Last entry?

I have been camping at Yosemite National Park for the past few days. It is glorious here but there is very (if any) reception.  Because of the lack of communication, I have been quite silent in my participation and experimentation of tools this week.
As this is the last day of the course, however, I wanted to post one last reflective post about all that I'm taking with me from this course:
-I learned about online CoP. I have become an active member of one and plan on continuing to participate!
-I have maintained a blog for longer than a few days (including my personal one!).
-I have learned that there are tools such as Feedly.com and Hootsuite.com that can help me organize my favorite social media websites and forums I like to follow.
-I have learned that I like Wordpress.com over Bloggere.com.
-I have experimented and liked using: weebly.com and edubloger.com
-I have yet to understand and fully experiment with Diigo.

I've enjoyed working with everyone sharing ideas and learning together.

Professor Dennen is awesome, helpful, and very knowledgeable! With all the ups and downs, the various tools we've used, and all that I'm taking away with me, what a pleasure this course has been! Thanks and best wishes to you in your future endevors.

This may be my last post......to all who have read this...thanks and good luck!

I'll be 'seeing' you online!

--Magali

Last week's prompt

Reflect on what you have learned in the class and how you will use it professionally as both a lifelong learner and an instructional systems professional (or whatever field you’re in).

Throughout this course I've learned more than new Web 2.0 tools; I've learned to push myself outside of my comfort zone, I've learned that I can do more than I anticipate, and I've learned that there's an entire Web world I was unaware of.  As a lifelong learner, these are the things I need to keep in mind in order to remain open to new technologies and any changes that may arise.  I hope to remain true to my wishes of continuing to learn how to use Web 2.0 tools once I graduate and have some more free time. Sometime it feels like grad school gets in the way of life, but I'm not too sure I would have ventured so much into the web world if I hadn't been obligated to do so because of a course I was taking. For that and my personal growth, I'm thankful!

As it pertains specifically to the content of the class and how I will use it professionally, I look forward to a couple of things to get me started: a class website this school year, either using Weebly or Edublogs, and attempting to model my class similar to this one.  I will take the feedback from Produsage 1 and apply it to my aspirations of implementing something similar with my courses.

I definitely see myself continuing to develop my skills! 

I love Weebly!!

For the produsage 2 assignment I debated which tools to use.  Then I came across Weebly.com.  This has been the easiest and most enjoyable tool I've experimented with this semester.

They have a minute long video to get you started and a step-by-step site planner that guides you along the way (which I used extensively!).  You can follow along the guide or they also have a support center where you can click on the specific issue you are having form a pre-existing category. If that isn't enough, you can submit a question to their help department.

The layout makes it very simple to customize, add pictures, video, slideshows, polls, surveys, you name it!!! You have the option to add pages to the menu bar at the top (or wherever you choose to put it) to categorize your content.  You can basically create as many pages as you'd like, show them or hide them, and they even have the option of sub-pages (for the content you think is less important).

And that is all for FREE!! Imagine that! Furthermore, they have more help options if you chose to upgrade, get your own domain, and include ads.

Not enough?? They also offer LIVE TRAINING!!! Have I mentioned I love Weebly.com??!!!

I loved the outcome of my Produsage 2 assignemnt and I envision I will be using Weebly.com for lots more to come!!

Check out my new feeds bar on the right!!

I am so proud of myself lol.  I actually can't take the credit for all I did was search, read, and follow directions, BUT I learned how to add gadgets to my blog! So I added the course #eme6414 and went ahead and added a poll I created on polleverywhere.com. Not too bad :)

I google searched "how to add twitter feed to blogger" and came across this http://tsbray.blogspot.com/2013/03/twitter-feed-on-blogger.html.

His blog is actually very helpful for lots of things.  Glad I came across it. I've added him to my pages in case you want to check him out.

Polleverywhere.com

So I was reading this article titled "13 free web tools students and teachers should know about" and spent quite some time reading about and trying lots of the tools mentioned.
The one I experimented with today was polleverywhere.com.  I loved the 1 minute tutorial which was easy to follow in order to get started.
Aside from the tutorial, they provide various examples and a tour of the page.

