Ed in ETEC

Resources and Support are Keys to Success

In reading Lenora’s scenario, I feel it would be advantageous for her to first research on the costs that she would need to incur to run a website, and the amount of support she will receive to maintain the website before she decides if establishing a website is the way to go. Further, she needs to learn about her targeted audience’s access and computer literacy in using her resources to determine if the format she is choosing is the most appropriate.

From the case study’s background information, it appears that Lenora is living in a place where high-speed internet is not readily available or that there are financial challenges that make the access to high-speed internet not feasible. This would substantially hinder the chance of developing and maintaining a very graphics and/or video-rich website as upload would most likely be a problem. I would argue that a significant portion of Lenora’s audience would also face similar technical challenges as well. If that is the case, then the creation of a website, much less one that features extensive display of graphics and large-sized files (for sounds and videos) may also be not suitable. A text-rich, free-hosting “holding place” such as a blog, therefore, may become more suitable.

In the design of the blog, Lenora can use multiple categories to classify the various topics on bullying against aboriginal people. To increase collaboration, she can grant access (user name and password) to other educators who wish to contribute to the compilation of resources as well. If, among the group of collaborating educators, there are people who have better access to internet services, services such as Google docs can be used as a storage place for sound tracks and videos. All Lenora has to do is to create a blog entry with the proper links to these documents on Google docs. Educators with access can download these files, while educators who do not can bypass them.

Wiki is another possible destination for Lenora’s work of collaboration. Similar to a blog, Lenora has to grant access to fellow educators to enter and modify the information of the subject specific wiki.

Neither a blog nor a wiki require extensive technical support and maintenance. I would argue that many blog websites provide a fairly adequate online/textual technical support. Other members of the collaborative team can easily receive assistance, and Lenora nor her employers would need to worry about paying for someone to provide that technical support.