QR Codes in Education

We stumbled across this on the web on potential ways of using QR codes in learning and teaching.

• Create a treasure hunt in the city of the bush that have QR codes stuck onto them that link students with questions or information that is important to that place they have actually arrived at.
• Create a Multiple Choice test that has QR codes in the place of answers with the students required to scan their answers for automatic correction of test results. http://www.semapedia.com/ generates your codes into a PDF document.
• Have the students create their own QR codes or submit an assignment as a QR code
• Include QR codes on printed worksheets to allow students to link to further reading online

Also refer to this paper by Professor Andy Ramsden of the University of Bath on QR codes in education for further reference.

CFDL QR Code

QR (Quick Response) Code designed by the Japanese which enables people to respond quickly to information. Mobile phones with a camera will be able to read this code generated.
For a demonstration of this technology go to: http://reader.kaywa.com/
If you have a mobile phone with the latest technology, try and unravel the QR Code below.

Creating Social Communities in LLC

An interesting initiative made by Lewis Castle College (LCC) is the creation of a LLC social community using ELGG application (similar to Facebook). This is done in the effort to create a sense of community amongst students and staff especially when they are dispersed across Scotland and abroad. It has been very effective so far in connecting all those associated with LLC. This is a worthy idea to explore at USP, creating that sense of community amongst our staff and students sprawled across the 12 member countries.

Online Learning Philosphy at LLC

An interesting comment made by the Head of Educational Technology, Mr. John Smith with regard to online learning is Lewis Castle College's (LLC) focus on having a blended format in its delivery. This is mainly due to:
(1) Maintaining that competitive edge in contrast to other key players in the field - Open University, UK for instance in other words by offering courses fully online means that they are in direct competition with big players such as Open University, UK.
(2) offering courses in blended formats ensures that it caters for varying learning styles as opposed to offering courses purely online which may not be necessarily appropriate for all learners.
They have recognised the appropriateness of applying the "purely online" format for the postgraduate level but this is applied to specific programmes only. Note that all students of LLC have good internet access. Food for thought for your deliberations...

Just Blurb it!!

Blurb is an application that lets you self publish your own photo book, cookbook, portfolio, and more with free software. And its reasonably priced as well! The project will be using this application to publish its findings towards the end of the project. We saw a product of this application on books that Professor Frank Rennie published. Check out samples of the book below.

Technology Training, Stornoway Scotland

Louise and I are in Stornoway, Scotland currently working from Lewis Castle College which is part of University of Islands and Highlands (UHI). We are currently involved in technology training as per the project activities. We have picked on some applications for possible use as follows:
Articulate which can be used for creating synchronised presentations, interactive quizzes and animations and you don't need to be a animation expert!!!
Camstudio which is camtasia's open source version
The one Louise and I are using for repurposing the course is call Magnolia, an open source content editing suite that is so easy to use. UWI is at this moment testing it after we gave a demonstration yesterday afternoon.
We are meeting with the Head of Educational Technology here in Lewis Castle this afternoon, Mr. John Smith and more tidbits later!

Tribute to Professor Robin Mason

(Professor Robin Mason - left back)

Louise and I would like to take this opportunity to relate our deep felt sympathies to Professor Robin Mason's family and friends for her untimely passing away.

We have gained much from her during interactions of this project. She will surely be missed.

To view tributes to Professor Robin Mason go to: http://iet-public-wiki.open.ac.uk/index.php/Robin

Course Development work in progress

Here is a summary of the schedule that we worked on to complete the repurposing of the course that we have been working on.

20/5/09, 12-4pm, SID Room
21/5/09, 9am-4pm, CDD Meeting Room
25/5/09, 9am-4pm, SLS Room

In addition to this, we have also assigned work to complete on an individual basis.

Press Release

Louise and I provided input to a press release written up by Theresa for the USP Beat and other media outlets. This is an effort to enhance the profile of the project leading up to the final dissemination event in February 2010.

USP Beat Press Release
Fiji Daily Post Press Release

Presentation to Support Sections of USP

Today, Louise and I made a presentation to the support sections of USP namely ITS, Marketing and Public Relations, Security, Physical Planning, Library and CFDL. These sections will form the core of the steering committee and we were very pleased with the positive feedback. You can view the presentation here. [to be linked]

Steering Committee Meeting in May, 09

We had a meeting today. You can view the minutes here. [to be linked]

Project Presentation to Faculty Deans

Today, Louise and I made a presentation to the faculty deans; Professor Bruce Yeates of FAL and Dr. Kesaia Seniloli of FBE. Unfortunately, Dr. Anjeela Jokhan was not able to attend as she was away on work-related trip abroad. However, we will be rescheduling a time with her to make the presentation. We appreciate the feedback that we got from this presentation and we look forward to further presentations with faculty.

