dhorn

Investigating the different types of media available: images, audio, video, and DVD leads one to conclude that each has a useful place in education and in creating or delivering lessons. As a photographer I use bridge to manage photos and Photoshop CS5.5 to edit and export images, however, tools like Google Picasa will work well for the average user who would like to incorporate images.
To provide audio content either for lessons or for review I generally use the podcast option found in Garage-band (mac user that I am). However, once again tools are available for people on other platforms or who want another option. Audicity was also an easy tool to use and people can find a number of simple tutorials on you-tube if they need help. The ease of use of a tool follows that it will be frequently used. Media in lessons, should always be supported with a sound pedagogy of why using it and what one would like the students to take away from it. The message could be something as simple as a little background about their teacher so they can better build rapport with students or it could be an indepth lesson on architectural design, doesn’t matter, you just need a plan!

Social software is a lot like a double-edged sword; awesome in some situations and dodgy in others.  Many of the programs support and encourage the development of learning communities, which I turn can lead to networks of knowledge in the correct instances.  However, there is also a bit of a disconnect between individuals, which can exist as people accept more and more random and tenuous connections to “friends” and links.

At face-value many of the social software programs and sites seem friendly or at least benign, idealistically I believe we all hope they really are.  Once you actually take a look though at the Term of Service (TOS) things look a bit different. First off the TOS design and location is significant; in plain sight, but generally in much smaller font and off to the side or at the bottom of a page so not to draw attention to itself.  Once opened up they are typically bound in jargon and corporate-esque language.  I suspect that the average individaul (self-included) typically looks at these like they do the user agreements from i-tunes; they just click agree and move on without actually reading it, their’s little they could do otherwise if they disagreed.

So many of the social software sites have some interesting takes on privacy and content ownership. Essentially your privacy is important and not going to be shared with anyone; well accept for affiliates of whatever social software you are using, but only of course to improve services.  Your content that you upload generally is acknowledge to belong to you, have by having it on a particular site it generally means that site can do whatever they would like with it and royalty free of course.

So there are definitely some issues, but does it mean we ignore the possibilities these tools offer for learning. No!  As educators it would make great sense to tap into the social tools our students use on a regular basis as well as the potential offered by tools like delicious for bookmarking and so on.  What it does mean is that we need to be conscious of what material we post (if you really don’t want other people to take what you are creating then don’t post it), and also be careful with what personal information is provided to sites for not only ourselves but also the students.  Lessons can be created just simply guiding students towards being more savvy about web 2.0.

Now in a previous course during my Master’s adventure we focused on the philosophy behind using technology and in particular, educational technology (essentially any media you can use to “teach” with).  I am still a big fan of the whiteboard marker, not only can you write down words and content, but it also makes an excellent projectile to re-focus the students; soft enough to not leave a mark, pointy enough to wake them up.

However, the blog is a slightly more modern and trendy tool of late being used in education.  I have operated word-press photography blog (shameless self-promotional link in side menu) for over a year now and I really like using it.   For educational purposes, I previously used a Ning (read-when it was free) with mixed results; posting discussions and questions for students to respond to and then directing further discussion from there.  The best results occurred when they were given a topic they had selected earlier or when they picked up a relevant tangent from an earlier post.  Interestingly students also discussed lab photos and experiments when those were posted.

A blog is fairly easy to establish, though it does take some time to set one up well and the biggest difficulty, especially from an educational stand-point is generating dynamic conversation; by this I mean that growth and learning is observed from the discussions and even points of views can be adjusted or at least the participants are able to see other points of view.  Having glanced through a few blogs, too often the questions and prompts are too focused and terminate after a short discussion.

Blogs also pose a problem in that generally only the owner of the blog can post new topics and then other members are left to respond, though they may bring up new issues or future discussion topics with in another discussion.  I do like the potential of having students use them as a portfolio model and to use the discussions generated from their postings or work in a formative manner.  I have students doing a year-end presentation for Biology 12 this year, but I am pretty tempted to borrow the portfolio model of 565 and see how they do next year, as I suspect I should have provided them with more scaffolding.

So you ask, what is my philosophy behind using a blog? Well, it’s worth the time in effort if you have the time and effort to ensure it will facilitate dialogue and discovery if not try a different media.

I began my foray into Moodle today, it turns out I am clever enough login and even change my password.  On a quick tangent- with all of the various websites and new pieces of technology, which require passwords, remembering them and varying is becoming somewhat tiresome. I wonder at what point in time we will start reading about people have mental breakdowns because they can’t remember important passwords.

Back on track; I have been really looking forward to starting to play with moodle.  The instructions for basic start-up in the e-toolkit were nice and simply, which I found matched working within moodle.  Initial difficulties I found were more related to where I found certain menus as they seem to vary from program to program.  So far I have only created two little tasks, which required little effort and I suspect that most of the time for future development will be the result of building the resources rather than setting up Moodle.  This may change as I get deeper into designing though so I will keep you all posted.

Well, I have fond memories of learning to swim via my dad toss me off the end of the dock at the local lake long ago.  Sure I had been in a pool a couple of times, but I can safely say that this approach to learning to swim was not the most successful.  Clearly I didn’t drown, but once again I find myself with a similar sensation of being a bit overwhelmed.  Two courses and full-time work is suddenly seemingly like less and less of a good plan.

The positive outcome of this slightly overwhelming endeavour  is that it serves a good reminder of how many students and I suspect teachers or administrators (our VP still has difficulties find files on his computer) feel when faced with technology.  So I shouldn’t get too carried away when designing lessons, tools, or worse yet; just saying “..but it’s easy, just click that button..”

With the recent opening of the toolkit, options and task to explore have become available.  I am still mostly looking forward to playing with and learning how to design in moodle, but there was a small section on creating DVDs.

It seems a bit silly, but I had more or less forgotten about using them as a tool.  I have a few from various publishers tossed in one of my desk drawers somewhere at work.  I have even created a few myself previously and the task itself isn’t too difficult and it has the advantages of not needing internet access.  However, creating proper resources to make them a useful tool does consume time.  I often find the interactivity of the DVD less than ideal and some of the layouts have been less than stellar, but not all.

The best part about this little task, was that it has prompted to head into work and search through my small stack of DVDs to see, which of them can actually be used effectively to support a lesson, or help build a students understanding.  If I find time, probably a good point to make the time, I will analyze the good ones to see what makes them good and how to use that to create some stand alone lessons for my own classes.