Week #11 - Can You Hear Me Now?

This week was both gratifying and petrifying for me. By now you have met my first experiment of the week - my VOKI Avitar.  Now that was very cool to produce.   I loved creating my Avitar and was happy to be able to move her from VOKI to my blog!

I'd next like to address my exploration of MOOC's.  Massive Open Online Courses.  (Cormier, 2012) tells us that MOOC's are courses - they are not schools.  MOOC's are about connecting, collaborating, engagement and an event.  He goes on to use 7 key words/terms to describe MOOC's:

1. Courses
2. Engaging & Collaborative
3. Open
4. Free
5. Inclusive Participation
6. World Wide Distribution
7. Life-Long Networked Learning opportunities

These words captured the essence of MOOC's for me. MOOC's are available to everyone who wants them, the work is shared by anyone willing to participate.  Participants can be contributors or not.  Participants keep the work and all they learned from it.  Information sharing in a structured yet graded environment.  How did I not know about this before?? I was pleased we were to review the Daphne Koller video again.  I find her inspiring and as the co-creator of Coursera, a woman to be admired for her brilliance.  After reviewing her talk for the second time, one key motivator she identified for herself to drive the concept for Coursera, was a saying by Thomas Friedman:

Friedman (Koller, 2012)

After my first viewing of her several months back, I took it upon myself to find out more about 'FREE LEARNING' from reputable Universities - was there a benefit to me and potentially my degree.  There were many courses offered at Brock that I would have to take but I wasn't really interested in - could this environment offer me an interesting yet credit worthy opportunity?  I have found several courses, and I will inquire with Brock if I can actually use them as credits!  I even got my husband enrolled in an economics course at Stanford through Coursera - LOVE IT! As with anything wonderful, there are always critics.  John Gold and David Coffey took it upon themselves to critique another MOOC environment - the Khan Academy. (Chen, 2012) notes in her blog that the professors 'biggest gripe is with the procedural, rules-based approach in all of Mr. Khan’s videos.  Khan Academy videos can be effective supplements to classroom teaching, says Mr. Golden, whose specialty is math education. But he argues that they do not encourage students to think critically. “If I have a bone to pick with the videos that I’ve seen so far, it’s that they tend to be about giving students rules and asking them to practice rules, as opposed to problem-solving,” he says. So who says everyone has to think just one way?  

This lead me to my next exploration this week - listening to the great Bill Gates discussing his book, The Road Ahead, where is discussed his vision of education how it could be transformed with technology with Jeffrey Young (Young, 2012).  He also spoke to society's need for 'degrees'.  

(Gates, 2012), "if you have a great degree then you're considered for jobs, and if you don't have that degree there are a lot of jobs you won't be considered for.  He continues, "the question is, Can we transform this credentialing process? And in fact the ideal would be to separate out the idea of proving your knowledge from the way you acquired that knowledge."

This quote I will carry with me always...and explore what I can do to move this concept into reality.

After all of this, I was further motivated to learn more about MOOC's.  I found many of the videos we were assigned outdated so I found a brand new one.  The embeded video proved most beneficial to me in further understanding the benefits of MOOC's to our world learning and Digital Citizenship growth and understanding.
 

(Cooper, Our Education System)

Demystifying MOOCs! from Zaid Alsagoff  
This week continued with some fun from my Feedly.  This comic fit so well into my exploration of education equality and MOOC's, that I had to share it with you here.  I believe it speaks to Bill Gates vision and just reemphasizes that education is an individual journey and one size does NOT fit all!


I explored a few more things this week.  They included:
Webcasting, Podcasting, Screencasting, TeacherTube, SchoolTube, and or course YouTube.  I then went into creation mode and created a screen cast (on how to add pages to your blog) as well as uploading a video (Chasing a Double Rainbow) - I hope you enjoy both.  

Once I got the hang of it it was fine - BUT...it was very time consuming (as is any new task.  Will I use it again - Oh YES!  My students could use this for presentations, and assignment submissions.  My wheels are turning for January 2014.
My final task this week was to insert Creative Commons into my own blog.  Ensuring my work is used with my approval and with acknowledgment of contribution is very important to me and as these months have passed I have come to understand how this respect of the digital world contributors must be extended to all and must be taught to all.  The process of acquiring my own CC was very easy and embedding it into my blog just as easy.   You will find my Creative Commons on the footnote of my blog home page.

