Weekly report 1: Blended Learning

Well it was only just over a week ago that I posted an idea for the collaborative development of a Guide to Blended Learning in the knowledge era. But it would be ridiculous to think of this idea as ‘my’ idea… it’s not. It’s really an idea that has been perculating (?) through the activity of all of us contributing to the Teach and Learn Online (TALO) email group – a group of people from a number of educational organistaions in Sydney (and overseas!).

Progress so far

It’s been an incredibly busy week! The original post generated some interest from the TALO group, and a few of us quickly set up our own blended learning email group to continue discussing the idea… and we’ve had 53 postings during our discussions so far, so it’s been quite busy!

Through these discussions we came up with the idea to use a Wiki to plan the project itself, and after checking out a number of options, set up the BlendedLearning Wiki on JotSpot. It’s taken a bit of getting used to, and we’re pretty certain that we won’t use JotSpot for the actual resource, but it’s been good to get started with the planning. We probably spent too much time trying out special features of JotSpot, but have started using the system to structure our thoughts for the project.

We’re currently focussing on evaluting which platforms might be most suitable for developing this resource, as well as finding out what resources are already out there (so that we don’t re-invent the wheel). I was also hoping to spend some effort looking at the licensing options, but haven’t had the chance yet.

So that’s it! It’s been a busy first week, but we seem to have some momentum going… hopefully we won’t lose it!