On a learning journey….
Well, this course is coming to a close, and what a learning journey it has been! As I said in my Synthesis, I have been walking a steep learning curve during the past three months and I am so excited by what I’ve learned. Bring on September….well, maybe give me a few weeks of camping to recoup first, then I’ll be ready to go!
I have to say, I started out rather scared approaching this activity, but very quickly got totally excited and loved creating my story! There are so many different tools available, and in the end, I chose Animoto.
When selecting my Web 2.0 tool, I thought about Bates’ and Poole’s (2003) SECTIONS model. I loved that the online tools was accessible and didn’t need to be downloaded (one more thing for my students to NOT think about!). It was incredibly easy to use, and the cost was free for a short production, or very reasonable if you wanted to purchase a one-year license to create longer productions. Very few prerequisite skills were needed to use Animoto, and issues of copyright were avoided because free access audio options were provided within the program. It was easy to add text, organize images, and create the flow I wanted. It’s a program I can see myself using over and over again!
For my story, I wanted to create an introduction piece for my online courses. I wanted to make something that would show students more about me, and the things I cherish. My hope is that by giving students a glimpse into my life outside of work, I am able to establish and build deeper relationships with students faster. By putting a bit of “me” out there, I hope to create more trust, and by doing so, enable students to be more confident sharing with me and with the community of learners we are building. Using Animoto, I was able to share images of my life in a way that expressed the things I value most…..my family, our traditions, my music, etc. The music I chose really fit well with the feeling I was attempting to convey.
I can see myself using Animoto at an instructor level, and as a tool for my students to use. In one of my courses, students create a presentation to reflect the cultural diversity present in our class, and this would be a great tool for them. I think students would find it very meaningful and motivating. I really liked that I was able to “show” my students something, with limited words (but carefully chosen ones. The images, text, and music worked together really effectively, and I’m looking forward to trying something totally different with it next time. So much fun!
For those who missed my earlier post with my digital story, you can click on the link below to view it.
For this activity I chose to do a story about my life outside of work to share with my online students. I want my students to get a sense of who I am, and I decided a personal glimpse into my life would help to build some connections and trust as we get to know each other at the beginning of the semester.
This week we used a class wiki to discuss challenges and strategies in using social media in classrooms. The experience of creating a wiki compared using the threaded discussions in our LMS was rather enlightening. Some of the things I really liked about the wiki were:
Some of the challenges in the wiki format were:
I really enjoyed a change from discussions this week, and I appreciated how we could grow each others’ ideas more fluidly in the wiki context. For example, under the “challenges”, I simply wrote “Copyright”, as I didn’t have time right then to expand my thoughts, but I wanted to get the idea down. The next time I came back, others had expanded the topic wonderfully! It was easy to come back and edit throughout the week, and I particularly liked the sense of group ownership that was established. A great activity!
Today I made a video of myself for the Moodle course I’m creating. In my course I ask students to share an experience they have had with a child who has AD/HD. I wanted to share one of my experiences with my students, and decided to do a video. Having John post a video earlier in this course, it reminded me just how important seeing a real face is for students!
I don’t have a video camera, but decided to use my built in camera on my laptop to record my video. I had to learn how to do that first, and quickly decided on using iMovie. It took me longer than I expected to do the recordings. I did separate clips for the intro, two main sections, and conclusion…..each of them many times! The first time, I didn’t like the lighting. So I adjusted that. Then I didn’t like the angle of the camera. Adjusted again. Then there were the multitudes of outtakes.
Being a tad self-conscious, it was hard at first to even see myself on screen. I am SO not a camera/video person! I hide whenever an image capturing device presents itself. But I do think my online students will really like being able to see me. I have used nanogong before, just to get my voice recorded, and students response was overwhelmingly positive to that. It really does help to establish better rapport.
iMovie makes adding title slides and transitions very simple. I did have some trouble cropping images, but a quick iMovie tutorial fixed that. Having uploaded a video to Youtube earlier in the course, doing the same with this one was a quick and easy process.
In the online courses I teach (college level), I think I may do my weekly News Forum greeting via video. Each week I like to make contact with students, discuss a focus for the week, send reminders, or whatever. Having personalized videos, especially early in the course when relationships are just being established, might really work well!
