So after a fun filled day of Easter hunts, local markets, visits from family members it is time to get back onto Task 2. Tomorrow marks the due day of our final product submission for Task 2 after almost a week of peer review. I reviewed a website myself and offered as much constructive feedback as possible; I hope it was helpful. Disappointingly however, I did not receive a formal review through LMS of my work on this task. Despite this, I decided not to request one through a message on LMS as I have been fortunate to receive feedback from other peers prior to submitting my draft.
After some consideration of the feedback from my friends, I made the decision to leave my work and not make any changes. My screencast was the one thing that I had considered redoing but after listening to it several times and accepting the reality that my home is always noisy, I decided that my instructions are clear and that the background noise was as minimal as it will get in my home.
Before starting this blog I took a look at the numbers for my blog page and found a massive spike in views around the 15th April; coinciding with the submission of my draft. Over one hundred views were made, suggesting that despite no one conducting an official review, there were still plenty of peers that were happy to read my blogs but were not willing to offer their feedback.
If this situation has taught me anything, it is the importance of generating feedback for the people you work with. In the classroom context it has demonstrated to me how a feeling of being "lost" can come about when communication between peers, EA's and teachers isn't continued back and forth. Even in regards to informal events.
Well, I really must sign off for the night before I fall asleep at the computer. Time to enjoy a small breather just before we begin Task3...
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Task 2 Screencast
Well since making a start on Task 1 and continuing all the way through Task 2, I have been catching up with my lovely peers by text, instant messaging and in person for coffee. Special thanks to Joelene Nottle for pointing out that I could use screenshots on word and save as an image to then insert on my webpage, that idea hadn't even crossed my mind because I was too busy trying to find complicated solutions. Thanks to Rebecca Exley for the late night inspirations and encouragement. Throwing around our ideas via text message in the middle of study sessions has helped my Social Learner page grow. I was impressed after I viewed your presentation with instructions for your Wicked Wix event at the level of detail. I decided that I wanted to go outside of my comfort zone and give the screencast a go but was unsure about the end result, so thanks for viewing it for me to give me some feedback. I know that part of this task is a formal peer review but without on going help from peers during the creation process I think that I would have missed vital components of the task. For example, it wasn't until I read Jolene's Social Learner Page that I realised that I needed to describe the event and my justification of social media in more detail. It was Fiona Walter's blogs that made me understand that my descriptions of finding solutions to my technology fails needed to be very precise and explicit. So thanks ladies, I appreciate it!
Seeking feedback from my peers has been a natural response to the Tasks required. I have come to understand that this is leading us nicely into Task 3 which will require an even higher level of collaboration with peers. I can see the scaffolding taking place of the authentic tasks building on one to the next. So it will be exciting to introduce myself to the group and get to know some more peers.
To complete instructions to create a Flickr account and join my group I decided to use Screen-o-matic due to it having a recordable time of 15 minutes. I didn't want to rush my instructions. It also allowed me to pause the recording which I found very handy since all three of my children were home at the time. However, even with the pause function, my third attempt at recording still had background sounds from the children and dogs. By this stage, after receiving some feedback from Rebecca as mentioned above, I made the decision to submit the recording as my draft and wait for further feedback from my peers prior to the final submission date. I'm sure that if I had continued to try to get a flawless recording that I would find something to pick on it each time so instead I will await further feedback. You can find Screen-o-matic via this link http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/
In my last blog I described a problem that I had had with Flickr and geotagging photos. Since then I have successfully tagged the photos and they now show up on my map. It turned out that all I had to do was go into "Organize" and select location and then alter the "geoprivacy" once that had been done I was able to drag each photo to the location on the map. To work out how to do this I went onto the help page on Flickr, typed in my query and below is a screen shot of what I was presented with. I then read up on a couple of these before attempting the steps described above and hey presto it worked! So next blog I expect that I would have completed a peer review and received one, so till then ciao.
Seeking feedback from my peers has been a natural response to the Tasks required. I have come to understand that this is leading us nicely into Task 3 which will require an even higher level of collaboration with peers. I can see the scaffolding taking place of the authentic tasks building on one to the next. So it will be exciting to introduce myself to the group and get to know some more peers.
