Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service that allows users to store files in the cloud, synchronize files across devices, and share files. Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are part of the free, web-based office suite of tools offered within the Google Drive service. Although I have been using the tools extensively for personal use, a recent group project allowed me to deepen my understanding of the system and its features. A powerful feature for group projects is the ability to collaborate online within any of the Google apps. Each group member is able to create and update documents simultaneously, making the applications ideal platforms for groups to plan, review, and edit content collectively. In addition, anyone can create a document and share it with whomever they choose, providing permissions to view or edit as required. The sharing feature was initially a pain point with the group. To share Google documents, the creator can share with specific individuals or anyone who has the link. Where individual sharing becomes difficult is adding each user separately. The process of finding the correct contact information and adding it for each document, each time can become cumbersome. Enter the magic of Google Drive. As the overarching service for the applications, shared folders can be created one time using each group member’s contact information. Any document, of any file type, created within the folder is shared with all folder members. This is not limited to Google applications. Uploading any file such images, audio, video, pdf, and even those built within Microsoft applications allows each member access to those files. A point worth mentioning about Microsoft files. Google Drive allows viewing of these documents within the related Google app. For example, Microsoft Word docs can be viewed within Google Docs. However, the some of the features of MS Word and Google Docs are different. For editing purposed, it is better to open the document within its original application, which takes away some of the freedom Google drive provides to open files anywhere on any device as not all devices are equipped with Microsoft applications. As a final note, file management is an important consideration when sharing documents. Until the end, the group didn’t realize that there is a version control feature within Google Drive. Files were managed using file names and sub folders for older versions. Unless it is well understood and agreed upon what the file management system is, finding documents can become confusing. In the next iteration of my experience using Google Drive, I’ll be sure to investigate the version control feature.
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Canva is a graphic-design tool website that provides tools for both web and print media design and graphics. With an easy to use drag-and-drop interface and access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts, it can be used by non-designers as well as professionals. For this non-designer, the tool is simple to use and offers templates, graphics, fonts, and settings to manage them easily. There are a number of features available with a free account with more advanced features available with a paid plan. As a first time project in Canva, I selected an inspiring template as a starting point and personalized my design with uploaded images and adjustments to the colour scheme. Although the template provides it’s own colour palette, it can be customized using hex colour codes. Templates also provide font suggestions that can be interchanged with others available within the tool (uploading personal fonts is available with a paid plan). That being said, without using a template to begin, a variety of frames are available to begin with a blank document. There was a little negotiating with the tool to figure out how to make it do what I wanted at times. Canva doesn’t quite suit the purpose of creating the academic poster I required, but I was able to produce a reasonable facsimile (see post EdTech Enhancement Proposal). It took some time to learn how to use the images within the framed areas. Capturing and moving multiple elements around was a breeze if they are directly on the background, but if they are within other elements, it was a one-at-time process. However, the snap-to feature and guidelines were helpful in laying out elements. If all else fails, there tutorials and design tips are available within the tool. Sharing the finished product is easy. It can be shared within Canva and, once it is made “public”, there are options such as sharing with specific people, sharing with a link, sharing to Twitter or Facebook, code to embed within a site, or download options such as as a pdf or image. With more to explore, I’m sure there are other features I have to look forward to. Having used mainly Microsoft Publisher for this type of work, I may be a Canva convert for its sheer simplicity alone. PowToon is a web-based animation software program that allows users to create animated presentations by manipulating pre-created objects, imported images, provided music and user created voice-overs. Although an account is required to use the program, there are free and paid options, each of which offers different levels of use and resource availability. Once a PowToon creation is complete, it can be shared within PowToon itself or published to YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia or Slideshare (Slideshare is only available with a paid account). I chose PowToon because I was looking for an interesting way to create and deliver a presentation in a purely asynchronous environment. The presentation was to be posted to a discussion board within the LMS. Having already completed number of written submissions for the course, I was also looking for a unique way to synthesize and compile information. PowerPoint was an obvious option, but I wanted something the viewers could experience that was more unique; shake things up a little. Did I mention I had never used PowToon before? I found the tool fairly intuitive. It walked me through a series of steps to begin my presentation and I was able to manage without using the available tutorials. Given the option to use a template or blank presentation, I decided to start with a template. The program guided me through setting up an outline of my scenes before I started creating anything. It served as a storyboarding process before development and encouraged me to check my content to understand how I wanted to present it; good standard practice for development. My process was completely "learn as you go". I’ll admit, unexpected things happened and they forced me to sleuth my way through some elements. Once I figured out how to use the timeline to manage the animations, things moved along quickly. I had control of all elements of creating scenes with the help of the library and settings features. Also, along with templated scenes the program provides pre-built scenes that can be inserted and manipulated as required. I appreciated that the program automatically added a piece of royalty free music from its library to my presentation. Although, I didn’t realize until it was complete that the library existed, or that I could have changed the music. Regardless, I was happy with the result. From beginning to end, including writing and organizing my content, the process totaled four hours. Of that, about 2.5 hours was learning and building with PowToon. The final step was to publish my PowToon to YouTube and then embed it into the LMS for my peers to view. I think it was a hit: Loved, loved your presentation! I'm such a visual person that this was fun to watch and learn from! I enjoyed your presentation immensely This was awesome! Great idea! That was great information, think I need to go on one of those excursions soon The first time I opened Doodle was to select a meeting time in a poll created by the instructor of the EdTech course. My initial thought was, “Is this ALL it does?” I wasn’t even sure it warranted an EdTech Exploration. Over the course of this online course, I have recognized Doodle’s infinite value.
