Tools Tried During ION Tech Tools 1551

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Twitter
Twitter account

Diigo
Diigo Account

Linked In
https://ca.linkedin.com/pub/lynn-okanski/27/228/979

PollEverywhere
https://www.polleverywhere.com

Blackboard Collaborate
(in FOL LMS)

Skype/Google Docs discussion

YouTube video link
Tax Freedom Day

Podcast link
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/vdgllry/ndvdls/srs-prprngrtrn2b-eng.html

Office Mix PowerPoint multi-media presentation
Setting Goals

Office Mix PowerPoint multi-media presentation
Academic Integrity

Qualtrics survey
Welcome to Financial Services

Blog
My Learning Blog

Ready Made Content

Searching for ready-made content online in my subject area was an exercise in frustration. Most of the material is in print form, much of it is commercial, and I found nothing of a level I would want to present online to students.

In a classroom, I have typically used ready-made content to increase the entertainment value of class, but I’m not confident some of my uses of video content in class was not a breach of copyright. Teaching online offers the benefit that I can hyperlink these items with impunity. However, I would want to know they offer something that is truly valuable. An online student, when bored and needing a break, has the option of walking away at any time.

Here's my link to a video I do like to use in tax class, as a way to add a little lightness, and introduce the topic of taxation with a little Canadian flare: Tax Freedom Day

There are more recent versions of this clip, however, they do not appeal to my '60's folk-music sensibility!

I’m convinced that creating our own content offers a lot more potential to give on-target video, but I think we need to develop our ability to put out things quickly and easily so that it’s not an excessive burden, and we are not tempted to leave old, stale content on our sites.

One of the issues to think about as we develop online courses is who will be the teacher? I don’t think I would want to use video content produced by another teacher. I’m not sure another teacher would want to use video content produced by me.

These are dilemmas going forward.

Lynn

Video Content with Office Mix and PowerPoint

During week 6 of our ION course we were challenged to produce some video content for a course. This is a completely daunting task if you haven’t done it before. And, it did take an inordinate amount of time. One classmate reported spending 7 hours producing a 7 minute video. My ratio was similar.

However, the most time-consuming aspect was NOT figuring out the software. I chose Office Mix that adds into PowerPoint. I liked the idea that I already use PowerPoint routinely, and hopefully the Mix add-on would be easy to use.

In fact, it takes about two minutes to figure out how to use it. Simply create your PowerPoint, go to the Mix tab, and start recording with standard play, pause, and review buttons. The time is in the production details. It’s alarming to watch your own facial expressions, especially paused in bizarre contortions. The lighting isn’t right. The fish tank is gurgling. The parrot is chirping. The sun is shining in all the windows. The camera is too high, too low, too near, too far. Microphone is or is not working well. And then speaking. Somehow it seems unacceptable to have a natural speech pattern with various imperfections, and we want it perfect.

I think most of the production details will be ironed out with experience – we’ll have the location, positions, lighting, etc worked out. As for the perfect speaking…I think that in the interest of actually getting anything done, ever, we have to allow ourselves to simply be ourselves, and accept the imperfections. It’s hard to think about a student who might replay our awkward moments over and over, but so be it.

For all my classmates who posted onto YouTube, I applaud your bravery!

Here's my first ever video content: Office Mix video

I am very pleased with the Office Mix product. It produces a professional, attractive product. All evidence to the contrary is user-related!

Lynn

Survey Tools

Spurred by this week’s assignment, I threw myself again into learning a new piece of technology – Qualtrics survey tool.

In anticipation of taking this course, I used PollEverywhere in a conference presentation. The stakes were very high as failure would have been professionally embarrassing for me. However, it turned out fairly simple. I took a few hours to learn how to do it, develop my questions, tinker with the look and feel, and then test. I tested over and over and made sure I had worked out all the wrinkles before my presentation.

One wrinkle I did not anticipate – my audience. Financial advisors are often said to be 59 year old men, on average. It turns out some of them have never sent a text, don’t know how to do it, and it required about 5 minutes of ordering younger participants around the room to get people set up on their phones to send and receive texts! The result, however, was powerful for me – clear feedback from the audience on their experience in the areas I was discussing in my talk.

New learning is always invigorating, and there's an additional surge of energy when you venture into an area with apprehension and experience some success. I was surprised at the number of friends and family – similar demographic as above – who expressed openly hostile and negative attitudes about these technology tools. In reference to social media, one person said she was “beyond it”. In my new enthusiasm, I would express it a different way.

I have found that there is some transferable knowledge from one tool to the next. It’s not a completely new navigation. Gradually I feel I’ve been in this neighbourhood before, or a similar neighbourhood.

Qualtrics was no exception. What a beautifully professional product emerges from my basic inputs. As I type in questions, I realize just how many things I want to know about my audience, and it is exciting to think that I can ask for this feedback in such a simple way. I also think it's powerful for students to feel their feedback is heard and wanted.

Qualtrics was nearly immediate in terms of being able to set up a survey and run it right away. Two tiny, simple, intuitive tweaks made it more attractive visually.

There are many more options to manage the survey, but what I am enjoying with many of these technologies is that they seem to be so simple to start and run with. You can improve and redesign at your leisure, but meanwhile you are up and running! In the past, it seemed very much the opposite. The startup instructions were so dense and detailed it discouraged the first attempt.

Thank you to all the designers of these wonderful technologies!

Lynn

My Blog on Blogging

As a child – grade 5 – 6 – 7, for example – I took every opportunity to have penpals. There were clubs at school, and I would exchange addresses with people I met on family vacations, even briefly. It was fun for me to get to know someone far away, and think about what to tell them about myself and my activities. I also kept a journal of sorts.

In high school my family moved 1000 miles away. At this time there was no internet, no email, texting, Facebook or any means other than “snail mail” to keep in touch. Long distance telephone was considered expensive. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and I loved getting letters in return. This took away from journaling time.

During university I resumed my journal, and reduced letter writing.

In my adult years I kept buying books with lovely paper to write in, but most of them remained empty. Eventually I re-established penpals, this time via email.  

All this to say, you would think I would love blogging! It appeals to me in every way, and I love the soft colours I established for my page. And yet I have failed to maintain my blog. Something blocks me from posting.

I note the inverse relationship between letter-writing and journaling, and further I believe I have replaced all with more talking in recent years! I talk a lot more than I used to.

Why maintain a blog? I’m not entirely sure. I think a blog with appropriate tags might attract like-minded individuals to read, and respond, and this would be a penpal relationship of sorts, but shared with others. I’m sure friendships develop, and communities share ideas with each other. An uncle of mine ended up in an online community that started with a common health concern. In their searches, they all found a certain blog where they were able to connect. It became a great source of understanding, support, shared information, and friendship. One year they all travelled to a US point to meet together.

It might serve only me – a record of my early thoughts and development on issues. A way to reflect and consider my information and views. This all takes time. I do think it’s worthwhile, and yet I have not done it.

I think I have been “shy” to put my thoughts into a public place. This is something I have thought about quite a bit during this course, and it is making me more willing to “put myself out there”. I posted a photo on Facebook. I’m writing this blog.

Lynn

Synchronous Communication

Until now, I have considered online courses to be a low quality substitute for face to face classes – “real” school. Remember “mail order degrees”? Even our school is sugar-coating the concept. As we are assigned online course developments, we are reminded that some students aren’t able to attend face to face classes (the implication being that f2f is a superior delivery model), so we will offer this to a different market.

My online course development is primarily asynchronous, offering a variety of content uploaded to the site, a series of assignments submitted to drop boxes, discussion groups around the assignment submissions, online quizzes, and remote proctored final tests. I felt comfortable with this format based on my experience as a student in online courses. As a student, I concede I would not take the course if it wasn’t available on my own time in an online format. And, the asynchronous platform suited me well as a learner.

This week turned all that around for me! Participating in a short Collaborate session in which I could chit chat with other students before the class began (typing in chat function, or with audio/visual), and then finding myself fully engaged with the range of audio and visual functions presented was an amazing experience. I saw that connection and a sense of fun and belonging could exist in the online environment, and that it is greatly enhanced with the addition of a synchronous option. I am very excited at the possibilities for students who are struggling alone with an assignment and just need a little direct help over a small barrier – suddenly this is possible in an online course in a way that I hadn’t imagined.