Steering Committee Meeting in April, 09

A meeting was held today at SLS. View the minutes here [to be linked]

Steering Committee Meeting today in SLS

A meeting was held today at SLS. You can view the minutes here. [to be linked]

Steering Committee Meeting today @2.30pm

A steering committee meeting was held today that was attended by the deputy chairperson, Theresa Koroivulaono, committee secretary, Evonne Inia and project participants; Louise Vakamocea and Alanieta Lesuma-Fatiaki.
For more information on this meeting, you can view the minutes here [to be linked].

Steering Committee meeting - setting the groundworks

Further to PVC-LT's endorsement of our recommendation to set up a steering committee to oversee the planning and organisation of the final dissemination event, the first meeting was held today at 2.30pm, CDD Meeting room to set the terms of reference of this committee. We have begun discussions on this but will finalised this in the next meeting. In attendance were Theresa Koroivualono (Deputy chairperson), Louise and I and the appointed secretary, Evonne Inia. 2 members of the initial group have withdrawn their membership; Valentine Hazelman and Eileen Tuimaleali'ifano and we thank them for their support at the initial stages. Dr. Jenny Evans related her apologies attending to other matters at this time. The next meeting will be held on Thursday 5th March at 2.30pm in the CDD Meeting room.

Presentation to PVCA

This morning at 10.30am, Louise and I made a presentation to PVCA in the New Admin. conference room. Also in attendance were Jenny Evans, Valentine Hazelman, Eileen Tuimalealiifano and Theresa Koroivulaono. The purpose of the presentation was basically to give a background of the project, progress to date and discussions on the setting up of a steering committee to spearhead the preparations for the final dissemination here in USP in 2010.
We are very delighted with the expression of support by Dr. Nabalarua and her sound advice towards the next steps to undertake for the project. She has suggested that we determine the composition of the steering committee and its terms of reference and have this communicated to her.

Scheduling to meet PVCA

Since Monday 26th January, Louise and I have been busy trying to schedule a meeting with Pro-Vice Chancellor-Academic, Dr. Eci Nabalarua. This is based on a recommendation after our presentation to our VC and after doing so, the formation of a steering committee will eventuate that will begin the mammoth task of organising the final dissemination event to be held in early 2010 here in USP. We are now confirmed to meet with the PVCA next week, Thursday 5th February 2009 @ 10.30am in the New Admin Conference Room. Those that will be in attendance from CFDL are as follows:
Jenny Evans, Valentine Hazelman, Eileen Tuimaleali'ifano, Theresa Koroivulaono, Makarita Erasito and Louise and myself of course. We will be posting an article on this after the meeting.

Show & Tell presentation @ OPS Meeting

Today, I did a presentation during our show & tell segment of our operations meeting held from 10am-12pm at the Green Room. This was simply to give an update of the project. Those in attendance come under the course design & development section of the Centre for
Flexible and Distance Learning (CFDL).

Cost Statements (UK & Mauritius) submitted

Whew! What a relief! After painstakingly slaving off compiling the statements for UK and Mauritius, its FINALLY finalised and the statements with its supporting documents were sent via email to Nigel as follows:
UK - 15/1/09 (Fiji time)
Mauritius - 16/1/09 (Fiji time)

Lessons learnt - For the upcoming cost statements we will finalise these immediately after each event is complete and of course solicit more input from our finance department.

Still trying to wrestle with the monthly timesheets! To be finalised soon!

Meeting with Finance

As per the project requirement of providing cost statements, I had a meeting with Raksha Ben from our Finance Department today at 10am at her work station on behalf of Louise and I. .
The meeting was to make clarifications on cost statements for the UK and Mauritius trip. It has been quite an experience collating the statements but nevertheless learnt a lot about financial reporting in the process. We are aiming to submit the cost statements to Nigel before the week ends. Louise by the way is currently in Tonga conducting Success@USP orientation training for campus staff. Hopefully, she gets back safely amidst the tropical depression/flood conditions that Fiji is currently experiencing.

Post Mauritius Workshop - presentation

Today at 11am, we made a presentation to the Vice Chancellor , Professor Rajesh Chandra, Michael Gregory from the Planning and Development office and Helen Lentell, Director of CFDL on the SideCAP project and its current progress. We felt a sense of relief at the end of the presentation that we have been able to share our experiences with the VC and also highlight the significant benefits our university will derive from such a project.

Post Mauritius Workshop - report compilation

We are now back at our work desks and we met today from 11am-2.15pm to discuss and compile our report to the CDFL advisory group and ultimately for USP SMG. Our report is now compiled with some final adjustments before we have it circulated to the advisory group

Blog updates delay

You are probably all wondering why there hasn't been much news from us. Its been quite difficult getting internet access here. When we do get internet access, its for a very short time only or access is slow, so we are trying our best to update as much as possible.

Cameleon

Outside our hotel room, we spotted this reptile which we discovered later to be a Madagascar Cameleon.

Sister Jocel

During our wait to go through immigration, we met Sister Jocel from Madagascar who was on her way home after a 5 year mission in PNG. As you probably notice from her outfit, she is from the "Missionaries of Charity" founded by Mother Theresa.

