Group Project

For our final group project, Shelly, Maureen, Karyn, Thomas and I brainstormed a new approach to learning management systems. We believe that what we have now is not student-centered or flexible. We need a system that allows us to tap the abilities of Web 2.0 directly in the online classroom.

Our brainstorm led us to N.O.B.L.E. - New Open Book Learning Environment.

Imagine a place where secure data meets an open exchange.

Integrated systems in a modular, customizable format.

Rooted in tight integration that bends at the needs of its users

Strong, stable, learning-centered, adaptable, flexible.

Leveraging the tools of Web 2.0 with an open architecture.

It's learning without boundaries structured in a cloud-type ecosystem.

Our logo uses imagery from a tree. We believe that symbol truly represents the next new system. It's something that it rooted in the ground (admin, data, reports) but flexible enough to bend with the changing needs of its users.

We met several times via Skype to brainstorm our project. After the first meeting, we divided and conquered as each person tackled their own aspect to the project. Karyn was our resident prezi pr dedicating hours to its creation, Shelly brought her editing eye to all aspects, Thomas did the final editing to bring the presentation together. I was a brainstormer always adding to the google document and wrote the audio script. I also added heavily to both the blog and Facebook page to allow us to market our idea and continue the important conversation about its need in our industry.

Individual Project

For my final individual project in this class, I created a SoftChalk lesson for my COM 110 students (Introduction to Communication) about Technology and Communication. One of my goals in this project was to find a way to demonstrate to my students how the recent shift in technology using Web 2.0 tools, mobile tools, etc has changed the way we communicate. Many of my students do not remember an Internet where you could not contribute to it.

Here is a link to my presentation.

I created the graphic - not a graphic artist so bear with me. The wordle addition was fun.

Wish Map

I love to travel. This is my first attempt at a map in Google Maps to lay out the journey. Use the link below the image below to see the full version of the map including a listing of my cities.

View Future Cross County Trip in a larger map

Geotagging. I'm it

This week, my assignment was to tag some of my images in flickr with geotags. You can see where they fall on my map by clicking here.

I love the geotagging aspect of images. Honestly, I have never used it until now though not sure why. I also give my images tags, but never scrolled down further and assigned geotags. I love that my images can show up on the map of their origin.

I added 5 images - Greensboro, NC, Winston Salem, NC, Atlanta, Georgia, Salt Lake City, Utah and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Searching in my head for instructional uses of this medium. Maybe an art class. Maybe a history class can create their own version of a walking tour. Maybe this is an icebreaker assignment to get students talking about themselves. Maybe a college can start this tradition and encourage students to do the same.

Then, we watched the brief presentation on Ted by Blaise on Photosynth. This "software" takes tagged images and links them together spatially. So if I took an image of a location and you took an image of the same location, then we both geotagged it correctly, our images could be related in the future and form one mega-image. It demonstrates how contributions to all of the endless social networks are not in vain. Of course, it does make you think before you tag your next digital image. Do I really want to stand in front of this famous building and pretend like I am holding it up? Where could this image end up?

Finally, I was asked to review the EXIF information on my data. I could not find that data on my camera, but my camera software on my computer is updated regularly. When I uploaded my images to flickr, flickr figured out what kind of camera that I was using and tagged my images automatically with this information - even down to the type of Canon PowerShot. Very cool

WordSmithing

This week, we were asked to worksmith a document with our class in Google Documents. I use Google Documents a lot thanks to work. Without it, it would be impossible for us to get anything done.

I often give my students a wiki to use to prepare for group projects and I can't for the life of me understand why they have such trouble with it. The idea of lots of people editing the same thing can send a student into a tail spin. Most online documents and wikis have a history feature that allow you to "bounce back" to an older version if someone makes a mistake and deletes your creativity.

Usable Non-Copyright Images

I found a great site - Yellowstone Digital Slide File. Owned by the government, great images from the park have been scanned and placed here for both the media and the public to use free of charge with proper credit. They are public domain.

Here is a link to an image that I used on my website.

For educators (developers), this is a great resource. The images are beautiful and high quality. The only concern about these images is that since they are scanned, they are quite large. Once someone shows you this website, you need to learn how to resize it properly.

Meetup

Ok, I confess that I was shocked that D.I. challenged us to use the Internet to meet with someone in person. Argh. The Internet is great, but it's also a super scary place. You have to be careful. So, I hung back and watched my classmates take the lead on this one. Most of them were joining meetup. So, I took the plunge and joined the Triad Hiking and Outdoor Group on meetup. Huge group! They have over 800 members and they use the site a lot to organize events.

