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\"Birds-Flying-above-the-Sea-at-Sunrise__25282\"<\/a>

(cc) Public Domain Photos on Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

Flight Path Pr\u00e9cis<\/h1>\n

As I stated in my\u00a0Flight Path<\/a> at the begin of the course, I had several reasons why I wanted to enter UBC\u2019s Master in Educational Technology program and register for ETEC 565. \u00a0In regards to the course, I had either an interest, experience or familiarity with many of the technologies being examined and, in the case of Moodle, was interested in expanding my knowledge of that particular tool.<\/p>\n

I felt at the time, and still do, that I have been in the field long enough to have experiences to draw upon and give context to the theories and concepts I would be learning. \u00a0By adding a formal structure to my own developing educational technology philosophy, I would be better able to organize my future experiences and make me more effective in my educator\/mentor position that \u00a0I enjoy so much.<\/p>\n

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eLearning Toolkit Experience<\/h1>\n

The following sections details some of my direct and indirect eLearning toolkit experience and reflections while in the course including learning management systems, web design, wikis, weblogs, synchronous communication tools, social software, accessibility, mLearning, multimedia and authoring tools.<\/p>\n

Learning Management System – Moodle<\/h3>\n

Overall, I have found the 6 week experience of completing a constructivist Moodle (Bremer & Bryant, 2005) online course to be rewarding. \u00a0However, if you had the ability to have read any of my reflection notes during this process you would have probably thought the opposite to be true. \u00a0With the assignment done and, on reflection of the holistic process, much knowledge and experience has been gained.<\/p>\n

I was fortunate that, even though I had never worked with Moodle before, \u00a0I brought prior knowledge and transferable skills to assist me in the completion of the components. \u00a0This included some practical experience participating within the MET\u2019s use of the UBC BlackBoard Learning Management System (LMS) and in my ETEC 510 group work using the Canvas<\/a> LMS.<\/p>\n

On reflection, I am glad to have had the opportunity to complete this assignment. \u00a0Not only was I able to utilize my interest in educational website design to fulfill the assignment\u2019s components but it has given me practical experience which will better inform me when completing future assignments in the same vein as the LMS proposal<\/a> or Benoits dilemma<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I definitely see this activity as just another experience which confirms my belief that without support the integration of technology within the education system is set up to fail (Gagnon, 2012). \u00a0It is hard to understand, how we as teachers, accept the lack of support that we see as our professional duty to provide to our students. \u00a0If I found aspects of this learning process frustrating with my interest and ability level, I couldn\u2019t imagine how the average unmotivated teacher would feel. \u00a0In my experience as a mentor, teacher frustration often leads to actual or perceived failure with the end result of no adoption of the new tool, behaviour, etc.<\/p>\n

Web Design, Weblogs & Wikis<\/h3>\n

In regards to web design tasks required to complete my Moodle course, I found I was rusty in using Dreamweaver as it had been several years since I had to use an offline editor to do web design. \u00a0Maybe this speaks to the movement to cloud based storage and apps with my use of SharePoint and WordPress. \u00a0However, it did allow me to design my splash page for the course, its navigation, and the HTML pages displaying the content.<\/p>\n

Prior to the course<\/a>, I was already very familiar using and creating weblogs, especially using WordPress, and was comfortable adding artifacts to my\u00a0course e-portfolio<\/a> and my own MET e-portfolio<\/a> as well.\u00a0Before being in the program, I had used wikis but not via the MediaWiki platform. \u00a0However, in ETEC 510, an assignment<\/a> required the completion of a comprehensive wiki entry which gave me useful skills, mainly the familiarization with the mark-up language used for formatting, \u00a0in this course. \u00a0The two main wiki based assignments were the whole class asynchronous task of developing strategies to engaging students using social media and the two wikis I created for use in my Moodle course. \u00a0One of the Moodle wikis was utilized as an asynchronous tool meant to support student interaction. By adding a wiki activity, I created a space for those in the community to collaborate and share helpful course related resources in the form of links such as, but not limited to: web sites, software, hardware, and readings. \u00a0A wiki supported my instructional goals by providing students with a supplementary resource and provided myself and future students with a growing resource. \u00a0In addition, it provides students with exposure to a tool that they can use with their own students (e.g. group work) or possibly for their own use in creating a site if the tool I have chosen for them to use is not to their liking. It will allow them to compare the affordances and conventions offered by blog and wiki platforms.<\/p>\n

Synchronous Communication Tools<\/h3>\n

Utilizing synchronous communication tools was not often required or easy mainly due to the nature of the course and the geographic locations of students within the course. \u00a0Much of the communication was completed using asynchronous communication using either discussion forum posts or email. \u00a0This is understandable as students were in a so many differing time zones that scheduling was difficult especially when taking into account family and work obligations.<\/p>\n

However, I did participate in one BlackBoard Connect session which was our introduction to Moodle. Even though the session itself had some technical difficulties unrelated to Connect itself it was rewarding. It was nice to put a face and voice to peers, who until then, were known only as a small thumbnail avatar and accompanying text. \u00a0In addition, I had the opportunity to use Skype to communicate with my Instructor and discuss some ideas I had for an assignment. \u00a0I value synchronous audio and video communication for occasions when trying to explain in words is time consuming and possibly ineffective.<\/p>\n

Social Software<\/h3>\n

I used primarily three social software tools including Flickr, Twitter and YouTube. \u00a0Flickr was utilized for both its Creative Commons search feature and subsequently found images for use in my e-portfolio. \u00a0For the most part, I felt using Creative Commons was relieving me of any copyright obligations but I found out that I could be crediting\/citing the photos and images in a better manner. \u00a0In addition to adding captions citing both author and source to each image in both the course and my MET e-portfolio, I added an\u00a0image credits page<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

I started using Twitter two years ago and find it to be one of my most valuable professional development resources. \u00a0Having information sent to me from those I follow versus visiting all their sites for updates is a key feature. \u00a0I also like that, due to the 140 character limit and use of hashtags, I can quickly discern the content at a glance and either decided to access the full article or more on. \u00a0I did not use Twitter within an assignment but did use it as a research tool, curated a list of users in the course<\/a> which I then shared, and tweeted about learnings like the embed tweet below.<\/p>\n

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I created "Tools For Online Interaction" with @HaikuDeck<\/a>: http:\/\/t.co\/stYkCHruox<\/a> #setyourstoryfree<\/a> #edtech<\/a><\/p>\n

— Mark A. Bates (He\/Him\/His) (@markabates) June 14, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n