Giving constructive feedback...

Obviously throughout this task we would all have different opinions and different expectations that we would expect of ourselves.  Some of my group member's sent through drafts of their content for our Wiki today. I was made to think hard and relate back to the peer review system and remember how to go about giving constructive feedback rather than negative. After all, this was a group task and we were there to support each other. It's just a case of diplomatically putting our views out there. I didn't want to go and criticise or hurt any of my groups efforts.  It is important when working in a group to consider how to voice your opinions carefully, and avoid offending or insulting anyone.

Lesson Plan (Draft): I was very happy with the progress made on the lesson plan so far. Mel had quite obviously put a lot of time and thought into the content. I had a few suggestions that I wanted to contribute. I was just hoping she wouldn't mind the feedback. I had great difficulties in trying to explain in words the things I was trying to say without sounding negative. The content I thought was great but I had a different image in my head regarding the structure of the plan. I was picturing more of an easy table layout. At present I work at a Primary School in Millner and have had many relief teachers during my time here with my year 3/4 class. I could relate back to when they would walk into my class and pick up the teachers lesson plan and could not even be bother to read the half of it. Too much description too long paragraphs. They wanted the task to be explained quickly, simply and to be able to access the lesson content fast. I wanted to try and explain this all when giving feedback to my team member but didn't know how to make it all make sense. So instead I asked her if she would mind me editing the word document so that I was able to show her what I had in mind. 

I took the word document and converted it into a table format allowing for a day,week, lesson description and resources needed as headings. There were also a few extra details that I felt needed adding which was agreed upon. We had a discussion of what sort of time frame would be expected from a year 4/5 class.  I suggested a note to say what a standard lesson is typically based on eg. 45min period and also suggesting allowing more time for some tasks like using Ipads in groups they may need more than one lesson as I realise how long things can take sometimes in the classroom and doesn't always conform to the teachers initial lesson plan.

So far in this task I believe we have been collaborating very well as a team. We have all formed good relationships with one another and have each given opinions and our own contributions to the task. Although now, considering this is a group task, I should do some background reading on what does make a good team.

My input so far... We have a name and logo!

So far I have begun drafting up the content for our home page and introductory page. This will include background and task information, suggested target year level, group members, learning outcomes, links to the WA curriculum, a description of the Authentic learning and a link to our presentation once it has been created. I believe I had now made good progress with this and have put it up onto the site for my group to comment and give thoughts and feedback on what can be done from here. 

I was starting to feel irritated that we had not yet decided on a title for our wiki resource. I was  feeling in a creative frame of mind today so decided I would think on, and create a Logo for our Wiki site. I had an idea in my head and decided to run with it...

Beginning research

I have found throughout this unit that the best way to get a clear understanding of the tasks requirements was by initially viewing the three sample sites that the tutors had put on the LMS for us. Being primarily a visual learner, having a visual representation has really helped me get a clear understanding of tasks we have been set and a good idea of the expected standard. A written description of the task may be read differently by people and can sometimes be mis-interpreted. I would also find it difficult not knowing when I had done enough to achieve the marks that I wanted without having something as a comparison.

Screenshots of sample sites 

I really like sample 3's site I thought that this would be of a good standard to set ourselves. It appeared to have addressed all the marking criteria to a high standard. Simple, clear, with easy navigation is what we wanted. I noticed that all the sites had addressed somewhere on their site about authentic learning, some more than others. This is something we will have to make sure we include in our wiki resource. I was disappointed to see that a group from last year (sample 1) had already done something close to what our group had planned to do (Healthy Eating). I was worried about this as I didn't want ours to be too similar. My concerns were later put at ease by our tutor who reassured us that our idea was fine.

I tend to feel when first starting out with a new task, it is that feeling of the unknown and I sometimes lack in confidence which makes you want to seek reassurance that you are on the right track before continuing and risk the fear of getting it wrong.

I noticed that two of the sample sites had a separate references page. However the other just listed the references at the bottom of the page. Did this matter? I asked a couple of members in my group in an email who were also unsure. Darlene checked this with Jenni on Skype chat who informed for us that either way was fine. It was up to us as a group. I think if we end up putting it as a separate page we may want to consider subheadings such as teacher resource page, introduction, lesson plan etc. That way, you would know what page you were referring to. These are all aspects that we will have to discuss as a group and work through together. When talking with my group member's I think we are all feeling very much the same. We all have many questions going around inside our heads that we want to seek answers for.

Query about Health and Physical Education (Australian Curriculum or WA) Screenshot of Skype Chat Jenni Parker

As expected many of us are very unfamiliar with the curriculum's. With changes currently happening whereby everyone is rolling over to the Australian curriculum it makes it slightly more confusing. For the past year I have been referring to the NT curriculum within my job role here in Darwin until recent changes over to the Australian curriculum which I am now trying to learn and understand. The WA curriculum framework is also new to me. I have found that these changes have made it a little confusing on which one we should be addressing for this task, especially when I then discover that Health and Physical Education was also only available in draft form for review. Why did we pick health I thought! Why not a subject area that was already completed? Are we making this too complicated for ourselves? After speaking with Jenni who happened to be on Skype at the time, it actually was not such a big deal as I had thought. We could use either. I gladly reported back this important information to my group in which we then extended our conversations further in our group looking at what one we would address, why, and how.

We discussed the different options and decided that we would address the year 4/5 scope and sequence lifestyle choices content from the WA Curriculum Framework.  This was also something that I wanted to clarify with our tutors. Are we required to address all the outcomes for knowledge and understandings or refer to only one. For example, did we need to cover Hygiene content in our task or can we just focus on one aspect of it's content such as varied/sound nutrition?

We have a Wiki...

Jodie had set up a 3 examples of wikis for our groups consideration.

https://sites.google.com/site/whatsforlunch113/home
http://edn113whats4lunch.wikispaces.com/
https://sites.google.com/site/edn113grouptaskdanigroup3/

Jodie sent a link to Google drive to enable us access so that we could edit the group Wiki. 

This is the first time I had attempted creating and editing a Wiki. I thought it would be similar to creating a website, but it in fact I was finding it far more complex. I was hoping that I could just be able to open up the document and start copying and pasting from the word document I had created as a draft. How wrong I was. When adding content from word I found that the formatting changed and varied across pages. It took me a few moments just to realise intially that to be able to edit our wiki site you needed to click on the pencil icon at the top right hand side of the screen. This was clearly a complex tool to master and would take time to get used to, time in which we did not have. I needed to learn fast, but this was very frustrating.

Group Meeting

(Sunday 28th April) This morning I thought I would get better prepared this time around for our second  formal group meeting.The brainstorming doc hadn't really worked for our group to get our ideas across to each other clearly. I also found that there was still some confusion when working with Google docs. Was it the current version of the document? One member ended up having two of the same document, but different versions. I am used to writing all my ideas down on paper in note form, but clearly this was not going to work for a group task. I decided I would use powerpoint to start brainstorming some ideas on the tasks content. I could then share this easily with the rest of my group members via email or post onto our group site. 

Screenshots:Powerpoint ideas.

The slides were to give an overview of what basic elements we needed to include for task 3. I found that by also reviewing the sample sites this gave me some ideas as to the content which we were required to include. I went through the UlRG guide and broke down the task into stages, simplified tasks. See Slide 2: What we need to have. I felt by doing this it gave us all something to start working with and was a conversation starter. By including the scope and sequence I also wanted to confirm we were all looking at the same content in the curriculum. 

For todays meeting I also set up some Agenda items in attempt for us to try and stay on topic as it is very easy for time to pass just chatting and not getting anything constructive done and any decisions being made at the end of it all.

April 28 at 12:58pm

SUNDAY 28th GROUP MEETING AGENDA: (please add if there is anything you would like to discuss) ps. hope you dont think im being bossy just thought this might help us maintain focus?

PLEASE ADD YOUR SUGGESTIONS...

Think we need to focus on the idea and content first. 

TASK DESCRIPTION-More detailed description of what we want our task to be and include I think is the first step (also see Dani's comment on how we make it available to wider audience) What it is we are going to plan for? Overall goal of the students/teacher? 

-Once this is all agreed upon I am happy to make a start this week (Mon-Thurs) on drafting up some paragraphs of writing that can be used for our home page... and put forward to everyone on Thursday....? eg. Intro, group members, task description etc etc obviously with the exception of including the powerpoint prezi at this stage think this should be let to very last!

LESSON PLAN:

For Thursday : if everyone could get some ideas together to consider for lesson plan Ideas so that we can start on this. next...

In my opinion I believe that this meeting went well. We had managed to cover all the agenda items suggested and had decided on the content we each needed to gather.  

However, earlier on when first beginning the task some of my group had decided to allocate specific jobs to people. When it came to todays meeting I must admit I became a little confused in the conversation as I hadn't realised this and saught clarification on what it was I was meant to be doing to contribute towards the task as I hadn't yet been allocated.