I decided to take the plunge and go indoor rock climbing with this group. I posted my plans on Facebook and my friend Becky wanted to join me. Why not? So, on a Wednesday night, the two of us ventured into the Ultimate Climbing Gym in Greensboro. This place has been here almost 20 years, but it has been on my mental radar less than a week. I RSVP'ed on meetup and went for it.

Brad (red shirt in photos) was the organizer for the event and the person at the gym that I knew to find first. He helped Becky (green shirt) and I (purple shirt) do our first climb. We climb like newbies. We want to pick up one foot, place it somewhere and then lift the other. We were muscling the wall too much with our arms and not our legs. We weren't sure how much to trust the belay. If you looked around the room in contrast, people were diving, bouncing, standing on one foot, etc. These fears kept us from reaching the top during our first climb.

After our first climb, Becky and I stood back and stared at the amazing strength of the people in that room. Two of the photos here are of a man climbing the CEILING. Yes, he is upside down. I call him, "The Stud". After I took my final photos of him, he literally dangled from the ceiling with one arm. (Ladies, that sight was worth the price of admission alone.)

Brad introduced Becky and I to Sara, a relatively new person to indoor rock climbing. She has been doing this for 1 year (though her arms say much longer). She's a mother - her son can be seen in the first shot in the background in brown climbing the wall. She had such patience with us and told us exactly where to place our feet. With her help, we made it to the top of the wall and rang the cowbell. It was amazing!

I thought Brad was going to be my "person that I met" for this assignment, but it was Sara. She is the one who really talked me through how to do it. My photo of her is at the very end.

Now, I am glad that I had to do this assignment. I am really planning to attend several hiking events with them once school is over and work calms down. My next adventure with them must be riding the zipline! I want to do the super fast one in Asheville this summer.

Fun project

I will confess that I love Brooke's idea of a lip sync video for YouTube. I say that we go for it.

My original thought was all of us taping ourselves in Second Life doing something and connecting them. The action could be either be one person does step 1, another person does step 2, etc. I can't find examples of what I have in my head on YouTube. It's like a baton race of sorts that we combine together.

BUT....

If you take Brooke's idea of lip sync and combine that with Second Life, we could lip sync with our avatars. I found a video on that in YouTube.

Objectives Gap

This week, we were asked to revisit our initial objectives for this course, rework them if necessary and provide a gap analysis on these modified objectives. You can see that information on my website.

I realize now that my initial objectives were too specific aimed at my need for tools at that moment. I rewrote my objectives and how well our class has addressed them to this point.

It's important to note that we are studying a moving target. As soon as we learn a tool, another tool that does more things is being introduced. It can become frustrating if we focus too much on a specific tool. Instead, we need to have a broad understanding of these new tools and how to evaluate them. There are MANY tools out there that will never stand the test of time or traffic. As professionals, we need a way to evaluate the validity, purpose and abilities of future tools.

Evaluation abilities come from dialog. Having a variety of people look at the same tools and provide analysis. We have achieved that in this course thanks to the blogs.

Couchsurfing

Ok, I will confess that I was super nervous filling out the information for my profile on couchsurfing. My username is amybedot if you are looking for me there. It does take a while to fill out all of the information for our profile, but it does make sense why in the end.

This is a very different kind of social networking site. Your goal is to meet face-to-face for some reason - coffee, beverage, over-night visit, sight seeing, etc. Most social networking sites do not aim for face-to-face meetings. They go the other direction. On Facebook, you meet someone in person, connect with them on Facebook and stay in touch that way. On CouchSurfing, you join, connect with complete strangers and arrange a face-to-face meeting.

Not sure why I was nervous to tell you the truth. I have met many strangers on my travels and slept on their couch or floor for the night. I have gone over to people's house just to meet them for coffee or a beverage. At least this method gives you a face-saving way to say no if you get strange vibes from them.

What I found interesting is the use of references. It's like you are writing reviews for someone like they are a product on Amazon.com. The ratings system works a lot like the ratings on ebay. Former visitors or people trying to get in touch with you can alter your overall rating to warn people about you. (Though it does seem difficult to post negative comments just looking at the path you have to take.)

I did join a group, in fact a rather large one called NC Triad. There are 131 members of this club in my county. The group page had lots of requests and events posted. It looks very active. They were organizing camping trips to share a campsite in the mountains, going to music festivals looking for rides and hosting events in their houses. It's like the virtual version of the ride-share board like they had in college!

