Session 5

After you have discussed the topic of new media you are to select a new media to investigate its function and characteristics that make it potentially useful for eLearning. If you aren’t sure if a particular media should be considered “new”, just ask in the discussion thread.

 

Some possible new media to choose from:

 

Blog

Podcast

Wiki

Facebook

Youtube/Teachertube

 

Be sure to provide the following in your blog post:

 

 

Career Exploration Interview Assignment

Introduction:

This course is intended to guide an individual through the complex array of career choices. The course is designed for students, as well as professionals, so in this assignment you will explore in detail the three careers you selected as interesting and worth pursuing, interview a person in that field and refine your career planning.

 

Process:

1. Go back to the three careers you previously selected as interesting and worth pursuing
2. Locate a professional in each career you selected.
3. Interview the professional in person with the questions provided.
4. Submit verification of interview via email to Melissa.Sakoonphong@chaffey.edu.
5. Post your interviews on your blog.

 

Media and Links:

Career Noodle (http://www.careernoodle.com/devsite/index.php)

Interview Questions (Word)

 

Interaction:

Student-to-Student

Student-to-Content

Student-to-Instructor

 

Requirements:

1. Post the all three Q &A interviews on your blog
2. Comment on three other student’s blogs and respond with what you found interesting about the career and why.

 

Evaluation:

Each post is worth 10 points if all these criteria are met:

·         Posted before the deadline

·         Submit verification of interview via email (Business card, company brochure, etc.)

·         Post addresses all the topics/issues listed in the assignment

·         Students responds to threes posts left by others students in the class

 

Name of New Media:

Wiki

URL or other identifying and locating information.

http://theelearningcoach.com/elearning2-0/using-wikis-for-elearning/

http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/19/using-an-open-source-wiki-for-e-learning-development-process-documentation

 

Features and/or characteristics of the tool (Including tool’s capacity to facilitate communication in terms of one or two way communication and its’ relevance to media theory.)

Compare the capabilities of the new media tool with tools that are available in your current CMS/LMS.

A wiki is a collaboration among users to collect and organize content, create and revise group documentation. Wikis are a way to grow a knowledge base around a particular content area or interest in a specific topic, be it best practices in a particular field or note taking in a course. Some organizations allow any registered user to contribute similar to public wiki sites; others limit contributors to a particular department or group similar to private sites.   The important characteristic of wiki pages are the ease in which information can be added, edited and removed from the document.  This ease in organizing and collecting information is an example of wikis can be use to facilitate two-way communication among students and instructor(s) in a course; more importantly, wikis supports a Social Presence concept of Media Theory because of its’ main features and characteristics

Wikis are currently available on Blackboard, however, I have not had the opportunity to use in it a classroom setting.  I’ve always been curious about it and would like to see it utilizing in an elearning environment, so I can make the comparison between this new media and other tools available on Blackboard.  After my preliminary research on Wikis I believe it has complementary capabilities to the other tools available on Blackboard, so students can have a sample tray of different learning tools they can pick from in order to enhance their learning.  Students have the online discussion board, chat/virtual rooms, announcements, course documents, and Wikis for collaborative work.  Overall, Blackboard provides an array of tools to satisfy different learning styles, but like every product on the market—there is always room for improvement.

 

Critique the ability of your selected new media tool to support an eLearning activity of your choosing. Explain why the tool would or wouldn’t work to support the eLearning activity you describe.

My selected new media would not support my elearning activity because it is not a shared assignment.  Each student is to conduct their own interviews and each interviewee will have a unique set of answers to the questions depending on his/her values and experience in life.  More importantly, every student will have their set of unique answers in terms of careers they chose for this activity, so it would be impossible for every student to collaborate on every career listed.  It would be an unrealistic for both students and instructor to participate in. However, a wiki’s format could potential work in the previous assignment where students are gathering information about a specific career.

 

 

Summary Discussion on Blackboard

In this week’s Blackboard discussion threads our class brought up a variety of different topics ranging from Twitter to Wiki to Whatapps as forms of “New Media” instruments that can help facilitate learning in an elearning environment.  Overall, I thought the thread were insightful and engaging in terms of content, but fail short in terms of format and readability.  I’ve have always been partial to discussion forms and text chats or documents because of my learning style, but the way the threads are created are too confusing for me.  More importantly, it’s a nightmare for an instructor to try and grade the discussions--I can see why some instructors have converted from the discussion style to blog.  You get the same student engagement and student learning outcome with blog posting and it’s definitely easier to grade, plus, more aesthetically appealing to look at than a discussion thread.  So as an instructor I have to be cautious of the types of technologies I used for the activities I have, because I have to make sure I achieve my SLO’s and foster a healthy learning environment.

 

 

References:

Newberry, B. Communication- New Media (Word Document). Retrieved on February 10, 2013 from http://studyonthebeach.com/csusb/classes/winter2013/etec_674_winter_2013/s05.html

The Learning Coach. (n.d). Using Wikis for Learning and Collaboration Retrieve February 9, 2013 from http://theelearningcoach.com/elearning2-0/using-wikis-for-elearning/

Waterhouse, S. (2005). The Power of ELearning: The Essentail Guide for Teaching in the Digital Age. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

 

Wikipedia. Retrieved February 10, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki