Journal #7 Professional Learning Network

Journal #7 Professional Learning Network

I have joined an affinity group named “eLearning Heroes” to learn Articulate software which is for my internship in Western University of Health Science. One classmate referenced this group to me because I was totally new to this software. And I found it’s so useful to me. 

First, I downloaded a free ebook - Getting started with Articulate Studio, to get started. The ebook helps me create my first e-learning project with some interactions, and I can show my learners what they need to know with simple screen casting tools. Second, there are many discussions in the community, it’s full of the problems and solutions about Articulate software. Through some of the discussions, I solved my problem. For example, I got my ideas of building the storyboard of my e-Learning modules in the light of the discussion group. 

I had to say that I really benefited from the affinity group. It’s a good way of learning. 

Journal #6 Self Reflection

Journal #6 Self Reflection

I like this class because I can learn design and make my own website. The class is well designed. After I followed the instructions of the classroom lab and do some practices of the book, I found myself learned a lot about HTML. 

HTML is a markup language, this means there are lots of tags in it. I got a big head about the tags and format. I think this is the hardest part for me in this class. But I found with Dreamweaver, I  can accomplish many task without memorize those things. But of course, I need to know the basic format. 

The most rewarding part of the class is that with CSS, I can easily uniform the interface of my website, and change them easily just by modify the CSS files. This is awesome!

Journal #5 My Twitter Experience

Journal #5   My Twitter Experience

I had never used Twitter before GED 512 required us to do so, although I had known this social network for a long time. However, I had used another social network named “Wei Bo”. It’s also a social network similar to Twitter, and it’s very popular in China several years before. But in these two year, with the widely use of “Wei Xin”, a software like Fackbook, “Wei Bo” is fading out of it’s popularity. It looks like Twitter has the same fate, it’s market is eating by the other social networks like Facebook, Linkln.

I set up my Twitter account per the class requirement. I followed four twitters. One of them is Barack Obama, he has more than 65,000,000 followers, and ranking the fourth in the people with most followers. The number one is Katy Perry, she has more than 77,000,000 followers. I can easily get their update since I am their follower. 

And I also followed CNN, so It’s convenient for me to read the CNN news because they are listed in the twits,  and updated often. And I can also view the others’ comments about the news. Sometimes, I think the comments are more interesting than the news itself. Furthermore, I can also add my comment and can share the twit with others. So it’s not only reading the news, but also getting interactive with the others on the topic of the news. In this aspect, it’s interesting.

Like Facebook, Twitter can also be used in our cell phone, so it’s convenient to use. 

In total, I think Twitter can provide me some information and make me get updated in a easy way. But compared to Facebook, it’s not that attractive. So I would say I will not use it often.

Journal #4 Final Project Plan

Journal #4 Final Project Plan

•   Site title – Go fencing.

•   Developer – Selena Chen

•   Rational- I want to create a website to let more people get to know about the fencing activity. This can fall into two parts, for those who have no idea of what fencing is, I will introduce them the basic knowledge and rules about fencing. And for those who have already participated in this sport, they will get some systematic information such as, the origin of fencing and fencing history in Olympic.

•   Main features outline – I will use pictures and video to illustrate some of the concept. I think it will be more visualized and easy to understand.

•   Content – See the following site map for details.

•   Target audience – My target audience is adults or kids who has interest in fencing or who are new to this sport.

•   Design considerations.

My goal is to make the website easy to browse and get the information. So I will add the links that facilitate the browsing. For example, I will add the go to the upper link in the every page except the home page. And in the home page I will organize the information well so it’s easy to locate the information.

And also I want to make the website more attractive. Since fencing is an intensive activity, I will add some videos in the website.

Limiting factors 

1.                    If I include too many videos, the size of video may be too big and then will result in slow speed.

2.                     There is a variety of knowledge available, but due to the time and the size of the project, I need to choose those I think are more important for the new fencers.

3.                     Different person has different preferences for viewing the website, but I can only design one style according to I think which is the one fit the majority.

 Wire frame

Journal #3 The Case For Social Media in Schools

Journal #3 The Case For Social Media in Schools

Kessler, S. (2010, September). The Case For Social Media in Schools. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/09/29/social-media-in-school/#m_2BAuC71Gqt.

Summary: In this article, the author advocates that social media should be used in schools and supports her point from different aspects. First, she pointed out since the Internet and social media are the trends of our life, more and more people are going to use them. So we don’t need to go against them. And also she uses some examples to demonstrate that engaging in the social media will increase student’s motivation of learning and collaboration, and then result to their better performances in schools. Furthermore she thinks that there are ways to control the students’ access to the distracted websites, for example kidblog.org, so we can decrease the potential harm from the Internet to students. Lastly, she argues that although the cellphone is banned in the most of schools, it is a good way for kids to communicate either to parents or to teachers.

