After far too many hours, my digital story in Prezi is finished and posted to the Story page of this site. All in all, it was quite a lot of fun, which is likely why I committed so much time to it when I should have been working on my Moodle course.

The biggest time suck for me was trying to get an understanding of the audio options in Prezi, which I found to be completely counter-intuitive. You see, I had created what I thought was a nice little track using Garage Band, all I wanted was to add it to my presentation, and I imagined that this would be a simple insert function.

But no such luck.

Prezi gives you two options to insert audio: import in flv format if you want it to play during a specific portion of the presentation, or in swf format if you want it to play in a continuous loop throughout the entire presentation.The observant among you will note that neither flv nor swf are audio file formats; they’re movie formats. That’s when the pain started.

Am I looking in a mirror?

Being the tenacious learner that I am (okay, stubborn goat may also be a fitting description), I tried a bazillion things to get my little mp3 into the swf format that would let it loop through my story. I tried both iMovie and Movie Maker to create a “movie” consisting of one image and my track; I clipped and mangled my poor track in attempts to make a seamless loop; I exported the movie into different formats; I converted the movie (after finding and downloading the least-sketchy-looking free converter application I could find) into swf and inserted it into my story, but the looping effect was always poor. There was always a crackly gap between loops.

Then, during our Wimba session, John made a comment that reminded me how annoying it is when something plays automatically, and I finally came to the realization that a musical background was NOT a good idea. I wanted students to zoom around, look at the images, and watch the embedded YouTube clips; I was so stuck on figuring out the HOW? that I forgot about the HOW COME?.

For me, this activity was an effective way to develop my skills both in Prezi and in media creation and (repeated) manipulation. But perhaps more importantly, it was a vivid reminder of how easy it is to lose sight of the purpose behind your teaching choices.

Kathy

I discovered something on the weekend. It could be something wonderful, or it could be something terrible; I haven’t quite decided yet:

if I connect to my iPhone’s hotspot using Bluetooth instead of wi-fi, my off-grid internet connectivity is quite reliable.

p.s. I really do need birdwatching and canoeing!

On the plus side, this means that I can use my off-grid time to complete all kinds of course work, essentially giving me two more days per week to review the fine details of course assignments!

On the negative side, this means that more of my off-grid time will likely be used to work on obsess over fine details of course assignments.

[sigh]

Oh well – who needs birdwatching and canoeing anyway?

Kathy

So in keeping with my crazy off-grid life, I’ve posted my LMS site proposal three days early. It’s a total departure from what I thought I was going to propose; I was planning to propose an LMS site to support faculty members in the development of their teaching skills, but when I realized the assignment requirements included specific course components, I decided that I didn’t have the curriculum to build from. I’ve never taught teaching skills, so I decided that learning to use Moodle would provide enough of a challenge, and went with something I know fairly well: English as a second language. The end result is a proposed course that I’m excited to start building. Have a look and let me know what you think.

I think I need a long weekend, but not before I prepare my first post via the WordPress app on my iPad. This will help me figure out which tasks I can actually do when I’m “offline” – can I do a blog post using the app? We’ll see what happens when I click post, and how the formatting turns out. I’ll also try to make a comment to see if it works. Even if this post works, I’ll probably still be too nervous to try to complete & submit a graded assignment from “the back 40,” but maybe I’ll be one step closer.

Fingers crossed,
Kathy

So, after a lot of hand-wringing, reflecting, worrying, and then some prompting from John, I’ve posted my Flight Path. Please take a look and leave a comment for me!
Kathy

The observant among you may notice that my flight path page is still blank. I’m posting this description of the assignment at hand as a step in planning my route.

Taken from ETEC 565A

It is difficult to get where you want to go if you don’t plan your route… though side trips and tangents can often be some of the richest parts of the journey!

Write a proposed flight path during ETEC 565A. Tell us a bit about yourself, your experience, and your goals for this course (or, perhaps, the MET). Explain what you want to learn about Learning Management Systems (LMS), assessment, social software, and multimedia. Give your best estimate (guestimate?) about what resources you would need to master these technologies as a novice professional. Be sure to cite relevant literature to support your decision. Be as specific as you can, even if you’re “guestimating” at this early stage: you won’t be penalized for your priorities evolving as the course proceeds. But you might not get the full benefit of ETEC565A if you start out with too general an idea of your aspirations.

