Horty Kim

I love my flexi fridays!Although this whole week felt as if it should have been a friday,everyone around me seems a bit burnt out and longing for the three week student break;including the students of course.I have dodged the lurgy going around(so far)and always feel abit skittish when surrounded by sneezing,wheezing trojans who power on with their ailments. Just a quick hello to any friends or family members who I blog bragged to;although no one has more joy reading about me than me.HI! OK so today is the shortest day of the year and I am hoping for snow…I have this morning to work on flexible units and then I teach machinery this afternoon although i will liase with my students soon and see if they want to proceed in the cold or reschedule after the break.We have high cloud and a bitter wind. Back to the meat of the matter!Today I will try to finish loading the mini power points which are now all labelled onto our wiki page,and continue working on activities for units 43 and 6916.Another exciting thing will be to see how far sunshine got with editing Jerry’ chainsaw video.You can see an example onbliptv of how t

WOW-Leigh has just shown me some of the video snippets of Jerry explaining chainsaw maintenance and they are fantastic! Sunshine has done such a great job of editing these videos, everything I had hoped for and more! What did I ask for? you are wondering…well all the things you call upon when teaching face to face really; reliable authentic information, humour, cool music (engaging), concise explanations and toys for explainin’/pointin’ out stuff. Well, a performance really. Have a look!

Leigh and I have been working together down at block L today and as I write we are experiencing a nasty front moving into Dunners.

Today I have uploaded photos of garden tools that I took photos of on Friday and I am delighted to say that they all smiled for me.I put them into picasa which compresses them as well there  are various effects available which can tweak them a bit.And then we uploaded them to Flickr.See!And now we will put them onto a wkipage(which we prepared earlier) and create an interesting activity or at least starty the ball rolling as I still have a few photos to add.

Ok so we( Leigh and I ) need to do the following to progress our progress:

1)Load the rest of the horticulture units onto wiki:

(I have an inkling that loading them to my blog as an html may be helpful for transferring them onto the wiki so I will try doing this…)

Train and Prune Fruit Trees/830

Botanic Nomenclature/829

Identify,Label,and Present Common Trees Shrubs and Climbers/1670

Apply Safe Work Practices In the Workplace/17593

Weeds and their Control/21555

Control Weeds Under Supervision/21556

Plan and Manage a Weed Control Programme/21559

2) Search for existing resources and links for the above units.Leigh, Wendy RJ is on leave for 3 months,who is our librarian now please?

3) Contact relevant lecturers who deliver these units and start to add to resources.

4) Organize my annual leave from technician duties and spend a concentrated week working on flexi-discuss dates with Leigh tomorrow at his new office in H100.

5) Review units already in progress and identify any performance criteria/objectives with holes.

I was invited to attend a meeting on Friday ,August 17 at the Learning Centre to meet Wayne MacKintosh from the Commonwealth of Learning and I learned a thing or two.

It was a great chance to meet other Otago Polytechnic staff who are working on flexible delivery options for their respective courses as well as listen to Wayne explain his work in on line education.I really liked his philosophy on free education and his vision to help facillitate the availability of free education to all countries,in all languages by 2015!

I took along my camera and did a bit of video and I will try to nutshell some stuff but Wayne can say it best and I just love his accent!
In the first bit of video Wayne introduces himself and explains that he works for the CoL on two levels-the policy level and on an implementation level.He is a board member of the Wiki Media Foundation and in fact CoL founded WikiEducator.What is WikiEducator you are wondering?The previous link will help you get a handle on wiki.Wayne is also involved in developing funding proposals and it is one of the areas he works in that he is most proud of.I apologize that Wayne is sideways in the first part of the video, but then again he does a lot of things differently.

Wayne brought along an informative presentation which included some sobering statistics on how many people did not receive a secondary education let alone a tertiary education.Who could not help but wonder how much better off the whole world would be if more people learned how to learn?One of the things that was most striking about his desktop was that I did not recognize any of the software he was using?What the?I soon learned that Wayne only uses free software.Another interesting and contagious philosophy.

There is a story in today’ ODT on page 5 if you want a further read.(Also in the ODT photo is Sunshine Connelly who has done some excellent video and editing for some of the units Leigh Blackall and I have been loading to wiki.)And sweet when IgoogledLeigh2giveualink he had already uploaded the article!Good value!Anyway back to the sublime work Sunshine does…Check out this one with Jerry Lynch ,our arboriculture lecturer!

Back to the meeting with Wayne…this next little vid is where I had to leave and teach machinery for horticulture but the discussion is now looking at some wiki examples,specifically on loading handouts and worksheets onto the wiki skeleton and some exciting developments in terms of html to PDF,which will enable me to quickly transfer info from my blog to a wiki.

Yah so some interesting stuff and very interesting people…After reflection I wish i had commented on how being involved in developing flexible options in education has helped me to embrace e learning.I am really enjoying pulling together information and resources.I especially enjoy creating new resources where the lineage is known.I mean it is not unusual to open a folder for a specific unit which contains helpful worksheets,handouts,supporting notes etc and not really know where ALL the info came from?When we create a new resource we can attach our good name to it(otago polytechnic) and be confident that we are sharing useful and original information and at the same time always acknowledging or attributing information from other reputable sources.

