Video-recording Part 1

Video-recording Part 2

Guide (online-version)

Looking back at the final symposium of the project on the 30th of September we fond it a inspiring and very useful event. Looking at our project in relation to other initiatives.

At this moment we are introducing our new and revised LMS at our newly started courses. The are newly structured and there is a major role fore the 2.0 tools. With the project we gained a lot of useful experience in implementing the PLE tools implemented in our new LMS. 

The first signals from the new students look good in how they respond and interact in the LMS. Its also interesting for the teachers and the coaches to work in a new role in the LMS with the students.

Based pilot company PLE we developed in the project as presented at the last project meeting we have a requests from participating company’s to investigate the possibilities for additional development and implementation on a number of topics. The first appointment is made to explore this.

On 6th an d7th of september the Arboriculture Academy Sachs (UG) represented the Project PLEbaum at the Osnabrücker Baumpflegetage, a forum for arborists, treeexperts, scientists and members of administrations in Northern Germany.

discussing with arborists about the  Project PLEbaum at Osnabrück

In the next months we already enter the final phase of the project PLEbaum. 
In this time after the summer break we push the activities of the arboriculture companies again and will soon come to an end with the survey, 
start collecting the results and summarize them in reports for presentation.

For the second experimentation, we decided that: students should be volunteers; they don’t spend more then ½ a day in front of a computer; they work on subjects in touch with their training of climber.

It’s why we have only work with 4 students. But the working atmosphere was completely different that in the first experimentation, it was really pleasant as much for the students as for the trainers. YEAH !!

Moreover, subjects on which the students worked were really in touch with the pruning and other arboriculture trainers of CFPF become integrated into the experiment really motivated the students.

In the initial protocol of the experimentation, it was precise that students had to work at home. But for the CFPF group, these homework’s couldn’t be set up because 3/4 students don’t have computer at home and the last one didn’t have an Internet access. So we were obliged to adapt the initial protocol.

At the beginning, we have planned only 2 half days in the computer room (February 2011, Monday 14th, Friday 18th) and 2 complete days on the worksite where students were outside with materials borrowed by the CFPF -- camera, video camera, recorder and laptop…-- (February 2011, Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16^th). But February, Friday 18th, one trainer had to stay at home. Fortunately, he had a internet connexion so it was a really good opportunity to used chat and forum to manage works of students.  It’s why the phase 5 was organised on Monday 28/02/2011 afternoon.

The general thematic was:  “How adapting the pruning technique to the new tree stresses due to climate change?”

First group had worked on: “How and why realising the best cut angle?” to decrease the risk of colonization by rot, and so minimize stress to tree weakened by climate change.

And the second group had worked on « why and how reducing the cut diameters? » to decrease the stress of pruning, minimize the diameter of branches and allow tree cicatrizing faster (less chance to a decay to contaminate the tree and less reserve lost).

The second implementation with students of the LVG Heidelberg took place in 3 half days. They were provided with topic-related articles and books and had access to the computer for a research in content of the first implementation. After a short introduction they were divided into groups (4 teams with 6 students) to produce wiki-content by using different media like pictures, video, podcasts to the following topics:

- Reasons of climate change and the consequences for trees and shrubs in urban areas
- By climate change promoted tree diseases and varmints
- Cultivation and cutting of trees and shrubs damaged by climate change
- Suitable tree species for urban climate

Within the group they organized themselves:
- one sub-group was responsible for the text-content
- the other sup-group was responsible for creating the interview-content, setting up a screenplay and planning to record video / audio.

The students were quite enthusiastic with recording the videos. Those were recorded during a pruning-seminar in the zoo of Heidelberg. Also the recording of podcasts worked without problems, the students' preparation was very sophisticated.

On March 25th the evaluation with all students took place. Although there were a few technical problems while editing the wiki-articles, most of them were positive and at least can imagine to use such kind of technology for their own company.

Last week we had the first session with the students for the second fase of the pilots.

After a introduction, the students were positive about the doing it. One thing what was crusual for them that they had to be able to score point for there overall education portfolio. When this matter was cleared we could start work.