What does it do that other social networking and Web 2.0 tools do not? It encourages face-to-face interaction among its members. It wants to know how much you know about someone and your level of trust. It wants people with high ratings, that people trust, who answer their emails and give suggestions. It's much more aggressive in asking for donations than other sites. They go an extra step to verify your information by mailing you a postcard to verify your address. That's impressive. Facebook has never mailed me anything.

Will I keep this account open once class is over? Not sure. I might wait until I have an interaction or two first and then judge.

Private Universe

Watched the video today called A Private Universe. It's about how people learn and hold on to false information. Sometimes instruction can reverse someone's thinking. Sometimes someone holds on so tightly to their own personal theories that instruction cannot change their perception.

One of the examples in the video was asking both ninth graders and recent college graduates to explain the concepts of the four seasons. The majority of them gave the explanation that it's based the Earth's distance from the sun as opposed to the changing tilt of our axis. One ninth grader was interviewed before and after instruction about this concept. She was able to incorporate what she learned from the lesson, but she still held on to a degree what she believed before.

How can new media make an impact on education when things like this are happening? A few things come to mind:

1. Most schools have an online classroom for their students. I know this is true for most college courses, but this is becoming more and more true for middle and high school students. Instead of assuming that students are just a "void" (quoting teacher from the video) about the subject, assume from the first day that your students have some misinformation about the topic. Use a combination of pre-tests, discussions, etc to find out what the student knows now. That instructor could have asked each of those students to write an explanation for those concepts. Ask them to teach the concepts to others either through a blog and brief youtube video.

2. I love the concept of students creating learning objects. It's one thing to learn a concept, it's another to be able to teach it to someone else since you have to know your concept from a variety of perspectives. Using an array of Web 2.0 tools, you can ask your students to create a learning object to demonstrate their understanding. THEN, post it so that others (global or local) can provide feedback and ask questions. Creation makes the students more active. Like the teacher in the video stated, she needs the objects in her hands to describe it. She needed to be active to communicate about those concepts. So, sit in front of a webcam, describe it and let others ask question or make suggestions.

3. Wikis would be really powerful here. Ask students to rewrite their textbooks in their own words. This includes images and diagrams. Require students to contribute to every section and correct the mistakes of others. Thanks to the history function of most wikis, a teacher can see easily who added the wrong information and who corrected it.

Too often, students can get lost in a face-to-face classroom. We know how to make others believe that we are listening and understanding the material. We nod our heads at the right time. We point our eyes forward, but in many ways, no one is really home.

This concept taps in my frustration with face-to-face instruction and the faculty members who become angry when I suggest that developing some online tools might help their students learn. A math instructor once told me, "Students do not learn without me present." It broke my heart. Now I need to find a way to get that instructor to watch this video. Yes, they need you, but in face-to-face classrooms, we lack the time and resources to make students as active as they need to be. Active learning is the key to addressing misinformation and misconceptions of our students.

Using some online tools that require students to demonstrate their learning can help you identify some areas where students are lacking understanding. (Of course, grading this type of assignment is not as easy as a self-graded, multiple choice test. Ah, there lies the difficult journey!)

Learning in Second Life

I attended a scripting class in Second Life today. I did not register beforehand, but the instructor let me observe the class as a student to get the full effect. Handouts existed of images that you had to touch in the front of the classroom to download to your profile. He did not allow me to download them, but I asked one of the students privately what they were. Since he was going over basic scripting, he gave the class a copy of the images that he was using for the course.

To give you an idea of what this course looked like, I am pasting a snapshot that I took while sitting in the class. (That's me in the blue dress in the center.)The instructor communicated with the class by text, not microphone which I found surprising.

What I learned from this Second Life Event:

1. That participants needed to know at least the basics about how to navigate Second Life including how to teleport, use PK pads to beam from various locations in their school, sit, touch images and accept handouts.

2. Images used in Second Life instruction need to be larger than normal with relatively minimal text. Luckily, the instructor gave the students a handout of what was on the board. The text on the board was too small for me to see - and yes, I did move up closer to try to see it.

3. A new educator in this medium can easily get overwhelmed. I was IMing him privately to ask if I could observe, other students were talking to him and he was trying to distribute his materials. There were about 12 people in the course. In person, the other students could have formed a queue of sorts to ask questions. Online, it all comes to you at one time.

I would like to try my hand at teaching one class online in Second Life about something simple to experience this medium as an instructor. Any suggestions? Anyone want to join me?

