is now Telstra’s e-learning champion). She pointed out the gap between how we use technology for teaching and how most people are using it in their day-to-day lives and advocated the ‘demand your own carriculum’ school of learning, suggesting that rather than passively accepting the current agenda students should be more proactive in directing their learning (I suspect she’s been impatiently waiting for a National Curriculum for quite a while). A little Telstra factlet: the entire contents of the library and the ANU can be downloaded and sent to Sydney in 4.5 seconds. It’s a shame that no-one asked how much of the Telstra network was used for this link - ’cause it’s a very short answer: none. I think she was citing this fact as evidence that the network is now the fourth utility, alongside water, electricity and sewage but my mind might have been wandering here, drifting around in a revere about when I was employed by Telstra (as a morse code operator, of all things).

John from Adobe pointed out that we’ve been talking about online learning for a long time, showing a series of Time magazine covers going back to 1989. He wondered how many students have experienced any of the starry eyed predictions made back then. Even now, he says, students are being subjected to ‘airplane effect’ teaching: when they enter the classroom they have to turn off their mobile devices, disconnect from their world and stare straight ahead for the duration of the flight.

Mark then posed a question to the panel:  “how do you see the role of collaboration in the classroom” - they were all pretty much in agreement that the current school system was out of sync with what current business practice requires… advanced collaboration skills.

Morning tea beckons, but before taking off I just have to note that I’m a little dismayed that everyone here still seems to think that ‘edcuation’ means K-12 delivery. In spite of all the rhetoric around lifelong learning and informal and community learning the focus of these industry reps seems to be firmly aimed at youth (perhaps because this represents a lucrative market for their companies). I’m hoping that the next session will take a broader view. As it’s about “How will 21st Century Leaning impact on higher education and workplace learning?” it might just prove to be a bit more relevant.

Back after a sugar hit and 2 cups of chamomile…

Michelle told us that the employees they recruit from university at CISCO still need a one year boot camp before they’re considered work ready (she also said that CISCO can’t afford to keep doing this).

Neil promised to be brief too, and true to his word spent just 5 minutes talking about how the strength of a student’s network was as important as any knowledge they learn in a classroom.

Susi is concerned with students and digital architecture and quality teaching. It seems that Telstra is building ’strategic partnerships’ with universities (perhaps because they’ve been so good in the past at setting up their own network).

Finally, John has a crack at this and, once again, we’re stuck on a Gen X,Y university focus. What happened to the adult or workplace student? This part of the talk rapidly devolved into a marketing pitch for Adobe connect

I’ve been looking now at the twitter back channel on http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23edausem - it’s currently much more entertaining than the speakers  :^)

Some interesting questions that were raised in the general discussion:

• How do we convert the educators into lifelong learners?
• Why are we teaching collaboration and networking but still testing for memorised knowledge?
• How do we engage adult learners with 21C learning technologies given that they might be technologically challenged themselves?

At the end of the day I didn’t walk away with very much new knowledge. Bronst summed it up with this tweet: “BronSt I wish these talkfests actually produced, changed, moved things. I have done with talking let’s move on to do and share successes!”

It was interesting though to see what a great weight is being given to K-12 teaching in the e-learning landscape (at least from the vendor’s and education.edu.au’s point of view) and to get an idea of what a merger or schools and VET might look like (I suspect it might run the risk of having VET’s voice, achievements and interests considerably diluted)

LORN, the vocational education and training (VET) system’s gateway to online training resources, was officially launched last week at the 2009 ACPET national conference in Canberra.

LORN provides a one-stop-shop for practitioners and training providers to access the latest in education and training resources, drawing on state and national repositories from across Australia.

Speaking at the ACPET conference, LORN Business Manager, Kim Edgar, said the new LORN had proved extremely popular with test site users and was now being rolled out throughout VET.

“Through a simple three-step process, LORN users can access and download online training resources that meet their organisation’s needs. Training can be customised by mixing and matching resources from different national, state and territory repositories.

“LORN saves training providers time and money, by allowing them to share resources rather than having to develop their own. My LORN gives users even more control over their use of LORN for education and training development,” she said.

To check out the enhanced site, visit: http://lorn.flexiblelearning.net.au

Today HALF-BAKED SOFTWARE (the creators of quiz building software: hot potatoes) released Quandary, their Web-based Action Maze software as freeware.

An Action Maze is a kind of interactive case-study; the user is presented with a situation, and a number of choices as to a course of action to deal with it. On choosing one of the options, the resulting situation is then presented, again with a set of options. Working through this branching tree is like negotiating a maze, hence the name “Action Maze”.

You can download the program, help files and examples from http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/quandary.php

Skills Tasmania are offering the following professional development activities over the next couple of months.  Please note registration using the online registration from at the bottom of the page is essential.

NOVEMBER SESSIONS

Exploring e-Innovations   |   Wednesday 4 and Thursday 5  Online

Exploring e-Innvations 09 showcases the latest innovations in e-learning from around Australia. The focus will be on flexible e-learning outcomes developed through industry and business training provider partnerships and models designed to enhance the learning of specific client groups.

The sessions run from 10:30am - 4:30pm AEDST on both days.

Gain insights from the showcased innovations: Find out how VET practitioners, training providers and businesses are using e-learning pedagogy and technologies to promote new and flexible training options through 8 – 10 online web conferencing sessions over the two days.

Ask questions of e-learning expert panel: Drop-in to online ‘Experts Lounge’ to ask your questions and interact with a panel of e-learning experts in real-time in the afternoons of Day 1 and Day 2 from 12:00pm - 3:00pm (AEDST)!

Come and explore…

http://networksevents.flexiblelearning.net.au/

Tas-e Day09 making e-learning work for you

On the 18th November Skills Tasmania will be holding their end of year event, Tas-e Day09 making e-learning work for you, at the University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay Campus. For further information - see here.

Each person attending will need to register using the following form.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

September 22nd 2009

WORKSHOP

In this ARED workshop we will be covering basic usage of the AREDv2.1 application, which is available as a free download from the Australian Flexible Learning Framework. See: http://tinyurl.com/aredv2-1

The workshop will cover six ARED functions:

1.    Presenting information about a topic
2.    Labelling targets in a scene
3.    Sequencing steps in a process
4.    Reviewing knowledge about a topic and
5.    Applying control measures to targets in a scene
6.    The learning sequence tool

Note: we will be covering the decision tree tool in a separate workshop later in the year.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER