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Joyce Seitzinger, eLearning Adviser at the Eastern Institute of Technology in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, recently asked me to present at their Half Day Retreat (Joyce and I are members of the OzNZ Educators network). The theme of the Retreat was “Engage, Relate, Connect” guiding Eastern Institute of Technology staff in the management of a changing student corpus. Joyce wanted her teachers to learn how Web 2.0 tools could be used to do this. Networked Learning was one of five hour-long sessions run concurrently (twice) on Friday 13th June. Reports from the sessions are viewable at the EIT wiki.

Connecting the Media
When Joyce and I discovered that both TAFE Queensland and the Eastern Institute of Technology used Tandberg equipment, we decided that video conferencing would be the best ‘virtual presence’ technology to use. Because the EIT and SkillsTech Australia videoconference networks had never before been connected, we arranged to test the equipment during the preceding week.

After several attempts, there was a simply magical moment when we spoke virtually face-to-face while sitting 2500 kilometers (1600 miles) apart. Joyce and I used Gmail, Twitter, Skype and mobile phone to arrange the rendezvous via Videolinq.

Planning the presentation
Joyce wanted me to share with her teachers how I’m building learning networks with my students and colleagues, as well as indicating what students, colleagues and management thought of it. I was to leave the sessions’ participants with tangible means of Engaging, Relating, and Connecting using Web 2.0 tools.

Sharing the presentation
Re-working an earlier presentation, I chose Gmail, Del.icio.us, Flickr, and Ning as starting places for network novices. Sheryl (N2teaching) gave me Mark Twain’s story of Tom Sawyer enlisting his friends to help whitewash a fence, and I used screenshots of websites to explain how each social tool worked. I uploaded the PowerPoint presentation to SlideShare before the workshop, and Joyce displayed it during the presentation with a data projector. My notes are displayed as a comment on each slide.

Extending the conference
Joyce created a Ning network especially for the event, providing a public forum to discuss the conference, as well as tools to play with.

txt2spch podcasting

Originally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

Txt-2-speech podcasting:
When I learned about OdioGo text-to-speech podcasting from Lyn Marentette’s Classroom 2.0 update, I decided to apply it to my own blog. Visiting the OdioGo homepage, I pasted my blog’s URL and email address into the spaces provided.

Process:
It took me about fifteen minutes to carry out the instructions delivered in a verification email from OdioGo. An OdioGo subscription button soon appeared in my blog widget pane.

Podcast subscription:
This step was easier than any other subscription service I’d tried. I just clicked “Click here to subscribe to this feed with iTunes” and my iTunes podcast list was automatically updated. I copied these files to my mobile phone to listen to on my way to work.

MP3 downloads:
Other options are to listen to the files directly from the computer, or singly download separate files for selective listening.

The reader’s voice:
OdioGo presents the reader as “near-human.” It’s very good, I’ll admit – much better than listening to my own voice, something I’ll never become used to. Hearing my text read out in a soft American accent was a pleasant surprise! I’ll need to adapt my writing style to suit a different phrasing, and I’ll also experiment with the word “stone masonry” so that it sounds less like “stunner messenry.”

childhood things…

Originally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

Operculum
Seven years old. Walking behind my sister along Moreton Bay’s shoreline at Margate, I picked up an interesting stone. My lucky stone. I asked my Science Master in high school about it. No answer, until weeks later when I had an appointment with his dreaded cane. “Did you manage to identify my stone, Sir?” I asked hopefully. “Ah! Yes – an operculum.” Reaching into his pocket, he told me a little about gastropods. His cane rested that day. My lucky stone.

Leprechaun soccer booties
Eight years old: revisiting western Queensland after some years away. We had learned to swim in the city, living near the beach and St Bernadette’s “Olympic” swimming pool. Roma, halfway between the coast and my first home. I still have the trophies I won that day, in the country town with dangerous beetles in their pool. I stayed with the sporting goods shop owner, opposite a vineyard. The nights were crackling cold with frost. He gave me a tiny pair of Adidas boots, fashioned for the little people.

Flying Arrow
My American aunt – born in Halifax, raised in England, resident of Florida – and her US Coastguard husband gave me this keepsake after a swimming carnival. Flying Arrow. I was a little embarrassed to think that they had given it to me out of pity, instead of to my sister, who was by far the swiftest.

Stage 3 stonemasonry projects

Originally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

Published by Tomas Lipps in The Stone Foundation periodical issue #8

Working stone by hand, I use a mason’s steel hammer only with two stone working tools: the pitching tool and the punch. I drive the claw tool and the chisel with a nylon mallet.

Regarding the hammer throw, I like to first steady the workbench and the workpiece so there is no movement cased by the striking. I balance my stance, and straighten my arms loosely before starting work. I like to “cock” the hammer as the point is placed, that is, I develop an easy rhythm with the punch placed accurately and securely on the stone at the same time as the hammer is raised behind my head. Then, the hammer is dropped – “thrown” – and raised ready for next place, strike, place, strike etc.

A chipping hammer requires a different action to a mason’s hammer. A chipping hammer is similar to a mason’s hammer except that the inside edge roughly shapes walling stone similar to a hammer and pitching tool, requiring just one hand to hold the hammer. The other hand is thus free to steady the stone, usually on the ground between the feet. The arm holding the hammer doesn’t follow an arc, as in a throw: instead, a “pushing” action allows the bigger shoulder muscles to stop the hammer ready for the raise. I found out the hard way that using forearm muscles to stop the swing becomes very painful.

Regarding the hammer itself, my preparation includes shaping and wedging the handle tightly into the head, shaping the handle to a flared end with a mid-length swelling to grip, and roughening the handle surface. Tightening the head to the handle goes a long way to preventing mis-hits.

I find that the hammer head turns laterally upon releasing its energy to the striking tool. Selecting a long, narrow hammer head resists this turning and is less tiring to use, although the risk of hammer strike on the hand is increased. Roughening the surface relaxes the hand grip, because the increased friction lessens the need to grip the hammer tightly, thereby energy is conserved. Varnished handles straight from the tool store look good, but create blisters.

So steadying the workbench and the workpiece, steadying the stance, straightening the arms, roughening the handle and using a long, narrow hammer head all contribute to a pleasant day’s work!

Learning Table in the classroom

Originally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

I had earlier blogged about RFID Learning Table, a software application developed by Daniel Dacey’s New England Computer Solutions. It was installed on the stonemasonry section’s classroom computer. This computer had always been used to operate SignLab VinylPro stencil cutting equipment, and was recently connected to the Internet.

Classroom Internet access
Having a computer in the classroom allowed us to access many useful sites such as Google Earth, Ning, YouTube, Flickr and lots more sharing sites. It was also useful for presenting Powerpoint presentations and instructional videos using the RFID Learning Table to access them. However, the computer and its network connection were eventually brought into line with the rest of the institute, and these privileges were stopped.

ACER Travelmate 6410
After several months of waiting, I took charge of an institute laptop on March 13th this year. Several weeks later I managed to get the RFID Learning Table installed after the network managers agreed to package the application to suit their requirements. It was not an easy decision for them to make as the institute is in the process of ‘rolling out’ ResourceBank and my.TAFE. The RFID Learning Table effectively duplicates these applications, however as they are not yet developed, I will continue to develop resources. Learning objects produced for RFID Learning Table are easily transferable to ResourceBank, and are then able to be managed with my.TAFE.

Self directed learning
Students choose lesson topics from a range displayed in a small book of cards. Each card has the learning topic written on the front, and an RFID tag stuck on the back. The lesson is accessed by placing the tag on the top of the reader. Lessons are accompanied by assessment sheets, and a teacher provides extra assistance.

