Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Play? Mary, Erica and Deb's VLOG

Finally got our vlog loaded and here it is!

Thanks to Dave from ITEC 830, fall 2006 for your loading instructions!

Week 10

Not much to report this week. I hope some of you in class got something out of my presentation on GIS - I know it is pretty technical and narrow in terms of what it might have to offer to most people. I have to say that I learned a lot researching GIS. As a kind of a science nerd, I find it fascinating and actually pretty cool in what it can do. I think that it definitely is an explanation for the power behind GoogleEarth and I appreciated Darren's presentation on that . . . cool stuff! For anyone interested, I do think that ESRI offers links to ArcVoyager workshops for teachers.

I understand now that we are expected to go through a mini-version of the instructional design process for our project. We are somewhat in a holding pattern now as our contact is away for the week. But we have all been doing some work. I have looked into Drupal and a little into eLGG as alternatives to Moodle, but I don't really have the technical knowledge to know which might be better for our purpose. They all seem to offer about the same thing in terms of free, open-source sharing sites. Our purpose is to create a site where young folks from various cities can share their creative writing in a protected environment with a person who would act as site administrator. The idea is not to solely have a blog, but to have forums for sharing. If anyone who reads this is familiar with anything other than Moodle for this purpose, please respond.
I feel that at the very least we will be able to get something started for 826 Valencia that will hopefully lead to something really powerful for them to complement their tutoring centers.

I am about to try and load that vlog from a few weeks ago, on behalf of Erica, Mary and I, so we shall see . . .

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Week 9 (at the last minute)

As you all know, we did not meet last week as a class. However, our project group - Mary, Kate, Erica and I - met for a few Margaritas and a bit of food to discuss what our plans are for our project.
Erica has posted a number of things for us on Google.docs, such as meeting minutes, etc. Mary has started a blog site for us on blogger, entitled 826 Valencia, and we have pretty much decided on roles.
We were to have met Joel from 826 Valencia yesterday to discuss next steps and share some ideas with him, but unfortunately he had to cancel. We will try to meet with him the week that we are on break and in the meantime we all have assigned tasks to complete before our meeting. Things are looking good!
I have not reloaded our video blog to blogger. Suffice it to say that it is on iLearn and I will load it withing the next week.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Week 8

This past Thursday, it was fun to watch everyone's vlog on Pink's content - I especially enjoyed Peter's and Ben's. I have just uploaded mine, but am a bit nervous that the content is not okay because it is from images we got from Google images and screenshots of websites. I would have gladly loaded it onto the SFSU server and then streamed it from there, but we have not gotten instruction in this. Does anyone have feedback on this. If it is not kosher, then I would rather delete my video from You Tube and make another that is okay.
Erica's presentation on Google.docs was also informative. I had not been aware that such a thing was available.
I was glad we got a few minutes to talk about our project with Dr. Foreman. I am anxious to get started with this part of the class.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Week 7

I appreciated the presentations on Second Life, Video Blogging and Tagging last Thursday. I'm having trouble keeping up with my First Life . . . but Second Life is very intriguing. I've become more aware of simulation software that uses avatars so that students can experience a scenario and learn at the same time - there is one I was talking to a colleague about called "River City", developed by Harvard. It is designed to teach students about environmental concepts, pollution, problem solving/scientific method.

The Tagging was something that really didn't resonate with me. I tend to be very linear and organized in my thinking and for myself, I could see it as something that would hinder rather than help me. However, I did see that it could be helpful to people whose minds work in a more abstract - random fashion.

Mary, Kate and I met with Joel at 826 Valencia and I think we may have found a match for ourselves with a project with them. 826 National would like to have a site where students from different 826 locations can share their creative writing with each other. I hope we can fulfill their needs. A related question is, how do we access our server space at the university? Maybe you can go over this with us Dr. Foreman.

I liked the short and sweet article about visuals and text. What I really enjoyed leading up to class on Thursday was going through the color and design web site. For a non-artist, it was really informative and enjoyable.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Week 6

I finally found my way to posting my story in five frames! Finally figured out how to get the URLs - I could not figure out how to upload them as an entire set - advice? Maybe I missed something on Thursday?

Anyhow - it was fun to see everyone else's stories and to hear everyone's interpretation of John's picture story - especially his own!

Mary, Erica, Kate and I are going to check out a possible project with 826 Valencia. The organization is interested in setting up an interactive site for youth where they can share their writing! Could be fun!!

Where can I begin with the Flickr site??? After just figuring out a way to get my pictures into my blog, I can tell you that it was a bit of a problem solving task to figure out that 1) the URL of a photo "set" did not work, 2) Using "help" on flickr is not easy, and 3) finding the URL of an individual picture was a bit convoluted once I navigated through help and got an answer.

The fact that I had to click on a photo, then go to "different size" at the bottom of the page, then on that page find the bar with the URL in it seemed wacky to me! Why wouldn't the URL of the picture just show up when you click on the picture itself? When I tried to get help (which is where I fould what I just described via reading through others' FAQs) I found that it was a list of FAQs - not a regular help site - did not really make things easier.
After posting my photos in my round about way, I did look at the flickr sitemap and found the section on posting to my blog via email - I will have to try it out!
At any rate, I don't find the flickr interface to be very user-friendly - like I said, it is more of a problem solving activity!

Bon Appetit! - Homework 5