Image from my class:

Embedding Woices

One of my classmates has turned me on to Woices. I recorded three simple audio files to it about assorted topics, but it's meant to be a place where people can come and record audio tours. Anyone can visit the site and download an echo (name of the audio file in Woices).

Here is my Echo about the limitations of YouTube.

FYI...I make my name amybedot on all things. I rarely use Amy Brown on outside tools. My family calls me Amy Bedot (that's Be-dot). I renamed myself when I was four. Amy Brown is my name but really only people at work call me that. (Just in case you were wondering.)

YouTube

Ok, I am not in love with my YouTube video. It's blurry, but it gets the message across. I am teaching you how to use one of the newest apps on iPod/iPhone called sleep cycle. You download this app, place your iPod/iPhone face down in your bed and it just works.

See my demonstration here.

This app does two things:

1. 30 minutes before your alarm goes off, your iPod/iPhone makes noises to pull you out of a dream state to a light sleep state. When your alarm goes off, you wake easier. I promise you, this works. My alarm goes off at 5:20am every morning so that I can workout. Typically I cannot wake up easily in the morning. The mornings I used this app, I woke up very easily.

2. It gathers data on you about when you are dreaming, in deep sleep and light sleep. That I found fascinating.

Embedded Images

This is my photostream from Flickr. I love Flickr. I use it a lot to share photos with others outside of Facebook.

Wiki Something Else

This week, I explored two sister projects for wikimedia. That is wikiquote and wikispecies.

Wikiquote is a database of quotes from notable persons in various forms of media including print and movies. Wikimedia does understand the importance of setting up a scalable tool so that the masses and keep adding content, but I found that using their subcategories features a bit confusing. It's still growing so it's not full, per se. Individual pages are interesting with quotes of the day, a brief summary of the media in question and dialogue from the media.

Wikispecies talked a bit over my head with its scientific terms but it did find its search structure easier to use that wikiquote. It also had a species of the week feature (like the quote of the week feature) with links to the different kinds of specifics. LOTS of great information and resources lies in this site.

Find a image that you can legally use

This photo is called, "Jayatii Laughing" used with permission via Creative Commons from Premasagars' Flickr Photostream.

One of my tasks this week was to find an image that I can legally use and explain how I know that I can legally use it.

This image came from www. flickr.com. I searched for the word, "laugh". The next page showed me many images. I clicked "Advanced Search" and ticked the boxes at the end of the search for "Creative Commons" and "Adapt and build on".

Once I found the image itself, I clicked on the link on the right called, "Some rights reserved". This link told me that I could copy and distribute this image legally.

Personally, I love the dynamic nature to information on the Internet. I freely post images, media and documents that I create for both work and personal uses and allow anyone to copy, distribute and alter it to their liking. I do this since I am a happy consumer of media on the Internet as well. So, I should be willing to share what I create in order to use freely the works of others.

Now, some things are off base with me. For instance, I do not share my quizzes freely with others for security reasons. If I create a tailored message to my students about their past activities in class, I keep this type of information in our classroom. Information about how my students are doing in class and any media that I create to comment on it is not for public consumption, in my opinion.

Woices

This week, I was asked to record three sample audio clips on a free audio repository site. For photos and videos, I knew exactly where I needed to go - Flickr and YouTube. I use these sites so much and force them on my students. Audio - no clue. I embed all of my audio clips directly into my Moodle site.

So, I explored the blogs of my classmates to see what they were using for ideas. I followed Kelly's lead and used Woices for the first time. In fact, I followed her example to experimenting with the speech-to-text abilities. Thank you Kelly for the great ideas.

Woices is an interesting tool. In just a few clicks, I created my account and updated my profile with my photo and information. Click "Create" and "New Woice or Echo" and I was ready to record. It links your "Echo" to a specific location, so you have to link your "Echo" to a spot on the map. At first, I found this strange and a small invasion of my privacy, but then you realize that you are not giving an exact address.

Recording was super easy. Click the large circle and it starts once it gets permission to use your microphone. Since I was using the Text-to-Speech feature, I had to struggle a bit. If you are not talking within five seconds of clicking record, everything stops. It takes me longer to click "Start Speaking" on my Mac! I had to get creative and verbally introduce my clip.

Overall, I am pleased with the abilities and approach to Woices. I am sure with more playing that I will see the real potential of this tool and its need to connect all "Echos" to a geographic region.

