ETEC 565A Ronna's Reflections: Confessions of an Education Junkie

Using synchronous tools (Skype, Wimba, and Elluminate Live™) is relatively easy to do. I had the chance in this course (ETEC 565), and even more so in ETEC 510, to use Skype to communicate with a group of fellow students. I found that being able to hear another student’s voice, even ever so briefly, carries through to the text postings and helps to make a personal connection. On the downside, perhaps it is just me and my lousy equipment but I seem to have quite a bit of trouble with Skype disconnecting and suddenly going “fuzzy” or completely inaudible – ? Knowing that I do have the option to text synchronously if the audio goes out, I think I might just opt for that to begin with and avoid any frustration – or maybe it is time to update the old (in techno terms) laptop.

Although I was unable to participate in the two Wimba Live Classroom sessions held in this course (the second one I was definitely working at the pharmacy – the first one?) I was able to view the archives and saw that it is similar to Elluminate Live™ which I have used quite often but admittedly mostly asynchronously. I just visited FanLive, as my college calls it, and noticed that it is now officially known as Blackboard Collaborate. Has anything changed? The initial load page looks different of course with the new name but once it opens up the appearance is as it was. The other difference is that it loads faster! Looks like a good start to a new school year!

Video
Making a video using my digital camera and Windows Movie Maker was surprisingly simple and yet again a rather time consuming activity. Did I say simple? Yes, using the technology is simple but creating a professional looking video is a little more difficult. In fact, I think it will take a lot more practice to make a really skilled looking product. In the name of getting the thing done, I broke a few rules; recorded outdoors on a bright and windy day, began by reading my script – I recovered fairly quickly, and held the camera myself – it is a little shaky at times. However, I did get it done, uploaded to Youtube and linked to my LMS and I am impressed (and a little surprised) with the way it turned out. I know I will be much more comfortable and confident with this technology next time!

DVD
I was also able to burn this video to a disc using Windows DVD Player. I think creating a DVD that would be interactive (e.g. with quizzes, etc.) would require a lot more time and effort than I can afford at the moment but the tools available certainly make this task doable for nearly everyone!

I chose Glogster in which to create an “edgy” Digital Story primarily for its ability to add audio and video. I intentionally made it a little dark because pharmacy can be a very rough place believe it or not. Yes, I have personally witnessed a robbery at my store. We can call this an effort to desensitize and initiate, I suppose.

I think this tool would work well for students to create a story of their own. Each year I give students an assignment in which they are required to describe a “Leading Practice” in a hospital setting that would add value to the institution. The example that I use is a living roof. I show students a PowerPoint presentation with pictures and describe how the project came to be as if I were really involved. They are asked to follow suit and be very creative, however, what I often receive is a dry presentation with “just the facts.” I think using a tool such as Glogster would encourage students to think more outside of the box and be creative. It would also allow students to share and get ideas from each other and hopefully increase motivation and improve the quality of the final product. I do not think it can be used effectively to teach a lesson if there are too many bells and whistles added. I used numbering to help guide the flow of the story. You can view my work and read more under “Digital Story.”

Still Images
Using Picasa was relatively easy and enjoyable once I realized I needed to double-click on the photo to open up the “Basic fixes,” “Tuning” and “Effects” buttons. How could it not be intuitive for me to double-click on something to open it? Anyway, I managed to crop a photo and resize (and make black & white) a photo.

Again, as with other tools, it took me quite a long time to get to know this one even in a limited way but I did not find it difficult. I was surprised by the number of different things it allows you to do with your pictures (collages, movies, albums) but I was also overwhelmed – simply resizing and cropping a photo took me long enough! I was delighted that Picasa found pictures on my computer that I forgot I even had, how cool.

Now that I feel comfortable using it, I think Picasa will be very handy for altering pictures that I find on the web and want to use in the classroom. I always create a class picture at the end of the year for my students using a picture of each of them at their placement. This year I made a collage (release forms were signed! And it is all over Facebook) using Photovisi. Next year I might try something like this using Picasa!

Audio
This exercise reminded me of my daughter’s violin practices a few years ago (not my guitar practice, I am a hacker). She would have to practice a piece of music several times and the more difficult sections many more times until the whole thing was perfect ten or twenty times in a row! But it made me realize that there is value in repeating things over and over and over. Certain aspects of the exercise become routine and retention over time increases. So too it was with practicing with Audacity. After the initial downloading (do not forget to download LAME) and checking it out, I went to work. Being familiar with recording my voice using other audio applications, I think the number of practices I needed to get an acceptable version was reduced. It still took about 5 tries! Is it just me, or do I have some “Oprah” inflections in this? Oh, well she had a large following so there must be something appealing to it.

Unfortunately my daughter traded violin playing for volleyball and I will likely trade Audacity for the latest, greatest recording tool – someday. But for now, this is a great tool and very easy to use!

Accessibility is a major concern with my students. Our college does so much to ensure the success of students with disabilities by providing in-class notetakers and interpreters, a testing centre equipped with technologies to aid in test taking, and ergonomic and other equipment to help with comfort and ability in the classroom. But looking at our college website with all of its non-intuitive, often hidden information, I wonder if they have seriously thought about making the online component of teaching and education as accessible as the traditional in-class part? I know I have not until now.

Reading through this material has really opened my eyes to the need for creating a course site that is easy to use for EVERYBODY. Does this make my work more labour intensive? Well yes, but the suggested improvements will make a better site for all students, not just those students with disabilities. For example, using simple, straight forward language, making the site navigation consistent, and paying attention to its ease of use will benefit everyone who accesses the course site. I also realize I need to add descriptions for my images (img alt tags) and lots of audio for those who are visually impaired. I hope I have time to have a friend test my site so that they can make suggestions as well. For now, I checked the Moodle site using the Markup Validation Service and so far it passed!

Creating a group Wiki was more fun for me than contributing to a discussion forum in a LMS. Being able to focus on one document rather than reading multiple postings made this task easy and enjoyable.

Advantages
I believe that using wikis for collaboration can be gratifying for students. I enjoyed watching the wiki grow and develop and quite quickly at that! I also appreciated being able to check in and add to the wiki at any time as opposed to trying to collaborate synchronously using Skype or live chat. Live chats also tend to put people on the spot. For those who may need some extra time to think about ideas and then respond, I think chats can be intimidating. I also think the final product that was created was much better than what could have been produced in the same time frame using another form of communication. Scheduling a time for a live meeting would have limited contributions and using the wiki helped to organize and track activities.

Challenges
I thought it would have been harder to reach a consensus but the group wiki developed quickly. I am unsure if everyone felt comfortable participating. I think a synchronous group meeting would help ensure that everyone is heard from. I am also aware that a few students took the lead in putting together the final 5 Strategies and 5 Challenges but this is normal in any group activity.

I think that group collaborations involving a combination of wiki work and synchronous chat sessions would likely provide the richest learning experience for students.

Yes, the physical size of mobile devices (smart phones) is far too limiting. I do not have enormous fingers or a problem with manual dexterity but I certainly had difficulty with this exercise. First I tried using my son’s Blackberry to access my course and my initial fumbling attempt to type in my Moodle site, never mind my username and password, provoked my son to do so for me. And then we waited. And we waited. After a couple of minutes my son declared the attempt a failure. I, apparently having a different sense of time, would have given it a longer try. His impatience to wait reminded me of someone – oh, yes, my younger students! Would they get frustrated and give up too?

I had a bit more success with the iphone tester http://iphonetester.com/ but I think it was mostly because I used my trusty computer keyboard to run the thing. I was delighted when it loaded and I could see my course on the tiny screen but that same tiny screen soon became annoying. Although I was able to navigate the course and access the images, it drove me crazy not to be able to see the pages as I do on my laptop.

