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Information Technologies and Indigenous Communities

Workshops 2 & 3, Workshop 7: Peter Karmel Building

9-12.30pm: W2. Find your mob online : using digital resources to research your family history (Room 2.25)

Convened by the AIATSIS Family History Unit

The AIATSIS Family History Unit helps anyone of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander heritage to find out about their family history. The Unit also assists Link-Up Caseworkers in support of reunions for members of the Stolen Generations, including providing training in family history research methods and resources. The AIATSIS Family History Team has a wealth of experience in Indigenous family history research and an excellent knowledge of what records and resources are available. Our Find Your Mob online! workshop is great opportunity to get advice from the Team. It’s also an excellent opportunity to learn about how to trace your family history online and where to look for information on your mob! The workshop will be hands-on and the Family History Team will be providing demonstrations of searching a range of family history resources on the internet. Participants will have the opportunity to search for information on their own families and communities. Topics covered will include:

9-10.30am: W3. Delivering edication modules online (Room 2.28)

Convenors: Carol Rose Baird (Lecturer, Derby Campus, Kimberley TAFE); Suraya Bin Talib (Business / Governance Lecturer, Broome E); Michelle McLaughlin (Business Lecturer, Broome TAFE); Gary Urquhart (Kimberley TAFE)

Presenters from Kimberley College of TAFE will be three Indigenous women lecturers and team leader Gary Urquhart. The lecturers are Michelle McLaughlin, Suraya BinTalib and Carol Baird. The team will demonstrate features of the online learning management system CE6 which is used by to present courses in a flexible manner to local and remote students. CE6 is part of the Blackboard system which has been customised over the past seven or so years to suit the needs of the mainly Indigenous clientele of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It is now possible for to offer its online courses to students anywhere in Australia who have an internet connection (and who satisfy residential requirements).The Kimberley TAFE team has offered to present two workshops and a mid week presentation from an Aboriginal woman’s perspective covering the following topics.

The use of online learning management system CE6

Especially for external trainees, using CE6 helps monitor, record and communicate with trainees and allows the lecturer to add extra information if necessary. Tools such as the calendar help with letting students know important dates and when the lecturer will be available online. We can also see who is online and when. We can use voiceover to assist students with low literacy skills and can reach students who cannot attend a formal class for whatever reason. The learning is self paced and can work around students’ personal and cultural commitments. It has an inbuilt email facility which means not only lecturer-student, but student-student contact is easy to establish.

Conducting current online courses in Business, Governance and IT

Appreciation of issues surrounding governance within communities is essential knowledge in today’s social and political climate. Governance courses empower community members to take on decision-making roles and responsibilities and improve understanding for Indigenous organisations about how corporations work. It is very satisfying to know that we are part of increasing community education and can offer such a powerful tool for creating knowledge. Increasingly women are taking on the decision-making roles and are often interested to pursue other courses for their own personal development. Unfortunately TAFE and communities are resource poor at the moment and lecturers have to create most of their own additional materials. In Business courses there are many more Indigenous students now, many of whom are women. It is encouraging to see women creating positive role models in their communities by being prepared to gain their own knowledge. We often feel that they, like us, are on the leading edge of breaking entrenched stereotypes, especially when people are surprised to realise we are the lecturers, not support staff. We feel that our female students will go on to consolidate that position, especially as their numbers increase.

Open discussion on training as an online Trainer from an Indigenous woman’s perspective

This will provide an opportunity for participants to ask questions and relate our experiences to their own situations. Some points about online training are:

Advantages

Disadvantages

Open discussion on adapting to new IT technologies and utilising them for the training of Indigenous people

We will be pleased to discuss the variety of computer programs we use in delivering our courses and making resources. We will be interested to know what programs others find useful. We find that new technology needs to be simple and relevant and have a high chance of success in the early stages of use. Our main program is the Blackboard system and all its features which will be demonstrated during the conference. We also use the Microsoft suite and programs such as Photostory. A virtual meeting program called Elluminate was learned but then discarded by TAFE and is now being replaced by Go To Meeting/Go To Training which looks more promising. Go To will enable us to have face-to-face contact with remote students and allow us to guide their learning through demonstrating on their computer if necessary. Go To also allows students to network with each other thus helping them to feel part of a group and to develop relationships with others with similar interests. The need for such a program is higher if students are off campus or working outside such as in social or housing programs. We will demonstrate the features of Go To Meeting during the workshops.

Embedding e-learning workplace language requirements into online learning

This point holds its own challenges, not least because it requires introducing yet another language into an already complex linguistic situation. How do we explain e-learning language to students who may speak English as a second, third or fourth language? We try to cover most terms within the course induction and keep an eye out for indications that terms are not properly understood. We are aware of one trainer who uses Kimberley Kriol to explain e-learning special terms. We can also use voice over options so that students are not relying on their literacy skills but can receive the information aurally which is usually their preferred mode of operation. We also liaise with supervisors for feedback on the students’ progress. This is an instance where Go To Training will be invaluable.

Co-ordinating online training, resources and copyright

Copyright is a foreign concept to most Indigenous students and even after more than 20 years of discussion is still a oneway street in Australia. Copyright protects non-Indigenous ‘ownership’ of information but not communal ownership which is our way of seeing things. The outcome of the present battle between an art gallery owner in Katoomba and the Mowanjum people for use of wanjina images may give us a vehicle for explaining the underlying principles of copyright to our students.However, from a TAFE lecturer’s perspective, we use material that is copyright cleared and already publicly available such as resources provided by Microsoft, public shareware and toolboxes and interactive web sites that encourage participation in learning activities. If we need specific photographs we tend to take our own, and always ask students’ permission if want to use their image for some reason. Learning how to co-ordinate online training is part of our own learning experience with TAFE. We find that mastering small chunks of instruction on a need-toknow basis is less daunting than lengthy sessions of complex information that may or may not be relevant to each lecturer’s individual situation.

11-12.30pm: W7. Social Media (Room 2.28)

Convenor: Chris Rauchle

Indigenous communities stand to benefit more than most from the new technology enabling social networking. This workshop tells you why one-to-one communications devices like mobile phones, one to many communications systems like Twitter, Facebook YouTube and many to many community sites like Apple iTunes, Google Sites and Microsoft Live are going to be a critical part life in your community in the future. New technology allows the creation of new linkages that have not been seen in our cultures before. In the past relationships were formed over several meetings requiring introductions and formal processes that took time and were often linked to meals and formal celebrations. Social networking technologies strengthen but do not replace these mechanisms. If all this sounds cold and mechanical we will show you how it will help members of our community who have difficulty communicating and point to advances in technology that are able to bring new ways of communicating to our communities, allowing language translation, collaboration and remote experience of Country and family into our daily lives at little or no expense. We will show you how to set up a blog, tweet and put together a site to share news about activities in your area and give you a start on where to find IT resources in your community.

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Please sign up for workshops at the Registration Desk, or to secure your place in advance please email your interests to publicprograms@aiatsis.gov.au.