YouTube

I choose to look at YouTube this week mainly because it's something that I force upon my students every other week. It's only fair that I use the resource on a regular basis so that I know what my students are going through to use the resource.

Overall, the look and approach to YouTube is easy to use. Create an account and you are ready to go. Most users go directly to the videos for viewing. Uploading videos and making adjustments to your profile is not the most intuitive approach. The "Upload" button needs to be easier to find. It's multiple chicks to edit your profile that seem unnecessary. Once it's uploading you are at the mercy of the "upload gods" when it comes to the speed.

YouTube does not play nicely with .mwv video formats. If you read their FAQs about the subject, YouTube knows that it is happening and recommends that you use a .avi file format if you are going to pre-record your video before you upload it. What happens with a .mwv file is that the audio and video become out of sync. Most webcams with software for recording does offer the ability for you to export as an .avi file, but warning, these files are HUGE meaning longer upload time.

My LEAST favorite thing about YouTube is the limitation of 10 minutes or less on the videos. I struggled with my assignment this week to upload three videos. I record tons of videos and tried to upload a good number of them, but YouTube blocked my actions since my videos were over the 10-minute mark. NO! I understand that the average person listens for less than 10 minutes, but sometimes a longer video is warranted. Please of this limitation, I would not recommend YouTube is a primary solution as your media repository.

Flickr

I have had a flickr account for several years. Besides my Facebook page, it's my preferred method to share images with others.

Why do I prefer flickr? Here is just a small list of reasons.

1. Most of the people that I know are already on Flickr and my accounts are linked to them. When you have been using a service like this for several years with lots of content, it makes it difficult to move to another resource.

2. Uploading images is streamlined and easy. I can highlight several images on my computer at one time and have Flickr upload them with one click. I don't have to select the images individually.

3. I am allowed to type the labels and descriptions of the images from a bulk upload all at one time. I can give them all the same labels with one click.

4. Flickr has a search feature that allows you to look for Creative Commons content.

Flickr is popular for a reason, it works beautifully and is very intuitive.

CopyLeft

This week, we read and watched some resources about copyleft and the Creative Commons. This is not my first experience with creative commons. In fact, I use several images from flickr in my online classroom that I found with a Creative Commons license. Flickr actually allows you to search for images searching content with a Creative Commons license.

I was first introduced to Creative Commons thanks to a copyright expert that GTCC hired to talk to our faculty about four years ago. He scared us to death which is his job, but one of the solutions that he suggested was looking for resources with a Creative Commons license.

I think this concept of "right to distribute copies", make changes and allow those changes to be protected by the same license agreement as the original is overdue. The Internet is full of data and "stuff". Find the owner to ask permission can hinder the creative process. Plus, many of us, myself included do not create things with the intent of making money on them. Information is dynamic. I find it excited, for example, that someone can download a tutorial that I created and make it better.

My way of thinking is not commonplace at community colleges. Some instructors get nervous about this concept since they also write textbook or create resources for sale. The old model of one person creating, altering and controlling the text has made them money. If it becomes more dynamic and anyone can add and alter it, their abilities to make money change. And we all know how much people love change.

I do agree with Lawrence Lessig that the ability to read-write using the content on the Internet is the literacy skill of the 21st century. My students want to turn in their projects as a webpage instead of a Word document. They need to learn how to collaborate with others online to be effective workers of tomorrow.

Course So Far

Courses like this "force" me to explore tools that I haven't used yet. Force is a strong word, I know. I really want to learn these tools but I never find the time with my tight schedule. Being here is making me do this. Thank you.

Now, what I am learning. I am forming a preference for some tools over other ones. It's only natural, I guess. We seem to be using a great deal of them in this class. Some of them are natural for me to check often (Moodle, blogs, links to tools in profile) while others I need to discipline myself to go there (NING, Google Groups, CMSimple).

Blogging - This is my favorite. I have blogs of specific classmates that I read religiously. They introduce the topics in such an interesting way.

Wiki-ped/tion/versity - I use these resources more than I ever care to admit and I will continue to use them, but I still will not encourage my students to use it as a primary source. Maybe one day. I did enjoy seeing how easy it was to add information to these sites, but like several students have mentioned in their comments this week, I did not feel like I should be adding anything to the sites. I am a jack of many trades, but an expert in just a few.

Second Life - I met DI and several of my classmates there one night after work to explore how Second Life works. It's an interesting place and has a lot of potential, but I still have some profound concerns. It has a steep learning curve. DI came to our school and taught a 2-hour session on Second Life. It took us 2 hours to learn how to create our avatar, move around and create some basic things. You will not grab the masses with this tool if it takes that long to learn the interface. If a 8-year-old boy can put a video game in a console and learn it in less than 30 minutes, Second Life has some issues regarding its learning curve. Also, you do need a healthy computer with a strong connection to the Internet to make this work. The background is constantly rendering. If your computer is not up to par, you will struggle a bit on Second Life.

Wordles - These things are addictive. They have a pretty end result but not sure how I could incorporate it in an online classroom except maybe an interesting approach to summarizing the class topics for the students at the beginning of the semester.

Google Image Labeler (and tools such as that) - Yikes. I am completely addicted. I played Tag a Tune to the point that I was the top of the high score board. It was a moment of complete pride and immediate "oh no, I am that person"! The resource provided before the exercise talked about human computation and the number of work hours people spend on these tools. That was striking, but what got me was how Google solved a problem with an opportunity. They found a way to get other people to provide them information freely with systems in place to verify the information.

The resources have been very interesting and I have already passed several of them to other people to share what I have learned. I am enjoying this class. Unfortunately, my work schedule is tight and I can only log in extensively on the weekends.

Digg It?

I joined Digg today and "Digged" at least 10 stories posted on their home page. Once you "digg" it, its considered "dugg". Later, I can change my mind and "undigg" it. If you don't like something, you can "bury" it and then it disappears. I feel like I am having a flashback to the 70s with all of this "digging".

I joined this site over delicious since I didn't care to create a yahoo account in the process (I could have misunderstood this step.)

How would I describe digg to someone who has never used it? It's a social networking tool that allows you to collect listings of stories, videos and images that you like. Link our friends to your account and you can share what you like or have found recently with them. It's an interesting approach to an aggregator.

For me to love this site, I would need a lot more people that I know linked to my account. It's a nice place to find interesting links, but I believe the real power in this tool is in its linking of accounts. It reminds me of Netflix. I have several of my friends linked to my Netflix account. I can see what they are renting and their ratings. I use these links for suggestions on what to rent next.

Wikipedia-Wikitionary-Wikiversity

This week, we have been playing with these Web 2.o tools by creating our profiles and adding content to them. It's been an interesting experience.

Why interesting? Like many schools, our school regularly tells students not to use these resources as viable sources in their coursework. They are consider secondary sources of information. This is because you cannot link specific information on the page to a specific author and validate their credibility.

After our work this week of changing/adding entries, my viewpoint of the sites have changed slightly. Honestly, I never noticed the "History" tab in these sources to see the editing trail. You can see who exactly is editing the page.

But my view of student's using it as a credible source has not changed. Why? Because many of the authors do not elaborate about their credibility in their profiles. As part of our assignment, we had to update our profile, but an updated profile for every author seems rare. I do recommend to students that they use these tools as a launching point in their research. Let these tools give you some ideas. If you like what is stated, try to find that information in our library's databases from a clearly stated author.

I do enjoy the ease of these tools, how far they have come in a long time and their promising future. I am curious about how these tools will evolve as new technologies are created.

Logo Creation

In my former life, I was a video producer. I am visual in nature, but I am not sure why I did not enjoy creating this logo. I kept it generic thinking about our department at work. I know that my talents do not rest in this area. I rather have someone on our staff create this who has a better eye for graphic arts. (We have three people in eLearning who create everything for us.)

Use free logo tools like cooltext is easy to use, but it lacks a certain professional edge to it. If you are photoshop guru, some of these logo tools provide you some basic editing abilities.

Wordles

Who I am



Who I'll be

Ok, warning: Creating a wordle is addictive. You can find yourself playing with it for hours if you let yourself. As a visual person, I found the exercise of creating word clouds of who I am and who I plan to be an interesting exercise. You see, as you use words more, they appear bigger. What struck me was how the most important thing in my life is family and friends, yet they were always small words. My profession dictated the majority of the cloud. This is the story of my life.

Second Life

Several years ago, GTCC hired DI, our instructor for this course, to come and teach us about Second Life. Quickly, you learn that DI is very passionate about this topic. In two hours, he taught us to create our avatars, move around, interact with others and create basic shapes in a sandbox.

I believe that Second Life or at least the concept of this virtual world has a lot of promise for education. It gives us a new way to interact and create together that we lacked online. Anything can exist in this space. It's only limited by the imaginations of the users. It's free! It's visual.

I do have some concerns about Second Life as an instructional tool at this time for community college students (where I teach). Second Life is free, which is great, but it's usage requires a healthy computer with a strong Internet connection. At GTCC, 80% of our students have a computer at home with 70% of them using broadband to access the Internet. We don't have any idea of the quality of their personal computers. We do not have 100% saturation of home computers.

Also, using Second Life takes some training. You have to learn how to create your avatar, move around, create, etc. PLUS you have to learn the culture. There are thousands of tutorials out there ready to teach you, but it's a time investment. Most faculty members are not going to want to give up 4-5 hours of instructional time to teach a student how to use an instructional tool. Second Life will need to simplify its approach and shorten the learning curve to gain more acceptance in the educational markets. A 8-year-old can learn a new video game in less than 15 minutes. A 18-year-old is not going to understand why s/he has to spend hours learning how to use a tool.

Games with a Purpose

This week in Web 2.0 class, we played with the Google Image Labeler and then watched a Google Tech Talk from Luis von Ahn (July 26, 2006) about human computation.

1. The game was fascinating. I am a fan of online games, but few of them have a purpose where the output of the players is actually being used on the Internet. We had to work towards scoring over 900 points. You are matched with a strange and asked to give photos labels. When you can match a label with your partner, you score points. There is a timer present and taboo words that you cannot use to keep the game moving fast.

It is much harder than it looks. You can't communicate with your fellow labeler. Time ticks on. Every time your partner suggests a label, you can see the number of suggested labels increase. It adds another layer of pressure!

2. Lots of interesting information from this video. He begins by discussing the concepts of CAPTCHs and how this tool was used to determined if the user was a human being or a hacker. Great example of an online poll used with some university students. Within days, millions of surveys were being submitted by a computer program which made the results null and void.

His talk though was more about human computation. First, there are things that computers cannot do that only humans can do like labeling images. Second, images on the web are not accessible to the visually impaired because they lack captions. How do you get humans to label images, for free and fast? You make it a game, a game with a purpose.

ESP game - which I believe is now the Google Image Labeler, is addictive. During the presentation, von Ahn displayed some of the description of the ESP game from users. One in particular stood out to me, "anonymous intimacy". YES! I know exactly what this means!

For example, while playing this game, I was matched with a stranger that I could not see. Sometimes my partner was slow on giving labels or wanted to pass when I really liked the image. I found myself shouting at my monitor, "No", "What are you doing?, or "Come on, suggest something". Then, I was paired with someone who was in sync with me. We were matching labels within 10 seconds of seeing the image for the first time. "Yes!" "Way to go partner". "Look at our points." Even though I could not see these people, I instantly had some sort of connection with them.

Other games he introduced included Peekaboom and Verbosity. Both of these games had a purpose where players were matched with strangers to reach a common goal. ESP game is an example of a symmetric game where players are given the exact same information at the same time. Peekaboom and verbosity are asymmetric games where the players receive different information and try to get their partners to guess what they are trying to say.

How could games with a purpose be used for instruction on a massive scale? Here are some intial ideas that I had:

1. ENGLISH - Anything that gets students writing and critical thinking is a useful instructional tool. Play the game as a class at first and encourage students to play until they hit a specific score.

2. SOCIOLOGY - The words that we use to tag these images say something about us as a people. Analyze the taboo words. Look at the words that are not making the cut. What is going on?

3. eLearning - Give instructors access to learning objects and allow them to use the same concept as the ESP game to assign metadata. Repositories never list all of the data that you are really seeking.

Love this game. I can see why it's addictive. Love the concept of games with a purpose to solve a problem like labeling images in Google.

Google Docs

How did I exist before Google Documents? I can't remember. I don't want to remember. I think before, we past around Word documents in our email accounts and used track changes to keep track of the offerings of others. That method feels a bit like carving in stone now.

If you have NEVER heard of Google Documents, stop right now and take their tour. Click here.

How do I use Google documents? Here is a list of the top 3 ways that I am using it now.

1. I am planning a conference for the North Carolina Community College Association of Distance Learning. I am sharing the responsibilities of receiving the requests to speak and mapping out who is speaking where. The person who is working with me lives 2 hours a way. So, we have several documents where we store a master list and play around with the schedule daily (actually hourly.)

2. My department has to write several documents as a team. We are all going 90-miles a hour in different directions. We can't sit around a Word document. We have to come to it when we can. We write EVERYTHING in Google documents. I know that in an instant, I can find the most up-to-date version of what we are doing.

