Tag: web 2.0

Categories
Module 5

Multimedia Reflection

Think about an example of how multimedia has been used effectively to enhance your learning. Feel free to reflect on your MET experiences, or any other.

Over my first year and three courses in the MET program, the multimedia which I feel has been used effectively to enhance my learning has been screen casting.  A screen cast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration.

It wasn’t until my third course, ETEC 565A, that I was introduced to this technology.  Now that I have been exposed to it, I believe that I would have benefitted from other professors using this multimedia to convey some of the course materials.  Here is an example of a screen cast that my instructor in 565A put together towards the beginning of our LMS projects.  Thanks John!  🙂  This was an effective method of showing ETEC 565A participants how to set up their course shell and, as was mentioned in the screen cast by John, saved him about a day and a half of work time!

There are many screen casts available on the web, such as this one on YouTube, which explains how to export and resize a photo using Picasa.  This particular screen cast helped me to be able to resize a photo quickly, without having to spend time fiddling around with the program.  In the end, this gave me time to focus on other aspects of the E-learning toolkit.

Having been exposed to screen casting, I have created a screen cast with ScreenToaster for my moodle course.  My main goal in creating this screen cast is to identify the different components we are being assessed on and to highlight some interesting features of my course.

Screen casting is a multimedia tool that I will continue to use in my teaching practice, with students and colleagues.  I often do short educational technology presentations at staff meetings, and presenting a screen cast, which can be archived for reviewing, will be very beneficial and appreciated.

Enjoy!

Screencasts and videos online
Categories
E-learning Toolkit

Social Software

Social Software

E-learning Toolkit Reflection

For this E-learning Toolkit Activity, I have decided to focus on four Social Software sites that I use personally.  The main sites that I use most frequently are Delicious and Twitter, and I have explored Digg and Flickr.

1.  Who “owns” materials posted by members?

Delicious

By posting content, you are granting permission to Delicious and others to access and use it in connection with Delicious and otherwise in connections with its affiliates’ businesses.

Digg

By creating and posting Content to Digg, you warrant that you own all rights to the Content, agree that the Content will be dedicated to the public domain under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication, available at http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ and that you will not object to the use of the Content by Digg in any context.

Twitter

Twitter claims no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Twitter service.  Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours.  You can remove your profile at any time by deleting your account.  This will also remove any text and images you have stored in the system.

Flickr

You understand that all materials, including without limitation, information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, and email messages or other kinds of messages (“Content“), whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, are the sole responsibility of the person from which such Content originated. This means that you, and not Yahoo!, are entirely responsible for all Content that you upload, post, email, transmit, or otherwise make available via the Service. Yahoo! does not control the Content posted via the Service and, as such, does not guarantee the accuracy, integrity or quality of such Content. You understand that by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that is offensive, indecent or objectionable. Under no circumstances will Yahoo! be liable in any way for any Content, including, but not limited to, for any

errors or omissions in any Content, or for any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of or reliance upon any Content posted, emailed, transmitted, or otherwise made available via the Service.

2.  For what purposes can these materials be used?

Delicious

Delicious is explicitly not responsible for the manner or circumstances by which third parties access or use public content and is under no obligation to disable or otherwise restrict this access. Delicious provides you with the ability to retrieve and remove your posted content and your personal information from Delicious. This ability does not extend to copies that others may have made or to copies that Delicious may have made for backup purposes.

Digg

Social sharing of data: Digg allows other users to browse stories that you have Dugg, submitted or commented on. This information is made available publicly via your User Profile, on Digg Labs (labs.digg.com), via the public API (services.digg.com), or within the permalink URL of the story on which you performed the action. Digg may choose to post this data on other site features.

Twitter

The Twitter service makes it possible to post images and text hosted on Twitter to outside websites. This use is accepted (and even encouraged!). However, pages on other websites which display data hosted on Twitter.com must provide a link back to Twitter.

Flickr

Yahoo! does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service, you grant Yahoo! the following worldwide, royalty free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable:

  • With respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform, and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purposes of providing and promoting the specific Yahoo! Group to which such Content was submitted or made available. This licence exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Service.
  • With respect to photos, graphics, audio, or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This licence exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Service.
  • With respect to Content other than photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups, the perpetual, irrevocable and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

3.  Would using each site be appropriate with your students?

My students are grade one students, and therefore, many social software sites are not accessible to them because of their age.  Digg and Twitter require that users are at least 13 years of age.  Reading through the respective Terms of Service of each site, I could not locate age requirements for Delicious or Flickr.  That being said, I would not have students sign up themselves.  I would create classroom accounts on both services.  I would not have students bookmark sites to Delicious, rather I would direct them to the site to visit sites that I would like them to visit.  A Flickr account could be created to house photo collections of classroom projects.  I would not post photos of students on Flickr, unless I had parental permission.

4.  In your opinion, how well are the privacy interests of members represented?

Locating the Terms of Service for each site was very accessible.  That being said, some are easier and more straightforward to read and find the necessary information.  It is up to users to inform themselves before signing up to a service as Social Software sites are very clear with their expectations.   I would argue that if you are going to use a Social Software site, you are basically giving up your right to privacy.

