After having the weekend the digest the time spent at the DCLP workshop I thought I'd post a quick reflection. There were some interesting gems of knowledge, but for me "practice" was the lacking element to make it truly worthwhile, especially with the effort required to get a lot of us released and travel authorised.
The first presenter impressed us with some pdf wizardry, and then went on to show some htlm/js/css examples of other adobe software. I think that more could have been gained if we had created a couple of pdf's using the techniques shown instead of seeing advanced build and coding examples, especially since most people had work laptops with the necessary pdf software installed but aren't normally involved in high end multimedia creation.
Gary's presentation definitely had the wow factor and I think inspired a lot of us to think about interactive learning resources, but there was also a lot of "my institute will never support me or buy software" conversations. I think we all missed out on learning that a lot of rapid development software out there is available as a free trial, probably just long enough to create something nifty for our own projects or to help build a business case for the purchase of a full version for work use.
I felt the ebook presentation was another missed opportunity for practice, we could have installed the free software shown and had a go at converting and editing an ebook. All of the resources shown on the big screen were already available online, we just had to read them and give it a go.
Even our own group presenations lacked practical access, I only managed to get one web address written down (though I'm sure they will all get posted somewhere soon). It would have been great if the first step in each show and tell was to get the group to go to the wiki/blog/online presentation space so we could see the digital content on our own pc's as well as on the projector.
In saying all of that it was great to meet face to face with other participants of the program and I saw lots of informal learning going on between (and during?) the presentations. The two days were well organised and run, the presentators passionate about their topics and I am pretty sure we all got valuable information out of it and I'm still looking forward to working on my own project, participating in the webconferences and attending the next two day workshop.
Hi David thanks for sharing this feedback I agree that the balance of do and listen was probably a little skewed for this second workshop. Getting that balance right based on your reflection and others is something that will be used to design future delivery of this program if it is funded again(!). Perhaps to support this we may do some practical activities in the up and coming web conferences based on these ideas. Say an adobe acrobat portfolio development, and ebooks using calibre and an articulate demo and practice. Still thinking about these concepts and how to get the doing so any ideas of how to best do this using webconferencing or maybe VC gratefully accepted.
ReplyDeleteThanks for always being so constructively critical,positive and supportive to this capability program community I for one very much appreciate the opportunity to work and learn from you. Regards Colleen