Paul's ETEC 565 Experience & Domain

I am not a crazy social web 2.0 person; at least not yet.  About a year or two ago I figured I should log in and make an attempt at understanding the life sucking embrace of connecting and making “friends” with everyone and anyone to improve my self-esteem.  It didn’t go so well.  I backed out and neglected all the friend requests, retreating back to my family, my school and the B&B.  In evaluating different TOS agreements b/w social networking sites, I focussed mainly on the controversial Facebook.  It surprised me the level of ownership they take of members content.  It seems they own all the content provided to their webspace to virtually use as they see fit.

While I do plan a return to the explore some networking aspects of FB, I will be very careful with my privacy settings and maintaining my “space” from students and others I don’t want to share with.  Here is a quick clip to intiate some of these settings for security and privacy.

Well Wimba definitely surprised me! For synchronous and asynchronous communication this product was brilliant. I have used IMs, Elluminate and Skype before but I was very impressed with Wimba right from the get go in this course: Introducing ourselves (async). Then in our first group assignment we worked in the classroom together and I found it a great way to be in “sync” with my peers. Lastly, I was most unfortunate to be unavailble to participate during the online seminars, however, I was able to download the seminars and feel like a part of the original class ~ I even commented a couple times, but alas the moment was gone!

Wimba is a terrific and strong product for the market in supporting both methods of communication and it is surprisingly easy to participate with. If I was delivering a course online I would find this an invaluable tool for myself and my students.

Creating a webpage was not a problem for me…stylistically and creatively however to create a page that doesn’t suck…a different story!

Well, I have taught html modules in the past using both Notepad and Frontpage Express (yeech) and now I am trying to learn Dreamweaver on my own.  So far I have found this quite challenging as I tend to struggle with CSS and would like to incorporate more of this into my projects.

The link Jennifer Kyrnin I found quite helpful and the Q&A by the University of Adberdeen likewise.  That being said this will still be a project to learn more about.  I was surprised at how little of this stuff I have retained and how ultimately basic my knowledge and skills are.  Obviously this is definitely a goal for me to improve upon and learning more DW will be a big step for me.

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?

Well, DVD Authoring is eeeeasy!

I have a great new program called Roxio Creator Business DVD.  It isn’t AS simple as iDVD, but it seems very Paul -friendly and it works!

Total time to burn pictures and short clip of  “menwithtalent” ~a beerdrinking montage/spoof on america’s got talent    > 5mins.

Two things surprised me:

1. how easy the process was, but I have burnt a few disks in the past.  Usually, when I burn disks now I am backing up pictures and I use the built in Picasa photo burner. Honestly, the only challenging part of this task was finding where the program was stored on my XP programs menu.
2. the video capture software as part of the Roxio suite.  Here I was able to engage and record on my webcam, a short video of me talking and looking silly.  Very cool and good to know!

Lastly, to pose a question I did try to upload the media file for the “talent” but it won’t play in the page unless I link it to Youtube, is that the only way to get it to play?  Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Hi there,

this is my first attempt at using wordpress.  I am exctited and think this will be a great experience and outlet for me.

Hope you enjoy my effortsl

PQ