MA

Jul 4 2006

Stephen Downes and Avoiding Finishing this Assignment…

Have just been surfing through my bloglines feeds and as usual went to Stephen Downes blog as it had an interesting introduction to ‘Identity Networks’ and the future of one sign in process for everything that you do on the web. Good Stuff. But I had never read his little aside to introduce his blog and maybe it might inspire me to change mine to:-

“My government thinks it controls me. My employers think they own me. Corporations think they can buy me. Bullies think they can push me around.
But for half and hour each day my life is my own. For half an hour I can write and think what I will, without regard to who is watching, who is reading. Half an hour, each day, for me.
This is my space, and this is my time.”

Stephen Downes

Love it..now back grudgingly to that assignment.

By drtech • Assignment • Comments Off on Stephen Downes and Avoiding Finishing this Assignment…

Jul 3 2006

Struggling along – 3 days to go…

Well its starting to come together, but now finding it difficult to intertwine all the different threads of the design process together and also whether to not hint at some level of apathy for certain parts of that process. I have been teaching or been taught various design processes throughout my career whether it be an architectural process for a house design or a design and technology process for a furniture project design and still come to the conclusion that sometimes things are generally a lot more fluid and personal that any rigid process can describe.

However I am quite proud of my design spiral diagram which I think sums up what has roughly happened while I was producing and developing my WBLE. Click on the thumbnail here to have a look. Funny but I  have only just realised that WordPress had this thumbnail built in function that makes life so much easier! Typical but at least I have found it now!Spiral Big

Not much else to report, I have too many different styles of usability reports and seemingly I will be told off for numbers of screenshots within my assignment. But I find it very difficult to write about visual issues without a screenshot right next to it, so for anyone including Karon reading the assignment I would think this would be of great importance. Maybe my writing is not descriptive enough. Who knows?

By drtech • Assignment, Moodle, Planning / WBLE • Comments Off on Struggling along – 3 days to go…

Jul 1 2006

Continued ‘state of partial attention’…

Well good news, Dave Tosh reports over from Elgg that 800*600 resolution is finally on its way out -so maybe all the struggle to try and resolve those resolution issues with my Moodle CICT site might be a thing of the past? Still excited about the integration of Elgg and Moodle, although am being held back at this moment in time by the wonderful assignment. Less said about that the better, as I am ploughing through the opening paragraphs after proof reading them to make swathes of necessary changes.

Just found a new Feedburner type site, Feedo Style that will place your feed in a fully alterable (CSS styled)Feedo Style block that can be embedded into any website…etc…which might be a better option than Feedburners rather simple options. Although as I found out with the Grazr feeds when their site goes down your site ends up hanging and that can’t be good. Another reason to think about the plugging in of all these different Web 2.0 style tools in the long term and something I will be commenting on in my assignment!

How else can I waste time, aahh by popping the anthem of the summer for you to listen to by Peter and Bjorn – ‘Young Folks’ -go over to their website and buy it.

Standard Podcast [ 4:36 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By drtech • Assignment • Comments Off on Continued ‘state of partial attention’…

Jun 29 2006

Assignment – HOW many words!

Well 8 or 9 days to go and the usual word worries are beginning to creep in. First draft, yes I know it is late is not finished and I am on 9,287 words. Oops so already will need to prune over 3,000 words and have’nt even touched accessibility or usuability issues. Have finally realised that my ideas for what this assignment was meant to cover might be a little extravagant especially when i am going into the merits of using a LMS like Moodle rather than starting a WBLE from scratch. Still very worried about my research into George Siemens work into the so-called ‘connectivist’ pedagogy and whether the very new research and linking to weblogs and various websites will be considered adequate references.

Well beyond anything else it is a little late now I think to turn back. Still the most urgent thought going through my head is related to the ideas if todays ‘digital natives’ not multitasking but being in a state of ‘constant partial attention’. This seems the way I am while writing this assignment, as I continue to wander around the web researching for more information; found a great explanatory diagram about LMS and their position within today’s online learning from Derek Wenmoth along with the very interesting usability tool related to testing a website in over 23 different browsers at Browsershots.

Time to get back to my state of constant partial attention, and stop writing on this blog.

By drtech • Assignment, Moodle • Comments Off on Assignment – HOW many words!

Jun 26 2006

Back home in Britain

Well I have had to leave the dreaded assignment alone for a week or so due to a manic last week at school and of course the world cup! England are through with a few unconvincing displays but we cannot complain, and poor Mexico had a great game but unfortunately were knocked out by Argentina.

I have ten days to go until I have to send off my assignment, and so I will give myself three days to come up with a finalised draft all the way from introduction to conclusion, and then go from there. Fingers crossed!

By drtech • Assignment • Comments Off on Back home in Britain

Jun 7 2006

Outline finally done…

Well I have been putting off the inevitable, – yes that is starting the assignment for my Masters second module. Having first produced a Mindmap of topics I might need to cover, and then converting that into an outline. Heres a link to the Mindmap – be warned its a large file!

So I have approximately a month left to complete the assignment and finally finish the testing of the Moodle. The Heuristic testing is to say the least a nightmare and shows the difficulty of making a website let alone web learning environment truly accessible. The Open University has been doing a lot of work on this which will eventually filter through into later versions of Moodle.

Have been reading much more related to ‘Connectivism’ and how it might relate to actual learning within schools. There is a great post written over at the Education Bazaar Blog along with an interesting paper at the Bazaar.

Other interesting news is on the development of integration of Elgg – a Personal Learning Environment , with Moodle and then an eportfolio application. Its in its early glitchy technical stages but this might be a resolution to the problems I have come across within Moodle specifically related to lack of ownership by the students using the learning environment. This might be down to me being a little precious and not allowing the students to change themes to suit themselves, but there is much more than that.

Anyway, enough I need to get on with this assignment. I wonder how everyone else is doing?

By drtech • Assignment, Moodle • Comments Off on Outline finally done…

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