A Final Reflection: I can't believe it's time to say good-bye!

It is hard to believe that we are coming to the end of the course, and even harder to summarize all that I have learned over the past few weeks. I have learned so much about how technology is changing the face of the library, the way students behave and the skills that they need to learn. On top of that, I have learned about a myriad of Web 2.0 tools, which has helped me to form an understanding of the tools that my students, as digital natives, have grown up with.

I have learned so much, yet, of course, there are still questions that will need to be explored as I continue in my teaching career. Learning how to teach students the skills necessary for this world of technology will be a continuous journey. Already, questions constantly arise: what are the ethics involved in encouraging students to participate in social networking sites? How can we teach students what sources are reliable or not reliable? How can we teach students to sift through all the information on the web accurately? Questions will continue to arise as my position changes at the Vancouver School Board and I am put into different teaching situations. The most important point to remember is that I need to be aware that these questions will continue to arise, and that I have the power to think about them critically.

As always, it is important to examine how what I have learned will effect my teaching practice. I am extremely lucky because I have a brand new course to play with: my summer school English 12 course. I am lead teacher this summer, which means that I get to design an entire course from scratch, in any way that I want. As a result, many of the tools that I have learned about in this course can become part of my summer school course, and I will be able to experiment, evaluate and discuss how these tools work within an online course. Three targets that I have for summer school:

1) A collaborative wiki: one unit in English 12 is a short story module, and to have a collaborative wiki would be a great experience. It would allow students to interact with each other, hone their writing skills, and evaluate other students’ writing.

2) Podcasts: During this course, I created a podcast for one of my English 12 assignments. I would like to continue using podcasts as a tool for teaching my students.

3) Media collections: I learned about the variety of media collections available to teachers online: TeacherTube, Youtube, Google video, etcetera. I definitely plan on using these collections to expand my summer school course.

This course has truly made me aware of changes that are taking place in education. Though I have made three specific, immediate goals for the future, the awareness and understanding of Web 2.0 and how it is changing education is even more important. Thank you to everyone: Joanne and my classmates, for guiding me and joining me on this journey through Web 2.0!

Week 13 Evidence of Learning: A tool not yet explored - downloading a podcast via iTunes

Today I subscribed to Mark Kermode's film reviews with the BBC. I know it may seem like an unusual choice, but in the English 12 course, students review two versions of Hamlet, so I wanted to try out different film reviews to expose them to. In my previous posts, I have talked about wanting to experiment with different types of assessment for learning, getting away from so much writing, writing and writing in the course. Listening to a podcast as a model for an assignment is an idea worth thinking about. Students could then create their own faux radio show reviewing a film and then post it on the discussion board to be marked.


Subscribe to Mark Kermode's film review at http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/kermode/. Reel Reviews Radio has interesting alternatives - not so British and still PG; its podcasts are at http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id73330500.

Week 13 Evidence of Learning: A tool not yet explored - Ning

In these final posts of my e-portolio, I wanted to explore any tools that I have not tried yet. Today I thus created a Ning for anyone who attended the Overseas Chinese Youth Language and Study Tour (aka the Loveboat) in 2000. I thought it would be a good network to create as there are people both locally and internationally who were on the trip, thus spreading the "net" of the network wider than just Vancouver. People attended this trip from various parts of the northern hemisphere: Canada, the United States of America, Britain and France.

I regularly meet up with a group of friends from this trip, but I have lost touch with anyone who lives outside of Vancouver. This would be a neat way to get in touch. As you can see though, I am yet to invite anyone. I think I should consult with my group of friends when I see them next - I think they would be puzzled if I did something like this without them. However, I have a feeling that I will be explaining to them exactly what a Ning is!

To think about how this tool would play out my teaching practice: I have to admit, I am not too sure. There are interesting features of this network, but being able to chat, add videos, content and events are things that I can already accomplish in our learning management system; it would be redundant to use two websites for the same thing. I also understand the idea of having a network with your students, but as I said before, teachers are already piloting having a facebook group for our student population. As a result, the addition of Ning seems unnecessary as of right now.

Week 13 Reflection: The Future

What does the future hold for teachers, learners, libraries, schools, and education as a whole? How will Web 2.0 continue to transform the tradition role of both the library and the school? This week's videos had a variety of perspectives on the topic.

Two videos really struck me: Ken Robinson's talk on schools killing creativity and Gever Tulley's presentation on five dangerous things for kids. Let me explain why these videos connected with me: a few weeks ago, near the beginning of this course, I mourned the loss of the simple (see my Week 3 post on finding that middle ground). I wrote about the idea that in this world of digital storytelling (not just storytelling), flashing lights and instant technology, the younger generation are losing an appreciation of the basics, and are instead demanding that everything be digital, bells and whistles included. This is the reason that I enjoyed Robinson's talk: he focused on the importance of simple, wonderful, creativity. His point was not about statistics, about catching up with the younger generation, about adapting or changing; rather, he spoke about the wonder of imagination and creativity. The same can be said about Gever Tulley's Tinkering School. I agree with his idea that children can learn through these hands-on, "old school" methods, of building, playing, and experimenting. Developments in the world of technology should not mean that basic methods of education are forgotten.

So how does fit in with the transformation that will continue to occur in education due to Web 2.0 tools? Simply put, it reminds us to not lose sight of what is important: creativity, imagination, experimentation and play. Educators like Robinson and Tulley remind us that as we continue to adapt and change our system to meet the needs of students today, we must remember that these tools should be enhancing students' skills, not replacing them. This, in turn, is how we can construct new knowledge and develop our teaching philosophies with Web 2.0 tools. We must remember to use the tools to help students use their creativity and imagination: do not let the "gadgets" of Web 2.0 become learning outcomes, instead use them as a way to meeting learning outcomes.

