Home: Before the seminar...

Dear friends,

I would like to welcome you to this forum in which we will prepare and support (in a free and relaxed way ) the distant seminar on e-business that will take place in 2 weeks time (11-14 July) between Athens and Belgrade.

This forum will be moderated by Jochen Dietz and Wolfgang Neuhaus (the Free University of Berlin team), Vassiliki Giannikopoulou and myself (the GRNET team).

The participants are: The 6 trained tutors + 3 of the professors (Dr Pantelis Aggelidis, Dr Panagiotis Zaharias and Dr Zoran Jovanovic) + Milan Kuzelka (AMREJ-University of Belgrade)+ Gerald Haese and Harriett Hoffman (Berlin again)

The main aims of this forum are to

· Get to know each other

· Find out which are your expectations of the training

· Find out what is your current level on informatics/ e-business/ e-learning

· What questions/problems should be discussed during the seminar

So please, as a first step, it would be nice if you could all introduce yourself (apart from the CV that you have been asked to send via e-mail) and write a few words on the rest of the questions.

I wish you a pleasant and fruitful work.

Ilias Hatzakis
ELISA coordinator

As one of the moderators of this forum I'd like to set a good example and start with a short presentation of myself:

My name is Jochen Dietz, I'm 32 years old, an university trained teacher for economics orientated vocational schools and working currently at the Freie Universität Berlin within two projects:

1. Project FUeL, which aims at implementing e-Learning at the Freie Universität Berlin. I'm consultant of the economics department and contact person for all questions around e-Learning and the central learning management platform Blackboard.

2. Project ELISA, which you (hopefully) already know. Together with my colleagues from Berlin we are responsible for the evaluation of the learning management platform Moodle and that you all gain lots of usable (e-Learning) experiences before, during and after the train the trainer seminar.

Before this job, I was an academic research assistant at the Universität Leipzig (Chair of Business Education and Educational Management) and worked together with pedagogues, business economists and computer scientists on the development, implementation and evaluation of an online e-Commerce course. And before that I worked as an ad viser for Electronic Data Processing and Information Technology at the Eastern German Savings Bank Academy in Potsdam and was responsible for the according educational training program, including calculation, marketing, organization, coordination and evaluation.

Apart from my working life, I’m spending quite a lot of time with my son (playing football !) and the rest of my free time I’m surfing the internet, reading (Harry Potter) books and enjoying the world championship by watching nearly every match at home or at public viewing places.

If you’ve got any further question to me, my life and especially to e-Learning, Moodle, deployment scenarios etc., please don't hesitate asking any question. I’ll try to answer with a few hours.

Jochen Dietz

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Hi everyone,

First I would like to encourage you to post something on your expectations of the training, probable questions/problems of the platform or the content that should be discussed, or even a confirmative post that you receive e-mails from this forum...

Second: On the URL http://www.elisa-project.net/Announcements.php?month=06&year=2006&languge=en#36

you will find a video in English concerning the experience of the deployment of the GOONLINE initiative in Greece.

Please see it, it will be the subject of discussion on Tuesday 10h30-13h00.

Thanks
Ilias

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Hi everyone,

My name is Vinko Draganja and I am glad that I've got the chance to be a part of this project.
Result you have managed with "the GoOnline project" in Greece are very impresive, as I have seen on your video presentation and on a web site.
I hope ELISA project will reach the same level of success in Serbian environment.

Best regards,
Vinko Draganja

P.S. I must confess that I am more familiar with a German language, but I will manage(with help of my collegues) to follow the discutions in English.

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Hi Vinko,

Thanks for your post and welcome to the e-Learning discussion forum. In order to set a good example for your tutoring colleagues, you could write a little bit about your e-Learning experience and your expectations of the Train the Tutor Seminar.

With the best wishes from Germany

Jochen

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Hello everybody,
My name is Srdjan Vukasinovic and I am an employee in Computing center in University of Belgrade. About mine, and i could say e-learning experience of my collegues, we have all finished CCNA. It is Cisco Academy program and have there own E-learning platform. All materials and tests are on-line. It's great when you can reach to materials and study whenever you like. Also, it's good when you know use you7r knowledge in whole world because the standards are the same. I hope this seminar will be usefull for me and specially to the people in our country who doesn't know advantige of IT.

Best regards,
Vuk

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Hi everybody,

I'm one more tutor from Serbia , my name is Slavko Stojsin and i am also employee in Belgrade University Computing Center. As you already know our e-learning expirince is quite good (from mentioned CCNA), and as Dobri said, genaraly our computer knowledge is very good.

I'm looking forward for this seminar, we should easily handle this project, and hopefully it will reach nice success here in Belgrade.

Best regards,

Slavko

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Dear Tutors,

I’m very happy that you (all) have a good e-Leaning experience, based on the CISCO CCNA course. This is a very good precondition for your future work as e-Tutors, when you have to train SME’s with the help of the Learning Management Platform (LMS) Moodle. As you already know about e-Learning, I’d like to know from you,

- what a (good) e-Tutor should know?

- what the main fields of activity of an e-Tutor are or might be?

- what you’d especially like to learn during the Train the Tutor seminar?

- whether you’ve already any ideas how you would use the/a LMS in order to train the SME’s?

So, please have a little chat together and post your collective opinion.

With the best

Jochen

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Dear Jochen and all,

I schould be a participant in a tutor seminar next week. My name is Nikola Jovanovic and I have also finished CCNA.

About a Jochan's latest questions, I can say that every tutor has to look on things by the eyes of the participant. The difference is that tutors has to know all answers. On the seminar, we should pay attention to the e-businness and advantage for SME's to start advertize them self and expand there businesses on the Internet. I mean, the way we should present them this advantage is crucial for us.

About using the LMS for train the SME's, it depends on the tools this LMS offer. The textual part is basic for learning but examples and Labs offer "all you should know asap".

That would be all from me right now.

Best regards,

Nikola

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Dear Nicola,

Thank you very much for your post. Your answer about the tutor’s job is quite interesting and it’s a good start for a further discussion, we should resume after the seminar. … It is absolutely true, that the “tutor has to look on things by the eyes of the participant”, and that “the difference is that tutors have to know all answers”. But what does that exactly mean? How can the tutor look on the things through the eyes of his participants? And how can he know all the answers? … I don’t want to post an answer now as I hope that the other tutors post their opinion to this topic as well. … Regarding the use of the LMS during the training of the SME’s, you’re right, it depends on the tools it offers. One important tool, the discussion forum, you’re already working with it. There are other tools like an integrated mail and chat programme and the possibility to integrate Skype (www.skype.com). All these tools and of course others as well you’ll get to know during the seminar. … But what I didn’t understand, what do you mean with: “The textual part is basic for learning but examples and Labs offer "all you should know asap". Can you give an example or could you please make some further comments.

Thanks

Jochen

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Hello all,

My name is Dusan Radovanovic, I am 30 years old and I am looking forward to be involved in this project as it encourages people to get more involved and computer literate. I hope it will have the same success as the "GoOnline" project.
I am employed in University of Belgrade Computing Center and have had some e-earning experiences.
I was involved in two projects which as a part had some personell training, and in both of them people have never had any computer knowledge.

Best regards,
Dusan Radovanovic

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Dear Dusan,

welcome to the forum.

You wrote, that you have had already some e-Learning experiences. Can you please give some further details on your e-Learning experiences? And what are your expectations of the Train the Tutor Seminar? What would you like to learn?

Thanks

Jochen

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Hello all,

I would just like to give a replay to questions from Jochen's e-mail.

My e-Learning experiences are CISCO CCNA academy as my coleagues.

I think e-Tutor should have good knowledge of software and materials, but maybe the most important thing is "How much do the pupils know, and what are their expectations?". I think this is important for planning the lectures.

As far as activities are concerned, I think the e-Tutors feedback and contact with pupils are essential. Exercises are very handy as they keep people on the track.

I would definately like to learn the best ways to relay knowledge during the Train the Tutor seminar.

Regards,
Dusan.

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Dear Dusan,

100 points for your answer of the tutors main job: "I think the e-Tutors feedback and contact with pupils are essential. Exercises are very handy as they keep people on the track."

The only challenge left is to realise this in practice. ... But we'll work on that, so that you know what and how to do when you have to train the SME's.

Regards
Jochen

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Hi everybody

my name is Wolfgang, working for CeDiS/Freie Universität Berlin as e-Learning Consultant, like Jochen. My profession: teacher for music and mathematics.

Since 1996 I am organising different kinds of e-Learning projects also in transnational context (Finland, Portugal, Northern Ireland, USA).

One of my projects in that context is still on the web: http://www.worldtune.com . In this project we founded a community which exchanges environmental sounds of different european regions. The result is a soundsculpture with loudspeaker installations in seven european countries up to now.

Since 2005 I work for CeDIS at Freie Universität Berlin. Here my main focus is the consultance of professors at the faculty Biology, Chemistry and Pharmacy.

So if you have any ideas or visions in what you would like to realize via e-Learning, I think I have enough experience to help you to make it true.

Especially the question how to combine face-to-cace learning situations with individual online learning situations is my expertise.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

I will be online once a day during next weeks
and will be happy to hear from you

Wolfgang

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