To complete instructions to create a Flickr account and join my group I decided to use Screen-o-matic due to it having a recordable time of 15 minutes. I didn't want to rush my instructions. It also allowed me to pause the recording which I found very handy since all three of my children were home at the time. However, even with the pause function, my third attempt at recording still had background sounds from the children and dogs. By this stage, after receiving some feedback from Rebecca as mentioned above, I made the decision to submit the recording as my draft and wait for further feedback from my peers prior to the final submission date. I'm sure that if I had continued to try to get a flawless recording that I would find something to pick on it each time so instead I will await further feedback. You can find Screen-o-matic via this link http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/
In my last blog I described a problem that I had had with Flickr and geotagging photos. Since then I have successfully tagged the photos and they now show up on my map. It turned out that all I had to do was go into "Organize" and select location and then alter the "geoprivacy" once that had been done I was able to drag each photo to the location on the map. To work out how to do this I went onto the help page on Flickr, typed in my query and below is a screen shot of what I was presented with. I then read up on a couple of these before attempting the steps described above and hey presto it worked! So next blog I expect that I would have completed a peer review and received one, so till then ciao.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Task 2 continues...
Golly gosh, boy have I been busy working away at this task! So much has happened in the past couple of days that I'm really not sure where to begin to fill you in! Firstly, my Social learner page has been created on my website along with my very own Flickr account and Mother's Group Flickr Group, here is the link. https://www.flickr.com/groups/2654709@N22/ Now initially I had a few hick ups creating this little gem; I had set the group setting as public but invitation only which meant that the link above only provided an email address instead of allowing me to show the actual group. After a bit of a think and read through the Administration page I realised that in order to have a link direct anyone straight to the page, I needed to alter the setting to public so that anyone can become a member. My first thoughts on this scenario was concern for privacy, however after having a thorough review of the material that I was posting, I came to the conclusion that their was no risk to anybodies personal information and privacy. I then came to understand that when it comes time for peer review it was far less complicated to allow anyone to become a member and relieved me from the worry of checking frequently to see if anyone had requested to be a member during the review period next week.
Another problem that arose began as an exciting option that I hoped would enhance my features of my social media event. I discovered that Flickr allows you to geotag photos to show the location of where each photograph was taken. I thought that was a great idea, however for some reason I haven't been successful in tagging any of my photos. I looked under the About section for some answers and followed the instructions provided but I kept getting messages saying that the map was unable to list the location for each photo. The only explanation that I can come up with at this stage is that I had location settings switched off on my phone when taking the photos. I wonder if that then means that the information is not available for the feature to work? I tried to click and drag each photo onto the location on the map manually but this also did not work. Back to the drawing board on this one, I will keep you posted.
The actual process of getting the photos was completed yesterday. There are so many great parks and playgrounds for kids in Jurien that it was tricky to narrow it down to four. In the end however, my decision to narrow the choices to out of four parks was due to the tear-away toddler that had to accompany me on the photo shoot. It started off with the said toddler standing in doggy doo at Venue 1; not a positive start but at least it did remind me to mention to the group that venue 1 is in fact a dog beach. More upsetting was the realisation that I hadn't bought any baby wipes with me to clean up the mess before getting into the brand new, two day old car with beach sand and doggy doo because as I left the house I thought "will only take a minute, no need to grab the baby bag". Hmmm I was wrong on two points there. At the next stop, the proximity of the busy road was too much of a temptation for the toddler and my thoughts were "a great big beautiful park to play in and he is attracted to the road". By Venue 3 my plans of editing the photos on my Flickr app while the toddler played happily were all but shattered when his tiredness become obvious with each trip and stumble. By the time I got to Venue 4 we did not get out to play, it was a quick shot out of the car window and off home to bed. I really was hoping to use the mobile app and photo editing features more than I did but that being said I am generally happy with the overall result.
Yesterday I also received my feedback for Task 1 and have ascertained that I need to concentrate on the use of visuals. With that taken on board, I have included three screen shots of my Flickr group on my social learner page by saving them to a word doc and then converting it to a PDF and then to jpeg to allow webnode to display it on my page. I realise that the visual section is under the blog marking rubric so I need to perhaps come up with some special visuals here that enhance my blog...
