Category: e-learning tool kit

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e-learning tool kit Reflections

Synchronous Communication Tools Reflection

We use Elluminate at Fanshawe College.
It is embedded in our Learning Management System, FanshaweOnline (FOL), a Desire2Learn product. We have several professors in our business school that use it as a synchronous and an asynchronous communication tool. They all seem to use the tool very differently but they have had tremendous success.
Most professors start by recording a lecture (asynchronous communication) and then give the student access to the recording. Many professors get frustrated that they can’t edit the recording. I am always telling them that Elumniate is a synchronous communication tool that just happens to record. There are much better tools out there for recording and editing video.
Elluminate is best used as a synchronous product that is running while you lecture to a live class. Sometimes one student in the classroom is assigned to be a moderator to keep their eye on any questions that pop up from remote students but not always. The lecture can be recorded and then is automatically archived in the FOL course.

Issues

The biggest issue with Elluminate is to learn the product. Elluminate has several free training videos on their site that help teachers get up to speed with the product. We run practice sessions and best practices meetings where profs show how they use the tool and talk about their successes and failures. It is a powerful product that can be used on many levels. The best way to get started is to use it, keep it simple and then build from there.
Professors need the courage to use the tool. A lot of professors fear failure in front of their class so a live session is very scary. I have moderated a couple of classes in the beginning to support the professor as they venture into this new delivery method. The business school has really taken to this product and is using it in a lot of classes. Unfortunately, them seem to be the only school that has. I am trying to push my schools to use it but am coming up against a lot of resistance.
Technical issues do arise and you need the patience and support to get through them. When lecturing to a live class, you really need a wireless mic. The mic gives you the freedom to move away from the computer to address your live audience.

Other uses

The school of Business uses the product to broadcast their school meetings. Most of the professors are part-time and physically make the meetings. They can attend when Elluminate is used.

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e-learning tool kit Reflections

Still Image Reflection

Manipulating an image was extremely easy using Picasa. I am a Photoshop user and teach an introduction college level business course on Photoshop. I love the power of Photoshop but with power comes a step learning curve.

I cannot believe how easy it was to rework an image using Picasa. Cropping was easy and not labour intensive at all. I loved the collage and can see how a new user to image manipulation could really get into this. I tend to work with masks and layers when I make an image collage in Photoshop. I could not find that feature in Picasa.

I had no real challenges accept that I couldn’t download the software at work. Our computers are locked down so I couldn’t play with it during lunch. I would recommend it to my students as a quick alternative to Photoshop. This is a great free piece of free software for a beginner. You can do a lot of image manipulation without the cost of a software product like Photoshop.

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e-learning tool kit

Addicted to Moodle

Yikes, I am addicted to Moodle. I love creating courses on Learning Management Systems (LMS) Am I crazy?

My Moodle course site is expanding beyond the “requirements” but I can’t help myself.

Adding Forums

I am currently adding ‘help forums’ all in all modules. I really like how ETEC 565 has discussions for each tool  so I thought it would be a good idea to put forums in each module so students can help each other (just in case the prof is not available). It really sets up a nice community of practices where peers can share their learning/knowledge with classmates.

Working with HTML and CSS

Linking to an outside web server

I am also going crazy (a good crazy) with HTML and CSS. Originally I just linked to my webworkshop on my web server.  The workshop has over 60 html pages so adding them individually to a Moodle course would take forever and  I was also worried that the links to my css and images would not work. The only problem with this approach is that the students cannot be tracked.  The students will be tracked if they click on the link to the workshop but moodle can’t track which pages were visited inside the workshop.

Working with HTML & CSS inside of Moodle

In the File Management module, I built the web pages outside of Moodle, zipped them up and uploaded them. I then added each page individually. This means the students will be tracked for each page. So if a student comes to the prof and says “I didn’t get this part”, the prof can go to the reports and see if the student even visited the page on that subject.

Once loaded, I had to make some teaks… I always have to make teaks. I like how moodle lets you edit the file inside of moodle. I know HTML so it wasn’t a big chore for me to change things but I can see that it might be for those who use WYSIWYGs like Dreamweaver. I guess they would be constantly be uploading  files everytime a change needs to be made. I designed my html pages so that the design (look and feel) is controlled by the CSS. I only had to change one file to change the design on all the web pages. This came in handy when I noticed that the colours I choose for the pages were wrong. Since I had a hard time figuring out the colours the moodle’s wood theme was using, even after downloading the CSS for the theme, I used a FireFox add-on, Colorzilla, to pick out the colours in the theme. I changed my CSS and bam! The design for all my web pages in the File Management module changed. I love CSS! Like everything else, it takes time to learn but once you got it, it is such a time saver.

Possible Problem

While tweaking the web pages, I constantly had to “Reload the Frame”. This makes me nervous. I have run courses before where what the students see isn’t the last updated version of a html page. It causes a lot of confusion. It is unrealistic to ask the students to reload pages especially if the web page is inside a frame. I guess the course should be totally built and tested before going live, but realistically that does not happen where I work. Online courses are built and tweaked on the fly. So how can we stop the caching of web pages? Internet Explorer is nortourious at caching pages and not letting go. In my web design courses, I always instruct the students to test their web pages in Firefox. Reloading and/or refreshing a page is usually not a problem in FireFox.

