Although this module was for less credits than the other two modules, I really felt that it was necessary to put a lot of effort into the assignments, especially the virtual group collaboration assignment.
Although it was a lot of work, this was definitely the most creative module. It was nice to have the freedom to choose what to talk about, what to research and what to speak about on the Podcast (noise problems have been sorted :-D). It was the first time I had ever been given a reflective exercise in my entire education. I feel if March hadn’t been so completely hectic, I would have spent a lot more time reflecting on all the different topics that we learned about in El6052 which were very interesting and still spinning around in my head.
I am very glad to have had the opportunity to play about with so many different technologies. Although the virtual team project was stressful, I really enjoyed playing around with my new favourite toy, Twitter and trying out other technologies I read about in my class mates’ blogs, even if I wouldn’t use them again personally.
This semester, the modules have definitely blurred into each other more so than the previous semester. Darina always mentioned how we should try and relate one element of the course to the others. Everything we learn is relevant to everything else and the more we see the bigger picture, the better off we are in the long run.
My interview with a journalist is scheduled for Friday so sadly I won’t have the opportunity to blog about that or about playing around with Flash and Captivate as I complete the assignments. On the bright side, it is one less thing to do.
This is definitely a worthwhile exercise.
This Podcasting assignment has been a welcome break from the other assignments. I decided to talk about the works of one of my favourite authors and I really enjoyed preparing the scripts for my talk.
I have been playing around with Audacity since yesterday. I was really encouraged by the blog posts of my classmates who wrote enthusiastically about how easy it is to use. I have recorded the first draft (?) of my podcast but there is this tinny whistling noise running through it. I am currently playing around with effects to see is there anything that can be done about it. I will probably rerecord it later into the evening. The more I read the script, the more comfortable I am with the words. I mispronounced so many words out of nervousness on my first attempt. I don’t know what is wrong with me! I like being able to cut out any stumbling also. The zoom feature on Audacity makes it seem quite seamless. It is one of the most useful tools I have come across on the course and I can’t believe that it is free.
I have tried to put as clear a structure to my podcast as possible so that the listener knows exactly what is coming. I am rewriting bits and pieces that are not clear also. Hopefully Podcast version 2 will be a greater success!
Last night I began preparing for my Podcasting assignment and finally decided what topic I would talk about. I got confirmation off Majella that it was OK to talk about this topic and have spent the day researching my topic.
I have attempted to type up my script but I have a strong impulse to write it on paper first. I am trying to break this pattern as a step toward paperless existence but it is hard. I have always written my first drafts by hand. My mind seems to work better when I take pen to paper and I can put order to my thoughts. During my undergraduate years, I once damaged my wrist and had to type my summer exams. Although I did better than expected, that month was constant panic as I felt I wasn’t functioning properly by typing. Either it uses a whole other part of the brain or I have some emotional connection to writing by hand which is uncomfortable to break.
I also find reading on a computer screen more draining than reading a book/print outs. I’ve read more on a computer screen as part of this course than I have done in my entire life. I am still unsure if I am getting used to it. I notice more and more people around me are reading lab sheets from the screen rather than printing out hard copies. One of my class mates at least is aiming to go completely paperless..
My stepfather works for an office supplies company and assures me paperless offices will become a reality in the near future. I can see how wasteful and costly paper is and understand the benefits of going paperless. Still my mind resists.. I don’t want to be left behind!
On Friday we finally completed our second and final group project. It ate up a lot of time over the previous two weeks. I find that group projects are generally more time consuming than working alone. They are also an education in themselves.
During our first virtual group project, I sometimes felt a bit overwhelmed while communicating via the chat rooms. I just read streams and streams of text flowing before me and was slow to react. On this project I much preferred having the opportunity for face to face meetings. I also liked being able to pick up the phone and talk if necessary.
I found that using website templates was very effective. For my own website project, as well as previous projects in the past, I hadn’t taken the time to make one. Maureen designed the template and I thought hard before altering it in any way. Dreamweaver was very swift to update the corresponding pages each time a change was made, there were no problems here.
I had some background with using Dreamweaver, so I was put in charge of adding the content and images to the site as well as the coding. I found that although I had some previous experience, there was still a lot I didn’t know and bugs would crop up when I least expected it. The hardest part of designing the website was making it compatible with Internet Explorer. It would be so much easier if we didn’t have to design with Internet Explorer in mind!
I found I was moving more and more into code view rather than design view to figure out what was going on. Although Dreamweaver is a powerful tool, sometimes when I previewed my pages in the web browser they were different from what I had in mind. Through playing around in code view, I learned a lot about both CSS and html, especially div tags. During the last stages of the project, I learned a lot about coding from my team mate Maureen.
Regarding the project in general, I think it is very important from the outset to identify precisely what each task entails. We all come from different backgrounds and what is a given for one person may be completely new to someone else. A good web site is dependent on a number of factors. When these factors are divided amongst five people in a group, you are dependent on a unified vision to make the web site a success. Breaking down and defining each task would prevent future misunderstandings and time wasting.
