Something New Everyday!

Why is it 12:52 am and I'm still on my laptop:

• MSN
• Skype
• EdTech Talk
• Google Docs
  
• Twitter
  
• Why do we blog
• Paying my first water heater bill
• Online course
  

This is what I did tonight after watching Grey's Anatomy! It's been a very full evening. I raced upstairs to chat with Don in Al Ain - only 20 sleeps left and he'll be here! Last night we tried the yackpack Walkie Talki widget that's on my blog - it worked like a charm. And then I Skyped with Joyce in NZ for almost two hours. She introduced me to Google Docs. I had earlier emailed my draft PowerPoint which she put up on Google Docs so I could see how she was editing the slides. Google Docs allows for collaboration via the web. She opened a new document so we could both work on our timeline for tomorrow's Twitter session. Google Docs is really easy to use. The files Joyce sent to me can be opened in the Shared Files folder. You can edit simultaneously, format as one would using Word, preview, email and save a document.

Previous to that, I was listening to the live EdTech Talk - a Skypecast of some amazing educational technologists talking about Twitter - Art Gelwicks, Courosa, Lizbdavis, Doug Symington. I learned that with Skype Pro, you can conference with up to 24 users but bandwidth may be a problem. The EdTech Talk is hosted by Worldbridges - a community of communities that use 'homegrown webcasting' and other new media technologies to to help people connect, learn, & collaborate from Vancouver Island, BC. Yea Canada! I checked out twitter and responded to technolibrary's tweet about Grey's Anatomy. I tweeted that the relationships are sad. She tweeted almost immediately that she liked the healer - I'd forgotten about her. I liked the healer too because of her strong faith and positive energy. Tweets always lead me to URLS which lead me to reading blogs. Darcy Norman talked about public v. private tweets and how you can't have both. Someone else is opening another twitter account just to interact with his students to maintain confidentiality. The topic for today which caught my eye was reasons for blogging. I have been amazed since I started this course at the number of people who have so much to say and it's all good stuff - probably because of who I choose to read. I like blogging too because it's a journal of my activities, my thoughts, my learning process. I couldn't say it any better than University professor Daniel Lemire as to why I like blogging:

“to me, my blog has become the single most powerful knowledge management tool I use. The way I use it, it gives me a view of where I am, where I’ll be, where I’m thinking about being. My blog is like my intelligence department… it collects lots of data in an organized fashion and it sits there, waiting for me to go to. The fact that I’m read means I get feedback, and hence, people help me complete my information. I also find out about new, interesting people because they link to my blog, comment on my blog and so on.”

Professor Henry Farrell identifies five major uses for blogs in [college] education, including the organization of in-class notes and providing equity in discussion for all students.

Before I call it a night, I need to update my Angel site. The students and I are having a few problems as I've not had any training on it. The gradebook isn't recording the fact that they've done the orientation tasks and neither our Ed Tech Department or my contact in Florida can help out. I discovered that I have to answer the short answer questions by clicking Utilities, View Grades. It allows me to see their answers and I input the points. I've got my email forwarded to my hotmail account so it's interesting to see how late students stay up, as notice of their emails pops up when I'm working this late at night! They want to know the results of the poll and the Dog's Trial, and I've found another legal quandry to post for tomorrow's poll. They're still having growing pains with the wiki. I don't like the wiki and blog as much as I thought because you can't change the format of the text or insert an image - it's quite limited. Also I haven't figured out how to see all of the posts - sometimes they hide. I probably need to read the manual! As for the Dog's Trial discussion - I can't find the answer to the conundrum so will have to figure it out again. I noticed that 5 of the students didn't complete the poll on the German luxury car and 350 pound Robert but have posted the results under Course Announcements. I spoke to a colleague today who is developing her own online course. I asked her if she wants to collaborate and she said "No, we all work alone and make the same mistakes!" She was kidding of course, but it made me realize there's little collaboration going on at our college. I hope I can change that. Well, it's 2:06 am and it's time to say goodnight!

I have to agree with this fifth grader who was asked about blogging:

"I think it’s the most beautiful tool of the world and it allows us the most magic thing..."

—Florence Dassylva-Simard

Lots of Talk!

Today was an amazing day! However, I spent so many hours on this computer. From the moment I awoke at 6:30 am, I was messaging with Joyce on MSN. We then moved into a Wimba session and it was easy to compare the pros and cons of those two voIP software. I prefer MSN because you don't have to hold down a talk button, but MSN only allows voIP with two people and IM with a maximum of three. We were setting up times for our Twitter session and we both seamlessly went into the meeting planner at timeanddate.com and pulled up our respective time zones. I am amazed at the ease with which I move between all these applications as I'd never heard of them before this course. After spending a few productive hours at the college, I was back online with Chris W and Joyce on MSN, and then Skype. Skype won out today. We were able to hear each other clearly, for the most part, and you can conference with up to nine participants. I prefer Skype to Wimba as there is no hesitation while webcams change over to the speaker, there's no talk button to hold down, and the conversation just flows rather than being stilted. We carried on this wonderful conversation for 1.5 hours - there's nothing like learning from and sharing with colleagues all over the world. And we reviewed our session, jotting down minutes. My job was to post a poll on our Time Machine page asking whether or not Skype is a social network software. And again, with ease, I looked up how to insert a poll on KG's help page, inserted the poll, voted of course(!), and invited others to do so in the Shoutbox. I can't believe I know how to do these things! I wrote Peter requesting he insert the Glossary onto Moodle so I can see how it works, as Joyce said it's a really terrific glossary and perhaps I should use one in Angel.

I have been reading some wonderful articles to support my research for Assignment 1 and I just want to share them with my colleagues who have never experienced an online course. I get so excited when people are passionate about the Web 2.0 tools and 21st century skills we as educators need to equip our students with - to guide them into becoming self-learners, to re-tool', be adept at unlearning and relearning, and be comfortable with today's technology for tomorrow will bring new ones that we can't even imagine, and jobs that haven't been invented yet. That's why I am hoping my plan for them to teach each other all of this semester's software through a wiki will be successful. I know there will be moans and groans but that's to be expected. I must say I am happy to read the word "while" instead of "whilst"!! Just a hangup of mine, although I still say "full stop" instead of "period", a left over from my UAE days. Completely out of the blue - do you ever wonder why, although you say "Remember my password", it never does when you open a site again?? It's a mystery to me.

There have been tweets about Scrabulous so I joined today. I thought it would be similar to playing Sudoku online - just me and the computer. But alas - it is not. When I entered the Oasis room, I felt as if three heads turned to check me out and a sign said "This table is waiting for one more player." I panicked and left the room quickly. I think I'll wait until Don arrives and then we can play two against one!

Speaking of tweets, Twitter is amazing. People who are in another part of the world, who I don't even know but am following, are answering my requests. Someone tweeted asking for information on a professional organization which has positive comments about the value of social networking. I responded requesting the link too and almost instantly, someone sent it. And when 'elemenous' inquired as to who removed her post from Steve's social networking site, I asked for the link to the site and in seconds, it was there! Today I found a few 'mashups' created for twitter - twitter karma, twitter vision and twitter blocks to name a few.

Joyce told me she watched a little bit of the podcast "Women and Web 2.0" on EdTech Talk and suggested it would be interesting to watch. I just wish there were more than 24 hours in a day! Good night.

Life is good!

I have so much to write about and I keep making mental notes about it, as everything I learn is so exciting these days, and when I finally have time to write - I forget it all! Don and I shared a virtual New Year's celebration thanks to MSN and our webcams. At 2:59 pm on Monday afternoon, we were online, synchronized our laptop clocks and called out the countdown together! And then I cried - never thought we'd be celebrating together and there I was celebrating the arrival of 2008 with him! I was going to close my Facebook account because I never use it. Two of my friends wrote to tell me they were closing their accounts as well. I'll write more about that on the Facebook KG page. Later that afternoon, the phone rang - it was from my friends in Al Ain calling on Skype! Couldn't believe it. Then on New Year's Day, to my surprise, I had an email from Shawna Corbett, married daughter of my childhood girlfriend Maxine, who died a few years ago. How wonderful to catch up with her and the family after all these years - ah, the power of Facebook and social networks! Later in the day, I checked out Kwout. You paste an URL into the box, it brings up the page, you choose an area to cut out, and it converts it into embeddable code. It has its drawbacks - it doesn't allow you to click into pages on the second level of a site. Then I listened to a webinar entitled Integrating LessonBuilder content with Angel Learning through the magic of scorm. It was very informative - they use Sofchalk, one of the alliance partners, but unfortunately we're not getting Sofchalk or Wimba with our package. It was amazing to see how a traditional lesson in Word could be turned into a three page interactive lesson. The graphic of the eyeball was turned into a diagram that the student applied labels to which was a scorable learning activity. As I was just finishing the Webinar, the Skype window opened and it was my friend from Al Ain. I asked him how he accessed it since it was a blocked site, and he told me about Anchor hotspot shield. I immediately got on Moodle and posted in the forum in the hopes that my colleagues in the UAE will be able to download Hotspot shield and subsequently, access Skype and Twitter. Not sure where I read about Tribbit, which is a free online card that many people can sign. You can embed music, videos, a voice recording, words and include photos. I know this will be of great use in our office. and will save us rushing to the store to buy a card because we forgot someone's birthday!




"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."

Courtesy of my dear friend Jax, quoting Neil Gaiman on his blog. (http://journal.neilgaiman.com)