BP11_2010023_Link to My Comments on Classmates Blogs

Follow this link to my comments on Justin Kraky's blog.

Follow this link to my comments on Scott Legere's blog.

Follow this link to my comments on Tamara Collin's blog.

BP10_2010023_Reflective Media Asset

I chose ShowMeWhatsWrong.com as my Web 2.0 tool for this week.

Love this tool! I can see lots of uses for it personally, professionally and academically.

I hope you enjoy the presentation!

BP9_2010023_Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

The Web 2.0 tool I have chosen this week is ShowMeWhatsWrong.com. In fact, I was so pleased with this tool that I decided to do my One Minute Message on it this week as well. My first response to this tool when I accidentally came upon it was: “Wow! This solves a problem!” What more could you ask of a new tool?

The problem: With my new IT classes preparing to start in another month, one of my primary goals has been to launch the Computer Science Club on campus. I intend for one of the primary objectives of the club to be student computer (laptop or desktop) troubleshooting and repair. This not only provides the IT student with good repair bench experience, but it also provides our campus students with some value-added campus activity. In addition to the hardware/software repair experience, I want my IT students to develop good customer service skills and understand some portion of what a Help Desk would do.

ShowMeWhatsWrong.com is the perfect little, simple tool to assist with this project. I can envision the tool being used in the following manner by the IT students:

(1) Campus students will be informed about a web page on the student network where they can sign up for technical support for their personal laptop(s) or workstations.

(2) At the same time, the current class of IT students will determine which IT students, what times and timeframes and in what order they will address the requests. They will determine this at the start of each new class and follow their procedures throughout the course. Their activities on this campus “Help Desk” will be part of their grade.

(3) The IT student addressing the request for assistance will go to ShowMeWhatsWrong.com and generate a URL for their “client”. They will email this URL to the client.

(4) The client student receives the URL along with specific instructions on how to use the link.

(5) The client student follows the link and records the problem they are experiencing from their computer (assuming, of course, they have Internet access). The client student has 5 minutes of recording time to capture the issue. (Note: Students without Internet access may also do this recording from the campus labs and illustrate from a functional machine the problem that IT is to address.)

(6) Once the client student stops the recording, the site automatically processes, uploads and emails the video link to the IT student’s email address.

(7) Upon opening the email, the IT student is required to record (in an online form) the client’s information and the nature of the problem.

(8) The IT student downloads the video to a shared IT folder, logs the start time of the troubleshooting on the Help Desk documentation, and begins the troubleshooting process.

(9) IT students will be allowed to escalate the client ticket and request higher-level support from their classmates, if they are unable to resolve the problem in a timely, 24-hours.

(10) Upon completion of the troubleshooting, the IT student may request the client student bring the laptop in for repairs; or, they may call the client student and walk them through the correction; or, they may create a short video themselves and send it back to the client student for visual instructions. (Note: this part of the exercise is to develop the IT student’s ability to deliver customer service based on the client needs, desires, wants and communication types. Some client students will not want to receive an instructional video or instruction sheet; they will want personal attention.)

From such a simple tool, great academic experience can grow! I can’t wait to implement this activity and see how excited the IT students get about the experience they will receive. Great stuff! Love this tool!

www.ShowMeWhatsWrong.com

BP8_2010022_Reflective Media Asset

My choice for favorite Web 2.0 tool is iGoogle.

iGoogle is an extremely versatile tool.

I hope you enjoy the message.

BP7_2010022_Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

I have decided on Quizlet as the next Web 2.0 tool I would like to implement. After browsing the site, I find it very easy and quite intuitive for using and creating study flashcards. This is definitely a site I will send my students to in preparation for a quiz or exam.

When I did a search through standardized tests and selected the College level, I found a nice, broad collection of already created flashcards for every possible standardized entrance exam you can imagine. I also found a location for “college groups” where my students could join other college students on-line to form study groups. This is really great stuff!

Further browsing revealed that there are even practice cards for driver’s testing! If you are a trivia buff, there are flashcards provided for non-academic purposes, such as quotes and scenes from movies. This would be a great play site for kids or adults who are into trivia activities.

After exploring the Professional & Trade links, I followed the Computers link to see what I could find that is relevant for my IT students. I followed the Parts of a Computer study link and loved what I discovered! There are several options for study under each of the links: (1) you can familiarize, learn, and test out on the terms and definitions; or, (2) you can play several game options such as Scatter, Voice Scatter, Space Race or Voice Race. The Space Race requires the student to quickly read the definition for a computer component and type it into the provided field in order to “crash” the words before the time is out. How quickly this is done determines how many points the gamer will win. A scoreboard is presented the end of the game and students can engage in competition with other students. I tried this game myself and found it challenging and thought provoking as it caused a rapid recall of the term based on the definition provided. The race to beat the time caused that emotional connection between the term and definition that creates a memory map to the understanding. This is good, mind-mapping engagement.

I will most definitely incorporate this into my IT intro level courses. This is a great study site and I can see the benefit for the students in an academic as well as engagement manner. I can also create specific flashcard sets for my students. This will be very good for particularly difficult terms and definitions to remember. There is a site blog that is very active and provides ties into Twitter and Facebook. The most recent announcement on the blog indicates that image uploads will be coming soon to the site. This will definitely increase the usability and viability of the site content. A great Web 2.0 tool.

Quizlet image courtesy of www.quizlet.com

BP6_2010022_Lesson Plans Using Flickr

The Flickr lesson I found is for ages 8 – 15 and is called Five Card Flickr Story (Interface, 2009). This lesson would be good for literature (story-telling), writing, spelling, grammar, communication, sequencing, evaluation and critical thinking exercises.

How does this work: Go to http://web.nmc.org/5cardstory/. The site “deals” five random photos from Flickr. You choose one. The site deals another five and you choose again. This is repeated five times, so you end up with a final set of five images.

Before starting the activity, you would discuss with students the possibilities of pictures telling a story: how to interpret a picture, how action can be determined and, the story behind the image. Show several images, one at a time, and ask them to define the story behind each; then, ask them to link the stories behind each picture.

During the discussion, tell them they are going to be doing a writing exercise where they examine five photos and write a story that links the five photos.

You can both prepare five images per student and perhaps display them on the white board for choice selection ahead of time; or, you can have the students select the five photos per student with you directly from Flickr while projecting on the white board. You may select the same five images for the whole class, if the timing is more advantageous or the activity results more to your preference.

Once the five images are selected, you can discuss what can be written about them and provide parameters for the activity. For example: you could have students write the story based on them; or, about something happing at the school; or, let them come up with their own ideas.

You could also ask them to write about the images in a particular order; or, swap the order around. For a little more complication and provocation of critical thinking skills, you could even allow them to “trade” one card to another student. This would force them to think ahead on their story line to make certain they are trading for something more relevant to their story and not inadvertently detracting from their story.

Once the stories are done, discuss them and compare the results. Talk about how people interpret messages and whether they are the same or different. Discuss the “whys” of communication. At this point, you may even ask the students if they would like to publish their stories on the web, through YouTube or Facebook or some other web 2.0 medium.

Follow-up exercises: (1) use sets of five images as chapters and combine them to create longer stories; (2) select from alternative sources for images such as magazines, class albums, or have the class take digital photos of their own.

(2009). Lesson Plan 42: Five Card Flickr Story. Interface Magazine Online, 19(4). Retrieved February 12, 2009, from http://interfacemagazine.co.nz/downloads/INTERFACE% 20Lesson %20Plan%2042%20-%20Five%20Card %20Flickr% 20Story.pdf

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Flickr Lesson Plan for Marketing:

My idea for using Flickr for class would be to use the same Five Card Flickr activity, but adapt it to my Introduction to Marketing class.

Marketing is all about the message and human interpretation of words, colors, symbols, shapes, etc. Marketing messages provoke human action or interaction and therefore, the marketing images must cause intuitive action or re-action in response to the visual interpretations. For this reason, this is a great exercise and I am so glad to have been forced to seek it out!

Since marketing students are involved with and required to understand and do storyboarding for message development, this is the perfect opportunity to take students through deconstructing messages.

My adaption of the exercise would follow:

1) When we reach the lectures on messages, encoding and decoding, and the process of communication, I would explain the Five Card Flickr functionality of the web site.

2) We would select the five images per student group together, while projecting onto the white board.

3) We would discuss the process of determining the who, what, where, when, how and why (marketing objectives) of what their message is to convey.

4) We would discuss how to determine the product(s) their message will market.

5) We would walk through the process of deconstructing each image in order to identify the encoding/decoding that is occurring through the images.

6) Students would then choose a visual media to convey their message. They could chose from: iMovie, Garageband, Screenflow, PowerPoint, Keynote, live video, etc. The original images would have to be present in the story production.

7) Students would be given two hours of class time to work on the project together and then assigned to complete their group work as homework. The presentation would be due for an upcoming class period.

This activity would not only force the students to deconstruct images as messages; understand the process of human encoding and decoding; but, also, how to take those original images (stories) and re-create them into a new story or message. This is the process of marketing.

All images courtesy of http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=free+images &gbv=2&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10

BP5_2010022_Link to My Comments on Classmate Blogs

Follow this link to view my comments on Jeff Kohl's Blog

Follow this link to view my comments on Russ Gaspard's Blog

Follow this link to view my comments on Justin Kraky's Blog

Follow this link to view my comments on Scott Legere's Blog

…or, this one about his Chronicle article

Follow this link to view my comments on Tamara Collin's Blog

…or, this one on her Educational Uses for Blogs

Follow this link to view my comments on Karen William's Blog

Follow this link to view my comments on Sharon Jones' Blog

…or, this one on her RSS Feeds

BP4_2010021_Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

In April 2010, I will begin teaching our new campus Information Technology program in Networking. This will be a cohort program, where 15-18 IT students will go lock step through a 12-month program.

From my years working in the IT industry, I have discovered that there is a great need in the IT field to share information. No one individual can have ALL the IT knowledge that is available. It is too vast. There is, however, a significant amount of person-to-person knowledge sharing that occurs within field; and, in fact, it MUST occur in order for IT departments to become as efficient and effective as possible. This information sharing skill is something I want to teach my IT students very early in the program.


To this end, I have decided to use three Web 2.0 tools synchronously: YouTube, Woopid and Vidque. YouTube and Woopid will be sources of video searches. Vidque will allow the students to compile their video searches and discoveries into one location – a video web page – which can be shared with their classmates via Twitter or a Google web site; shared now and in the future, as they enter the industry for their first IT jobs.

The classroom activity using the tools will begin the first week. Students will be introduced to YouTube and Woopid and taught how to do valid searches for training videos on IT topics. They will enter search criteria such as: “hardware”, “software”, “networks”, “server”, “Windows VISTA”, and “Windows 7”, as well as more complicated advanced searches. After some exploration has occurred and students feel comfortable with what types of videos they will be seeking, we will move on to Vidque.



The activity will follow these steps:

1) Go to www.YouTube.com and www.Woopid.com.

2) Search for videos related to the content of our class. For example, our first class in an A+ hardware class. Search on words such as: hardware, CPU, memory, motherboard, ports, USB, etc.

3) Once you have identified several training or information videos that appeal to you, go to www.vidque.com.

4) From the home page, click in the upper right corner to “sign up” and create your user account.

5) As you fill out the information page for your account, link Vidque to your Twitter and Google website pages by entering the URLs in the appropriate fields.

6) Once your account is created, log in.

7) Click on the link titled “My Page” and proceed to personalize your web page. Make certain you add the Bookmarklet widget, to make your YouTube and Woopid searchers easy to tag as you find them.

8) Invite your classmates to your site.

9) Once you have your page settings to your liking, click page to the home page and then click the “Options > Add Video” links and begin adding your previously located videos to your page (enter the URL).

10) This will be your share site for all IT video training you find on the web. You may wish to create a blog on your Google web site or communicate with your classmates via Twitter, when you find a video you believe the class would enjoy sharing.


I expect my students to be very engaged in this activity and to enjoy the opportunity to so easily compile and share some necessary video IT training with their classmates.




All graphics courtesy of www.vidque.com.

BP3_2010021_iGoogle RSS Professional Feeds

1. EdITLib – This blog feed is sponsored by AACE (Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education) and is an association through which many of my peers and myself are active. One of the current, primary topics of discussion on the EdITLib blog is social media. As I am currently writing a chapter on social media for our Introduction to Computer class, this site is extremely timely and relevant to my work on this project.

2. U Tech Tips – This blog feed is particularly relevant to educators working with Web 2.0 tools. I am the project leader for a new, instructional technology orientation/training project at my campus. I am hoping to use the U Tech Tips site as one of the alternative training sites for our instructors. This is much need to update the technology skills of our campus teachers. This site is full of clean and simple instructional information. It also links to many YouTube educational modules.


3. Faculty Focus – This site is designed for higher education administrators, faculty, and student affairs departments. It is published by Magna Publications with content focusing on higher education learning and teaching activities. Many of us receive the e-newsletter in our email and regularly share content and articles from it. In particular, our current interests from the newsletter center around learning community concepts. It is a concept being implemented with the new orientation/training module and is also the topic of my Action Research project.

4. Gifted and Talented in the 21st Century – This may seem a strange feed in which for me to be interested because I am a teacher of higher education and this is a site about child education; but, it is the very topic of this site that interests me professionally. As I am considering a particular type of change of venue to private, K-12 education in the future, technology and the K-12 classroom interests me significantly. It is a topic of which I keep abreast as I move along my educational pursuits. The impact of my research will be needed in my professional future.


5. Go2Web20 – This is a feed I came across during my research on social media. It is also a site I use for creating new classroom content from current and entertaining Web 2.0 environments. I have used it recently for my campus classes and will be using again for this course and in my next blog post.

I love the collaborative and collective nature of these feeds and sites.

BP2_2010021_Educational Uses for Blogs

Just last month, I incorporated a blogger.com exercise into my university’s Introduction to Computers class. It was a mixed reception. This introductory general education class normally consists of students from age 17, straight out of high school, to age 35, and a mature, income-producing adult. The young, digital natives were highly receptive to the activity; the mature, digital immigrants were much less receptive and had difficulty understanding the purpose of the activity.

This leads me to the statements by Davies and Merchant (2009) that “Many children and young people are already engaged in Web 2.0 practices” and that “Important kinds of learning can be developed in Web 2.0 environments through knowledge sharing and distributed cognition”. It is clear that the digital natives are primed and ready for Web 2.0 and social networking engagement. It is also clear that our digital immigrants are not.


I believe we have an obligation to narrow the divide between digital natives and digital immigrants. It is possible to believe, that if we do not narrow this divide, it will only grow wider and deeper as the new generations of today’s children engage more and more in social media activities. Many of my mature students come to the classroom stating that they want to know what their children are doing; that they want to not only understand what the children are doing, but also engage in what the children are doing. Why would we, as teachers, not take this opportunity to develop this desire for “knowledge sharing and distributed cognition” (Davies & Merchant, 2009)?

The use of blogs in the classroom as learning activities and then continued use as educational communication forums provides a significant step in narrowing the divide. Blogs are easy to set up, easy to use and easy to network. The most difficult part of having a blog is simply keeping step with the changing characteristics of the blogging environment. As Mr. Donald J. Leu, Jr. (2009) states “the ability to learn continuously changing technologies for literacy may be a more critical target than learning any particular technology of literacy itself.”



In developing any kind of rationale for educational uses of blogging, the teachers must be the first ones to understand the opportunities and applications of blogging. As many of our teachers themselves, fall into the digital immigrant category, it is a process of playing catch-up in understanding what the world of Web 2.0 and specifically, blogging, is all about. Stephen Downes (2010) reminds us that teachers must first understand that a new and evolving pedagogy is taking place when we engage Web 2.0 technologies. He states that we must first “teach students to critically engage media” and that we must teach our students how to “address writing for a public audience, how to cite and link and why”. These are the very skills we are learning ourselves in this blog engagement.

Several of the sites I have researched and visited for commentary on this blog are blogs themselves. They are edublogs developed by educators for commentary on such topics as the educational uses of blogs. It is a very amazing thing to see such a global collaboration and exchange of ideas within the educational community. It is exciting and somewhat intimidating. To have a voice in such a vast ocean of knowledge and experience seems to be a very thwarted opportunity. We leave ourselves open to criticism and judgement; but, yet, I seek what my educator colleagues are saying and I value those opinions, thoughts and ideas greatly. Blogging is a very compelling, addictive, and intimidating method for communicating educational understanding, pedagogy and experience. We are pushing the boundaries of understanding forward and blogging is just one of the tools with which we are moving the horizon of understanding. I feel the greatest educational use of blogs - right now, at this point in time - is by the educators themselves. It is an exciting time to be in education.


Davies, J., & Merchant, G. (2009). Web 2.0 for Schools. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.

Downes, S. (2009). EduBlog Insights. Retrieved February 05, 2010 from Rationale for educational blogging: http://anne.teachesme.com/ 2007/ 01/ 17/ rationale-for-educational-blogging/

Leu, D., Jr. (2009). The New Literacies: Research on Reading Instruction with the Internet and Other Digital Technologies. Retrieved February 05, 2010 from IRAchapt.html: http://www.sp.uconn.edu/ ~djleu/ newlit.html

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