Project Progress

Sue Waters - Aquaculture

On the weekend on 10-11 June, 2006 Sue conducted a pilot in which she delivered resources via a PDA to her online Aquaculture students who were in Perth for 2 days of intensive workshops. She developed her resources in FrontPage, PowerPoint and Excel. She also used ~PocketTV to play videos of parasites.

The feedback from the students was extremely encouraging. All five students said that the acitivity was useful to them and four of them said that it enhanced their overall experience. The videos were popular - "Being able to see the parasites on the video is very good" - but the checklists weren't so well-received. For Sue's detailed analysis of the student feedback click on Evaluation of Aquaculture PDA Trial 10-11 June 2006.

Also, read Sue's blog for regular updates on her project.

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John Forrest (Horticulture) & Wayne Miller (Turf)

20 June 2006

Both John and Wayne spend most of their workday in the workplace and they feel that the greatest potential for PDAs is for content delivery. Marcus's workshop on developing resources using PowerPoint and FrontPage was a revelation and they want to develop resources that they can take into the workplace, to demonstrate activities, photos, videos etc.

I think that they should also explore workplace assessment and skills recognition. I meet with them next week to discuss the way forward.

27 June 2006

I met with John and Wayne this morning. They will meet this week to develop their project ideas and write the project plan. After the last project meeting with Wade Lapp, they have rethought their ideas ("as you do") to include applications for assessment and attendance.

Wayne has been experimenting with applications for his PDA:

• a simple spreadsheet to record student attendance - date and arrival time - and task completion.
• accessed photographs taken with his digital camera by inserting the camera's memory card in the PDA memory slot.
• making small videos his digital camera to play on his PDA, using an open source movie players such as PocketTV or TCPMP.
• using Blue Tooth to transfer photos from his digital camera to the PDA.
• PowerPoint slides for content delivery

Wayne will attend the Visual CE workshop on 28 July and will probably morph into the resident Horticulture/Turf database developer.

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Colin Boyd - Maritime

20 June 2006

I sent Colin's WebCT course to Marcus for his feedback on whether it is able to be modified for the PDA. Marcus has spoken with Ian Whitehouse, his colleague from Global ICT who is CEO and has been behind the development of the Card PLE prototype. They have briefly spoken about Colin's projects needs but he hasn't yet been able to talk with him on the specifics. However, they have agreed to provide us with at least two memory cards packaged with some content (eg, a unit of competency) so that we can test the process free of charge as part of the prototype testing. The feedback will help them to further develop the product.

BUT ....Unfortunately, Colin's project is looking very shakey because his time has once again been absorbed by other, more pressing, activities. Colin and I still want to convert a small part of his unit for the PDA and trial it. We may have to focus the Card PLE pilot back to Sue's content development. Also, John's and Wayne's ideas have potential.

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Michael Snadden - Hospitality

20 June 2006

Michael has co-opted Steve Berry to help him with the task mapping. I think that we will be able to get a substantial amount of programming done with Visual CE and Access, to at least be able to demonstrate the model.

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Rajiv Singh - Maritime

21 June 2006.

I met with Rajiv and Sue to discuss Raj's involvement in the project. He teaches Maritime law and he has a really neat application. He has downloaded various legal document onto his PDA, for example the Australian Navigation Act and the Ship Registration Act. He calls it his portable reference library, or quick reference guide because, when his students or colleagues ask him a question about legal matters, he has the definitive reference on his PDA. If he is uncertain of the precise answer, he does a search of the document on his PDA. His only frustration is that the search is slow in comparison with a search on his laptop. His PDA is an iPAQ 2190. We'll compare the speed of the search on the high-end PDAs (when they arrive).

Rajiv encourages his Law students to bring their laptops to class and all but two of the students have one. At the beginning of the class, the students download Raj's powerpoint and they take notes as he talks. They also have legal documents on their computers which they can refer to during the class. The two students who don't have laptops use the printed copies of the powerpoints and the legal documents.

Raj will lend these two students a PDA with a memory card loaded with the legal documents and powerpoints for the duration of the course. They won't be particularly useful for taking notes during the class but should be effective as a resource for viewing the powerpoints and searching the legal documents. The searches will be slow because the PDAs are iPAQ 1950.

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Rhoda Takiwa - Maritime

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Elisabeth Elsmann & Frances McLean - Information Technology

27 June 2006

Elisabeth and Frances have just joined the project. They are both expert database developers and Frances has considerable experience in developing applications for PDAs. They attended both of Marcus's workshops and will come to the Visual CE workshop on 28 July.

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Andrew Matthews - Aquaculture

3 July 2006

Andrew is a casual Aquaculture lecturer who is developing resources for his Aquaculture students, including videos. He plans to use videos to demonstrate procedures to his students before they actually do the activity themselves. His ultimate aim is to use PDAs in the workplace to enhance workplace learning but he'll pilot content with his internal students. Andrew will attend the Visual CE w'shop on 28 July.

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Brian Wolstencroft - Building and Construction

4 July 2006

Brian has been working with Carrie Roche on a CSSN project to map critical aspects of evidence and knowledge for a job to units of competence and elements and to develop tools that will capture the data. The next step in the process is to use Visual CE to record the data, using PDAs, which will then flow through to the elements, and finally to ASRI. I'm confident that we can achieve the first part and the second part will be done by Wade Lapp and ICT Training Delivery Solutions. Our goal is to achieve a model for this process that can then be extended for other delivery areas.