Further development of RFID tags for learning
Currently, the RFID Learning Table application is most useful in the classroom, as it is designed to be read with either a desktop or a laptop computer. I plan to one day expand its range to the workshop using hand-held computers. Sue Waters has published excellent resources about this topic at her wiki. A tag beside each piece of workshop equipment will access learning topics in the hand-held device, describing its safe and effective use. This system would also be useful for safety inductions, applicable to any workplace, as well as marketing the institute’s operations at public events.

ANZAC Day 2008

Originally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

Scotch Suit
An American friend once described my Scottish garb as a “Scotch Suit.” I’ve been wearing kilts since tagging along with the local pipes and drums when I was eleven years old way back in 1974. My piano teacher at the time suffered a serious brain injury in a motorcycle accident, so I continued my music studies by joining the Redcliffe Scottish Pipe Band. Belonging to a bagpipe band was not just a musical education opportunity, but also a study of Scottish culture in an Australian context.

Pipes and Drums
I’ve been a member of a few bands since then – (St Andrew’s, Tenterfield Highlanders, and Queensland Police) and played along with many more. During my twenty years with pipe bands performing, competing in band and solo competitions, and playing for Highland Dancing events, I enjoyed friendship with many people.

Ashgrove RSL ANZAC Day Commemoration committee
Twenty five years ago, I was asked by the Ashgrove RSL to “play the lament” at their ANZAC Day service. This meant providing bagpipe music during the wreath laying ceremony, between a hymn (Abide with Me) and the Last Post. This was a typical suburban Australian ANZAC Day commemoration, timed so that people could attend a dawn service at 04:28, return for the main local service at 08:00 and then travel to the city for the main march at 10:00.

Growth in attendance
The first Ashgrove ANZAC Day meetings that I attended were fairly low key: an army band leading the parade and providing the hymnal accompaniment, and army catafalque party honouring service people. I’ve watched community participation in the Ashgrove ANZAC Day service grow. I estimate that this year’s attendance was about 1000-1200 people.

Duties
My Ashgrove duties are simple: provide ten minutes’ music as the parade approaches, and play a lament during the wreath laying service. Initially, the funeral march “Flowers of the Forest” played once through was enough for the wreath laying ceremony. In successive years, I added a regimental slow march “Mist Covered Mountains” and an air “MacCrimmon’s Lament” as more people joined the wreath laying ceremony. I play my own version of Sheila Chandra’s “MacCrimmon’s Lament.”

61st Australian Infantry Battalion (AIF) the Queensland Cameron Highlanders
This year, I was asked to consider the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Queensland Cameron Highlanders. As it happens, my kilt is Cameron of Erracht tartan, an original Queensland Cameron Highlanders issue. I bought it from Scots College, Warwick when its band was upgrading equipment. At this time, it was still in its original condition, sewn into a roll. Guest of honour at Ashgrove this year was Lieutenant-Colonel Richard W Cameron DSO ED, who is 92 years of age. He addressed the meeting, seconded the meeting’s resolutions and, in the context of ANZAC sacrifice, spoke of his own extensive wartime experiences. Meeting with him after the service, he told me that many years ago, he had donated excess equipment to Scots College, Warwick including two original issue kilts that were sewn in rolls. I like to think that I am continuing his tradition whenever I put on my “Scotch Suit.”

stomas_ning

Originally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

This is a screen shot of my online social network that I’m using with my stonemasonry apprentice students.

Geographic spread
I set up the Ning stonemasonry network in July 2007 to keep in touch with students between classes. Most of my students do not live in Brisbane – they are spread along the eastern seaboard of Queensland, with a few in northern New South Wales and Darwin. They attend four “blocks” of training, each five weeks long during approximately three to four year duration of their apprenticeship.

Why Ning?
I chose Ning after experiencing other online social networks such as MySpace and FaceBook. I decided that Ning had the best capacity for images, and was easiest to customise to a work-related setting.

