Category: E-learning Toolkit

The issue of accessibility is very clear in my mind because of my role working with special needs students in school. I have had the opportunity to work with members of SET BC and take advantage of programs and tools that they provide for greater accessibility. In the case of my own Moodle site, there are a couple of things that I notice with respect to accessibility. The way Moodle is designed, a lot of clicking and scrolling is involved. My site requires much clicking between resources, activities and external sites, which for some, may be challenging. Also, the size of the text in Moodle is by default very small (for the activity and resource titles). I did provide alternate text for my images as prompted. When checking my site through the Markup Validation Service, four errors were returned, but I didn’t understand what they referred to.

When I hear the word “wiki”, I automatically think of referencing a Wikipedia article, although since starting the MET I have started to think of other options under the “wiki” umbrella. I have some experience using wikis either for reading or writing purposes – I did a collaborative design project in ETEC 510 last term entirely on Mediawiki, I used pbwiki to collaborate on a small project in ETEC 512 and I frequently use Wikipedia as a reference tool for anything from historical facts to movie trivia to sports statistics.

In reflecting on my past experience with wikis and connecting them to the teaching and learning process, I have found that they can be tremendous collaborative tools. When using pbwiki, I was working with a group that was less experienced with technology and the pbwiki interface allowed for “wysiwyg” content rather than html generated content. The final product was a good representation of working collaboratively in an environment that served as both the sandbox and the final product. My experience with Mediawiki was wonderful and a great lesson in the power of wikis. My design project group created an entire course in Mediawiki and the features of the interface allowed for us to feel like we were all in the same room throughout the process. The “recent changes” link allowed us to view the recent changes of other group members, which was very useful given the scope of our site. We were able to message each other and leave notes on the “discussion” pages as we went through. The process was very fluid – there was no need to compose formal emails to each other or list the changes we were making because Mediawiki is intuitive enough to allow for these things to happen through the natural process of using the interface. The use of html was a big tricky for me to get used to with some of the more complicated functions, but it seems that many wikis (like pbwiki) are available in “wysiwyg” mode so one won’t be scared off by html.

For the purpose of this toolkit activity, I checked out the educational wikis, which were much of what I expected. My interest was peaked by a suggestion in the toolkit assignment to look in the discussion page on Wikipedia. I thought of a nice controversial topic, the Holocaust, and decided to see if the discussion page was wrought with racist or politically motivated material or if it was truly indicative of a collaborative, scholarly discussion. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this discussion page consisted of dialogue between strangers about how to best represent information on the Holocaust and an academic discussion about references, points of contention and points of inclusion. I also looked up Adolf Hitler and found that the discussion tab had many posts about correct grammar and even members that would chime in at the mention of any words that could be seen as not neutral (ie. A member made an argument that using the word “atrocity” to describe Hitler’s action was not neutral enough). The Wikipedia guidelines are clearly posted and suggestions for what would make the article a “good article” are listed. I know that many people see Wikipedia as a “bad” resource but there are clearly a lot of check and balances in the large community that is genuinely interested in presenting factual information in an accessible manner. While not all articles are “example worthy”, I am confident that the growing Wikipedia community will soon fill in the gaps and that Wikipedia will become a credible source of information in the eyes of academics and educators.

This assignment was actually pretty fun because I usually view blogs as a means to procrastinate but in this case I was doing the assignment! Blogs seem to be growing exponentially and it seems that everyone “has a blog”…. Something they check consistently as part of a routine. For me, checking blogs has become something I do even before checking email. The option of RSS feeds make blogs even more accessible. On my Firefox toolbar, I have my favorites links, Delicious links and list of RSS feeds making these items “mindless” to access. I’ll admit it, my first exposure to blogs was not through anything news related or education related, it was through gossip blogs like perezhilton.com, laineygossip.com etc. I then branched out into blogs of friends from university or even people that were only acquaintances. I used to feel a bit creepy getting the inside scoop on the lives of others but hey, if you blog, it’s out there! I think that blogs are genuinely valuable tools that are here to stay. They are easy ways to connect people with common interests through dialogue that is often so honest, you feel as if you are having a conversation. I had a grade 5 student last year who has brain cancer and her mom blogs through caringbridge.com. I am still able to follow her though every round of chemo and every success and setback as if I never left her life. Furthermore, this blog started by a mom who just needed an outlet for her emotions, has received anonymous donations for her daughter and a paid job for mom writing for a publication for oncology parents.

I have only briefly experimented myself with blogging. Having a blog served a purpose when I was traveling in Europe and wanted to communicate with a number of people but didn’t want to send individual emails or blanket emails that felt rigid because they were trying to cover the interests of everyone from Granny to my 20 year old brother to my coworkers. I used travelpod.com and loved it for the ease of use and convenience of a “one shot deal”. I also liked that I wasn’t forcing my witty commentary on peoples’ email inboxes. For images, I actually uploaded to photobucket.com because it was the quickest and had a link on my blog to this site.

The sites suggested with “Top 100 Education Blogs” had some great blogs that I had never seen. I especially like how these blogs can provide an outlet for anything education related, be it rants about hot topics, resources, suggestions or just a running commentary. From an educational standpoint, I can see blogs used many ways for teaching and learning with elementary students. Much has been written about blogs as a replacement for journals and with the emergence of ePortfolios as significant assessment and employment tools, blogs will only become more prevalent and more useful.

Analysis and Reflection on Social Software

Facebook

Facebook is careful not to say that they own any of a user’s personal information or materials but they do state that a user grants Facebook non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable and royalty free licence to use IP content (video and images). They state that the user owns their content and information but that they have to control how Facebook shares it through privacy and application settings.

I would NOT use this with my students. I don’t see that Facebook can provide anything that I can’t find elsewhere in a more educational setting. I know that some teachers use Facebook in order to create a group and post homework assignments but I would rather put my students on an email group or give them read only access to a Google doc. I also think that there is a thin line with Facebook in regards to inappropriate access to communication between teachers and students. Students use Facebook to communicate how they wish with friends and to post personal photos. Teachers have the right do to this too without fear of their students viewing their personal information and images. That being said, I do have former students that have added me as a “Facebook friend”. I created a “friend list” for them whereby they can only see my basic information and they can’t see what my friend’s write on my wall or see any photos of me (the last thing I want my students and their parents seeing is a photo of me in a bikini drinking beer on a beach ☺).

I think that overall, Facebook does a fairly good job with their privacy options. They have many privacy settings that allow you to be as open as you want to viewers or virtually invisible. The only place where I take issue is the fact that they can use your images. I wouldn’t mind if they used a photo I posted of the Eiffel Tower but I wouldn’t be too pleased if the aforementioned picture of myself ended up somewhere other than where I posted it. That being said, I no longer upload images. I think that as long as users are aware of the terms of service, they can make informed decisions.

Delicious

Owned by Yahoo, Inc., Delicious states that user’s have the ability to mark their content as private or public but says that they are not responsible for how third parties access or use public content. Delicious allows a user to retrieve and/or remove posted content but does not guarantee this with regards to backup copies of said materials.

I would definitely use Delicious with my students. It is certainly an appropriate site and is great for teaching students how to organize research, categorize information and share links. Since no personal information is openly posted it is one of the safer social software to use with students.

I think that privacy issues are represented fairly. I don’t really see any areas that are lacking.

Flickr

Owned by Yahoo, Inc., Flickr is similar to Facebook in that by submitting content such as photos, audio or video, Flickr has the right to use, distribute, reproduce or modify the content via world wide, royalty free and non-exclusive license. They do acknowledge that Flickr does not claim ownership of this content.

Flickr is something that I would consider using with my students depending on what other resources I had access to. I wouldn’t see Flickr as a “must have” but I think that it is an appropriate site for students as long as the photos being posted were not of people.

I don’t like the fact that Flickr can use your content without permission. There is also a stipulation in the terms of service that allows Yahoo to disclose a user’s content information and content in order to comply with legal process, enforce the TOS, respond to claims that any content violates the rights of third-parties, respond to your requests for customer service or protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Yahoo!, its users and the public. These are such broad reasons that I think the disclosure of anyone’s information and content could be remotely justified which I see as a conflict with user’s privacy interests.

World of Warcraft

Owned by Blizzard, World of Warcraft expressly states that a user does not own his/her account and that that account is forever the property of Blizzard. Since user aren’t uploading content, there are no policies regarding it but there are very strict regulations about how to proceed in chat and what appropriate names for characters are.

I don’t think this is appropriate for my students (intermediate elementary aged) although I know that many teenagers play this game at home.

The privacy interests of members seem to be represented logically.

Overall Impressions

This assignment definitely had me on my toes with regards to processing the legalities of site usage. I wasn’t that surprised by the amount of control that these sites can wield over personal information and content but I was surprised that each site seemed to have a very generalized set of conditions whereby they could disclose a user’s information. I think there are a lot of great social sites out there but I have been operating with the policy that if I don’t want something to be public, I won’t post it on one of these sites. I think many people (read: kids) operate too freely with these sites, especially Facebook and MySpace without really understanding the terms of service. This assignment further validated the fact that I show my students how to change their privacy settings in Facebook and have a discussion with them about public access. As a teacher, I operate with the knowledge that my students use these sites and that all I can do is teach them how to use them safely and responsibly. I may be biased, but I think that educators should follow suit with this.

