Lauren C's EME 6414 Blog

So here I am; last blog post of the semester. What an exciting and challenging semester its been. This course has taught me so much and perhaps more importantly, I've pushed myself to step far out of my digital comfort zone. Am I an expert now? Absolutely not, but I do have a better understanding and appreciation for web 2.0 concepts and tools - and perhaps that's a good starting point. I would like to thank Vanessa and Omer for being incredibly helpful and accommodating throughout the semester. There were definitely times when I felt lost, but they always provided prompt and helpful advice. I really appreciated the renewable credit option also! Also, thank you to my classmates who posted consistently interesting blogs that were super fun to read and respond to. I hope I got to everyone! Take care everyone!

For the second in my trilogy of reflective posts this week, I'd like to explore ways in which I could have gotten more out of this course. First, although I'm typically very good at time management, for some reason, this semester got away from me. I did start a Summer C course midway through that greatly increased my workload, but I think that was only part of it. One thing I know I will change in the future is making sure I read the entire syllabus very early on in the semester. Usually, I only refer to the syllabus if there is specific information I need, and I don't typically look ahead to assignments until it's the next one on the list. Many times this strategy is helpful because it keeps me from feeling overwhelmed and helps me focus on one assignment at a time. Unfortunately, when there are projects that require pre-planning and a longitudinal effort, this strategy falls flat. So, lesson from this semester  - make sure you explore all the assignments early on!

Although we explored many tools this semester, I feel that one of the main learning goals was to discover integrate them into our epistemological philosophies to make us better educators. I'm not certain that we must have our students engage with the tools in the same way we have, though what we can learn through our interaction with other individuals through the use of Web 2.0 tools certainly can. For example, if we're looking for lesson plan ideas, there are several platforms available that allow us to connect with other educators who may have helpful suggestions. We've discovered much of this through our examination of personal learning networks and its definitely something I'm excited about taking further in the future.

As I've been working through my produsage assignment, I realized that the tool I was creating could actually be used to inform my dissertation work. To that end, I've sort of been planning in my mind how I could keep track of various efforts at censorship throughout Florida by using the annotation feature of Google My Maps. I could even use the layering feature to account for different genres of books, temporal considerations, disposition, and many more. How about you, can you see yourself expanding your produsage assignment into a resource to assist you in furthering your education or work?

So, I'm knee-deep in my produsage project at the moment and despite early misgivings it seems to be coming along really well. The social media tool I'm using is Google My Maps. Initially, I was wondering if this tool would have all the features I needed to complete the project I envisioned. After exploring for a bit, however, I found it had even more than I needed, which allowed me to expand the proposed project, making it more detailed and in-depth. Discoveries like these are one of the main things I've gotten out of this course - moving beyond my comfort zone, and getting a better feel for what the various tools we've explored have to offer. How about you? Are there any functionalities you've discovered since the beginning of this course? Have you discovered any new features of the tools you've chosen to utilize for your produsage project?

For my reflective post this week, I've been thinking quite a bit about this process of blogging that we've undertaken throughout this semester. Personally, I had never blogged before this class - it always felt kind of awkward putting yourself out there like that. But honestly, I've come to enjoy it, it's cathartic in a way, and given the tools available to protect anonymity, it can be done in a way that people feel comfortable with.  One thing I struggled with early on, is the feeling that I don't really have much to say. Sure, I can talk about the readings and assignments for this course, but apart from school or work-related topics, there is little that I'm interested in that hasn't been said before by others, and better. So, I began thinking. Surely, I'm not the only one that feels this way, yet there are still many people out there who blog on the regular, always with something new and seemingly interesting to say about whatever they're interest...

For my reflective post this week, I would just say I CANNOT believe this semester is nearly over. From the standpoint of coursework, what I've learned most is that although I'm relatively disciplined with time management on a micro-level, I clearly need to put more thought into planning out the entire semester as a whole. One habit of mine that I need to work on is not looking ahead to other assignments until the one I'm working on is complete. This practice does help me stay focused on my current task and avoid feeling overwhelmed - assignments that require longitudinal planning tend to suffer. Nevertheless, progress is being made and not too much longer to go ya'll!

So, in preparing my produsage assignment, I've been thinking quite a bit about this week's topic - assessment and evaluation - and how to construct assignment directions to address what I'd like students to get out of the assignment. To that end, what I've found helpful is to put together a preliminary rubric that has concepts, a description of each task, and point calculations based on the importance of each descriptor. I've actually never designed a rubric myself (I've used plenty of them though!). I'm not sure if I'm going to attach it to the lesson plan because its quite simplistic at the moment, but it certainly has been helpful to me in thinking about how I want to approach the exercise, how I should explain it to students, and what elements are most important; it's also helped me to refine the learning objectives I'm interested in teaching. How about you, are there any 'early-stage' exercises that help you determine how to best app...

Reflecting on the article "Assessing the Effects of Interactive Blogging on Student Attitudes towards Peer Interaction, Learning Motivation, and Academic Achievements" by Yang and Chang, I was struck and honestly, both surprised and not surprised by the findings. According to the authors, use of blog commenting was associated with both positive attitudes towards peer interaction and subject matter achievement. I was unsurprised given my experience over the course of this semester with blogging. I do feel like it gives me the chance to articulate thoughts on weekly topics in a way that I may feel inhibited from doing in a strictly lecture-based environment. What was surprising were the results in light of the fact that the sample was comprised of a 5:1 male to female ratio in STEM courses. I feel this really goes against the traditional belief that males, particularly those who are technologically or mathematically inclined prefer less interaction or participation in learning ...

And for the final blog of this week, I'd like to ask how everyone is doing - how did the knowledge-sharing assignment go? As I stated earlier this week, I found parts challenging (mostly due to my own technological limitations) but the actual project itself was quite helpful in learning how to approach knowledge sharing - what works, what doesn't, what I could have done better, and where I need to improve in terms of reaching the largest audience. Personally, I felt the most fascinating part of the project was analyzing and tracking views. I used Twitter to conduct the project and I did not even realize Twitter afforded you that ability - I'm checking all the time now lol! 

Since there were no readings this week and in recognition of our pause before the final sprint to the finish line, I thought I'd share some news: I'm getting married next month! We're looking for a local honeymoon and have considered Disney World, but if anyone has any Florida-based recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

Back to blogging! For this week, I'd like to begin by reflecting/venting on the knowledge-sharing assignment. First, as I noted in my presentation, I learned quite a bit from the assignment, specifically about how Twitter analytics work and why they are useful. I also learned that while I come a long way technology-wise, there is still much to learn. For example, when I tried to add voice narration via Voicethread it produced separate audio files that were not in sync with the slides. Very frustrating! I consulted several sources to locate a solution but was ultimately unsuccessful. In the end, I decided that the best thing to do was to forgo Voicethread's audio features, and instead use PowerPoint's audio function. However, I had already recorded the audio files and didn't really want to repeat the narration, so I downloaded each audio file from Voicethread, renamed them so they would correspond to the appropriate slides, and used an online file converter to ensure com...

As pointed out in Kim et al.'s reading for this week "Effects of Group Reflection Variations in Project-Based Learning Integrated in a Web 2.0 Learning Space," participants for their study consisted of young adults who were very familiar with Web 2.0 tools, but conceded that conducting the same study with certain age groups - namely older adults and very young children - may have yielded very different results. This caused me to wonder - as instructors, to what extent should programs that rely extensively on Web 2.0 tools and technology be tailored to specific age groups? While children may not be expected to engage with an extensive amount of interactive web-based tools, the skills of older adults are likely to be much more varied.  With that in mind, how can we accommodate those with more experience without losing the interest of or overwhelming older adults that may not have much experience? It seems like it would be a delicate balancing act to account for the needs of...

So, when thinking about networked knowledge activities and the tools used to facilitate them, I can't help but think back to my Master's program (which was completely online) and the amount of team work we were required to do. Obviously, in a situation where each member may be located in different parts of the country, if not the world, we had to find a way to collaborate with each other taking into account each person's schedule, time zone, etc. I was fortunate to be in groups with individuals that had advanced knowledge of different communication systems and platforms that were extremely helpful to us as a group in overcoming what we initially felt would be onerous logistical difficulties. First, with regard to communication, we set up a Google Hangouts account which allowed each member to stay updated on pertinent communication if they had to miss our scheduled weekly meetings. A group email could have potentially served the same purpose, but by activating the notificati...

 Hi all,  So, I thought I'd complete my reflection post first this week since I've been giving a lot of thought to the upcoming assignment. First, while I do think I have the hang of it and can create an adequate deliverable, I'm a little disappointed in the response/engagement rate. To provide just a bit of information about my project: I am curating a list of books that have been part of the ALA's Top Ten Most Challenged Books List. I have 22 books total; I'm posting two per day and I've increased the tags from one to two. Before I get to the end of the list I intend on having a total of four tags (which will hopefully boost engagement). I wanted to use our class tag last (#eme6414) last because I felt like including it earlier might artificially boost the engagement rate and I was curious as to what the rate for each tweet would be on its own merits.  Turns out - not much. Which is fine, I started this account for the purposes of this class and therefore any ...

Reflection Post Tried two new sites this week (Goodreads and futureme, yay! I've never been a huge tech person, but I'm really starting to get over much of the anxiety that comes with attempting new tools. Some, I think, are more useful than others - I spent a good bit of time on Goodreads - and being a voracious reader, I'm sure I'll be using it well into the future. I was surprised about the group feature, although I suppose I shouldn't be given that it's technically a social media site (duh), I guess it just hadn't occurred to me that there were other people to connect with that enjoy the same types of literature as I do. To me, that's one of the most valuable things I'm gaining from this course - the new discoveries that happen when I move out of my comfort zone and explore new things. I'm certainly looking forward to more!

A point in the Dennen, et al. (2020) article that I found very interesting discussed the difficulty in determining the intent of acknowledgments on social media. As the authors state: "Distinguishing among users who click on these indicators to say “I saw this,” “I like this,” and “I want to save this so I can find it later,” can be difficult if there are not corresponding linguistic cues in a comment that explain the user’s intent" (Dennen, et al., 2020). I'll bet we've all come across this issue at some point in our social media journeys. Some social media sites have addressed this issue by adding a wider range of emoticons that allow a wider variety of expressions than simply 'like' or 'not like.'  Facebook, for instance, allows for more expression these days, but Twitter only allows one option for those that prefer non-textual acknowledgments. So, when someone tweets something understood to be negative or upsetting, the only non-verbal option would...

Hi all,  So, in light of our upcoming assignment and consistent with a few of our readings for this week, I've been giving a bit of thought to the idea of collection versus curation. If I understand it correctly, collection suggests gathering together a group of materials or objects that have some type of similar theme whereas curation would be isolating specific elements from the overall corpus of materials based on predetermined characteristics.  For example, when thinking about the upcoming knowledge sharing project, I was thinking about gathering together a collection of YA novels that have been challenged the most according to statistics provided by the ALA. This would be a collection. However, if I wanted to focus on novels that were challenged due to a specific rationale - that would be curation. There are a number of reasons given for why certain books are challenged - so for instance, if I wanted to feature books that were challenged for violent themes, profanity, uns...

Whew, so this has been a very hectic week! For my reflective post this week, I'd like to echo the sentiments expressed by Beth Kanupp on her blog. Sometimes life does get in the way. For example, I'm TA'ing in another course and my professor asked me to cover the class next week - which, since there was nothing prepared beyond a basic theme, took me days to complete the research and draft the PowerPoint, script and activity for the class - I'm exhausted.  Coincidentally, the topic I'm covering is IP, ethics, copyright, so I don't feel like I missed too much. But like Beth, I'm also ready to get back into it next week and I agree that the freebies we do get in this class are life-savers! I did have a chance to review a lot of my classmates' blogs as well and like always, they were super informative and illuminating!

In our 'tools' section for this week is a link to Creative Commons, which I just so happen to be working with for another course right now. This is an awesome resource, especially for educators! It does take some familiarity with the different types of licenses you can use and their commensurate attribution requirements, but once you understand that, you can be confident that you'll be able to find and use all kinds of cool images for assignments, presentations, performances, and any other eventuality where sprucing up your content with an image can transform a good project into a great one! If you need a creative commons image in a hurry, I've found this shortcut particularly useful: Google<Google Images<Settings<Advanced Image Search<Scroll Down to “Usage Rights”<Choose from drop-down menu Then, simply type in your query, choose an image, and click on the image to view its usage requirements. This has been enormously helpful to me in my program when cre...