Taken directly from the Doodle Support Center, “Doodle is an online scheduling tool that can be used quickly and easily to find a date and time to meet with multiple people. First you suggest dates and times for your event participants to choose from, then Doodle creates a polling calendar that can be sent to participants for feedback. As each participant selects the dates and times from the polling calendar that he or she is free, Doodle aggregates the responses and tells you which option works best for everyone.” In short, “herding cats gets 2x faster”. Part of Doodle’s value is in its simplicity. A (free) account is required to create a poll, but not required to participate. Respondents can be invited directly through email or using a link to the poll. Further, polls are not limited to scheduling events. Polls can also be used to vote on any number of decisions. Our team used it to select a topic for our group project and then set up a time for a synchronous meeting online. What more is there to say? Doodle events are easy to set up in four simple steps. There are not a lot of options for formatting or rule enforcement (e.g. if the poll requests selection of only 3 of 8 options, there is nothing stopping the respondents from selecting all 8 options), however that doesn’t seem to be a significant detractor. Most importantly, Doodle eliminates the need for multiple emails and discussion threads to negotiate meeting times and topics. That alone makes the tool invaluable. Gamification meets microlearning in DuoLingo’s approach to online language learning. DuoLingo is language-learning platform that includes a language-learning website and app, as well as a digital language proficiency assessment exam. To explore the tool, I signed up for a free account and reviewed the available languages available; currently, there are 68. I selected Spanish. Microlearning - Lessons are short, approximately 10 minutes each, and include reading, listening and speaking activities. Experience points are earned for each lesson and the app encourages the user to earn a certain number of experience points a day, in line with the philosophy that language should be practiced daily. Emails reminders are sent to encourage logging in and completing activities each day. Gamification - The game features of DuoLingo lessons make them fun and approachable. As with many successful online games, learners are rewarded for their progress. Streaks are recorded and posted; “badges” are colourized when a level is complete; lingots, DuoLingo currency, are earned and can be spent in the Lingot Store to purchase Power-ups and Practice options. For three days, I walked around telling friends and family “he/she/they drink(s) milk” and “eat(s) bananas” before I broke my streak. Even in 10 minute increments, there was an element missing to motivate me to practice instead of doing that other thing I had to do that seemed more important at the time. In fairness, I was using a laptop. I think the accessibility of downloading the app on a phone would help... maybe. The bite-sized lessons will mean sticking with it for the long haul. As with any language learning I’ve encountered, other than my first language, the learner begins at the very beginning; with the constructs of the language. Maybe starting with something that allows learners to use the language in a meaningful way immediately, and then working on conjugating the verb “to eat” would be more motivating? I’m thinking something that mimics first language learning. I could speak long before I learned what the elements of the language were. From the perspective of an adult learner, DuoLingo does a good job of engaging learners. Keeping them engaged might require something more. I’ll be interested to find out more about the language learning bots currently under development. Conversational learning might be the missing element. I participated in my first TweetChat today. I'll admit I was nervous, and considered following the chat without comment just to see how it worked. However, once I introduced myself, I realized I was "all in". TweetChats are live discussion events on Twitter. Tweets are collected as a conversation between participants using a common hashtag (#). There are a number of TweetChats occurring each day, many of which can be found in this Google calendar. The one in which I participated was #iolchat (Inside Online Learning) hosted by @CenterOnlineEd. After I figured out the protocol of including the answer number (A#) and the discussion hashtag, things moved along well. Today's topic was grade inflation in higher ed. I wasn't sure I'd have much to offer, but soon learned that questions are welcomed as much as answers and there are no "answers" as much as perspectives and discussion points. There was an added element in coming up with a meaningful response in 140 characters or less, and I realized I have some room to learn Twitter lingo. I'm sure there is also an art form to following the threads within threads that I have not yet mastered. Sixty minutes flew by! As I find myself scanning the calendar to find another TweetChat to join, I'm also considering how TweetChats can be used for teaching and training. Instructor - Learner, Learner - Learner, Organization - Employees, etc. Tweet! Pinterest is an online tool for creating and sharing visual boards of