• 24Jul
    Author: Katherine Pisana Categories: Mind Amplifying Tools Comments: 4

    I’ve been working on reinterpreting my PLE in order to get a deeper understanding of its nature. My initial approach was to group both formal and informal learning together. This time I’m going into a bit more detail.

    I’ve derived three sub-PLEs from my core map. The base categorisation is dependent upon context: the three sub-PLEs represent maps of my MA ODE PLE, my Professional PLE, and my Blog PLE. Strictly speaking, I suppose one could argue that the first represents a formal learning context, while the other two are much more self-imposed learning scenarios. Here they are below:

    My MA ODE PLE

    My MA ODE PLE (Click on the image to view full size)

    My Professional PLE (Click on the image to view full size)

    My Professional PLE (Click on the image to view full size)

    My Blog PLE (Click on the image to view full size)

    My Blog PLE (Click on the image to view full size)

    I’ve found that reinterpreting my initial PLE has allowed me to identify components that I had originally missed. For example, I had forgotten that podcasts were made available within my course materials. I think I forgot to consider this technology in the initial map because, as an overall concept, podcasts were interesting to me a couple of years ago but I quickly became overwhelmed by the amount of information available and eventually unsubscribed from the feeds. I think that the fact that I don’t like listening to the radio also has something to do with my disengagement from the podcasting community. And finally, and probably the most important reason why I don’t listen to podcasts, is because I’m not an auditory learner. I process information better when I can read it. I think that’s probably the most important lesson that podcasting technology has taught me. Some other components I forgot to include the first time around are MS Word and Google Scholar, along with a number of creative tools that I’ve added to my Blog PLE.

    This PLE drill-down also gave me a clearer picture of my dominant learning tools, namely, Firefox, which in turn means the Internet which then leads me to my laptop. The nodes that are connected by a green line are the only ones that can be accessed without the Internet.

    I’m not sure whether the real value of this activity is going to be in comparing my own reinterpretations, or eventually comparing my analyses with others’ reinterpretations…


  • 15Jun
    Author: Katherine Pisana Categories: Education, Technology Comments: 2

    Online learning and I have had an interesting relationship over the years...

    We’ve been monogamous…
    I have studied online as a full-time student.

    We’ve seen other people…
    I have completed additional specialist training (also done online) in online language instruction while still wearing the hat of the part-time online graduate student.

    We’ve taken a break…
    As with many professional development endeavors, they eventually lead to promotions. Mine did, but along with more money and a longer title, it also came with more work!! As a result, I had to take a break from my studies and trust that when the time was right, we would pick up where we left off.

    We’ve had a long distance relationship…
    During the time that I’ve been working on completing my MA in Online and Distance Education (a three-year part-time degree) I’ve lived in 7 different cities spanning 4 countries. If it wasn’t for the technology, I would have had to choose between my studies, which are both personally and professionally very important to me, and the numerous other aspects of my life.


    I hope that a few things have emerged from this little blurb. One is that learning is a lifelong process, and sometimes it can feel like a love/hate relationship. But as with all relationships, they’re only as good as you make them! The second thing that I hope translates is that online learning (whether it be fully online or mixed in with a bit of face-to-face instruction) is a flexible approach to developing your knowledge and skills. And the third aspect of online learning, and the one that is probably the most fundamentally important to me, is its ability to seamlessly connect you to a border-less world.


  • 10Apr
    Author: Katherine Pisana Categories: Educational Technology, Mind Amplifying Tools Comments: 3

    Whether you want your local students to have a way of meeting outside of the classroom, your distance learning students to remotely collaborate in their study groups or for you to conduct seminars online or have one-on-one conferences with your research students, the technology available to us today affords us with many free and easy solutions that connect people, and that allow for the sharing of videos and images as well as text and sound. The types of technologies focused on here are screen capture, screencast and screen share technologies along side video conferencing applications. These types of tools are more and more often being bundled together – so teach yourself what each technology does so that you can decide which ones are important to you.

    In this post, I’m not going to go into great detail about the ways in which you could apply these technologies within an educational context. Instead, my intention is to build an evolving list of resources to which you can refer each time you find yourself looking for a new way to connect with your students (or to have them connect with each other).

    Because the technologies below can seem similar to one another at first glance, it’s important to have as clear an idea as possible about what you want the technology to do for you. If you’re not sure exactly what it is you’re looking for, browse through the list and start to develop a familiarity with the capabilities of the tools. To help you get comfortable with their features, I’ve included links to demo videos and/or tutorials where they are available.

    Just to clarify for those of you who might be unclear about the difference between Screen Capture vs. Screencast vs. Screen Share tools:

    Creating a screen capture (a.k.a. ‘screenshot‘ or less eloquently as a ‘screen dump‘) is basically the process of taking a static (still) photo of your screen (great content to add to help documents and other instructional material that mix text with images). A screencast is a way for you to capture moving images (videos) of what you see on your screen and share them with other people so that they can see what you see (useful for demonstrating tools or for giving overviews of resources and course websites to distance learning/remotely located students). Participating in a screen share means to either have access to someone else’s computer or to give access to the other members of your group (lots of security issues arise in this scenario, but some people find the function useful).



    Screen Capture / Screencast



     

    freescreencast

    Demo Video

     


     

    goview

    Demo Video

     


     

    jing

    Demo Video

     


     

    mykogo

    Demo Video

     


     

    screencastle

     


     

    screenshotcaptor

    Demo Video

     


     

    screentoaster

    Demo Video

     


     

    skitch

    Demo Video
    Read more about Skitch here

     


     

    snipsDemo Videos & Tutorials
    Read more about sni.ps here

     


     

    utipu

    Sample Uses Videos

     



    Video Conference / Screen Share



     

    dimdim

    Demo Video

     


     

    elluminate

    Demo Videos

     


     

    mousecloud

    Demo Video

     


     

    oovoo

    Overview

     


     

    palbee

    FAQs

     


     

    powwownow

    Demo Video

     


     

    skype

     


     

    thinkature

    About

     


     

    twiddla

    FAQs

     


     

    wiziqDemo Video

     


     

    yugma

    Also see their education program

     


     

    yuuguu

    Tutorials

     


     

    zohomeeting

    Demo Video

     


     

    And remember, if you’re a MAC user, you can easily take quick pictures (screen shots) of any part of your screen by simply pressing COMMAND SHIFT 4 and highlighting the area you want to capture. A .png file of your selection appears neatly on your desktop.

    Have I missed a tool you want to share with others? Add a comment and let me know!