That was the task for this past week.  With each meeting this past week our group encountered many challenges and great discussions (also some big headaches).  Let me bring you up to speed.  We were tasked with producing and rubric to select and appropriate rubric for a fictitious scenario that involved a group of University students that needed an LMS to manage their videos captured for annotation purpose.

We set on the task using Bates and Poole’s SECTIONS (2003) as a framework.  The initial brainstorming procedure was a lot of fun.  We were drawing on our experience using UBC’s Vista, WEBCT, blogs.ubc.ca and even Connect.  This started as an enjoyable experience.  All we had to do was think “what did we really enjoy about our current LMS?” and “what did we dislike about it?”  It became a wish list!

I even got thinking about the temporary shutdown that UBC Vista experienced at the beginning of this 2012 term!  It was our DREAM LMS!  Surely by putting this all together we could make it about learning and not about the technology once again!

Of course as each subsequent meeting progressed the decisions as to which points were truly of value and how to rank them in order of importance became more and more difficult.  For example:  1) Was online security more important?  or 2) Complex video player for playback?  Or was it a case of both of them being equally important?  Many great discussions occurred but the different timezones also caused headaches to occur as the week progressed (fatigue, but also beginning to doubt ourselves).  Right about to the release date, we still spoke about how to score it properly.  What should the rubric look like?  (ie. Checklist?, Meeting Expectations/Exceeding?)

I should conclude that in the end we came to some consensus on the project but we were glad it was done.  I’m pretty sure inside if the professor knew about our struggles, they’d be jumping with glee — the task had engaged us completely in arguments, discussions and thoroughly challenged us!

This was an important exercise in the process of developing an LMS.  How are we suppose to design an effective one without knowing how to evaluate one?  Perhaps this is stating the obvious, but the obvious just became more clear.

Oh,  by the way here is our current draft (version # 789, still in beta form I think… )

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H89DayF86-DoiqOd7_hPeq-Uu-0aZQHkB53_PXqwgwY/edit

References:

Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003).A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education (pp. 75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4.

Being an EVA (Educational Venture Analyst) might not be as easy as it seems.  Evaluating this week’s assortment of “marketing pitches” I was able to suss out my favourite pretty quick.  I ended up going for this one:

I was pretty confident with my decision.  I did note in my decision that I felt he would be better off with a more experience advisor by his side.  Despite his lofty $100,00 request — It was his charisma and personality that made me a believer.  More over than anything else, I knew what he was selling.

This came in sharp contrast to many of the other products, who gave polished presentations but gave you the feeling that behind all of the “big words” and key phrases they used there was no substances.  In fact in some cases, I wasn’t able to determine exactly what the product was.  Although I didn’t watch this entire seminar by David Shore, I found out that delivering a succinct message about what product one is delivering is key.

As the weeks progressed with the discussion one after another, my colleagues posted that they would not invest in this young entrepreneur.  I was beginning to doubt my decision.  My peers represent individuals that are knowledgeable in the educational field but how could I be the only one to support this pitch? In the middle of the week I began to think that I had voted for this CEO with my heart and not my head.

I noted that many of my colleagues didn’t support this venture due to the high figure that he was requesting.  I wonder if their minds would changed if he had purposed this idea on Kickstarter where money is diffused amongst a crowd.  Albeit the payback is a lot less and no one gets a percentage in the company, people like this young investor would probably get a lot of people, pitching in a few dollars.

As the week is coming to a close, I stand by my choice (without my money–easy to decide when it’s not your money ;).  I still feel that an elevator pitch is based on a solid idea and the charm and charisma of a CEO.  Anshul Samar has both.  More so than the other pitches, this wasn’t a polished product but an idea from a youngster.  I see these cards in the hands of kids in elementary school all the time.  Even if they were to play with them for only a month, some educational benefit would come out of it.  Would I likely see a return in my investment soon?  I’m not sure, but I really like this idea as an educator (I would buy one!).  At the end of the day, this investment might not make me rich — but I love the idea of making chemistry interesting for students.

