This resource is based on a discussion that took place between 11 - 26 October 2004 to celebrate the launch of three interactive elearning training products featuring scenarios, images and learning experiences designed for Indigenous learners. Many thanks to Louise Housden for designing and hosting the event.

The new Indigenous Toolboxes are:

The Cultural Resource Management Toolbox
http://flexiblelearning.net.au/toolbox/series5/518.htm

Deadly Jam Music Festival Toolbox
http://flexiblelearning.net.au/toolbox/series5/516.htm

 

The Building Skills Toolbox
http://flexiblelearning.net.au/toolbox/series5/517.htm

Each one is the result of around 12 months' work by a dedicated project team. The developers worked in close consultation with Industry and RTO representatives nationally to ensure that the resources are learner-focused, relevant to the needs of the target audience and culturally appropriate.

Discussion Summary:

The Cultural Resource Management Toolbox

The Cultural Resource Management Toolbox, which supports the Certificate III and IV in Conservation and Land Management (specialising in Indigenous Land Management, is highly interactive and hands-on with amazing graphics that take you on virtual field trips as a tracker to investigate nine culturally significant Indigenous sites. In this exciting visual experience, you can pan across landscape images and zoom in on selected items such as trees and stone implements, which can then be viewed in 3D, as you develop skills in predicting where to find a culturally significant Indigenous site, identifying a site of cultural significance, reporting on important items within sites, and planning to protect a site.

You’ll meet a number of virtual guides including Val, an Indigenous woman qualified in Cultural Resource Management, and Uncle Al, who encourages learners to find out stories about their own country from community elders. Uncle Al then helps learners use these stories to construct an electronic picture of a site that is culturally significant to them and their community.

Comments

• The appearance of this resource is excellent,  and the "ALT" text is working fine.
• I'm quite entranced by your Toolbox - the content is very interesting and the whole experience with the virtual tours of the sites with the pictures and audio guides is just outstanding.

The Building Skills Toolbox

The Building Skills Toolbox, which supports four competencies from the Building and Construction Training Package, has been designed to specifically meet the educational needs of Indigenous learners – particularly those studying in remote areas. As you learn how to build a brick cookhouse, you’ll receive instructions on a range of widely used trade skills including levelling a building site, laying concrete and tiles, hanging a door, safe work practices and cleaning up, and practice your skills through interactive exercises and tasks both virtually and in your own workplace.

The Toolbox also provides opportunities for learners to practice numeracy skills including calculating length, volume, mass, area, costs and percentages, to support the development of these important underpinning competencies. It offers a range of skill development activities to help learners apply their new skills and knowledge in a building and construction context.

A key feature of this Toolbox is its web-based templates for teachers and trainers, making customisation simple. Photographs, graphics and sound files which reflect the context and features of the local community can be inserted into the templates and incorporated into the Toolbox to make it more localised and relevant to your learner group. The accompanying teacher guide provides instructions on how to customise the templates, and includes an online professional development kit packed with ideas for teachers.

Question: We are located in remote and rural Queensland and often training online is the most feasible option but may prove to be the most difficult for Murris to access. Are there any programs which involve the preparation of online skills - even for our mob in the government jobs - it can be quite a daunting idea to study online.

Answer:  This is a situation that I'm sure many VET people out there can relate to... we put a lot of effort into our own professional development, only to discover that our learners are really not well prepared and/or set up for online learning.

The good news is that there's lots of great resources available and plenty of experience that can be shared from others here who have found solutions to this problem.

Check out the "Access and Equity" section of the flexible learning website. There's a range of guides available there that you might find helpful.

Comment: I look forward to any opportunity to develop a toolbox that is mobile technology friendly and multimedia platform interoperable.

Response: I was teaching in the VET sector in schools in the NT. I was using a laptop and digital projector to use a Series 3 Toolbox for group delivery, projecting onto a painter’s dropsheet hanging over the whiteboard. Sort of like a cross between high-tech and low-tech.