Question 1: Will the engagement in social media increase students’ performance in study?

I think every sword has two blades. In one aspect, if students use social media in a proper way, for example, like us, use the blog to present their points of view of the topics related to their courses, it will definitely be helpful to their study. However, if they just make small talks or play through social media, such as post pictures to show off in their Facebook, it seems that their involvement will not contribute to their performance at all. So in my opinion, students’ use of social media should be under the supervision of the parents or schools, and also under the control of the software or system. If they can make good use of the social resources, it will a play positive role in their studies.

Question 2: Can we monitor and control students’ activities in the social media?

There are some software that can monitor and track users’ activities. For example, in the Windows’ system or Mac’s system, we all can set the limitation of web access and time restriction of the machine. And also, as the author mentioned, in the kidblog.org, it will monitor and approve everything that kids post online. But how about Facebook? How about Twitter? Those popular social media, what do they do in the controlling? I don’t think there are very effective ways to restrict students’ activity in them, except that their guardians can also join  in their circles, and know what the kids’ are publishing. But the guardian can’t get all their activity information, it’s far from monitoring.  I think maybe this is the reason that many parents and schools are still ban their kids from those social media. 

Journal #2

Join an Affinity Group and Share your Digg Stream

I have joined the Learning & Development Center of Excellence (LDCOE) for about a couple of months.http://elearningindustry.com/. It  has different topics discussed between the group members, for example, “Do you use a steps of training method?”, or “What managers should know about learning and memory in the brain?” etc. Members of the group can make comments on any of the topic or just click “Like” link to show your support to the topic.

I started to use Digg because of the GED 512. I am not very familiar with it, but I think it’s useful if you want to get some information on certain field occasionally, since it will keep on updating the information you are interested.

Question 1: What can we benefit from joining the affinity group?

For me, joining LDCOE opens a window of the learning area and makes me thinking of something I never thought before. And it is useful to read the comments from the other members as well, I think it’s good to hear from different voices. Although, sometimes, there are some discussions I am not interested. It will make feel disturbed, especially when it keeps on send email to your mailbox even if you have no time to read it when you are busy. But after all, I think I benefit from joining the group, because I can keep an eye on the learning area and at the same time, keep contact with the experienced members. 

Question 2: How to select the affinity groups which are right for you?

There are numerous affinity group in various fields. So how to choose the right groups for you?  I was confused by this problem. Once I joined several groups at the same time, and it kept on sending me many emails every day. I was overwhelmed, and then I cancelled some groups that are useless to me. So we should choose the groups according to the area that we really have interest in, and furthermore, the topics in the group good. It’s a good idea to be referenced by your friends. And also avoid joining too many groups at the same time.

Journal #1

 

Robbins, J. (2012). Learning web design: A beginner's guide to HTML, CSS, Javascript, and web graphics (4th ed., pp. 3-46). Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly.

Chapter 1 - 3 Summary

The first chapter of book “A beginner’s guide to HTML, CSS, Javascript, and web graphics” mainly introduces some basic concepts, protocols, languages, softwares and technologies about the web design. And all kinds of design we need to consider when we set up websites. Chapter 2 illustrated how the Internet works. It gives us a picture of the way that so many computers and devices work together. Chapter 3 talks about multi-devices, the standards and the performance.

Reflection

Internet has been developed in a very fast pace in this 20 years. It has become part of our life now. We get information, communicate, do all kinds of business in this platform. So we need to learn it and use it well. But it is hard to get started, since it’s complicated. We can benefit from this book while it provide us a easy start. After reading the first three chapters, I have the following two questions.

Question 1

In the web design, we have the choices of Frontend design and Backend design, which one is for me?

Frontend design is about the design that appears or relates to the browser. Backend design is about the program on the server side. Both designs are important. I think we should have some knowledge of both design. But I will choose focus on the Frontend design, because as an Instructional designer, we need to think more from the user side, and design more user friendly learning modules.

Question 2

Since Internet is open to public, how to keep our privacy while we surf in Internet all the time?

Although share information is important to us, “privacy” is also essential. If all the information is open to the public in Internet, then it will become an insecure place. And nobody will get involved in it because we can need to protect our sensitive information, such as credit card info, social secure number etc. So we have HTTPS protocol to transfer our information securely through internet by encryption. And we have Intranet an Extranet, to control the information that users can access according to their identity. And we have many security technology like firewall, SMIME etc to ensure security on Internet.