Another problem that arose began as an exciting option that I hoped would enhance my features of my social media event. I discovered that Flickr allows you to geotag photos to show the location of where each photograph was taken. I thought that was a great idea, however for some reason I haven't been successful in tagging any of my photos. I looked under the About section for some answers and followed the instructions provided but I kept getting messages saying that the map was unable to list the location for each photo. The only explanation that I can come up with at this stage is that I had location settings switched off on my phone when taking the photos. I wonder if that then means that the information is not available for the feature to work? I tried to click and drag each photo onto the location on the map manually but this also did not work. Back to the drawing board on this one, I will keep you posted.
The actual process of getting the photos was completed yesterday. There are so many great parks and playgrounds for kids in Jurien that it was tricky to narrow it down to four. In the end however, my decision to narrow the choices to out of four parks was due to the tear-away toddler that had to accompany me on the photo shoot. It started off with the said toddler standing in doggy doo at Venue 1; not a positive start but at least it did remind me to mention to the group that venue 1 is in fact a dog beach. More upsetting was the realisation that I hadn't bought any baby wipes with me to clean up the mess before getting into the brand new, two day old car with beach sand and doggy doo because as I left the house I thought "will only take a minute, no need to grab the baby bag". Hmmm I was wrong on two points there. At the next stop, the proximity of the busy road was too much of a temptation for the toddler and my thoughts were "a great big beautiful park to play in and he is attracted to the road". By Venue 3 my plans of editing the photos on my Flickr app while the toddler played happily were all but shattered when his tiredness become obvious with each trip and stumble. By the time I got to Venue 4 we did not get out to play, it was a quick shot out of the car window and off home to bed. I really was hoping to use the mobile app and photo editing features more than I did but that being said I am generally happy with the overall result.
Yesterday I also received my feedback for Task 1 and have ascertained that I need to concentrate on the use of visuals. With that taken on board, I have included three screen shots of my Flickr group on my social learner page by saving them to a word doc and then converting it to a PDF and then to jpeg to allow webnode to display it on my page. I realise that the visual section is under the blog marking rubric so I need to perhaps come up with some special visuals here that enhance my blog...
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Task 2 begins...
After what seemed like forever, I have finally decided on a social event for Task 2. I have researched different social media platforms and I have decided on Flickr as being the most appropriate for the event. I have absolutely no experience with Flickr, which is not very surprising since just about all of the social media platforms I came across were completely foreign territory. I was so amazed at the shear number of different social media tools that are available on the internet and a little ashamed that I haven't heard of them before.
My research started by looking at reviews of social media; http://60secondmarketer.com/blog/2010/04/09/top-52-social-media-platforms/ helped to narrow down my search to the tools that seemed most appropriate in context to my social event. I was flabbergasted at the number of social groups listed in Perth on http://www.meetup.com/ and was in awe of how far social media has developed over the few years that I have been hiding away in Facebook.
Today I also completed reading a chapter of our text on "Communicating with Technologies". I found it interesting to read about asynchronously and synchronously communicating online and the differences between the two. I could not help but get the impression that Jonassen, Howland, Marra and Crismond frowned upon synchronously communicating. It did challenge my perspective, as I have always found instant messaging a convenient form of communication. Perhaps I have been conditioned to expect instant gratification with quick answers to questions? It also made me think of previous conversations with friends regarding their distaste at people communicating by text messages instead of picking up the phone for a verbal conversation. Anecdotally the friends that tend to dislike this form of communication have grown up in an environment prior to internet technology suggesting a reluctance of change.
My plan of attack from here is to complete another chapter of the text and then to begin setting up accounts for my social media platform. I did post a question on LMS to see if any fellow students have had experience with Flickr but had little response. Really thinking about it though, the best way for me to decide if it is definitely the right social media for the job is just to give it a go.
My research started by looking at reviews of social media; http://60secondmarketer.com/blog/2010/04/09/top-52-social-media-platforms/ helped to narrow down my search to the tools that seemed most appropriate in context to my social event. I was flabbergasted at the number of social groups listed in Perth on http://www.meetup.com/ and was in awe of how far social media has developed over the few years that I have been hiding away in Facebook.
