Done and Dusted

Today we completed our task which was a relieving and joyful experience. Knowing that this was our last task, it was a very good feeling finishing up today. I was voted in by the group to do the voice over, explaining our wiki, and all the steps we have gone through to complete this task. Like last task we used Jing for this, and again I felt confident using this program as I had used it before.

All in all I am very happy with how we all worked within this task. It would of been very easy for us to crumble when Grant fell sick, but instead we picked up the workload and worked very well together. I am confident with how our wiki looks, and am hoping for a decent grade to finish off the semester.

Thank you for reading my blog, hopefully I have given you an insight into how we worked as a group and all the problems that occurred through out the semester.

Until next time....

Happy Days

A week on and we have found some good news within our group. Grant is out of hospital, and although he is not feeling 100 per cent he is still keen to help our group and partake in this task, which is very good from him. As a group we are travelling fairly well with this task, and personally I am confident with how the home page is looking on the wiki.

I picked up the concept quite easily and from there it proved to be an easy part of the assignment. 2 lessons a week for 6 weeks has been abit more challenging than we all thought it would be at the start, but we will work through this as a group.

All in all I am happy with the progress we are making as a group, and believe we should do very well in this task.

Until next time......

Start and a problem already

As my title states we have just started Task 3 and already our group has hit a major hurdle. One of our group members (Grant) has fallen quite sick and has been admitted to hospital. At this stage it is unknown when he will be out of hospital therefore meaning that the remaining 3 group members will be required to pick up the load and complete more work.

This problem is unavoidable so I wont complain to much, but it does throw a spanner in the works. Hopefully for Grant he will be out of hospital soon, and this to will help the group significantly.

Before Grant went to hospital we sat down as a group and divided the task into 4 parts, which meant all group members completed equal amounts of the task. My job is to create the home page on the wiki. As I have never used a wiki before this will probably be a challenging experience, but hopefully I will pick up the concept quickly.  We also have decided that we will all contribute the 6 weeks of lesson plans, meaning that each member has an equal say as to what we will be doing in the classroom.

Although we have hit this hurdle so early on in the task, I believe we will still be alright to do well in the task.

Task 3

Task 3 required us to stay in our group of 4 and create a wiki for a class, and plan out 6 weeks of lessons in a particular field. Looking at this task it seems like it is going to be an enjoyable one, and again lets us work within a group with an end goal. We have chosen to target our lessons at a year 4 class, and our main subject field is nutrition and physical education.

Personally for me this is an interesting and enjoyable topic, so this should suit me and allow me to work to the best of my ability. Again I am in a group with Josie, Harriet and Grant and if the last task is anything to go by we work very well together and all have different skills to bring to the table.

All in all I am looking forward to this task and as a group we are setting the bar high with our expected grade.

Until next time.....

Reflection Task 2

In this blog I am going to reflect on my learning's and feelings of Task 2. I found task 2 quite challenging as I had never experienced using Endnote or Jing before, but in saying that I enjoyed learning how to use both programs and believe I gained some valuable experience that will help me along my university career.

I have enjoyed the Peer Review part of the task and gained some very valuable constructive critism, which has enabled me to work on some flaws which I had in my website. I believe I am much better off since viewing the peer reviews.

In this weeks lecture we ran through parts of the peer review system and also the requirements of task 3. Again we are keeping the same group with Harriet, Grant and Josie, and we will be researching Maths again. Im looking forward to improving my work from task 2 in this task.

:)

Endnote

I have just viewed the 3 examples on how to use Endnote and now I feel much more confident with the task at hand. I downloaded Jing to capture the demonstration on how to use Endnote, and this has made it quite simple. It is a free download and a easy program to navigate through and very user friendly. We also watched one example in last weeks tutor to show us exactly what was required of us. I am now about to give it a go for myself. The video has to go for 5 minutes and has to demonstrate to our peers how to use this program.

Once I have done this I have to upload to my website, on my brand new page Task Two.

Task Two

To be honest I have found it hard to get motivated for task two, and I think I need a real kick up the butt to get back on track. After receiving my mark for Task 1 (68%) I was reasonably happy with my first up effort, and was surprised how quickly the next task snuck up on us. So the last few days has been quite a rush and quite stressful to get everything up to date.

We have been placed in groups of 4 for this task and I am grouped with Grant, Harriet and Josie. Our task is to explore technologies related to our work at university as a learner and a researcher. We have to pick a topic of choice (We chose Maths) and research how technology might be used for teaching and learning on this topic. We all need to use a different reference type, and I have found a 'Book Section' to do my research on.  

Its only a small part of a book but still gives me plenty ideas for the assignment. The part I am particular struggling with is the EndNote program, where we have to screen cast 5 minutes worth of footage to be shown to our peers.   I need to view the example which was shown in the workshop last week, to again get a few ideas of exactly what to do, but fingers crossed everything will be okay.

Choosing my Social Learning Page

I have just set about choosing my Social Learning Tool for the task and for my football team to choose our End of Season Trip Destination. After trialing Twitter, Facebook and Skype I have decided to go with Facebook. After chatting  with members of the team I have decided that Facebook is going to be the easiest to use and manage for all players as, all players currently are using Facebook.

The other two tools could both be effective but not every player is using either of these options, and knowing my team mates I know they wont want to spend the time and effort creating accounts if they are not going to use it regularly.

I believe the benefits of using the Facebook group are
- The ability to share news and be notified straight away
- Allows group conversation and discussion
- Has the option to post photos of possible destinations and also hare albums once we have been on the trip
- Very easy to navigate around the site

Last Week

In the last week, I have made some significant progress on my website and this has left me feeling a lot more confident of where things are heading. I worked out how to add Hyperlinks onto my page, and believe this added tool has my page looking a lot better. I also again got a better understanding of what is required in the Social Learning Page of my website. 

Also in the tutorial we did abit of work on Peer Assessment which is the next task. We went through a few example websites and we had to review them, giving us a basic idea of what is required.

I am hoping to have my website finished by Wednesday so that it will be ready for the peer assessment on Thursday. I believe that with all the help we have received over the last few weeks, my website should do okay come assessment time.

Social Learning Pages

Today proved to be a good day for me as I gained a bit more knowledge on the 'Social Learning' aspect of the assignment. During the lecture we went through examples of other websites using the 'Social Learning' page and I now feel more comfortable tackling this head on.


Apart from this I found the lecture quite boring but in saying this I walked out happy with what I learnt as it will save me a bit of time in the workshop going through what is expected.

For the task I am going to organize a page or website for my Football team to access, so we can discuss and organize our end of season trip. I haven't yet decided my three pages I will look at, but I am leaning towards Facebook, Twitter and Skype. I will go into more detail next Blog about exactly what three pages I am looking at.

Until then....

Getting Started

After being out of school for 4 years and being told I had to make a website I was initially terrified. I havent done anything like this since year 12 and even then I was no computer wizz, so my initial reaction was to freak out and think I was doomed. But after attending the 2nd lecture I seemed to re gather some old knowledge and now all of a sudden I seem to be back on track.

 

So here we go... I will be blogging about my progress through this unit and all the difficulties I come across while trying to get my website up and running. I have decided to go with Jimdo ahead of the other websites as we did a demonstration in class using this feature and I believed it was nice and easy to navigate through the site. A lot of other people in my class are using other sites such as Yola, but I feel after watch the demo on Jimdo, it looks easy enough to navigate through the page.