ETEC 565 Blog

Here is the story that I came up with, which I created in ToonDoo.

Here is the direct link as well: http://www.toondoo.com/ViewBook.toon?bookid=306171

I really wanted to try a comic style approach, so I explored some of the tools in that section. I really wanted something that was easy to put together, where few to no artistic skills would be needed. I narrowed my choices down to ToonDoo and Kerpoof, and decided to go with ToonDoo because the layout seemed a little more intuitive to me, which I think would be important for students learning to use a new tool.

For me personally, I know that I like to have a lot of freedom when I am putting together a project. I like to envision the entire finished project, and then try to figure out how to make it happen. In this case, that would have been nearly impossible, as you are restricted to the elements that ToonDoo provides you when you are putting together a comic. I found that this forced me to be a little more clever in the wording that I used, in order to get the point across that I was hoping to.

On the other hand, it was very easy to build something that legitimately looks like a comic. I have tried activites with students where they make illustrated stories that have analogies to the science curriculum, but quite frequently students feel very uncomfortable with their artistic abilities. This is something that I can definitely relate to, as my artistic skills are limited to rudimentary stick men, but I would have no qualms about displaying something that I created in Toondoo.

This is definitely something that I think I will try in my classes. Due to the ease of making fairly good looking pictures, students can spend more time manipulating their existing knowledge to create analogies and further solidify meaning. An added benefit is the increased student engagement that may occur, because not only was ToonDoo easy to use, it was lots of fun too!

I found it very interesting that on the discussion page of our wiki activity was very similar to the discussion pages that we use in Vista. I guess a lot of it has to do with what we’re comfortable with, even though the wiki discussion page doesn’t really lend itself well to threaded discussions similar to what we use in Vista.

That being said, it really was more of a “discussion” than I have seen on many wiki discussion pages. Usually the discussion is more of a recorded history, with maybe a rationale for why an author made the changes that he or she did. Personally, I’d rather see a rationale and no discussion than a discussion an no rationale, as I always like to learn about the thinking and reasoning that went into a decision. However, a bit of a hybrid would be ideal, where a rationale is always included, and some back and forth exchange happens between authors as they examine philosophies behind the choices that they made.

Like most of us, I’m always looking for ways to be efficient and make less work for myself, while at the same time being more effective in my teaching. When it comes to using technology I think that it is easy to fall into the trap of actually doing more work and THINKING that  it is more effective because students appear more engaged, when really it is just novel interest that does not result in academic improvement. In considering Trinh’s scenario and the synchronous/asynchronous scenario, I really tried to come up with something that was educationally sound, rather than flashy and eye catching. This is how I came up with the Wiki FAQ idea, because it allows students to pose questions to each other, and to manipulate one another’s answers, and at the same time it reduces Trinh’s workload (she shouldn’t have to answer as many emails). This activity also further reinforced my belief in the value of the “Wikipedia model,” where the sum of the collective is greater than that of a few experts.

It has started me thinking about how I can apply a similar model in my own classroom, though I have to admit that it isn’t easy to let go of many of the teacher driven techniques that I’m comfortable with!

I finally got a chance to work through the Moodle toolkit yesterday. I have to admit that I’d been putting it off, because the last time that I tried to work through Moodle I was a little overwhelmed. At the time, I tried to download it straight from the official Moodle website, and build everything from scratch. Fortunately, working with an existing shell is much much easier! Adding a discussion forum was much easier than I anticipated, and of course adding a basic introduction was no problem either.

After this short activity I’m feeling much better about the course that we have to develop later on, though I still anticipate spending a great deal of time on it. One thing that I’m not sure about is the whole look and feel of the student view, and I’m not sure how difficult it will be to find a theme that I’m happy with. I also tend not to like things that are too structured as I like to have options to make freestyle changes, but at this point in time it looks to me like Moodle may not allow that. That being said, I’m looking forward to finding out for myself!

Welcome to my ETEC 565 blog. I have very little blogging experience, but this is where I plan to reflect on my progress through ETEC 565.