Matt's ETEC 565A ePortfolio

I’ve been exploring the world of mobile learning technology. I have to admit that I was extremely biased going into this one, though I’m not sure why. I am pretty comfortable with technology in general, I love my phone and I am ridiculously busy. You might think that this would make me the ideal candidate for mobile learning technologies and yet I approached this with a real sense of dread. Maybe it was because I was prepared for the worst or maybe today’s technologies really are good enough to make it work or maybe I was just glad to be getting out of the house, but in any event  I was pleasantly surprised with the experience

The deficiencies were not really a big surprise:

• Small viewing surface requiring constant scrolling and zooming
• Slower loading times
• Small keyboard makes typing long sections onerous
• I experienced a limited functionality when working with moodle (for example formatting tables seemed impossible…though this could be a browser issue specific to Safari…)

However the pleasant surprises were many:

• Although slower loading than my home computer, I was impressed with the loading times (on wi-fi that is…3G was pretty awful). As I said I was expecting it to be pretty painful so when I was able to log in, check a few discussion threads and be on my way in minutes I was fairly impressed. I did find that vista seemed to load more slowly than moodle and moving between links had noticeable lag.
• Though I had expected to be too frustrated to even attempt something as complicated as editing my Moodle site, I was able to make some minor tweaks with relative ease.  I’m not sure that I would want to do  much more than simple text editing, copy/pasting or adding a photo, but still it was nice to have the option.
• It may not make my wife happy, but I found that being able to access my schoolwork from away from home was oddly reassuring. Being able to get some schoolwork done if I have the spare time could be a real boon.

Overall I have to admit that this was a positive experience. I can’t imagine using my phone for more involved tasks such as writing long posts or more complicated editing. However, for quick access, reading and posting short discussions or emails and messaging it is a valuable tool to have in the arsenal.

By there very nature, wikis are more open ended and flexible than discussion forums. However this is the source of both the strengths and weaknesses of wikis. Enabling anyone to add or edit any part of the document  allows for ideas to become more and more refined over time. It is easier to end up with a finished product that incorporates all of the best ideas and without other distracting text. While the same thing can happen in a discussion forum, it generates a string of ideas rather than a single collection. These threads require frequent summarizing which can be come repetitive or can even result in valuable ideas being missed altogether.

The free form nature of the wiki is also its biggest drawback. Without the forced structure of a forum it is up to members to control the format. If there are multiple editors it can become unwieldy and confusing if everyone does not follow the same structural guidelines. Overall I would tend to think that wikis are better suited for smaller groups.

I am building a new website for the brand new Physics AP course that I am teaching this year. The course is a blended model. Students access materials, worksheets and notes online and then we meet face to face once per week for tutorials and labs. Before jumping in to it i made a quick checklist of the things that I would like to accomplish with this site.In order of importance they are:

1)It needs to go up immediately!

2) Post notes and links to video lectures

3) Link to materingphysics.com for online assignments and quizzes

4) Link to additional resources such as applets and simulations which may help students.

5) Provide a forum for students to discuss problems and concerns

6) Increase avenues of student teacher communication

Overall I think that my needs would be best served by constructing a course on an LMS, such as moodle. However I have ruled out building a full-blown course on an LMS for a few reasons.

• Time is at a premium for me this year. Between teaching full time with 4 (count them 4!!!) new courses to prep and my MET coursework, I will not have the time to learn an LMS and create a course that I will be happy with right away.
• Since this is a blended course I will still be meeting with students face to face and so communication with students should not be a major concern
• We will be learning to use moodle later on in ETEC 565 and I just don’t want to spoil the surprise !

For these reasons, I have decided to build a standard website to complement my course. I have a limited experience building websites with Adobe Dreamweaver but I have decided to go a simpler route. Since my course site has very minimal requirements in terms of functionality (it is really just a nexus which links to other resources) I don’t feel it necessary to get into coding html, hosting my own site or using FTP.  I have decided to build my site through googlesites for this year as a prototype with the idea that next year I will transfer it to a more powerful platform.

And….VOILA! https://sites.google.com/site/physicsap123/home

Like I said this is a bare-bones project for the time being. Having said that googlesites was definitely the way to go! I had the initial site up and running in about 30 mins. Another half our or so tracking down resources and linking them and I already have site that will see me through the first unit of my course.  I am happy to keep things simple for now because in a way, the less stuff I add, the less chance that my website might suck.

Wow! My very first blog post, ever…I’m so excited I think I will play with the formatting tools… 😉

 Ok now that I have that out of my system, I had better find something worth reflecting on. Luckily there was planety of good insight in this week’s readings. In particular I quite liked the ideas laid out by Bates and Poole in Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. I decided to see how two of the technologies that I am looking to implement in my teaching this year stack up to the questions raised by the SECTIONS criteria.

The tools that I am considering using as part of my teaching are www.masteringphyics.com and www.physics-online.com.

I was very pleased that I was able to answer in favour of these technologies with respect to nearly all of the criteria. They both seem particularily well suited for the Students and teaching and Learning criteria. They are very appropriate both in content and delivery as well as fitting in to my own current teaching practices.

It is perhaps a sign of the times that nearly all of my concerns were centered on costs. While I have been able to secure funding for this year for both resources, there are simply no guarantees going forward that the money will always be there. I was impressed that the costs sections takes into account teacher time as a cost – thank you! So it should be. It would be devatating to invest a great deal of time and effort to implement these technologies only to have them snatched away by budgetary shortfalls.

The only trouble is I will likely not no the true cost of implementation until firmly ensconced in it…let’s hope they live up to expectations!