Enjoy my rainbow chase (PS I haven't caught it yet)!
     

References:

Chen, A. (2012, June 28). Parody critiques popular khan academy videos. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/parody-critiques-popular-khan-academy-videos/37543 

 Cooper, S. (Artist). (2013, November 26). Our Education System [Web Drawing]. Retrieved from

                 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BZ_qJp4IEAEDYip.jpg:large 

                Cormier, D. (Writer) (2012). What is a mooc? [Web]. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/eW3gMGqcZQc

                Koller, D. (Performer) (2012, August). What's new about mooc's. TED Talk. [Video podcast]. Retrieved

                                from http://on.ted.com/Koller

Young, J. (Performer) (2012). A conversation with bill gates about the future of higher education [Web]. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/A-Conversation-With-Bill-Gates/132591/

Week #10 - RemixedUp! (has anyone copyrighted that??)

Week 10 - Time sure does fly when you are having fun.

I took a lot of time going through the weekly exercises including the Background Readings.  Topics of this week - Remix and Creative Commons.  I found though that I really got tied up in the Creative Commons this week and missed much of the fun of Remix.  I really wish I had spent more time on the creative tools!

Having said this, the week started with the great video - Kirk Ferguson: Embrace the Remix. One of my favourite quotes in the video truly defined the term 'remix' for me. 
(Ferguson, 2012) quotes Henry Ford: 

"I invented nothing new, I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready and then it is inevitable."

This lead me to thinking of my own understanding of how we take ideas and continued to build on them.  We take a thought or idea from one area, mix it with an experience of another world and tweak it with a recent conversation and VOILA! and idea is created. (Ferguson, 2012) continued by stating what resonated more than any other statements this week when he said:

" Our creativity comes from without, not from within.  We are not self-made.  We are dependent on one another, and admitting this to ourselves isn't an embrace of mediocrity and derivativeness.  It's a liberation from our misconceptions, and it's an incentive to not expect so much from ourselves and to simply begin."  

But why should we not expect so much from ourselves?  I think we should push ourselves to reach to the stars to create and invent!  Search out the ideas, search out for inspiration, search out for motivation and then make it yours!

I do however understand now the connection in this week between Remix and Creative Commons.  Having never been "educated on Copyrights (even though it's posted everywhere at school), I could not be bothered to read the why's what for's and what if's about the concept that I can't copy notes or pictures or use images in my presentations for my students.  After reading Fair Dealing For Media Education article this week, it started to actually make sense to me why restrictions (guidelines) are in place.  There is a lot of legal jargon involved and I struggled to understand it...until it lead me to Creative Commons Licenses and how these would be a great alternative to explore for in class work.

I printed for my own reference use (and potentially sharing it with my fellow teachers), the
Resources and Tools from 2Learn.ca to support Digital Life Skills - the explanation of the Canadian Copyright 9 Key Questions and the 19 Copyright Resources will prove most useful.

Although juvenile and YouTube directed, the Teaching Students About Copyright -The YouTube Way video was quite on the money.  Simple but to the point - I will share this with my students and encourage a class discussion (they are presenting their term projects shortly).

This lead me to the Creative Commons: What Every Educator Needs to Know video.  Although quite long, it really made me understand the benefit of using Creative Commons both as a creator and a user of material that may be used by others.  I exercised my own Creative Commons rights by loading some of my personal pictures to Flickr and setting Creative Commons restrictions on them.  This did give me a sense of empowerment - both to share but most importantly to get credit for my sharing.  (I have been struggling with this on my PLE).  I found the types of licenses were so very well explained in the video that applying these to my images worked well - I understood it!

I am attaching my link to My Prezi Creative Commons presentation blog.  If was a great (but VERY time consuming exercise).  I can visualize myself using this for presentations in class but also asking students to use this tool to create presentations.  Need to try something new (PowerPoint burn out happening!). 

My final task this week was to try out Animoto.  I have seen it so often and heard about it, and yet no knowledge at all about this tool.  I wanted to do something a little special dedicated to my youngest brother who I lost tragically 3 years ago.  I miss him terribly and this is a little something just for him - Dedicated to Oliver Bodemann!

The Story of Three

Well - on that note...I love these new creative tools - now personally as well as professionally.  I have a few more to explore including Screencast which Kristy-Anne included in her blog.  It was great - How to create your first Animoto.
Thanks for the help on that one Kristy-Anne.

J

References:

Ferguson, K. (Performer) (2012). Embrace the remix [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/kirby_ferguson_embrace_the_remix.html

Week #9 Reflection - Mind Your Digital Manners, VoiceThread (Sewcool) and Right/Wrong Scenario #2 Discussions

 This week our focus continued with the collaborative work tools, continued understanding of Digital Citizenship, and a review of what I see as basic Netiquette guidelines.  

In the Netiquette Tips readings, there were three titles; No Need to Respond to Rude E-mails, Top 10 Scariest Email “Boo-Boos”!, and “How to Nicely Ask…”.

Miss Manners

McLeod, J. (2012) 
http://www.topshelfcomix.com
/comix/miss_manners/
miss_manners_01.gif

It was similar to the old style advice column (Miss Manners) and I really enjoyed the read.  I must say that I could relate to each of the three situations and have found myself (past tense) a rather rude emailer - especially if I found the email accusatory or disrespectful.  I learned after one particularly ill placed response, that it is not always about what you say, but the tone of an email can change the whole level of communication you are engaging in.  I now take the advise about taking a deep breath and reading your response email at least 10 minutes after you write it...lol...I do this now and always keep in mind that my words are permanent and will go public!  How good/bad do I look in the note?

I also found the 101 E-mail Etiquette downloadable book on the Net Manners site really good sound advise to keep handy (both for personal use and to share with my students).  I also like the approach Judith takes to how you pay for your e-book - 'Pay with a Tweet or a FaceBook post' (as a marketer I can appreciate this approach).

Pay With A Tweet or
Facebook (2012)
http://www.paywithatweet.com/

I continued to explore the Net Manners site and stumbled upon the Privacy & Security page.  This tied in nicely with our Rights & Responsibilities work last week.  Although privacy was included in my submission, I thought my research partner +Mary Lou Siviero's summary so very excellent!  In her summary, +Mary Lou Siviero share with us that:

"Digital Responsibilities: Digital citizens have the responsibility to respect and adhere to, privacy policies, rules and, regulations. Citizens will not misuse privacy information for illegal acts or, for personal gain without consent" (Siviero, 2013).

Ms. Net Manners - Judith Kallos - demonstrates this right to privacy so very well on her page, it brought to light that Digital Rights and Responsibilities are vital to share and educate all our students, families, and friends about.

Several of our assigned readings, web searches and exploration tasks were quite disappointing this week.  I found that at least 60% of the links on the various sites we were to explore (in particular those on PollDaddy.com and Rudebusters.com), were not working - frustrating as I did want more information on these topics.

The balance of the Building Background readings were great review and nothing all that new for me.  I did tag all of them in my continued Content Curation ScoopIt site for this class (hope you are reading it or using it as a resource site).

Ironbrigade (2011)
http://www.mtlsd.org/mellon/teams
/ironbrigade/images/voicethread%
20logo.jpg

We were also introduced to VoiceThread this week.   As I progressed through the Building Background exercises, I found myself not turned on by a tool (for the first time this semester!).  But why?  Perhaps the examples just didn't do it for me?  My VoiceThread blog outlines in detail my thoughts on this exercise.

The second learning activity this week, involved using blogs as discussion forums.  We were each able to choose from a selection of scenarios outlined in our Digital Citizenship in Schools text (Ribble, 2011).  My scenario #2, spoke about a young woman and her addiction to facebook.  My blog forum for this scenario can be reviewed and commented on by clicking here.  I am looking forward to your thoughts.

I had the opportunity to respond to several of my classmates scenarios.  Jeff & Jamie, Hilary & Mary, and Linda & Sean.
Great Scenarios by all!

