Australia Series professional learning

The Australia Series is a professional learning opportunity that has been developed by Steve Hargadon and a group of Australian educators.

Providing free access to online professional learning and conferencing via Elluminate, all sessions will be held in Australian-friendly times and offer topics that are relevant to Australian teachers.

Accessed via the LearnCentral Australia Series group, the aim is to have (at least) weekly Elluminate sessions. If you join the LearnCentral Australia Series group, you can join discussions, add your own events and see what other events are planned and use links provided to enter the Elluminate sessions.  Of course you do not have to ‘attend’ all scheduled sessions. You can select sessions that are relevant or appeal to you and those that fit into your schedule. (Remember to keep a note of all sessions ‘attended’ for teacher registration purposes.)

Australia series

This professional learning resource is highly recommended and is freely available to all Australian educators. (Please note you will need to have Java installed on the computer you are using as well as a headset for communication in Elluminate).

Read more about LearnCentral and Elluminate.

Host your own webinars – for free

LearnCentral are encouraging educators to run webinars via LearnCentral public Elluminate. Any educator can use these resources for free as long as:

the events must be 1) education-oriented, 2) free (you’re not charging those who attend), 3)  recordable, and 4) open to anyone to attend.  We’re really excited to see what you do with this capability, and are hoping that it allows you to regularly gather other educators around curricular interests in “historic” ways.

The current instructions are below.  This is a new service, so your feedback and help are greatly appreciated!

Before Scheduling a Meeting

We ask that you go through the live or recorded free Elluminate training (http://www.elluminate.com/support/training/index.jsp) before hosting a session, and suggest strongly that you attend another session as a participant to see how an Elluminate session works.  Please don’t go in without any actual experience–it won’t be good for you or your attendees!  🙂 This is an honor system, but we do ask that you are prepared as we don’t want these free sessions to reflect poorly on Elluminate!

To Schedule a Meeting

To schedule a meeting in the LearnCentral public-use Elluminate room, please create the event using the calendar for this group by going to the events tab here and clicking on “Create Event.”  Please check the calendar first and take care not to schedule over another event.  Please also leave at least 30 minutes before and after each event (so that you and the organizer who follows you both have time to come into the room to prepare before your events).

The URL to put in the calendar event, or to give out to others to attend, is https://sas.elluminate.com/d.jnlp?sid=lcevents&password=Webinar_Guest. You can also use this shortened version:  http://tinyurl.com/lcparticipant.  Participants do not need to be members of LearnCentral to attend the event, but please encourage them to join!

Once your event is scheduled in the group calendar, you are welcome to also add it to the calendars of other groups you are a part of.  If you believe your event might be of interest to the LearnCentral community as a whole, please email me at stevehargadon@elluminate.com so that I can place it on the community calendar.  You also need to email me for the moderator log-in information of this is your first time holding a LearnCentral Elluminate meeting. 

Please keep meetings to under two hours in order for others to be able to use the room.  If you need a session that is longer than two hours, please contact me directly.  Also, the LearnCentral Elluminate room has limit of 300 participants.  If you believe that you will need to accommodate more than this number, please contact me directly as well.

The Actual Meeting

When you enter the room, there will be one or two standard slides that we ask that you leave in place.  Any slide you want to upload should be placed after our default slides. 

You will also need to start the recording.  There should be a pop-up box asking if you want to do so.  You should wait until your formal session is about to begin.

If you need to set up a telephone bridge, see the instructions in the Elluminate manual at http://www.elluminate.com/support/docs/9.5/telephony/index.jsp.  You’ll need to have your own conference call system and dial-in number. 

Ending a Meeting

When your session is over, please clear the room of all participants, yourself included.  The room must be empty for the recording to process.  If you have participants who have left the session running and don’t exit on their own, you can click on them in the participant window, then right-click to manually remove.

After a Meeting

When your meeting is done, you will need to find your recording link and place in the post-event URL.  Here are the steps:

1.  Go to the Recording Table is at https://sas.elluminate.com/drtbl?suid=D.40F698971780B7AEE5FAD85F5E2D6D.  Look for the date and time of your session for the link (you can change the times to reflect your time zone).  When you have found your session, right-click on the “Play” link to copy the URL. 