Bonjour Mauritius!!

Finally landed in Mauritius about 8.45pm, Sat 29th Nov (Sunday 30th Fiji time). It was raining and going through immigration was such a long wait. Got out of immigration, collected our baggage and we were out to arrivals an hour later. Our driver Ravin was waiting for us and we zoomed off to Klondike Hotel, an hour away from the airport. Check out Louise waiting outside for our transport in the drizzling rain!

On board Air Mauritius

We had an unusual experience on Air Mauritius. A passenger sitting beside us coming all the way from Bangladesh, was not feeling too well - had a bout of air sickness and we had to put on our nursing hats. Flight was about 6hours in duration and we were just counting the seconds to touch down in Mauritius.

Sights of KLIA

We thought we'd show you some sights of KLIA - voted the best airport in the world 3 years in a row...

Taking the KLIA shuttle

Well, we felt that we'd like you to experience some of what we have experienced. So here is a little video clip of our shuttle ride experience at the KL International Airport. almost comes close to the real thing.

Publish Post

Journey continues..Sydney-Malaysia

Whew!! What a relief that we found each other on board Malaysia Airlines bound for KL (can u guess what that stands for? quiz buddies!!). Experience on Malaysia Airlines or what they prefer to be referred to MH (nothing to do with MHCC) - its Malaysian Hospitality and its the tag that carries the pinnacle of their tourism promotion. We were constantly fed on the flight and had a great entertainment programme. Experienced indigestion as a result. Getting off KL and into immigration was smooth sailing - no delays at all. We were just so impressed with KL International Airport, the organisation of key processes of the airport was just super perfect which explains why they have been voted 3 years in a row as the "best airport in the world". Finally got a pic here - check out Louise sitting in the shuttle within KL Airport taking us to the immigration area.

Mauritius - The journey begins.... (Nausori-Nadi-Sydney)

The next activity in the SideCAP project is in Mauritius and our journey began on Friday 28th November (Fiji time) at 6am in Nausori Airport. Delayanism (refer to an earlier article) was the order of the day. Flight on Pacific Sun was due to depart at 6am but was delayed by 30minutes or so. Arrived in Nadi to a long line of passengers checking in to the Sydney flight that we were booked into. Then another long queue to go through immigration. We only went to our gate just in the nick of time to board our Air Pac flight to Sydney. It was a 4hour flight and the flight crew was great in comparison to our earlier experiences with the UK meeting. Arrived in Sydney Airport, Louise and I lost each other for a good 2 hours and fortunately found each other on board our booked flight to Malaysia. Whew!!! Almost had a heart attack there!!! Sorry! no pics to go with this article. it was a really rushed connecting flight experience!!!

More feedback coming in

We received feedback from the remaining members of the review group. One of the feedback that we received was to narrow down the area of concentration in the chosen topic – Study Skills. We then decided to narrow this down to the following:
Resource 3: Essay Writing and Report Writing
Resource 5: Reading and Notetaking

Repurposing of the Content

The next task on the agenda was the repurposing of the content. First, a print out and compilation of the OER was made. This involved converting each page to PDF and the eventual print out and compilation. Louise was tasked with repurposing each of the content. What proved quite challenging was the repurposing of the topic used. After much thought, constitution

Content Analysis of OIL

Louise as the content specialist, carried out a content analysis and the deal was sealed. The results of her anaylsis was positive. The decision was made to use OIL as our basis of the repurposing exercise.

Success@USP Presentation

Louise and I were asked to make a presentation at the Success@USP workshop. Success@USP is a orientation programme for DFL students. This workshop were attended by orienation trainers by the pilot campuses amongst our 12 member countries. In this presentation, we provided background information abou the SIDEcap project and its benefits for USP.

OER web search

After the meeting with the review team, we decided that it was best that we look for another OER to work on. We decided to do a web search of OERs within the Australasian region which may have material that will suit the USP context. We were sent a OER site link by one of the review group members. This was an OER in New Zealand. At first glance, it automatically appealed to us.

2nd meeting with review team

Our 2nd meeting with the review group was specifically focused on how we could possibly place the resources online through Moodle. Suggestions was made to have the following:
Standalone/self-paced study skills modules that can be linked in with online courses
Facilitated study skills modules that can be done fully online or in blended format (f2f & online)
During this meeting, there was discussion about the suitability of the openlearn modules for our repurposing project. The review group were of the opinion that we was not appropriate and that we may consider looking at other OER sites.

Content Analysis of Openlearn materials

Louise and I carry out a content analysis of the Openlearn materials. This was quite a complex progress. We found ourselves wondering whether or not this was appropriate for our repurposing project.

Content outline submitted to SideCAP group

Today, we submitted our content outline to the SideCAP group. There was a bit of delay in receiving feedback from all members of the review group so we went ahead and submitted to fulfil requirements of the project.