Wednesday 20 February 2008

Visiting Time!


Over the last few weeks, I’ve been to-ing and fro-ing around Wales a fair bit, visiting Coleg Sir Gar in Llanelli and Coleg Glan Hafren in Cardiff in late January, and then embarking on a North-East Wales tour in February. First stop up North was Deeside College, followed by the Welsh College of Horticulture near Mold, NEWI, and Yale College in Wrexham. Justin or Pete came to some of these meetings, and also Mark Thomas from Fforwm . It was good to see ILT Champions ‘in situ’ and to discuss their many interesting projects. One key theme was collaboration, both with other colleges and local schools, and Moodle is often the ‘agent’ for this. We asked about Web 2.0 usage, which was nil in most cases, and we also inquired about future support from RSC Wales. There were some requests for possible training in topics such as podcasting and mind-mapping, as well as updates on topics including e-portfolios and funding.
At NEWI, we discussed aspects of the new ICT minimum core for TQFW (teaching qualifications framework for Wales) and I picked up some useful points (though I wasn’t happy about being recorded!).
When not travelling, I’ve been doing various things like arranging other visits/meetings, doing online seminars (one on Moodle using Elluminate, which is v. similar to Instant Presenter – the actual presentation wasn’t that good!), contributing a bit to the ITT task group wiki on JSLnet, going to Welsh lessons. (the pic is of Powis Castle near Welshpool - haven't actually been in!)