Wk4 Wimba

In listening to this week's Wimba archive, I realized that I had been selecting learning management systems for use in my classroom without even realizing that was what they were. While doing my action research project, I used Edmodo to create an online book club for my class. This site had only a few simple features, but it was a nice way to introduce my kids to online learning. They were able to post links and comments and respond to comments by others, turn in online assignments, and answer poll questions I made up, but it was very limited (kids could not send messages directly to one another to prevent cyber-bullying) and I felt it was appropriate and safe for my fifth graders. I chose Edmodo over Ning because Edmodo is add free and I wanted my kids to focus on group discussions rather than direct messages. For my current position, my school wants the kids to have e-mail and blogs and has elected to use gmail which I am not really comfortable with. I don't feel it has all of the options and safety features that I think are necessary when dealing with young students (I work with sixth graders now) and I have been trying to persuade them to use Gaggle. I have also heard of Schoology and after the discussion, I think this would be worth exploring.

Comments to Rebecca

From Rebecca, "I had a great time working with UDUTU and thoroughly enjoyed my experience. My lesson is very basic because I am new to the program and haven’t had the opportunity to discover it as much as I would like. I kept it simple by using images as opposed to videos, but I am going to play with it more and learn how to import videos. From past Wimba sessions, I have discovered that many people had problems embedding videos so I was fearful to use them on my first project. Due to the fact that I kept my project simple, I didn’t encounter any problems. I downloaded and read the pdf and everything else seemed self explanatory, which is a lot coming from me because I am not tech savvy in any way.

I can definitely see myself using UDUTU in the future and I am excited about discovering everything it has to offer. I am so thankful for this class and this experience as learning how to use this tool is what I have been hoping to get out of this class. We used ning in a past class, but it was too complicated for me. I don’t have that problem with UDUTU, it is very user friendly."

Rebecca, I really liked your course. There was a lot of good information that I can even apply to my own life. Thanks for the info. My only suggestion would be to make the font bigger and easier to see, and divide the text into smaller chunks to make it easier on the eyes. Otherwise, great job! I am now considering getting a wireless card so I can access the Internet when I visit my parents (who only have dial-up.) Thanks again.

Comments to Amanda

From Amanda, "OK so my Udutu is ready to be looked at...I would like to do more to this and actually have my students use this. I like the features, once I got use to them.
I took the video that I made in our music class and cut it up to use as an intro for each section. I hope it is okay that I edited and recycled some of my previous work.

On facebook it seems to still be loading, the name of the course is Geometry.

This is another location where it can be previewed.
http://publish.myudutu.com/published/launcheval/20330/Course36274/Launch.html"

Amanda, I liked your videos (especially your pi t-shirt) and the catchy music. They make the lesson feel fun and lighthearted. I also like the clear visuals of the triangles. My suggestion would be to break down the steps to solving the problems even further, and adding a screen for each small step, that way the students could go back and repeat the steps with other problems (on paper?) if needed. Nice job!

Comments to Kenya

From Kenya, "My Udutu project is for my recipe, Kickin' Bleu Cheese Burgers.

The URL for the project is: http://publish.myudutu.com/published/launcheval/20429/Course36319/Launch.html

Enjoy!!"

Kenya, I really liked the visuals and color in your lesson. It really made the lesson pop more than a traditional recipe. My only suggestion would be that since you are using video, why not have video of someone actually preparing the burger instead of just still images? Going step by step through the process and being able to watch and rewind someone shape the burger and add the cheese would be helpful.

Wk4 Project: Future Report

Wk 4 Udutu Project

Energy Resolvers Course

This project was created to give students and introduction into energy conservation and reducing their carbon footprint. While I was creating the Udutu unit, I was frustrated at first and gave up several times. Then all of a sudden, after sleeping on it and starting in again with fresh eyes, it all became clear. Udutu was actually pretty easy to use and I wanted to create more and more content but had to force myself to stop because of time constraints. I look forward to creating more content with Udutu in the future, possibly for my classes in the fall.

Wk3 Wimba

Clark Aldrich - Simulations and the Future of E-Learning

I recently started a job in which I will be teaching sixth graders to develop their own educational computer games. We just finished a three week summer institute - an introduction to the course (which was difficult to teach since I haven't taken the training on the curriculum I will be teaching) so my main focus was teaching the kids why games are important and why it is important for them to learn. They seemed to grasp this concept a lot easier than adults do. Duh, games are fun. Why then, do educators have such a hard time grasping this concept? Fortunately, many educators now seem to realize how important games are in education. I did some research and found an article exploring reasons why animals love to play. It seemed so obvious. They play so they can learn skills that will be important in their adult lives, they play to exercise their muscles and to test their limits. Smarter animals spend more time playing (Braaf, 2003) - since humans are the smartest animal, their need to play far exceeds that of other animals.

I really made the connection from this article to Clark Aldrich's presentation because when he was talking about simulation games, it was mentioned that in a simulation you are free to make errors that you may not want to try in the real world. This seems to be the key to using simulations in education: preparing learners for dangerous situations in a safe environment. Some situations may just be emotionally dangerous, but they do help students understand the ramifications of their choices. For example, a driving simulation in which your reactions are delayed to simulate intoxication can hammer home the message not to drink and drive much better than simply memorizing a booklet full of driving rules and taking a multiple choice test. I can see how this type of simulation would add conviction to compliance.

Resources

Braaf, E. (2003) Why animals love to play. Home and Garden Publications. Retrieved June 26, 2010 from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4128/is_200311/ai_n9307508/

Wk3 Reading Comments to Michael

"Students who are gaining new replicated information can expect to see an e-learning environment based on the Intellectual tutoring system. An ITS handles connecting the expertise of a teacher with the knowledge acquisition of students through artificial-intelligence-control tutorial module. “Such situations occur when large groups need to be tutored simultaneously or many replicated tutoring efforts are needed. Cases in point are technical training situations such as training of military recruits and high school mathematics” (Wikipedia)."

Until now I had never heard of intelligent tutoring systems. I am wondering how this will be done and how training of military recruits and teaching high school mathematics could be similar. Thank you for bringing it up, it is something that I would like to learn more about.

Wk3 Reading Comments to Christina

"In looking at the 6 Trends described, I am familiar with the need for change and there is yet another new trend to add. With new innovations in technology comes new ways to use technological resources. V-Books are the newest trend in online learning. Video books or V-books are snippets of videos strategically place in the reading to enhance learning. Retreive Rechnology has a site which explains why and how to use video books and it also has a small inventory for online learning and it has inventory for v-books (see below). The information from Clay Shirky "It’s all about the transformation of media in the age of Everybody, and it’s focusing on a subject very dear to our heart – oldteevee vs. newteevee" clearly addresses the possibility of mass popularity."

Interesting post, Christina. I am not sure how I feel about embracing technology like v-books. Sometimes I think we may be going overboard in trying to use new technologies to get kids to become engaged. When do they stop becoming tools and start becoming gimmicks? With something like v-books, I would be afraid that students would learn to depend on them and gradually lose literacy skills that have been difficult to develop. Although there is a place for new media literacies, we cannot forget about traditional literacy.

Valdez Teresa Wk3 Reading: LMS Choice

Choosing a learning management system is an important decision that should not be taken lightly. With the variety of learning management systems available, each institution should be able to find one that has the right features and capabilities that will fit their needs. Knowledgeable educators should be part of the selection process for their particular institution and using the steps outlined in this article would certainly be beneficial. Key questions to ask when deciding on LMS requirements would be "what do you want to do, who is going to do it, and how is it going to work" (Parkin, 2005). Once you have a list of requirements, you can begin looking for a vendor who can meet these needs. In order to choose the best learning management system, it is important to be active when choosing a vendor as there are many factors to consider and choosing wrong can be costly.

Parkin, G. (2005) The lms selection process in a nutshell. Parkin's Lot. Retrieved June 27, 2010 from http://parkinslot.blogspot.com/2005/04/lms-selection-process-in-nutshell.html

Wk2 Project Udutu Setup

1. Valdez, Teresa
2. Prior Project Selected: Energy Resolvers Project Based Learning
3. Education Design and Evaluation - November, 2009
4. In Education Design and Evaluation, I created a Ning Social Network focusing on environmental issues, specifically energy conservation. I created several media assets for the course and would like to use them for this project since I would like to assess how much information students will get out of the media assets and also if they could then perform an energy audit on their home or school. 
5. http://energyresolvers.ning.com/

Valdez Teresa Comments to Michael

"Standardization is necessary for the future of LMS. The interoperability and exchange of information has been used throughout history because of standards. It should be continued in the future of learning."

Michael, I agree that some standardization should be in place when it comes to learning management systems, but with too much standardization we run the risk of our media content becoming stale and boring. I think there could be a market for content publishers to make more standardized material, then the learning institutions would have choice in what content they used or purchased. Standardization could lead to more competition in the production of RLOs.

Valdez Teresa Comments to Louria

"When deciding on a content-authoring software one must decide if the content created needs to be reusable or not. This will also drive your decision on what e-learning platform , CMS, LMS or LCMS to use."

I think the key point you mentioned is deciding whether you want your content to be reusable or not. I suppose that if I were creating content, I would want it to be reusable so that I wouldn't have to create new content over and over again. I don't see how not having reusable content would be an advantage, do you?

Valdez Teresa Learning Content Management Systems: What Are They For?

While reading these articles and trying to understand the differences between the CMS, LMS, and LCMS, I finally had a sort of epiphany to what the Learning Management System was. I was reminded of my time as an undergrad, when the Internet was in its infancy (or at least adolescence) and the only online content we had were e-mails and list-servs. I thought specifically of certain professors who must have spent an awful lot of time researching and finding information that was specific to what they were teaching. I majored in Radio-TV-Film production, and I wonder how much has changed since then. My professors were fantastic and fascinating people and often they couldn't find material for their courses that was specific enough to their own subject, and several professors wrote the texts for the courses themselves. Sometimes, however, we were forced to buy several textbooks for one course and read only a chapter or two here and there. This could get to be pretty expensive, but one thing I dreaded more than this was photocopied course packets. Professors would assemble various articles and chapters from books into one spiral bound packet for the course, and although they probably saw this as a less expensive option than forcing students to purchase dozens of books, I hated those things. The photocopies had no color and were often hard to read so I missed out on a lot of readings.

Now I can imagine professors collecting information online, I wonder if the copy places that made those course packets are still in business. With an LCMS, they could have all of their favorite articles or media pieces available to change at any time. They could customize for undergraduate or graduate courses. I see the LCMS as sort of an online course packet, but way better because not only can it be customized for a course, it can be customized for a particular student. For example, if I was back in one of my film history classes watching Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, my LCMS might have articles written about the film, commentary and interviews by Alfred Hitchcock or other filmmakers and critics, and clips put together by my professor illustrating examples from the film. I could even choose which type of delivery method I preferred. Then my professor, who also teaches a class on cinematography, could reuse some of the RLOs for that class without having to photocopy a whole new course packet. Wow.

Week 1 Wimba Session 1

After watching the archived Wimba session, I was pleased to find out that there were a lot of visuals which will help me stay engaged during the session. I am shy about participating in Wimbas, I don't want to force people that I don't know to listen to me if they don't want to (and I sometimes get frustrated with the same people who just talk, talk, talk, then ask questions that are clearly answered in the syllabus or in other places in FSO - I don't talk in Wimbas because I assume that other people would be annoyed by me) but this Wimba was pretty useful. This class seems a little overwhelming to me right now, and a lot more academic, which is good but will be an interesting change. The information in this course really interests me since I have just started a new job as a technology enrichment teacher in which all of our course curriculum is online via a wiki. Since I will be working with sixth graders, the wiki seems a little too advanced for them (I believe it was designed for high schoolers) so I am interested in how I can organize the course for them in such a way that they will get the most out of it. I have been told that the previous class did not get much done and I want to break down the content for my students into manageable pieces so they can work at their own pace and accomplish their goals. I am a little apprehensive about my lit review, but I am on summer vacation and even though I am teaching summer school, it is only half a day and I will have afternoons to work. I liked the term "fail forward" - kind of like learning from your mistakes, I guess. OK, I am going to try not to procrastinate as much in this course, since it seems as though the course was not designed with procrastinators in mind. I better get to work!

Wk 1 Project: LMO Overview

CMS (Course Management Systems) are used in education to manage courses, registration, grading etc. Learners advancing through similar courses with similar learning goals. They are easier to regulate because each learner has similar content, goals, and are graded by similar rubrics. They are especially useful for schools that require accreditation because they can demonstrate that they are meeting specific standards.

LMS (Learning Management Systems) are used in commercial enterprises to manage individual requirements of learners. They are especially useful in companies where learners have different age ranges, skill levels, and might require different certifications. By using learning management systems, needs of individual learners are taken into account and instruction can be differentiated to meet the needs of each learner.

Throughout history, many useful advancements developed in a commercial domain have been adopted by education when it becomes economically feasible. The same is true for learning management systems. Personalization of syllabi, different learning styles, and more choices for learners are just a few of the advantages of a learning management system that could have great value in the education domain. Since all learners are different, and best practices in education are now acknowledging this, learning management systems will become a bigger part of the education domain as they are refined and perfected in the commercial domain.

LCMS (Learning Content Management Systems) are used to manage content, primarily by very big organizations like universities or the military. RLO (re-usable learning objects) provide instruction that can be used in many courses and re-used, and do not have to be re-authored repeatedly. Applications in traditional education environments may allow a less linear type of learning in the future.

PLE (Personal Learning Environments) are ways in which learners can customize their own content and networks to meet their own needs. The possibilities are endless when it comes to personal learning environments. They can be a combination of the above mentioned learning systems or something completely different. They can be managed by instructors, organizations, or learners themselves.

The possibilities afforded by online learning are truly mind boggling.  Learning how to manage different learning management systems will help people get the most out of the Internet and the educational experience.

Valdez_Teresa_Comments to Kim

"Why learn at a distance in the first place and why did all these advancements take place? From the earliest historical evidence of distance learning to the present day there is an express need and an express answer to that need: someone willing to teach at a distance and someone willing to learn at a distance. The innovations of technology with the television, recording and playback functionalities, and the giant leap of the computer and internet just facilitated this process. The current abilities of learning systems and management systems far extends the hopes of the earliest individuals to have the freedom of education anywhere at anytime. However, the reality of distance education is still changing. I personally took independent study courses while I was in high school and am now completing my masters online. I can see the very real change that has occurred since 1990. The future of distance learning is only limited by our own perceptions and creativity to use available technology and to dream the next generation of learning systems. :)"

Kim, I like how you mention that distance education developed primarily in response to a need. Isn't that the reason for all great developments in history? I too have to marvel at all of the changes in communication and education that have taken place since I was in high school in the early 1990s. Although distance and correspondence courses were around, the developments we are witnessing in learning management systems are exceptional in that they now allow learners to interact so much more with each other and with their instructors. It is so exciting! 

Valdez_Teresa_Comments to Melissa

"The History of Virtual Environments article shows tremendous growth due to the Internet becoming available during the 1990s. Here is a brief snapshot of some of the events that occurred during this time of tremendous growth. In 1990 Princeton introduced assessment management systems, and MIT evolved it into a shared services system. “Here is a list of the features of the system as of 1990: printing, electronic mail, electronic messaging (Zephyr), bulletin board conferencing (Discuss), on-line consulting (OLC), on-line teaching assistant (OLTA), on-line help (OLH), assignment exchange (Turn in/pick up), access to system libraries, authentication for system security (Kerberos), naming-for linking system components together (Hcsiod), and a service management system (Moira)." 

Melissa, I have heard of Moodle before, but I didn't realize that it was a learning management system. I really had no idea at all what it was until I read your post, so thank you. I would be interested to hear more about what your experiences with Moodle are like and how other teachers and students in your district like it. I also would like to know more about how educators are using it.  The 1990s was truly an innovative time for online education. I remember when I started college in 1996 and it seemed like the technology available at the university was so advanced compared to what I had been used to at the public high school. Now look how far we have come and how the same technologies we have access too are accessible even in a K-12 classroom. 

Valdez_Teresa_History of Virtual Learning Environments:In a Nutshell

In order to explore the history of virtual learning environments, one must also explore the history of education and the history of computers. This is a broad topic that encompasses many different areas. The two Wikipedia articles were long, they probably missed out on some key developments, but so is the nature of Wikipedia. The article begins with 1728, but it could conceivably go back even further, to pre-historic times when humans first began to pass information on to future generations, or when writing systems were first developed. Or it could start when formalized education first began. Likewise, the history of modern computing could be traced back to the very first mathematicians. Where the history of any topic begins can be somewhat arbitrary.

Xerox PARC does seem to have had a great influence on the history of modern computing, as it seems to be the first time that users were able to interact efficiently with computers. Prior to the development of the graphic user interface, computers were not easily accessed by the general public. If not for this development, it would not have been feasible for many learners to use computers for education, as more time would have been spent up front in learning how to simply operate the computers.

There were many events throughout the 1980s that influenced the development of virtual learning environments, but the key was that people were becoming more excited about the idea of using computers in education and more willing to experiment. The 1980s was a time when schools were willing to try out a variety of new ideas, but they were all so different that it would be hard to pinpoint which was really the most important.

Distance learning and correspondence courses have been popular for many years. Although this article does not address it, it must have been popular to take courses by mail at least in the early twentieth century when the postal service became more widespread, there are references to correspondence learning in popular fiction of the time. In the book Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery, originally published in 1908, Anne mentions taking college courses through correspondence. Of course, with advances in technology and improvements in communication, the ease and popularity of distance learning programs has risen continuously since then.