Adam Rattray’s ETEC 565 Efolio

Synthesis Reflection

Precis of Flight Path:

I began ETEC 565 with some experience with learning management systems as well as some experience with programs such as flash and dreamweaver. At the beginning of the course I wanted to continue to learn new tricks in these programs and make new discoveries with moodle. Specifically, I was interested in developing moodle within second life. To me, this would have been the next step in my learning. Unfortunately, due to course restrictions, I was not able to try this, but I did become more familiar with moodle.

I was also pursuing a better understanding of assessment, social software, and multimedia. Chickering and Gamson’s Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education and Bates and Poole’s (2003) Framework for Selecting and Using Technology will be very useful in implementing multimedia and social software in the furure. These readings may also be applied to improve assessment in the online environment. Largely, however, my thirst for becoming a better online test creator has not been quenched. There are some things in my flight path that I have still not resolved, yet ETEC 565 has given me the direction to resolve them.

Reflection on Toolkit Activities:

The e-learning toolkit activities were a very enlightening component of the course. They were very fun because it gave us a chance to play with the tools. Pedagogically, it makes the most sense to learn from playing. The moodle toolkit was especially beneficial as it walked us through such aspects as making forums which was important for successfully creating a good course within moodle. Comparing the different LMSs was also very interesting. It allowed me to see that there are not too many differences in the systems. There are some variations in the systems, but they all successfully carry out the functions that you would want a LMS to carry out. This prompted me to think why an institution or an individual would pay for an LMS such as Vista when they could use an open source one such as Moodle for much less the cost.

There were a few tools that were particularly interesting for me. The DVD authoring toolkit was very useful to me. I did not think to introduce a lot of video to my own teaching, but upon completion of this activity along with the discussion that followed, I believe that I have discovered the benefits of DVD authoring. Although I didn’t have time to implement DVD authoring or videos into my LMS, the toolkit activities made me think about how I should be selecting my tools for my course. This line of thinking that permits me to select the best tools for a course will no doubt help me in my future endeavors.

There were activities such as synchronous communication tools in the toolkit that I was quite familiar. I have developed a good level of how these tools worked so I did not feel the need to do the activities and reflect upon them in my weblog. Reading through the activities made me realize that my abilities were at par or greater than what was being demonstrated. I only wish that I had such activities when I was first starting out.

Applying SECTIONS to self-assess my e-portfolio:

Assessing my e-Portfolio using the Bates and Poole (2003) SECTIONS model was an excellent way to analyze what I have created and at the same time use what I have learned. I generally looked at what I have done and how I will use it in my teaching. This is the main synthesis portion of this reflection as these concepts are fused together.

Students – As I am a student in ETEC 565 it is easy for me to reflect on the use of a eportfolio. I think that an eportfolio is a great way for students to showcase their work. Students need to see what other students are doing in the class. This helps to guide students and to develop a collective knowledge. Reading and commenting on other ETEC 565 students’ weblogs also helped me to develop working relationships that may not have been established in only discussion forums. This sort of weblog is for everyone. No HTML experience is needed. By using wordpress’s WYSIWYG editor, posting and creating pages is made easy. Moreover, having students information organized on weblogs such as this makes the teachers job of checking assignments easier. I definitely see myself using this kind of weblogging to teach science 10. I think that it is important for students to have a comprehensive summary of what they have created after a course has been completed. An e-portfolio accomplishes this.

Ease of Use and Reliability – WordPress was very easy to use. As mentioned it utilizes WYSIWYG technology which negates the need for users to have HTML background. The CWL login was also beneficial. It is much easier to have one login for the whole system, but this may create security problems in some situations. In a high-school environment, it might be better to have a separate username and password for the students’ weblog. I noticed that when I viewed my weblog in IE it did not work as well as in Firefox. Some of my pages did not open and on the pages that did open there was computer gibberish. Making sure that a system such as wordpress functions in all browsers is important.

C – Cost – As WordPress is an open source software, the costs are low. The major costs that UBC would need to deal with would be support costs. As a student we are faced with a time costs. It takes a little more time to upload our material to a weblog. Usually there are some sort of format issues that need to be rectified. This tacks on additional time costs. An open software weblogging software such as wordpress is something that I will definitely consider using in the future.