Thinking about how this plays into my own practice: I still have a lot to learn about using Web 2.0 in my teaching. As I have been posting throughout this e-portfolio, I plan on piloting many tools in my English 12 summer school course: a collaborative wiki, podcasts, media collections, etcetera. In this way, I am already thinking about how Web 2.0 will change the course I have. What I plan on taking from this week's topic: to remember that Web 2.0 is a means to an end, not the end itself. As long as I stay focused on using the tools to enhance student learning and to not get distracted by the all the fanciness, I will be on the right track.

MY VISION FOR THE FUTURE

Week 12 Evidence of Learning: My adventure into Open Access

I wanted to experience open access for myself, so went looking through the Directory of Open Access Journals. I found a very intriguing article on the role Second Life (SL)in distance learning. In A Second Life for Distance Learning, Jace Hargis discusses the virtual world of Second Life, a "three dimensional virtual world entirely built and owned by its resident" (2008). His argument is that as education once changed from oral to literacy, it is now changing to a form known as "electracy", which Wikipedia defines as "the kind of 'literacy' or skill and facility necessary to exploit the full communicative potential of new electronic media such as multimedia, hypermedia, social software, and virtual worlds" (2007).

Though it sounds bizarre, Hargis's main point is that this is simply another facet in which learning may occur. His argument is that learning already takes place in many informal settings, such as correspondense, electronic, distributed, etcetera. Education through Second Life is yet another informal setting that allows people to learn. Indeed, numerous universities, one hundred and nineteen at the time that this article was written, have a presence in SL. More than one hundred islands have been sold in SL for educational purposes. Hargis also notes that there are issues to be developed in SL, such as assessment, how to maximize the positives of such an interactive learning environment, etcetera.

To not lose focus on why I read this article in the first place: I found it through a simple search on the Directory of Open Access Journals. I wanted to read about something related to distributed learning, and searching for those key words brought up a wealth of resources. It was incredibly easy to use and I will definitely continue to explore it as a resource.

Reference
Hargis, Jace. "A Second Life For Distance Learning." Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education 9.2 (2008): 57-63. Web. 9 Apr 2010. .

Wikipedia. (2007). Definition of electracy. Downloaded on January 15, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electracy .

Week 12 Reflection: Open Access

What struck me the most about this week's topic was the simple fact that I had never heard about it. Never have I heard a colleague mention open access (OA), recommend OA, or talk about OA. This is different than our other weekly topics; even though I didn't necessarily have any experience with previous topics, I had at least heard the topics mentioned before at some point (except RSS feeds and aggregators - I admit, that was a mystery as well). Open access though, is different. This is the first time that I was made aware of these huge databases of free resources, and I have a feeling that many of my colleagues are also not aware that this type of resource exists. Some comments on Alice's voicethread echoed this.

In regards to Joseph J. Esposito's The devil you don't know: The unexpected future of Open Access publishing, I sympathize with Esposito's diatribe on the economics of OA. It is a huge issue, and is completely changing the face of both libraries and publishing. However, I feel at peace with this and not nearly as torn up about it as Esposito. This is simply because so many things are changing because of the internet and, frankly, OA is just one more change. Libraries are shifting anyway, indeed, many of the articles that we have read and studied in this course are about the digitally re-shifted library. In fact, Joyce Kasman Valenza and Doug Johnson state that "the library, as we once knew it, may no longer be relevant" (2009). Surely Esposito shouldn't be surprised that change would extend to the world of journals and publishing?

To extend his analogy of the telephone: phone companies did not go out of business as the world of telephony changed. Instead, they adapted, and as he said, he actually now pays much more for his telephone that his parents' generation. Librarians, writers, and publishers will need to adapt too: OA is just one more factor in the huge change that has been happening over the past decade, and will continue to happen as technology dictates what we do and how we do it.

In contrast, it was a pleasure to read Willinsky's article. It let me know that there are also intellectuals out there who, despite the economic issues that OA poses, are still in favour of OA and extremely positive about its direction. As someone who has not used OA before, it was important to see both sides of the coin.

Reference
Kasman Valenza, Joyce, and Doug Johnson. "Things That Keep Us Up at Night." School Library Journal (2009): n. pag. Web. November 25 2009. .

Week 11 Evidence of Learning: Voicethread

I explored Voicethread as a possibility for my Vision of the Future Assignment. I opened an account and played around with it, creating a slideshow of my family photos. I like it and think that it has potential to be the tool I use to present my slideshow. I'm just worried about there being too much text on each slide: the rough draft of my assignment has quite a bit of writing for each section. I'm not sure if Voicethread is the right program for a presentation with a lot of writing. But then at the same time, I could read the text aloud - the audience could read and listen at the same time . . .

Week 11 Evidence of Learning: Animoto

I've been working on the rough draft of my Vision for the Future assignment, and today took the time to explore Animoto as a possibility. I made a presentation just for fun, to see whether it would fit what I would like to accomplish with my VOF assignment.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

My one concern is that I will have writing on my assignment, and a thirty second video is not going to be enough for people to read it. Even if I had it as an audio clip, and showed images while my voice is reading out my VOF in the background, thirty seconds will not be enough. I am starting to wonder if maybe a prezi would be more fitting for my VOF . . .?

Week 11 Reflection: Learning Management Systems

This week's topic on learning management systems (LMSs) certainly struck close to home, as I have been teaching online with Desire 2 Learn (D2L), Vancouver Learning Network's LMS, since last January. As a result, I was very interested in this week's reading on the positives of LMSs in education.

This week's reading certainly sang the praises of LMSs. I would have liked to read more about the difference between full online courses and blended courses (classes that are in person but managed online on an LMS). The reading seems to discuss both simultaneously, not really specifying the differences between the blended courses at Ross's school (BCPSS) and the full online courses at Waymack's school (GCOC). Waymack's school has an 85% completion rate; do Ross's blended courses have a 100% completion rate?

I say this as a teacher at my school used to teach blended courses, but has since moved to teaching online full time. She finds blended courses to be more effective, as there are the positives of face to face communication, yet all the organization and independence of online learning. She is very confident that the future of education is heading in this direction. My personal experience with online courses is that the completion is nowhere near the 85% that Waymack claims to have at Gwinnet County Online Campus. This does not have anything to do with the LMS and is not a criticism of D2L (though I do have many criticisms of D2L), but rather with the "newness" of online learning to many students. In my personal experience, I find that most students find the time management and self-discipline of a full online course extremely difficult, leaving everything to the last minute. In many ways, I think a blended course, which is managed online yet has classroom time, would overcome these problems in many ways.

I think that I will be back in the classroom one day; my contract here is temporary and next year's layoffs mean that there will probably be a lot less positions and a lot more applicants. When that happens, I can see myself using Moodle in my classes. It might be a lot to do in the first year, but it may be viable in my second year. I went to a presentation recently and a teacher did a talk on how he used Moodle in his classes. It was very impressive, and he described success similar to Ross's. This reading has definitely made me think in this vein: what my future with LMSs will be when I am no longer teaching solely online.

Week 10 Evidence of Learning: Animoto for my Vision of the Future Assignment?

In addition to trying to learn about my podcast, I started checking out some of the recommended formats for presenting my Vision of the Future assignment. Below is a screenshot of my new Animoto account, which is my favourite so far.

Week 10 Evidence of Learning: Creating and Publishing a Podcast

Wow. I won't lie: this was by far the hardest tool to figure out so far. Creating the podcast on Audacity was easy to understand, and I am pleased with my podcast. I made it for an assignment in my English 12 course and plan on embedding it and sharing it with the other two English 12 teachers this week.

Learning how to actually publish it was definitely the hard part. I spent hours trying to figure it out, following the tips in Will Richardson's book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts without real success. I tried following the About.com tutorial which is how I learned how to make the podcast on audacity in the first place. Stephen's website on How to Create an RSS Feed With Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer was also really helpful, and made me laugh too, which was a nice break from the stress (check it out at http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=56).

In the process of consulting these sources, I uploaded my mp3 and rss file to my Google account, as you can see in the screenshot below:



The problem after this was actually linking this up with my blog. So for help, I checked out other blogs on my blogroll. Luckily it sounded like Patrice had a similar experience to me, and her post directed me to box.net, which was an easy website to use. Here is my podcast below:



Overall, I have to admit, I am still a little dazed by this whole podcast experience. I liked creating it, but I do not feel that I have mastered the publishing part. Box.net looks like a good alternative, but at the same time, it is not really visually appealing. I noticed that Aaron had a cool audio clip icon on his blog, which I would like to learn how to create.

On a final note, I hope you enjoy my podcast. It is about a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, entitled The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World. If you would like to read it, an online copy is at https://vln.ucourses.com/content/english/ZAEN12/ZAEN12Y09/ZAEN12BY09/Short%20Story%20PDFs/Marquez_HandsomeMan.pdf. I really enjoyed being able to create a podcast that I could use in my course right away. Here's to many more . . .

Week 10 Reflection: The Pros and Cons of Podcasts for Me

Much of the discussion this week has focused on the pros and cons of podcasts, something which has come up and quite a fitting time. Just this week, I met a mother whose son's special need hinders his writing output. When tested orally, he is gifted, but when the test is based on his ability to write, he scores far below the average. She raised the question of how students are assessed in English at our school, which is, to be frank, only on their writing. Every single assignment is a writing assignment (we had some oral presentations but only in summer school, and it was just a bonus assignment).

I have been thinking a lot lately about how I assess students, partially because I am part of an inquiry team, investigating assessment for learning (AFL) at my school. At the moment, my entire course is based on reading and writing (even new ideas since taking this course, such as a collaborative wiki project, is based on writing). Can they read and understand the excerpt provided? Can they then write about it effectively? Those two questions summarize many of the assignments in my course.

So, the pros of podcasting for me:

1. It can assess students in an alternate way of learning. Indeed, one of the biggest criticisms about our online English course is that ESL students like to take it so that they can avoid doing oral presentations/group work, something that shy ESL students would prefer to avoid. If students have to make podcasts for the class to listen to, this would fulfil the speaking component of the oral language prescribed learning outcome (PLO) of English 12. Listening to podcasts made by other students would fulfil the listening component of the PLO (they could prove that they have listened by responding).

2. It is new! We are always trying to do something new with the curriculum. This is partially to avoid the huge problem of plagiarism that occurs in online education, but also to ensure that the course is fresh and creative. Doing something completely new like this would be incredibly positive.

3. It is engaging. A big part of the AFL inquiry team that I am on, which I mentioned earlier, is about examining how assessment can be engaging for the student, thus making the student become responsible for his/her own learning. This new idea of the podcast truly engages students; in fact, Anita's recent post on the discussion board talks about how a colleague found podcasts to be extremely popular with his ESL students.

Then there is the con:

1. Students do not always have access to the necessary software. Some students last year did not even have Microsoft Word, instead submitting assignment on AbiWord or Open Office. To expect students to have a computer good enough to download Audacity and Lame, and to have headphones/speakers and a microphone, might be a bit much. This was part of the reason that last year we made video presentations a bonus assignment: just in case students did not have webcams. We could still make it an assignment, but to address the issue of equipment, it may have to be a bonus assignment.

With all these pros and cons in mind, I am still excited to be able to fulfil the oral language PLO. As I mentioned in previous posts, I am in charge of English 12 summer school this year, and can probably pilot the idea then. The first step, of course, is to learn how to do it myself. Stay tuned for my next post . . .in podcast!

