bP17_2009121_Final_Project

Check out my final project video

BP3_2009121_EduUses4Blogs

There are several educational uses of blogs and in this post I would like to discuss some of them. In my last class my group was asked to create an educational website that focused on experiential learning. The blog was used as a means to documents students experiences as the completed activities assigned to them. It was thought that the blogs would be a great opportunity for students to talk about the course content, thereby enhancing the learning experience through the creation of a learning community.
Blogs can also be a method of allowing teachers or subject matter experts to share information with the wider public. There is a teacher in Trinidad and Tobago that blogs about her experiences teaching. You could learn about her successes and trials as she tries to integrate technology in to the classroom. A fellow’s teacher has the opportunity to learn from her mistakes and build on her successes. In this scenario both the student and teachers benefit from a teacher following her blog and implementing what they have learned in the classroom.
One of the more obvious uses for blogs is that it helps students hone their writing and reading skills. Students can create portfolios of their writing with a global audience. However another not so obvious benefit is that it is identity formation. In a paper titled Presentation of self on the Web: an ethnographic study of teenage girls’ weblogs Bortee argues that blogging helps student find their own voice and consequential helps them to create their own identity.
Finally I think blogging and blogs helps students to become more active and engaged in the learning process. Blogging for a student allows them to extend their education experience to teaching and information sharing., which is not always available in the classroom. I believe that is the true benefit of blogging

Bortree, D.S. (2005). Presentation of self on the Web: an ethnographic study of teenage girls’ weblogs. Education, Communication & Information, 5(1), 25-39

http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2009/04/blogs-in-education.html

bp16_2009101_my comment_2

Louria,
I truly appreciate your defense of a classroom teacher. It is always good to get an alternative point of view. i agree that it is time consuming and difficult to effectively incorporate these tools into a classroom environment. My struggle with these tools is that I can use many of them in a corporate environment because of data protection issues. Thanks for blogging I enjoy reading your ideas

bp15_2009101_Reflective media asset_timeline

Please note that all pictures were taken from Microsoft clip art and from using the tool timeline

bP14_2209121_Web 2.0_Tools_Edu2.0

EDU2.0 is a learning management system for k -12. Therefore EDU2.0 cannot be used in the corporate environment, which by the way is the same story for most of the tools evaluated in this course. I have enjoyed playing with them but in the end I can’t use them. The evaluation of EDU 2.0 is the final straw, this class Emergent technology in a collaborative culture has be targeted to teachers for k through 12 not for corporate trainers. In fact I would say that most of this program is geared towards teachers and I feel pretty left out. Yes I could see the potential of some of these tools and I have blogged about them but I must protest the lack of focus on tools that can be implemented today into the corporate classroom.
Moving on, I have decided to talk about the value of LMS systems in corporate training, which has been an essential part of corporate training for the past 10 – 15 years. In an article in the New York Times titled “Within Companies, Too, Education Proves Its Value” argues that companies that invest in employee training and development out perform those that don’t. They go on to state that a company’s success depends on its human capital. What does that have to do with LMS? LMS allows companies to monitor and evaluate their human capital. For the employee LMS systems provides them with a roadmap to success as they must view themselves are learners that need to constantly update their skills in order perform their jobs and advance within the organization. LMS systems, usually offers, course listings and resources such as publications to the student, they also offer reports and assessments to the trainer all within one platform. Hey are robust and can support large organizations and ensure corporate privacy and data protection.
EDU 2.0 has similar offerings as other LMS systems for corporations and It will allow students to take school home while they are doing their homework. It looks like any other LMS system except it is clear that is gear toward children and teenagers.

bP13_2209121_Web 2.0_Tools_Fishbone

Kaoru Ishikawa invented the fishbone diagram, which is also known as the cause & effect diagram. Karou Ishikawa is also known for his work in quality management processes and his methods has been adopted by companies globally and is considered to be a pioneer of modern management systems. How do Karou and his work? His work and his diagram is part of the quality health and safety (QHSE) courses that every employee in my company must attend. So, immediately I knew that this tool and diagram would be very useful for corporate training.
The fishbone diagram is used to explore all the potential or real causes that result in a single effect. This makes the diagram invaluable part of the process of determining the root cause of an accident or quality failure. This diagram can be given to the participants in a QHSE class to determine the root cause of an accident and then determine how the accident can be prevented. As the instructor in a QHSE class I would split the class up in groups, give them an accident or quality failure and ask them to use the diagram to determine the root causes. Once they have decided on the root causes they can then figure out what measure should be implemented to prevent this incident from reoccurring.
The fishbone diagram can also be used to for brainstorming and problem solving. Students can be given a problem and asked to solve it using this tool. Their fishbone diagram can be used as part of their final presentation, which would be their solution and how they arrived at it.
The fishbone diagram is a very effective teaching and learning aid within the corporate classroom. The web 2.0 version of the fishbone diagram in its current form would be a great addition to the corporate classroom. However it needs to be updated to look more professional to be used effectively.

BP12_220912_Web 2.0_Tools_Timeline

For the purpose of this post I would like to discuss the uses of a tool called timeline. Timeline is a web2.0 tool that allows students to create a timeline of events. There are several applications for this tool. The first is to allow students to create a timeline after you have covered a topic. Timeline is an excellent tool for teachers to evaluate how effectively each student is learning, as they are expected to list the major events within the given topic. It gives the students another opportunity to cover the material again and create something interesting that can be used for further study and revision.
The second potential use of timeline is to document processes, which has a chronological order such as subjects like history and geology or process such as digestion and digenesis. Asking the student to create a timeline of events they have learned will help to keep the information straight and will be an invaluable study tool when it come time for exams. Color-coding of events adds another layer of knowledge to timeline. Once the students have listed out the events, they can use color to categorize each event. For instance in geology, during rock formation you have physical and chemical process, when using time line to described the formation of a rock you can have yellow mean physical and red mean chemical process.
Timeline can be also used by the teacher at the beginning of the topic to give the students an overhead view of the topic about be covered. Students can use the timeline to understand where they are in the grand scheme of things.
Although there are many uses for timeline within the classroom for people from ages 5 to 22, I think that the tool will not be very usable in the corporate classroom in its current state. It looks very cute and gimmicky and does not really have a professional finish with corporate students expect. We also run into the question of privacy and protection of corporate data. I have the tool thumbs up for the classroom but I would not implement it in a corporate classroom.

bp11_2009101_my comment

Vandy
I love my iphone it keeps me connected and organized it is possible i would forget to go to work it i did not have it! apptism sounds like a great tool that i would like to try!
Like Mark I am having problems when I look at these web 2.0 tools they seem great for school children but to implement them for corporate training seems unlikely at this current stage of development. some of the tools simply can't work for my target audience!

bp10_2009101_Reflective media asset

Here is a advertisement I created for one of the most useful Web 2.0 tools out there google docs and igoogle. Please watch, comment and enjoy!

bp9_2009101_Web2.0_vuzit

 I have suggested the use of wiki’s for content creation and survs to provide feedback on content and classes. We now have the possibility of having constantly updated training materials.  As the a training service delivery manager how am I going to ensure that my trainers get the most up to date version of our training materials?

What my company needs is a document distribution software application that:

·      Allow trainers to get the most up to date versions of training materials as soon as they log into the companies network.

·      Allows authenticated trainers should be able to print the manuals, and view them but not change them.

·      Allows the training service delivery manager to get statistics of the viewing and use of the new manual

·      Allows global, scalable access to training materials

·       Is user friendly an can be integrated into companies LDAP

Although I am not directly involved in the search to provide a solution that meets requirements of the company, one potential solution, is Vuzit DocPub, which is an enterprise solutions.  It meets the requirements outlined above but we the IT department will need to look at the compatibility and integration with other tools already deployed within the company. However I did try to conduct my own personal evaluation of vuzit. I used Vuzit free web based document sharing application. I found it easy to use to distribute, documents, pictures and movies to family members.  It did live up to its claims and allowed me to prevent others from changing my documents.

The picture below shows how I use Vuzit to share a caricature of myself.

Bp8_2009101_Web2.0_Confluence

I would like to take this opportunity to share with you a project I am currently working on. I have proposed the use of Confluence an enterprise wiki solution to improve the process of creating training materials to include collaboration. The diagram below describes the current training manual production process. It takes roughly 6 months to a year to complete this process, and is usually described as painful.

The process involves the author writing the training manual then sending it to the training and development department who edits it and then hands off the document to peer reviewers. The peer reviewers create separate word documents called the peer review document, which contains their comments and suggestions. They send the document back to the training department who concatenates the peer reviewers’ documents, formats the manual and send it back to the author to respond. The author looks at the peer review documents and the formatted version of their manual and updates the manual. When the author is finished the document it is sent to the training department for final publishing.

Figure 1 illustrates the current process for updating training manuals. Where M stands for manual version, P is peer review and SME means subject matter expert.

The problems encountered using the process illustrated above are:

· The process of converting the authors’ document to final PDF is long and results in a number of mistakes that result in rework

· Peer review comments took approximately 6 weeks before being returned to the author. However the average time spent by peer reviewers with the document was three days.

· The peer review form is tedious and only facilitated one-way communication from peer reviewer to author.

These issues with this process all stem from the non-collaborative nature of the writing a training manual. I suggest the use of wiki for authors, peer reviewers and training department people to collaborate to create a training manual. Investigations of the wiki tools available lead me to Confluence©. Confluence is an enterprise wiki solution that can be easily implemented

· Wiki based manuals draw on the community as a source of knowledge. The responsibility of producing quality materials is shared.

· It facilitates scalable collaboration between a few subject matter experts to company- wide collaboration.

· Wiki is an enterprise solution so data can be stored behind the corporate firewall

· Updates are easy to incorporate and can begin during software development stages. This gives the company the possibility of releasing training materials with the product.

· Training materials have several output formats such as xml, pdf and html to facilitate in publishing the manuals.

· Authors can track changes and the author’s of the changes. There is also ability to set up a change management workflow. For instance if some one proposes edits the author can accept or reject them

· Confluence has versioning control the author can roll back to the best version of the document

· Confluence also supports the additions of videos, pictures and metadata

Figure 2 illustrates proposed process for updating training manuals using Confluence ©.

I have suggested the use of Confluence for developing training materials at my place of work the pilot started October 26^th 2009. Since my companies version of confluence is proprietary I can’t share pictures of what it looks like. I hope you enjoy his post

bp7_2009101_flickr

Integrating flickr into lesson plans

Please find the link to a lesson plan using flickr.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19387797/Lesson-Plan-With-Flickr

In this lesson plan the teacher used flickr to teach students to learn new words specifically verbs and their conjugation and relate them to pictures of people using the verb in question. This is a novel approach to teaching grammar, as it is not compartmentalized in grammar class. The lesson plan using flickr allows students to relate grammar to everyday activities.

Other ideas for using flickr in the classroom

Another opportunity to integrate flickr into lesson plans is at Universities and societies such as the American Association of Petroleum Geoscientist (AAPG )for field courses in geosciences. Fieldwork is an essential part of becoming a geologist but it is difficult for schools to integrate sufficient field trips into the curriculum. With flickr students could post pictures of geological formations with the precise location. The type of structure, the formation process and age will be the tags and organization of the pictures within this group. Students and professors will then discuss these pictures within flicr. These pictures and the discussions can help students learn to build persuasive arguments about the structures formation using geological fact, get alternative views about formation process for the geological pictures and also encourage students in their spare to time to visit these site themselves.

flickr for the oil and gas industry training

The integrating flickr into a personal learning environments and lesson plans at my job, will be difficult. I work for an oil and gas service company, where we provide training for our clients (operators such as bp, Exxon Mobil) on our products. The oil and gas industry is not what one will call an open industry, although there may be collaboration amongst companies the sharing of data is not an option. Why because our clients the operators spend millions and sometimes billion of dollars on data about the subsurface. Since the data is proprietary and exorbitantly expensive the sharing even the location of data is forbidden.

The only instance where I think the integration of flickr into a personal environment may be possible is if we create a class for a specific client. Then it would be okay to share pictures of the data and interpretation performed using our software. Flickr will facilitate students discussing the progress and choices of their classmates.

However I can foresee problems with even this approach. Flickr will be storing proprietary client information. The client will have no control over their data and will be relying on flickr to maintain the privacy and access rights. Flickr is a cloud-based service like gmail and there is no service level agreement with flickr, so outages and data leaks will have no redress options. The only solution will be to allow companies to create their own proprietary version of flickr so that their pictures are stored behind a firewall. In the end I will have to conclude that flickr in its present form is not usable at my job.

BP5_2009101_SocialBookmarking

Educational uses of social bookmarking

One of the first things you learn when you start working for a corporation is Networking is everything! You rely on your network to help you if you have a problem to solve, for your next position and sometimes your network saves you from getting fired. I think that social bookmarking combines easy of navigation one experiences using bookmarks, the efficiency and organization of databases and value of a personal network and learning community all in one. So why would you use it for education? The biggest advantage is to see what other educators and students are using to facilitate and or engage in learning. It may also lead learners down new and interesting side paths, which brings exploration back into learning. It also integrates more social interaction in education, as it encourages the formation learning communities. One feature I would like to see added to social bookmarking is the ability to rate the usefulness of each site.

BP2_2009121_RSSFeeds

I have subscribed to Wiley: All New Education titles. This site seeks to find the answers to several questions such as the value of education, who is the student and at what stage do they need to be educated. I think by trying to answer these questions we will become better corporate trainers as such reading others attempts to answer these question will help me.

The second site is ScienceSim this site focused on the 3D Internet. This is relevant to my Action research project because I am thinking about exploring the use of virtual worlds for sales training, software training and safety training. The views and experiments from the people of online community will be valuable for my project.

NewswireToday is a search engine about based in the UK that pulls up all the corporate training articles. This site will help me keep in touch with trends in the industry that will help me perform my new position as Education service delivery manager.

My fourth choice is TEDS. I have always followed TEDS because they present alternative views that get me to think. Even when the talks do not directly relate to education or corporate training, when you digest what the speaker is saying there always seems to be point that can be applied to my area of interest.

Dougbelshaw.com is my fifth site, the author talks about the future of education, which is key to the Education Media Design and Technology.

BP6_2009121_AntiTeaching

Now I am all for change but the question is do we need to integrate technology into the current Education system? Aren’t children being educated and moving on to perform well at their jobs? If the answer is yes, why are so concerned about change? The fact is that current methods of teaching are becoming more and more ineffective every year. I am sure there are a number of articles which states why the education system and current teaching methods are failing and need to change. I have chosen not to cite them in this post because of my own personal experience as a student, teacher and corporate trainer attest to outdated nature of “chalk and talk”. In fact my enrollment and the enrollment of teachers and corporate trainers in Full Sail University, Education, media technology and design course and similar courses attest for the need for change. Micheal Wesch eloquently explains what me and my fellow educators are sensing is going on in the classroom.“ For many (students and teachers alike), education has become a relatively meaningless game of grades rather than an important and meaningful exploration of the world in which we live and co- create” (Welsh 2008).

Sorry but since when the modern school has ever been about exploration? How can you explore sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day? The closest schools have ever come to exploration or exploratory learning is in a science lab and even then you know in the back of your mind the teacher expects a specific answer. To me exploration requires some element of the unknown, the idea that you could possibly find or create something new. In fact I challenge you to look back at you school career, when have you ever gotten a good grade by challenging the established point of view. The fact is every student learns (through exploratory means of course) that you tow the line you get an A if you challenge the status quo you get a C or B (only of the teacher is soft hearted). School is about learning ideas and theories put forth by others. In fact the concept of academic research is based on upholding the status quo don’t all of our references have to be valid, reliable and peer reviewed? May be at the PHD level you are finally considered capable of valid original thought. Why is this a problem? It is, because learning is a personal effort and regurgitating the ideas of others with out experience or exploration (by exploration I don’t mean reading a book or searching the internet I mean )robs the student of the personal nature of education. The reason for this is simple, the education system has to reliable, repeatable and serve the need of the masses, because there are billions of children than need to be educated globally. To successfully change teaching practices and education, we have to change the variables of the situation. As teachers and corporate trainers we only have control over our environment and the methods we use to facilitate learning. In the articles read the authors argue that personal learning environments and Course Management systems can solve the problem of the lack of “significance” in the modern education. The idea of creating a personal learning environment with web 2.0 tools will bring back exploration, creativity, and social interaction during learning. Which interestingly enough, was part of early education systems an example of which is the aboriginal walkabout ceremony. Which means we are using technology to bring back the old ways and I am in fully support of these initiatives.

References

Wesch, M. (2008, October 02). Anti-teaching: confronting the crisis of significance. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/6358393/AntiTeaching-Confronting-the-Crisis-of-Significance

Educase, (2009, May). 7 things you should know about personal learning environments. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7049.pdf

BP4_2009121_Webtool_survs

Corporate training at my company is entirely classroom based. The training materials are created by the product center rather than by the trainers. The reasoning behind this policy is the “product creators” know the product better than anyone so who better to create the course materials. Although this makes sense on one level there are problems associated with this policy for instance the people who create the product naturally want to push the new features, rather than aligning the materials with the student goals and expectations. How can this product they be expected to align materials to student goals, they are not in the classroom, they are not teaching in fact they are disconnect. A potential solution is the integration of surveys and questionnaires.

A survey will capture the student’s expectations before the class begins so that the materials can be adjusted and the trainers will have the opportunity to manage the expectations of students before they are disappointed. The real time analysis tools and share options within survs is particularly useful as the survey creator, trainers, managers and product creators can analyze the results of the survey as results come in, allowing for real time customization.

(surs, 2009)

The filter tools also enhance the survey solution as they allow you to distill information, and see trends within the results. In other words changing the results from just plain data to information. Information can be used to make decisions about class content and course offering.

Second use of surveys is to capture the comments of students after the class. This allows product creators and trainers to further adjust the material and get general feed back about their classroom management skills and the content of their class. Again allowing trainers to continually update and improve their teaching techniques and materials. Surs’ export tool is useful, as the result from the survey can be used as the basis of creating monthly and quarterly reports that managers will view to asses, the companies course offering and how well the company has meet student expectations.

The third use of the surveys is to assess the comprehension of students during the course again this feed back.

Surs’ makes the creation and analysis of survey results easy. It is also deployed over web and can be stored in a digital format that protects the rights of the user. Although I support the concept behind the application, I am forced to ask if surs’ surveys can be deployed on a large scale. In other words is it an enterprise solution. In order to answer yes, surs surveys must be usable and customizable for use in other areas with in the company and solution must be scalable, i.e. can be used in very large organizations under heavy use. After using surs and taking a tour of the application, I will have to say yes this is an enterprise solution.

I could choose from various services packages, from the free option to the premium page.

(surs,2009)

I can customize my surveys

(surs, 2009)

I can preview my survey while during its creation

All and all this is cool tool!

References

Enough Pepper Lda (2009). Analyze. Retrieved from https://www.survs.com/tour

BP1_2009121_iGoogleScreenShots

Emergent Technologies in a collaborative culture: Using igoogle

In this post I would like to share with you my igoogle page. The first image (on the right) is a screen capture of the "my page" tab. This tab has a number of gadgets that reflect my interests, photography, geology, education and the oil and gas industry. This tab is designed to contain my personal interests and keep it separate from school and work interests.

The second picture is of the WGO or whats going on tab. This tab allows me quick access to Twitter, Facebook and my school to do lists.

The third picture is of the AR or Action research tab. It contains delicious, mylisty and box of links gadgets. This tab will be used to allow me quick access to my research and website created for school.

Finally the fourth picture is of the ETC tab. This tab hold, google doc, google reader, google bookmarks and my blog gadgets

Welcome to Eduwatch by SRC

Welcome and Enjoy