T – Teaching and learning – All students in ETEC 565 were able to use the wordpress weblog. In the beginning, issues like tagging raised a bit of confusion, but this was the exception and not the norm. For those students that understand or have developed HTML skills, the wordpress site could be further customized. The e-portfolio was a good way to build upon previous knowledge.

I – Interactivity – In my e-protfolio I have included links and embedded media which will help to increase student-content, student-student, and student-teacher interactions. An RSS feed is also an option for increasing interactivity and feedback from others. By providing links and uploading media to the weblog, ETEC 565 students were able to create more engaging weblogs. This seemingly limitless environment allowed for students’ imagination to run wild. For future use with high-school students, I can see that I will have to limit what kinds of media students are allowed to place in the course so that it remains specific to the course goals.

O – Organizational Issues – The wordpress weblog was a great way to organize course assignments and reflections. Posts are all in the same area, but pages were created to help users navigate to specific areas of the course. Reflections can be hard to find as they are intermingled on the main ‘posts’ page. This kind of organization was determined by instructors. The only difficulty I had was finding the correct page to access my weblog. At times when I was logged into CWL it would not allow me a link to my weblog. Through trial and error, I bookmarked a page that will take me to the appropriate page to login so that I may access my weblog. My biggest concern would be how to integrate wordpress with a LMS like desire 2 learn so that you would need only one login id and password.

N – Novelty – This is my third e-portfolio and still the novelty has not worn off. I am still learning new tricks each time I create one of these. For high school students, I believe that since they have not created one before, they may be more interested to do so. This in turn will help them to engage with the content.

S – Speed – The e-portfolio can be created by anyone, anytime. The content that is created can be placed on the web very quickly. Simply by clicking a button your thoughts can be broadcast to millions of people worldwide. The only thing that can slow down the process is bugs in the system. For students to become not only writers, but also publishers is a strong motivating force.

Next Steps:

There are still many things that I need to learn and taking this course has taught me new things. While not everything was new, it is hard to teach a course to students of all levels at the same time. It might be good to have three courses like this that teach to different student skill levels.

I will continue to work on things such as captivate, flash, and dreamweaver over the summer. If I am really eager I may challenge setting up moodle in second life. At present, what most interests me is iClickers. I will find ways to implement what I have learned in this course. I will use Bates and Poole’s (2203) SECTIONS model to identify useful technology. I will use weblogging in my courses as well as moodle. I will utilize Alan Levine’s 50+ ways to tell a story in my digital arts class.

My new flight path:

1. Keep up to date with new technologies.

Technologies are always evolving. It takes an added effort to remain current with what is available. To do this, I will need to set aside a certain amount of time each day to read weblogs and technology papers/journals.

2. Share my knowledge with colleagues.

To gain knowledge is not enough. To enhance the overall atmosphere at work, I will need to develop a best practices section on our LMS. Here I will place what I have learned and encourage others to share their knowledge and skills.

3. Once I have reached a destination, develop a new flight path.

This is the end of the beginning. As long as humanity is intact, technology will continue to advance. New destinations will be created and others discovered.

I will continue to enjoy working with youth, technology, and science. These things interest me and as technology and science changes it seems so do our youth. As a species hopefully we can continue to evolve into something better and the best way to do this is through education. Now that we know that we can do anything, what will we do?

References:

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

Chickering, A.W. and Gamson, Z.F. (1987).  Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.  American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), p. 3-7.

Comprehensive Inventory of LMS Multimedia

The pdf can be viewed here.

This is the inventory as of July, 23^rd, 2009. The inventory will continue to change up until August, 2^nd, 2009.

Think about an example of how multimedia have been used effectively to enhance your learning. Feel free to reflect on your MET experiences, or any other.

In ETEC 533 multimedia was not just examined extensively, but it was also used effectively for instruction. The graphics tied in directly to the text that was been presented. I could read the text then see the concept without having to make an effort to look for the graphics. By reading the text I could ‘hear’ the authors voice, but by seeing the graphics allowed me another mode in which to visualize the concept. Moreover, embedded videos were a welcome change to reading. We are wired to respond to visual stimulation in the form of movement, colours, and contrast. Using multimedia helped me to become more engaged in the course and I think that becuase of this I probably learned more than if it was not present.

You can find a link to the story that I created here. It is called “Mountains and I” and it is an introduction to me and biology.

