A Serendipity Day

I spent quite a bit of time preparing for my three lectures today. I had precedents ready to project and everything. Imagine my surprise when I walked into the classroom and there was no computer! I just couldn't believe it - I haven't taught in a classroom sans computer for years. So what could I do but wing it, tell funny stories and let the students out an hour early.

I was happy to have the extra time to continue working on the Angel course for Assignment 2. It's like the wiki pages we had to create last November - as you work away at it, the more comfortable you become and more things seem to fall into place and make sense. I was able to move content into a different folder. I made up a new crossword puzzle for Wills and Estates. I was inputting a new html page and decided to include a link to team skills. When I searched for team skills I found a very informative link to Penn State University which had an Angel tutorial and FAQ site. It also had info on Angel Team Tools! I couldn't believe it! I will be setting up 9 teams who will write the manuals for the 5 legal software we're going to learn this semester so this site will be perfect to refer to. There was also a Community Hub which is a user group's self-help blog. That's exactly what I spoke about in our School of Business meeting last Friday and I emailed our Ed Tech department about today, requesting that they allow me access to start one for the pilot group. Meanwhile, I emailed everyone on the pilot project and invited them to join a user group so we could collaborate and commiserate! No responses yet though. I watched the Gradebook Wizard video and learned how to edit the Gradebook. Now I have categories for each area of law plus a Classwork section to cover the Introductory section. There are two ways of keeping grades - by points or by percentage. I was originally mixing the grading system up by using both ways so that’s been corrected.

I panicked this morning before class as I didn't know how the students were going to access the Angel site. Either did the Ed Tech Department! We had to experiment before class! I had three students log on today and I've received such positive comments from all of them. "Yes, I find this really neat too! I like all the information that we have access to and all that we are able to accomplish with it. This will be wonderful."

When I didn't have a computer at my fingertips today, I talked about wikis and blogs. It was amazing how little they know about either of them, although they do follow Paris Hilton's blog! I wondered what type of blog my students would read. I 'm disappointed or maybe I just don't know how to change the font for the wiki and blog nor how to insert images. When I was questioning students how they would communicate/collaborate with group members and got blank stares, I suggested the virtual classroom or IM or Skype. Imagine my surprise when they asked “What is Skype??” so I can see a quick lesson coming up!

I also learned how to use the Attendance feature – students will enter a PIN which shows up on my home page every day.

At 7 pm tonight I had a really enjoyable Wimba session with Chris, Joyce, Cherry, Penelope, Fiona and Peter. Poor Peter is suffering from sciatica. It's amazing how clearly we could hear each other although there were times the audio broke up. Everyone seems to be motivated and excited about the course, and the session provided a lot of good links. I especially like the one about the growth of a wiki.

I don’t understand why I can’t access any sites, my blog won’t save and yet the music is still streaming. I don’t want to close down as my head is spinning with ideas. But it’s almost 1:30 am so it’s time to say good night.

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.

Wimba

Last night I downloaded the Wimba software in preparation for the Wimba session on Google Jockey tomorrow morning. I'm not sure if Wimba if it's because Wimba is easy to use or if I'm just getting really good at figuring things out - but I didn't have any problem manipulating my way around it. While I was at my desk in Kitchener, Ontario, I could see and hear Joyce in New Zealand. Wimba is really three products - a colloboration suite which I was using, a publishing service, and it also integraets with course management systems such as Angel, Blackboard, Moodle and Web CT. As a collaborative software tool, it allows for synchronous online discussion as well as instant message exchanges. My experience of Wimba is as follows:

• Wimba quickly downloaded and the setup wizard checked audio
• All participants who are online appear in the window
• Click the Talk button to speak
• I didn't have a microphone or headset, but rather used the built-in speakers and microphone on my laptop - there was no problem with echo or fuzziness
• participants can clap, raise a hand, leave the room, smile, thumbs down, etc.
• the webcam changes views and shows the person speaking
• can exit to the lobby where all the rooms available are listed

I also recently worked with Audacity which is a free recording and sound editor. I used it to record mp3 files for the upcoming Machine Transcription exam. Audacity is easy to us. After recording, the sound files were stretched to easily distringuish each segment. Then the unwanted sound patterns (ums, ahs, coughs, background nosie) were selected and deleted, and Audacity automatically closed the gap.