Ovah and out.

I really had a great time with the students on the fieldtrip to Okia Reserve which is located on the Otago Peninsula near
Victory Beach,Dunedin New Zealand.
The reserve is owned by the Yellow Eyed Penguin Trust and the Dunedin City Council and a committee with representatives from the YEPT,DCC,DOC and Te Runanga Otakou manage the huge job of restoring the bio diversity of flora and fauna which existed before the area was cleared for farming.
We met Anita ,Margaret, and Gaileen from the YEPT on August 9 which was a beautiful sunny day.Margaret and Gaileen are former Otago Polytechnic students who now work tirelessly for the trust.(below)

Myself and the horticulture students spent most of the day learning about the reserve and we were happy to assist with planting 200 native trees and shrubs.(below)

Watch the following informative videos for more information!
An interesting talk about the Okia Reserve and the people who help out
And some info on the remanent bush at Victory Beach.

The next video is us trying to figure out what pest has succumbed to one of the traps used in the reserve to control the ferrets,stoats and rabbits which threaten yellow eyed penguin habitat.

Fenn trap for stoats and ferrets

Thumper trap for Possoms

We then got down to the nitty gritty of our trip to Okia and Margaret demonstates the planting techniques to be used for planting 200 trees and shrubs which were grown at the YEPT nursery from seed collected on the peninsula.Hmmm I have been trying to upload this informative video but having difficulties so I will hopefully add it later.In the meantime I will add some more still images of the planting plus a couple of videos of Zac and me planting a cabbage tree.
Planting a cabbage tree…one down 199 to go!

Otago Polytechnic students plant NZ trees and shrubs at Okia Reserve.

Caging the plants is integral to their survival.

After we finished planting we went for a walk on the beach and picked up any rubbish we spotted.
Margaret suggested we check out their plantings of Pikao grass where the walking track leaves the beach.

We continued our walk from the beach back towards the Pyramids,along the way there are some great information signs.

On our way back to the Pyramids we found a cave!

After we checked out the cave we came across a track

that led to the top of one of the pyramids.We had a great view of the beach ,the wetlands ,the road back to Dunedin and most importantly the area we had just re-planted.We did not see any penguins but we know they are there.

Hmmm -I did not exactly get back to you tomorrow as i had indicated in my last blog log and in fact was just speaking to Leigh about the fact that I am feeling a little stressed about my recent lack of progress on the flexible delivery project which has been hi jacked by some extra teaching duties.My group manager has indicated that we could look at extending the deadline so we will see if this is necessary.

In the meantime I have completed my Beginners Digital Photography short course and just received my results…I am delighted to announce that I have “passed”.I am enrolled for the advanced course in october.I not only learned how to use the digital camera more effectively but I found I learned a bit more about quality teaching  from my tutor,Brian Treanor,yah like trainer.Peer teaching is a really valuable tool.

I have found that taking the digi cam with me everywhere is a great way of collecting information and my students actually get quite used to me waving it about and they are quite supportive of my endeavours and in fact most people will allow me to capture their valuable knowledge and then air it to the world!We went on a fieldtrip yesterday to Victory Beach -  which boasts the longest beach on the otago peninsula as well as the biggest pocket of remnent bush on the peninsula.There are also so some really cool rock formations called the pyramids which strangely enough look like pyramids.No way!The main reason for our fieldtrip was to plant 200 trees and shrubs to help restore Yellow Eyed Penguin habitat.I will put this together for ya soon.

Another cool thing that has happened is that a TV station in New York New York found the horticulture promo that leigh and i did at the beginning of the year on movie maker.Leigh had put it on youtube and it was noticed by  a dude who works for WLNY TV which is the largest independent TV station in the U.S.A. Brent,the associate producer for this TV station thought our production would be of interest to their viewers on a program called Quick Flix-well sweet!Thanks Brent- feel free to promote training at Otago Polytechnic in New York!

 Ok so I got a lot to do still but that is a wee update on where I am at.Ovah and out

Oh jeez-I sure have neglected my blog and in fact the rhythmmmmm of flexi has really fallen by the wayside!Why?Well I was asked to do some extra teaching which I ageed to -after all ,the students of the now are the future of me,well, my job at the polytech and hey the whole deal really so the priority is to take care of the paying customers now eh?.Plus I love teaching!I also got a bad lurgy which started with a sore throat and  is now petering out with a wheezy cough and people are giving me that “don’t give it to me look” which I was using just prior to getting my sore throat.Hmmmm.Yah so anyway I gotta get back in the groove and in fact spent the afternoon with Leigh at my office.Leigh added some mo stuff to unit 497.that we were sent from Alex in Cromwell.We also had Lisa B send all her resources for this unit  which i will sift thru after I teach plant identification to the arborists tomorrow morning.Today I also took photos of garden tools for unit 4.Leigh also added a pixie thing onto my PC so I can doctor my photos and make thenm even prettier!

I am presently at my short course on digital photography so I gotta go now,but some neat things to tell you tomorrow!