Your entry should be no more than 1,000 words. Once completed you will “submit” your assignment by publishing it on the Flight Path page of your e-portfolio. Revisit the WordPress setup instructions as required.

The successful completion of ETEC 565A requires the demonstration of educational development prowess, educational technology competence, and critical thinking skills informed by the materials studied in the course. Performance in the course will be based on the completion of a modular e-portfolio with multiple components. Each component constitutes an important aspect of learning technology selection, design and application. This e-portfolio (or components of it) could form part of a professional teaching e-portfolio. This modular approach will also make it easier to provide both formative and summative feedback on submitted work. Not all components of the e-portfolio are graded, but they are all mandatory. Each assignment will receive summative qualitative feedback, with those that have a mark associated with them receiving additional quantitative assessment. At the end of the course, the instructor will assess the final assignment (reflection) and the entire e-portfolio.

E-portfolio components

There are six (6) components of the e-portfolio:

Flight Path

A proposed personal development plan for ETEC 565A that includes the following elements:

• a brief personal history
• discussion of experience and goals for this course (or, perhaps, the MET program)
• discussion of learning goals in terms of Learning Management Systems (LMS), assessment, social software, and multimedia
• an estimation of the specific resources required to master these technologies as a novice professional
• reference to relevant literature to support all claims

Although priorities may evolve as the course proceeds, specific details are to be included, as the full benefit of ETEC 565A may not be realized with “too general” ideas of aspirations. The Flight Path entry should be no more than 1,000 words and must be published on the Flight Path page.

Proposal

The Proposal must provide answers to the sort of questions a reviewer would expect to find answered; integrate learning from relevant ETEC 565A activities; integrate relevant literature (required: no literature = failed assignment); delineate testing undertaken within the LMS platform to ensure availability of desired functionality; and be posted in the Proposal page of the e-portfolio.

Course Site

A significant component of this assignment relates to the calibre of web design, such as  level of sophistication, overall look and feel, user-friendliness. The course site must include the following components:

• a splash page with a customized GUI with at least four (4) navigational components
• two (or more) complete learning modules (module shells or placeholder pages not acceptable), largely based on HTML pages
• one (or more) module programmed for selective release
• two general discussion forum topics
• one additional group discussion forum for (at least) 2 groups (must set up groups; they need not be populated)

A reflection on the experience of completing this assignment must be posted in the Course Site page of the e-portfolio. Learning modules populated with a preponderance of attached files that download (i.e. pdfs, Word documents, Powerpoint presentations) rather than (html pages that load within the LMS are not acceptable.

Assessment

This component requires that a complete exam or quiz for the online course site be produced. The exam or quiz must include a variety of question types and assessment strategies and be built within Moodle’s quiz tool (add-ons or plug-ins like Hot Potatoes cannot be used to complete this assignment). The quiz must have 10 or more questions including

• 3 (or more) multiple choice questions
• 3 (or more) matching questions
• 2 (or more) short answer questions
• 2 (or more) short essay questions
• One question with an embedded image or graphic
• Partially or wholly auto-assessed/graded
• Time limited
• Pre-programmed post-exam feedback for students

A reflection on the experience of completing this assignment must be posted in the Assessment page of the e-portfolio

Story

This component must meet the following requirements:

• be educational in nature
• be a story–not a digital lesson or lecture
• be viewable either as an embedded file or a link on the Story page of the e-portfolio

In addition to the embed/link of the story itself, the following must also be described on the Story page:

• why this is the right tool to use to tell this story, particularly from a pedagogical perspective
• what process was followed in selecting this storytelling tool
• how this story works, based on pedagogical arguments, in an existing course that you teach (or would like to teach)

Synthesis

The Synthesis component must include the following:

• 1-2 paragraph précis of Flight Path
• substantive, comprehensive reflection about the eLearning toolkit experience overall
• substantive, comprehensive reflection about the overall ETEC 565A experience
• substantive, comprehensive reflection about next steps in terms of personal practice in educational technology, which could include what technologies will be explored moving forward, or how educational technology will fit into lifelong learning goals

This component is to be posted on the Synthesis page of the e-portfolio.

The e-portfolio accounts for 90% of the ETEC 565A  course grade.