This week we needed to complete our collaborative midterm. We had four categories to choose from:
- Quiz & test builders (Exam builder, Survey monkey, Zoomerang) - I chose not to choose this category because Blackboard, the courseware used at our college for online courses, comes with a test/quiz builder already.
- Reflection assessment tool (Blogger.com, Schoolblogs.epals, OurStory, LiveJournal) - I did not choose this category because I've already learned about blogger.com in a previous activity and will be using it every week.
- Peer-to-peer collaboration tools (Groove, Breeze, WebEx, Wikis) - my teammate Sharon had chosen to work on Groove, and I had knowledge about wikis already.
- Course tracking tools (Excel spreadsheets, Micrograde, Teacherease, Calendar software) - I know how to use Excel and have been using Micrograde for many years. The calendar software attracted my attention because it's something I've never tried before, and I could think of several uses for my classes, online and F2F.
The calendar builder software http://www.rkssoftware.com/calendarbuilder/overview.html was VERY easy to use. It's very intuitive and offers many options of fonts, colors, header styles, icons, borders and clipart, and had the capability of inserting your own images. I liked the fact that it has Spanish among the language choices, and that I can choose to start the calendar on a Monday (which is the case in Spanish speaking countries). This calendar software can be downloaded for a 30-day free trial and purchased for $19.95, a one-time cost, which I thought was extremely affordable! I can use this software to create a calendar for my online course highlighting dates of homework, tests, cultural projects, composition due dates, cultural events in the local Hispanic community, movie nights, and tertulias (informal conversation gatherings on campus).
Two Fridays ago I proposed an initial deadline of Wednesday for our team to complete our individual assessment tool. Amid great frustration I was able to download the program Groove on Wedenesday after several tries, and on Thursday, Sharon and I met in Groove at 4 p.m. PST to try out its different features. We spent about 2 hours, the first 45 minutes on the phone and the rest communicating through the chat, and got a good general feeling about what Groove had to offer.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday our team members (Elli, Sharon and I) worked in wiki to polish our final presentation and published it on Sunday around 8 p.m. PST. Our wiki page is http://team4toolbox.pbwiki.com/Finished%20Doc and the password is team4. This was a very "hands on" activity using the wiki and gave me a much deeper understanding of its features and capabilities. It was an ideal tool for this collaborative midterm project!
On a side note: I just noticed after publishing this post that Blogger dated my post Saturday, the day I created the initial draft and not today, Sunday, when I finished my draft and was ready to publish it. I don't want to sound confusing: my writing talks about Sunday (today) but the publication is dated Saturday. Is there a way to change the date? I would appreciate any suggestions in this regard. Thank you.
1 comment:
Beatrice,
Your team has done an excellent job on the midterm. Here are my comments : First off – thank you for providing such a clear internet view of your work. Nicely organized, practical and graphically appealing.
Blogging as a tool:
Well said and complete with research strengths and challenges as well as associated learning objectives. Thank you for that! I would have also added blogging tools that are available and the main features, comparing accessibility and usability.
Groove tool:
Thank you for adding a screen shot. That was helpful for those who are not familiar with the software. I appreciate the thorough evaluation of the tool and especially appreciate the creative additions that you suggested.
You mention that it is less powerful for educational use, but as an educational administrator, I could definitely see advantages. There is a team of us that are continually (daily) creating collaborative documents and to have this Groove service, time could be saved.
Perhaps someday a majority of teachers will work as closely – collaboratively – sharing lesson, ideas and documents. Then Groove could serve them just as well, perhaps. Very clear, complete learning objectives associated with this tool.
Calendar tool:
Thank you for examining this tool – you are the first team to do this thus far in three classes. I see that you have applied the calendar tool as an aid in assessment through time management. I am wondering if assessment use couldn’t be even more creative. For example, often timelines are used to assess learning. What if a team was asked to create their project timeline using the calendar tool. If there is a place for notes, they could apply tasks to roles of team members in the notes section.
I’m sure you could come up with more ‘assessment’ uses. Please think more deeply about this.
Your efficient and effective teamwork is evident in the results of this project. Thank you for working together to create useful documents that ‘fit’ into your assessment toolbox – when you walk away from this course…and design your own. Well done!
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