WP6: Web 2.0 and staff development

So far, our main developments have been in the use of synchronous classrooms (WebEx), to deliver staff development on Web 2.0 technologies. Six, 2-hour sessions have focused upon blogs and wikis, social networking and social bookmarking. an evaluation report will follow, alongside a recipe paper on engaging users through synchronous tasks. This also links to a conversation I was having earlier with Derek Harding, at the University of Teesside about producing shopping lists for users. His argument is for microlearning:

"Learning that doesn't take long to do - maybe a few minutes. For example a small tutorial that covers how to do something in photoshop such as crop. People doing stuff in the community want to get on and do it rather than mess about doing courses so it is just a question of facilitating that.microlearning needs in communities. What I really need I suppose is a process for responding to Explaining this has just given me an idea. What we need is a shopping list page that people can write in to say 'I don't know how to x' and the list can be visible to all like an faq list but newcomers can endorse things on the list by voting for them if they are already there. This would allow the community to set priorities."

We also have a space in Second Life, which a student is scripting. This level 3 Computing Sciences student will be producing guidelines for staff development in virtual worlds.