So the limiting factors that I encountered were: time to load and screen size. Another major limiting factor is the reality that not every student owns a smart phone. At this point, for me, mobile learning cannot replace classroom learning and I am not sure it will anytime soon…but I have not tried out the iPad yet. Of course, that would mean I need to actually purchase one first.

Since I have had some experience using WordPress here (no, you do not have to press anything – this page is it) I decided to try using Blogger I am starting to see the value in linking one’s web activities (but have not done so yet) otherwise it would be quite difficult and time consuming to update and keep track of everything – aah! I think I prefer to be the person who routinely and continually contributes to her blog(s) and updates her websites largely because I find it rather discouraging to visit a promising looking site only to find its last entry was literally years ago! This was the case with the Stingy Scholar. Sure, I was drawn to it because of its name (you try going through this list of 100 Education Blogs and see which one you pick!). However, when I visited it I was a little disappointed to find the last entry was June 17 – 2009! O.k., so maybe this blog was written by a student which would explain its limited shelf-life; I know you cannot stay in school forever, I tried. After clicking on the “meet the writers” button I found out that there were actually eleven writers altogether and the blog activity petered out from 303 in 2006 to just one in 2009. Hmm. There was also a link to the Stingy Scholar’s wife’s website for new moms but it too was last updated in 2009; new moms have a short shelf-life also. And then I felt a twinge of worry for these people. I hope they are both (or all twelve) still alive and well. Anyway, I did manage to find quite a few blogs that are very interesting and up-to-date (Clive Shepherd; The Open Classroom; and Moving at the Speed of Creativity). I am sure if given enough time I may have found 90/100 to be awesome blogs but these are three I plan to check in on from time to time.

The big lesson learned in this once again is that the process of learning and creating using technology (in this case blogs) is the easy part; the arduous task may be in keeping on top of it in the day-to-day routine and for the long haul.

Creating a wiki may be like riding a bike IF you have the same experience making a wiki as you do riding a bike. What I mean is, I had the opportunity to create a wiki in ETEC 510 and I know I spent a lot of time on it and I felt like I had a good grasp of what I was doing at the time – here it is: Ronna’s Wiki – it looks nice, right? Fast forward a few months and it was as if I was learning to speak a new language all over again. (Now, how did I get that content box to magically appear again?) I guess it makes sense since I spent a good decade riding a bike as my only means of transportation and only a couple of months “wikiing”. So, I found the UBC wiki sandbox and went to work (click here). I even learned how to make a table – the “real” way. Well, maybe if I had found the toolbar sooner that gave the option to “insert a table” I would have done that instead. But I am happy to have spent a bit of time re-learning how to create a wiki. Initially, I was a little disappointed in myself for having forgotten something I seemed to understand so well before, but it turned out to be yet another enjoyable experience.

I almost forgot, I also created a site on Wikispaces that I intend to use for my students in the Fall. It is important to me to be able to take a lot of what I learn in this course and actually use it in the classroom.

This exercise was quite a time robber! I suppose one could say that it was labour intensive, but I found it to be a labour of love. I really enjoyed learning and creating but soon (or not so soon) realized that to even come close to completing my website, I would need to dedicate much, much more time and effort. You can have a look at what I have created so far http://pharmtecheducator.bravesites.com/ keeping in mind that it is nowhere near being useful at this point. I did test for accessibility using the WAVE tool and was happy to find that it worked – at first! Then I tried getting too fancy and ended up with “2 possible accessibility errors.” I tried accessing my site using Internet Explorer and Firefox and it seemed to work just fine with either one.

I was a little surprised with how easy it seemed at first but how difficult (or tedious) it really ended up being trying to create an attractive and functional site. I wish I could throw together a website like this one: http://www.campluxe.com.au/relax (ah, so pretty AND functional) but I am guessing someone with a lot of experience had a hand in creating it.

I also downloaded Dreamweaver and have started creating web pages and loading them onto my Moodle site.

All in all this was a great exercise and I feel that I learned the basics upon which I am prepared to continue to build, learn and improve.