PlanetUSF

I attended a webinar yesterday that covered an overview of AECT’s plans to participate in the 3d, virtual environment Second Life. My in-world persona (Cinead Allen) visited the new AECT building on EduIsland and mingled with the other participants of the webinar.

Included among AECT’s goals are:

• Creation of a social framework
• Support for research
• Extension of publications (to SL)
• Educational opportunities
• In-world convention events

The third part of the final project was creating a social navigation website. The purpose of the social navigation website project is to organize and publish hypermedia content. You will use digital communication tools to communicate your ideas. For this project, you will use file transfer protocol (FTP) to publish a website.

In my opinion, this project was a little confusing to me. I would recommend that you complete the Creating Bookmarks activity because you will need to know about bookmarks for this project. Additionally, you are required to make blogs for each project of the course about recommendations that might be helpful for others who will be taking this class. Make sure each of your posts are included in the EME2040 category and not left to Uncategorized. In additon, always make sure you type in the correct URL for any part of the project because it will not come up if one thing is incorrect.

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The second part of the final project was creating a Developmental Portfolio. The purpose of the Developmental ePortfolio is to relate each coursework throughout the semester with five of the National Technology Standards. It is used to show your progress toward understanding the five standards. The content within the developmental portfolio consists of your ideas and materials from the artifacts, activities, and projects that you have gathered from EME2040. These ideas and materials are applied to demonstrate your understanding of the five NETS_T standards.

For this project, it took me some time to think about which coursework throughout the semester relates to each of the five National Technology Standards. I sometimes found it hard to discuss my understanding of the standard and how the example I picked illustrates the standard.

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The first part of the final project was creating a Showcase Portfolio. For this project, you are required to submit an electronic copy of your professional portfolio, showcasing your best work. The work included in the portfolio is a creation of a technology supported lesson plan for students in PreK-12 classrooms using a Webquest design. In addition, this portfolio includes a personal philosophy of using technology in teaching and learning. This project gives you an opportunity to learn how to create an electronic portfolio in order for you to use it for employment purposes.

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The fifth project was creating your own webquest. A webquest is a lesson plan in which is set up for the students to use the Internet to research a topic, and they use digital technologies to communicate their thoughts on the information the students find. For this project, you will first use power point as a graphic organizer to outline your WebQuest and gather all the materials that you will use in the lesson plan into one file. After gathering all the materials and completing the power point organizer, you will construct your WebQuest wiki website.

When completing this project, make sure you learn about webquests and the structure of webquests because it is a different kind of lesson plan. In my opinion, I would choose a webquest from the samples and create a revised version of your chosen webquest to make it better. For my project, I decided to create my own webquest, and it was difficult to start, especially coming up with a theme. I really liked how we were required to use power point as a graphic organizer to outline the webquest. I thought that it was an excellent way to gather your information for your lesson plan. In addition, it was very easy to put all of the materials from your power point to the wiki page as the final part of the project. Make sure you use many design elements like color and contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity because it contributes to the learner understanding of the topic and grabs their attention to want to learn more about the topic. Additionally, make sure your lesson plan focuses on multiple aspects of the topic to meet the needs of diverse learners.

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The fourth project was creating a thematic resource webpage. For this project, you will search through different websites to find information on your assigned theme. When you have found information, you are required to take notes on your theme in NoteTaker. Additionally, you will be required to evaluate the websites using an excel shreadsheet. After evaluating your three websites, you are to create a new Wiki Webpage as a website resource for your assigned theme.

I found this project to be a little more difficult because you had to find three website resources for your assigned theme. When searching for different websites, I wanted to find three good and informative resources to use when creating a Wiki Webpage about my assigned theme. Make sure you take really good notes in NoteTaker to use when created the webpage because the notes are very important for this project.

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This is a trial podcast created in today’s workshop.

Test Audio File

This is a test post

I must admit the using both synchronous and asynchronous modes in the clss was unusual for me. I have taken tradional classes and classes that were totally asynchrosous. I think, that I almost prefer the asynchronous class better. I think that it is because I enjoy working alone and, to some extent, in relative isolation. Writing and commenting about others statements and comments under this system allows one to remain relatively anonymous.

Once you open the door to synchronous communication, the person at the other end of your commentary starts to take on form and shape and become a living, breathing, individual. That can be scary. Think about it, what seem relatively harmless could be impacting the lives of others. Your comments could be shaping their lives and philosophies. It is easy to think in isolation that only you are effected by your writings. This is not so, and we soon learn that others have substance and learn to value their ideas and personalities.

As a distance instructor I would chose to use Elluminate and Blackboard. This will provide the student with a virtual classroom which will enable them to participate in live discussions and therefore enhancing the distance learning experience. The class would be structured with quizzes, discussions and group projects. With Elluminate I would hold meetings with faculty, staff and students. Also conduct virtual office hours, workshops, peer tutoring and provide mentoring. My rationale for choosing Elluminate and Blackboard would be the institutional cost effective element as well as the student’s time management effective savings. Some barriers in implement Elluminate would be technological requirements not met or students lacking initiative to meet during the required times.

How awesome is this? That republican candidates would stand before us on youtube and discuss all sorts of good questions. I’m really happy to see this is possible and being done. Check it out, and remember to vote:

http://youtube.com/republicandebate

Why is it that amazing stuff gets dropped at my feet when I’m supposed to be working?