2.  Return to the LearnCentral and find your event.  It’s usually easiest to do so by going to the group calendar in the “Host Your Own Webinar Group” or by using the top “Event” menu item and then selecting “My Events.”  Click through to your actual event details page, then click on the “Edit Event” button.  Scroll down to the “Other” box and click on “Expand.”  You’ll then see a “Post-event URL” field, and you should now past the link to play your event recording. Then click the “Submit” button at the bottom to save these changes.

3.  Repeat this process for each listing of the same event if you’ve put the event in multiple groups.

Feedback

We hope you have fun and find lots of good uses for this service!  Please give us your feedback and ideas by posting in the discussions of this group, or by emailing Steve Hargadon directly at stevehargadon@elluminate.com.

 A great way to save time, money and the environment! As a regular user of Elluminate, this is a great tool.

LearnCentral

LearnCentral is an online, social learning network for teachers and is affiliated with Elluminate, the online conferencing system featured here previously.

LearnCentral homepage
LearnCentral homepage

From the FAQs page comes the following information:

What can I do on LearnCentral?
Use LearnCentral to:

  • Connect with your peers worldwide
  • Share ideas, discuss issues, solve problems
  • Meet with colleagues in real time
  • Develop and share standards-based curriculum
  • Access a library of peer-rated resources
  • Discover relevant content for your classroom
  • Improve skills and increase effectiveness
  • Create and maintain a portfolio of learning content
  • Join and create groups
  • Collaborate on projects and best practices
  • Mentor and be mentored
  • Increase visibility of an academic institution
  • Conduct professional development training
  • Attend events with thought leaders in the education community
  • Participate in a global dialogue to help transform education

 What is LearnCentral?
LearnCentral is a new social learning network for education. More than a social network or a learning community, this open environment enables those who are passionate about teaching and learning to improve their education experiences and inspire others do the same. In addition to social networking tools that allow you to connect with others and share content and best practices, LearnCentral gives you the tools to meet in real-time virtual rooms and even hold and attend events.

Why is LearnCentral unique?
LearnCentral is a social learning network with a mission. Similar to the familiar No User Left Behindproduct philosophy for Elluminate, the rallying cry for LearnCentral is No Educator Left Alone. Here you can begin to make the connections you need-peer to peer, classroom to classroom, school to school, country to country-to form a collective wisdom that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Who can use LearnCentral?
If you are part of the global education community, LearnCentral is all about YOU as participant, contributor, and partner. Not just for Elluminate customers, LearnCentral is for ANYONE who is passionate about teaching and learning and wants to connect with like-minded colleagues to share, inspire, and be inspired.

Why should you join LearnCentral?
On the surface, LearnCentral is your opportunity to connect, share, and inspire on a global level, enabling you to be more productive and effective. At a deeper level, it’s a call to action to help bring about positive change within the education community worldwide. LearnCentral is about shared conversations and inspired collaborations, forward thinking and forward teaching, real-time dialogue and real-world results. Elluminate believes that the power of community has the power to transform.

What is Elluminate’s role in LearnCentral?
We think of ourselves as a facilitator or guide within the LearnCentral environment, much like a teacher in the learner-centered classroom. As part of the global education community, each of you has something to contribute and something to learn. Elluminate’s role is to provide an open online environment where this can happen freely and easily, including providing the enabling technology for real-time meeting and live events.

What is the philosophy behind LearnCentral?
At Elluminate, we believe that 21st century education calls for 21st century solutions. We understand that the learning landscape must evolve into what we call EDU 2.0, an environment in which Web 2.0 tools come together with traditional and virtual classrooms, physical campuses and distance learning programs, learning communities and social networks to transform education. The way we accomplish this is to be always learning-together.

Why was LearnCentral developed?
We listened to those in the academic community who told us they wanted a destination for education, a way to connect, collaborate, and learn with others on a global level. As a result, Elluminate has partnered with Edtuit, a free social collaboration site co-founded by a former developer of the Yahoo! Teachers community, to create a new kind of online environment that combines a social network, learning community, and grassroots movement to improve education.

As we continue to build our online, worldwide networks, LearnCentral seems to be one source that we should consider including. Thanks to Camilla Elliottfor the tweet on LearnCentral.