Here is a link to my forum where the video is posted:
Boris wants to create a stand alone self-directed review tool for his students for learning the Periodic Table, preferably with formative instant feedback. One option for Boris is to create a “lesson” in Moodle. The lesson activity allows teachers to set up and scaffold learning, providing instant feedback for students. Information is presented/reviewed, and then a question is asked. Depending on how the student answers the question, s/he is moved forward if correct, or if incorrect s/he is sent down another path for more review or is forced to stay at the same question until it is answered correctly. If developed well, the lesson activity would provide Boris’s students with great review, instant feedback, and as much detailed assessment as he wants to provide.
Here is a 3 part tutorial for using the lesson activity in Moodle:
I’ve now had my first real interaction with an iPad. I have looked at one briefly a couple of times, but I spent several hours “playing” yesterday. My College EdTech specialist has one staff can sign out, so I’ve got it for several weeks.
I had no trouble accessing ETEC565, but I couldn’t get to the Moodle course I’m developing. It said, “Cannot open page – Safari cannot open the page because the server could not be found”. I was able to get to the courses in Moodle that I teach for the College of the Rockies though, so did some experimenting there. It was very easy to access discussion forums and post, and to edit add content. No problem! Things loaded very quickly. I was quite impressed!
However, not having any hand held devices on my own, I found my lack of experience created a lot of frustration. How many times did I scroll up when I was trying to scroll down? And typing on the small keypad….so slow. I had some trouble navigating, but learned several things fairly quickly. I googled several things (and I have to admit, finally grabbed my laptop so I could google faster!) and that helped. I figured out how to copy text and images, which once you know what to do, it is a very simple process.
I spent a lot of time trying out various apps that other faculty had downloaded. I even found a Moodle Touch app, but it was for 2.0 so couldn’t try it out. My favourite app was the iBooks. I could spend hours….but homework beckoned.
I can see how many people would love this. There is an unending list of apps to explore, and some great resources for both home and work life. For me, the bulk of what I do I use my laptop for, and the iPad slows me down. The keyboarding is just painful for me. I know I could get a keyboard to use with the iPad, but that’s what I have my laptop for! If I did a lot of travelling, the iPad would be awesome. It’s small, light, and convenient. I could maintain contact with my students, update my Moodle courses if needed, and not have to lug around a larger piece of equipment.
My kids now…they vote YES to buying an iPad. They would spend hours on long road trips keeping very entertained. If the battery life was longer (10 hours isn’t enough when you’re away from electricity!) it would be a great option. I’m still weighing the pros and cons. I’m getting something this summer, be it an iPad or some kind of eReader, but am still not sure. The iPad does SO much more than an eReader, and I would hate to underestimate my potential usage and buy the wrong thing….especially being so new to this kind of technology.
Decisions, decisions.
Just contemplating….
At the rate I’m progressing, I may never get a page done for my Moodle course. This is when I question my love for technology….I do believing it’s waning. Taking the “not so easy road” may be tougher, but I’m destined to learn more….right?!
Well this sure took a long time….with mixed success in the end. I downloaded Audacity 1.3.13. No problem. I downloaded LAME. I played around recording several things….well mostly getting my children to record several things. I saved a file. No problem. Then the frustrating part. I couldn’t export my file as an MP3. It kept saying it couldn’t find “libmp3lame.dylib to create MP3s”. I tried everything I could think of….but nothing worked. I don’t know the difference between an MP3 and an MP2, so I tried exporting it as an MP2 and it worked. It opened in iTunes and I could hear my girls singing. But I couldn’t post that file here. I really want to explore this further, as I’ve been looking for a way to record myself playing the piano so that I could send files to my mom. (My playing is something only a mother could love!) So I think I’ll make my husband look at this tonight and see if he can find out what I did wrong.
This afternoon I did the practice activity on still images using Picasa. Having used iPhoto’s editing before, the cropping was pretty easy to figure out. I watched the tutorial on resizing in Picasa, and that was pretty simple too. I enjoyed playing around with several of the other features. I don’t know much about photography, but it’s something I would love to experiment with more.
