Month: July 2011

I chose to use Xtranormal to tell a story I could use with my introductory accounting class about the Father of Accounting, Friar Luca Pacioli. I wanted to use a tool that enable me to tell a story in narrative form as I had a significant amount of information to covey and simply drawing or creating a series of pictures would not have been effective.

The tool allowed me to select my characters and I could add different actions, such as shoulder shrugging and surprise to parts of the story to mimic what might happen during a face-to-face conversation. I also became the director as I selected different camera angles for each frame, whether or not I wanted the character who was speaking to face the camera and I could also select close-ups if the speaker was presenting critical information. I have a new appreciation for movie directors!

I plan to use this story with my grade 11 Accounting class this fall as a way to introduce the course. I can also envision using it in some of my other Business courses where accounting is discussed.

Student access to Xtranormal from my school’s computers could be a challenge as many sites are filtered. I will have to check the availability of this site when I return in the fall and submit a request to unblock the site if students cannot access it.

Since Xtranormal has many choices for characters, voices and backgrounds, I expect that my students will enjoy using it. I can envision providing it as an alternative method of completing an assignment (e.g. differentiated assessment) to appeal to different learning styles.

I had an opportunity to participate in the course discussion last week using a wiki, and I also co-authored a wiki entry for another ETEC course I’m taking this term. While I am familiar with Wikipedia as a user, I have never edited a section and have not used HTML prior to this term.

Summary of My Experience
It was a bit difficult navigating within the wiki environment due to my lack of familiarity with HTML coding. I am now much more comfortable with the coding conventions and the set up of a wiki having authored an entry and edited one by contributing to the course discussions last week. There is a rather steep learning curve associated with HTML and while I’m getting better at it, there are still things I have to research such as how to embed an image, how to format it, etc.

What Worked Well
Once I became familiar with the coding, the process of entering the information was not that difficult. I like the layout of the page and I can now appreciate the consistency that is applied to Wikipedia entries.

Challenges
The coding was the biggest challenge I encountered. When I started the wiki entry, I had to look up everything including the basics such as how to bold, underline, etc. Having mastered these items, I had to learn wiki entry conventions such as main headings versus subheadings. Adding an image and formatting it was also not as simple an exercise as I had envisioned. Finally, my research skills were put to use again when I wanted to create a link to another website, as well as to another wiki site within our course. While information on how to complete these tasks was readily available, it still took time to find them and tweak the coding to make it work.

It was also a bit challenging to write using a neutral point of view. It is not something that I have much experience with as I am always trying to make a point or convince the reader about my point of view. I’ll certainly need more practice to get better at it.

What Surprised Me
Once I learned some HTML coding, I realized that it’s really not that difficult. I’ve also been trying to practice some of the basics, such as bold, italics and underlining when completing my weekly posts in Vista. The best way for me to reinforce a new concept is to use it.

I had an opportunity to review the terms of service (TOS) for four social software sites, namely Delicious, Flickr, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Discoveries

I chose to summarize the information I discovered in a table (see below).

What Surprised Me

In reading the individual TOS, I was shocked by the number of adjectives used to describe what the site could do with the information that was posted, e.g. exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, etc..  While every site noted that the user owned their information, the terms give the site owners a great deal of flexibility over what they can do with the content.  I was also surprised that Facebook and Delicious noted that even a deletion by the owner of the content does not completely delete the information/content on the site.  The original content may still exist in back-up copies.

How Does This Inform My Own Participation

I am very selective about which sites I choose to set an account with.  I have never had a Facebook account, and despite prodding from some of my colleagues in the corporate world, I have not set up a LinkedIn account yet.  I think my hesitation stems from the fact that I’m just not sure who will be able to view my information, and what the site will do with it.  From reading the various TOS agreements, my hesitation is completely justified!

Implications for Education

Of the four sites reviewed, students would only be able to sign up for an account on two of them, namely Delicious and Facebook.  While the imposed age limits are meant to restrict access, I know many students under the age of 13 who have Facebook accounts.  I don’t think setting age restrictions necessarily restricts the access.  Of all the sites I reviewed, I believe Delicious is the site I would be most inclined to use with my students.  I can envision having a site listing a number of relevant sites for my grade 12 International Business students as they complete a trade manual on one of Canada’s trading partners.  This would be a very helpful, and constantly evolving resource for students to use, semester after semester.

I had an opportunity to participate in the week’s discussions using a wiki space instead of the usual format in WebCT Vista.  One observation I noted was that there was much less interaction on the wiki than there usually is in a given week.

Advantages of Using a Wiki

The ability to edit in the wiki was handy as you can move, consolidate or delete comments along the way. The format also allowed for the creation of tables to synthesize the information that had been contributed by my peers.

Challenges of Using a Wiki

I am still learning HTML coding, so the formatting of a wiki entry was a bit challenging at times.  By contrast, Vista has no such formatting challenges.

Also, since it’s not possible to put a title on a post, it was necessary to scroll through other posts to find those that related to a particular topic or train of thought.  This issue was partially addressed by the indenting structure initiated by a classmate.

Also, I noted that posting a reply took more time.  In WebCT Vista, I can hit “reply” and start typing my response.  In the wiki, I had to hit “edit”, find where I wanted to add my comments, and format them appropriately using HTML coding.  I also had to manually add my name, the date and time to each posting whereas Vista does this automatically.

I also appreciate the count of new messages when I log into Vista and the identification of which thread(s) contains the new messages.  By contrast, I had to scan the wiki entries and search by date and time to identify the most recent contributions by my peers.

Finally, perhaps it was just my computer, but it took more time for the wiki to load.  WebCT Vista is very quick to load, meaning that I can start reading posts straight away.