Here's one of the polls I created.  I created this one with the intent of posting it to my Facebook to see if any of my friends would be willing to participate in order for me to get some practice with the site.

Here's the widget in case anyone else would like to participate as well.

<script language="javascript" src="http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/aHta1zTFgcX8jWB/web.js?height=250&results_count_format=percent&width=300" type="text/javascript"></script>

.....except it doesn't show up on my blog for some reason.  So I guess that's something I will need to keep practicing with.  Here's what it said to do:

Can anyone help? I would like to figure this out so that I can use it with my classrooms.  I'm debating upgrading to the paid version, which would allow me to automatically grade responses for when I want to quiz my students and /or give them practice quizzes.

Week 5 prompt

How do you judge the value of expertise on the Web? Does it differ from your notion of expertise in face-to-face settings? Why or why not?


This is a good question.  I once read a quote by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche on one of my friend's Facebook posts.  It read: "An artist should never be judged according to the measure of his works". This baffled me quite a bit. My first instinct was to think the opposite, artists should be judged by their work.  But the conversation lead to the idea that any one person couldn't be a good judge of 'art'.  It went on to the philosophy of "what is art" "art is a matter of perspective", "can someone be considered an artist even if no one else experiences their art?" and so on. Deeper one could make the argument that we are all artists, in a more complex way than the contemporary term.  My friend who posted the quote went on to say " Perhaps everyone is performing art altruistically in a way" and another person commented "Everyone is an artists and everything is art."\

This is exactly how I feel about expertise on the web.  Who is to judge 'expertise' and which criteria is one to use? Afterall being an expert means skill or knowledge of a particular trade. By that definition, an 16 year hacker can be considered an expert.  
In their article, Leadbeater and Miller, 2004, state".....Pro-Ams, innovative, committed and networked amateurs working to professional standards." From what I understand a Pro-Am is basically an amateur working to professional standards. Therefore judging 'expertise' by this definition could encompass a large array of people.  As they mention in the article, Linoux was created by a computer student in Finland.  He was by no means an expert, yet he created something (over time) to professional standards. 

For me what has changed is the overall meaning of the term "expertise" regardless if it is face-to-face or on the web.  In today's day in age there are many more 'experts' out there that don't necessarily fit the category of professional, for example, yet they may be experts of their own trade.  The Internet and the use of Web2.0 tools has enabled expertise to be within finger's reach.  Besides, many of the areas of expertise that exist not, didn't exist 15 years ago, opening the door to endless opportunities in the future. 

Scratch

Ok...so where to start.  Here's a new tool I played around with today (it only took me 4 hours lol).

Here's the link http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/11582073/

What I liked about it: 

- self-created (by teachers or students)

- you can aggregate content (by 'seeing inside' and remixing)

- fun way to participate in a learning game (attention grabbing)

- students/teachers can comment for a nice discussion

- FAQs and tutorial available

What I didn't like about it:

- it took me 4 hours to make that silly (and incomplete) game

- tutorial didn't fully explain each term individually....I had to guess or copy the tutorial

- it wasn't saving appropriately (I had to re-do the quadrants 11 times!!!!!!!!!)

But in all seriousness, if I knew how to use it and it functioned appropriately, the uses of games or self-created projects through the use of tools such as Scratch are wonderful tools for learning.  

As a teacher, when creating a learning game one must always keep in mind objectives.  Once a good learning game is designed it has beneficial uses for the teacher and students.  It enables the teacher a quick glance at the scores to see where the students are at, as a quick (unofficial) assessment. This frees-up the teacher to provide feedback and redirect instruction.

As a student, these can be fun (attention-getters) and a way to self-assess.

As an IDer, this is yet another tool under one's belt.  Just as we try different tools in this course, Scratch and other game-based learning tools can be a way to train IDers to practice linking objectives with tasks.  It also facilitates creative options for developing instruction.