collections. Items added to boards are called “pins”. Users can categorize and circulate their boards as well as create boards for collaborating with other users. In order to explore boards and pins of similar interest, users can follow other pinners to find pins to save to their own boards. There is also the option to upload pins directly from websites. As a digital curation tool, Pinterest focuses on collecting information, enabling users to gather content around particular themes. It is highly visual with the ability to annotate a graphic representation of the resource. The resource may be an image in itself, such as an infographic, or include a link to the originating website. In one course reading, Leona Ungerer discusses Digital Curation as a Core Competency in Current Learning and Literacy: A Higher Education Perspective. She suggests Pinterest as one of many tools that might be used in a curational learning process; each tool offering different features that supports the process. Although Pinterest does not have all of the features suggested for digital curation as a learning tool, there are features that support some of the stages. From a user perspective, Pinterest is accessible on multiple devices, free, and easy to use. Using the application as a learning tool is a new concept for me. Although I’ve mastered the “collection” aspect of the process, how it aids learning depends heavily on what is done with the information. It is easy to add items to boards and never think about them again, and challenging to sort through a large number of pins unless they are well organized on themed boards. With a number of boards comes the challenge of cross referencing pins between themes. However, there is a search feature that allows users to find pins on specific topics either on their own boards or others. To see how I’ve begun to use Pinterest to collect EdTech information, follow my EdTech board. (Note: A Pinterest account is required to view this or other Pinterest boards.) Weebly, the platform for this blog and ePortfolio, is a Web hosting service that offers both free and low-cost website hosting options. The site uses a drag-and-drop interface designed to allow anyone to build a website, even without knowledge of HTML or scripting. (Reference.com) Long before this technology was available, I developed websites and online applications from the first <HTML> tag. Back then, drag-and-drop was cut-and-paste. Since then, I've used various content management systems (MS CMS, Joomla, Interwoven, etc.), Google Sites, and Blogger to create websites. Although they became less do-it-yourself, none of them were as simple as Weebly. After deciding what I wanted for my site, and selecting a template, I was up and running in about fifteen minutes. The intuitive features allowed me to focus more on the content than how to structure a page. Although I opted for the free version to start, there are enough of features available that I have all the flexibility I need at this point. Formatting options are the only limitations I can mention as I begin building out my site. Unless, I'm missing something, font is based on the template selected and I can't seem to change it. It's not really an issue as I don't mind the font provided. The defaults for size and colour can't be changed, although they can be changed manually within the text element. Spacing within and between elements is also limited. Line and paragraph spacing options within the text element is non-existent, and it seems there is built in padding for spacers and dividers that provide limited sizing options in relation to the rest of the page. I've spent a little time figuring out how to make the text and image elements play nice together so I can achieve the format I want, and sometimes it requires using a section element. Some of these limitations may be features available in the premium version and they are minor in relation to the number of elements available to build a page. The time I need to spend building my site is minimal compared to the time I want to spend developing my presence within it.
Welcome to my journal of educational technology discovery! I find myself in week one of a new adventure in my learning journey: Using Technology for Teaching and Training. We begin with some new tools for communication as well as resurrecting an “old” one.
Hello Weebly! One of the new tools. As with all good portfolios, this one will be continually under construction. Let’s see how Weebly’s gadgets, widgets, and what-nots will help me describe my experiences. For now, I'll start with a blog page. To your right (and maybe further up on the page), you will see my new and improved Twitter timeline. Never thinking I had much to add to the Twitterverse, @smrtang was dormant for a while. However, there are so many interests to follow and share! Finally, behold an introduction to me via the newest “thing” in my repertoire, and first EdTech Exploration. ThingLink replaced “Hello, my name is…” introductions and opened the door to a new world of visual media communication. Hover over the hotspots in the image below to learn more about me. |
What's this about?Documenting my exploration of Ed Tech and how it applies to the field of Adult Education. These are my Ang-ventures. ...see more Archives
April 2017
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