Synchronous Communication

A few weeks ago, we were all required to take part in a synchronous chat. We were given choices of which tools to use, and chats were scheduled. One of the tools I chose to use was Elluminate, and I have to say I was very disappointed. Not because Elluminate seems "bad," but because the version we used seemed to have many features greyed out. I'm not sure why, and neither was our instructor. The result was that we really couldn't see what kinds of things Elluminate could do. I have used chat tools for years, in fact, I got to know my husband predominantly via chat tools. There are many simple ones available for free through companies such as Yahoo, Google, ICQ, and Facebook. There's also Skype, which I enjoy as well. One problem with all these chat tools are that everyone has to have the same one or else communication can't occur. Then you have to remember which friends have which chat tool! Another problem with using these tools is time zones. I use Skype to talk to my sister in New Zealand, and it's EXTREMELY difficult to set up a time when we're both available. A contributing factor is that my Internet connection is very, very poor, so I really need to Skype from my office. That of course reduces the window for chatting even more.

Aynchronous chats have their place in education. They are useful to create community, to offer answers to questions quickly, and to allow students to work together from great distances without having to wait for responses. I'm still not sure I'd want to enforce them in a class; after all, one "benefit" of online learning is that you can organize your time around it. If a lot of synchronous chat was desired by students, wouldn't they simply take face-to-face courses?

Diigo

One of the things we were asked to do in this course was to sign up for Diigo. I already used Del.icio.us and have many, many bookmarks saved there, but I have now also joined Diigo. My address is http://www.diigo.com/user/kiwilindsey. You can access this site to see the kinds of bookmarks I've saved since signing up a couple of months ago. I do like the feature of being able to save links not only to Diigo but also via Twitter to others who might be following via that mechanism. Diigo (like Del.icio.us) allows you to not only save bookmarks so that they're accessible no matter what computer you use (assuming it's hooked up to the Internet), but also to add tags for referencing and to share with others who may have similar interests. I think it's an underused tool, and I aim to take greater advantage of it in the near future.

Elective

So, we were asked to try something new. Actually, I think we were asked to write about something new we'd like to try. I decided to try Glogster. I took the idea for content from a Prezi I created about Cheating, and used that information (as well as some web links) to create a Glogster. Here's the address: http://www.glogster.com/kiwilindsey/cheating/g-6lsi9bud8b3m7ail5dpula0 I think this could be very useful as a sort of brief summary of a topic. For example, if I were teaching about young adolescent development, the Glogster could be used to summarize the information in different categories (e.g. physical, moral, emotional, cognitive, and social) and then include web links to sites with GOOD and TRUSTWORTHY information with regard to these sub topics.

I enjoyed making the glogster, and I'm on the look out for any other tools I could use! If you know of any, feel free to add them in your comments!

Surveys and Quizzes

We were asked to create a survey or quiz for our course, and I decided I would use Survey Monkey. In the past I have used Quia (I've forgotten my username and password though, so if I'm going to use it again, it's another account for me!), Hot Potatoes, and a couple of other sites. However, even though our College has a Survey Monkey account, I've never created a survey using it. For this assignment, I set up my own account ( a free one, which I later found out only allows 10 questions) and typed in some of the questions I wanted to use as an end-of-course survey. It looked quite nice when it was finished, and I know Survey Monkey is easy to fill in. Because Survey Monkey only allowed 10 questions, I ended up using the survey in BlackBoard 9.1 which has the advantage of showing me who took the survey and who did not (although not which survey belonged to whom) - this enables me to give points for the activity and encourages higher participation.

Here's my Survey Monkey survey, for what it's worth! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JG7XR39

Asynchronous Communication

One of the most common tools for asynchronous communication would most certainly have to be facebook (facebook.com). Known as a social networking medium, facebook enables people to keep in touch with others by writing notes, uploading photos, joining groups etc... I think it has uses in education as well. Many colleges have facebook pages, and certainly it is a useful venue for posting meeting and course information. Another tool is tumbler (tumbler.com). This is similar to facebook in that it is a social networking tool, but perhaps has stronger privacy controls. I've played about with this a little, but I haven't had the time to really invest in this tool yet. Google also has a social networking tool, and their aim is to displace facebook. It remains to be seen as to whether this will happen.

Created Content

This week, I examined Prezi. I actually enjoyed it a great deal, and I'm sure I only scraped the surface of what can be done with it. I looked at three learning theories (behaviorism, constructivism, and cognitivism) in this Prezi with the thought that I could use it in one of my classes next semester. I didn't find the learning curve too steep, and enjoyed the fact that because Prezi is stored "up there in the clouds" I could add things from my home computer and work computer and not have to worry about carrying any material around on a flashdrive.

Here's the URL to my Prezi: http://prezi.com/wut9u6k8xxu3/learning-theories/

Synchronous Interaction

One of the topics we looked at this week was synchronous interaction. I found a website that lists a bunch of free tools for this purpose: http://topfreedownloads.brothersoft.com/chat-tools/index.html. I enjoy synchronous chats myself; they're part and parcel of the MMORPG, Lord of the Rings, that I enjoy playing. You are able to meet and chat with people from all over the world. I think that an online chat would also be useful in terms of asking questions in the university scene. One semester, I used Yahoo chat and gave all students my Yahoo name. Not many people took advantage of it, but those who did seemed to find it very useful. They were able to shoot a question at me and get an immediate response. This is something I need to think about trying again.