Week the third: What's half-baked? My video.

For this week, we were to

1. Create a wiki page and read about and write on two "emergent" technologies, and
   
2. Create a brief educational video and upload it to YouTube.

Let's just dive into this, shall we?

Wiki
The aspect of creating a wiki was itself not a big deal. Reading the instructional wiki and not grating at the grammar was another matter. I am, if I haven't already mentioned, an English major seeking license to teach English. And I am a very major "Grammar Nazi," to use a popular term.

Then there's this whole concept of "emergent" technology. I am obviously using quotes intentionally. Google "emergent" and you get a few definitions for the adjective:

In the process of coming into being or becoming prominent
(of a property) Arising as an effect of complex causes and not analyzable simply as the sum of their effects
Of or denoting a plant that is taller than the surrounding vegetation, esp. a tall tree in a forest
Of or denoting a water plant with leaves and flowers that appear above the water surface
Arising and existing only as a phenomenon of independent parts working together, and not predictable on the basis of their properties

Now, I could see possibly manipulating definition 5 to this purpose of speaking about technology, but the context in the assignment is clearly using definition 1. The problem with that is that the list included such "coming" or "becoming" technology as Skype, which has been around since at least 2005. Several other items on the list had information from 2008. Granted, it's not all that old, except that we are talking about technology, where 6 months is a long time and most hardware and software is updated every 6 to 18 months. So 2008 is a long time, and Skype has been around forever.

At any rate, I did find a couple interesting items that are fairly emergent. One was Voki, which is an animated avatar that the company itself says has been around for years. Voki, as a site and as a marketed educational product, though, has only recently been introduced. They tout the infinite possible uses for their tool. I am personally slightly creeped out by being talked to by an avatar, but I do like the many options, such as recording audio via phone or computer microphone or simply typing the text and choose a voice and an accent. Lots of customizing features and some usefulness in a classroom setting. They also promote community by having a forum where experienced teachers can offer help to new teachers, along with a page where teachers can look up lesson plans using Voki which others have shared. Very nice features.



The other technology I looked at is Udutu, a website for collaboratively creating online courses with ease. Easy on the eyes and easy to use, it's like something made by Apple. This would be a really cool technology for schools or classes with regular access to computers for all involved students, which is obviously not all schools nor all students, sadly.

I spent several hours tweaking links and text for the wiki. I generally don't do anything halfway. Then I did the next assignment.

Desktop Video
Well, I think I did a pretty good job, but I also think I could have done a lot more and perfected the little details a lot better. I just didn't take the time to do it. It's a decent, if silly, video that is short and to the point. I think it meets all the demands of the assignment well enough. But, to me, it has way too much text, mediocre transitions, my horrible voice, and is cut slightly short at the end.

Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

Week two was much better

...Well, except for time management. That's not unusual for me, though.

This past week, we had a spreadsheet (ooh!), a "hypermedia" PowerPoint, and a diagram or mind map or what-have-you. It was a "visual learning" module using software called Inspiration.

Spreadsheets
I've been using Microsoft Office-type products since 1988 or so, and have been doing spreadsheets and data entry about that long. I've also been a certified Microsoft Office Professional, so this assignment didn't scare me at all. I'm the crazy person who kind of enjoys setting up spreadsheets. Of course, I also have to tweak them, adjust them, and make them look good.

I've also used Google Docs before. Not much, mind you, because I haven't needed to and I prefer the features included in desktop applications that Google hasn't programmed in yet. Even so, I have used them.

So basically, this assignment wasn't a big deal to me. I enjoyed figuring out how I wanted the sheets and what information I wanted in the charts and seeing what I could tweak and move around. I might stick with Excel (or Apple's Numbers, since that seems to cooperate better on my machine), but I appreciate the practice.

Visual Learning

This was simple enough once I decided what I wanted to do with it. I find Inspiration's software funny, though. I remember selling their titles when I worked at the Apple store, and it always sounded interesting. Now I've used it and I laugh at the user interface design. I'm guessing they haven't updated it since the 1990s. Bad, bad, ugly design with little tools and text boxes and pixelated graphics.

Beyond that, though, it was fine and some slight fun and it did what it advertised. Would it be useful in a classroom? Definitely, unless I find something else with a more modern user interface.

PowerPoint HyperMedia
I thrive on and love creating in PowerPoint or Apple's Keynote, so I knew I'd probably like this assignment. The one twist here was that it had to be something non-linear, which I had not personally created before, although I had seen a coupe such presentations. Oh, and I did actually use PowerPoint. Amazing, but true.

I spent hours on this, of course. And I had to make it look good and consistent. I also did not want all the answer links to be underlined, so I used empty text boxes to do the work, and it worked flawlessly on my computer. But I found out that the links did not work for Ms. Romano. My only guess is something to do with going from Mac to PC, but it destroyed my near-perfect grade, which irks me to no end.

Oh well. Such is life. I worked hard on that presentation—harder than on anything else so far—pouring hours into it to make it as perfect as I could for the material and the needs. I hate Windows with a passion. (EDIT: I found out that it wasn't a Windows thing at all and, head-scratcher to me, Dr. Romano uses Macintosh, too. So it's just Microsoft that sucks. No surprise there.)

I'm not much more silly quiz games with chintzy graphics for some reason, but this will be a useful application of presentation software. I'll find ways to make it mine if/when I become a teacher, although my idea of "fun" is often different than a teenager's.

Looking back at week one

(Please note: I dated this post for the week after the assignment mentioned to be a better reference point in time (and I should have written it right after doing the assignments). The post was actually written July 28th.)

So here I am, finally trying to do what I'm supposedly best at and what I hate the most: writing. I'm just going to briefly state my thoughts on the first week's assignments.

Blog Setup
Let's see. There's creating a blog. This was old hat for me, since I have already setup seven blogs on three different services. Not that there's much to do. It's the writing that's the "hard" part. Tedious part, actually. I have an English degree, love picking at grammar and proofreading and even editing. Even so, despite my seemingly natural talent for the written word and my propensity for rambling on and on about a favorite topic, actually starting to write or deciding what to write about has always been a struggle for me, along with always choosing the right tone and the right words. Because the process is a pain for me, I have always hated to write and have avoided it as much as possible.

It doesn't help that I'm a type-A anal retentive with ADHD and Asperger/High-Functioning Autism tendencies and spend more time tweaking and editing and revising and completely redoing than I do creating something. Oh well. I also have over 24 years of experience on computers and pretty much live online.

Web Portal
Oh, and I am a Mac user. This was a big deal with the "web portal" assignment on pageflakes.com. While FireFox was recommended for the entire course and particularly for this assignment (and is what I've been using for the last two months almost exclusively), I had to go into Safari to create an account at the site and create the modules and the page.

Yet that was the end of that. I could create an "anything flake" in Safari and type of copy-and-paste text, but I could not edit the text on my Mac and make it look how I want. Thankfully (I suppose), we're staying at mom's house and she had a work-issued Windows laptop that I could use. Definitely an annoying pain, but it worked, even though the boxes don't all look quite how I would like them to look.

This site was simply a pain in the rear in every conceivable way short of simply not functioning (which was how it actually appeared to me originally in Firefox for Mac).

Of course, I could dive into the look and feel of it and how "last decade" or even '90s it looks and feels like, but that's neither here nor there. I'll just state plainly that I will probably never use the site if I do teach for a living.

Word Processing
I don't have much to say about this assignment.  Well, compared to the last one. It's creating a newsletter in a word processor. I used Pages because I like it better than MS Word and it actually supports my favorite font, unlike Word for some strange reason. You know, despite the fact that OpenType fonts were a collaboration between Adobe and Microsoft and the Myriad font files I have are OpenType. Details.

Here again, I have experience in desktop publishing and graphic design. I am very particular about design elements and opinionated about look and feel. Thus, generally, school teacher newsletters tend to be ugly affairs that offend every optic nerve I have that still functions (I am blind in one eye). I also hate Comic Sans and Times New Roman and have an aversion to the overly-popular Helvetica.

Needless to say, the samples provided did not impress me. I was bound and determined that mine would look as professional as a word processing application would allow. Thankfully, also, the latest version of Pages (and perhaps even Word) have page layout tools that quite nearly rival Adobe PageMaker 5.0, which is what I started on and loved dearly.


Epilogue
Yes, the guy who hates writing is very long-winded.

What is this?

I'm here blogging for my current class in Instructional Technology. I am an unemployed middle aged family man seeking teaching licensure and work despite over 24 years using computers and ample knowledge of Microsoft Office, Adobe products, Macintosh, Windows, and literature and grammar.

I really want to be an editor and/or graphic designer.