In the past week there was a lot of information gathering and the forum was actively used to discuss items and to exchange information.

Today we are going to evaluate the work don and the info gathered and introduce the wiki to percent and organize the data if possible with the self video and photo material.

My first impression is that the students are reluctant to shoot videos ore use self-made pictures to integrate in a subject. This needs apparently a longer learning period. We are going to address this today and try to make it work.

In the guide, the results of PLEbaum should be reflected and be comparatively analysed with findings of similarly positioned projects. Doing so is important, among other things, for synthesizing key messages.

With this background, we visited the innovation agency for IT and media in Stuttgart at March, the 8^th 2011. In the internet we came across the Leonardo da Vinci - project of this institution "SVEA - Promoting web 2.0 uptake for organisational and personnel development in Vocational Education and Training and adult training". It is a project that addresses the use of web 2.0 skills by teachers and trainers in both vocational ecucation & training (VET) and adult training institutions, with a special focus on personnel and organizational development.

Concerning the target groups, the results of the assessment of demand, the project execution and project results, there are parallels and differences between SVEA and PLEbaum. On this meeting we discussed the mentioned givens whereby an interesting exchange of experiences has developed.

More information on the project SVEA can be found at www.svea-project.eu .

Evaluation phase: meeting and interviewing the companies

01.02.2010: Rinntech, Heidelberg

03.02.2010: Blattwerk, Stuttgart

19.02.2010: Freeworker, Gilching

02.03.2010: Baum und Garten, Nürtingen

19.03.2010: Pfefferer, Müllheim

23.03.2010: Blattwerk, Stuttgart

24.03.2010: Freeworker, Gilching

March/April: evaluations of the questionnaires, composing a report

27.-29.04.2010: meeting the partners at the "Deutsche Baumpflegetage" in Augsburg

04.-06.05.2010: presenting the results of the survey, preparations for the implementation phase

Implementation phase: installing the PLE in the companies

29.-30.09.2010: Pfefferer, Müllheim

04.10.2010: Baum und Garten, Nürtingen

13.10.2010: Pfefferer, Müllheim

03.11.2010: Freeworker, Gilching

22.11.2010: Pfefferer, Müllheim

28.01.2011: In the new year we go on with the companies by visiting the company     Rinntech in Heidelberg, Freeworker an Bühler. In the next step we try to realize a networking between the companies. We hope they´re not too shy.

After the phase of survey about their skills and demands in spring 2010 we started introducing the arboriculturak companies in autumn 2010. In cooperation with MBits we visited the companies an showed the PLEbaum program to the participating persons, explained them how to use it, gave them examples and asked for suggestions for improvement.

Yessss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday we had the Wiki pilot her at IPC in Arnhem. It was exiting to do and we were very curios to see how it would work.

1 The software worked great

2 The students could work with it

3 There was a lot of information gathered in the wiki

4 The students liked it

5 The teachers enjoyed working with it.

Please have a look at the photo impression in the blog

For two days on October 5th and 7th, 2010, 8 students participated in the European project PLE BAUM.

Two teams were formed and had as mission to work on sharp subjects in arboriculture related to the main topic “climatic change and its consequences for urban trees”.

By using Tikiwiki about twenty pages were written and illustrated in a collaborative way by the students. The various wiki pages created seem to be interesting and they did not expect such a result. The fact that subjects were not directly related to the content of their training has been identified as a source of dissatisfaction.

But working in sub-groups and then creating contents with the whole group was, for them, a very positive experience. Multiplication of opinions, different research directions, obligation to find consensus, producing a synthetic work brings a real dynamic to the training sessions. Even if they would have prefer to climb in the trees outside rather than being locked in a computer classroom during 2 days !

The 1 of July we had the a training here in Arnhem for teachers about the use of wiki’s.

It was don by Martin. He use the same strategy as we do in the project with the students. only he changed the subject to web 2.0 media in stead of climate change. It worked out very well for the group and martin got a lot of interesting feedback. Thanks Martin fore coming over.

Under this entry you see a couple of pictures of the training workshop session here in Arnhem. You also can see the poster we have made for PR for our institute and other events.

