Paul's ETEC 565 Experience & Domain

Well, I have really started diving into my Toolbox now, and Blogs were the first I wanted to comment on.  The short and sweet of it all is that I really do enjoy this blogging thing.  I have used Blogger on a number of occasions at school and have introduced it to numerous colleagues and students.  Also I have now spent some time going through Stephen Downes’ blog OLDaily and really see how much he enjoys it.  Obviously, blogging suprises me on how some people have turned this into a daily personal passion bordering on crack-habit.

I am much more familiar with blogs and their potential now;  especially since I am taking ETEC 522 concurrently with 565.   I am planning on working on a portfolio for 590 using WordPress here on the UBC server and I really am impressed with the level of adaptability and options provided for bloggers.  While I won’t be lighting up the blog world with nightly updates on my life I can finally start to feel comfortable in creating my own personal dashboard of blogs to carry on personally and professionally with my life.  Blog ON!

I finished my digital story mash-up, taking data from the web and putting it into a story for my students at school.   This was a rewarding experience b/c it was totally new for me.  I could have used other presesntation software tools I was familiar with but I see the value in exploring the new.  I chose to use Xtranormal: a text to movie software.

I made some glaring errors in creating my project by using some sets and actors that were considered “premiums” to the software and would have cost me $$ to publish.  I initially wanted to have my story take place in the jail scene with a police man and a little snitty know-it-all girl (personal experiences with cyberbullying kids).  I figured the goal was to use the new tools in a way that could be implemented for free in classrooms and I will likely pursue a free teacher and student set of accounts.  So I started fresh, and kept an eye to avoid the premiums, and I was quite happy with how things turned out.  Check out my cyberbulying story on my Story page.

Overall, I see tremendous value in supporting students to use mash-up tools like these to build web presence and confidence and to instill their own creativity alongside their learning.  This year I was able to introduce the kids to PREZI and ANIMOTO as extra tools for creating interesting presentations and their confidence and skills astounded me.  A lot of them started creating their own personal presentations on topics of their choice outside of classes…the learning continues.  After all, let’s light the spark and let them build the fire!

Questions?

After you have completed the wiki activity, take a few minutes to consider how the group collaboration and discussion within the wiki space differed from what you are accustomed to in a standard threaded discussion space (like the one we’ve been using throughout the course in WebCT Vista). What kinds of advantages do you see in using wikis for group collaboration? What are some of the challenges of working with others in a collaborative wiki space?