Latest on twitter:
As of today the whiteboard paint in the hothouse has finally finished curing! Over the morning many of the TLC staff have been trickling through whenever they get a spare moment to have a look, many bringing their own markers. The wall itself is fantastic (4m wide and 3m high) and has exceeded my personal expectations. When dry, the markers erase perfectly with no signs of leaving ghost lines so far. The finish is glossy but textured, so you don’t get a mirror effect.
While we haven’t had any meetings in here with the whiteboard wall yet, I foresee it being incredibly useful for illustrating a point or sharing a graph without fear of running out of room or having to wheel over a whiteboard. And while working individually it already seems quite useful for getting your thoughts out there on the wall to reflect on, alter or simply erase.
Other things are going slower, the website is still waiting to be connected up to the outside world, which is further delaying getting everyone journalling. However this seems to be the nature of a project like the hothouse. Since a lot of what we are doing is trialling new things, there is always a lot of groundwork to do before we even get to a point where we can begin. The plus side is that when the next hothouse begins we should have at least some of these systems in place and ready to go.
This week marks the halfway point for this hothouse session. Things are moving along, last week the ITaLLs ran two more workshops. One on blogs, wikis and media sharing, the other on copyright and free media resources and we’ve heard some great feedback despite technical difficulties with the computer lab they were held in.
Yesterday we ran a hothouse open morning tea complete with Easter buns and chocolate eggs with a reasonable number of people turning up. I feel we pushed the presence of the hothouse out a little further and more people now know that we’re here and know what we’re about. There was also some interest in the concept images from the up and coming teaching and learning commons, which has a truly ambitious deadline of being built by sometime this October. The bad side of this is that the hothouse will be displaced in the not too distant future so that building can start, but it will definitely be worth it in the long term.
We’re hoping things will be slightly quieter this week and we’ve set the goal of launching the hothouse website and ITaLL blogs, so expect to hear about that in my next post, along with something about the whiteboard painted wall.
Firstly apologies for the delay between the last post and this one. I will try my darnedest to stick to a regular weekly post from now on.
I also apologise if this post is a little bit all over the place, but that’s how it has been the last few weeks.
Last week was a busy week for us at the hothouse. We’ve been looking at furniture, setting up wireless (which is working nicely and doesn’t use the silly vpn system like the rest of the uni), building websites, planning meetings, arranging consultations, recording workshops and a handful of other hothouse-related tasks.
The whiteboard paint arrived last week, unfortunately we still have to wait for facilities and services to come and put it up on our walls. If we get the time we may just do it ourselves.
We have also been given our server and started building our website, which will be an instance of wordpress/buddypress. Buddypress is basically a blogging tool which can house multiple blogs from multiple uses. It also allows groups and forums and can be configured to do just about anything you want. We are part way through setting it up now, we’re still in the process of giving it a usable theme and tinkering with groups.
As for ITaLL progress, we’ve had several seminars and workshops from a few ITaLLs already, which is very encouraging. Almost all of the project plans have been signed and returned and money is starting to change hands. We’ve had consultations with most of the ITaLLs which have been extremely useful for us and hopefully similarly so for those who have had them.
Overall everything has been a little hectic but we’re starting to see good results.
The end of last week marked a turning point for the hothouse, we finally got hold of a set of keys to the door. While we still seem to be constantly waiting for one thing or another (roof tiles, whiteboards, wireless, etc) we now have more control. We don’t technically have to wait for things, for example if we knew how we could come in and change the roof tiles ourselves. That’s not likely to happen, but that control means we can get proactive about some things at least.
This has also meant we have some security so we’ve been able to move in computers and printers and chairs and tables and have started ordering technology. We’ve already held a seminar, several meetings and a couple of ITaLL consultations in here and things have worked really well. The space is perfect for small groups but many more than 15 heads around our small conference table and you start to get a little cramped. I’m now working full time in here and the room is open for anyone to drop in and use, bring colleagues to as a place to collaborate, or just come and poke their heads in to see whats happening.
The next big milestone will be having wireless setup and working well in here, which I’m very confident we will be able to ensure happens very soon.
This week has been slightly disappointing, at least in terms of the physical presence of the hothouse. All of the painting has been done (except the whiteboard paint, coming soon), we’ve gotten most of the furniture in, we even have a massive printer/copier/scanner MFU sitting in the room. What we don’t have is keys. And not for lack of trying.
While I enjoy standing outside peering in and imagining what could go where, I fear the staff at Bruschetta are starting to think I’m a little odd. Without keys we’ve been stuck in limbo in regards to moving technology in and getting things set up just the way we like them.
However this hasn’t stopped other aspects of the project from steaming ahead. We’ve had our first informal sit down with all of the ITaLLs last Friday over breakfast, and we’ve all been preparing ourselves for a more structured meeting this Friday. The meeting is partly aimed at making the ITaLLs aware of what everyone else in their team is working on. That way people can see where there are similarities and where they can help each other out. It’s an important phase of the project and in my view a key reason for the hothouse.
Still planning on putting up some photos, as soon as we can get in to take
Ceilings are up, paint has dried and furniture is being hunted down. All signs that point to the hothouse’s physical presence coming together.
The hothouse project is a new way for the Teaching and Learning Centre at the University of Canberra to support faculty staff. The basic concept is to get 14 innovative and respected educators from across all faculties and bring them into a nice shiny new space where they can work on their ideas. The result being a list of teaching resources available for all faculty use.
The initial hothouse has been set up to help lecturers cope with the new winter term. The problem is that this new term is half the length of the usual one and people will have to come up with new ways of teaching to meet the needs of this intensive model. Hopefully in this shared space they will find cross-faculty collaboration easy and being in new surroundings will be conducive to developing new teaching methods.
At the moment the room itself is just a big empty white L-shaped room. Photos to follow when furniture and décor have been installed.
Based on a theme by Jarred Bishop
