Assessed Activity 8.1 – Term Reflection

1. What did I learn?

WOW.. What DID I learn!! A whole lot!! SO Much!

I started this course hoping to learn the unexpected and reflecting on the privacy issues of blogging and microblogging. At the end of the first term I can confirm that there was a great deal of the unexpected. I am now in a position where I feel I have a digital toolbox, full of interesting tools, ready to use on a real world task.. the Project.

Privacy was and is a recurring theme. My most recent experience is the incessant emails I receive, now that I have a LinkedIn Account. The concept of connecting with other professionals is a powerful idea, especially for new graduates, however, it is very demanding of your attention with at least 3 emails a day. Perhaps LinkedIn has some privacy settings that I have not found. It still remains that the level of digital privacy must lie with the individual. It follows that the use of digital tools must be evaluated for the purpose at hand and re-evaluated as your own situation changes.

While pondering these issues and many others we covered many interesting subjects, including various pedagogies, the influence of digital technologies on various types of educational institutions, the technologies that form our PLNs, wikis, Google, blogging, the Cloud, instructional design and ePortfolios. That’s quite a list!

2. Things that I liked!

What I liked most is pushing my own digital boundaries. That great feeling of producing something in the wiki or blog that looked great and that only hours previously seemed very confusing and mind boggling.

I enjoyed discovering that pushing boundaries means that sometimes things break and that’s OK. There is always a way (well almost always) around the problem which stimulates mental activity that is very rewarding especially if you find a clever way to do something.

I also very much enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere in the class and the fun we all had learning.

3. Things that could be improved!

I think the single best improvement to the DLT class is timetabling classes so that the two sessions are on different days.

• With both sessions being on the same day there was no time to digest the first session or research what was taught before arriving at the second session, particularly if you are working full time. This meant the value of the afternoon session was often significantly reduced.
• For those of us that are working, timetabling 3 hours on a single day also puts pressure on the remainder of the day rather than spread the load over the week. From my discussions with class mates, the Grad Dip IT students are often employed full time and study part time.
• Having both sessions on a Monday means losing a week of classes each time there is a public holiday rather than just 1 session.  This problem will grow if and when public holidays are ‘Mondayised’ such as Anzac Day.

It has been a thoroughly enjoyable term and I am looking forward to the remainder of the course. Thanks Michael.

Assessed Activity 7.2 Online Courseware

Follow the link to an example of Online Courseware used to teach Italian

One World Italiano

http://www.oneworlditaliano.com/english/italian/italian-course-free-online.htm

• One World Italiano is designed to teach Italian to students ranging from beginner to advanced levels. The Online Course is a self contained, self directed collection of teaching modules containing various activities. Each module contains conversation, grammar, aspects of interest (including cultural), and a quiz as a form of assessment. It consists of 37 units which cover quite complex grammar constructions and therefore appears to be quite complete. An interesting aspect is that is is also available in French, German, Japanese and Italian!

This blog entry can also be found in the DLT class wiki OnLine Courseware examples by following the link;

http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Digital_Learning_Technologies/Online_Courseware_Examples/Home#General

Assessed Activity 7.1 ePortfolios – LinkedIn and Google Sites

ePortfolios

An ePortfolio can be many things to different people. If we were to deconstruct the word; ‘e’ represents electronic (of course), ‘port’ is to carry and ‘folio’ is a collection of work. So superficially it is a collection of work that can be carried with you electronically. I used the word ‘superficially’ because there is a lot more to an ePortfolio. ePortfolios not only contain documentation but they also consist of collaborative and reflective components. The combination of these 3 components sets ePortfolios apart from traditional portfolios. It allows this collection to be referred to as digital learning artefacts.

The 3 types of ePortfolio;

1. Learning
2. Assessment
3. Showcase

allow for emphasis to be placed on either learning (private or professional), goals and measured achievements (mostly private) or evidential profiling (professional). The ‘e” part is crucial in a digital learning environment as various ePortfolios can be easily maintained for different purposes, locally or even more portably in ‘the cloud’. The other notable point is the ability to take advantage of the enormous collection of digital tools to build the ePortfolio, bearing in mind that it is the content and combination of reflection, documentation and collaboration that makes the ePortfolio what it is.

