It is just the beginning of my learning curve .....

"Huh.... the course is just going to end soon". I think this is a 'relief' sentence that always comes to our mind whenever we have finished a course in our tertiary education. Most of the time, we only use only small of amount of knowledge that we have learnt (formal learning) to apply later in our employments. Students always lack of higher learning skills in the conservative learning environment. Because of new generations and the advancement in technologies, I believe that our students can benefits more from learning with technology, that is what is all about in the course - "NEW LITERACY ".

Although this is the first time I am exposed to online course, I find it is interesting, flexible and making me think deeper than I will just learn from the classroom. No doubt, in the classroom, there will be very interactive and spontaneous. What I see here is different learning environment will give rise to different learning outcomes.

From this course, I have learnt how to use and evaluate educational technologies tools that will benefit me and help me improve my PLE. I have built my own blogs and start to write something on it. I have learnt to use wiki in order to work collaboratively in small groups in jointly creating an online presentation, social bookmarking which allow me to tag and share my favourite website with others, to aggregarte some of the tools using Google reader/ snowflakes, to use RSS 'feed'/ send information to me.

Tools are only devices created by us but how we are going to utilize them need another skill. I have done quite a number of reading on the emerging tools for learning with technology through this course. From there, I have learnt about the functions and limitation of each tools. Now, with some of the 'seeding'/basic knowledge provided in this course, I going to apply some of these tools for my class in coming semester. I am thinking of blog, video presentation to explain some basic concept or theory (something like common craft), and may be create a social network site from Ning. Plenty of ideas and need some time to execute them. I think what I would like to explore later is to find/ learn a tool like "Moodle" to coordinate my course and allow me to assess some my students' assignments.

Physically, the course will end but my spirit to research more technologies for teaching keeps on burning....

Bye!


p/s: To all course-mates, do keep in touch and share what have learnt....

Personal learning environment... what do I have?

After reading the article by Attwell (2006), I am agreed with the author that our learning environments are not just limited to formal or informal learning, but also how we use educational technologies to share, to gain and to create new information/ knowledge. Most of us are familiar with formal learning, which receives much recognition. This will help us in our employment indirect, however, most of us also know that informal learning environment is very important. In this course, I read and search for authentic information (theory and concepts) but indirect, I have learnt about self-discipline, time-management, exploring new tools to use for teaching. As this course is designed by professional educator, it has created a 'fun' environment for me to learn more. I believe I could do it by myself by exploring the internet and find the appropriate tools, but it may take me a much much longer time to do it or I might lose my interest in between .. :-) Thus, we should evaluate our PLE from time to time...

To create a life long PLE, I believe that we need to choose the style of learning that we prefer and suit to us. And with the helps of educational technology tools, our learning curves are exponential! But, as point out by Sha, everything goes back to availability and technology. I am totally agree with that.

Educational tools by themselves may not create an effective PLE but integration of different components as discussed in the article by Attwell (2006).

Let's me do some reflections of the tools that I have learnt from this course:

Delicious - social bookmarking (share popular and relevant bookmarks)
Facebook - social networking (connect almost everyone)
Blogger - multiple blogs with different topics (to voice out)
Google tools (i.e. mail, alert, iGoogle, Goole reader)
Solidcasts/Podcast - audio files hosting
Endnote- Management of references
Audacity - audio recording for podcasting
Skype - internet communication
Wiki - contribute various knowledge
Jing- screen capture video to create demos
Web brower - safari, firefox, opera
Search engines - Google
Mozy - online backup tool to save all your important data
Adobe suite - photo editing and other design works


All comments are welcome.. bye


Reference:
Attwell (2006) Personal Learning Environments. The Wales-Wide Web website. Retrieved on 4 December 2008 from http://www.knownet.com/writing/weblogs/Graham_Attwell/entries/6521819364

Is everything under one roof?

Hi,
Frankly, I have learnt a lot of emerging communications tools from the CNEL2008 course. From social book marking to audio visual recording for podcasting, screen casting, ustream, simple bloging to microblogging. Then we move on to social networking tool like facebook which like a more 'advanced' twitter and finally, we are looking into aggregation tools that we hope to link and coordinate our works under one roof.

Like what have George mentioned, how can a person manage so many accounts at one time...? (Scratching my head) sometime, i need to memory couple of password and user name. Thinking..Can the website notify me when there is a new input. Aaa haaaa... When I see the assignemnt for this week, it really opens my eyes. Works can be simplified (sound ideally).

I know about google aleart and have a google account. I have been using goolge alert to track any new information or journals that are related to my research.

iGoogle and Google reader are new for me. So, I registered for an iGoogle and Google reader.... wow... Fantastic, everything seems to be under one roof. I tried to explore Google reader, added in my twitter and blog RSS feed. Then I arranged my iGoogle, yeap... I can now check my email, news and updates from blog or twitter and so on. I should say: Google simplify life ..:)

However, I found that the feed only applied to certain website (especially news, blog). I am thinking wether there is a software that create a RSS 'FEED' for other website that cannot be 'feed'. Wow.. sound very confusing with the word 'feed' here and there... :)

I could not make it for Face book. I have searched with google to find a solution, but not unsuccessful. I think there is a limitation for facebook (correct me if I am wrong). But, I need to use Google mail to faciliate all the RSS from different sites. And I use different email accounts for different things. Need to sort this problem out.

Pageflakes need a long time to log in. Hmm....I found that we can receive RSS feed from selected email account at one time but I am not sure we can receive RSS feed from few different email accounts at the same time.

I appreciated if anyone can 'enlighten' me with some helpful tips... :)

Ciao..

Microblogging

Wow.. this is really a 'micro' blog, which every character is counted.. :) Easy to use and it is like updating everybody on what you are going to do everyday.. may be every hours or every minutes.

Twitter has few interesting features such as:

1. it can be embedded into blog/ facebook etc.
2. twittering on mobile phone
3. it promotes yourself and keeps your network growing- i guessed

I think it will be useful to use as a quick communication tool in education. Students can sort of "sit together' and discuss their matters among themselves and the educator. But, we have to create real-life or authenticate issue which can catch the interest of most students. Technology without good management does not have any meaning

Keep on twittering.. :)

Educational video

Catching up with assignment..

Huh... looking for relevant movies/ videos for my subject in the internet have brought me from one website to another website, but it was fun! because I can keep on searching and learning new techno gadget at the same time. I have learnt how to download video from Utube and what is screeningcasting and ustream. However, I could not find a "FREE" software for screencasting for Mac.. :( sob sob.. . For window OS.. there are plenty!

As recommended in this course, there are some very resourceful websites that offer great educational videos and conferences. They are not only prepared/ recorded from prestigious lecturers but also free. I have tried to download them but due to our LOW internet speed... I can view one or two with lot of buffering time... that make me frustrated!

Although I am using a Mac computer, but I am not good at multimedia. There is something called iTuneU in itune, There, you can find couple of good video made by educators from different university such as Oxford, Yale.... but you need to have iTune in you comp.

The lessons I have learnt here is that we need HIGH speed connection to make all these things possible and applicable. If not, low downloading internet speed will only hinder us to look at this technology.. ! But no doubt, I will adopt some of this video in the class and use screencasting for my teaching :) I am sure students will benefit from it... :)

Podcasting, here I come.. ...

Hi,
Let me talk more on my experience on podcasting! I have been struggling with my computer hardware and software some time before I could make my first podcast uploaded in my blog last few days.

Because of this assignment, I need to look for the built-in mic in my laptop. I never use it since I bought my laptop three years ago and I was afraid that it is not functioning anymore... huh... I tested it and luckily, it is fine.. then I looked for the audio software to make MP3 file. I downloaded audacity and MP3 converter for recording purposes... But actually, I found out later that I can use my Garage Band software to do it... That is not a problem... the problem is to start talking in front of a mic in a quiet room make me feel uncomfortable.... .. I found that I was hesitate to talk and when I re-play my recorded voice.... ohhh I can believe that.. is that my voice ? sound horrible...... ha...ha.....

After forcing myself to speak a couple of words, I saved the file in MP3 format. I then registered an account in solid cast.com to upload my MP3 file... The registration was simple, what confuse me was the podcast's name and episode's name in the solid cast website.. With lot of try and error, it was uploaded and I copied the link and inserted in my blog.... I tried it and it worked.... yoooh! Task completed

Then I think of how it can be use in education. I have checked with the internet and see their educational applications... wow... out of my expectation... there is plenty. It is not only can use for tertiary education, but also for primary education. One issue I think we need to considered is the attendance of a class (as discussed by Shaz). Podcasting will promote absenteeism.
Whether we like it or not, some students will take advantage of this. But, what we hope is to help/benefit the majority of students who want to gain knowledge or understand the topic we are going to teach!

Nothing is perfect in this world ....

Ciao....

Podcasting.... not that easy....

Hi,

  I am testing to upload my recorded podcast.. see whether it works or not! fingers cross

Let's me try this.:

RSS




Will write more about my experience when get this correct.... huh.. quite tiring but worth it :P