Week 9 Evidence of Learning: Exploring Slideshare

I thought I'd also take a look at another media collection: SlideShare. I had not heard of it before, and found it based on the instructions in the e-portfolio to create our own slideshare. This is yet another media collection that I have not used before, and was not even aware of! This, in combination with what I just explored on TeacherTube, opens up an entire new realm of resources, which is very exciting!

I opened an account and explored a variety of slideshows. I also uploaded a slideshow that I created with another teacher for our recent Writing Across the Curriculum Workshop. This presentation takes you step-by-step through a one hour workshop, so anyone can use it!

Sentence Workshop

View more presentations from Diana Liao.

Week 9 Evidence of Learning: Exploring TeacherTube

Having never used TeacherTube before, I opened an account and spent some time exploring it and thinking about what videos I would actually be able to use right now. I focused on the module that I updated most recently, the English 10 novel study on To Kill a Mockingbird. I found one video that I would like to use in my online course; in fact, I think it's better suited to an online course than in a classroom. It's similar to a theatrical trailer, and students can watch it to get a taste of what they're about to read: http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=158905&title=To_Kill_A_Mockingbird&ref=Dianaliao

There was another one that I really liked, but unfortunately was full of spelling and grammatical errors. It gave me some ideas for future assignments though!

Though this video, found at http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=24266&title=Mr_Duey___Fractions_Official_Video&ref=Dianaliao, has nothing to do with my English courses, I still wanted to share it. It's so funny and inspirational! I just love that this teacher has been so creative and taken the time to make this video. I'm going to share it with the math teachers at my school!

Week 9 Reflection: Media Collections (Video and Audio)

This week's lesson on media collections focused on videos, while the reading that I've chosen to reflect on,There's Something in the Air - Podcasting in Education built on that by focusing mainly on audio, leading up to next week's challenge to create and distribute your own podcast. This really works for me as I use Youtube regularly to post videos on my online course (so it was good to have a refresher and explore TeacherTube, etcetera), but I have never done a podcast. It has been a good movement, for me, from one topic to the next.

The challenge in this week's lesson was to share a video that you created on a video multimedia library. There didn't seem to be a Lesson 9: General Discussion for this (probably in light of the research article wiki discussions and the topic sharing discussion board), so I've posted one of my recent videos here:



This video was to help get my students working; I'm happy to say that it sort of worked, and sad to say that it sort of didn't!

Moving on to the Campbell reading - it was really enlightening because before I read it, I had no idea how to podcast, how to listen to one, where to get one, etcetera. I wouldn't necessarily say that I know how to now, but at least I understand what podcasts are actually used for, where the term comes from, and who listens to them. The comparison of a podcast to a newspaper definitely helped, and I have to say that I feel pretty excited by the idea of listening to podcasts (aka newspaper, in my mind) while "driving, walking or working out at the gym" (Campbell 2005).

That said, I have to make it clear that I do not learn well by listening. It is simply not how I learn, and I chalk it up to the teenage summers that I spent putting lids on bottles in my father's herbal manufactory. These summers, surrounded by machinery that made it impossible to talk to your co-workers, meant that I spent hours every day zoning out, daydreaming in glorious technicolor, while I completed my tasks. Campbell addresses this very point: the listener cannot control the pace of the podcast and is thus at the mercy of the speaker. He then asserts that listening is a skill that people need to learn. Thus is true to a certain extent: listening is important. But being intuitive to what type of learner you are is also a skill, and frankly, is just as important. A stronger defence, which he uses, is that listeners can listen to podcasts over and over again. I can tell you already, that will be me.

A final point on a part in this article that touched me: Campbell discussed iTunes's role in podcasting. This is exciting because I actually have iTunes on my computer! My boyfriend uses it all the time for who knows what. Looks like I'm going to find out next week . . .

Reference:
Campbell, G. (2005). There's Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education. EDUCAUSE Review. 40(6) Retrieved October 31, 2008 from http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/TheresSomethingintheAirPo/40587

Week 8 Evidence of Learning: Sharing our Wiki!

Today we posted the url of our wiki for the class (http://electronicbooks.pbworks.com/). It was my first time creating a wiki, and I enjoyed the collaborative nature of the project. I've worked with fellow teachers before, but it was always with teachers who I knew very well and who were already my friends. We always were on the same wavelength anyway, and we worked together, face to face. Working with someone who I didn't know (and who wasn't even in the same city) was a new and interesting experience. It was neat when we were both working on the wiki at the same time - you could see that the other person was working on the same thing as you, even though they were so far away!

I hope you enjoy our wiki!

Week 8 Evidence of Learning: Flickr

This is my first experiment with flickr, and I made a slideshow of our adventure to the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. I can easily see myself using this site for personal use. I made this slideshow intending to only post it on my blog, but then ended up e-mailing it to my family because it was so easy to share!

Week 8 Reflection: Social Networking Beyond Text

As I mentioned in a previous post, the English Department at my school has recently decided to pilot a school facebook group. In essence, teachers now have professional facebook accounts associated with the school, and friend students during the school year. It's yet another way for teachers to get information out to students. At the end of the year, all students will be de-friended to make room for the next batch of students.

Not everyone has jumped on board. First of all, why encourage students to check facebook for course information? Why not just have them check the actual course website? It's already a struggle to get students to check the course homepage and e-mail, so why create another excuse for them not to check the course homepage to stay updated? Advocates argue this is the way forward. Students are so in tune with social networking, that it is simply a crime to not acknowledge social networking sites as a way of getting in touch with students. Indeed, William M. Ferriter notes that "conversations - whether they are started on Facebook, through text messages, or in the hallways - play a central role in adolescents' lives" (Ferriter 2010). Why fight it?