The toolkit activity didn’t necessarily expose me to anything new but it did, however, force me to think about what synchronous communication tool(s) I would use if I were running a course via LMS. I briefly explored Skype and Wimba and reflected on Elluminate – a synchronous communication tool available to BC teachers that I used very successfully to complete a group project in ETEC 510. I loved Elluminate because of all of its affordances – the way you could have audio, visual or both, the “whiteboard”, the web tour option which allowed one person to navigate the web while the group watched and many other features. The downside of Elluminate is that for a free account, the maximum number of participants is 3 people. The best part about Elluminate, from an assessment and accountability point of view, was that you could record your chat session and save it as an audio file. This worked well in the group setting as we had one session that a group member couldn’t make so we had our session and then sent the audio so that the missing member could listen and be quickly “on the same page”.

Wimba seems to be a good option for synchronous communication although I don’t think that it is free. I searched around on the web and I couldn’t tell how much it cost but assuming it costs money, I can’t see myself using it with students unless I was working in an environment that paid for WebCT/Vista with Wimba integration… not too likely in the K-12 world (yet). I logged into the Wimba site the was set up and everything looked relatively easy to navigate. I haven’t actually ever used Skype before so it was nice to do a little research on it. Many of my friends have been using it as a communication tool and I could really see myself using it with students in the K-12 setting. The fact that it is free is a huge factor and I also like that it is a “cool” site in the eyes of kids. I like the idea of taking a “cool” site and having students use it in an educational way (ie. Skype, Facebook etc.). I guess the biggest consideration would need to be access to the correct technology for students if I was going to include this as a “mandatory” activity. I know that my beloved MacBook Pro has everything built in but many computers don’t include microphones, video etc. I don’t see video as educationally necessary for my target students (middle school aged) so a Skype voice call seems the most appropriate, accessible and least distracting.

This is an area that I feel moderately comfortable with having some experience with many of the skills mentioned in the toolkit. I have used both Dreamweaver and nVu in order to create an ePortfolio. This was a requirement at UBC during my B’Ed in 2006-2007 and I was hired as a “tech coach” to show my peers how to create a basic layout (or storyboard) for the ePortfolio and then translate that into either Dreamweaver or nVu. In my experience, they are both straightforward programs to use as long as you remember to “mirror” your basic page for formatting purposes. I think the challenge for me was uploading to the web using an FTP.

Regarding HTML, I was always a bit scared viewing the html source for a page and seeing an explosion of nonsensical characters. I just learning some html code this year because of the MET and because my ETEC 510 group was using Mediawiki. There are a lot of great html “cheat sheets” on the web which were helpful and I still use basic html for bolding, italicizing and underlining in MET discussion boards. I would not choose to write a site using html but I feel that given all that is available, that wouldn’t be necessary.

For this activity, I went through “Web Pages that Suck” and saw some sites that almost made me cross-eyed! I did find the checklist a bit daunting because it was so extensive and many of the items didn’t apply to my particular experience or needs. I have a current website and hosting for the purpose of having my own Mediawiki and because I thought I would need this for my ePortfolio (I am now going to use WordPress as my main shell and link to my own site). My site is www.pezonk.com. I feel that even though it is a basic site, it doesn’t “suck” largely due to the fact that I created it in iWeb which utilizes many of the considerations under “Design Questions” on the toolkit page. I would use iWeb in the future if I was required to make a website.

Much of this activity was simply review for me but I did like the guidelines laid out in “Design Questions” especially given the terrible, blinding “sites that suck” that I went through. I did learn something new and that was about cascading style sheets. I haven’t heard that term before and the resource provided was useful in explaining what they are.

After getting my Moodle site set up I thought I would try the toolkit activity. Previously, I have read materials about Moodle and the functions that it is capable of performing but I have never used a Moodle site as a teacher or as a student.

Overall, my experience was more positive than negative. I was able to complete the activity in about 10 minutes and I felt that I learned some new things. However, I relied heavily on the instructions from the activity. I consider myself to be very self-directed when it comes to new technology. I can usually open a brand new program and figure it out with maybe only minor help from a “help” menu or instructions. This was the case for me in learning Mediawiki, Fetch (FTP), iWeb, iMovie, CMaps and more. My fear with Moodle is that without direct instruction I won’t know how to proceed with some of the functions. In creating a discussion forum, it was obvious to me that I would select “add an activity-forum”. The questions for me came when I got to the creation screen and there were all of these drop down menus with default settings. I wasn’t sure if I should keep the default setting or if I should change it. I see that I will potentially have difficulties in this area…. for example, I don’t know what “aggregate type” refers to nor did I make sense of any of the options in the drop down menu. I assume that with time, I will figure these out. After all, Moodle has probably just assigned names to things that I might normally know but not by a particular name. I do anticipate having to spend a great deal of time learning about all of these options before becoming comfortable with Moodle.

On the upside, the links to further resources were helpful and there is a lot of self-directed teaching about the functions of Moodle on the web, similar to learning Mediawiki.