My blogs and more comments

Hello everyone,

Way to go! for all the people that are entering comments. I finished all the assignment and I’m trying to finish another course I have on weekdays. I’m also trying to get back on my thesis because I couldn’t work on it a lot from September to now due to all the courses I was taking. I have one course to go and my thesis. Humm! Basically, from April to now, I almost completed all  my courses.

I have created additional Blog pages for presentations I have given and also for all my classes. My students love them. I am also posting pictures with flickr and students are very excited to see the pictures.  Here is the link.

I have created a few Wikis to use the calendar feature. It’s great and easy to update.

Lift (Spanish session)

Today I presented the session: “All you can learn Spanish in one day.” I hope the participants use the blog page. I will see how effective the page is the following weeks. The teachers were very happy to have the page to practice Spanish. I found that using all this technology to enrich your teaching practice is great for us as teachers and great for students. Student become independent learners and take ownership on their learning.

Now, I’m very tired, so I will leave you all. I need to sleep!  I haven’t done this since September.

Other Blogs

This weekend I was planning a Spanish workshop – All you can learn Spanish in one day. I created a page for this workshop. Please, check it out if you have time.

Lift-Spanish

My Podcast

I finished creating my Podcast about Use of Web Resources in a blended learning situation in a Spanish course from a secondary institution. If you teach languages you could find it interesting.

Download this episode (7 min)

Instructions for Skypecast

Hello everyone,

I’ll hope to have some participants tomorrow, to see how the Skypecast works tomorrow. I created a little tutorial with PowerPoint to help you connect to the Skypecast.

Instructions for Skypecast (PowerPoint)

I also used the Slide Show from WordPress, please, let me know which one is better.

Skypecast Instructions

Getting assignments done

Today, I started to work on some of the assignments and I felt better every time I accomplished something.

• I created a video and uploaded into Google Video. I created this mini video for teachers that need to update their WebPage from the Vincent Massey’s website.
• I updated my PBWiki with the list of all the things I completed.
• I created a Skypecast and I invited the entire class. Check your Skype account and you will receive the message.
  • Date: Saturday, November 11th
  • Time: 1:30 – 2:00pm
  • Name of the Skypecast: ICT-07.598 – Using Social networking in teaching and learning
  • Description:
    - Think about different topics in different courses we could incorporate social networking.
    - How can we implement social networking in teaching?
    - How can we make it work?
• I created another blog with blogger. I sure prefer wordpress.com
• I created a comparison table between Google docs and MS Word with google docs.
• I’m creating a script for the “Use of Web based resources in a blended learning situation.”
• I’m getting resources for the final paper.

Make your tools your own (comments)

My comments while I was tired and frustated 

I read your comment (Glen’s) about what is expected from this course, and I understand your expectations, but sometimes I find it overwhelming. I find, that it is very time consuming if I have to write every single day to my classmates plus start working on the assignments. Right now that I have learned a few tools, I want to concentrate in the assignments I need to complete for this course. So when I log in and check everybody’s blog and reply to some, I see that I have spent 1.5 to 3 hours doing that. So when I finally have time to work on the assignment, I’m already a little bit exhausted.

So, some of the strategies I’m applying to get some of the assignments done, are:

- Ignore for a while the blog entries and concentrate on my assignments. Then if I want to take a break, I take some time to look at the blogs and see if I can get additional ideas. At this time of exploration, I just read blogs and explore around with some tools and I don’t write anything. Then a few minutes later I get back to my assignments.

- One Saturday, I found myself spending 8 hours replying back to messages and when I looked back at the assignments sheet, I hadn’t done anything yet. So, my priority now, is to start working on the final papers (time is ticking) and as I take a break, look at my classmates’ pages to find an additional inspiration to finish my assignments. I don’t know if this is OK with you (Glen).

My comments after 1 hr. rest

I agree with Michael. As a teacher I need to monitor what students are doing. But also if I’m a online teacher, I need to understand that students take an online course for convenience (any time, any where).  Some students won’t be able to log in every day, but I would need them to get into a routine of checking the course at least 3 times per week. This will help the students pace the course. If students log in just once per week, they could get overwhelmed and they will tend to give up. We have all found how it works when we don’t log in for a few days.

Right now I’m very emotional because I’m trying to do well in all my courses and also finish all the assignments for all the courses.  Sorry, if my messages are too emotional!

Yugma & Skype Experience

Yugma

• I already have Yugma.

Saturday Experience

I could see how challenging was to get ready and how some people had a very hard time to log in. So, what did I learned from this experience?

• Prepare the session in advanced.
• Check the tools in advanced.
• Try a session with a small group.
• Start the people on the chat and then when everyone is on the chat, give the instructions to join the Skypecast or dial the number to do the conference call.
• Be patient
• Have a video tutorial a week in advanced and ask the students to try to set up a call with another class member prior to the group conference.

Glen, thank you for sharing your experience with us.

Another good site

I found the following site… it talks about good software available on the net.

http://blogs.business2.com/business2blog/2007/09/liveblogging–1.html

The following links is a preview of the things you can find in this blog. Check it out:

BeFunky:  Turns photos and videos into cartoons.  Sort of makes everything look like A Scanner Darkly.  Also lets you create “uvatars” that look exactly like you.  (They are hand-drawn now, but will soon use the same “Cartoonizer” technology you can already apply to photos and videos).  Startup is from Turkey.  Cool FX.  Panelist MC Hammer thinks its funky.

Kerpoof:  A new Website for kids where they can write stories, create art, and make movies.  They pick a scene, grab characters, make them bigger or smaller.  Kids can print them out and make birthday cards or coloring books, and also share their creations digitally.  (This startup secretly wants to teach kids object-oriented programming). Guy Kawasaki likes this one.

Orgoo: Consolidates all of your e-mail and IM accounts in a single browser pane.  Also lets you send video messages and create chat rooms where you can invite friends or colleagues for a real-time conversation, complete with video streaming.