Building confidence

This week I have used tools and enjoyed experiences.

On Tuesday I facilitated a session for World OT day; a subject I have only a layperson's experience of. Although I had 'played' in Elluminate this was to be the real thing, so armed with a whisky and soda I started up and was relieved to have Sarah there to talk me through lining up 2 PPTs.

It being a world wide event meant an inclusive ice-breaker was required, but a fast one, in addition I wanted to reduce the 'testing equipment' time as much as possible and worked on an assumption most participants had previously been into other rooms, therefore come with experience.

Using the mic I asked everyone to test their audio and put their hand up or text their success. Then I asked people to say high and provide a word or two describing their environment or country but on text.

27 people came into the room, most arriving close together with a few latecomers. The style of presentation was 3 ppts from presenters, plus the one on Elluminate etiquette. This mean there was straight dialogue and no interaction with participants. There was activity on the text I am relieved to say.

Periodically I would pop something onto the text welcoming someone or providing encouragement/affirmation to the speakers. Once the presentation period was done it was question time when I reminded people of etiquette, my final action was to time the conversations out to fit in with the session ending and provide a url to the next session.

As it was a hour long I managed to complete most of a Killer Soduku puzzle and all of my whiskey and soda, phew that was important.

It was a whole lot easier than I planned for, I relaxed and enjoyed myself; I felt a bit for the listeners, as that is all they were. The style of presentation provided a clear example of how important it is to have interaction, some of these sessions were happening at night or during the night and that meant people were waking up or staying up past their normal time, to sit and not be involved would be difficult I think.

The following day I spent time with a fellow 0-lf student in Elluminate and that provided more experience and was a comfortable space of discussion and support. After that my special guest for the 9th met me in Elluminate and we discussed the session construction, her role and the tools she would use to ensure engagement with the group. Tomorrow I am meeting a fellow student in Elluminate to go through a presentation, so all in all I am getting plenty of experience.

I saw that WizIQ is being used for the presentation and that is something I could have done to0; almost regret not doing it now, however to secure learning at a basic level in this case in Elluminate, is useful for me as it suits my learning style and provides a discipline for someone known for their flitting hither and thither.

I have pushed the boat out and advertised my mini on twitter and facebook and course email as well as here, which means I may have other participants than just fellow students. I have not put the url on either site as I want to screen who comes in. I am mindful that this is not my 'property' to be handing out.

I have also used Doodle as an invitation tool, as well as the timeclock and tiny url tool on WikiEducator.

At this time I am committed to participating next semester to enjoy the environment again and become more confident with the tools I have really only started coming to terms with. Like ACE [Adult Community Education] one time round is not enough for me, so twice round will set me up nicely and I hope to provide support to others as they jump into this awesome playpit. Also I am aware that life will come along and subsume me, taking part for a 2nd round will remind me of where I am heading.

As I sign off I have a vision of a great wave coming to shore. I have been apon a surfboard on that wave, enjoying the exhilaration of the ride, I see the shore, the wave is dying, am I coming in or finding another wave?

My favourite things

My mini has continued to be created and now seems to be settled. My former colleague Vasi Doncheva will attend and will discuss her experience of using Delicious and Twitter.

We will take a look at the tools we have most enjoyed using, and why; and why others haven't been successful for our situation or just ourselves and our style.

Some of you may be interested in Vasi Doncheva's e-daily, http://paper.li/playnice_nz/elearning

You see I have removed teams from the concept and moving around rooms, I am aiming for an interesting, informal sharing of learning and information.

My Mini helped by "The path of least resistance- Robert Fritz"

Robert talks about the creative process in way that is freeing but at the same time may be trying for those who need parameters or even 'should do's'.

So I begin with the end picture in mind, much like a 'Merlin' experience I then work back from the success. This approach removes the hopelessness of complex tasks weighing me down.
With a picture I have more information than can possibly be achieved with words; as I describe this picture and how it came to be I provide knowledge on the steps forward.

If I look at the image from many angles, add and take away elements, turn it over to see from below, above, inside and out the terms of reference of the image change or fill out, and thereby fills out the concept.

I will reflect on how this approach helps or hinders my mini preparation.

Learning is a dynamic activity which has been proved yet again with developing my mini approach.

Later I will post what my vision is and then the steps to the reality, I welcome comment from participants and readers of this blog,

If we don't look for and read we can be the looser

Note to self, read other students' blogs more often, so many people are sharing interesting ideas, networks, developments and unless we click onto these blogs they remain undiscovered to us.

After the party finishes- the mini beckons

There is plenty of clearing up to do, as well as seeing if there is anything lingering....

Well in my case 8 days away from on-line facilitation and planning my future have had a significant impact, with one I once again am well behind with my work and reading and with the latter I have changed tack, probably best to do that now rather than further on course.

I missed, through poor time management the 2 2nd life opportunities, which means I will have to find other ways to look through it, I appreciated Sarah's comments on the need to have a thorough look and not make immediate judgements. I am enjoying both listening to recordings and taking part in synchronistic sessions; Tuesday's with Nellie Muller was most interesting and with other speakers she was very stimulating not only in her manner but also with her easy use of various tools we are being introduced to. E-portfolios seem to be available through mahara and google, they are high on the 'get to' list for me. Coach Carole has just put an announcement up about developments for her with e-portfolios, which looks interesting too.

Some of you may be interested in Vasi Doncheva's e-daily, http://paper.li/tag/eqnz I hope this works, it is my first ímplant'. This is fairly recent start-up. Whilst we sat discussing the huge world of on-line tools or applications I mentioned how challenging it was to cope with them all, so Vasi suggested I use tweetdeck http://www.tweetdeck.com/desktop/ try it out and see wha

t you think.

I am thinking deeply about cultural competence at the moment. It's value is highlighted by spending over a week with 3 Taiwanese grand masters [martial arts] and listening to one interpret for the 2 who had minimal English. These 2 travel the world teaching and rely to a vast extent on interpretation by students, cultural competence is hugely important for their messages which are sent kinaesthetically and visually.

I am going to have a look at delicious, it offers a good way to hold all the websites I am gathering, among other things.

Now, onto assessment things. Part of this course requires us to put on a mini-conference. As we have all come to this course with e-skills and are adding to them each day I thought it would be interesting to look at some of them in the mini-conference. So this is my thinking:

Would 4 people volunteer to involved in a discussion? They would be in 2 teams and each team will chose 2 tools to promote to the audience, hopefully made up of other participants. I will ask the 2 teams to go into a room each and put onto a whiteboard the pros and cons of each tool, then after say 15 mins come back into the large room and not only present their whiteboard but also champion their tools to the opposite team, perhaps getting a debate going. I will then ask for a vote for which group of tools is the most favoured from everyone.

SO, can I please have some volunteers!

The last few hectic weeks leave me to ponder where there was time to work and keep up to date with the rest of life. Once my Ching Ming Tai Chi Chuan experience in Bacchus Marsh, Melbourne is over I will have the mental space to make some in-roads to the readings from this course, and comment on them here. The easiest homework are the YouTube clips. I have yet to work out how put up links with ease and accuracy and want my blog to reflect my growing confidence with the myriad of tools available. I have added to my goals making You Tube clips which I aim to put on my website, I wonder if this is possible.

One of the many things I appreciate being self-employed [but not yet earning any income], is that I have the time to look, for example when we moved to this house the garden had experienced a scorched earth event, when all the trees bar one had been chopped down and the stumps covered with black plastic and river stones. One Totara survived, its limbs well chopped back, due to the timely arrival of the police called by the neighbours. Since then I have been planting fit to bust and one particular species I like are aloes, I like their structure and line. Now 6 years old many are tall and beautiful shapes, this season they have bought added bonuses to us. The flowers which are vertical, large and colourful have attracted many wax eyes, on some pollen laden flowers there may 6 birds, so beautiful to watch, how they worked out that this year was the one to visit our garden I don't know but they have certainly added enormously to our life.

On to our weekly considerations on the course: to do this I will go through the posed questions and provide answers, this acts as a good development prompter, as I prepare to become an on-line facilitator.

Is this activity or event in an open or closed environment? Well there multiple avenues to travel down and so multiple events to consider. I am keen to establish a wikieducator site and put up some community education ideas, I have established a profile, need to get some comment/critique on that and so if someone reads this and would volunteer, that would be good. The WE would be an open environment, the on-line facilitation closed, the blog open and so it goes on.

Do I need to target my marketing to specific people or use the Internet to spread as far and as wide as I can? The basic answer is far and wide, but in a managed way and using tools appropriate to the market, this may have to include Twitter which is a tool I don't yet have a handle on.

§ What networks do I need to develop and what communities do I need to access in order to market my event/activity? I need to develop networks in sustainable community development, these will mainly be found in the Social Enterprise community and Corporates that presently philanthropise. I will develop local and non-local networks which will require me to consider how, who and what: how I do this, what tool/s I use and who I know who would be willing to assist with introductions.

§ How can I leverage or make the most of the serendipitous nature of the Internet? Leveraging will require me to respond in a manner that interests the enquirer and provides them with reason to take the contact forward, this means the manner in which I communicate must be appealing, thought provoking and useful to encourage enquirers to forward my site to others and thereby experience serendipity. The requires planning, connections to be working well and confidence in me in the tools I will use.

§ Will the event/activity/project be free or does it have a cost involved? The most obvious answer to me is that some of the activity will be free to interest/excite the reader and some will come with a cost around it. I will have to self-moderate to an extent, but also discuss this with people in the field to find benchmarks and then consider what styles of charging I will operate, eg a not for profit charge and a for profit charge.

§ What tools shall I use - free or proprietary tools? I will use skype initially and perhaps moodle if it is still free, initially I need to be using these types of tools, they may also be tools familiar to users which will be a double bonus. As I will do some work in the SE sector an aim may be to have the on-line facilitation activity either sponsored or subsided by a company providing the activity.

§ Will the speakers/participants incur a cost? Don't know and also don't know how I will set up charging, if anyone call lend a hand here please do!

§ How will I support people to access the technology before the event/activity? Well this is preparation, same as when I taught, I will offer participants practice sessions prior to the event/activity with me and perhaps with others already signed up for the event/activity.

§ How can I market my event to and support people who have minimal access to computers and the Internet? I have come across this so many times in Adult Education, the solution was to market to the community organiser and the community site which had access to these essentials, this may mean agreements or arrangements with that larger organisation. Then there are networks and these can be tiny but enabled to grow larger through the notion of sharing tools.

§ Is there a place for integrating the cell phone? Well yes, and is the course going to include downloads onto ipods which will mean students can stay up to date with resources and take part using say Skype.

§ How can I put information online in a format that can be printed cheaply for people who have limited Internet access. Don't know-help!

• What do you need to do develop an effective online network that you can use for your online facilitation?
• WIIFM [what is in it for me] I need to have something others want too, I need to know people and can find people with similar interests, so I need to find these people on-line and pitch my product/event. Similar to a face-to-face event a well known and liked guest speaker is a powerful start, good graphics and stable platform. I must have my website/blog up and running with regular updates happening and this to be on the move in a growing network of interest.
• What tips can you share about online networking that will help us improve our online facilitation skills?
• I will come back to this, I wonder if people intending to facilitate on-line would be assisted by running a trial and hearing a playback to find out what of their style does work well and the converse. Explaining that time lag is inevitable would be very helpful and give some information on that, such as what to wait for, and perhaps have a symbol on the screen that reminds people to click the microphone off before they do anything else, it seems to be a sticking point.
• What worked well? Our on-line session was full of bumps in the road; Karen's connectivity and audio was a real downer, which means there must always be a plan B, we did have this but then didn't follow through with the idea, I would do that again. Exampled was the DimDim session going onto Eluminate. Allocating people specific tasks and times I think would help, we tend [any session] to talk over each other, so perhaps a section of the session, not jumping around with inputs.
• What did not go so well? Setting up rooms, which was frustrating especially when I took part in a meeting with Coach Carole and found how relatively easy it is to do. The connectivity ofcourse was a real issue and led to disappointment for us all.
• What skills or resources do you need to network and facilitate meetings using Twitter? I wonder if this will be my temporary nemesis, even though I watched the You tube clip I could not confirm in what order the info should go into the discussion box and what I needed to have clicked before hand, very simple but totally eluded me and resulted in my first frustration on the course, which I guess is quite something. I do know Twittering holds really advantages for me, so as I said above a temporary nemesis.
• How do you see yourself using Twitter in the future, if at all, for online facilitation? Yes I WILL GET THERE, it may be the challenge area I have.

Venn diagrams, social networking and on-line facilitation

As I sat thinking about this blog Venn diagrams came to mind and stayed there, my conclusion is that they concept is to be part of my blog, and why?

I have read Sue Walter's blog and her PLN site, there are some excellent visuals to promote thinking. For me from a personal and professional perspective I see networks such as professional Ning or Facebook site as circles, as well as social circles and learning circles; there are points of sharing common knowledge and skill and points where sharing or commonality takes place in new ways, I visualise these circles as in constant motion connecting at the similarities.

How can social networking and facilitation be used for on-line facilitation?

To answer this I return to how we as humans network and facilitate, it is worth pausing a moment to remember that not all humans value doing this, or have the confidence and skills. Attempting to take this on-line therefore presents a range of challenges if one of the outcomes is to include these groups.

For those who seek to network and facilitate taking the activity to an on-line forum means basic pool rules are known and even part of personal practice. An interest in people and their activities is commonly held. For those with more dominant characteristics I suspect the on-line forum provides clear indicators of people voting with their feet!

Advantages and disadvantages of social networking on-line are oft-documented and debated, as I am personally during planning for my new business; ie which networks do I wish to use and why, who do I want to reach on-line? these need to be clear business objectives as part of the overall plan. I am also clearly aware that my personal and business networks are like the Venn diagram discussed above, there are points of commonality and points of distance where other links occur. Coming to mind pretty immediately are that some of the postings of my young friends 13 to 23 are not appropriate for other generations to be exposed to.

Once I have decided from this candy shop of platforms which ones I am committing to, I will plan the part of my business I will operate on-line and prepare the first few weeks of work, to ensure the viewing networkers wish to return and recommend the site to others. I would use it to post resources and invite participants to discussions, facilitating further networking. I was interested to hear from an ex-business person that this mode of operation was considered foolhardy, as it could only lead to other people in the same business swiping ideas and comments, competitiveness run deep ofcourse, I am interested in hearing how other on-line facilitation business have fared in this regard.

I intend using my on-line site as a continuation of face to face facilitation and skype mentoring/coaching sessions, in much the same way as many people on this course already do. I am sure there is little to invent, there may just be adaptations.

Now I am away to socially network with adult community educators who have jointly won the 2010 Dynamic Community Leadership award, they are Circus Kumarani and Flax Roots Whanau, we are to congregate and celebrate.