Why did you choose this particular tools?

I wanted to create a story that incorporated many photos, but I also wanted to allow the viewer the freedom to move from one photo to another out of sequence. Alan Levine’s list of 50+ tools was a god send. Ourstory (www.ourstory.com) was such an application that would allow for this. It would incorporate my photos as well as the flash movies that I had created into a tidy timeline. I thought that is was very viewer friendly, but it lacked a certain pizzazz that I was looking for. Roxio photoshow (www.photoshow.com) was a great tool for telling a story as you could include music, utilize great transitions, and add in text. Photopeach (www.photopeach.com) also had a similar functionality to photoshow. Tikatok (www.tikatok.com) was also a great tool for presenting a story. Actually creating a “book” online will give students the confidence they need to become better writers and it is more intuitive to uses than the other programs. These tools were all great, yet I found myself wanting something that was a bit more interactive. The very last tool on Alan Levine’s list, prezi (www.prezi.com), had exactly what I was looking for (Levine, 2007). It was flash based, it allowed for viewers to view photos out of sequence plus more, and could integrate a multitude of media into the presentation. Morever, as my students are currently using CMap tools to create concept maps, I thought that this could be an easy replacement to CMap tools. Once I found this tool, choosing it was very easy.

How did the tool impact the manner in which you told your story (perhaps in a way that is different had you just used text or related the story using your voice)?

The tool impacted the manner in which I told the story in a number of different ways. Firstly, I realized that I did not need to write a large amount of text below each picture. Instead I focused on tying the text from one photo to another photo in a creative manner. Also, the path function in prezi greatly changed how I was presented the story. Using this function, I was able to take the viewer to exactly where I wanted him/her. Text and photos can be zoomed into and photos do not need to be in any linear sequence. In fact, I did not arrange my photos in any linear order. I created a picture of a mountain with my pictures which I feel helped to add another dimension to the presentation. Since I did not put my pictures in any linear order and I had many pictures (about 60), it decreased the organization and made creating the path difficult. However, the end product is that you are able to fly past many photos that appear later in the sequence and view all photos as they are arranged in groups. The groups are sunsets, flora and fauna, people, Mt. Fuji, the seasons, culture, and me. I was also going to include a flash movie into the presentation, but I changed my mind. The ability to integrate a multitude of different media (pdf, video, etc.) into the presentation is an added is an added bonus. The old saying says that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I think prezi has allowed me to create a presentation where the photos are worth 2000 words.

How might you use such tools in your own teaching to produce materials for students?

There are a number of ways that I may produce materials for students for my teaching. Prezi is great for linking lessons from an entire unit and for providing instruction. I see myself incorporate media such as photos, but using largely captivate to produce visually rich slideshows and presentations within prezi. The combination of the two flash based applications will create a dynamic and stimulating environment for students. Students may follow the instructor’s sequential outline that he or she set up in using the path tool. Or they may zoom and drag the screen to the area that they wish view. Mentioned previously, prezi would be an amazing tool to use for concept maps. The zoom function allows information to be stored in a very small space and arrows as well as text may be placed anywhere on the screen. All this allows for the creation of a clear and organized concept map. The concept maps created in prezi over a single year may then be incorporated into one knowledge map which ties all ideas together. As prezi is easy to use and flexible, it is only truly limited by the users imagination.

How might students be given access to the same authoring tools?

Prezi is great because it can be accessed over the internet without downloading any software to your computer. This is the major problem that I have CMap Tools. Although it is free, students must download it to there computers and there are always technical problems. Having students create projects online would alleviate this problem. Unfortunately, there will probably be other problems. For example, when I was uploading my photos to prezi, every other photo would not upload. This doubled my upload time because every photo that I wanted I had to upload it twice for it to work. After saving and finishing the prezi online, it may be downloaded to your hard drive to use offline or on a different server. Unfortunately you only have up to 100 MB of storage space on the prezi server (Prezi, 2009). I used 35% of this space to tell my story which means that it may not be a feasible option for use over the entire year. It might be good for only one or two projects. There is the option to upgrade for a fee. The pro version allows you to edit material offline and gives you 2 gigabytes of space. However, it costs 119 euros (Prezi, 2009). I believe that for a few projects students this project will be useful, but to upgrade would be too costly.

What kind of impact would you expect to see in your students in terms of motivation, creativity, or any other characteristics?

The ability to produce professional looking presentations easily in prezi will motivate students to spend the time to create unique stories. Students are frustrated with the status quo learning environment and this was seen at Harvard where dissatisfied students created their own computer system (Lamb, 2007). Prezi has less limits then other similar software such as Roxio. There is also the opportunity for students to work collaboratively in groups. They can use their creativity on a number of different levels. Photgraphic, graphic, artistic, organizational, and literal creativities can all be integrated into prezi. By giving them different avenues to express themselves will help to meet the specific needs of each student. Thus, this lack of restriction will free them from the normal confines of learning.

Describe how a story-telling approach would work within a course that you teach (or would like to teach) using sound pedagogical arguments.

Prezi could be used for Science 10 to help combine semantic knowledge of facts with students’ episodic knowledge in which they gained through life experiences. This would be done by having students narrate photos or upload videos that are within the context the course content, physics, chemistry, ecology, and energy systems, but also within the boundaries of their own lives. In a community-based learning environment in which students must discuss ideas before they are created, knowledge will be constructed under constructivist principles. Digital media like Prezi allows for speedier creations and accessibility 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (Jarke et.al, 2006).

For each unit I will provide the vocabulary that they must use for their unit concept map. Students will work in groups where each student is given a specific task. They must then link each idea in a method that they deem fit. By linking ideas they are essentially telling the story of how one thing relaters to another. I will scaffold their knowledge by providing an outline of the concept map for the first assignment, but will allow them to create their own maps from scrap later on. Cognitive affordances such as visualizing concepts are gained through prezi. Social affordances such as collaborative work are also gained. The concept maps created in prezi would be a marked similarly to any other summative assessment by creating a rubric that would be given to students in the beginning. Using sound pedagogy, pezi could successfully be implemented into a course.

In science everything is connected. Students tend to only remember facts from chemistry or how to solve problems in physics, but fail to realize that one thing overlaps into another. By having students tell the story of science in the language of science will help them to see the not only the connections within the scientific disciplines, but also the connections science has to their own lives. Utilizing pezi will help to meet the BC Ministry of Education goals for science 10 students (Ministry of Education, 2008). They are:

GOAL 2: Skills– Students will develop the skills required for scientific and technological inquiry, for solving problems, for communicating scientific ideas and results, for working collaboratively, and for making informed decisions.

GOAL 3: Knowledge – Students will construct knowledge and understandings of concepts in life science, physical science, and Earth and space science, and apply these understandings to interpret, integrate, and extend their knowledge.

A concept map created in prezi will have the detail that is needed to accomplish these goals. As Lamb (2007) notes, students will be able to create a better learning for themselves if we let them become co-developers.

References

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In  Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success.(pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

Jarke, M, Klamma, R., Sharda, N. & Spaniol, M. (2006). Web-based learning with non-linear stories. Advances in Web Based Learning. (pp. 249- 263).

Lamb, B. (2007). Dr. Mashup; or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix. Educause Review, 42(4): 12–25. Retrieved July 6, 2009 from http://www.educause.edu/ER/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume42/DrMashuporWhyEducatorsShouldLe/161747

Levine, A. (2007). “50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story.” Accessed Online July 14, 2009, from http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools

Ministry of Education. (2008). Science 10 Integrated Resource Package 2008. Retrieved July 15, 2009 from http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp/science810/2008sci10.pdf

Prezi (2009). Home page. Accessed Online July 14, 2009, from http://prezi.com/

When using wikis for group collaboration there are some advantages. They are as follows:

• Able to work asynchronously.
• Document is editable by everyone, but the parts that can be edited can be controlled.
• Only one link to the document needs to be clicked and not many links like in vista discussions.
• Others may add to the document.

What are some of the challenges of working with others in a collaborative wiki space?

• Others may change your contribution. This is not only an advantage of a wiki, but a disadvantage. If your contribution gets changed for the worse then it can be very disheartening.
• It can be unclear who made which edits.
• Formatting can be difficult.