References:

Delicious.  Terms of Service.  Accessed on-line July 18, 2009 from: http://delicious.com/help/terms

Digg.  Terms of Service.  Accessed on-line July 18, 2009 from: http://digg.com/tou

Flickr.  Terms of Service.  Accessed on-line July 18, 2009 from:  http://digg.com/tou

Twitter.  Terms of Service.  Accessed on-line July 18, 2009 from:  http://twitter.com/tos

Categories
Module 4

Digital Story

Please view my Digital Stories and my reflection on my social media creations on my Digital Story page.

Enjoy!

Categories
E-learning Toolkit

Web + log = Weblog

E-learing toolkit:  Weblogs

We have been discussing Weblogs in much detail over the past week or so in ETEC 565, which has led me to this toolkit activity.  I’ve spent the greater part of this afternoon browsing through some educational blogs which has been interesting and has led me to discover many articles, video clips, views and opinions of educators worldwide.  Sampling through the different weblogs, I came to the realization that every blog starts small; they all seem to be at a different point in terms of their content, number of comments, pages, etc…  The Weblogs that are more developed are truly a work of art in a sense, rich with information, well thought out and clearly visited on a daily (hourly?) basis!

In the New Year, I thought it would be a good idea to start a blog chronicling my journey through the MET program.  I created this blog using WordPress, which turned out to be very easy and quick.  However, I did struggle with understanding the difference between categories and pages, and this confusion remained with me, until I started ETEC 565 and created my reflective weblog for the course.  Through the creation of the pages that we were asked to create, I finally understood how a WordPress blog is organized!

So far, I have enjoyed the blogging experience in ETEC 565, not only posting assignments, but also being able to choose a theme and customize the header of my blog.  There are limitations to how unique your blog looks, but I think that I’ve made a tweak or two to help it stand out.  🙂

Throughout our discussions concerning Weblogs, I picked up a great book by Will Richardson (2009) titled “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Web Tools for Classrooms” through the Professional Learning Centre of the Calgary Board of Education.  I’ve been thinking about how teachers could use blogging with students and I would like to share Richardson’s following ideas:  (p.39)

You can have your students create their own Weblogs to…

  • learn how to blog.
  • complete class writing assignments.
  • create and ongoing portfolio of samples of their writing.
  • express their opinions on topics you are studying in class.
  • write comments, opinions, or questions on daily news items or issues of interest.
  • discuss activities they did in class and tell what they think about them. (You, the teacher, can learn a lot this way!)
  • write about class topics, using newly learned vocabulary words and idioms.
  • showcase their best writing pieces.

Richardson also provides ideas for teachers wanting to create a reflective, journal-type blog and/or a class blog.  Blog safety is an important consideration when blogging with students and it is important to be aware of the policies of your school district.  There are many good arguments concerning private vs. public blogging with students and it is very important that the teacher and students understand the consequences of both types of blogging before embarking on a blog project.

I look forward to blogging in more detail and reading other Weblogs as I journey through the MET program and my teaching career.

Reference:

Richardson, W. (2009).  Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.  2nd Ed.  Corwin Press.

Categories
Module 4

Social Media and Learning

Wiki Activity: Social Media and Learning

This week in ETEC 565, we used a wiki to discuss the impact of social media on classroom spaces.  Our first task was to list a social media sighting from our teaching context on the 66B wiki page.  From there we utilized the discussion page of the wiki to discuss the issues and trends of social media and learning.  As a class, we were asked to come up with 5 key strategies and 5 key challenges for engaging students using social media based on our discussion over the week.

Normally, our weekly discussions take place in WebCT Vista.  Having a discussion in a wiki environment is quite different.  The main difference that I see is that the wiki environment does not afford threaded discussions, which for me, is a drawback as I like to reference others’ comments based on what was said prior and I like the organized structure of each forum.  This is a challenge of working within the wiki environment as it does not facilitate a conversation as easily and parts of a conversation can even be deleted or edited.

That being said, the use of wikis for group collaboration is advantageous in the following ways:

  • Groups can work privately on projects as usernames and passwords can be set up. This ensures safety when working on the web, especially with students who are minors.
  • The wiki environment encourages participation and motivates users to share their knowledge as common goals are set and realized. Furthermore, the use of a wiki engages students in their learning and is constructivist as an approach to learning.
  • The wiki environment is asynchronous, and as such, groups of people can work on projects when convenient instead of trying to meet at a certain time synchronously or even F2F.
  • The wiki environment is visual which affords the creation and completion of projects and the ability to see where the project is at. (Invaluable for our assignment this week)

My experience working in the wiki environment has been positive.  A challenge that I think might be difficult for some to overcome however is the fact that others can change your work, or the final product may not be how you envisioned it.  It is important to accept this as a fact of working in this environment and to “let go”.  Otherwise, the whole experience could prove to be very frustrating.  In the end, we are all accountable for what has been submitted and just as if we were in a F2F environment, there will always be people who jump in quickly to the conversation and others who listen and then contribute.

Please continue on to my toolkit post on wikis for examples of my educational (teaching & learning) experience using wikis.

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