Another reason that people are worried about communicating with students over social networking sites is the responsibility involved. With all the photo sharing sites out there, will teachers be responsible for acting upon any incriminating photos? Advocates see this as a lesson that students need to learn: be responsible with what you post on social networking sites. The points made in The Consumerist's scathing article on facebook's ownership rights is just one reason why students must be responsible with what they post for the public. As one reader responds: "License to use your photos against you when you run for office in 20 years" (Walters 2009). I mean, really - has anyone, let alone a student, actually read the mile-long statement of rights posted by facebook (http://www.facebook.com/terms.php)?

Having said this, I probably will jump on board the facebook campaign at my school very soon. Though I feel unsure about its purpose (I side with the question of why encourage students to check facebook for course information), I also believe in unity as a department. After all this a pilot project, and at the end of the year, the department will re-convene and discuss its worth. Stay tuned!

References
Ferriter, William M. "Can't Get Kids to Read? Make it Social." Educational Leadership 67.6 (2010): 87-88. Web. 12 Mar 2010.
Walters, Chris. "Facebook's New Terms Of Service: "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever."." Consumerist 15/02/2009: n. pag. Web. 12 Mar 2010.

Week 7 Evidence of Learning: Wiki in Progress!

Above is a screenshot of how our wiki is progressing. On top of contributing to the actual write-up, we've developed the sidebar with some related articles and Katherine has added some images. Check it out at http://electronicbooks.pbworks.com/!

Week 7 Evidence of Learning: Social Bookmarking with Delicious

Above is a screenshot of my delicious account, which I started late last week. I started with some of the bookmarks that I keep on my computer at work, and I'm loving that I can now access it at home too. What a great idea!

I've spent the weekend exploring the website, looking at the fresh bookmarks, popular bookmarks and tags. It's been good to get a feel for the website, and I'm planning on adding bookmarks in the future - no more "home bookmarks" and "work bookmarks"!

Week 7 Reflection: Social Software in Education

There was certainly a lot of information in this week's reading, covering a wide range of topics all under the social networking umbrella. I chose to focus on the social software report, as I am interested in how these tools will play a part in my actual teaching experience. It has been so neat to learn about all these sites, but kind of like a pro-d day where you get a whole bunch of new ideas but haven't actively planned how you are going to use them, I wanted to see what this report said about social software's role in education.

The report has a lot of useful information (such as a very detailed explanation of different kinds of social software), but the most important part to me is the list of social software's key characteristics. The report lists qualities of social software that explain why it is important in the realm of education. Prior to this list, I was reading sweeping statements: that it enabled people to "to learn together, to collaborate and to build knowledge" (Owen, Grant, Sayers & Facer 2008), and so forth. But the list of characteristics are concrete ideas and statements about exactly how social software fits into the education system, and I really need that. It answers the question of "why" for me.

Another part of this report that stands out for me is section 3.3, which addresses the question of "How do we educate for creativity and innovation in the ICT age?" (Owen, Grant, Sayers & Facer 2008). As you've seen in my prior posts, I did worry that the expectation for amazing digital tools would result lack of creativity and a scorn for anything simple (See my Week 3 Relection; after all, what's wrong with just telling a story? Why does it have to be digital?). It is nice to see this issue addressed in the report.

Thus, in section 3.3, the creative process in Japanese industry is described. It shows that in order for creativity to blossom, there needs to be a way for thinkers to externalize their thoughts. Without externalizing their thoughts, ideas remain tacit, personal and essentially unseen. By having a space for dialogue and creating a place to collaborate, creativity is enhanced. Ideas, though perhaps repeated throughout the creative process, become refined, challenged, and openly discussed.

This week, I hope to try out some more social networking sites and think about how to use it in my teaching. So far I have twitter, facebook, and a blog. I've posted a video on youtube and am working on my wiki. What's next? Stay tuned!

Reference:
Owen, M., Grant, L., Sayers, S., & Facer, K. (2006). Opening education: Social software and learning. Futurelab: Retrieved June 21, 2008 from http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/opening_education/Social_Software_report.pdf

Week 6 Evidence of Learning: Wiki in Progress

My partner set up a wiki for us, so this week I have started learning about it and editing it. Above is a screenshot about what we have so far; it outlines the key concepts and purpose of our article. Hopefully as we continue we can make it look a bit fancier. But I think we're off to a good start!

Week 6 Evidence of Learning: No Wiki for Now . . .Trying Out Prezi Instead

Stay tuned for a link to the research article wiki that I'm working on with Kathy for March. For now, I'm learning about using Prezi, another free online tool that I learned when attending a VSB Web 2.0 workshop this week. Prezi is the "free online zooming presentation editor" and is growing in popularity; before attending the workshop, I'd had more than one colleague mention it to me and encourage me to use it.

I think the mistake that people make is thinking that Prezi is just a better version of Power Point. It isn't. It has a different purpose than Power Point, in my opinion, and should be used for presentations where seeing the big picture is important. If slides just need to be shown one by one, then I'll be honest, I liked using Power Point better. But Prezi allows you to zoom in and out, to draw your presentation in different shapes, and it looks prettier in the end. So for example, if your presentation was based on a timeline, Prezi would be perfect. People could zoom in to learn about an event, and then zoom out to see how it fits into the timeline.

I've started the basics of a presentation that I plan on using this summer when students start registering for English 12 online. Enjoy!

title on Prezi

Week 6 Reflection: Wikis in my Online Course?

