GETTING STARTED: Here is the start of the class! On the one hand, I feel bogus for not having everything up and running. On the other hand, this is also a great way for everyone to follow my journey as someone who is constructing the course as well.
FIRST STUDENTS: Linda & Marianna were the first two to email me their gmail addresses; however, Alex did also comment on the first journal picture. The point, however, is to realize that some of your students will be working while you are sleeping...and that is the only time they will ever work.
WHY PICTURE GALLERY AS A JOURNAL: Many people ask me how/why I learn about all the technologies that I do. One of the ways I do it is by committing myself to a project using the technology. In this instance, I'm committing to journaling my experience teaching cis236 using the Picasa photo gallery tool.
FLICKR, WHY NOT? I could have just as easily used Flickr; heck, I've already got a profile up and running over there. However, as some of you can probably guess, I'm now testing the boundaries of Picasa as a program.
ZONE SPECIFIC ANNOTATIONS: One thing I really like about Flickr, and imagine that photography instructors might use, is the image annotation tool. As you can see in this image, I marked specific parts of the image and was able to annotate what each thing represented. Maybe Google will add this feature to Picasa in future versions. I'll keep my eye out for the red font saying "new features."
MULTIPLE CAPTIONS: Although Flickr has the image annotation,Picasa has made arranging all the images in one gallery very easy. And then being able to input, and revise, all of the captions at once is wonderful!!
COMMENTS FROM OTHERS: Since I firmly believe in social constructivist learning theories, I think it is important that students are able to interact with one another and one another's course work. I'm really excited that Picasa has this commenting feature that is separate from the captions feature.
ANOTHER JOURNALING EXPERIMENT: Like I said, I use work that I have to do as an excuse to learn a technology. In this instance I'm using Gabcast as an easy way to start podcasting. I'm podcasting for my FPLC journal. I figure, that if it only hurts me (ie, only my work) that is the lowest stake testing. I've occasionally tested stuff out on my colleagues (committee work). But I'll be honest, it's almost impossible to KNOW all of the features, as well as all of the glitches, before running a technology with a class. The price I pay for trying newer technologies with my students is that occassionally...it bombs!
OPEN SOURCE TESTING: And since I'm currently doing this batch of visual journaling on my laptop, I'm also testing out GIMP, the open source equivalent of Photoshop. This last time I reimaged my laptop's harddrive, I decided I would try to limit the software to open source or freeware. Therefore I'm running Open Office, KompoZer (Dreamweaver), and GIMP. Again, notice a trend here...
WEB-BASED TEACHING & LEARNING WIKI: I've got the wiki started; however, there is absolutely nothing in it. The one thing I'm ecstatic about using a wiki with cis236 is that the course can continue to develop a robust resource center over the course of numerous classes. I'm even thinking cis236, and maybe even the Distance Learning Mentoring Group, can use the same wiki and add resources as well.