I believe that Toolbox developers have to meet fairly stringent benchmarks for Toolboxes to satisfy operational requirements from ANTA. The result being that even on antiquated PC's or laptops (mine was windows 95 and slow as a wet week) the resources will still function.

Question: In the Trainer's Guide that's available on the Building Skills Toolbox site, it mentions a "Professional Development Kit" that offers templates and suggestions for teachers on how to use and customise the Toolbox resources. I really like the idea of providing templates to help trainers, especially if they want to add in extra content or resources to suit a particular community or group of learners.

Answer:  Replacing images to make the Toolbox more relevant to a community sounds like a fairly simple process. I think it could also be a nice way to involve a community's people in the process and build some ownership of the completed resource, what a great way to engage people with the Toolbox!

As an aside, using images of indigenous people from within a learner-group's own community makes a huge difference to the learners' interest levels. Using the local dialect will not always be as simple as changing images, because certain words are not a part of the language. Visual learning aids to such concepts might be needed in such cases.

Deadly Jam Music Festival Toolbox

Reckon you’ve got what it takes to launch your music industry career at the Deadly Jam Music Festival? This Toolbox, supporting competencies from the Certificates II, III and IV in Music, is a sound and vision extravaganza offering a totally engaging and unique learning experience. Talent, training and formal qualifications will help aspiring music professionals stand out from the pack, so everything you ever wanted to know about the highly competitive music industry – from playing the guitar to managing a concert – is here. The Deadly Jam Music Festival Toolbox is a resource designed to particularly appeal to Indigenous learners, featuring music scene identities like Lee Morgan, and Indigenous music throughout.

Learners can interact with four music industry professionals involved with the virtual Deadly Jam Music Festival; including a musician, a sound technician, a band manager and an events manager. A range of interactive learning experiences take you through topics including learning to play a guitar, forming a band, getting a gig, negotiating deals, planning sound systems and organising backstage catering.

Comments
Music is a vital element in our curriculum because it provides skills not only for the community but also for the individual. With the Deadly Jam Toolbox we will be able to consolidate the practical elements with the theory. Our students are all boarders from WA, NT and QLD and it will allow students to work on their music studies even if they are away from school visiting family.

Did you know there's another Toolbox - "Diary of a Sound Hound"  http://flexiblelearning.net.au/toolbox/series5/512.htm - it supports units from the CUS40201 Certificate IV in Music Industry (Technical Production) qualification.

General suggestions

• In my experience with Toolboxes in a classroom situation, it can be better to start with a digital projector, and the Toolbox on CD through a laptop.
• Navigation problems, such as new pages or help tutorials opening in a new page on the lower toolbar, can lead to some confusion with learners who are not so savvy with surfing online.
• Group interaction can assist the more shy learners, who don't find the need to speak to be "interacting" with the class.
• A good starting point for teachers is getting in contact with the Toolbox champion in your state. Their job is to get teachers up and running with Toolboxes. This is a free service and you can contact them via the toolbox website flexiblelearning.net.au/toolbox/ - see the button for Champions on the left side menu. I think that the Toolboxes are a terrific place to start with online teaching and learning. They have Teacher Guides with lots of info as a good starting point.

Article recommendation:
Learning about e-learning - Indigenous TAFE staff online and loving it
http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/newsandevents/Flexenews/37/Chris_Robinson.htm

Other toolboxes that might be of interest:

Learning about Native Title
http://flexiblelearning.net.au/toolbox/series4/423.htm

Indigenous ecotourism
http://flexiblelearning.net.au/toolbox/series3/318.htm

Horticulture for Indigenous learners
http://flexiblelearning.net.au/toolbox/series4/422.htm

Contributors:
Narelle Ashford, Alex Hayes, Norm Henrickson, Louise Housden, Barbara Morris, John Odgers, Zelda Quakawoot, Peter Robertson, Brandon Thompson, Lisa Wait