I've been thinking about how I would use a wiki in the courses that I'm teaching right now. I'm currently teaching at the Vancouver Learning Network, and though each teacher essentially has autonomy in what happens in his or her own course, something as big as adding a wiki to the curriculum would definitely be a group effort. Some questions that may arise:

1) At the moment, everything is attached to a gradebook. For example, we have online discussions, and each discussion can be assessed with a mark out of 10. We punch in this mark every time we mark a discussion post and the gradebook is automatically updated. This kind of set-up allows students to continue discussing - every time I assess a discussion posting, their mark goes up. They see it go up, and as a result, it's very clear cut about how they can succeed (what kind of posts count as 'quality', the necessity of responding to others and not just posting your own thoughts, etcetera). With a wiki, I'm not sure how these grades would work - I would have to manually go into the gradebook each time to update their mark based on their most recent edit. This could cause problems when it comes to multiple edits (for example, what I've marked and what I haven't). I can see from this week's links that WetPaint allows you to track the participation of students. At the moment though, I have approximately one hundred and fifty English 12 students. Would managing this kind of participation be overwhelming?

2) Monitoring polite behaviour on discussion boards is an ongoing task. I've had to delete posts, send e-mails to students about discussion etiquette; I know that one teacher has had a very serious situation on the discussion boards simply because students weren't taking each other's criticism constructively (and weren't giving criticism constructively either). I'm already thinking about removing the Sharing Short Stories discussion board from my course next year. Would having students edit each other's work be a lot of trouble in this regard?

3) My department, at the moment, is thinking about creating a blog as part of the course next year and already this is quite the subject for the discussion. How many posts? How can it be monitored? In our course, students can join any time between September to April. How can we make these kinds of "external" assignments manageable, so that the requirements are clear and we aren't pulling our hair out at the end?

4) I'm participating in an inquiry team at the moment, and we're investigating assessment for learning at our school. One question that has been brought up is the problem of everything in our courses being attached to the gradebook. This is yet another issue here: does the wiki have to be attached to the gradebook? Maybe it can just be a participation thing? Terry The Tennis Ball, the link that Patrice provided on her discussion board this week, is a good example. Collaborating online in this way is fun, and perhaps can be just a participation mark instead of a mark on grammar/writing.

Despite all the questions, having a collaborative wiki is an exciting prospect. I'm in charge of English 12 at summer school this summer, and it will be a good time to pilot this kind of project. That way, if it is too much, I won't be stuck with it for a full year. But an exciting prospect? Definitely!

Week 5 Evidence of Learning: Updating my Blogroll

I've had my blogroll since I started my e-portfolio, but I just updated it with some more blogs so thought I would post it with my recent additions. I've just added Moira Ekdahl's blog after attending her professional development session here in Vancouver, which I really enjoyed. I've also added a friend's blog, which she has for her courses; I'm particularly interested in hers as it's a good example of what I can aim for when starting a blog for my class. I've also added the BCTLA blog, which I hope will help keep me in the loop!

Week 5 Evidence of Learning: Editing a Wikipedia Entry

Above are the before and after shots of a Wikipedia entry: before I edited it, and after I edited it. It was so easy! I just watched the tutorial and just like that, I knew how to edit a Wikipedia entry.

In becoming an 'editor,' I learned something new about myself: that I really don't know very much about anything. It was a real struggle to think of topics that I would know anything about, and when I did think of something, there was already a ton of stuff written about it. This was relatively disturbing.

My boyfriend suggested that I write about my school, the Vancouver Learning Network, which I did. The entry about VLN was very short and had a few spelling and grammatical errors. I guess that plays on what Robert McHenry said about the quality of writing on Wikipedia being questionable. I added a little bit and tried to improve the existing entry by fixing the mistakes. I hope I wasn't too biased in how I portrayed VLN; I think it's a great school and that might have come through in my entry - not very encyclopedic of me!

Week 5 Reflection: The Wikipedia Debate

Above is the welcome video to my topic presentation this week on Wikipedia and its role in education. I ended up finding it to be such an interesting topic, and thus wrote a little bit about three main issues in the Wikipedia/Wiki debate: the debate on Wikipedia's legitimacy, teaching students how to deal with the amount of information online, and using Wikis in the classroom.

For me, the most interesting part is the debate on Wikipedia's legitimacy. Not many people have posted in my discussion board yet (hopefully they will soon), but I really understand both sides here. Essentially, the debate has two arguments: pro-Wikipedia (it's an amazing wealth of information, collaboratively edited by people all over the world) and anti-Wikipedia (the quality of this information simply cannot be truly regulated and guaranteed). I really do see both sides. It's wonderful that people can collaborate on such a global level, sharing information and working together. However, you simply can't guarantee how accurate the information is. True, a study showed that Wikipedia only had four errors per entry as opposed to Britannica's three, but Robert McHenry makes a good point when he also critiques the quality of the writing, not just the accuracy of the information.

That said, for all the teachers that support Wikipedia, most will not support using it as a reliable source, or will at least tell students to use it as a starting point and to not rely on it completely. Many say to not bother citing it - just check it for a place to start and then look elsewhere for the real information. That's just been my personal experience from working with other teachers (maybe others have had different experiences). This also plays on McHenry's point, about the writing being poor even if the information is accurate. And do we really want to point our students towards bad writing? It's quite a risk.

References:
McHenry, Robert. "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia." Technology Commerce Society (2004): n. pag. Web. 25 Jan 2010.

Week 4 Evidence of Learning: Free Movie Making Websites

A fellow teacher showed me this website, and I've had a real blast playing around with it. Making this video made me laugh out loud a couple times, I have to admit - it is enjoyable. She uses it as a tool to insert some fun into her lessons, having students use the website to make tutorials on course content. A great idea!

Week 4 Reflection: Interview with Chris Harris

In comparison to Prensky's article last week, this week's reading was a much more realistic and balanced look at the growing phenomenon of technology in the education system. Michael Stephens' interview with Chris Harris on how libraries are changing digitally was a fair and understandable approach to the shift we see happening before our very eyes.

