Month: June 2009

For the activity I have posted a topic into a discussion forum titled, ‘Week One Forum – Logging in British Columbia’.  The activity is designed to inspire students to think about their future as woodworkers in a larger context.  They will be working with wood, but that wood doesn’t just grow magically in a lumber yard, it involves logging.  The forum wants students to use what they know, or have heard about logging to express an opinion about the practice in B.C.  The forum is not looking for a right answer and for the age group the course is designed for, I’m not expecting deeply philosophical answers, the question is designed to make students think about the ‘big picture’.  Students will be expected, as part of their mark, to contribute to the weekly forum.  With this first forum my hope is that the question is broad enough, and open ended enough that opinions on logging practices in B.C. will be quite varied and that students will be inspired to respond to each other with varying opinions.  The intention is that if that happens it will plant the seed for future forums and if I can get students to feel comfortable expressing opinions and arguments it will carry on throughout the rest of the class.  My only concern with this forum, and any future forums is with forum etiquette, however since the forum will be available to look at all the time I will be able to monitor the discussion and make sure it stays civil.

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I knew pretty much from the beginning that the two tools I wanted to use were a chat and a forum.  I’ve had experience in being a participant using both of these tools and I think they both compliment each other.  The chat I’ve enjoyed if for no other reason than it lets me feel that I’m not alone.  The feeling of isolation is one that I’ve struggled with throughout the MET program.  Even a chat that doesn’t go particularly well can at least make me aware that there are other people in the class.  A chat that goes well can be a really great experience letting you get instant feedback to points that have been made.  Like a face to face class the chat can often quickly clear up any confusion I may have had about an assignment or some other aspect of the class.  As for the discussion forums, I can’t see how you could have an online class without including discussion forums.  This is where so much of the learning takes place, by reading and responding to what other people in the class are thinking about a particular topic.  Before i made the final decision I did consider some other tools.  I thought of making the asynchronous tool a Wiki, however in the end I realized that I would be using the wiki in the same way as a discussion forum so it didn’t really make sense not to  just use the discussion forum.  Even though Moodle has a built in chat I did look at some other chat tools.  I liked the Google chat tool but I didn’t want students to have to leave the course site so in the end I decided to use the built in tool that Moodle.  I experimented with both of the tools within the LMS site and they both worked well.  I didn’t really like any of the four layouts of the Moodle discussion forum as much as the layout for the WebCt forums, but it’s not a serious flaw, it will work fine.

Well this didn’t come easily to me at all.  In fact i had a lot of confusion about this one.  I signed into the Wimba Live classroom account as instructed, o.k., that was easy.  Wimba tested my set-up and that went fine.  So far so good.  Then a new page opened up saying ‘Welcome to ETEC565’  at which point i was faced with the question, ‘now what?’  It looked like a chat program but it’s hard to know for sure unless you actually have someone to chat with.  I tried typing in, ‘this is a test’ and was informed in the little box, ‘you tell etec565, this is a test’  ‘etec565 tells you, this is a test’  which i suppose means that i’m talking to myself (again).  I did play with some of the buttons and it looks like it could be very useful, if everyone you were communicating with had all the right stuff, mic and headsets for example.  I also liked the white board but i’m not sure how much use it would really get in a group chat.  One of the things i liked the most was that you could add a web page in a separate box.  Having been taken away from Vista more than once for clicking on a link within a chat, that seemed really useful.

One thing i am having a problem with though is the reflection assignment for Wimba.  The assignment says, ‘Write an entry for your course weblog about your experience here (on your “Home” page and posting a new entry). How labour intensive was the process? What worked well? What was challenging? What surprised you’.  I’m not really sure what’s being asked.  My experiences where?  On the Wimba chat?  How labour intensive was what process?  Maybe this will become clear later and i’ll be able to respond better to this, but for now, to coin a much used phrase, ‘ I don’t get it’

Took a giant leap backwards and went through the instructions for setting up the weblog.  Sure enough, there is was, and not even hidden, instructions on adding a new post.