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e-learning tool kit

Building a Quiz in Moddle

Short Answer Questions

I was really worried that I wouldn’t cover all the possible answers the students would give me. You can predict everything students will do. Luckily,  Moddle will store answers for questions so that later I can go back into a question and assign a grade to short answer. Moddle will then update the question for later use by other classes. How do I know this? I subscribe to Lynda.com which is a software training & tutorial video library. Lynda has several online courses including Moodle Essential Training for Teachers.

Essay Questions

I feared that since some of my questions had HTML and CSS questions in them that the code would not display properly. With other Learning Management Systems (LMS) and/or Content Management Systems (CMS), I have battled to keep my code visible and not acting on the page. Moddle does a good job showing the code as code.

In my essay question ‘CSS box model’ I did want the students use the HTML editor to affect the layout of their answer.

Explain the CSS box model and why it is often used by web page designers. Use the HTML editor to put your explanation inside a box using CSS. You can use what ever CSS properties you like as long as your box is noticeable. For example, you could place you explanation inside a red box.

Lynda.com says it can be done but I couldn’t find it. Maybe it works in a different version of Moodle. When teaching HTML and CSS, it would be extremely useful for students to have that ability and show it inside an exam.

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e-learning tool kit Reflections

Wiki Reflection

I have set up a several wikis for things like:

In total I have 11 wikis set up on pbworks.com
I am a big fan of wikis for education. They are a great asynchronous tool that lets students share knowledge. My web design classes love using wikis to share their work and learn for their peers. At first, the students are reluctant to use the new technology but once they get into it, they love how easy it is to use.

The hardest part of setting up wikis on pbworks is inviting people to your wiki. When you have a class of 50 students, entering their email address is time consuming and boring. It is easy to make mistakes. Students can request access to edit pages but I am not automatically notified. I have to go in and see if anyone has requested access.

I usually set up a shell for the students to use as they enter their information. Knowledge of good navigation and information Architecture really helps with this task. The files can become disorganized with many people using the site so I often have to go in and make some file management clean up.

Often students accidentally change my Front Page… which can cause panic. The Front page holds navigational elements for the students to get around to the rest of the pages. Luckily there is a function where I can look at the page history, revert to an older version of the page and see who made the change. I love this feature. It is handy when looking at group work to see who has participated and who has not.
Like all Web2.0 technologies it takes some time to learn how the technology works but one you do, it can become good learning technology. It can be easy to drop something and revert to old teaching habits, but tools like wikis, help students participate, contribute, collaborate and create content. There is more interaction with the content and therefore I believe more learning.

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e-learning tool kit Reflections

Web design and HTML authoring

I have been professionally designing web sites for over 15 years. You can see examples of my work at jdwwebdesign.com. I have also taught web design in the school of business at Fanshawe College.  Building a web sites is extremely labour intensive but I love it.

I use information architecture when I work with a client to build a site. Webmonkey has a set of tutorials if you are interested. Clients are always changing things in the navigation that takes time to change which costs $$. To get a client on board, I always create an information architecture document. I give the client questions and from those questions we build an architecture. The client then agrees to go with the plan and then if there are any variations, the client has to pay. It may seem like a small change to the client but in a static website, a change to the navigation could me a change to 100 pages. When working on Linda Lundstroms web site, a change to the navigation meant a change to 1000 pages.

What I liked about this activity was the WAVE accessiblity site. I already use a few accessiblitiies site with my students so I’ll add this is one to my delicious bookmarks as well.

Web Design and Moodle

As an experiment, I thought I would bring my  webworkshop into my Moodle course site. John gave us a demonstration on ‘how to upload html pages into moodle’ (via the Wimba discussion)… which is great if you only have a few files to bring in but I have about 100 files. It would have taken quite a bit of time to upload everything. Adding html files to each module can only be done one file at a time. I have 60 html files which would take way too much time. I decided to keep everything on my web server. I linked to my webserver by choosing “Add a resource” and then choosing “Link to a file or web site”. I put the link inside the frame so the student remains inside of moodle.

I do understand that it is harder to track the student ‘s engagement with the content. The only thing that would be reported is if the student went to that frame. It will not report on all the pages the student visited. For reporting purposes, this would not be the best solution.

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e-learning tool kit

Moodle

My first experience with Moodle was a pleasant one. Using the e-learning tool kit, I was able to make my first web page and a forum with little difficulty. I think I named the course incorrectly. I’ll have to look to see if there is a way for me to change things.

When following step by step instructions, I find myself concentrating on the steps and trying not to make mistakes instead of understanding why I do something a certain way. This is the down fall of step by step. It can give you quick success and/or failure without really letting you experiment and play to understand. There is more than one way to do something with software, so I am sure I’ll find quicker ways of working with Moodle once I get in to it.

What really surprised me was the interface. The interface was not as visually as I had expected. I don’t know why but I was expecting a slicker looking product. I guess I am too use to commercial software products.

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e-learning tool kit

e-learning tool kit – weblogs

I have my own blog, edutechfan.com, that I host on my own webserver. It was labour intensive when I built my blog because I went into the CSS and changed how my blog looked. I am a very visual person so visual representation is important to me. I love that I can control the look and feel of my blog. I can’t seem to find that control on this blog. I guess because it is hosted on UBC and we are restricted to what we can do. If anyone has found a way to change the CSS let me know. I’ll keep looking but any help would be appreciated.

Keeping the blog up to date is a challenge. What is the standard for entries?… as far as the timing.

I did explore the other blogs. I am already a reader of Steve Downs and George Siemens. There were other blogs of interest to me as well.
I have written several papers on blogs in this MET porgram so nothing really surprised me here.

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