Today I also completed reading a chapter of our text on "Communicating with Technologies". I found it interesting to read about asynchronously and synchronously communicating online and the differences between the two. I could not help but get the impression that Jonassen, Howland, Marra and Crismond frowned upon synchronously communicating. It did challenge my perspective, as I have always found instant messaging a convenient form of communication. Perhaps I have been conditioned to expect instant gratification with quick answers to questions? It also made me think of previous conversations with friends regarding their distaste at people communicating by text messages instead of picking up the phone for a verbal conversation. Anecdotally the friends that tend to dislike this form of communication have grown up in an environment prior to internet technology suggesting a reluctance of change.
My plan of attack from here is to complete another chapter of the text and then to begin setting up accounts for my social media platform. I did post a question on LMS to see if any fellow students have had experience with Flickr but had little response. Really thinking about it though, the best way for me to decide if it is definitely the right social media for the job is just to give it a go.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Well what a difference a few days make! I am very pleased to say that my poster is completed and my assignment submitted, YES! To sum up the end product was created with Piktochart after trying a couple of other software packages I found it the most user friendly. I incorporated authentic learning practices in the final product, solved the problem of saving the document as a printable PDF file, kept the message brief and informative and visually appealing to the target audience.
I have been in contact with two fellow external students using instant messaging on facebook and sent them links of my website to receive some feedback. We were able to use the messaging feature to have a brief discussion about the assignment in real time which I found very helpful. . I also met up with another external peer from the same town and had coffee while looking at each others work. I had some concerns that the information provided on my website was perhaps too personal so I was able to ask their opinions to decide what I needed to change. Looking at the work of my peers also helped me to recognise areas of weakness in my own work, lack of description in my blogs of how I resolved problems was one of them. I also took this into account when describing my poster on my Digital Citizenship page.
Now that Task 1 is completed I am excited to begin on Task 2. At this stage I have no idea what social media to focus on but I am not planning on jumping ahead of myself this time, instead I will wait to receive guidance from the lectures. As it is, I still have illnesses to deal with on the home front so for now I have a little time up my sleeve to focus on getting everyone healthy again. Insert sigh of relief here. :)
I have been in contact with two fellow external students using instant messaging on facebook and sent them links of my website to receive some feedback. We were able to use the messaging feature to have a brief discussion about the assignment in real time which I found very helpful. . I also met up with another external peer from the same town and had coffee while looking at each others work. I had some concerns that the information provided on my website was perhaps too personal so I was able to ask their opinions to decide what I needed to change. Looking at the work of my peers also helped me to recognise areas of weakness in my own work, lack of description in my blogs of how I resolved problems was one of them. I also took this into account when describing my poster on my Digital Citizenship page.
Now that Task 1 is completed I am excited to begin on Task 2. At this stage I have no idea what social media to focus on but I am not planning on jumping ahead of myself this time, instead I will wait to receive guidance from the lectures. As it is, I still have illnesses to deal with on the home front so for now I have a little time up my sleeve to focus on getting everyone healthy again. Insert sigh of relief here. :)
Monday, March 17, 2014
I have decided to focus on the area of netiquette and have started a new poster using infogr.am. So far I have found infogr.am a little fiddly to use and haven't been completely satisfied with the templates that are available for the posters. I have decided instead to have a go with Piktochart over the next few days to see if I find it caters to my needs.
I have wanted to focus my poster on the parents of children in years 3 to 5. I recently went through Internet Policy and consent forms with two of my children for their school and thought that it would be helpful for the school to provide some useful information to parents on how they could help their children understand correct and appropriate netiquette use. I was worried that the task posters were only for students but after viewing this weeks you tube instructions for the digital poster there is no specific mention that it must be aimed at students. I have also looked at the marking rubric and found that there is no mention that the poster needs to be for students only.
This part of task one has been such a tedious challenge this week, with investigating the available tools very time consuming. Attempting to do this while caring for my three sick children while fighting off the dreaded flu myself has seen me rethinking my study load for the semester. Throw in a trip to the nearest hospital, 2 hours drive away, for my daughter and I am a little concerned that my deadline for the assignment due date may not be attainable. Strict time management is on the cards for the next week. With a bit of luck my next post will see the poster attached as a printable PDF, a deadline met and a household full of well people. Fingers crossed...
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