It was decided that I would begin doing the home page and Introduction content. Jodie and myself would work together in setting up the Wiki and work on adjusting the layout of content.

I expressed my concerns to the group that if too many of us were all trying to upload content at different times, we might run the risk or overriding others contributions or messing up the formatting. Therefore it was in agreement by the group that myself and Jodie would be responsible for uploading and    

                                                      editing others content onto the wiki. 

Our allocated Tasks:

Jodie Dunning was responsible for creation of the group wiki and uploading content.
Melissa Baugh was to create the lesson plan and contribute to students resources.
Jenny Matthews would compile resources for teacher and student pages.
Darlene Catalano contribute to resources, create and manage our group presentation.
I would be responsible for the home page and introduction page content, contribute and upload resources. 

Outcomes of Sundays meeting: successful
                                                        made good progress so far
                                                        clearer on our ideas,all the same
                                                        allocated job roles
                                                        agreed to meet together again Thursday to share progress.

Jodie today also asked group members what each of our expectations were for the  assignment . From the groups responses it has made me very happy to see that we all have set very high standards for ourselves and want to achieve high marks. It was reassuring to know that other members of the group were also enjoying this unit as much as myself. They also had as much determination to get the most out of this unit as did I and a pass just would not cut it.

Authentic Learning

For the remainder of today (Saturday 27th April) I thought it would be of interest to do some research into understanding more about 'authentic learning.' The lecturers refer to this regularly and it's something I know very little about. I was aware that there was some useful links on the Technology Toolbox that I had briefly glanced over before now, but not in depth.

Week 8 Lecture on Authentic learning (Jenni, April 2013): gave some good examples of non meaningful tasks and word problems. "Why would your students want to care about these problems?" (Jenni, April 2013) It did make me think about how we should approach this task and looking at it from the students perspective on whether they would be interested in it or not.

We needed to ensure we were not "giving our students questions with no meaning"( Jenni, April 2013). What is the end product? These were all important questions we need to be asking oursleves throughout this task.

The lecture refers to Jan Herrington's 9 elements and that we could use these as a check list for task 3 The more of these elements our task addresses, the more authentic the task will be.

I knew that it had been mentioned that there were links and information to Jan Harringtons elements of Authentic learning on the Technology Toolbox for Educators. This would be my first point of call. I followed the link and watched a couple of the You Tube videos on authentic tasks. The first describing the characteristics of an authentic context and the second on authentic tasks.

 

 Above,YouTube video: Jan Harrington (2013) Authentic learning 2: Authentic Task, retrieved from Technology Toolbox for Educators,Murdoch University.

The video gave 3 clear examples of authentic tasks and gave you a clear idea of what was not. Jan also states that an authentic task 'should be broad enough for students to still be able to make their own decisions'. I thought this was a very important point made. We needed to be careful that our task does not end up a series of instructions on what to do and how to do it. Students need to be able to problem solve and think on their own. The task matters the most and should be completed over a longer period of time, not in only one lesson.

Ideas coming together... decisions being made!

So far I think we are going OK. we have made our first important decisions as a group.

1. Facebook group would be our first means of communication.
2. Group meetings will be held Thursdays 07:30pm (WST) and Sundays 12pm (WST).
3. Our subject will be Health and Physical Education. Our Topic will be Health and Nutrition.Year level 4/5.
4. The Task: Students will research healthy food choices, create ingredients list and posters of their recipes. Presentation to the class, they vote for the best recipe which will later go on the front cover of the cookbook. Recipes will be combined into an Ebook for the school library. Printed copies will be made available to parents for purchase.
5. We will be addressing the WA Curriculum content.

I am feeling a little better about the group task now. Everyone is contributing equally to ideas and we seem to be collaborating well and are managing to organise ourselves as a group. Now to sort out who was going to do what.....

EDN113 Task 3 Facebook Group

The brainstorming document has not proven to be a successful communication tool for a group task. It had been used to get each others contact information, but the group agreed that a better solution was needed. We discussed various options, and weighed up the pro's and con's of each. In the end, it was between Skype and Facebook as the most suitable methods of communication. It was decided that Facebook would be the most effective, as all group members were already signed up, and conversations could be reviewed by members who may have been unavailable at the time.

Facebook did have it downfalls though, which we all soon came to realise. It was not as easy as Skype for maintaining conversations. Each time someone commented or wrote a thread you were required to refresh the page. This became quite annoying and confusing! Fortunately we found a solution to this problem. By setting up a group message, we could converse easily in real time with one another without the need to refresh the page and sort through posts which would not maintain a chronological order.