Well, everyone knows that animes are a little weird. If you’ve heard of “dragon ball Z”, then you know of its overt ‘power’ theme, that people and critters of all sorts can wield the ability to fly, conjure massive blasts of energy from their fingertips, right? Well, in one case, a character in the anime series who had really red lips (I forget the details here, people), apparently offended someone as looking racist. and that spiralled into someone blacking the anime character’s face out and giving them super red lips and captioning the image “Shoop da woop”. Well, in the anime, as I said, the power theme took over, and within a little time, people had drawn the anime character shooting laser beams out of its mouth (with the black face, bulging eyes, and red lips).

Fast forward a little time, and apparently now the fad is to black out someone’s face, put a gaping mouth with red lips on them, and bulging eyes… shooting lasers. All this from an anime that offended someone because they thought it looked racist. The hilarity is how well someone has abused the fad, producing two animated shorts that left me paralyzed in laughter, and completely blew my research time out of the water. I’m now staggering around, wondering how I’m going to finish this paper because I had to research this all out instead… I wish I had done “4chan” as my rhetorical analysis project… but please, for the love of all things holy, don’t ever go to 4chan unless you want to be more than offended. I refuse to link 4chan, as well. I simply am not going to ruin your mind. But the youtube videos rule.

Here’s the videos, for the curious:

Lazer collection: part one

Lazer Collection: part two

The videos are surprisingly hilarious, but realize they are noisy, so turn down your speakers. The first video ends with the green anime figure that started the whole thing. I have no idea why it’s funny.

I think it goes back to why the kitty cat song (warning! that link is also very noisy!) is funny.

I want to teach a course on internet fad and meme history. I think it would be so hilarious, most people would go catatonic after experiencing the wealth of silliness.

This project is to put everything that you have done in the class together into one giant project. This will prove that you have learned the main goals of the course. It should also reflect your final grade. You should follow the directions precisely and if you have any, I mean any questions, you need to ask, in order for you to get everything correct.

Always do your best!

The purpose of this project is to demonstrate that you understand five of the six National technology Standards.
This portfolio also shows my progress toward understanding and demonstrating the application of each of those standards in my work.

This part of the final project is very complicated. You have to pay attention to detail and what the instructions say it can get tricky.

This project brings all of the other projects together and creates one big project. It is best that you attend class and get help when you need it. If you fall behind on this project, you will have a hard time catching up.

Project 5

P_4 project is mainly about creating another excel spreadsheet that evaluates websites and wiki pages. This will help you when you have to create your own wiki. It will set a standard for you and will ease everything.
Project 4

I’m well aware of the excellent Rufus Reid interview videos at jazzdoublebass.com, but was not aware of last month’s article at allaboutjazz.com. Rufus is a giant among bass players. His book, “The Evolving Bassist” taught countless jazz bassists how to fulfill their role in an ensemble.

If you study consistently and are thorough, you should know when you are in control. All members in the group desire a positive, confident and consistent posture by the bassist. The desired musician has what everyone wants and needs to make the ensemble the best.

I’ve heard Rufus say it in person, and he repeats it here: The bassist has the power to destroy an otherwise excellent ensemble.

When one says they are a jazz bassist, it is assumed they know how to ‘swing’, can play the ‘blues and rhythm changes’, know numerous standards and jazz tunes, can play fast, can play in any key well, etc. Those attributes become crystal clear rather quickly if they are, in fact, under control. Your musical savvy is known immediately or not.

I’ve spent plenty of times fooling myself into thinking I possessed these qualities only to be called out for not having my “stuff” together. It’s humiliating and can be a real turning point is a musician’s career - it was in mine. I’m still working on getting it together and have appreciated direct help from Mr. Reid in doing so.

In the article, Reid outlines four important facets of effective jazz bass playing:

PULSE
SATISFY
CLARITY
RECALL

“The pulse is intangible to the touch but can be felt incredibly when executed properly.”

“When the bassist plays a song ‘a cappella’, one should be able to render the melody and harmony as suggested by the music. ”

“All bassists must be clear to one’s self before one can be truly clear to our listeners.”

“(It) is the player’s choice to respond or not, but actually hearing the event go by while you are doing what is expected of you is the important thing to establish a musical thread throughout the group.”

Please do youself a favor and read the whole article. In the meantime, I’ll include the www.jazzdoublebass.com videos here:

P_3 project is mainly about assessing lesson plans and creating your own. With the excel spreadsheet, you will have easy access and spend less time preparing the lesson plans. This project is worth all that you can take out of it. The use of the excel spreadsheet will benefit you throught your life, not only in makeing and preparing lesson plans.

Project 3”

P_2 project was also very simple. If you follow the step by step instructions, you will have no problems in constructing your own powerpoint presentation.

Project 2”

The P_1 project is pretty basic. If you understand why teachers are in the classroom then you will have no problem creating your own teaching philosophy.

Project 1”

So, I have been hammered so bad I can’t do church stuff tonight.

I’m supposed to be doing a 10 page paper right now. And I just finished a project early today. I have 2 minutes to submit a review of my lab partners. And I did a paper revision on Tuesday. I also have a presentation tomorrow, and I’m going to be working nonstop on getting up to spec with my data structs assignment which is due soon too.

Please. Shoot me.

So… I walked into data structs on Monday. About 15 minutes late, because I thought it was a normal day. Yep. How wrong I was. Everyone was buckled over in their chairs, doing the second midterm. I sorta slipped into the room… did a modest “Yea, I completely forgot about this” audible cough. And then split the paper in two with my mind. And by split, I mean “scrawled across it with the grace of a madman”.

*sigh* Every semester, I do this at least three times on several exams. When will I learn?

Also, I did art for my wiki entry on data structures. I guess I’ll post those.

Assessing and evaluating websites was a key part in deciding which website was formed correctly. I looked at important factors such as: Authority, Accuracy, Appropriateness, and Design. There are many important questions to look at when assessing and evaluating websites.

Project 4