Technologies Supporting Teaching and Learning

My Weblog experience with WordPress was enjoyable and not labour intensive at all. I had the option of either working with templates, in which I do not have to know html language or I can choose to work with html. The user interface was very user friendly and it was easy to add pages, post blogs and follow discussions. RSS feeds were useful in following posts etc. The ease of use and the ability to hold threaded discussions were a surprise to me. I can definitely see myself using WordPress for personal blogging as well as with my students in developing their e-portfolios and personal blogs as well as hosting discussions.

As a learner I am constantly making references to what I already know (old/prior knowledge) and using that to relate to and/or organise new knowledge. In some way then one can say that I embody theories such as Schema Theory, Discovery Learning, Constructivism and Connectivism. I begin with this preamble because I need to qualify the title of my post in that rather than being a ‘which is better that the other’ it is more of how I related to and organised my experiences based on prior knowledge.

I concentrated on Moodle first. I touched on Vista but did not fully emerse myself in the Sandbox until I felt I was somewhat proficient in Moodle. And what a surprise it was!!! It was far more user friendly and did not necessarily require as much technical expertise (e.g. html code) as Moodle. My appreciation for Vista however was that much greater having experienced Moodle first, in which I fought my way through mastery while engaging in quite a bit of research. Components I had to research in Moodle I found so easily in Vista (perhaps that is one reason why WebCT Vista is not free or perhaps prior knowledge made me more aware of what to look for?). If you have the money to spend on WebCT Vista then it is more than worth it, particularly at the level of administrators and course designers. It really takes a load off module leaders in uploading and managing content.

Moodle is great to work with once you get the gist of it and it has the benefits of being free and open source but I could not help but thinking, while working with Vista, ‘Ahhhh. This is way easier’. The templates are sequential, easy to access with a very friendly user face. For example, even just how one assigns what kind of discussion: threaded, blog or journal; course management tools such as deciding what tools to use in the course, ease of changing the appearance of the course, use of colours and course creation tools e.g. assigning goals and uploading content. These affordances go a far way in creating an aesthetically pleasing, professional and user friendly site quite.

What also was very apparent is the manifestation of meaningful learning. The Moodle experience was meaningful as I used a real course and had the desire to create a full LMS. From my Moodle experience I was also able to have a more meaningful experience with WebCT Vista. All in the all the experiences were a full manifestation of Ausubel’s meaningful learning theory in experiencing and participating in authentic and relevant learning structures and activities.

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of Moodle having left the experience with new skills, particularly html coding, which I did not utilise as much in my WebCT Vista experience.

While working on my Moodle site I was made to appreciate even further the value of detail and the ability to spot minute, seemingly difficult to see differences. A wronly placed ‘<' after a '>‘ or a missing ‘/’ are so easy to mask and yet wreak havoc in overall appearance and presentation. Likewise the wonderful fullstop , which when appearing after ‘< /p >.’ made me labour over the appearance of a number of my pages. I asked myself, after mulling over certain options, ‘Could it be the fullstop?’ and it was. I was amazed that such minute details could be so difficult to pick up after going over the content several times and after many attempts at larger more obvious ‘solutions’. Hmmm…. could this be the same in education? Looking for those personalised, individualised clues and solutions that are ‘seemingly difficult to see’ in the ‘sea’ of ‘texts’ and ‘codes’ but which if missed wreak havoc on the overall outcome?

Heads up! Sometimes we have to change course, step back and look again with fresh eyes, an open mind, and new possibilities, strategies and angles.

Choosing my tool
I explored a number of tools: Empressr, Babble, Slideshow, Xtranormal and finally PhotoPeach. The one I really wanted to work with was Empressr because I wanted to work with text, pictures, videos and voice. However, the video upload was problematic. Xtranormal was fun but had potential costing issues and also the story was so real to me that I wanted to present it using real characters. Babble was also fun for animating pictures but I wanted to use several images in my story. Slideshow and PhotoPeach were ideal for this.
PhotoPeach was a lot more user friendly for uploading images and text, adding music and adding text. Editing was also easier. Because of the restriction to images, absence of voice and video, I invested a lot of time in sourcing photos that related not only the idea but the emotional qualities experienced. In this way the use of mashups really felt like an artist using a variety of media to generate an art piece. I had to be more efficient with my words in order not to create lengthly text on slides. It was actually good that the captions had a word limit.
This experience actually reinforced efficiency of language and focus in presenting ideas clearly and succinctly. When reviewing the presentation I found that the lack of audio focused on the emotions within the pictures. It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words and I saw that evidenced here.

Use in the Educational Context
The story itself carries material that can be used to generate discussions, create problem sets and collaborative problem solving exercises. I ask questions of the design, use, and management of technology to facilitate and enhance learning. It addresses issues of inclusion and individual design and roles and responsibilities in order to create more meaningful learning (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996). In its stimulation of critical thinking and problem solving it satisfies the International Society for Technology in Education standards for students’ digital learning (http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students.aspx) while also meeting standards for teachers in: facilitating and inspiring student learning and creativity and designing; modeling digital-age work and learning; and developing digital-age learning experience with the opportunity for use as an alternative form of assessment.
The tool itself can be used to engage students in creating, viewing and analysing multimedia presentations utilising ‘mashups’ and ‘remixes’ thus increasing creativity (Lamb, 2007) and also catering to diverse learners and multiple intelligences (Howard Gardner).
PhotoPeach is free and easy to use and easily accessible for students. It is alo very user friendly and will rate highly in integration and use of technology within higher education as assesed within the SECTIONS framework (Bates & Poole, 2003). It offers opportunities for active hands on tasks, which reasearch shows increases motivation and retention of activities (Dale’s Cone of Experience, http://www.indiana.edu/~molpage/Cone%20of%20Experience_text.pdf).
One essential point to note is that considerations of copyright severely restricted choice of images that were culturally appropriate. I utilised images and music from sources operating under creative commons (http://creativecommons.org). Therefore, although the story is useful as is I would encourage creating and using original content where necessary to satisfy relevance.

This is further expanded on my page https://blogs.ubc.ca/khenry/digital-story/https://blogs.ubc.ca/khenry/digital-story/

Being a strong advocate of wikis I was surprised that I found a lot wrong with the use of the Wiki in the context in which it was used. Perhaps I shouldn’t say wrong but rather that the context and activities were not best served by the affordances and use of the wiki.
Although Wiki looks at collaborative knowledge construction through the editing of common text our activities could have been better facilitated and tracked using a threaded discussion forum where posts could be organised and replies to individual posts easier to thread. The thread of the discussion in the Wiki space was difficult to follow. Also, you could not see who made what changes, which I believe is essential in such collaborative and multilayered editing activities.
What was really important was the confirmation that not because a tool is a great tool it cannot be used even within the context of which it is intended, in this case collective knowledge construction. Within any given activity tools; context and expected activites; needs (e.g. tracking/threading editing or responses) and benefits must be assessed independently and intergated in order to choose the right tool to optimise experience.

The start of my blogging, which I do not intend to stop :-). I really enjoy writing so why was I not blogging before?