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.

Week 4 - Dropboxing

Tonight David Oyanadal, Supervisor of The CCSU Instructional Design and Technology Resource Center (IDTRC) visited the classroom.

I met and interviewed David in May of 2014 has part of my research on the Educational Technology program. He was very pleasant and candid about his experience in the program and the benefits he felt he had reaped from his M.S. in Educational Technology. I also met and interviewed Jennifer Nicoletti, Instructional Media Coordinator about her experience working in the IDTRC. Jennifer was also very pleasant and helpful. Both she and David said that patience and a thick skin were important attributes to have when working with the instructors and professors at the university level. They explained that often they needed to help the teachers to understand that a video of them lecturing for an hour was not an engaging on-line experience for the student; this is were the thick skin comes in handy.

I was not in class and so missed out on the WebEx practice. I will say I am nervous about the technical aspect of presenting via WebEx. I also have found it easier to present for an hour or more rather than 30-40 minutes so I plan on doing at least one run through of my material before the live experience.

I have a few ideas about what I would like to present and ideally I could use one of my Moodle units. There's those two birds again.

We are expected to use Vocaroo, the audio software, as part of our Moodle and as homework. This works well for me as my Moodle is on the Gayatri Mantra and I am leaning towards using Vocaroo as both a teaching tool and as an evaluation tool.

Week 3 - Screencasts

Lots to learn and lots to do. Tonight in class we went over lots of material.

We discussed two particular software programs to use as part of our Moodle project: Screencast-o-matic and Thinglink. You can click on the link below to see the Thinglink creation I made for another class that I may incorporate into my 13 section Moodle project on the Gayatri Mantra.

A link to my Thinglink creation: https://www.thinglink.com/scene/576629942901538816

Throughout the Educational Technology Masters program my efforts have been to develop a consistent look and feel to my projects with the ultimate goal of creating an exceptional portfolio.
I look to use creations from one class in other projects, as appropriate, as one way of reaching that goal. And though I'm a bird lover, I am on board with the the metaphor, "killing two birds with one stone". Keeping it simple.

As the first step in creating content for our Moodle project we are to create a five minute or so personal introduction to post as part of our introduction of the course.

We can use Screencast-O-matic to capture a PowerPt. or Prezi presentation and Catherine demonstrated for the class on how to create a presentation using Prezi. I've used Prezi in the past and once I got the hang of it, I liked it more than PowerPt. due to its visual appeal.

For my final project in Communication 498: Designing Social Media I used Prezi with another student, Peter, to design a FaceBook and Twitter rubric for use by Community Central; a CCSU community collaboration, Our presentation was well received not only for the useful data but also for its visual appeal; it earned us an A.

We also discussed how what we create for our Moodle project may or may not be appropriate for the WebEx classes we will each be responsible for presenting later in the semester.

Week 2 - Getting Started

Hello and welcome back to my blog for EDT 532 - Instructional Design and Technology.

Well, wow and whew.  Tonight's class was insightful, instructional, and jam packed with ideas and great information on how to create and design my first Moodle Learning Platform project. Yes!

This past week I posted my blog URL and idea for my Moodle Course. I decided to bring forward the Gayatri Mantra. The Gayatri Mantra is considered to be the Mother of all mantras and offers us illumination and enlightenment in this lifetime. Te long form of the Gayatri Mantra is designed to be either chanted in its entirety for an affect on all of the chakras (energy centers) or it can be worked with line by line to focus on one chakra at a time. So...that would easily be 10 sections.

When discussing our project topics in small break out groups the idea of using Vocaroo or Audacity or even Screencast-o-matic as an evaluation tool for my Moodle was suggested. These suggestions really got my wheels turning. I began to think that what I wanted to accomplish could be easier than I originally thought.

Yes, I could incorporate the different tools that we would be taught throughout the semester as requested but I could keep the overall theme simple by focusing on an audio delivery of my material and an audio delivery of the evaluation by the students. I like to keep it simple. And I like to give Mind a sense of structure, which I find a theme and a consistent format can provide.