Uploading and Sharing VPs over the Web with mEducator 2.0/3.0 Technologies; Hands-on Session

Introduction of the Presentation by Alavaro Salva Lezaun and Francisco Jose Grau Castilla
Worldwide, faculty members have been creating technologies from scratch and the aim of our project is to connect academics and not have them reinvent the educational wheel. Every university has a website for an e-learning platform and we created a mashup to embed in our e-learning repository, M-educator. The presenters pointed out their focus on metadata and learning resources (e.g. The date and place in a photograph is the metadata). Pointed out the use of the Creative Commons license. Focusing on the issue of replication of lectures. Overall, the introduction included the aim of the project in a brief manner.
Procedural Evaluation: An Interactive demonstration of the mEducator 2.0 platform
The presenters explained the procedure of the project during the introduction. An emphasis on “sharing” data and information with other educators was made in the introduction to the online repository. The presenters were very clear about Creative Commons copyright and I think this was a good procedural point given the overall aim of sharing information with everyone who has access to the Internet. It is very helpful the platform allows pages to be translated into various languages for the user. The presenters led the audience on how to create a new learning resource via the platform. The platform itself is intuitive and easy to use.
The presenters taught the audience how to use the basic and advanced editor for the mEducator. I am not certain how long the audience will retain the information presented, however the presenters provided an extensive explanation on how to create a VP in a paper handout for the audience. This is very good because the audience has instructions to refer to when they go home. The participants appeared engaged and gave the presenters their full attention toward the end of the presentation. The presenters asked the audience if they are following their instructions and questions came from the audience.
Educational Potential: Understand, Share Learning Resources, Search and Retrieve
The Hands-On part of the program was clearly explained to the audience. The presenter led the audience step-by-step on how to create content in M-educator in a kind and patient manner. He explained the “why” for all the steps in the hands-on presentation. The facilitators helped participants in the audience to understand how to navigate the platform. The presenters reviewed the virtual patients with the audience. The presentation had a high quality interactive component and the likelihood the participants learned is high because of their “doing” during the presentation. “Feel free to play” was encouraged of the audience. During the “hands-on” part of the presentation I noticed the audience interacting with each other while learning how to create a VP within mEducator. The presenter continued to talk while there was much “bustle” going on in the audience. Therefore, it was not clear how many of the participants were listening to the presenter. In the future, it may be helpful to have the audience in sync with the presenter. I sensed all of the audience was not following the presenter’s instructions in live time. This is quite common when someone is trying to lead an audience learning a new system. Toward the end of the presentation the audience was loosing interest, but the presenters ignited the interest once again by showing the audience how to create groups in the platform.
Audience:
Questions from the audience were politely answered and experts in the field were acknowledged. The presenters and facilitators in the audience provided an interactive and practical demonstration of a collaborative tool that is available to the public. An evaluation of the audience's participation was evaluated at the end of the presentation. It was a nice closure to show the audience how to create a personal profile and the ability to create a personal blog. Overall, the presenters followed their outlined aims, objectives and learning outcomes.
A question about creating a "peer review" to monitor the quality of the repository content was entertained by the presenters. The presenters informed the audience there is a rating system being implemented for the reviewing the content. 
The presenters encouraged the audience to sign up and share material on mEducator. Furthermore, the presenters will be sharing information about Medting on Saturday during the MEI 2012 conference here in Thessaloniki. 
Respectfully submitted,
Margaret Hansen ~ Rapporteur for this Session