3. All online and webbed faculty at GTCC have to complete our certification course in order to teach either online or webbed for our school. We have 400-plus faculty members in some state of this certification. Our faculty receive professional development credit for completing this course and many departments require a certain number of hours in order to live up to their contract. Instead of contacting Organizational Development every time someone finishes a part of our training, we instead give them access of our Google Document speadsheet that documents to the day when someone completed something.

Google documents takes organization to a new level. And as someone who is anal about organization, Google documents is been a bright spot in my already too-busy day.

Facebook

I guess by our class's definition of Web 2.0 that Facebook is a Web 2.0 tool. It's one of those tools that people either love or hate. I love it, though I hate to admit it. I have reconnected with tons of people via Facebook - both a pro and con. I have gotten tons of advice on personal matters, how to do household chores, how to approach something at work, what haircut to get, etc. My theory is the more heads, the better. Once I found a way to access my Facebook account from both my cell phone and iPod Touch, well, my life was never the same. I can wait for a meeting for 5 minutes and change my status update a million times without accessing my computer. Scary.

There is an instructor at GTCC named Carolyn Schneider. She told me once over lunch that in order to force herself to learn something new or research something, she agrees to give a talk about it. The deadline of that talk forces her to learn the subject to prevent herself from looking like a fool in front of her peers. I have used this approach many times in the past. One of those times, I agreed to speak at the League of Innovation several years ago about Facebook and instruction. They accepted my request. I had to stand up to the challenge.

I poured through everything that I could find about Facebook, how it works and instruction. At the time, there was not a lot out there about it. Yikes.

To help me illustrate a way that Facebook can be used, I created a Facebook page for George Washington. I invited about 2o of my friends to attack that page like student and post things on that page as if they were George Washington. You can see this page my clicking here. (This link will require you to have a Facebook account.)

NOW, if you google "Amy Brown" and "Facebook", my League presentation is like the 4th or 5th option that appears. Here is link to my Facebook presentation. I really enjoyed giving that presentation. HUGE attendance. Obviously, many people were curious about the use of Facebook for instruction.

So, how can Facebook be used for instruction:

1. History students can create a Facebook page for famous historical figures and share everything that they have learned about a historical figure.

2. Math students can create a Facebook page for a particular mathematical approach and invite others to share examples of it in action.

3. Music students can discussion genres of music and share links to their favorite examples.

4. Sociology and psychology students can focus on the information that their friends place on their information places and write volumes about the information we share and what is says about us.

Just the tip of the iceberg. But why Facebook?

If you look at the Internet traffic on our campus. The most popular spot our students go to is Moodle. (Yes!) The second most popular spot our students go to is Facebook. Hmmm. They go to Moodle because we force them to do so for a grade. They go to Facebook to connect and collaborate with their friends. Over 85% of our students have a Facebook account which means they are already trained on how to use it. Interesting. Could instructors learn to use a tool that students ALREADY know how to use to introduce their topic in relevant ways? I think so. We just have to be "brave" enough to log in and explore our options.

P.S. DI, I know that you are not a fan of Facebook (per your status updates). As you remember, I was not a fan of Moodle when you first introduced it to me. You brought me to the "dark side", please allow me to return the favor. :)

First entry

Prompt: For your first post, I'd like you to spend a nice chunk of time articulating your thoughts, experiences, and feelings about the unorthodox approach taken during the first week.

I am taking a Web 2.0 and Social Media graduate course at Appalachian State University. After logging into the Moodle server during the first week, I found several forums. I posted and thought, hmmm...where is that syllabus? I sent a private message to the instructor thinking that maybe he simply forgot to expose it to us. It happens. No syllabus. Other students started to inquire about the syllabus in the forum. We then got directions to start creating our own syllabus.

Shock. Honestly, shock.

I can roll with most punches. I can appreciate free form, but as a typical online student, I go 90 miles an hour on an average day. I work 50 hours a week, work on the board of NCCCADL to plan the March conference and have to develop 38 online courses with 32 faculty members by the beginning of May. My head is looking for a syllabus so that I can plan my life for the next 4 months. My life is one HUGE to-do list.

The initial approach did not work for me initially. Sorry DI. I needed a bit more of an idea of our approach. Icebreakers are nice, but once we moved into the second week, I craved some overall direction. I like the fact that we get to state what we want to learn. This is Web 2.0 afterall. These tools are constantly changing, but on this end as a student, I understand even more know the need to share at least your overall vision of the course.

I do feel better now about how things are going.