When designing a website, it is also very important to consider the audience. For the Ennis Hub Project, there are several different stake holders coming from different backgrounds. As well as the groups involved, members of the public are potential users of our website so clarity was of paramount importance.
Project management is also a recurring theme in my group projects. In the initial project, we didn’t assign a project manager. Although we did very well together, elements of the project could have been optimised by better project management. In the second group project, one of my team mates had the project management role amongst her other roles. This was definitely an improvement. If we had a third group project, I would be in favour of Project Manager being a role in itself on my team.
As well as better honing my web design skills, I learned a lot about group dynamics. I have observed how differently people react to the same situations and seen where I fit in. I realise how dependent others are on my contributions: whatever was going on in my life, I had to have my part of the project prepared before each team meeting. This was my first time working on a group project of such interdependency. Naturally, I am inclined to work alone. I am very comfortable in my own company. I hope I have developed some valuable insights which I can take with me from these group experiences.
I must admit I really enjoyed this semester more than the first semester. Although I entered this programme with more of an interest in technical writing, E-learning is proving to be far more interesting. Learning about Web 2.0 technologies which are technologies that facilitate communication, I also started to get to know my fellow class mates better than before. The group projects, discussion boards and blogs added a whole new flavour to the experience and for that I am very grateful.
The topics we have covered in the the EL6052 E-Learning Theories and Practices module are fascinating. The first essay on convergences and divergences in conventional and distance education allowed me to spend a lot of time reading about topics which elaborated on observations I had made during my time in UCC. I studied in UCC from 2003 to 2007 during which the university went through major restructuring. From what I have observed, there was a shift from old school academia to the modern, business model of the university.
I was a student in the department of Classics in which there were 7 permanent members of staff when I began studying, now there are only three. I took a joint honours degree and my Greek class had only three students. Naturally neither Greek nor Latin are available as degree subjects anymore as they are not economically feasible. There is a constant pressure on academics to be published and their entire worth is measured on this. Everything is measured in terms that can be categorised, easily referenced and put in an excel sheet for audit.
Personally, I think that there is definitely value in having a classical education. Through learning about the origins of western society and democracy, I find I can put modern events in greater perspective. It gave me new eyes with which to understand everything around me. My older lecturers, who had virtually no publications by modern standards, were inspirational educators and characters. Traditionally, individuals pursued a course of education to train their minds to better understand the nature of reality. Modern education is more preoccupied with skills acquisition and proving itself as a good monetary investment. In trying to fill out job applications and create an appealing CV, I understand the importance of transferable skills but hope some happy medium between intellectual development and skills acquisition can be found.
One of the essays in Tait and Mills calls on the readers to compare old world academics with up-and-coming academics. In my opinion, the older ones seem to have had a better time!
In one of Majella’s tutorials for this module we looked at animoto and xtranormal. I would like to end this post with an Xtranormal animation which touches on some of what I am trying to express in this post!
Now that I have recovered from the group website assignment I am looking at the guidelines for the Flash assignment. It is quite daunting.. Of all the new technologies we have touched on in this course, Flash looks to be the most complex. Mr Hutchinson who is a veteran of this course mentioned during the week that Flash was not one of his favourites either. Each week, I think I was so preoccupied with all the work I had to do that by the time the Thursday lab came along, my head was spinning. I haven’t looked at Flash much outside of the labs but will download the trial version now and get stuck into planning out what I need to learn.
I had some previous knowledge of Photoshop and Dreamweaver and am very glad of this. I am not sure if using labsheets is an effective way to learn a new technology; I think you really need to have something in mind to create with your new tool. Maureen mentioned in her blog that she really felt she developed a deeper knowledge of Dreamweaver through actually doing the assignments. I hope I will have the same experience learning Flash.
Like everything else, I think it is important to begin learning new technology with an open mind. Personally, I really enjoy it. The more Adobe tools I learn, the more intuitive I find their interfaces. Framemaker was the first new programme that I learned on this course with which I had absolutely no previous experience. Although I found it a bit finicky at first, I really saw its value and superiority to Microsoft Word as a word processing tool.
I got to the end of the few Flash labsheets I have done so far and it was satisfying to watch all my little shapes bounce around the screen. Now the real project begins. I hope I will have something positive to report.
This blog assignment was given to us to chart our experiences and reflections on learning about new technologies this semester. Technology has never been something I have feared: I really enjoy playing around with new computer programmes. There is always a learning curve and thankfully newer technologies are designed to be more forgiving to human errors.
While I am OK with technology, what I do fear is writing. I am very interested in writing, I even enjoy it, but academic writing is something with which I do not have a lot of experience. My Bachelor degree is in Greek language, both ancient and modern. The majority of my degree was translating texts and explaining grammatical constructions. There was usually a small essay component which wasn’t heavily weighted. The essays were largely argumentative in style: the question would propose a statement and we were given the option of agreeing or disagreeing. We would have to read the primary sources and the secondary sources and construct an argument for or against the statement.
There was something very satisfying about argumentative essays: our mission was clear. However, the essays on this course have all began with the verb “Describe”. Despite this, we all are aware and Darina even pointed out that a simple descriptive essay is not enough. This left me perplexed and my initial confusion is probably evident in my writing during the first semester.
