The CEDAR Project

Connecting Eyre Dry-land Farming Agriculture Resources

A joint project between BJ Network Consulting Australia and Cleve Area School.



Yes quite literally in fact. The CEDAR project was getting the word out to thousands of punters last week at the 2008 Eyre Peninsula Field Days held in Cleve on the 12,13, 14 August. Rhys Moult headed over to Cleve to do some work on the project as well as to talk to as many people as possible about what the project team have been up to and what all this "online" buzz is about.


CEDAR at the 2008 Eyre Peninsula Field Days

It seemed many people had already heard that the Cleve Area School Certificate II in Agriculture was going online courtesy of the ABC Radio spot, an article in the Tribune and now a full page in the Field Days brochure. But with 7000 or more visitors to the show, there were plenty of people who were interested in finding out about the project. Not least of which was the Governor of South Australia, Rear Admiral Scarce. The Governor was very interested in the Cleve Area School Agriculture Course and extended an invitation to Cleve Area School Principal Mick Braham and some of his staff and students to visit Government House in Adelaide. Congratulations on the invite Mick!

So where IS the project at?

Well, students of the Cleve Ag course would have opened their email today to find log in details, and web URL links to get them into the BJ Network Consulting Australia Moodle site. They are finally accessing the site for the first time and will be seeing the Moodle classroom as "Lamb Marking". This first release of the course contains resources, links, assignments, assessments and some trackable SCORM. These resources and tools have been put together to meet the requirements of assessment for the unit of competence "Identify and Mark Livestock" and also contains content for the unit "Castrate Livestock".

The SCORM object that has been included is a self marking trackable assessment tool which was developed using Articulate Quizmaker. This SCORM object adds to the list of deliverables for the project and is a bonus that came about because BJ Network Consulting Australia decided to purchase the web authoring tool to beef up their e-learning arsenal.


Screen capture of the SCORM quiz.


John Solly and Rhys Moult spent the last day of the Field Days at Cleve Area School collaborating on the finishing touches for the first stage release of this course. It is anticipated there will be hiccups and errors and changes will inevitably follow, but the students have now been unleashed on the Moodle and hopefully the feed back gained will be used to enhance the other unit of competence, "Operate a Tractor" which will be released for trial in 6-8 weeks.

The successes of the project have already been exhibited by several students. Jo Turner had told the students early on to start taking video and photographic evidence of their learning at Sims Farm and at the home farm or workplace. Several students have taken this instruction on board whole-heartedly and the video of students crutching sheep was viewed extensively during the Field Days. The project itself can take the majority of the credit for this uptake of video as a learning and assessment tool for the Agriculture course and is a major coup for this methodology in VET in schools.

Stay tuned to see how the Moodle class is received by the students......

1 comments

  1. RhysatWork  

    I have added a new blog to the BJ arsenal, check out rsaonline to see what we have been up to.

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