Friday 26th April: Our first organised group meeting 

I have again been reminded how important regular communication is within the group. It is the key to effective collaboration. I can see now how easy it can become to miss out on decisions, become confused with  what each others contributions are to the task or not understand what it is you are suppose to be doing.

To ensure we maintain regular communication, I put forward to my group that we schedule bi-weekly meetings to discuss ideas and monitor the tasks progress. I thought that members may not agreed to this suggestion or would find excuses for it not to happen but I was wrong... Everyone agreed!  It was decided that we would ALL meet on our Facebook Group on Thursday evenings at 7:30pm (WST)  and on Sunday's at 12:00pm (WST).  Since implementing this schedule, I have been very please at how we have been performing as a group. We have still been able to maintain day to day communication via Facebook messaging and email where required, and the regular group sessions have proven to be very productive.

Brainstorming

A group brainstorming template had been set up that required us to download, save a copy to our Google Drive account, then share with the other members of our group. Firstly, I had to set myself up with a Gmail account as up until now I have always used a combination of Hotmail for personal use and Outlook Exchange for work. This setup was easy. Simply follow the step by step instructions on the Gmail web page. For information on how to set up a gmail account watch this You Tube video below on How to set up a Gmail Account.

Sharing the group brainstorming document with my team members was the first point of communication I had with them. I found it daunting collaborating with people I did not know, as I am generally quite shy until getting to know people. However, I felt a lot better that a I was able to recognise a few of my group members names from chatting with them on the Skype group or on the externals Facebook group.  

At this stage I am unfamiliar with how Google Docs works. Although I have been able to use and access documents previously, I am unsure if i am doing it correctly. I would soon find out I suppose. I sent an email to all my group members sharing the google doc requesting that they add their name, contact number, email and preferred communication method.

After this I took a few days off this task to complete another assignment. I was shocked to return to my Gmail inbox a few days later to discover a mass of emails I was not aware of. I was not used to checking this one regularly and had not expected such a quick initiation to this task by my group. This highlighted to me the importance of prompt communication for a group to work together effectively. 

It seems over these couple of days somehow there had been some confusion over the brainstorming document. One of my team members hadn't been able to receive this or able to edit it. We then discovered that this was probably because they had given a hotmail email as their contact, as opposed to a gmail email which was shortly rectified.  Members of my group all seem very enthusiastic to commence this task and are keen to make a good start. I did not want to let them down and admittedly I had gotten off to a slow start with this task. It was time to get the ball rolling...

Chapter 6: Community building and Collaborating with Technologies

Howland, J. L., Jonassen, D., & Marra, R. M . (2012). Meaningful Learning with Technology (4 ed.). Boston: Pearson Education.

It has been a while since I have re-read our unit textbook. Chapter 6 on Community Building and Collaborating with technologies I felt would be of great knowledge for this particular unit, being a group task. This chapter talks about 'Wiki's' being an 'effective collaborative tool for constructing knowledge'(p.137). 

This chapter introduces technology tools that supports collaborative projects, and describes how wiki's can be of benefit to learning communities in K-12 education. It also points out the disadvantage to the use of Wiki's.

Figure 6.3 and 6.4 are good examples of how wiki's can and have been used within the classroom to engage in a collaborative environment. It has made me realise that for Task 3 as students we are using our teacher wiki resource as a 'learning tool for collaborating, designing, co-constructing and representing our knowledge'(p.140).

Some collaborative projects that I intend to view and refer to when considering our project are:

-Telegarden- example of internet-based collaborative task that stupports learning outcomes in science. Students are required to tend to a living garden.
-Save the Turtles- example of a collaborative writing example for students (chapter 7 p.183)
-Cyber Fair project is a project example on Global Schoolhouse.
-ThinkQuest is an example of a online learning environment for primary and secondary students.

Assignment 3: Group Task

In Task 3 we are required to form and work together in small groups to explore technologies appropriate for teaching and learning. Again, a sign up sheet had been created and posted by our tutors on the LMS using Google Docs for us to form into groups as shown below.

Screenshot:Announcement group sign up

I was one of the first people to write my name onto the sheet. At the time, I had many questions and thoughts running through my mind. I thought this task was going to be difficult with many challenges. How was a group task for external students going to work?  What if no-one chooses to work with me? What if the other people in my group are lazy? How do we communicate? After reading the task requirements in our UILG guide I was still left with many questions.

We are required to all work on a Teacher Wiki Resource. What is a Wiki i thought? Is this not just a website?

We then had to decide on a teaching area of interest to us. Unfortunately, due to my commitments in finishing another assignment, I missed out on being a part of this conversation with my team members, who were very keen on making an early start to the task. They had decided to go with Health and Physical Education as our teaching area. Personally, I would have Art as our area of interest however, it may be nice to do something a little different for a change.

Jing instead of Grab

Since purchasing my Mac early this year and commencing studies in EDN113 I became aware that where as my old PC had a print screen option on the keyboard, Mac's do not. It took me a little while to figure out after beginning this unit that there is an application called 'Grab' installed on Mac's to do this function.  Grab can be found by going into Finder, clicking on the utilities folder under applications.

Grab is a application created by Apple that allows you to take a whole window screenshots, capture a marquee selection, a whole screen or a timed screen. 

I am finding that this option is rather inconvenient and hard to use.Initially you are  required to open the program from the applications menu to use it.

After completing Task one and starting on my first blog for Assignment 2 I was having problems with my screenshots appearing upside down or squished up so you could not read them. I was unaware of ever having this problem before in my previous blogs until going back and viewing my last blog entry ' Peer review complete' only to discover the screenshots were also unclear here too. I was gutted and annoyed that I hadn't doubled checked my blog after publishing and submitting for marking.

I was totally confused, what was different and why this was happening? I decided to email my tutor to see if they had a solution to this problem.  They asked  whether I could 'check the original file? do you have one called feedback r1.jpg?'(Dani, March,10,2013).

I checked the files that I was using to upload. There was the problem clear as day! They were saving as PNG files not JPG. Unfortunately, this means that because Grab does not allow an option to save as JPG each screenshot I take and want to use I have to re-open in Paintbrush and re-save as a JPG file. This is now resulting in me having multiple files of the same screenshot and is very time consuming. From now on I think I will be using Jing to capture my screencasts.

Unable to upload my screencast to Weebly

I had nearly completed Task 2 today, and I was trying to upload my completed screencast to my Weebly site, but I was having difficulties. I spent many hours trying to resolve this problem by myself. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. I had assumed it was just as easy as uploading a video onto your website, which I had done previously before...

I kept receiving an error message when clicking on the SWF flash icon that my 'File size exceeds the limit, upgrade now to the pro account'. 

My partner suggested that it might be worth looking at upgrading to a pro account if I were to be continuing to use Weebly as my Eportfolio throughout this semester. I looked at this option but then decided against it as it only allowed for 6 or 12 month contracts and I did not want to commit to this. 

I continued to problem solve, by illuminating the different ways I could possible get my screencast onto my site. It wasn't a You Tube video I know, but In desperation and through trial and error, thought I would try this also. Copying the URL link from Screencast.com into the YouTube video icon.This, as I was half expecting, was also unsuccessful. 

I knew somehow I could embed a document. I tried to copy the embed code, again from screencast.com, where my screencast was stored. This was also unsuccessful.  I was now getting extremely frustrated as I just wanted to get this up and finished onto my researcher page.

Why wasn't it working!?!

I tried to Google the problem in search for an answer but this seem to just lead me to paid solutions offered by Apple.

I had wasted so much time trying to resolve the issue by myself I decided to contact our unit coordinator who conveniently happened to be on Skype at the time. This was fantastic because I was able to get an immediate response to my query.  I am now glad that I was able to have this communication with my co ordinator as I dont think I would have been able to successful resolve this problem by myself.

25 minutes later, with the assistance of my unit coordinator, I was able solve this issue. I decided to share this discussion on the LMS with my peers, detailing how you can upload your screencast created with Jing onto a Weebly site incase others were experiencing the same issue.

Using Jing

I downloaded Jing onto my computer. This was a very easy process. Once I had downloaded Jing, I couldn't figure out where it was located on my computer, according to the tutorial demonstration it should show in the corner of my web browser as shown below. I soon figured out that I had to go into the application folder on my computer and open open Jing to begin with before it would automatically appear in my web browser.

I spent the majority of the afternoon experimenting with Jing, trying to create my screencast. I found it extremely difficult to begin with, trying to multi task and grasp the concept of speaking and explaining what I was doing at the same time as doing it on the computer screen. One downfall of Jing is that it only allows you to create a screencast video of up to 5 minutes. I found this limiting and was continually getting cut short part way through my demonstration. This became quite annoying and I was very close to considering trying to find an alternative technology. In the end after many hours, and approximately 10 attempts later I finally manage to complete a screencast that I was content with.

When creating some of my earlier screencasts I found that I had the problem of background noise in my screencast and had to try and find somewhere quiet to record.