Captain Jack Sparrow (2009)
http://img.photobucket.com/
albums/v101/mandustries/
Choco%20and%20CC/Fictional%
20Fancies/sparrow1.jpeg

Well I am done for this week - 3 Blogs is a lot of work, but great learning.  Digital Citizenship is becoming a comfortable practice for me and I look forward to taking my new found "Digital Suave" out to the world I live and work in daily.









 


References:

McLeod, J. (Artist). Miss Manners [Web Drawing]. Retrieved from http://www.topshelfcomix.com/comix/miss_manners/miss_manners_01.gif 

 Ribble, M. (2011). Digital citizenship in schools (2nd Ed.). Washington, D.C:  International Society for Technology in Education

 Siviero, M. (2013). digital responsibilities discussion forum / mary lou's top three. Informally published manuscript, Bachelor of Adult Education, Brock University, Toronto, ON, Toronto, Ontario Canada. Retrieved from https://lms.brocku.ca/portal/site/ADED1P32D02FW2013WWW002/page/04297ea8-629a-4568-af70-db23a74cd3da

Week #8 - Wicked or Wonderful Wiki's? What Rights & Responsibilities Do I Have?

This week was a mixed bag for me.  I must admit that I think I am creating more work for myself than I need to in this course.  I am spending 3 times the amount of time doing the work for this program than I have done for any of my other programs!  Why?  For an elective, I should be spending not as much time....Well, I am starting to see why I am and why I am glad I am spending this time.

Centennial College
 Logo

The ideas generated through the learning over the last 9 weeks, as given me new perspective in how to present my classes.  Not only have I learned to be a good online learner, I have learned how to incorporate many new tools into my January 2014 courses.  I have found my teaching to be a bit outdated lately and incorporating the new tools into my existing classes has added some new excitement  - not just for me but also for my students.  In particular, I have been asked to merge two courses into one - what an amazing opportunity to create something new and exciting using some of these new tools.  I am currently working on this project and should have details in the next two weeks - I will share it then.

My current featured classes include one that I have taught for 15 years now.  I modify the content every semester, but I haven't yet made it digitally 'sexy' or exciting for my students.  In this class, my students create a marketing plan for a hospitality organization of their choosing - either real or made up.  To date all submissions have been either hard copy or electronic submission.  It's hard and a lot of work, but ultimately after 15 weeks, the students produce a great business document. During the semester, I always take my students 'temperature' - get a feel for how they are doing - struggles, successes etc.

Power Struggles

I generally do it with an online survey which always gives me some new ideas.  I conducted my usual survey recently, and the students were asking for more interactive work, my play, and more examples.  So I conducted an interactive JigSaw exercise with them on Marketing Mixes (what I call the Marketing P's).  Well they loved it and I asked them each to post their groups findings to our discussion section on eCentennial (our Moodle).

Working through the Wiki exercises, I realized and had another AHA moment (my second one this semester).  I could incorporate weekly group 'research' and the term project could be done using Wiki's that the students create.  I was inspired by the Discover Exercises link on the K12 Learning site.  These student examples, although none of a college or university level, showed the potential these Wiki's have - especially for projects.  I will be re-writing my course projects this week to incorporate and post them here over the next few weeks.  I started already by creating a Hospitality Sales & Marketing Curated ScoopIt! site to share with my students...so excited.

Also this week, I had the pleasure of working with my classmate +Mary Lou Siviero for our Google Docs Assignment on Digital Health & Wellness.  Working on this presentation virtually was very rewarding and challenging as we had so much information shared through our Evernote collection, yet only 500 words to share it with.  We worked hard and we worked well together and we utilized our individual strengths to create a fantastic assignment!  Thanks +Mary Lou Siviero - Great Job!

I also continued building the ScoopIt! curation site for our class ADED1P32 for class review at will - it's a great exercise for me to refer back to throughout the course.  I am also finding great articles for our curation site through my Feedly including this article Three Types of Assignments.  It is evident in this that I am on the right track when it comes to my own classroom assignments. 

So my final work (other than this blog) was our submission for Digital Responsibilities Forum about Digital Rights and Responsibilities.  I didn't find any of the readings particularly earth shattering (and truthfully rather repetitive), but I did find them helpful, informative,

Questions: Spring Board Thinking

and a springboard to bringing many of my own students into the realm of becoming digital citizens. I was absolutely horrified at the lack of Digital Responsibility a large number of my post-graduate students had.  I will be working on this moving forward.

