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A month at home - never been busier

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Asthmatic blowing on their Peak Flow Meter

As I'm asthmatic I started remote or 'distributed' working a week before my colleagues - some of whom stayed at college to man the phones.

The transition to working online, and bringing as many teachers and students up to speed, has been both swift and largely smooth. GBMET has had dedicated 'learning technologists' in a Digital Team for several years. We have been pushing to bring staff, educators and students online for the last two years. The last 9 months has seen a breakthrough with internal workshops and conferences, greater integration with internal marketing and more one to one coaching.

The current pandemic has made it all the more urgent. If we think of it in terms of the stages of 'diffusion of innovations' then in the space of a few weeks we've broken free to take in the 'late adopters'; a few so called 'laggards' remain. Not a term I like. Too pejorative. 'Late developers' or 'Traditionalists' might be better.

How are you getting on?

We use Google Suite for Education. 

I was thrilled when Thinglink announced yesterday that they were working closely with Google so that all Google assets can be directly embedded into Thinglinks or 'interactivities' - the term is evolving!! 'Thinglinks' are what we who use the platform call them. 'Interactivities' is the term coined by Jilly Salmon 12 years ago - it is less cumbersome that 'interactive activities'. 

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Give this a go! Four etivities to get stuck into !

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A screengrab of a 360 interactive tour with a set of embedded interactive activities to complete

Do we have lift off? 

I'm starting to see how a 360° tour of a catering teaching facility using some 16 360° images.

From diving in my lost post I am now elevating into flight mode. I'm something of a co-pilot on this one. I created the stage, as it were, while a colleague created the activities which I have started to embed within it.

Have a go > HERE Catering 23 + Etivities 

Let me know how you got on.

For now I'm running with the term coined by Jilly Salmon for 'Interactive Activities' = 'etivities'. I'm not convinced it'll catch up.


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Etivities in a catering 360 Health & Safety Induction Course

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A cropped part of a 360 image in a catering kitchen with hot spots showing an interactive learning activity

Eons ago, perhaps 15 years ago, certainly 10, Jilly Salmon coined the term 'e-tivity'. It never caught on, though I feel compelled to use it rather than 'interactive activities'.

This is what we have here. 

It is a set of 10 to 16 simply catering food safety and hygiene related execrises spread across a 360 tour of some 12 or more images around a teaching catering facility.

Catering Etivities 

My First Goal is to add, number and annotate a set of these etivities to a 360 page.

My Second Goal is to spread the etivities strategically across the full 360 tour with Voice Over and text instructions.

My final goal is to add VO to edit video clips to provide 'how tos', hints and insights.

Activities design and built by Mia Pledger, 360 tour created by Jonathan Vernon. 



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