Throughout the ETEC 565 course, I believe that I have been able to meet the objectives I set out at the beginning of the class. One of my goals has been to gain exposure to different technological tools. Through the Wiki Collaboration activity and Digital Story activity I was able to gain familiarity with tools which might be helpful in my teaching context. Despite the confusion surrounding my group’s use of the Wiki tool in Blackboard I was able to see in other groups how it could be used. Likewise, through the Digital story activity, I was able to see different video tools used by other students. I was able to see and learn about: Pixtoon, Emaze, Edpuzzle, Storyline 2,Go Animate, Audacity,Jing, Geogebra, and Videoscribe. Through the discussions about the digital stories I was able to get a short review of the advantages and disadvantages of the various tools. This was very helpful.
Another goal for this course was to learn how to set up an online course. Through assignments two and three I felt that I have achieved this objective. Through the use of Teacher Training Videos and a tutorial provided by the course I was able to create the architecture for our group’s course. This process demonstrated the advantages and challenges of using the LMS Moodle. We found that Moodle had a lot of useful tools, for example quizzes and a discussion forum, that were easy to set up. The challenges I found were the limitations of the various theme templates, the uploading of videos and the navigation through the LMS. I felt that there was little flexible and ability to change the various theme templates. I found it frustrating that the video upload function didn’t work. Originally I was going to attach a link to an image, but this would have taken the viewer away from the page. My group member, Jesse pointed me in the direction of a code writing website that allowed me to embed the video manually. Through the tutorial provided by the course I was able to create navigation buttons. I thought that this was something that should be easier to create in the LMS. All of these challenges made the creation of the LMS more time consuming. However ultimately I was very happy with the final product. I was pleased with the clean design look that the course had. There were a few compromises with the layout that I would change if I were doing the course on my own. One idea would be to create an introductory page for the start of the content module and having a contents page with just the navigation buttons to clean up the design. The work I did on the LMS will be of use to me in my professional practice as I plan to try to set up a digital citizenship course of my own at school.
In the ETEC 565 course, I felt that through organization, materials and activities I had many valuable learning experiences. The readings provided the context to develop discussion among my classmates. It was interesting to learn from other students experiences. I felt that perhaps the most valuable was the creating of the LMS modules. Working with the LMS provided very valuable experiential learning. While working with a group, it also deepened my proficiency in using google tools for creating documents and discussion. As google classroom is now being used in my school board I feel more confident using it now.
The use of the wordpress course content site outside the Blackboard LMS was useful to me as it was easier to navigate and i could more easily access it rather than going through the password protected site. All this combined to create a very stimulating learning environment.