I made a start with this course slowly by making a number of entries into my blog after setting it up. I consider myself a non-creative person so looking at what others do is the best way I learn about new tools. As this course has progressed, I keep having to remind myself to add links to Diigo rather than creating pdf of the pages! I also think Diigo would be a useful activity for out IT students to create as part of the IT Orientation week.Continue reading →
I thoroughly enjoyed the video provided. I found the changing idea around trespass an excellent way of looking at the changing nature of copyright. As a student at school and also at the tertiary level, I had never heard about the concept of copyright and referencing in my assignments. I had been wondering why it hadn’t been an issue back then and I think I have finally figured it out. First though, what is the law in NZ?
I wanted to use a question from a book in my class but I didn’t want to type it up myself.
Solution: I used my DocScan app to scan the part of the page which contained the question I wanted to. This was easy enough to do – I opened the book, started the app, lined up the scanner and took the picture. Then I selected the area I wanted and saved it.
Next I uploaded it to my dropbox using the dropbox app and downloaded it to the computer in the room I was teaching in.
Piece of cake!
This course is the first time I have really used a blog before. I did set one up years ago but it didn’t really go anywhere because I didn’t know why I had one – I just did as others seemed to be setting them up! I think that is why I haven’t introduced blogs as part of my courses – without a purpose, they have no purpose. I did get comments from some of my students this semester that they didn’t want to use a blog again but I think that is more to do with getting to grips with what they can achieve. Another student I was talking to was using his blog for everything now as he found it a great way to document what he was doing for his different courses regardless of whether it was a requirement to keep a blog or not. Continue reading →
I was unable to attend the organised Second Life Activity however I have used Second Life before.
I first got involved back in 2006. I wasn’t sure initially how to use Second Life for education but I could see how useful it could be to meet up with people from different parts of NZ or even the world. What I do like about the virtual environment is the ability to ‘see’ the person you are ‘talking to’ (everything was done by chat windows). The disadvantage back then was that those who could type fasts tended to have the opportunity to say the most. Another disadvantage was the lag and the inability to have too many people going through the same IP address.
Friday 11am NZ time I sign in to the synchronous session. I haven’t been involved with one of these before. I thought about the last one but it was at 7am NZ time and that was a bit too early for me as it is holiday time here at the moment! The previous one was at 11am but this semester I am teaching 10-12. So this week was a perfect opportunity for me to see what it was all about.
A while ago I noticed a link on the MCCPOT Diigo RSS feed about Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. Having known about the orignal Bloom’s Taxonomy I was interested in seeing how it had been updated for the Digital world. I was already aware that students coming through schools now would bring with them their computer skills but I had never thought about what these skills are. I found detailed information about this at Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. Continue reading →
It is possible to embed Jing into WordPress but it certainly isn’t the most straightforward thing to do.
As I was trying to embed Jing in directly, I noticed that it did seem to allow the embedding of You Tube and a few other types. Using this hint at an idea and some general web searching of the problem, I decided to upload my Jing to You Tube. Simple you might think. but no it wasn’t – it seems that You Tube doesn’t like .swf files. In fact, most of my playing up to now (playing is my word for experimenting but means that I have no idea what I’m trying to do really) had been trying to upload the original Jing file. I had tried to upload to Vimeo but no go – after it had ‘uploaded’ there was nothing to play. Again I had uploaded my .swf file. Continue reading →
I have successfully created my first Jing. I decided to show one of my current courses which I use Moodle for. The course I choose to discuss is my SYD200 course on Systems Development. The set out of this course is my preferred method of set out as explained in my presentation. I also use other set out methods for different courses but that is because I share the course with another tutor so I don’t feel I have the same ability to modify it. This is something I will have to either work on or work around. I have tried to embed the video using Vodpod but the screen size was too small and I couldn’t seem to enlarge it. I then uploaded it to YouTube but only the audio was uploaded. As I haven’t found any other way to embed the video so I have added the link to screencast.
Overall result 13 which pretty much puts me in the middle of the continuum of 5-20. Summing up my result is that I prefer to use small group discussions to maintain interest in the material and covering the content. Roles is a split between Instruction and students actively creating their own knowledge. For assessments, while they are used for testing student’s knowledge and application, I see them as more important as a learning tool for students (provided they earn enough to pass the course of course). I like to think of my assessments to be straightforward enough to get 40% (minimum mark to pass a course is 50% overall, but for each assessment there is a minimum mark of 40% as well). Continue reading →
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Sandra Dyke 