Peer Reviews

My Kitchen Rules (Wiki) homepage

It's coming to the end of the semester an our final submission for our last assignment is due Friday which will be a relief.

Today, I completed three peer reviews on other wiki sites. All of which were very different from ours. This was a big eye open, and it enabled us to have the opportunity to reflect on our own groups work. It gave an indication on areas our group may need to address before the submission deadline.  

Screenshot of Peer Review system

All our reviews were fairly good,in fact mostly HD's. However, those that gave credit it some areas, I wish that they could provide us with some constructive feedback for our group to  improve on as we were all just left questioning why or what can we do to improve?

Myself, Darlene, Jody and Jenny all sent through our copies of the peer reviews that we had been given to each other. This was a great way for us  all to reflect on the feedback given and make minor adjustments to our wiki.

Jody and I where also very concerned about our references page as this was still incomplete. We hadn't heard anything from Mel since she went away on holidays and we were unsure where she retrieved the images from. Jody said that she would try and search for her pictures on the internet and add them in ourselves. This was a bit inconvenient, and unnecessary. This is maybe something we should have considered as a group at the start of the task.

Final Days....

I have spent the majority of this weekend, compiling our reference list together, chasing up my group members for information. I just want to get our project finished. I feel like I am getting little input from some members of my group unfortunately some are also on holidays which cannot be helped. They  have kindly tried their best to stay in contact while away but this is difficult. Putting our reference list together has proven to be very time consuming. In doing so I also decided that I would check to insure all Hyperlinks were working correctly, which I am glad I did. I found that some were not working, the icon that links from our homepage to student page was going to the old page that had now been deleted. This needed to be rectified.

Darlene had now sent me through a draft of the powerpoint presentation for myself to edit. She had worked very hard and I was pleased with the content however I wasn't too sure on the layout (alinement of text) and choice in colour. Personally, I thought Charcoal was a little dark and did not really link to our wiki design which is blue. I made a suggestion that if she would not mind I could have play around with the layout. Darlene had expressed that she hadn't had much experience with Powerpoint and therefore was happy for me to do so. I didn't want to override her presentation that she had put so much work into so I opened a new powerpoint document, created a template and begun to copy and paste the content across before re-sending back for her confirmation and so that voice over could be added. We were both happy with the outcome.

Screenshot: Presentation Draft

Screenshot: Presentation (editing)

Additional Resources

I wanted to get an idea of what sort of information a teacher may have at hand already in their school libraries if they were wanting to do this project with their students. I decided I would search my own school library as if I was the teacher going to undertake our lesson plan and needed some extra resources such as books on Healthy eating. I discovered that there were plenty of books on health foods and nutrition under the science section. I also stumbled across a classroom video Smart Food, Healthy Body . 


Title:Smart Food, Healthy Food
Subject:Nutrition

Details: 14mins
Year: 2009
Study Level: Junior

Description:Smart Food, Healthy Food is an Australian made primary curriculum fit program that explores how nutrition plays a crucial role in maintaining a healthy body and mind, it's aim to guide students into making healthy and balanced food choices.


More details on this video can be found on the website http://www.vea.com.au/Product.aspx?id=5324 along with teacher support notes that are very useful and can be downloaded as a PDF.

Contributing to our teacher resource page

This morning I worked on adding to the teacher resources. Darlene and Jenny had compiled some resources into a word document and both sent through for myself to edit and upload to our wiki. I wanted to go through and sort these into categories eg. websites, YouTube videos, documents.... I found this very time consuming and I didn't really want to have go through and re-organise. This could have maybe been made easier by being presented in this format initially. Slowly I edited, copied and pasted the links across into the Wiki, adding the hyperlinks to pages, organising the information under their appropriate headings and adding logos/pictures to make it visually appealing.

I went back to our group Facebook page where I had shared any resources I had come across that we may have found useful and also added these to our wiki site. I also felt that it was important to include some background information for our prospective teachers on Authentic learning, and what it is about.

I am feeling tired after today dedicating about 6 hours contributing to our wiki. I have now finished our home and introduction pages, uploaded the teacher resources edited and added to these and am now reviewing the updated lesson plan Mel had recently uploaded and adding the PDF documents required for the lessons. I only hope others appreciate the amount of time and effort that I have been putting into our group project and I can only hope they are all doing the same.

'My Story' - Bookmaker for Kids (IPad)

'My Story' Apple App for IPads

I had mentioned to my group that as part of the lesson plan we could use or recommend an App to teachers for creating the class cookbook. 'My Story' was an application that my classroom teacher had used last year with a year 3/4 class to create an Ebook. I remembered that this had been a great success with the students and 
had been used for assessment of the students. I didn't know much about Apps and Ipads myself, so wanted to get a better insight into how it all works.

I was fortunate enough that this weekend that I was able to loan an Ipad from my school. I spent some time looking at the application 'My story' and went about creating an example-open with IBooks of how students can use the program, to be included in our lesson plan.

A little information about My story:  My story is a simple story maker and book creator for children available from the Apple App store. Children can draw, use photos, record voice, type and send their books to friends and family. 

I thought this app allowed some good features that would be simple for the students to create their recipes and produce a cookbook. I was excited to be able to share this with my group members who when I had previously mentioned the idea, were confused. It was difficult to explain what I had meant and how we were going to use it. By sending them the link to 'My Story'  they were be able to watch the fantastic overview video that demonstrates clearer how we could use 'My Story' on an Ipad and what its features it has.  http://mystoryapp.org/.

I was really enjoying our group task and found I was getting immersed with the authenticity of the project. I put myself in the students perspective by creating a recipe with instructions, ingredients, demonstrating the app, drawing and recording features. This later would be used as a sample resources for teachers on our wiki. However, this was where the problems started.... I had made this great sample, and I was eager share it with my group. I stupidly had assumed that I have a Mac so would simply be able to save it from the IPad onto my computer as a document and share it with the rest of my group members. I was wrong!

I tried multiple different ways....

-saving it as a PDF
-syncing the IPad to my computer 
-uploading to Dropbox
- emailing it to myself 

each experiencing further issues....

When trying to upload to dropbox I had realised that it had been sent to my ex-classroom teachers personal dropbox which I could not access. I decided that I would give her a ring to seek some advice, she had used this program before. Unfortunately, she could not remember how she had got the students work off the Ipads and could access it through dropbox her suggestion was a Google Search to figure it out, this is what she would have usually done. Far too hard... there must be a simpler solution, I kept on searching.

Next I tried emailing it as a PDF document to myself. But how do I create an email account? I had managed to connect up to my WiFi at home, but the assigned email account was my ex-teachers. I needed to somehow change this. I went into the mail and account settings, here I found the option to change this but for some reason hotmail or my outlook account were not working. A third and finally attempt with a gmail account... it worked! 

Next problem... when I opened the attachment in the email, it was opening on my computer in a program called Adobe Editions, the layout appeared distorted. How do I get Ibooks for Mac. I noticed their were a few people on Skype at the time including our Tutor Jenni, I posted a question to see if any of my peers had any suggestions.

Nicole very kindly said that she would have a look, she owns an Ipad. It opened fine on hers in IBooks. Like myself she was under the impression that you should be able to get Ibooks for Macs but I discovered after doing some further research on the web it turns out that Apple have only made Ibooks available for Ipads and Ipods at this stage.Very disappointing! I looked into other options such as Kindle readers for Mac but these only allowed you to view purchased books not read an ebook that you had created yourself.

If we are to use this as a sample for the teacher resource page we will have to include a note to say that it would require opening in Ibooks to view.

Group Meeting Thursday 2nd May

I was a little was disappointed  to begin with today that not all our group members were able to make todays meeting.  Now that we are well on our way with the task, regular communication is the key to moving forward and their thought and input are valuable. In saying that, arranging times that suit everybody is near on impossible. I really appreciate however that they had the politeness to send their apologies to the group for their absence, and was also able to send through the teacher resources that they had begun gathering. They would easily be able to reflect on what had been discussed by viewing the Facebook discussion at a time convient to them, so this really wasn't a problem.

In todays meeting we discussed at length the issues some of us were experiencing with the wiki and different browsers we were using.
I had become very frustrated when I uploaded content to the home and introductory page. The layout would initially appear fine on my screen then when it came to saving it the layout changed. Text kept moving about all over the place! I thought it might be because I was copying and pasting content that I had drafted in a word template but still after re-typing it all out it still moved about.

Screenshots: Jody and I trying to resolve viewing in different browsers.

We were not really able to resolve this technical problem completely Jodie had suggested that now she was more confident with how to create a wiki and that she was easily able to re-create the wiki to see if this would fix the formatting issues. It was worth trying...

I didn't realise that trying to upload the wiki content successfully.. that is without pictures moving and font resizing, would be so difficult!  I had just assumed that it would be the same as creating a website in which I was very comfortable with now.This was so frustrating...

I decided that I needed to learn more about Wiki's. Up until now, I had been questioning Jody when I couldn't find or work out how to tackle something on the Wiki as she was a little more familiar with its layout. Now it's time I step out on my own two feet... I needed to learn more about this! I decided to experiment by creating my own Wiki so that I could play around with it, without the fear of messing up my groups work.

I didn't have a clue where to start. I didn't even know what technology Jodie had used to create our site. I went and explored the Technology Toolbox for some guidance. 

The first thing that was of interest to me, a simple clear definition of a wiki.

"A wiki is a website whose users can add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often created collaboratively by multiple users." (Wikipedia, 2012).

From here I spent time browsing through some of the useful links supplied under teaching ideas and resources. There are heaps of great resources that can be found here. I just wish I had more time to explore them all. The technology Toolbox provides an overwhelming amount of resources and links to other sites for this unit and I would recommend that you initially begin your research here. You will often find most of your questions or information that you are looking and it is easy and less time consuming to navigate around then endlessly browsing the Internet, which can become a bad habit.

TeachersFirst: Wiki Walk-Through was one of the links I took a look at. It provides a step by step walk through of all the basic information you would want to know when first starting out with a wiki. I found this information very useful as it gives clear and simple explanations in which you can follow.  The site also mentions Wikispaces and PBworks as both being free wiki tools.

Google Sites was another that the Technology Toolbox offers links to. It provides all the information required, a brief overview of Google Sites, template examples, direct link to getting started which is convenient and some useful YouTube videos that I always find the most helpful to watch.

Above, YouTube video: Google. (2008, Feb 27). Google Sites Tour Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X_KnC2EIS5w

It appears Google Sites was the chosen technology Jody had been using to create our group wiki. Now I know the technology it might help with assisting me trying to work out a few of the difficulties I had been experiencing by watching a few tutorials and reading up on the sites tools and features.

While I was on the Technology Toolbox I also took this opportunity to look at the two alterative free technologies suggested. I was curious as to why Jody chose Google sites to use.  

I went straight to Wikispaces and quickly set up a account, I did not want to be doing lots of research on this as our Wiki had already been created using Google Sites and way well on it's way. This was just for my own benefit to see what other tools there were available and whether they were any easy to use? NO is the answer! I managed to create an account and set up a new project on Wikispaces, but this is all I could work out. I found the whole site very confusing! I think this is a tool I would have to do some reading up about and learn how to use it before jumping straight in a the deep end. It wasn't going to be something I could just figure out by exploring. Maybe if I took some time to watch the YouTube tutorials and examples it would become more clear.

Now I was probably just wasting time, avoiding doing what it was I was actually meant to be doing at this moment in time.  At the end of the day this was just another free web-based technology. The video overview appeared pointless as it did not appear any different from the others tools. I therefore did not bother to look any further into this site after watching the video overview. I think there is more important things I could be directing my time to with the project. I also found that I could not read the pages tabs at the top of the sites homepage to explore the site further, the text was too small making it impossible to see.

I could now understand why Jody had chosen Google Sites. This seemed the most straight forward and sensible option as it appears the easiest to learn . We do not require something that is going to be too complex to use. Everyone was going to be required to contribute to this and we did not know what each others technological knowledge and capabilities were like.

At the end of todays collboration a few of my group member's expressed that they felt they needed or wanted to contribute more to the task. We had decided as a group that our presentation should be something that is left to last after our wikis content was well on it's way. This had been Darlene's assigned part of the project. I could understand why she would be feeling like at present she was not contributing enough to the task. This was ok as there was certainly lots that could be done. I made a few suggestion on other task alternatives  and these were discussed amongst the group. I think everyone went away feeling a lot happier that they had enough to do up until our next arranged meeting together.

"Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal."

I accessed The Technology Toolbox for Educators today and was having a look at some of the technologies it suggests for collaborating. I had heard of a few of these, the most obvious being Google Docs to share files along with Google Hangout and Wiki's. We have been using Google Docs throughout Tasks 2 and 3 as external students to sign up to tasks. 

After attempting to use Powerpoint as a means of trying to express my ideas, I was intrigued by Conceptboard, a team workspace. "Work more efficiently with visual content." This could be a useful technology for Task 3, I thought. I only wish I had read some of this information earlier, so that I had time to explore further. As a visual learner I felt this might be a great way of me expressing my ideas visually. I watched the demonstration video from the link on the Technology Toolbox and was impressed. Unfortunately, this is not a free program and requires a monthly subscription, not really viable for one task but may be a consideration for future teaching.

FlockDraw on the other hand appears to be a free online whiteboard based drawing and painting tool. It does not quite function in the same way. This is only useful only for presenting picture or illustrations and to be honest you would just use an interactive whiteboard. I was a bit disappointed that the site also does not give significant detail of its available features and found that there was no good basic overview videos when searching YouTube for the technology tool. Conceptboard would be my preferred choice as has many features, such as being able to edit screenshots, highlight content, add comments. It allows for cross collaboration,video chat and live view of the board with others. 

After reading this quote by Downes. It has made me realise how it is important to remember that when working in a group, learning to interact with others and sharing is all part of learning to be inclusive as a team."It only works if they are prepared to make talking about what they are doing a part of doing what they are doing” . (Downes, 2006). 

                                        Success = working as a team

The Meaning of Team. Together everyone achieves more!

 (ViVaNSE, 2011) Retrieved from Technology Toolbox (April,2013)