Tweeting an event live

Once again, Bow Valley College and NorQuest College, were pleased to host the two-day Upgrading Online Conference for adult education programs, their faculty, and administration. The theme of our third annual conference remained "Best Practices in Upgrading Online," including best practices in "Instruction and Learning" and "Development or Administration."

This year we were also pleased to be able to live Tweet the webinars, as a way to interact with a wider audience in the online adult education field.


What is live Tweeting? All it involves is posting information on our Twitter account in real-time - while we are participating in the webinars. The information can be quotes from the webinar presenter, tips that are shared, links to websites and other resources relevant to the webinar topic, questions or comments.

Why Tweet live? One reason to Tweet at all is to connect with others who are interested in the same topics you are interested in. As conference organizers, we were promoting both our conference and the topics that the speakers were presenting on by tweeting in real time. Besides promotion, we were able to have conversations with participants even though they are at a distance. This became really important when it turned out we had a bad link on our website. We were able to update participants as soon as we found out, as illustrated below.

Who can live Tweet? Anyone really. We had a whole team of volunteers who took the time to share what they were learning in a webinar and post it to our Upgrading Online Twitter account (@UOconference). We were a group of newbies, some of us feeling excited and others feeling rather nervous about this endeavour,  but each willing to experiment with this new-to-us medium and add our own style.

On top of that, we had our partner @NorQuest College helping us spread the word by live Tweeting from their organization’s account.

And that wasn’t all. Some other participants, who were not connected with the conference organization, also live tweeted their insight. This gave us, as conference hosts, the opportunity to retweet them or engage in a conversation about the information they shared.

Want to try live Tweeting? As this was such a successful part of our conference, we will certainly need more volunteers to help us Tweet at the UOconference in 2014. Here are a few pointers to get you started:

• Research your presenter before you tweet, including knowing his/her background, twitter account handle if they have one, and other pertinent information.
• Find suitable hashtags before the presentation. Others may come to mind during the presentation, but it's good to have some appropriate ones on hand.
• Have a snipping tool or phone on your camera ready, so you can take a picture of any slide you want to tweet about [ensure in advance that the presenter is ok with images of slides being tweeted]
• It is helpful to have two computer screens: one to watch the conference and one to Tweet.

Are you new to Twitter? Here are some of the basics:

• A handle is the Twitter username; it starts with the “at” sign @. Our handle is @UOconference.
• A hashtag is a search tool; it starts with the pound sign #. Our hashtag is #UOconference. By typing a hashtag into the Twitter search you can find all Tweets sent by anybody on Twitter that use that hashtag. Some of the other hashtags that are relevant to the conference are #elearning (elearning), #adulted (adult education),  #abpse (Alberta post-secondary education), and #edtech (educational technology).
• Twitter, the microblog site, is increasingly being used as a collaborative learning tool in many educational settings. Here is an overview of Twitter in Adult Education and here is a collection of Twitter tutorials for teachers.

Ministerial Order on Student Learning

On May 6, 2013 a new Ministerial Order on Student Learning was signed by the Education Minister Jeff Johnson.  The link to the document is http://education.alberta.ca/department/policy/standards/goals.aspx

This document articulates well the changes anticipated in the Education Act and marks a significant departure from what the former Minister of Education, David Hancock, called “Industrial Education”.

This Ministerial Order sets the stage for curriculum development and teaching standards in the province.  Given our efforts in continuous improvement of instructional practices, curriculum development and learning outcomes, the Order is an important reference point for the CEFL.

 

Some points of note:

•          The emphasis is on education and not the school; on the learner not the system; competencies over content; inquiry/discovery/application rather than dissemination of information; and on technology to support creating/sharing knowledge rather than supporting teaching.

•          Interdisciplinary learning is emphasized.

•          Students are viewed as engaged thinkers who can think critically and creatively, reflect, explore, experiment, innovate, collaborate, work as part of a team, and who see no limit to what can be learned.

•          Students are ethical citizens who can act beyond self-interest, commited to democratic ideals, contributes to the world, engages with diversity, can take care of themselves in the psycho-social-spiritual-health domains.

•          Students are confident, resilient, respect others, can take risk, make decisions, and have the courage to dream.

The Order sets out four major outcomes of K-12 education. All students will be enabled to achieve the following outcomes:

1.         Be engaged things and ethical citizens with an entrepreneurial spirit

2.         Strive for engagement and personal excellence in their learning journey

3.         Employ literacy and numeracy to construct and communicate meaning, and,

4.         Discover, develop and apply competencies across subject and discipline areas for learning, work and life.

As a department, we have many examples of what the Ministerial Order is aiming to create already in practice.  Part of the evolution of the CEFL is to take examples and to generalize those efforts across all of our functional areas: Literacy and Essential Skills, Senior High, Rural Initiatives, Curriculum and Testing, and, Assessing and Advising.

I would like each coordinator to create an opportunity to discuss what the Ministerial Order, the Education Act, and the new directions for education in Alberta mean for our instructional practices, how we evaluate and place students, student outcomes, the development of curriculum and curriculum support materials and so forth.

Keith

Share the Wealth and Other Gems

Without really telling me much other than "you'll enjoy this.. it's funny", Iba left an innocuous blue case with a CD in it on my desk.  I finally took it home and popped it into my computer and to my amazement it was JibJab... now I love JibJab and thought that Iba, displaying her technical prowess, recorded a JibJab video for me... I didn't really  know why she wouldn't send me the link but it was nice to receive.

So settling back, a brought my cup of tea up for a sip as the opening JibJab icon faded and Lee and Jenny leapt onto the scree... I nearly had a scalding incident! I had no idea that so many people were so creative and... nimble!

I was laughing so hard that my daughter came over just as Iba and I began our Olympic Routine.. I totally lost it in laughter while Jordan watched with a mixture of disbelief and humour.

Thank you to the clever producers! What a treat to just roll with laughter!

This is an example of what can happen in classrooms too.  Some of the work by Penny and others to bring the IPads to life in creating new ways of learning, engage students in their own learning process by finding new paths for expression and for discovery. The possibilities are many and with the creativity demonstrated by instructors, I know that adult learning will be redefined through the efforts and work of the CEFL.

Keith