On this course, my essay writing routine involved reading and reading, then reading even more and feeling overwhelmed, wondering when I would begin to write. Writing eventually came close to the deadline leaving little time for editing. All in all, the process took an awful lot of time and effort without reward. I was very dissatisfied by this. If nothing else, I am determined to improve my writing skills.
I was also very shy and embarrassed about my writing. I didn’t want to show my work to anyone but I knew that this was the only way to become aware of my flaws. I had to swallow my pride… When I received the feedback from my essays towards the end of the first semester, I made an appointment with a girl from the Writing Centre and went through my essays with her. This was a lot less painful than I had imagined. I left the meeting filled with enthusiasm.
The virtual group project was another important challenge. We were very lucky to have two very brilliant Americans on our team, Michelle and Patricia. Patricia took on the role of unifying the voice in the report and did a brilliant job. All four of my team mates are very severe and brilliant editors. I really felt the benefit of watching my writing being edited on a sentence by sentence basis. It was also a great benefit to read other people’s writing, to understand how different our styles all are, and to see what is needed to unify our voices.
My feedback from both my lecturers make reference to the length of my sentences. While doing the final proof read on our group project, Michael mentioned that he suffers from the same problem and blamed it on his Latin education. I also am coming to realise that my knowledge of Greek language, for all its beauty and richness, may have influenced my own sentence length!
While looking for resources with which to improve my writing, I came across the Stasis Theory. I used this theory in the preparation for my latest essay. I am delighted also that it came from the Greeks. The theory can be found on the Purdue Online Writing Lab it begins as follows:
The stasis theory asks writers to investigate and try to determine:
- the facts (conjecture)
- the meaning or nature of the issue (definition)
- the seriousness of the issue (quality)
- the plan of action (policy).
The theory in full and discussion of the theory can be found here:
The first website assignment was a lot more difficult than I had first imagined. I had some previous experience with Dreamweaver and had no problem going through the lab sheets in the EL6072 labs but when it came to actually creating the website, I realised there were a lot of things I had forgotten.
I spent a lot of time in Photoshop making a nice banner for the website. I chose Censorship and the Internet, which I rephrased as Internet Censorship so it would look better on my website (I hope this was OK.. ). I used images I found on the website to design my banner.
I chose to use a liquid layout for my website as I think that these websites can be quite effective and accommodating for users with smaller screens. I had initial difficulty remembering how to do this most effectively when it came to image sizes etc.. I soon found by playing around that the most effective method was to assign a percentage to the image sizes so they would shrink and grow with the website itself.
I tried to be as consistent as possible with my image selections. My images were first edited in Photoshop to be the correct size.
I also found the Spry menu quite difficult. On changing it to a colour that better suited the colour scheme of my website, in Internet Explorer I could see these horrible white lines. I had to go through every CSS style until I came across the problem in the final style in the Spry menu styles. It was specifically for IE so that is why it appeared there. It was a solid white border which I erased immediately. I created a div tag into which I inserted the spry menu also. I wasn’t sure would this work, it was all trial and error -but it seemed to work out just fine!
In retrospect, I realise there were a lot of things I could have done better. I am a bit upset with myself over this. I will have to take these lessons with me into my group web assignment I suppose..
While I was preparing the content for my website, I learned all about Internet censorship. To illustrate the different types of Internet censorship, I looked at variations of censorship on a country by country basis.
I learned a lot about the latest crisis in North Africa and how during the days of rioting leading up to President Mubarak’s resignation, the Egyptian government basically pulled the plug on the Internet in Egypt. It was physically down for days.
I have been very interested in Iranian history and culture for the past two or thee years. My interest began after seeing the movie Persepolis in the cinema. I have read a few books and watched as many documentaries as I can find. Tg4’s Fiorscéal made a very good documentary about Iran after the controversial presidential election in 2009.
Iranian Internet is the second most censored in the world. If you own a web domain in Iran, you have to register it with the Ministry of Culture who will then monitor the content. Internet service providers all require a license from the Ministry of Telecommunications. The Internet connection which the ISPs provide is then routed back through the Ministry of Telecommunications and monitored. Internet is slower and more expensive than in surrounding countries. Internet cafes are legally required to have slower Internet speeds than private connections.
Reading through the accounts of civil rights campaigners receiving prison sentences for emailing or blogging made me feel very uneasy and guilty for the luxuries we have here. North Africa is currently in a state of civil unrest; people are out on the streets campaigning for a fairer and more democratic society. I hope when things settle down, it is for the benefit of the people. The Iranian people thought all they had to do was get rid of the Shah but their problems became even worse. Today I saw these images online of Iran before the fall of the Shah:
http://flavorwire.com/165011/photo-gallery-iran-before-the-chador
Although this liberalism was only found in the capital, Tehran, Iranian society has become a lot more suppressed than ever before.
I really hope that in the very near future both North African nations and Iran will enjoy the democratic freedoms we take for granted here.
With the individual proposal, the group proposal, the individual website and my first essay of the term, I have started to fall slightly behind with this blog. I must endeavour to write more often !
Melanie's Blog 