LinkedIn Account

A linked in account is an example of evidential profiling and is almost always professionally oriented.

Follow the link to my LinkedIn Profile:

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=246273011&trk=tab_pro

Google Site

A google site can be just about anything you would like. A learning ePortfolio to record and reflect on your learning, an assessment ePortfolio to set and record personal goals and achievements or a showcase ePortfolio to express your personality, passions and professional experience for the purposes of employment opportunities.

Follow the link to my Google site where you will find a basic CV:

https://sites.google.com/site/marcoindlt/

NOTE: As with all publicly available material, privacy decisions need to be made. In this case, I have deliberately chosen to leave a light footprint in both of the profiles above that will be sufficient for this assessed activity. I may chose to develop one or both of these in the future.

Assessed Activity 5.1 Instructional Design Model Evaluation & Reflection

This week commenced with learning the theory behind 3 instructional design methodologies; ADDIE, OTARA and Prototyping. The first thing that struck me about the morning session was the similarity with Systems Analysis and Design. We learned that ADDIE was structured in a waterfall framework, OTARA was a table based methodology and Rapid Prototyping was cyclic in nature, reliant on feedback and repetitions.

The afternoon session involved the group design of a workshop to teach the use of an educational technology tool.

Task 1: Select the tool to be taught. This became a learning experience in itself. Arbitrary groups were required to communicate using a google docs whiteboard. Without the use of headsets this proved to be very challenging. Group members were not identified on the white board so it was near impossible to know who was editing what and how to stop overwriting. Having spent too long struggling with this, our suggested topic was already taken so we reverted to verbal communication to reach agreement. I think headsets are a must for this activity.

Task 2: Select the design model. The choice was made easy by the prepared selection of OTARA templates but on reflection I would still have selected OTARA. The main reasons are that it is not a waterfall type methodology, given the time frame prototyping was not practical and finally OTARA seemed a very straight forward, practical and self explanatory model. The tabular format made planning easy.

Task 3: Complete the design. The OTARA template was set up in a Google doc. Again the Google doc experience overshadowed the work at hand. Simultaneous editing of the document became the issue and forced group members to edit separate sections of the document to avoid typographical conflict. This resulted in the instructional design being disjointed. I think, in reality, a document like this would be edited over a longer time frame and allow the content to be edited and reviewed by individuals separately. This would allow for uniformity of design ideas and a coherent end result.

Overall, Steph did a great job overcoming unexpected technological “challenges” on the fly and introduced this subject material clearly and effectively. I feel I understand the OTARA model and again find by pushing our own technological boundaries we encounter problems, discover solutions and learn a whole lot more than just the subject matter at hand. It was a fun session and quite comical at times as learning should be!

Activity 6.2 Cloud Tools

Follow the link to see Edmodo, the cloud tool that I have explored and added to the class Cloud Tools/2103Activity wiki  page.

http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Digital_Learning_Technologies/Cloud_tools/2013Activity

Blog Post Activity 6.1 PLNs (Personal Learning Networks)

6.1.1 PLN Lecture Reflection

I enjoyed listening to Joyce Seitzinger’s presentation from last year. It highlighted the versatility of the technology that we are using. Not only was Joyce teaching from Melbourne to a class made up of students in various parts of Hawkes Bay and Gisborne in 2012, but she was teaching to our class in 2013 “in the future”.. I wonder if that crossed anyone’s mind before or during the class?

One of the most thought provoking elements of Joyce’s class was how to deal with the “information bloat”. So much information comes at you, it sometimes feels like a tidal wave, where most of it appears to wash over. For sometime now I have been wondering how to cope with this and how the next generation will cope. Personally twitter allows me to follow all my areas of interest but frankly I usually have more than 140 characters to ‘say’. Joyce raises the issue of over filtering and becoming enclosed in a filter bubble, however, this is exactly where the PLN comes into play. Your PLN has many parts and therefore many sources of information. Provided they are sufficiently broad-spectrum and not overly so, the information should be manageable.

