Show Me

Show Me   is a free app (I'm all about the free apps) which reminds me of Explain Everything, except the best part... it's free!

It says that it works like an interactive white board and I quite like it.

Here's a short tutorial type video that I found that shows you around this app:

What I really like about this app is that while you are drawing, or typing, you have a 'record' button at the top so you can talk over it and this will then save as a presentation.

I'm not big on the drawing part, as I am mostly writing out words and my handwriting is bad enough as it is but it's a nice substitute for when you need to explain something and draw out a visual at the same time. However, you can add text to it (or have text already added on each page) before you start recording which saves time. In this way, it sort of works as screen capture software. As soon as you hit the record button, it doesn't only record what you say but it records all your actions from that point on. 

I can already see lots of ways I can use this app and I can start thinking of it as a pre-recorded online tutorial.  

I am trying it out as a peer assessment - so having a student's answer on the page and then record myself marking it and making notes and annotating as I go. Or go one better and have students submit their homework electronically and use this app to provide oral feedback and they can watch me and listen to me mark their work and make corrections etc.- which I think many students might prefer than just seeing my red pen written all over their work. 

This is me trying out Show Me with a peer assessment activity. There are some glitches, I have no idea why the second slide showed up so funny, but it still works fine after that. I couldn't have picked a more boring topic to talk about (sorry) but in case anyone was interested to see how I've used this app, here it is:

The only downside is that it takes time to plan out each and every presentation and what you want to say for each slide, which can be time consuming to do all the time.

Also -  why has no-one ever told me how deep my voice is?! Seriously, I get that podcasts and recorded lectures are great but there's nothing quite so cringe-worthy as having to listen to the sound of your own voice and realising that you hate your own voice. So sorry, listeners. 

Making a VLE 'interactive'

                                                   Promoting Discussion

I read an article that made an excellent point: Simply having a website does not automatically enhance the learning. Just like a book cannot teach a class, it is the activities and teaching strategies used with that class helps students engage with the material. Just by creating a website and handing it over to your students does not make the lessons being taught anymore effective (Singh, 2011*).

One of the ways around this is to encourage discussion. I have tried various ways to encourage discussion on my VLE.

On GoogleSites, there are comment boxes on the bottom of every page - but only if you're part of the admin. If you're a visitor to the site you cannot comment. This is a shame as it would have been ideal but I have been trying out other ways to allow students to take part in a discussion:

1. Google Groups
This works like a forum. The admin (or page creator) makes a posts and others can login in to respond. It's a nice tool as discussions can be organised into folders and there is no word limit for replies. Also, it's easy to see who has posted as their name will come up (unlike TodaysMeet where people can post something daft and you have no way of knowing who did).

I've used it a few times throughout my VLE, the only issue with it is that you cannot embed it as that specific thread, you can only post the main menu which is a little bit annoying as I have to provide instructions of what discussion and topic to take part in.

As you can see, I've created my own private discussion group and have created topics within this group - but I can only post it showing all the topics, not the one topic. If anyone knows a way around this then I'd be grateful. 

2. Chatzy/TodaysMeet
We're all familiar with TodaysMeet - it's a great for short replies in order just to get feedback from your students so I've used this on my site.

I also came across a site called 'chatzy' - it has the same function and purpose as TodaysMeet, except it does not look great, it has a very 'Windows 98' look about it.

It reminds me of old MSN, but I think that's why I like it (ah, nostalgia). You can have longer discussions and is more of a chat room. I think this is a nice alternative to Google Groups as it's much more informal so is useful for when you need somewhere on your VLE to just have a 'chat'. For example, if you post a homework assignment, it could be useful to set up a Chatzy page next to the assignment that way if people are having trouble/difficulty they can just ask you or discuss it with others in the class. That way, as the teacher, I can log in to see what everyone has been having trouble with and hopefully provide some answers.

This is really handy for me in my placement as students don't have a VLE or student email and don't have anyway of communicating with their teachers (other than finding them on facebook or going into school).

Virtual chat rooms on Chatzy are free and can be as private as you want - so you can invite students by private emails for max security. As admin, you also have the power to clear a room, delete a chat etc.

*Article reference: 'Virtual Learning Environment: An Overview' by Sandhya Singh, technoLEARN (2011) Vol 1 No.1 pgs 87 -94

Adding borders to your GoogleSites...

Thought I'd post this on the off chance that someone else is also using  GoogleSites and has been, like me, wanting to add borders/boxes to your content area.


In case you don't know what I'm talking about:

I was having the following problem (don't know if you can call it a problem, as much as me being overly and unnecessarily fussy to the point of absurdity?)

Anyway, when editing a page, I could see the borders (pointed out by my badly drawn arrows), the different boxes were separated when editing. 

HOWEVER, when I saved, this is the result I had:

As you can see, no border. 

This image isn't from my own VLE and the problem was much worse on mine because of my colour scheme, you couldn't tell where one box started and the other ended and then they just looked like they were floating there.

What I wanted was this:

But obviously, not so crudely drawn that it looks like a 5 year old has had a go.


Well I found out how to do it, it just requires a little bit of coding...