The 7th and 8th of July were important days for us ... The first test phase of our newly created PLE. With high expectations and therefore perfect prepared we started the first day.

We could make three groups, each group with three students who worked on 3 subtopics related to the main topic “climatic change and its consequences for urban trees”. We accomplished all five phases of our learning arrangement and needed the whole two days for that. During that days we were surprised by how fast they learned the handling with the web 2.0 technology. They did the blog entries and the comments without help. The students found important key words and linked them with interesting professional contents they produced. They also integrated external links, pictures and links to entries the other groups created.

Some students criticized the topics because they are not much interested in this theme and a few students prefer individual learning more than learning in a group. But all in all the had a lot of fun with the TikiWiki.

During working with the PLE some important technical mistakes came across and the students gave constructive criticisms so we know were improvements have to be done, the main aim of this first phase of implementation.

In the video linked below you can watch the shortened process of our workshop.

Workshop-video LVG Heidelberg

I tried to train the trainer of IPC college at their institut in Holland.

The concept of teaching with different phases to go through worked quite well. Maybe reflection after each phase was a little to much to ask from them, because we didn’t have much time and had to shorten the phases a little

We didn’t work on the climate change topic but decided to create a little content about Web 2.0 technologies. It was quite interesting but some of the teacher didn’t focus on the content very much, they were more interested in learning how to use the tools. But I think this group isn’t representative, because they had a different goal from that workshop than the students will have in the next ones.

Tomorrow Martin is going to do a workshop here in Arnhem at the IPC about the use of blogs and wiki’s, We expect 10 people to participate. We are all looking forward to the event.

Yesterday Birte, Mark and I had a video conference in the online class room. I fond it very efficient and practical to discussing things. I want to advise the other partners to use this tool to.

After our 2^nd project meeting in May has been successfully and solution-oriented carried out we will start to implement the PLE in the LVG at the 7^th and 8^th of July.  Concerning this date we are discussing about the time management for this two days and the clearness of the evaluation and blog questions. We introduced the responsible teacher about the methodological and pedagogical concept for this days and informed him about the tasks he has to prepare before the implementation.

We are looking forward to this two days and  wondering how it will work out and about the opinions of the students working with the PLE!

Furthermore we made a large contribution to public the project. Some more articles in professional journals were published and we gave some more presentations on conferences which deals with the theme media didactic respectively arboriculture.

Wiki wiki is supposed to be quick quick but it is a technical struggle so far for me.

I hope to get the first group of students next week on the road working on a block and making a wiki. I hope this is going to work.

Aloa.

since the 1st meeting in december we were preparing for the assessment of demand in several arboriculture enterprises in Germany. We first had to contact the several partners to make up the dates for interviewing the participants. In the beginning of February we started going into the companies for the assessment of their demands. The aim was to get information about the familiarity with computer technology, the knowledge about web 2.0, the structure and organisation within the companies, the particular work and information flow, the expectations on a PLE and many many more details.

During tis time until the end od March the questionnaires were digitally stored and evaluated (of course the paticipants were treated anonymously during evaluation process).

In the beginnung of April we composed the 2 reports of the assessment of demand (1st project phase), one about interviewing the employers and one about the employees, and its interesting to find out about the similarities and differences depending on age, educational background, position and company.

Now, after the 2nd meeting, we´re looking forward to installing and integrating PLEs in the companies in a sustainable way. We hope the PLEs will be useful modules for the success of single participants and at least for the benefit of the companies. So let´s get on with it.

Very great tools created by Martin and Sascha ! Easy to use and really powerful. We made some good work together. YEAH!

At the 2e project meeting I had my first wiki experience. It was great making it and if it’s operational the result is interesting. I hope the wiki tool will inspiring a lot of others to. contribute and make this a success!!

You are welcome to CFPF. Please ask us about your preference regarding the extra-meeting activities !

The pendulum test, you can try ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0s79vLnIcQ&feature=player_embedded

Since this was my first meeting in this specific project, I didn't know what to expect. But after three days of work, I've seen some light  at the end of the tunnel . Nice people to work with, I think we made good progress, looking forward to work further on this.

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