So did I make the decision as a teacher more so than an EVA investor? Probably, but this idea gets me excited.  I’m rooting for this CEO.

Did I forget to mention that he presented at a TED Talk a few years later and early this year he even released an iPhone app to promote and allow individuals to design an personality for the chemistry elements?  Go Anshul!

This week’s discussion questions got me thinking about SUCCESS SECTIONS (Bates & Poole 2003) again.  In particular the idea of “Cost”.

In our forums we were responsible for discussing a fictitious character “Benoit” who had to decide which platform he was going to deploy an upcoming post-secondary course on.  A forum that he was familiar with but lacked a responsive tech support team or a new open source model that wasn’t supported by the university but had many of his peers using it.

Naturally this question doesn’t have a win win and is acting as more of a conversation piece but, it got me thinking about the hesitations of many of my peers (K-12 Teachers) who are reluctant to make switches to technology.  The old adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.  The question in response might be “what if you are missing something from not using technology?”

The problems that can arise from technology are numerous, sometimes that means a tech support that is bogged down in so many requests that they aren’t able to tend to them.  In addition, the cost of one’s time and energy invested into making a system work can be taxing.  It may be like opening a can of worms.

The last discussion question was asking how much time we thought it would take Benoit to build his course from scratch.  I have built a wiki for my classroom (in no way is this a course) but it was interesting to think how much time I had invested in the project.  The recess and lunch hours trying to make it work. Not including the weekends and evenings fixing, monitoring and posting new material.  I had never sat to think about it because to me it was all worth the effort for the students (they still use it to micro-blog on it 2 years later!).   It’s difficult to think what else I could’ve done with that time, but I guess that is why we are teachers.

Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003).A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education (pp. 75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4.

I’ve been recently engaged and piqued by some great conversation pieces on Vista with another MET colleague, Kathy, about how we are attempting to access course material through our course LMS, Vista.

As a result it got me thinking about SECTIONS from Bates and Poole (2003).  In my own personal teaching context, I made a big deal about “Ease of Use” and “Cost” as Elementary schools are very cautious about spending public dollars on areas they are unfamiliar with (fair enough).  When I become a student after hours, I feel like “Ease of Use” combine it with the idea of accessibility becomes a huge issue in my current situation.

I recall quite vividly early this week on Monday in the evening Vista simply crashing.  I naturally hit up Twitter to see if it is just me or if there are others experiencing issues ( I find this interesting that I go to Twitter to check if my situation is unique, not sure what to think about that — but I find it definitely resourceful).  Here is what I found:

celinaemcee VISTA IS STILL NOT WORKING. Rage. #UBC 2012-09-10 9:20 PM

christina_prc Why is Vista always down when I actually wanna do my readings… #ubcproblems #ubc #raaaage 2012-09-10 6:15 PM

s_arahwong Omg ubc vista not working, i need to print my notes!!! 2012-09-10 9:28 PM

I went through a few emotions pretty quickly.  I was elated that it wasn’t my computer (since I just spent a small fortune on it), next I was revelling in reading all of these Tweets that affirmed my own anger (still happy), then it turned into a little anger (I had put this time aside to due my coursework and I couldn’t), then to rage as I thought about how SECTIONS (2003) wasn’t successful at all, and finally a little more elated that I had just made a connection with a reading from my coursework (thanks 565a).

I of course went into a small tirade about how ridiculous this whole scene was.  Naturally, UBC was working on the situation and just as I prepared to tuck myself into bed — Vista was ready for me to learn again. 🙂

References:

Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003).A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education (pp. 75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4.

Flight Path is posted up and live!  I had to double check whether to post it as a page or a “post”.  Small nuances mean big things.  I’m still learning about them all. Let me know what you think of them.  Here is the link.

— Jonathan

Hello!

Welcome to my ETEC 565A e-portfolio.  This is my first attempt at a course portfolio so bear with me while I muddle my way through this one.

— Jonathan