A part of this interview that stood out for me was when Harris said that "the role of the school librarian in ten years will be to serve as a guide through the chaos of information" (Harris 2006). This may be because partially jobs and job descriptions are a huge issue at the moment considering that a possible twenty percent of VSB teachers will be laid off this coming fall, including myself. It may also partially be because at lunch last week, I told my friends that I was doing my TL diploma. One friend, who teaches secondary school, laughed and said, "What do librarians even do anymore?" But most of all, this quote stood out at me because it shows how much technology will continue to change: this is just the beginning. Since internet really 'began' in 1995, the changes in how we teach and learn have been overwhelming. This change is only going to continue, just as dramatically, as we move ahead.

Another part of this interview that resonated with me was Harris's tone of encouragement. How should those who feel left behind get started? Simply to "play" (Harris 2006). To "experiment" (Harris 2006). This course has taught me to be really true - I feel like I've learned so much just by fiddling with, toying with and playing with Web 2.0 tools. Who knew that these tools were here the whole time, ready to be learned?

This interview also brings up the issue of how we are planning on dealing with this digital re-shift, for example, how we anticipate using blogs, problems with blogs, etcetera (as per our discussion board this week). For my personal use now, I'd really like to use this shift as a way of establishing a connection for parents. As an online teacher, for example, I know how 'in the dark' parents can be sometimes. Some parents don't even know that their child has signed up for my course (they are hence very surprised when I call home)! A lot of parents don't know how to access their child's account, so they don't know how to see what and how their kids are doing. I wonder if I could do a type of blog for parents, so that parents can learn and understand how to see what their children are doing.

For future use, when I get to a library (one can hope), I love the idea of a BookBlog, as Harris mentioned in the interview. At the moment, most online courses, including mine, have discussion boards, which is something similar. A BookBlog, however, would invite the write-ups to be more in-depth, and perhaps not so brief and conversation-like.

Reference:
Stephens, M. (2006). The digitally re-shifted school librarian: A conversation with Christopher Harris. Retrieved December 22, 2008 from http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2006/02/the-digitally-re-shifted-school-library-a-conversation-with-christopher-harris.html

Week 3: Evidence of Learning: Youtube

Above is a video that I created today for the students in my online English 12 course. Another teacher showed me how to do this, and I find it to be an excellent way of video blogging to my class. I don't need much equipment - just a webcam, microphone and internet access. I can then record the video and publish it in a matter of minutes (except that I'm so paranoid that I re-record the video a thousand times over). I also like video blogging because it puts a face to a name for my students, something that I can really appreciate as an online teacher.

Week 3 Evidence of Learning: Google

Above is a screenshot of my iGoogle homepage, which links my gmail, docs and reader tools together. So far, I like it - it's nice to have the a little joke to read when I log on, stuff like that. More importantly, it's a nice starting point for all my tools that take cover under the big Google umbrella.


Above is a screenshot of my Google Reader, which I signed up for and began last week. I've subscribed to about twenty blogs at the moment, a combination of recommended sites, my own personal interests and my classmates. I'm finding it to be a very handy tool, especially as I'm trying to incorporate keeping up to date with blogs, tweets, etcetera into my daily routine!


This screenshot is of my gmail, an account which I opened last week. I'm still figuring out how to get back to my iGoogle homepage from my my gmail, which isn't obvious.

Week 3 Evidence of Learning: Twitter

I've been investigating how to link my other profiles and accounts with my blog. Today I learned how to embed my tweets:

My Twitter Updates

Week 3 Reflection: Finding that middle ground

I'll tell you one thing: even though there's spellcheck, I'm glad that I still know how to spell.

Call me old-fashioned. Call me a dinosaur. But there's something within me that feels wary about Marc Prensky's eagerness to toss out the old in favour of the new. Do we really have to throw out EVERYTHING to make room for the new? "As our kids all get their own phones and laptops," he asks, "do we really need to teach them the old ways" (Prensky 2008)?

Well, yes. Yes, we do. And don't get me wrong - I don't want to teach kids the "old ways" and ignore the new ways, leaving them unprepared for the future. The point is that there has to be a middle ground, where students still learn skills needed for coping with the world: both old and new. The invention of technology does not mean that we should ignore key skills, such as reading and writing skills, which, frankly, are very empowering tools, even more empowering than knowing how to wiki, blog and tweet.

Prensky wouldn't agree with me. Teachers like me are trying to give students a mere "backup" education, in which students aren't prepared for the world, but rather prepared for a technological meltdown - so that when the escalators stop, they know how to walk. So that when watches stop, they can still tell time. So that when all the calculators in the world explode, we'll still be able to figure out how much to tip. He claims that "the real issue lies in the fact that by continuing to teach the "backup" stuff, there is no room to teach for the future" (Prensky 2008). But this isn't true at all. I'm just trying to find a middle ground in this technology war. Why can't we do both? What is so wrong with still reading a book? Not everyone can afford a kindle. What is so wrong with learning how to write cursive? Not everyone has to type everything. Can't we do both?

B. Nesbitt produced a video called "A Vision of K-12 Students Today." It's a powerful video (despite the fact that the kids look totally miserable), but one scene jumped out at me. A boy holds up a sign: "Let me tell a story." Then another boy adds: "Digitally." Digital storytelling is wonderful, I'm sure. But what happened to just plain storytelling? What happened to sitting and listening to a story and enjoying it, the way that generations of the past did? Suddenly just plain storytelling seems inadequate and outdated, and that makes me sad. I hope that there can be a happy medium, where storytelling is not viewed as backward, but one equally important format of communication. It doesn't have to be digital to be a worthwhile activity.



To conclude, let me give you an analogy, which you may or may not agree with: have you ever looked at your children's toys - toys that light up, play music, make noises, open and close, and flash pretty colours? Have you ever stood there looking at all these toys, and then thought back to the cardboard box that you loved to play with when you were a kid? If so, what is your next thought? Perhaps your next thought is a clue as to what side of this "technology fence" you are on.