For a link to this step-by-step guide click here. 

And ta -da, I have borders around my boxes!!

I realise most people won't care about any of this and it's only something small. But now I've said it I bet you'll go and reassess your border-less VLE.

ThingLink

Ok I've tried out ThingLink and I did it quite quickly on juries ... but can't really see there being much more to it than this:

 

You upload an image and can add 'tags' to the image, which link to another website. I think the idea is that you have lots of useful websites all together on one page and one thing leads to another. 

You can add lots of different tags, I've just added a YouTube video and newspaper articles mostly, but you can add SoundCloud links and other photos etc. It could be a nice way to put lots of useful links all together on one page.

There is a ThingLink blog here that provides lots of examples of this tool being used (all of which are infinitely better than mine) 

I really like the Grammy one:

Useful website

Found this website and thought it might be useful and was worth sharing:

The website can be found here, it is entitled:

"Presentation Tools for your Classroom"

The author has presented  a range of applications and software that can be used in the classroom. She discusses lots that I hadn't heard of before. (Although I know Mandy has shown us loads already it can't hurt to see what else is out there). 

I like the idea of 'ThingLink' so will try it out and get back to you...

Importance of audio on my VLE

 

Physical appearance, tone of voice, inflection, humour, pauses in speech, volume - these are just some of the wealth of attributes that all have an impact on how your students see you, how they interact with you and most importantly, how they learn from you. When you take away the physical presence of the teacher (and therefore, all their valuable attributes), how effective is the teaching that's left? Does it not suffer?


My thoughts:

The VLE does not replace the teacher, it cannot just be somewhere you upload files/documents and it cannot teach your students for you. The role of the teacher is not diminished, it is perhaps even more crucial to establish the role of the teacher when using a VLE because of the fact that you are not physically there when your students are.

Therefore, I think it is vital to inject as much of your personality into your VLE as possible - and one way to do this, is be 'there' as far as technology will let you. To achieve this, I have been using audio on my VLE.

I know from personal experience that when I have missed a lesson and accessed the PowerPoint hand-out, simply reading the PowerPoint does not teach me anything. It does not help me catch up on a lesson and just reading through notes is not enough - I, and many others, benefit from hearing the speaker/deliverer of the lecture themselves. So I have added audio to my PowerPoint presentations when I can and I have embedded Podcasts where possible.

I found this useful website that discusses the use and importance of audio in learning, it also gives some advice on how to use audio.

Trying out a podcast

I'm currently researching for my e-learning essay and have found an incredible amount of academic articles on the subject.

I found one article which had conducted a study on something I had not thought about previously: the posting and non-posting behaviour online, sometimes referred to as 'lurking'.

I was going to write a short post about this but then this is an e-learning after all, so I've made a short podcast* instead discussing the article, that you can listen to here:

listen to ‘Article Review’ on audioBoom

In anyone wants to read the article then here's the reference: 'What do the numbers say? The influence of motivation and peer feedback on students’ behaviour in online discussion' by Kui Xie,  British Journal of Educational Technology 2013) Vol 44 No 2  Pages 288–301

*I've made my Podcast using AudioBoom, which is a free app.

GoogleSites

First issue with GoogleSites. You cannot make sub-folders.


KOS|BOH confirmed it.

The dilemma of choosing a VLE...

As part of our e-learning assignment our task is to create a VLE (a virtual learning environment - click here for a description of a VLE and why it is becoming crucial to education).

I already have a number of ideas of what I want to include, how I want it to look, ways to make it interactive but before I could get to any of that, I had to choose my VLE. Which was not easy.

In one of our earlier e-learning sessions, we each had to research a VLE and present our findings back to our group. This was very useful as it majorly cut down my sampling time and I could tell that just by looking at some potential VLEs that they were not for me (particularly wiki dot)

The ones we looked at included:
- Wiki Spaces
- PB Works
- WordPress
- Google Sites


Unfortunately, I felt I had to sign up to all  sites and actually start uploading things to see whether I liked the website. For me, this is the only way I can really tell whether a website will be for me. This took a lot of time and I came to quickly realise that I hated some.


My quest for a VLE boiled down to finding a website that did what I wanted so I made a list of things I am looking for in a VLE. I came up with the following:

- ORGANISATION

That's really all I wanted. Just somewhere I can upload files but in an organised way, I just wanted somewhere that I could create folders and put files in with headings and sub-headings and so forth.

(Little known fact about me, I like to be organised.)

Like I said, I have a lot of ideas of WHAT I want on my VLE and I just needed something that let me upload my material HOW I wanted.

So after a LOT of time testing each site, I settled on Google Sites. And for now*, I'm happy.

*Check back here in two weeks time where I will undoubtedly write a post about Google Sites making me want to put my fist through the screen. 

Quizlet

Quizlet is quite useful as there's already lots of quizzes available for Law, so I just choose the one that suits me best and I can share it/embed it as you can see above.

You can embed it in the format you want (i.e. test,flashcards, pair matching etc) but unfortunately when you share it as a link, you can't select the format in which you want it to appear in, which is a bit of a shame because I've made one that is best suited for the 'test' format and won't work as well in the other types.