Integrating On-line and Off-line Organising - A Case Study

A recent conference of NZEI school support staff union members led to an opportunity to intergrate some on and off-line organising. The conference was to have a professionally focused ICT workshop but I had the opportunity to discuss this with some conference organising committee members at a union leadership development course. They decided instead to focus the workshop on using the union's on-line networking and campaigning sites. Intitally they asked me to run the workshop but as I was unable I decided to look for a member who could run it. That proved fairly easy as all I had to do was look at the site and see who have been active and had engagaed in a number of different ways. One local member, Linda, stood out. I approached her about running the workshop and after she had agreed I worked with her on the workshop content.

Here are a couple of photos of the conference workshop.

The venue suffered from dodgy internet but Linda ran the workshop successfully resulting in new members signing up and a few of these people quickly adding content and comment. Linda asked all of the workshop participants to agree to an on-line task and because she has met these peole she is going to follow up with them.

Here's an email I got from Linda following the workshop.

Glogster: A New Tool Worth Trying?

A friend recently tweeted about a video made by a US school student on her Personal Learning Environment. Watching the video I noticed one of the tools she was using that I hadn't come across before - a glog. I checked it out and, while it's mainly the utilised by emo kids creating paean's to teen angst, it does seem to offer some opportunities for collective engagement around an issue or event.

A Glog is basically an on-line collage poster. You collect bits and pieces of text, images, video, links and sound and place them on a web page. It's highly configurable and there are a number of templates and tools you can utilise. (I found a useful glog tutorial on Slideshare)

Delegates could use it to create an on-line resource about a workplace or sector issue, or it could be utilised to reinforce learning at union education.

The Glog is a free resource that seems to be funded by advertising on the Glogster.com homepage. The glog itself can be visited as a stand-alone site or you can embed them into other sites. The glog can be public or private.

I had a play and created this glog to try the tools out. I've embedded it below, or you can visit the stand-alone page for a better viewing experience.