E-Portfolio

I didn’t realize the amount of time and effort it takes to create an online course. For my particular audience, I needed to relay content that was limited in the amount of text.  I spent an incredible amount of time looking for and creating video that relayed the intended content.  It I had more time, I would have added more practice exercises such as a matching page or visuals to print at home or put into the students’ portfolios.

I feel that the LMS was limiting in the fact that the students could not use rubrics to self-assess.  I love that one can create assignments, choice activities, quizzes, and rubrics, however, being able to self-assess with the rubric, would have been ideal for this particular course.

Attribution-ShareAlike

According to the above mentioned licence, it lets others copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.  The content of your work may be remixed, tweaked, and built upon even as long as they credit you, and their new creations are licensed under the same terms.  As well, the contributions must be covered under the same licence as the original material.

For the course that I am writing, I would use the above licensing.  As I am as much of a student as I am a teacher in designing an online course, I want to learn from others.  If someone has ideas in tweaking, or remixing my creations, I would want to see how they have made it their own, while recognizing myself as the original writer.  Teachers don’t like reinventing the wheel, but at the same time, feel that it is important to recognize others for their contributions.  Most of my resources for creating my course were collected online from Open Source licenses, and the course, I am hoping, would be free to students, without benefiting financially.  This course would be well suited for non-profit public institutions.

This week, our assignment was to create a digital presentation that is thematically related to the online courses that we are creating.  Finding a digital, specifically, a video tool to explain the content was exactly what I was looking for.  As the potential students enrolling into my course may have various reading abilities, the content needs to be explicable to a wide range of students with varying abilities.

I ended up using two tools and incorporated them together, and I am really happy with the results.  The first tool I used was Edpuzzle which is a video editing tool that embeds questions and comments into the video.  One can also clip the video to show only specific content.  The second tool that I used was Threadlink.  This tool allows the users to embeds video, pictures or content into a background video or picture.

I used the background picture of a bathroom (Threadlink) to embed four videos (Edpuzzle) which demonstrate various skills needed to learn personal hygiene.

Here is the final product:

Well this process certainly didn’t run as soothly as I anticipated.  There were quite a few challenges that came about from completing this assignment.

The first, was creating a learning document that that presented logical and important information, while using basic language for those with intellectual challenges, who could easily understand the information.  Learning to live independently is an important skill for anyone to learn, at the same time, I didn’t want the students to feel that I was condescending or treating them like young children.  To aid with this, I provided more complex language in the ‘Summary’ of the course, and I have used video to help convey information.

Second, I wanted to create a space that was visually attractive and inviting to teenagers.  I don’t think I would choose to use Moodle next time for this reason.  I was very limited with the type and size of font, as well as the placement of photos. /pictures.  To simplify the navigation, I created a table (a YouTube video helped me with this) into which I cut and pasted symbols where I and embedded links to the different units.

A third issue was in creating a screencast. Wow. I can’t tell you how many times I stopped and restarted the video. I was limited with the software to use to create the screencast as my laptop is software protected, and I need permission from my district to download any software. Luckily, I was able to use Screencast but again, the free version was very limiting in the editing capabilities. Yikes, will need to delete this video from Youtube, asap.

Overall, I am happy with the start of this course, and I think that it would be beneficial to many students, especially those from smaller communities who need to connect with other students like themselves.

Reflection of the platform evaluation:

I really enjoyed completing the group platform evaluation.  Each member of the group decided to take responsibility for various parts, and we synchronously added our thoughts in various areas while editing was being completed.  Our team worked very cohesively during our first group chat, and a number of us mentioned our work together as one of the best work sessions in any of the courses that we have taken.   Through Google Docs, we were able to collaboratively share, add ideas, and edit each other’s work as a cohesive team.   I feel very proud of the work we produced, and I wouldn’t hesitate in working with the same group members in another project.  Way to go, Team Moodle!   

Blooms Taxonomy Chart was recommended by a peer when I posted the learning objectives of my course prototype.  The verbs helped me create learning objectives that were more measurable.  The visual was created by Nick Grantham at Fractus Learning and can be found here.

Welcome to my personal journey in ETEC 565a.  I am looking forward to navigating through  the many challenges and learning experiences that this course will be sailing through.

Please post questions and comments on the tasks that are presented here.