ETEC 565 HJD e-portfolio

With this e-learning toolkit exploration, the first challenge was getting past the ‘I don’t want to’ and ‘Garage band or nothing’ mental state. I trusted the instructions and decided to dive in. Once the initial bump was worked out, it was very easy to create a simple voice cast. Then I tried it again with music playing in the background. I prefer with music but I can see the power of having just the voice recording done for specific learning tasks for students, particularly those with attentional difficulties. What surprised me the most was the quality of the recording and the ease with which mp3 files can be created. This would not be an onerous task for an instructor to complete, once there was an identifiable need. My next challenge is to try creating some supporting voice casts to link into course modules.   Here is a sample of my Audacity challenge – Success.

Digital story Lesson # 2 – read assignments carefully and clarify understandings. Sometimes you take a wrong turn and have to begin again.

My experience with the digital story telling started with multiple ideas, several media options and various familiar tools with which to create my story. As I worked on both of my digital stories, the ideas dictated the directions and the story dictated the final selections used. Daniel Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind, stated, “We are our stories“. This became my story.

My personal digital storytelling experience started with one story, that was in me to tell. It ended with another story, that evolved the way most stories do. It begins with images, ideas, and thoughts that slowly untangle into a thread that creates the fabric of the story. My digital story is a ‘narrative’ in the truest sense, with a main character, evolving plot line, rising to a climax of discovery, and has an ending that brings the story to a conclusion. Understanding the nature of a narrative is one that many students struggle with, as did I when this project first started. After a ‘eureka’ moment (that also made me glad I asked the question), I knew what to do. As Young Turtle discovers, the answer was within me all along.

You’ll find my digital story here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/hjdew/digital-storytelling/

References

Pink, Daniel H. (2006) A whole new mind.  New York: Berkeley Publishing Group, Penguin Books. Retrieved on July 10, 2011 from http://www.danpink.com/wnm.html

Image from http://4freephotos.com/index.php – Free photo # 820808c8369c053eceaf71070e248ff0

Tagging is the key to the web. The concept of tagging is not new, but it is something that has eluded me in my understanding of the web. It has come back into my explorations during this week’s discussions about privacy, protection and public presence in online environments. The difference between being fully private and fully public has caused heated discussions with educators around the globe. In our efforts to keep students safe, we are missing an opportunity to apply critical literacy skills to their investigations with digital media. In the meantime, the concept of the web is changing and this will become a redundant topic of discussion.

Link to http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

The concept of Web 3.0 and how tagging our web contributions makes the web work has caught my attention. I have now begun to tag where I never tagged before. I even went back into other blog posts and created tags to the information posted there. In this way, I am helping to create the next evolution of the WEB – 3.0. The web that will become my personal google and a tool fit to my needs. It will know what my interests are, my common search topics, my music download interests and even my fitness habits. My personal tags will define who I am, my biases, my interests and my explorations. My digital tatoo will define me but not limit me. It will serve my needs while it learns who I am.

Web 2.0 is here with full force. The next wave is the semantic web that is Web 3.0. Here is a simplified explanation.

Since we have also been working on digital storybooks this week, here is one created to explain the differences between Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. It is an Xtranormal clip with two characters – Broccoli 3-d and Semantic Web.

Web 2.0 you say?! I say, let’s move it up the web and aim for 3.0.

My reflections on the recent work on the collaborative wiki for this week’s module has left me pondering and wondering about the pedagogical and educational applications and implications for collaborative work spaces.

This activity was challenging since the only way to see if any changes had been made was to use the history and then compare versions for changes. This significantly changed the way I interacted with the information and with my classmates. Not necessarily easier or harder, just different. When you are used to seeing where and when additions or new information is posted, working with a wiki brings the word ‘collaborative’ to the forefront of my thinking.

Each page has the message “if you aren’t prepared to have your work ruthlessly modified, don’t post it here” as well as the warning ‘don’t post copyrighted material’. Both are reminders of the public nature of the writing environment.

The final product should be a piece of quality writing and a compilation of everyone’s thoughts on the topic, if everyone puts their ‘2 cents worth’ into the project. The fine-tuning and organization still takes a certain someone to take ownership of these tasks or the whole thing is left in a messy, disconnected collection of individual thoughts. In this writing environment, the individual contributor is always making some assumptions about the others involved – that they agree, that they are present, that they care about the topic, that they are participating (even if there is no record of their presence in the history), or that they are aiming for the best outcome for the project. These can be challenges but also strengths to this type of collaborative working space. If you have the right group of people working on the right task, these assumptions become irrelevant and a quality outcome is assured.