References:
"A Vision of K-12 Students Today." http://www.youtube.com. Web. 20 Jan 2010. .

Prensky, M. (2008). Backup education. Educational Technology 48(1). Retrieved Oct. 31, 2008 from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky-Backup_Education-EdTech-1-08.pdf

More Week 2: Learning about RSSs and aggregators

Today I decided to find out exactly what an aggregator and an RSS was. Every time I pictured my search for the RSS and the aggregator, I couldn't help but picture myself out in the wild, hunting down R.O.U.Ss (rodents of unusual size - any Princess Bride fans out there?).

Turns out, RSSs are NOT related to R.O.U.Ss, and neither are aggregators. I found this out after I spent a long time linking blogs up to my personal blog, as you can see to the right. I thought that perhaps this is what an RSS feed service was, but then I logged into my Google account, which magically showed me "Google Reader" - and I realized that the two aren't exactly linked up. I then stumbled upon an article by Will Richardson on Stephen's Lighthouse Blog, which talks about what an RSS guide really is. I understand now: an RSS basically collects all the information that you want from blogs, and feeds them into one place for you. This way, instead of clicking through a billion weblogs, they magically all end up on one page for me.

Technology really is amazing. I mean, the RSS feeds "make it possible to 'subscribe' to the content that is created on a particular Weblog so they no longer have to visit the blog itself to get it" (Richardson 2005). Whoever thought that the pace of life would be so fast that I wouldn't even have time to click? Or more importantly, whoever thought that the computer gods would deem clicking a waste of time?

Richardson gives instructions on how to sign up for bloglines, but I already have an account with Google so I'm trying to stick with Google Reader. I'm following almost twenty blogs, including my classmates and those on the recommended list for the course. I'm interested to see how well I cope with all the information that will be waiting for me when I find time to sit down in front of the computer at the end of the day.

Some questions to investigate (feel free to point me in the right direction):

1. Can I add more links (not just my facebook link) in the panel on the right?

2. Can I link this blog to my Google Reader so that people who check out my blog can see the shared items on my Google Reader?

References: “Blogging and RSS — The ‘What's It?’ and ‘How To’ of Powerful New Web Tools for Educators” at http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan04/richardson.shtml

Web 2.0 Workshops

Reading my blog, in LIBE 477, and living in Vancouver? I want to invite you to some workshops that I'm already signed up for. Just go to www2.vsb.bc.ca/vsbprograms/prod, click on current opportunities, and then look for the technology workshops.

I'm attending TL Studio 1: Using Web 2.0 Tools and Applications in Classrooms and School Libraries and Digitally Yours: Using VSB online resources and Web 2.0 Tools in Classrooms and School Libraries. If you are interested in attending and would like some company (i.e. me), get in touch!

Find me on other Web 2.0 tools . . .

Facebook: Diana Liao (ttdliao@hotmail.com)
Twitter: @dianaliao
Google: dianaliao477@gmail.com

School Library 2.0

This week's reading was about School Library 2.0, and it really clarified this idea of Web 2.0 and education. Before this article, I completely understood that I needed to keep up with technology as a teacher/TL, but I didn't really understand exactly how Web 2.0 fit into education. I mean, I wasn't planning on friending any of my students on facebook, ever - none of them need to see those pictures of me getting pushed around in a shopping cart in the middle of the night.

The reason I now understand why Web 2.0 is important to me and my teaching career is thanks to Jo-Anne Naslund and Dean Giustini's article (http://asselindoiron.pbworks.com/f/14>2naslund_giustini.pdf). It did something very important for my fixed and uncreative mind: it put Web 2.0 into categories, and called all these categories School Library 2.0. Then it discussed how each category worked. A quick run-down of the categories within School Library 2.0: blogs (online journals), wikis (online collaboration), social bookmarking, social networking, microblogging and social media-sharing sites. This kind of categorization is exactly what I need.

Of these categories, I'm most interested in wikis. I used to work with this really phenomenal TL, and she used wikis for book reviews and that kind of thing. She reported it as a big success, and I kind of pretended to understand what she was talking about. A classmate in 477 was also talking about a kind of online book club, using these kinds of collaborative websites. That sounds right up my alley.

At the moment, I teach English 10 and 12 online, and we have online discussion boards where students debate certain topics. I wonder - would something like a wiki or a Googledoc be a better or more interesting activity? Or is it just more of the same thing? How could I make a googledoc worth marks in an online course? Web 2.0 and online learning is definitely something that I'd like to explore.

Okay, I know this is getting quite long for one posting. I hope my lengthy posts aren't why nobody's following my blog. Come on people! I'm the only classmate with no followers! It's sad . . .

Google thing

I've signed up for google! Hooray for me! My e-mail address is dianaliao477@gmail.com. Send me an e-mail and brighten up my day. It'll give my sense of existence a bit of an ego boost (it's still smarting from finding out that every combination of diana liao has been taken).

My first post

Okay, so here is my first post. I'm only posting now because I've only just realized, from looking at other blogs, that blog posts don't have to be huge paragraphs discussing my day. Now I've looked at other blogs and realized that posts can kind of look like tweets - just a couple sentences talking about my latest thought.

Let me introduce myself: my name's Diana, and this is my blog. This blog is going to record my journey as I attempt to learn all about Web 2.0. I can't promise it'll be interesting, but I can promise that it'll be honest.

So far, I'm on facebook and twitter. My plans for this week are to join the google thing, and one more social networking website. My biggest question: who reads this stuff? Who has the time to read other people's tweets? Do people log in to their computers, sit down with a coffee, and read through tweets? I'm following about thirty people right now, and went away for the weekend. I came back and there were something close to three billion tweets waiting for me to read.

My other question: who would care to read about ME?