Widgets
In addition to images posted to the site, Ning has widgets (web objects) that allow greater interaction between members. I particularly like my Flickr RSS feed widget. I’ve customised it so that anytime anyone posts an image tagged “stonemasonry” to Flickr, a thumbnail is displayed in the widget. Other RSS feed widgets display my Twitter and Twiddeo timelines. I’ve also embedded various SlideShare presentations that operate as small versions on the homepage, and link to the full screen SlideShare version.

Member pages
Anyone can join the stonemasonry Ning, as long as they first complete a profile page. I designed the profile questions so that members tell a little about themselves in a work context. Recently, some Russian women joined without details other than a “dating” web address. While they were a welcome sight visually, I eventually blocked them after they failed to respond to my questions about their intentions. I didn’t want my students distracted.

I ask each member to provide a photo avatar so that the site is humanised.

Interaction
I’ve seen that each student group interacts differently, possibly due to web accessibility. Recently, I’ve received messages asking me to check administration procedures that are delaying payments to students. This is probably due to changing departmental and institute admin practices. Currently, one former apprentice is working in the UK and travelling through the Middle East. He updates his page with photos and messages about his travels. Otherwise, the stonemasonry Ning site is convenient for students to virtually meet one another between classes.

e-Portfolios
I continually stress the importance of apprentices interacting and presenting themselves in an appropriate manner. This fact is evidenced by the placement of a ClustrMap on the main page. Students are aware of the fact that the site is a portal to the global stonemasonry community, and that their interaction is viewed by potential employers, employees and clients.

Accessibility

TAFE Queensland does not support access to any sharing sites. I look forward to the time when sharing sites approved by the department will be made available to trades-teaching staff and apprentices.

I’ve just learned that the Flickr photo sharing site is accepting videos up to ninety seconds long. I plan to use this feature extensively, encouraging my students to do the same so that we can build a public resource of stonemasonry activities. This is useful for people who may be considering a career in building and construction industry, and who wish to know what a stonemason does.

Photos and video clips uploaded to the stonemasonry online social network also provide useful evidence of competency when they are accompanied by descriptive text and supervisor verification.

I encourage my students to present their e-portfolios online as potential providers of stonemasonry trade skills to both local and global audiences.

Twiddeo

I had previously written about using sharing stonemasonry video clips online using Twiddeo. Twiddeo is useful because of its feed straight into my (brownsd) Twitter timeline. However, recently I had difficulty logging in to Twiddeo, so I was looking for another application with which to share video clips.

Feeds

The stonemasonry online social network used by my TAFE students features a Twitter feed, so that the latest entries in my ‘brownsd’ timeline are displayed on the main page.

Flickr photos are also featured in a similar feed, that us, any photo tagged with ‘stonemasonry’ in Flickr is displayed in a widget on the main page. Now that Flickr is featuring video clips, and each clip is treated just the same as a photo, recent photos or video clips tagged ‘stonemasonry’ are automatically featured in the widget.

Recording

Recording short video clips with my mobile phone allows me to instantly upload the clip to Flickr. I always record using the ‘MMS’ (Mobile Messaging Service) option so that the clip length is limited to 15 or so seconds. I try to keep camera movement to a minimum, and lighting to a maximum. Sometimes I will ask an apprentice to record me while I demonstrate an activity.

Uploading

Emailing attachments from my 3SkypePhone candy bar is not an option, so I access Flickr mobile and use its uploading option. This takes a minute or so. When the file has been uploaded, I can then add a title and description.

Organising

I have to access Flickr using a computer to add other details such as tags, location etc. At the moment, my stonemasonry videos are added to their own Flickr set. Currently, the set features four videos recorded during the previous (stage 3) five week block-release training session. I will upload Long Photos of the next class (stage 2) starting on Monday 14th April.