Finally, an honourable mention goes to my experiencing Google Hangout on Tuesday.  I met +Caitlin Munn and a few other fellow students, and perhaps we can do the hangout again soon.  I can see doing this with some of my fellow teachers at Centennial to solidify the collaborative effort on our course outline reworks.

Well that is it for this week - I'm exhausted and exhilarated and ready to start Week 9.  Good learning and tie in between Wiki's and Digital Responsibility.  I can see how crucial the two are to creating a positive and digitally responsible experience for teachers and students.

Week #7 Reflection - The Great Google Docs

Google Docs... How did I not know about this until now? Who within my circle use Google Docs?, and how do they use it?  How can I explore this with my students and with my colleagues (at all three of my jobs).  This will be my mission over the next few weeks.

Don Adams http://img2-2.timeinc.
net/people/i/2005/news/051010/
dadams2.jpg

At the start of this week, my partners and I had a conference call to discuss our CLOUD project. Technically I suppose that was not a digital collaboration, but it was a great way to meet classmates and plan out of digital project.  +KaWai Sabarillo, +Mary Lou Siviero and I reviewed the assignment outline and divided up the tasks among the three of us.  We also shared our EverNote folders, which included the information we had each been collecting for our presentation.  +KaWai was great to send us a summary of the discussion and task distribution.  

No Time
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sRubyc07nKA/
UaKWgACFaOI/AAAAAAAABIY/
SXz1Qm1PNzI/s1600/notime.jpg 

+Jeff Stewart had posted to our discussion group his passion for Wiggio.  He mentioned that it "comes equipped with a list of all the different groups you are a part of, it allows you to upload files that are organized in the folder section, it allows you to schedule group events, do conference calling, create documents, send notes to your group members and many more things" (Stewart, 2013). With all the tools we have explored over the last months, I have been looking for a great one to use with my students.  Both my undergrad and my post grad students are involved in projects that require timing, team, and technique. I always hear from them that they struggle getting together with their teammates etc etc. Although a bit late for this semester, I think for the winter semester I will introduce this tool to my students along with Google Docs for their use for planning, plotting and presenting their projects to me.
I have also identified another opportunity for the use of both of these tools with my fellow part-time teachers at Centennial College.  We are currently working on merging two courses into one.  Not having face to face time with my fellow teachers, I will introduce these two tools to collaborate on this project.  

I did also explore Doodle and TodaysMeet and I think on their own they are great tools, but I want to promote one maybe two tools and not 3, 4 or 5 for students and my colleagues to get the same thing done - becomes to confusing for all.

Success
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HKNvnZOURf0/UdIsPlMbpAI/
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success.jpg

Now back to the CLOUD project, +Mary Lou Siviero and I are now the FAB2 team.  During the week there was a change in our team set up and unfortunately KaWai is no longer working with us.  +Mary Lou Siviero and I rocked it starting Sunday. We first met on TodaysMeet to discuss the redistribution of the work for the Digital Health and Wellness project.  We developed a list of tasks for each of us to complete, some joint tasks and finally a list to review with Caitlin to ensure we were meeting the project rubric.  I had already created a presentation template on Google Docs to start the project ball rolling.  We then met online on Google Docs bright and early Sunday morning and collaborated using our common platform, messaging, and sending notes and comments on each page - it was great!  We were so excited that our short orientation turned into an all day event (on and off anyway).

My biggest connect this week involved my work on my Evernote folders, Google Docs, TodaysMeet and the introduction to Doodle and Wiggio.  I see how I can use these both personally and professionally and an audit of my PLE is ongoing to determine how using the digital knowledge collection will ensure I 'work smarter not harder'. 

Works Cited

Stewart, J. (2013, November). Forums / ADED1P32D03FW2012MAIN Forum / GREAT TOOLS Discussion Forum . Retrieved from Brock University: https://lms.brocku.ca/portal/site/ADED1P32D02FW2013WWW002/page/04297ea8-629a-4568-af70-db23a74cd3da