Accessibility is something I’ve been thinking about a lot at work recently because I’m creating e-learning modules that will include some narration and audio clips. I was happy to see that Adobe Captivate now comes with a Closed Captioning feature. However, this isn’t going to help people who have low vision or blindness to navigate the reading sections. In order to keep our file size down, I’ve chosen to use voice-over usually at the beginning and end of the modules, not throughout. Reading the accessibility guidelines has got me thinking about whether or not we should include narration throughout. The challenge with this is time. Creating quality voice-over is time consuming. Matching it to the appropriate content is time consuming. And syncing it with the Closed Captioning is time consuming. I’m not yet sure what the solution will be.
We have a lot of emphasis on using plain language at work. Despite my best efforts, some things always slip through. For my current work I have a group of volunteers from our target audience who are reviewing the content as I develop it. Their feedback on the level of language and the particular vocabulary we use is so useful. They are our jargon watchdogs, and I appreciate their help with this. It’s easy (for me) to develop a blind spot for these things once familiar the content.
Natalie, the lovely blogger from Calgary I interviewed for my digital story has posted a link to my Yodio file on her blog. In her post, she also talked about her experience getting an email from me, being interviewed, etc. It’s interesting to read it from her perspective, and so great to see that she’s been posting a lot recently!
mLearning offers truly anytime, anyplace learning. I can imagine a number of excellent applications for workplace learning, and in a past role would have loved to implement this.
However, there still seem to be so many limitations. First, for students there is the cost barrier. In a workplace, this might not be as significant an issue, but the there are others. It is difficult to format the content without knowing exactly what type of screen people will use to view it. In addition, download speeds can be slow for large amounts of content, or slow enough to interrupt the learning experience. It requires custom design, so it doesn’t seem like it’s just a matter of transferring existing materials over. Much like the classroom to online conversion, there are many factors to consider, and it becomes a completely new learning experience.
I was somewhat surprised that accessing Vista from by iPhone was so easy. However, as soon as I tried to open a discussion forum message and found that new windows were opened, I started to lose my place. The speed when connected via my home wifi was good, but not amazing, and it seemed that the pages reloaded every time I clicked a link.
If I was taking a course in Moodle, I’d be curious to try mTouch, the Moodle app available for $2.99. After reading the description, I wasn’t clear about what was required on the admin side to optimize for the app.
After spending days working out my e-learning page designs and the Moodle splash page design, I’m ever so glad this isn’t my full-time job! It’s enough to figure out what goes in the middle of the page, let alone dealing with site design, CSS (which I thought would be a snap to implement), anticipating all the possible navigational elements you might need, etc.
I’ve never had to design a site from scratch, so thinking through all the possible navigational elements and deciding how to categorize the content is a big job. And design is decidedly not one of my strong points. I get hung up on colours and fonts, and lose site of the bigger issues. I’m thankful for the ever-growing list of WordPress templates available that allow us to update our sites and fiddle with only the small elements of the design.
However, the thing I find more helpful than checklists and tips is looking at the sites I like and analyzing what it is that makes them easy and appealing to use. Looking at professional sites like the BBC it’s interesting to see how they deal with large amounts of information an multiple graphics. The aforementioned Wordpress templates can also be good guidance for simple sites. But in the end, I think it’s just practice. Which I obviously need more of!
It’s finally done! I do love storytelling tools, but it is with some relief that I’m posting this. After a couple of false starts it is good to have that final product.
The idea for this story came from the dawning realization that much of my content is dry. Really dry. It clearly needs a personal story to give it life. I had initially imagined that I would be able to find someone from within my work network who uses social media to share health information. When I couldn’t find someone, I turned to Google and found links on the False Creek Healthcare Centre site to patient blogs. Natalie Ross, a young woman from Calgary, kindly agreed to be interviewed about the blog she started after being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.
Please see the Digital Story page for the complete Reflection.
The social media & learning wiki activity this week resulted in a tangible product, and pushed the group to reach a shared understanding. Threaded discussions seem better at supporting people to maintain their individual and opposing views. In the wiki format, while we can recognize those different views, we are forced to be more specific about our ideas and to negotiate with others to have our ideas included. While I don’t think this kind of negotiation necessarily occurred in our wiki this week, it is something I’ve experienced when using Google Docs for group projects. Another advantage of this format is that we all take something with us that is stronger than we could have created alone.
One of the challenge is to ensure that everyone takes part and has their ideas heard. With such a large group, it’s easy to become an observer. And it is also a different way to work, which requires its own rules and etiquette. For example, if we disagree with someone’s ideas or the way way they’ve expressed that idea, is it OK to rewrite it or delete it without first discussing it, or are there other steps we should follow? I think establishing an understanding about these before embarking on long-term group collaborations would help to support the collaborative experience.
I finished the next installment in the ePortfolio assignment earlier today. It’s on the ‘Assessment‘ page now, and I’m looking forward to the Digital Story!
I finally finished my proposal, and am looking forward to moving on to the next module!
Terry Anderson’s “Towards a Theory of Online Learning” is our next reading. I’ve read it in previous courses, and every time I there’s something new to take away. And each time I’m reminded how great it is that the book it’s a part of is freely accessible. Thank you, Dr. Anderson!
Last week I re-acquainted myself with Windows Movie Maker, and as always ended up spending hours playing around with it. It is so addictive — finding images and video clips, searching for a soundtrack, and tweaking the timing and effects. What could have been a 20-minute task quickly expanded to take much more!
However, the challenge I always have is burning a DVD that can be played on a regular DVD player rather than a computer. While I think I may have got it this time, without a TV and DVD player to check it on, I’ll have to trust that it worked. 🙂
I just spent a few minutes setting doing the Home page exercise in the Moodle Toolkit. Because I’ve used Moodle before it was very quick, but I was reminded of a couple of things.
First, it doesn’t take long to forget the intricacies of how a system works. After a few months I was scratching my head and thinking, “I know there’s a way to do______, but where?”
Second, no system is perfect. After repeated attempts to delete a News Forum from my home page, it was still there! Maybe the system just didn’t believe me when I answered “Yes” to “Are you absolutely sure you want to completely delete Forum ‘News forum’?” Or maybe there’s a hidden reason it doesn’t work, but regardless it refuses to die.
I look forward to getting back into Moodle development and rediscovering those temporarily forgotten features.
