Zoho Notebook

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Web Office Applications

OK. So, my learning curve really went through the roof with this week's assignment, but I had a great time working with the Zoho Applications. That's probably because there is so much potential for collaboration that it's pretty exciting.

To begin with, I chose Zoho after reading some of the information about it. Then, I decided to just jump in and see what I could do. Zoho Writer was appealing to me, because, as you all know, I'm always looking for new ways to collaborate with the team of trainers that I work with. However, it was Zoho Notebook that I decided to check out, because I liked the idea of an application that might allow me to jot down ideas in much the same way that I would do in a notebook. Well, I wasn't disappointed, but Zoho is a notebook on steroids.

First of all, I started playing with the notebook page and putting text here and there. Then, I realized that I can tack just about anything that I want to the page. Imagine going into a classroom that has whiteboards on all of the walls and being able to tack up a powerpoint presentation or a word document or an rss feed or a website or a video. Then, imagine being able to just move those all around - within one whiteboard or from one to another. Then, add some written comments or audio comments and/or video comments. There you go, Zoho Notebook.

The Notebook that I created is titled Duty of Fair Representation. I had some of those files available at home; so, I was able to upload them. The fun part (and the frustrating part) was adding the audio. Notebook will allow you to record comments and post them onto the page. It's just like a podcast. I did a few trial runs using the application itself, but when I went to do a recording that I wanted to use, I actually had to use my webcam microphone. (Another new adventure for me.) But, once I saved my recording, I was able to upload it onto my notebook page. So, take a look and see what you think.

What can an educator do with this? Well, the collaboration possibilities are amazing. It's actually a virtual whiteboard that can be used in real time. If two or more people are logged on, they can make changes that will show up on the other user's screen/notebook. In addition, users can chat about what is on the screen as they make changes.

What can students do with this? I think that the same type of collaboration can be made available. I really liked being able to include rss feeds and web pages. If students were working on a research project - for example on issues dealing with the Duty of Fair Representation, they can post websites that are relevant for one another. In addition, students can comment on the whole book, just one page or even just one object on a page. Then I realized that you can include a Zoho Write page. So, when working on a document that more than one user can make comments on, that document can be incorporated. Then, not last and not least, other applications can be included, such as calendars and spreadsheets.

Well, as you can see, I thought that it was pretty fun and versatile. I'm certain that I will be using it in the near future.

Practice, Quiz, Survey

http://www.quia.com/jg/1685149.html

http://www.quia.com/quiz/1881431.html

http://www.quia.com/sv/330023.html

OK. I'll admit that my goal was to have savvy Respondus activities as another notch on my belt of online learning, but that software is difficult for me to navigate. I played with it a couple of weeks ago, because I wanted to be able to create online flashcards, but I couldn't get things to run smoothly. Maybe it's because I'm not posting them to Blackboard. Anyway...

I decided to move on to Quia. I've used Quia before, but it has changed a little since I last used it. So the links that you see here provide for vocabulary practice, self assessment and a survey related to the impact of Spanish in the workplace. What's great about this site is that you can set up your class using your roster, and students can access your class page and all of the activities, assessments and surveys that you create. In addition, you can make class announcements, post reminders and communicate via e-mail.

The activities alone are great, because they offer students with diverse learning styles an opportunity to work with the information in lots of different ways. The nice thing about the Quia site is that it will continuously change the order of the questions and the order of the answer options. Therefore, it is different everytime the student practices the online activities.

I think that one of the major goals for this week was to design a survey. From past classes, I have learned the importance of using surveys as a pre-assessment tool. These surveys can be used to learn about the students that are taking a distance learning class. The focus can be on content and/or skill level. In addition, the surveys can also be used to evaluate a course and/or to do post assessments. However, as I was working on this project I was more interested in how surveys could be used as a tool that promotes communication and learning among the students. For example, students can develop their own surveys based on the content of the class, and they can use it to survey their peers or others outside of the classroom. In addition, I think that it is valuable to have students interpret the survey findings and use it for course discussions. It's not enough to just do a survey. Something has to be done with the information. That's always been one of the most frustrating things about surveys, you take the time to fill it out, but your efforts don't ever seem to get past the stamp that is used to mail it back. Maybe that's one of the positives of online surveys. They can provide instant feedback.

Just as a final note - Quia is very user friendly. It is so easy to set up the activities that you want to make available. Also, if you want ideas, there are lots of examples to help you out. All I did was set up my 30-day trial account (I don't know how many of these I have now.). Then, I was able to quickly set up the practice activities. The great thing is that you get four for the price of one. Once you set up a question bank, you can have flashcards, crossword puzzles, memory and a word search. Buena suerte. Good luck!

Wow! The past few days I have been traveling, and it seems like everything is so difficult. I have had airport delays in the airport and in the air. I have been lost driving up the East Coast and road construction projects have been time consuming. So, after dealing with all of this for the past few days, I got to my hotel this evening wiped, and I actually thought that this was going to one of those times when I just couldn't get the assignment done. However, Animoto is everything that my travel this week wasn't...Easy!!

I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do for my video project this week, and it was nagging at me as I was going through all of these fun travel adventures. I don't have a video camera, but my photo camera will take short videos. So, I played with that for a while, but besides videos of the dog smashing his nose into the lens. there wasn't much inspiration. Then, I remembered these great pictures and testimonials that I had saved from another project. Now, I just needed to figure out how to get them into a video. I had worked with some different software in the past trying to put together videos, but I'd never been very successful. That is why I am so impressed with Animoto; it was so easy. Because I was using a free subscription, I was only able to put together a short 30 second video. However, I am seriously thinking that an upgraded subscription would be well worth my money. Having said that, the video that you see is just a fragment of what I had originally put together. In order for all of my pictures and testimonials to be seen, I will have to put into into a longer, full-length video.

After finishing up my video, and I say that with a little bit of reservation, because all I did was upload some pictures and type in some testimonials. Animoto did the rest. So, after finishing my video, I was thinking about different activities that can be done with this type of media:

Videos can be viewed by students, and they can can critique them based on their learning objectives. For example, a student can view an organizer making a house call. Afterwards, he/she can share ideas via a discussion board about what was done well and what could be done differently.

Also, videos can be used to teach a step by step process that can be duplicated by the student. If the video is made available on a place like YouTube, the tutorial could be made to be downloaded and accessed from anywhere at anytime.

The videos could be used for learning as well as assessment.

Finally, the videos can be created by the students. One thing that I thought about was using them in an online class in order to get to know the other students - Icebreaker activities for example - these quick and easy videos can be used to present oneself to the entire class.

I think that the reason I got so excited thinking about all of the different ways that this could be used, because it was so user friendly for a TechStudent. I think that I'll be using Animoto for lots of projects at work and at home.

The World of Podcasting

One of the things that I had been looking forward to with this class was creating a podcast. There were a couple of reasons for this. One. I subscribe to a few different podcasts, and I really like listening to them. Two, whenever I talk to people at work about different training programs, in the back of my mind, I'm always thinking that we could incorporate some type of podcast to supplement the training.

First, before I begin telling about my experience, I really have to thank those of you that posted earlier in the week. Your details helped me when I was struggling with mine. So, like many of you, I started out with audacity. Sounds like there are lots of other programs out there that do the same thing, but I loved how easy it was to use. As soon as I downloaded it, I watched a YouTube video on how to record and mix in music. So far so good. Then, that was pretty much the end of the easy part. I tried downloading LAME so I could convert my recording to an MP3. I struggled with this until I was about to give up; then, somehow, I got it to work. After that, my fellow classmates came to my rescue. I tried using OurMedia.org, as mentioned in the text, for storing my MP3 file. I just couldn't ever register to get an account. I finally gave up and used the 4Shared.com site. After finally making that happen, I used podcastmachine to post my first ever, real live podcast. Check it out here on my blog. It's labeled under Spanish for Organizers. It's definitely rough, but it was fun recording it. One of the podcasts that I listen to, How Stuff Works, has two people talking to each other, and I really like that. So, it was fun to have a colleague help me out with mine.

This podcast is an example of what I think could be done for any class that is being taught either online or face to face. The recording can be used to supplement the lesson that has been taught or will be taught. In this case, if there was a "Spanish for Organizers" class, the instructor could record vocabulary and dialogues that the students could use to practice anywhere and anytime. (I was listening to my podcasts while weeding the garden last weekend. That's the first time that chore didn't seem so long and tedious. It was great.) Anyway, back to the idea. The students could listen to the Spanish over and over again and practice with it as often as they wanted or needed to. I think that this use of a podcast would be so convenient for organizers that are always on the road. Now, the next step could be to add some video that would take the lesson to another level.

Hope you enjoy the podcast. Hasta luego.

A Wiki And Then Some

My adventure this week with web conferencing was an attempt at using the technology to work on a "project" with a team. I chose Central Desktop, because it seemed to provide a good way for team members to work together on the document/project planning piece in addition to providing a way to web conference.

Our "project" was "A Rockin' Fourth of July Celebration". The premise was for our team to look at the best places to celebrate, the best food to eat, and the best kind of entertainment to have a Rockin' 4th of July. With that as our goal, I got ready for the conference by setting up our group wiki on Central Desktop. We had a page that stated our goals, an RSS Feed that had a few 4th of July recipes (figured that was better than my - Throw The Burger And Dogs On The Grill - recipe). We also had a place for our documents and PowerPoints for easy collaboration. Not to mention, the tasks that needed to be accomplished. Kim rocked at the PowerPoint, and Keith was supposed to pick up the food - which I'm sure he did, but I didn't get to taste any of it. That goes on my list of negatives for distance learning - "Difficult to share food". Anyway, what this is getting at is that Central Desktop seemed to be like the wiki we've been using and then some. The great thing about setting up the web conference was that I had a chance to become even more familiar with wikis. I'm not sure that Central Desktop is the best web conferencing software, but I loved being able to web conference using our team wiki, and I think that something easy like GoTo Meeting could be used to work with a wiki that has been established independently.

With the free trial package, I was able to give four people access to the "team wiki", and those four people joined in on the conference. Thanks, to all of you for taking part. That certainly was a learning experience for me. Note to self - Make sure everyone is dialed in before moving forward with the conference. Sorry about that, team. In the end, I felt like it was a great experience, I learned more about the power of a wiki as a collaboration tool, and I can see how that, combined with a form of web conferencing, could be very useful. Going into this assignment, I was really focused on how this could be used to work with other trainers that are out in the field. Then, the more I worked with it, I think that the "wiki and then some", the 'some' being the web conferencing, could be very useful for distance learning students as they do collaborative projects. Each student could work on their own piece, and they could do all of the meeting and collaborating through the wiki. I think that it would be a great way for students to work on a semester long project that incorporates the learning throughout the semester. Another fun project would be for them to use it as a group portfolio that could be highlighted at the end of the course. I think that I had these ideas before, but it seems more feasible now that I've become more familiar with a wiki and then some.

P.S. Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. I'm still curious about what might have happened had we put out our "4th of July Survey". Just wondering if Beer Pong would have made the cut on the entertainment list. After all, if we can blog like college students, maybe we can still...

Got Feeds?

O.K. I'll admit that I've always been curious as to what all of these little icons were for, but I'd never taken the time to try and figure it out before this week. Now that I know that RSS is the new "killer app for educators", I'm glad that Rob had us venture into the land of "Real Simple Syndication". This post is a little bit about that adventure.





After reading about RSS on our class wiki, I thought that I'd jump right in and try all of the examples - bloglines, technorati, google reader. I figured that if I try them all, I'll be able to decide which one I like best. So, after trying to figure out how to use one aggregator too many, I figured out what I liked best about Google Reader. Mostly it was that Will Richardson's chapter walked me through the set up. So, now I am officially receiving RSS Feeds for way too many blogs and news providers than I will ever possibly be able to read. Needless to say, after this week's experience with RSS Feeds, I can relate to Richardson's description, "...the results can be a bit overwhelming. Don't be surprised if at first you think RSS is adding to your information overload instead of easing it." Hopefully, as he said, with a little time and experience, I'll get it.



Actually, the RSS Adventure has been pretty cool. I've tried to do a few different things with it. I've subscribed to all of the blogs in the class, set up my folders and even starred a few posts that I will go back to sometime - like some rainy Saturday (hopefully not anytime soon). Then, I ventured into the "folksonomy" phenomenon, but not too far, because although they say it will be a valuable tool down the road, right now it falls under the "TMI" category - way too much information. Lol.



So, now the question is, what will I be doing with my feeds? This past week my mind has been buzzing with things that I would be trying with this technology if I were still teaching high school. I think that it would be a lot of fun. But, I'm not; so, I'm going to try and figure out how I can use this tool in what I'm doing right now. First of all, I've spent some time trying to include a RSS Feed on my blog. (No success yet, but I'll keep at it.) If I had a blog that was set up for collaborating with the other six trainers in the country, I could post the feeds that were relevant to the projects that we were working on. For example, we have been working on developing a course on negotiating a first contract. With news.google.com, I was able to add a feed to me reader that updates articles on collective bargaining. This could be a great resource for sharing information.



Finally, in addition to all of the things that an educator can actually do with RSS Feeds, I found Richardson's comments regarding the new reading skills that students and educators alike will more than likely develop to be very interesting. In the past, we have tried to teach students how to highlight textbooks and summarize their class reading. This application really seems like it will be a practical and necessary way for students (and educators) to acquire those skills.

Well, I'm back to my original question: "Got Feeds?"