For science 10 online, formative assessment is an important part of the learning strategy. I decided to use an auto-graded quiz as part of my educational plan. This will give students instant feedback so that they may assess their own learning (Gibbs and Simpson, 2005). Each section of the course will be followed by such a quiz. This is built on Gibbs and Simpson’s (2005) notion that frequent testing will also distribute effort over an entire course. This quiz is a part of the chemistry and radiation unit. Students generally find this to be a challenging unit so it is important that they are getting as much feedback as possible. Summative assessment will be left in large part to face to face testing and other assignments. This quiz focuses on student-content and student-teacher interactions (Anderson, 2008). In large part, the teacher interaction with students is achieved instantaneously during the quiz as feedback which is pre-programmed into the multiple choice and short answer questions (and to a more limited extent in the essay questions).

Setting up the moodle quiz was not a difficult task. This was likely because I have had some experience creating quizzes in moodle. The quiz that I developed has three multiple choice, four matching, 2 short answer, and 2 short essay questions for a total of 15 marks. Timing was set for 25 minutes; it was pre-programmed for student feedback; and two questions had embedded images. All of this was per the ETEC 565 instructions for this activity. Since this is a formative quiz, I allowed for unlimited attempts and the quiz time was set to give students plenty of time to digest the question (and investigate the answer). To mark unlimited test attempts with 2 essay questions would be the most demanding part of this quiz. My personal opinion regarding this is that I do not want to rely solely on auto-graded quizzes. I believe that there will be more student-teacher interaction and discussion with more open-ended questions.

After constructing the quiz I previewed it in the student role. When I created the quiz I found one hindrance with the multiple choice questions. I could not write subscripts or superscripts in the answer box as there was no wysiwyg editor in the answer box and pasting it into the box did not work (nor could I work with the html). I had to put the answers for this multiple choice question in the question text box and simply put A,B,C, and D in the answer boxes (See Fig. 1 below). It looks a little clumsy, but I believe that it is effective. The short answer questions have the greatest potential to confuse and frustrate students. Students must write the exact answer that the instructor inputted into the quiz and even if the answer they input is a slight variance of the correct one, it will be marked incorrect (unless the instructor was successful in putting every possible variation into the quiz). For this reason, I see myself not using short answer questions in a real life situation. There was also a problem with my second short essay question. The wysiwyg editor appeared for the first short essay question, but not for the second one. The use of subscript and superscript editing is absolutely necessary for this question so in the absence of the editor problems will arise. The feedback for each question was as specific as possible. This follows Gibbs and Simpson’s (2005) line of thinking that “feedback must be quite specific to be useful.” This quiz should be easy for students to use.

Gibbs and Simpson’s (2005) Criteria of good feedback which I employed:

• correct errors
• develop understanding through explanations
• generate more learning by suggesting further specific study tasks
• promote the development of generic skills by focusing on evidence of the use of skills rather than on the content
• promote meta-cognition by encouraging students’ reflection and awareness of learning processes involved in the assignment encourage students to continue studying.

Grading in moodle is both sweet and sour. Being able to penalize students for incorrect responses is a useful option to have. For my quiz I elected to not penalize incorrect answers, although I believe now that it might have been a good idea to penalize students as it would make them think before responding. To have your quizzes automatically graded is a good thing, but when the essay sections can’t be graded it skews the final quiz mark. Students may not realize that the essay questions need to be marked by hand so this must also be factored into the quiz. Grades book is well organized. You can see all the students’ responses simply by clicking on the links to the questions (See Fig. 1 below). This is important in case you need to override a response.

Figure 1

Moodle is not perfect and it appears clumsy at times, but it offers tools to meet the needs of most teachers. Furthermore, students will feel the benefits of online test taking. Students that take online quizzes with computer-based feedback score much better on exams than stronger students that don’t (Gibbs and Simpson, 2005). In light of this, no matter whether it is for the purposes of formative or summative assessment, online quizzes are a good part of a successful teaching strategy.

References

Anderson, T. (2008). Towards a theory of online learning. In: Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University. Accessed Online 9, June, 2009,  from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008_Anderson-Online_Learning.pdf

Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2005).  Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Accessed Online 22, June, 2009, from http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf

a) Elluminate

• Why I chose it

Elluminate links up well in my LMS. I have placed a link within the LMS to the external server as well I have created a “how to login to Elluminate” video to assist student logins. It is probably the best synchronous tool on the market. In a class such as science 10 where there is a lot of problem solving, there must also be a lot guidance from the instructor. Anderson (2008) also notes that teacher presence is crucial in formal education.

