A Distance Education Online Seminar Mashing Up Several Web

2.0 Tools

João MattarUniversidade Anhembi Morumbi

Brazil

March 18, 2010

SENAED

• 7º SENAED - Seminário Nacional ABED de Educação a Distância

• 7th National Seminar on Distance Education –Brazilian Association of Distance Education

• May 23-31, 2009• “Polyphony in Online Teaching and Learning”

ABED

• Founded in 1995• President: Fredric Michael Litto• Annual International Congress• Annual National Seminar• Online Journal• Printed Bulletin• Books

Organization

• Organization: João Mattar (Universidade Anhembi Morumbi), Marco Silva (Estácio/UERJ) & Eliane Schlemmer (Unisinos).

• Marketing & Communication Committee: Antônia Alves

• Program Committee: Breno Trautwein• Social Committee: Maria Elza Miranda Ataíde

Volunteers

• Active: Bertha Garcez, Fernanda Vilarim, Gentil Gonçalves Filho, Ieda Espírito Santo & Raquel Resende.

• Collaborated: André Genesini, Giancarlo Colombo & José Bueno França.

• ABED team: Alessandra, Beatriz, Rafael & Sérgio.

Characteristics

• Totally at a Distance for the first time• Free & Open to anyone• The program started to be built collaboratively

- and at a distance and by people that did not know each other personally – in a file on Google Docs, soon transferred to a wiki based on MediaWiki, the software that supports Wikipedia.

Topics

• Professional development for online teaching• Tutor• Brazilian government and regulation on Distance

Education• Brazilian Open University• Graduate Distance Learning Courses• High School Distance Education• Copyright and Distance Education• Corporate e-learning• Instructional Design

Tools

Blogs, Eduverse (Active World), FlashMeeting, Yahoo mailing list, LMSs, Mindomo, Moodle, Netvibes, Ning, Orkut, Second Life, Skype, Survey Monkey, Cable TV, Web and Video Conference, Games, Web Radio & TV, Wikis & YouTube.

Activities

• More than 100 synchronous and asynchronous interactive activities

• Training, courses, talks streamed to the web, posters, forums and discussion lists, chats, guided tours, researches, videoconferences, radio and tv programs, games and ARGs, contests, mind maps building etc.

• Instead of passively absorbing knowledge, collaborative knowledge construction, available now online to the world

Coordinators

• More than 160 leading Brazilian theorists and practitioners on Distance Education participated talking, moderating or coordinating tools and/or activities

• No keynote speakers• Each guest had a blank page opened in the

seminar wiki, which he could freely edit

Physical Support

• The activities had the support of dozens of physical stations throughout the country, institutions that kindly offered their space and resources for those who could not (or did not want to) participate on the Seminar at home.

• So, in many cases, the Seminar was followed by a group of people who continued the activities and discussions in their institutions.

Opening and Closing

• The opening was transmitted by videoconference and the video was then made available online.

• Various links to the recordings and materials used in the activities are available on the discussion page for each activity in the event program

• The closing was recorded as a short podcast.

Numbers

• 1,721 enrolled – enrollment not required• Around 2,500 participants• 643 enrolled only on Moodle activities• Generated about 6,000 web pages• To date, there have been 50,698 hits to the

program page

Comments

“SENAED was a great success. A perfect interaction.”“Innovative, fun, exciting and educational! We learned and had a lot of fun! The central theme 'Polyphony in Online Teaching and Learning' was perfect! We felt this movement spread all the time.”

Comment

“Fantastic! 7th SENAED as a whole was a success, creating something completely new that is going to change the paradigm of various events. We spend fortunes with face to face events and can not reach that many people.”

SENAED for DE history in Brazil

“In creativity and innovation, I have not seen anything similar, it was the first time.Fantastic to prove that, as I say, the virtual is a different space for education.It was possible to develop an online work much more interactive than in any face to face event.”

Results

• Each participant could build his own menu of activities and tools, according to his learning style

• Distance Education can be successful using from simple tools as mailing lists to complex tools as virtual worlds

• Different levels of technologies can generate the sense of being close and together