Week 11 - Student Presentations: Julio, Cat, and Joey

Tonight Julio, Cat, and Joey started off the class' presentations; courageous individuals indeed.
I utilized the strategy of signing up for the last presentation date.

Julio used a PowerPt. and started by asking for questions on the homework or what we wanted to learn about Newsela. He then put the questions to the side saying he would come back to them after the presentation to be sure the questions had been answered. I often used this technique when presenting and always found it a great way to close and bring the teaching full circle.

Cat covered Livebinder which I could see being very useful if I could figure out how to open my binder. I was able to create an account and upload some docs and links into a binder called Reiki but once I closed out I kept cycling back to the tutorial page when I tried to open the binder. The site was not especially intuitive to me so I will need to set some time aside to work out the navigation. I do see how it could be a better way of organizing my materials than just putting everything into a folder on my desktop.

Joe showcased Edublogs which is a site I used for another one of my Educational Technology (EDT) courses. Joe started out using Padlet to ask us what we currently use to communicate with our students and what other communication tools we would like to know more about. I thought this was a nice opportunity to get the conversation started and like that it was interactive. I do think though that the second question took the focus off using blogs and eat up some time he wanted to use for discussing a resource at the end of the presentation. Joe choosing to show us how to pick a theme and how to make a blog entry was a great way to keep it simple while helping us to get to know the site.

I came away with some new tools to use for both my own presentation and in my teachings. I'm going to refocus my presentation and include tips for teachers on how to use breath and mudra in the classroom.

Week 10 - Spring Break

The break flew by at nearly the speed of light, or so it seemed.
 
I went into New York to visit my family in Brooklyn and to see a friend of mine who comes to the East Coast a few times a year for a week or so. My friend Kerry is a shaman from Australia who I've known and studied with for more than twenty years. Because of the shamanic work I do with clients, especially trauma survivors, I go to see Kerry (http://www.shamanicgrace.com) twice a year to get a good "dusting off".

This visit was a little different as Kerry is now offering what is know as Streaming where she connects to each person's personality, spirit, soul, and Monad to share your life's purpose and any areas that need attention and alignment. Streaming is an outgrowth of the work we have been doing with an angelic collective know as the ARCS for the last nearly 7 years.

It was an energetically busy week.

I also continued to refine my Moodle project and really started to feel that I was understanding the mechanics of the platform. I do so much better integrating learning by taking a hands on approach and applying what I have heard and or read.

Learning from my mistakes and a trial and error approach sums up not only my learning style but often, my lifestyle.

Week 9 - Moodle News

In class tonight we learned how to save our lives. No joke, we learned how to back up our Moodle. Maybe you're not the sort to ever hit the wrong key and wonder into what dark void your hours of work now lie, but I am.

You've got lots on your plate and you're up to midnight, or later, doing your homework and it looks great but you're tired and.....then the void. Thankfully you have a back up of your work; especially for your Moodle project which takes hours and hours and hours of work to produce.

At first I couldn't hear the instructions in class because nearly everyone was talking out loud they were so excited to learn how to back up their work. I finally caught on to the process and practiced again a few times at home. Piece of cake.

We viewed some of the student's blogs which looked really good. I especially like the use of pictures by Sarah and decided to be sure to apply the 7 Design Principals to my blog.

We also choose our dates to present via WebEx on a first come first serve basis. I moved like the Flash to sign up for the last presentation date. I usually like to go sooner than later to impress but I've grown comfortable with the metaphor, "slow and steady wins the race" since I opened my new wellness center.

Week 8 - Scratch

Well, I wouldn't have imagined that learning a coding program for children ages 7-12 would cause me such anxiety and such joy.

When I worked as an Account Executive in the field of IT Education I was able to take all the classroom training I wanted for free and I took alot of courses. I always enjoyed Math and Science and love free. I took all the Microsoft Systems Engineer courses and was working on the Database Administrator track when the technology market crashed in 2001. I used to sell coding certifications and yet, I feel like Scratch is from another world. Maybe it just seems too easy to be coding.

Well, I struggled to put together a sprite of a cat doing a simple dance in the desert. That being said I was delighted and watched it over and over. I laughed out loud watching it go.

This is the link to my last creation; still really simplistic but ........

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/54017998/

In class we brain stormed a list of items to use to evaluate our game creating group projects' field test next week. It was a great group effort and an extensive list of critique criteria was developed.

I felt pretty good going into the field test as I had already created the 3 game boards in Photoshop and just needed to print them out and glue them to cardboard. What could go wrong?

Well....I learned that a box cutter works better than a pair of scissors when cutting cardboard. Live and learn if you're lucky.

Week 7 - Evaluation

This week is field test week. As a best practice a field test is in order to gather feedback on the functionality, aesthetics, and effectiveness of our Moodle. We are past the mid-point of our timeline to complete the project so if there are changes and tweaks to be made now is the time to make them.

Since we are developing e-learning it only makes since that the field test would be done on-line. My task was to develop and post a survey form in Google Forms. Once the survey was developed I posted it on my Moodle for Karrie and Mike to complete.

I choose to create a survey primarily about the format and aesthetics with yes or no questions and a space for comments under each question. I choose to focus on the format and aesthetics for multiple reasons including the fact that I like to set up the look of a project first. And yes, I color the outlines in a coloring book first.

I was partnered with two people rather than one as we have an odd number of students in class. At first I was not very happy to have extra work to do as I was running like Alice with the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass already but.....I knew that both Karrie and Mike were excellent students who did good work so I decided to look at the situation as a good learning opportunity.

They each created a different type of survey that functioned well for their Moodle projects. I was very thorough in completing each field test survey. I looked at every posting for active links, spelling and grammar, aesthetics, chunking and segmenting, user friendliness, and whether it was audience appropriate or not. I spent more than an hour on each survey not counting the survey completion and posting. It was definitely a learning experience for me but.....I learned so much invaluable information that I wouldn't have otherwise.

And the feedback I got from both Karrie and Mike on how my comments were helpful to them was an unexpected bonus.

Week 6 - Animation

Sometimes I feel slow compared to other students. I like to think through an assignment or project and plot out the concept before creating anything; story boarding works well for me.

I have also become aware that even though I can manage a project from start to finish in a timely manner, I am more of a process person than a project person. I see what comes before the project and the multiple potential outcomes and even where a particular outcome can lead.
My awareness is very expansive and broad and that's why working with a story board is important for me. I am also very visually oriented and really enjoy putting pencil, preferably colored, to paper and drawing the ideas I have about how to create an assignment.

So that brings me to this week's class and homework: Animation.

I love cartoons and at one point desperately wanted to to work at Disney helping to creating cartoons as an Inker. The idea of learning even a simplistic method of animating was exciting.

We learned two types of software to create a Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) and created one GIF as a class with Dr. Sponder leading us through the process and then it was for us to create and post another GIF on our own. This is were my expansive thinking and .......the desire to "kill two birds with one stone"and .......wanting to understand the process fully first and ....... a desire for perfection, slows me down.

I could see other students around me having completed their GIF while I was still thinking about what I could create that I could use for my Moodle project; I had a bunch of ideas. I picked one and was enthralled with changing its size and speed.

I got my GIF posted in time and at the size and speed I wanted and at least it was a prototype of what I would eventually use in my Moodle, but just barely. In the same way that working on Visual Fine Arts projects suspended time for me I saw that working with animation could do the same.

Week 5 - Audio

Yes, I do know that this was the logo for the RCA Victor company. And no, I have never listened to a Victrola, although my grandfather did have a floor radio that must have weighed a hundred pounds.

This week's homework was to create audio files for our Moodle using Vocaroo. Thankfully this is software I've used for another class so......easy enough, but the process got me thinking how I was drawn to earn my Bachelor's Degree in Communication because I love sound; especially music.

For a few years, while pursuing my B.A., I worked part-time in sales, marketing, and fund raising for both The Hartford Symphony Orchestra and The Hartford Stage. I loved working in the Arts. My "having" to attend all the performances, in addition to "having" to learn about the costuming and staging aspects of the plays was such torture; NOT.

To me sound, especially music, can convey so much to a person; including emotions. The change in the tone of a person's voice and the emotions it elicits make for an exceptional experience for the audience; be it patron or student.

I find that my background in Communication is a good one for the Educational Technology program. I think that the communication tools I've learned make for a good segue way into the software and learning platforms taught in the EDT program and the communication aspects of the two programs fit well together.

How do humans learn? What ways do we delivery information to each other? What roles do community and "soft skills" play in communicating ideas and ideals? I believe this is were my degree in Human Services and my work with indigenous practices is of benefit.

After all, who doesn't love a good story.