• What this tool brings to the educational experience

Elluminate is synchronous software that runs on java. As long as a computer has java and a set of minimum requirements, it will be fully capable of running elluminate. Moreover, it has video conferencing, live chat, voice chat, and a whiteboard to facilitate learning. Microsoft powerpoint slides may be uploaded to the whiteboard (Elluminate, 2009). Students may also be polled in a number of ways. The moderator may poll students by having them choose between a red x or a green circle. This may be changed to having students select letters for multiple choice responses. Elluminate collects the data from polling and displays it in the form of graphs after polling has been completed. Moreover, all sessions may be recorded and viewed later. Moderators may also take control of other students’ applications to guide them to specific sites or files. Furthermore, an instructor may wish to divide students into smaller rooms. If the class is large or the instructor simply wants students to work in smaller groups, it is possible to break the class up. Students with a descent internet connection will be able to fully use Elluminate. Lastly, it is easy to use. Students do not need to spend a lot of time to become proficient in it (Bates and Poole, 2003).

• What are its limitations

The fact that this software runs on java also creates limitations for the software. Java must be downloaded and installed. The Elluminate jnlp file must be downloaded from an external server each time. Usually this is not a problem, but if the internet connection is slow or the computer’s processing ability is low this can greatly affect the way in which Elluminate functions. Moreover, as Elluminate’s functions such as video-streaming use a large proportion of processing power, slower computers will be at a disadvantage. Another disadvantage of Elluminate may also be considered its advantage in that users must be present at the same time to use it.

• Does it work? If it is in your LMS site we will test it; if not, it should be linked there and you need to describe how you tested it

Elluminate works well within Moodle. I have used Elluminate extensively in other LMSs and I had no problems linking it within Moodle. For the student that has never used it before, I have created a short screen-cast that will allow them to access Elluminate easily and efficiently. It would be perfect if it could be accessed with a click of a button within the LMS. As Anderson (2008) writes, this kind of communication technology is modeled “pedagogically and structurally on the campus classroom.”

b) Discussion Forum

• Why I chose it

The discussion forum allows for a increased social, teaching, and cognitive presence which in turn opens up the possibility for greater discourse (Anderson, 2008). Good courses need the right balance between synchronous and asynchronous interactions and it is up to the designer of the course to get this balance correct. Since I already have an synchronous learning device I thought that an asynchronous learning tool such as a discussion forum would allow for more flexibility within the course.

• What this tool brings to the educational experience

Firstly this tool brings social affordances to the educational experience. By getting students to introduce themselves in the beginning fosters a “sense of trust” with the online community (Anderson, 2008). Students and the teacher can post their introductions here and ‘meet’ classmates. Discussions also allow students to ponder their responses before responding. Moreover, a discussion can be a good change of pace for a course. For example, for one unit of my course I will be covering chemistry which will include balancing equations, writing chemical formulas and names, and radiation equations. Using the discussion forum to ask a question such as how our understanding of atoms helps to explain why mass is neither created nor destroyed during a chemical reaction helps students to make connections between concepts.  This all tends to organize course materials for students (Perkins and Pfaffman, 2006). Finally, the forums allow students to subscribe to posts. Subscription to forums keeps students in tune with what is happening within the LMS as information is constantly being sent to their external email accounts. There are many cognitive as well as many social affordances that this tool provides.

• What are its limitations

The discussion forum has a number of limitations. Firstly, it cannot directly be linked to the grades. If you wanted to give grades for the discussion, you would have to go into the grades separately and input it indirectly instead of the easier way of inputting the grades directly from the forum page. The forum page does not allow you to see how many responses you have to messages that you posted. You have to go through all the messages and look for the ones that you posted which can be time consuming. All and all the limitations are low for the discussion forum. It provides a safe area for studentsto communicate.

• Does it work? If it is in your LMS site we will test it; if not, it should be linked there and you need to describe how you tested it

After creating an icebreaker and an activity with discussion forums, I would say that it works. It is quick and simple to use (grading the posts would be the only drawback). The discussion forum helps to set the climate for the whole course. It is important for students to construct ideas in their minds through discussion with others.

