Tag: e-learning

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Reflections

Class Wiki Reflection

Our Class Wiki for the Activity

The wiki activity involved coming up with some key Strategies and Challenges in using social networking tools in our educational settings. I like how we started by bringing our own experience (“sightings”) to the wiki. We have a lot of great human resources in our class with various experiences. This was the easy part. The hard part came when we had to, as a group, develop 5 key strategies and challenges. I felt lost and disconnected with the rest of the group. The discussion area didn’t really work for me. I added my 2 cents worth. I usually step up to the plate and help lead group work but this time I decided to sit back and see what happens. Key members of the class did take the lead. Social networking sites need “someone” in charge, facilitating groups towards a common goal or things will be lost or dropped but that is similar in all social gatherings whether it be a sporting event or backyard party.

Wiki is a great collaboration tool as long as it is asynchronous. Using a wiki inside a class when everyone is trying to access the same wiki page at the same time is problematic. I use pbworks.com in my class. Students have to steal the page from each other to edit it. Unlike Googledocs, where students can work on the same document at the same time. To get around this ‘page stealing issue’, I get the students to pick a topic. Since each topic is on a separate page, there usually isn’t any problems with stealing pages. It becomes a jigsaw activity. Individuals explore different topics but as a group a solid knowledge base is created.

In my experience, people have a hard time editing each others work. People tend to write notes besides others work instead of deleting. I guess folks are trying to be polite. I really was not impressed with the discussion feature and rarely use it myself. I prefer to use a wiki as a knowledge/content building activity not for discussions. I much prefer threads for discussions.

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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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my delicious account

Feel free to explore my delicious account where I have several sites tagged for web design and learning technologies. I will continue to bookmark resources as I journey through this class.

http://delicious.com/jwhite64/

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