Toward the end of the lecture (and it is a shame that time was against us) Joyce had referred to her work on dividing  a PLN into 4 categories (“faces”);

1. Staff room

2. Filing Cabinet

3. Portfolio

4. Newspaper

This is a logical division of sources of information and I think this would be a good starting point for organisation my own learning, knowledge and information. I thought the idea of bookmarking using Delicious was simply eye opening!! I hope there will be an opportunity  to hear more from Joyce in this area of her work.

This leads to to the question: With all the inputs from my PLN how will I get everything (anything) done? Well I believe the answer is simple and old fashioned. As with everything in life you need to find balance. It is a very personal issue and whether intended or otherwise, people make this decision every day. How much time to spend at work, travelling, relaxing, with friends and family, and when to fit the various aspects of my PLN?

6.1.2 My PLN Map

Follow the link to see my PLN (also shown below) which has been added to the class 2013MyPLN wiki page.

http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Digital_Learning_Technologies/Networking/2013MyPLN

6.1.3 Reflection on my PLN

Reflecting on my PLN below and my own personal concerns about information bloat, there are  parts of the proposed network that are familiar and that I use or interact with on a daily basis. In fact, this applies to most of my PLN. My PLN also shows technologies that I am not especially familiar with, which are the Google Ecosystem and Blogging (using WordPress, in this instance). I have included these with the intention of firstly, learning more about them and secondly, using them as a method of positioning myself at the leading edge of learning and technology itself. If I were to revisit this PLN in a year’s time it would be interesting to add new technologies that I am unaware of at present or that do not exist yet.

I don’t believe that this PLN alone will answer my concerns regarding information bloat and I will need to follow up on Joyce’s 4 Faces of Personal Learning Networks and other methods of managing and accessing information so that it is useful.

Blog Post Activity 4.3 Reflection on the new Class Configuration

The new pod configuration of the DLT classroom is a forward thinking approach to teaching. The move from a linear class has allowed much interaction and collaboration with class neighbours. Instead of  having access to immediate neighbours, conversations are taking place with all who are sitting at the pod and the neighbouring pod.

If there were no teaching done from the front of the class i.e not using the interactive whiteboard, completely circular pods would work well. One of my observations is that no one sits in the position where their back is to the white board. In future this position could be removed and pods of 180 or 270 degrees could be used, rather than the full 360°. Perhaps use larger arcs rather than pods?!

Another observation and my personal experience is that students tend not to sit in positions that are at the back of the class. This is because the large screens, while excellent to work from, obscure a clear line of sight to the white board. The lecturer’s desktop screen projection onto the whiteboard is difficult to read from that distance without the zoom function and more contrast adjustment. (Perhaps this reflects my fading eyesight!) Adobe Connect partially solves this problem by allowing you to follow the class from the desktop in front of you, but this ties up the screen or part of it, at least, and I am not sure this is the intent. Perhaps improved whiteboard technology will address this need in the future.

Activity 4.2: Adding Components to my User Page

Follow the link to learn & to see the components I have added to my wiki user page.

They include;

1. APA referencing from Wikipedia
2. Pedagogical Template
3. Syntax highlighting of source code
4. Adding an RSS feed from this blog

http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:Marco_Maiorana

Activity 4.1: Developing course content

Follow the link to learn about Edmodo a social digital learning technology. Cool vid!

http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Digital_Learning_Technologies/Social/Other

Blog Post 3.3: Skills for Teachers

Using these two references a list of desirable IT (and some not so IT) skills for teachers has been compiled.

teaching-skills-required-to-develop-dlt-courseware

Tweet:

A useful list for the 21C teacher #vmvdlt @medkh9 educationaltech-med.blogspot.co.nz/2011/01/21st-c…

— Marco Maiorana (@onecurlyone) March 9, 2013

References:

Kharbach, M. (2012). The 33 Digital skills every 21st Century Teacher should have. Retrieved from http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/06/33-digital-skills-every-21st-century.html

Ford, M D. (2010). 25 Tech Skills Every Teacher Should Possess. Instructional Technology @ WHS Retrieved fromhttp://itwhs.blogspot.co.nz/p/25-tech-skills-every-teacher-should.html