Week 24 catchup: Summarise, Assess and Contribute

So I have found my way to the end of the course.  Below are the links to my blog postings for this course.

I have loved this course from the moment I was sent the link to it.  The syllabus promised an interesting mix between theory and practical.  I love trying out new things but I need to be guided in this area – I need someone to suggest something to me and to give me a bit of introduction as to how or why I should do it.  Then I feel that I am in a position to play with it and learn how I can use and apply it.

Would I recommend this course to others?  Most definitely.  Anyone using or wanting to add web technology to their course delivery will find this course an exciting introduction to ‘what is out there’.  I want to come back and keep playing and learning and adding to my courses – even though I teach face-to-face.  It doesn’t matter how the course is taught, the tools and ideas apply to it all.

I have prepared a final video on how I have applied my new-found knowledge to one of my courses.

Week 23 Catchup: Presentation

My presentation for week 23

I have put together a powerpoint and uploaded it to Slideshare but unfortunately some of the links don’t appear to be working when the presentation is played online even though they all work when the powerpoint is downloaded!!

Week 22 catchup: Personal Learning Networks

I have just watched Dean Shareski, Sharing: The Moral Imperative and his last statement of ‘what will you share today’ is what this post is going to be about.  The last couple of weeks have seen me updating my Access 2010 tutorial (from the 2007 version) and changing some of the other parts to show them better.  Over the last few years I have put together a few tutorials related to people I have been working with as part of my teaching and tutorial jobs.  One day I finally got myself sorted and created a google site for these tutorials. 

Week 21 catchup: Online Education Theory

Here I go thinking that I can quickly finish this task as I’m on catch up mode big time.  I should have known better!!  Having watched the video and read the articles, I am left thinking about Issac Asimov’s Foundation series.  A lot of what was said makes me think that we have to be very careful where we go with learning. 

Week 20 Catchup: Does the Digitial Classroom Enfeeble the Mind

This heading caught my attention. It is something I have wondered about for a while.

A friend posted an interesting statement on Facebook in relation to her son not knowing who IBM is.  How can someone not know who IBM is became the issue. Was it because he spent too much time on the computer? The conversation continued during our Saturday morning coffee get together.  The last comment in that post was probably the most important – “It’s the Google’s and Facebook’s that are relevant today”.  We knew about IBM in the ‘old days’ because we could see evidence of them about us.  These days, IBM doesn’t seem to have the same presence.  The early PCs which were on the market were usually advertised as IBM clones, but not any more.  Times change.  Is this good or is this bad? 

Week 19 Catchup: Web-Enhanced, Hybrid and Open Classes

Open Classes

I have started by reading the using online technologies article and am only page 5 and I’m already struck with the thought that this is what this course is all about.   I remember seeing a map of where all the participants of this course come from and eventually I located it on the distributed activities page:

I think the heading for the map identifies one of the difficulties of open online classes. However the use of audio and video options as discussed in this course can certainly make distance seem a lot less, especially for someone sitting in New Zealand where our holidays and seasons are so different from those of you in the USA!!!

Week 18 catchup: course management system

NMIT uses Moodle as its LMS so that is what I am most familiar with.  Some support is available on using Moodle, however my experience is that tutors are pretty much left to their own devices to set up their courses.  There is a generic course shell available these days or else the previous year’s course can be copied over (which is handy because all of the resources come across as well).  I must admit that I haven’t experimented much with what is available – really because of the time required to explore it properly.  Since being involved in this course I have been introduced to Blackboard as well and I think from what I have seen of that I am glad I use Moodle!!   If found the Moodle Tool Guide impressive and I intend on printing it off so I can refer to it more regularly.

Week 17 catchup: Classroom Management

I have decided to use Audioboo to provide some feedback on this unit.  I haven’t used Audioboo before and thought I would give it a go as until you try something, you don’t know how it could be used in the future.  Another reason I decided to use this was to try to avoid having to convert an Audacity file.  The sign up was nice and easy because I used my Twitter account.  This saved having to set up yet another username (even though I do try to use the same one each time to reduce the different combinations I have).  Before getting started, I thought I would view the getting started video – it didn’t work.  Then I thought I would have a look at the Help screens – but they didn’t help neither!  So I just decided to give it a go.  The 3 minute limit certainly goes quickly and I had to restart my recording.  While I am writing this, my audioboo is being uploaded so at this stage I don’t actually know what is going to happen next.  I am assuming that I will get a url for it which I can paste into this post – I see that I can’t just upload the audio file directly into my post unless I upgrade.

Week 16 catchup: Our Online Students

Thoughts on the Articles

I enjoyed the links to the articles which were provided.  The Jakob Nielson article was interesting.  I have come across his website usability articles in the past.  It was interesting to see how he exposed myths about how young people use websites and I intend on using this as part of my system development course when we look at website usability. I have noticed how students use websites and their reliance on Google searches to find what they want but that they aren’t necessarily very good at using their results to find the answer they want.  I must admit that I’m not very good at doing Google searches myself but I can follow a links and keywords from one site to another (and I often start with Wikipedia for my searches) and I tend to persevere until I find what I want.  Which brings me on to the second article of Growing up Digital, Wired for Distraction.  The BIT course I teach on issues laptops to students to use for their studies.  This means that every class sees students with their laptops open and when I walk around the room I find students in and out of various social media sites and often they have multiple sites open at the same time; usually they are quick enough to switch to what they are supposed to be doing when I approach but I know they aren’t totally focussed on what they are supposed to be doing.  It is interesting to see how the various age groupings of students use their laptops.  Generally (and this is a massive generalisation) the older the student, the more focussed they are on what they are supposed to be doing, while the younger ones are more likely to be multi tabbing through social media sites.  Another thing I have noticed with the students and their laptops is that if they have other assignments to hand in they will work on them in my class and then switch to what we are doing!!!

Week 14 catchup: Audio and Video

Slidecast

I created a short PowerPoint for part of a unit we had just covered.  The PowerPoint uses mainly 1 slide and I found it easy to add talk around the slide however I kept using the mouse pointer to illustrate what I was talking about.  Of course, the slidecast doesn’t show this so maybe a different form of screen capture would be useful.

To add the audio, I downloaded Audacity.  I then had to figure out how to turn the Audacity file into an mp3 format.  The Audacity website provided a link to the lame mp3 converter but I was unable to download the required file.  Fortunately I found some information on how to convert the file using iTunes and as I now have an iPad, I also have iTunes on my computer.  To create the slidecast, I followed the instructions on the slideshare website.  I am glad my PowerPoint was small as it didn’t take long to upload it.  Adding the audio was straight forward.  Here is my Slidecast: