Well, what a revelation Netvibes (www.netvibes.com) is – thanks Anne!
After years of playing with an assortment of RSS readers, with their clunky interfaces and difficult navigation, Netvibes is a dream. Finally able to organise the net into the way that is most useful for me. Its a nice reminder that even though I consider myself to be pretty technologically savvy, there is always more you can learn – and thats essentially as the result of the learning networks we create. I must admit I was a pretty grumpy at our first eLearning Experiences block last weekend – but delighted to say that even though we focussed on the use of some technologies that I’m very familiar with and have been using for years, I still picked up some very valuable learning and exposure to some new tools. A nice reminder to try to look beyond your mood at the time…
As a relatively new teacher in the TAFE system, and one of a small, core group of new teachers who are pushing the boundaries in eLearning / Flexible Delivery development and use at our College, I must say that I am very pi**ed off with TAFE at the moment – the inflexible, ‘one size fits all’ attitude to managing and supporting the use of technology – compounded by the ‘tail wagging the dog’ approach to IT support (dictating the form and type of applications teachers can use and manage) – Ive always been a boundary pusher and after 16 years of self employment, I’m finding it very hard at times to deal with with working within a bureaucracy that ironically does not appear to seriously value its teaching staff. The rhetoric is there, but often many actions and attitudes contradict it. To get around the computing support constraints (dont you just love being treated like a child and not be allowed to add, remove or manage the software on your work computer) I now take my own laptop to work each day and ‘patch’ it into the network to bypass such rediculous rules… IT arent happy about it, but that balances the ledger of frustrations are far as I am concerned.
A lovely example from last week – when discussing the problems that a roll-out of the new Microsoft Office 2007 suite (without any consultation with teachers) is having on our students and us as teachers (without the lack of any bridging strategy to assist with what was a major change in software look and behaviour) – the issue was raised about how our students who are Mac users are being particularly impacted by this change. Student PC users are being offered to upgrade their Office Suite for an introductory upgrade price (great… the ’solution’ is to turn us teachers into Microsoft sales reps – “…buy the new version and your woes will be gone!“), however Mac users are not being offered the same deal. The response from IT ’support’ was “Well, its not our fault if your students choose to use Macs“. Ahem. What planet are you on? What sort of institution are you working in? I was gobsmacked and very angry. The next solution will be to survey students at enrollment and, with great pathos, tell those Mac users that we just cant provide you with any training support in this organisation. Such an enlightening attitude for a major educational institution.
Anyway… off my soapbox. Just an interesting insight I think on working with in Institution which, on one hand professes the progressive rhetoric of embracing eLearning, and the reality of the level of dysfunction between the sections of the organisation that need to work together to make successful eLearning a reality for its students.