Most of my classmates are in the US and seem familiar with these tools. I have taken some training previously but haven’t had motivation to use them. Now I am excited to offer them even in my face to face class. This way, I’ll be more practiced when the time comes to deliver an online course.

Later in the week, I used Skype along with a google doc. This allowed my partner and I to edit a document simultaneously, at the same time as we chatted in a sidebar, and could see and hear each other via Skype. It worked seamlessly, and once again, was fully engaging as there were a variety of things to be reading as we chatted and were able to see each other.

As a stark contrast, one day later I participated in an old-style conference call. I dialed in, entered my passcode, waited for other voices to join, and finally sat on the phone for 45 minutes with 6 participants. We referred to a hard copy document we had, but apart from that we had no visual content to the call. It was functional, but most certainly did not build rapport or a feeling of team the way the other tools had.

 

It's exciting to be learning to use these tools.

Lynn

I'm behind already! Google Reader no longer exists. I chose AOL Reader instead, and have my first blog uploaded.

Learning Technology

I'm an ordinary person, and I think slower than many to learn new things, especially things that involve technology. Many people in my world are dismissive of technological advances, focusing on the negatives - it's different from what they are used to, it's a time-waster, it's hard to learn, it doesn't seem to work when they try. I see it differently, and I've decided to become better at this. I want to appreciate technology, and all it can do for us. I want to develop a passion for learning and incorporating new technologies into my life. The learning process has always been exciting - and maddeningly frustrating!  There are many exciting possibilities and directions for both my personal life and my work life. Also fear that if I don't work to learn them, I will get left far behind and unable to learn in my late age.

I have sons in their twenties, young students, and a brand new baby granddaughter. I hope to keep in touch with their lives by immersing myself more in new technologies.

Today I read an exciting article talking about using and writing blogs. He uses an aggregator to track the blogs he follows, and spends 20 minutes every morning catching up on updates. Waste of time? Time you don't have? How many minutes per day do many people still spend reading the newspaper, whether or not the content interests them? This is an opportunity to have daily items of interest, presented, because you selected it.

The author writes enthusiastically about exchanges of ideas, pushing his thoughts, being pushed on his thoughts.

My next stop is to reader.google.com to load up some blogs of interest for me. Writing a blog is more intimidating, until I realize that I have started doing exactly that, with this post.

For now, I am not thinking about anyone following my blog. I hope they don't. But maybe in time I'll be better, and someone might find something I write to be of interest to them.

Over and out.

Tech Tools 1551 Week 2, Day 2

Twitter. I was required to establish a Twitter account years ago and follow Tweets leading up to a conference. Today I logged in and found a lengthy list of Tweets accumulated since. Do people really read this stuff? I’m bothered that I apparently have 13 followers, and several of them aren’t identifiable. Does this mean their inboxes will be filled with my ION tweets? I tweeted my professor. I see he has tweeted a daily link. I think I need to change my Twitter options so that Tweets come through to my phone, or something like that.

Diigo. I am to install Diigo on my browser. Instructions are given, but they do not seem to be working. I google “browser bar” to make sure I understand what they are talking about. I google several other items on Diigo, watch a youtube video, and eventually figure out that most of these are talking about Firefox, but I am using Internet Explorer, or Chrome. This is a key, and I am quickly able to install Diigo on both. The instruction was to right click in an empty space near my browser bar, and this produced toolbar options I was unaware of. I installed Diigo in Favourites on Internet Explorer and in Bookmarks on Chrome. These are details that weren’t apparent in my first pass of the information. If I wasn’t in the ION course, I might have given up. However, lately I am pursuing these things more doggedly, and gradually building some comfort level these things. My computer use to date has been very basic.

I often find information written by other users more helpful than what is written in official user instructions. In skimming for help, I came to understand a major benefit of Diigo for organizing information. By tagging information with descriptors, you can search for items that might not be related in a mere alphabetical search of favourites. True confession: Over the past year I read many articles online, some academic, some popular press, in preparation for a talk at a conference. I kept a disorderly list of my sources in a word document. Diigo would have made my life easier, and prettier J I am resolved to use it.