I experienced a wonderful virtual learning opportunity this week with some fantastic educators from ADSB. Donna Fry, who was leading the learning sessions on site, invited me to provide a kick off presentation to their day. My task was to ignite some change thinking by linking the areas of technology enabled learning, technology change and bringing collaboration into eLearning.
I loved the idea of doing a virtual keynote – what a perfect way to “walk the talk” in terms of connected learning and modelling what we need our students to do.
While there are a variety of tools one could use for this type of activity, we settled on Google Hangouts (GHO) for our session.
Of course, the technology all worked flawlessly <big grin!> – a good demonstration of technology creating a natural flow of sharing.
I really enjoyed being able to participate in a timed table talk opportunity following my presentation as Donna kindly relocated me from the “big screen” to the table.
I was certainly struck by the power of this. We collectively decided that this was a virtual F2F learning session.
Linking back to the theme of the day and my task with the opening kick off, I could envision a day when virtual F2F learning opportunities are normalized into learning environments. I look forward to learning with these educators as they develop their connecting and collaborating strategies.
~Mark
Resources:
Learn more about the background of the Futures Forum Project.
On the ground with Futures Forum.
~ Mark's Musings ~ blog.markwcarbone.ca 
Thanks for your contributions to our learning, Mark.
While you were speaking I couldn’t help but think of “the medium is the message” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
eLearning teachers were the audience on Wednesday. Why couldn’t our students learning at a distance be as much a part of the conversation as you were through GHO?
They can.
Distance learning is not about putting “booklets” online, it’s about relationships and learning – in that order. We can build relationships through tools like Google Hangouts and Skype, and they should be the foundation of eLearning. “Content delivery” is an outdated model that does not align with what we know about learning.
eLearning opens opportunities for learning. Let’s change the conversation about eLearning in Ontario.
Thanks for demonstrating how simple it is to accomplish this.