Reflection Regarding Selecting and Implementing Elluminate and a Discussion Forum

I have used Elluminate often in the past, but I have not experienced implementing it into moodle so I was interested to see how it would work. It was easier than expected, but not having the ability to create a webpage in dreamweaver and then upload that file to moodle hindered the process. To create the instructions in the moodle wysiwyg page editor was different, but I think that I can get used to it. Selecting Elluminate was easy as it offers the most capabilities  out of all the synchronous online tools. Selecting a discussion forum was also quite simple to set-up and using the moodle forums at moodle.org gave me a better idea of its capabilities. Both processes were not difficult nor complicated and I look forward to extending my skills further in the future.

References

Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an Online Learning Context.  In: Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University. Accessed online 3 March 2009 http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008_Anderson-DeliveryQualitySupport.pdf

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

Elluminate. Retrieved June 15, 2009 from: http://www.elluminate.com/support/docs/8.0/Elluminate_Live_V8_Methods_of_Loading_PowerPoint_Presentations.pdf

Perkins, M., Pfaffman, J. (2006). Using a Course Management System to Improve Classroom Communication. Science Teacher, 73(7), 33-37.

The Vancouver Learning Network currently uses Desire 2 Learn’s LMS. I propose that the VLN could save more from its operating costs by employing the open source LMS, Moodle. The Bates and Poole (2003) article, A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology, helped provide the criteria for which to scrutinize Moodle. The SECTIONS model will be used to display Moodle’s advantages as a LMS. As the VLN is funded by tax dollars saving on costs is important, yet this does not mean that it wants to sacrifice support. Moodle reduces costs and it still maintains a high level of support.

Students

The students at the VLN are more tech savvy than the average student. They have experience taking courses online and using a LMS. Quite often they have to make screencasts and use powerpoint. To switch to a similar LMS would not be a huge leap for them. Furthermore, the biggest complaint online students have is that opportunities to meet other students online or in person is limited. By combining Second Life or Teen Second Life with Moodle, students will have the opportunity to meet other students in a synchronous environment (Delucia, 2009). Moodle is generally used asynchronously to organize course content.

Ease of Use and Reliability

Moodle is fully functional on all operating systems. This includes Win XP/Vista, Mac, and Linux. No matter whether it is Safari or Firefox, it will run on all browsers. In fact, you may install Apache MySQL and Moodle on your own computer and test it offline before you install the system on a server. This also allows changes to the course or the LMS to be made offline, tested, and then uploaded to the server. The interface language can also be changed at the users discretion. My personal Moodle site allows for Japanese as well as English usage, but there are many other possibilities for languages.

Costs

There are no initial software licensing costs as Moodle is open source and free of fees (Perkins & Pfaffmen, 2006). D2L charges a fee per learner. The only initial costs with Moodle come from hosting and domain registration. The VLN already has its own servers and technicians, but the VLN is not taking advantage of these resources.

Teaching and Learning

MOODLE stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment and was developed by Martin Dougiamas as a tool for social learning and constructivism (UBC Wiki, 2009). Therefore it is a good platform for distributing problem based learning.  In fact all LMSs continue to be used more and more in learning environments (Panettieri, 2007). Constructivist problem based learning is the main teaching method taught to undergraduate education students. The ministry would like to produce more citizens that think critically about the world that they live. Online challenges students be even more motivated to learn than the face to face student because the online learner does not have anyone to push them to do the work. Therefore it is important that the LMS is able to create an engaging environment.

Interactivity

Moodle offers many social and cognitive affordances. Wikis, chat rooms, and forums allow students to discuss work and to collaborate on assignments. The creation of formative as well as summative quizzes can enable students to progress through the prescribed learning outcomes.  Multiple choice quizzes may also be created easily by downloading plugins such as the Yatskovsky quiz authoring template. There is also a plugin that allows feedback to be recorded orally. Multimedia rich webpages may be developed with such programs as dreamweaver and uploaded to Moodle by webdav. The VLN will also benefit from the fact that iclickers are fully compatible with Moodle (iclicker, 2009). When VLN teachers have face to face tutorials, students will be able to provide feedback with their clickers that automatically gets sent to moodle grades.

Organizational Issues

If technical support is ever needed there is a plethora of different Moodle affiliated companies that can provide support for a fee. In Canada, Remote-Learner has been providing Moodle support since 1982 (Moodle, 2009). There is also extensive access to online forums, RSS feeds, video tutorials, chat-rooms, training opportunities, books, and manuals.