TAFE Qld ResourceBank and My.TAFE

Originally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

RB02 Training Session
I’ve just completed my first formal ResourceBank training session. ResourceBank is the TAFE Queensland database (built on the Equella platform), with an interface called My.TAFE (provided by Janison Systems).

Contributing
At the two-hour session, I learned how to contribute a resource to ResourceBank. My prior experiences contributing material to WebCT, Blackboard, Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube were useful because ResourceBank operates in a similar way.

Organising
The resources I have developed for RFID Learning Table required arrangement in a similar way to that required by ResourceBank. I had learned that it was easiest to order all relevant materials in a hierarchy of folders and sub-folders, with an indexing document listing Title, Description and Tags (metadata, search terms) as well as setting out the methods and process steps that the lesson should follow. Keeping an indexing document sped up the Contribution process, enabling copying and pasting information rather than re-typing it all.

The five checkpoints
All material submitted to ResourceBank must meet TAFE Queensland guidelines. Although it will be up to a resourcing officer such as a librarian to check material against each guideline, the task will be made easier if a developer such as me learns how to meet the required standards.

TAFE Queensland Learning Resource Design Principles – Checkpoints
The standards are:
Principle 1: Presentation
Principle 2: Learning Design
Principle 3: TAFE Qld. Intellectual Property
Principle 4: Discovery and reuse
Principle 5: Accessibility

Moderating submitted material
I submitted a PowerPoint presentation to our trainer for moderation, after which I searched for other resources submitted by other session participants. I learned that each resource should carry TAFE Qld Copyright clearance. My PowerPoint presentation consisted of two dozen CAD drawings that I had created. We discussed how Copyright should apply to the intellectual material which I had sourced from a 1914 Geometrical Drawing textbook.

Coming up
The next learning sessions will focus on My.TAFE, managing contributed ResourceBank materials in Janison’s Learning Management System.

Mobile drawingsOriginally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

Many years ago, old friend William Whitmee gave me his book “The Elements of Geometrical Drawing” (Henry J. Spooner, 1914). On pages 167-169, Spooner describes Problem 194: To construct the Spiral called the Ionic Volute, the circumscribing Parallelogram having sides 3 1/2″ and 3″

This construction method is useful for students who are required to draw architectural elements and moulding designs (BCF3069a and BCF3035a). The Ionic volute is just one type of architectural decoration.

I had previously experienced difficulty getting students to draw this diagram. Having just presented the lesson recently (with the same confusion) I decided to redraw my directions in the simplest way possible.

My students provided useful feedback during class time, and I realised that the problem I was having was that I always try to explain “why” that is, the philosophy of proportion in Ionic Order and Classical Style buildings. BORING! They just wanted to get in and do it!

Consequently, I photographed the processes on the whiteboard and blackboard that the students understood best. Then I prepared 24 progressive drawings stepping through the process.

As explained in a previous post, the drawing were prepared using CorelDraw11, exported as JPEGs and uploaded to Flickr. Flickr images are downloadable to basic mobile phones like mine, with the added advantage of having a URL so they can be embedded in a blog and further explained.

It really was difficult for me to skip the explanation and jump straight into drawing, but the students told me that they wanted to draw the three rectangles first, then follow with the quadrants. I still felt that they needed the explanation, so added it as the first few slides.

After the PowerPoint presentation was uploaded to my Slideshare site, I Twittered the link with a request for comment. http://twitter.com/botheredbybees answered within an hour (Peter, you’re an early riser!)

Peter commented “iconic ionic! would have put the pics first and wordy dot point staff last – now off to carve myself a temple…”

I altered the PowerPoint accordingly, but have left the original slideshow in place.

I shared the altered presentation in my SkillsTech Australia Teaching and Learning Network (TLN) for other construction trades skills teachers to use.

Now the presentation is ready to show to the class after the Easter break, prior to exams which include having to draw an Ionic volute from memory, using different dimensions. I hope they like the new format.