Novelty

The introduction of Moodle as the VLN’s platform of choice would by no means be a novel idea. However, the introduction of Moodle into a virtual world such as Second Life or Teen Second Life could prove to be a fresh idea (Delucia et al. 2009). It would combine the best of the asynchronous and synchronous worlds. Students would not only have an area to study, but also an area to socialize and frolic. This hybrid of software is often referred to as Sloodle (Delucia et al. 2009).

Speed

With the advent of WYSIWYG software within Moodle content can be backed up, imported, or altered very easily. Although the VLN already has technical support, they will not need to be burdened by such mundane tasks as mentioned above. Teachers will be able to do it themselves. The creation of course material will be just as time consuming as with any other LMS. However, compared to print the content found on the webpages will be easier to update (Bates and Poole, 2003).

Using Moodle will help the VLN teachers meet the NETS standards (NETS, 2009). The five rubrics created in ETEC 565 66b for selecting a LMS will undoubtedly show that Moodle has a slight edge over other LMSs. The category where Moodle differs the most and which should be the most important to the VLN is cost. It is just as effective as any other LMS, but at a fraction of the cost.

References

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (Pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

De Lucia, A., Francese, R., and Passero, I. (2009). Development and evaluation of a virtual campus on Second Life: The case of Second DMI. Computers & Education 52 (1), 220-233.

iClicker. Retrieved June 6, 2009 from: http://www.iclicker.com/dnn/

MOODLE. Retrieved June 6, 2009 from: http://moodle.com/support/

National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers. Retrieved May 4, 2009 from: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_for_Teachers_2008.htm

Panettieri, J. (2007). Addition by subtraction. University Business, August, 58-62. Accessed online 11 March 2009 http://www.universitybusiness.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=845

Perkins, M. & Pfaffman, J. (2006). Using a Course Management System to Improve Classroom Communication. Science Teacher, 73(7), 33-37.

UBC Wiki: Moodle. Retrieved June 6, 2009 from: http://sites.wiki.ubc.ca/etec565/index.php/Moodle

Flight path

I just started teaching science and math online in Canada, but have some experience using moodle and flash in Japan. I want my skills to continue to grow and I would like to develop new skills. I believe that by doing this course I will prepare myself for the future of education as technology will only continue to advance. The days of brick and mortar schools will eventually come to an end. We will move to a more seamless approach to education. I want a better understanding of how I can make my online courses more interactive and give more opportunities for students to collaborate as well as interact with the course material. At the same time I need a stronger foundation in how I should assess my students online.

LMS
I want to know how I can maximize Moodle to enhance students learning. I would like to create Moodle within second life and experiment with how well the two may function together. Moodle is the tool that organizes course material and is good mainly for asynchronous activities, but Second Life is a good environment for students to socialize and collaborate.

Synchronous communication
I use Elluminate almost daily to communicate with my students, but I find that each time that I use it I find a new feature. It, at times, is cumbersome to use and such I am curious to investigate other synchronous methods of communication. Bates and Poole (2003) suggest that interface design is an important factor for making software easier to use. Elluminate’s interface design is what makes it difficult to use. iPhones probably have the most intuitive interface and its sales figures can attest to this. I am also interested in learning more about webcasting technology. I observed it used in a remote laboratory and found it fascinating.

Assessment
One of Chickering and Gamson’s “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education” (1987) is prompt feedback and I am wondering if technology can help us to give feedback quicker. I have made quizzes in moodle and D2L. The process for making questions was long and painful and therefore I am open to any ideas to help make it more efficient. I would like to learn how to better utilize Adobe’s PDF forms to allow me to mark assignments more efficiently. I know that grades can be calculated automatically and I know that Adobe has a multitude of other features that I don’t know how to use. Scorm is another area that interests me.

Social software
As mentioned I am curious to see how second life can be integrated with moodle. I would also like to explore other social software. I am not even sure which software I need to learn.

Multimedia
I would like to continue to learn tricks in dreamweaver and flash so that I create more interactive learning resources. I would also like to investigate video editing software such as After Affects in order to make more stimulating videos.

References
Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

Chickering, A.W. and Gamson, Z.F. (1987).  Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.  American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), p. 3-7.

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