Reflection on Group Project2

Just like Group Project One, our group had finished the second project successfully on this Wednesday night. There’s a minor imperfection, which is the pity that our group did not get to meet together. Charity was right, we should have informed our group members earlier so five of us could meet together, and this could be definitely improved in our next Group Project, which was planned on Sunday evening.

This time we get to experienced both audio and video function of telecommunication. We used Voice Board as well as Wimba to communicate with each other around the topic of how these functions could be used in our classroom. Besides a little time waiting for Wimba to set up and a little experience of bumping into each other’s voice when we talk, everything else went along very well. I enjoyed discussing with group members on the topic, which made me felt I was really in a class. This is something I never felt before during last semester when I had online classes. We tested different functions like talk, video, hand-raising and so on. “Live classroom was really alive”. We exchanged out ideas and comment on each other’s ideas. As to the possible use of such technology in our classrooms or would-be classroom, we came up with these ideas individually:

Roslyn: online classes can be lonely without the synchronous part. This would allow more connection to the class. It helps solve the problem of distance – we can still meet as a class without traveling to campus.

Rongfei: Wimba is good practice for hearing and listening to another language. Communicating with students in other countries, learning each others' languages is more effective than just listening to tapes in that language. According to the Communicative Learning Theory (CLT) in language teaching pedagogy, communicative situations make language learners to respond the incoming information and so the received information could be verified and confirmed, it is a good way to test whether the learner had understand the informing information. After responding, language learners will get subsequent information confirming their responding, so it's also good practice for their speaking skills. It is much better using Wimba than using tapes to practice students' listening skills because they could not communicative.

Tim: the voice board could be used to “turn in” recitations in a foreign language class or speeches in a public speaking class. Roslyn noted that Wimba could be used for small-group and one-on-one interviews, for assessment purposes in a business setting (could work for academics as well). Wimba could also be used, as Dr. Wang did, for a classroom chat with an outside expert (either in a face to face class in a computer lab, or in an online class, where everyone's together virtually).

Charity and Elois: there were several difficulties using Live Classroom and voice Board but agreed that it would not be suitable in a K12 classroom environment. Because some student may not have access to the equipment that is needed in order to participate in the online classroom activates (cameras, microphones, and computers). Also everyone has to be at their systems at the same time and some may not be available or able to access at the same time.

Artifact: Project 2 Report

Reflection on IT648 Group Project One

Our group set the time to have met and collaborated on Group Project One this week. The project was to experience Google's some new services such as Google chat based on Gmail, and play with it a little bit to see whether and how it could be used in our educational activities.

Our worked turned out to be pretty good, although there were some problems. The chatting went very smoothly, it was synchronous, and message was sent to each other without any delay. At first Roslyn, Tim and I had been chatting with each other and later other group members joined. We tried different things like one-to-one chat, group chat and we also tried video and audio chat, although that did not get to work eventually. We did some trouble-shooting and our estimate was because the software/driver Google requires to install was incompatible with some of our computer systems. Also, there are no video/audio chatting options in the Group chat Window.

As to the usage in Education, we reached some consensus about Google chats Educational use. To me, I have been interested in language teaching and learning all the time, so the first question I thought about was how Google chat could be used to facilitate international students’ English learning. The immediate thing came to my mind was to use Google chat connect students from different countries in different culture and educational settings, how ever, this feature of Google chat itself does not stands out compared with other international chatting softwares such Skype. However, Google chat is surprisingly bounded to its Email service, such combination of both synchronous and asynchronous feature was its highlights, which made communication more efficient, meanwhile, its recording functions is more convenient than other chatting softwares if users need to review their chatting records to assess their language practice.

Tim generalized our discussed points to a concise list on its problem, vantage and usage, and I added some on it before Roslyn asked us to assemble our scholarly paragraphs into the final documents. I post the concise list we first devised here as the reflection points on this project:

Good points:

• Convenient/always available from any web browser via Gmail, no downloading required (for text chat);
• An Email-communication revolution, combined functions of Email, listserv, IM, and SNS into one;
• Chat works pretty well;
• Record keeping, convenient for notes taking;
• It is easy and convenient for instructor to find out who are active and who are silent in a online discussion class.

Problems:

• It's easy to get confused with several windows going at the same time, especially if they have some of the same people talking in them;
• Inviting could be confusing (hard to remember who was invited and who started the chat. Also, having to scroll up to the top is not a very elegant solution, especially if the chat has been going on for a long time)
• Not well suited to having large numbers of people chatting at once (a dedicated chat program like Xchat does that better).
• Had trouble getting Voice and Video to work (the software wouldn't install on Tim's older XP machine).
• Users have to wait for responses sometimes, and some users got off automatically occasionally and have to be invited again.

Uses:

• Small group discussions (especially for groups who are working on a project together)
• Virtual office hours (for one-on-one or small group conferences)
• Discussion class on a certain topic for a small class

Artifacts: Project One Report

Walk On

It was really disorganized scrambling before I really could finish up everything that was supposed to be finished at the beginning of this summer semester, and sit down in such a hot Mississippi Friday summer morning to start updating my blog. It's a very short semester, it is supposed to be like this busy and pushing.

It was not until I read other peers' blogging did I realize I still haven't posting anything talking about myself. I have been here for almost half an year, which includes a whole semester, and have been taken several of the Instructional Technology courses. In two of Dr. Wang's classes, I used created course blogs like this, but failed to keep the blog going very well. It is new semester, and I thought it might be good to just combine these blogs into one and keep it moving forward. With Dr. Wang's approval, I combined the two course blogs into one and named it "My Educational Technology Road". I used to read a lot of professional's blogs in this field, both written in Chinese as well as English, and I was really amazed by their experience and sensitivity to find new things in education. I thoguth maybe one day I might be experienced in this field and become "somewhat" knowledgable about this field, and then be able to blog like that, like a real scholar. And hence I am setting this little blog here, wishing it could advance like that.

I have been living in China for the past 23 years before I flew to the US and started the academic journey. I just read Roslyn's blog about "when I grew up" and was interested because I have always been amazed by my realizing the notion that life is an amazing journey, you never know where the next stop is gonna be, even though you may plan a lot. I used to devote myself into find arts and thought I might become a painter when I grew up. And when I was old enough the world had already been changed a lot by technology, especially in such a skyrocketingly developing country. Lots of professional no longer draw and paint with brushes and canvas, but with their laptop, digital tablet, and Photoshop. There were even more room and posilibities for them to actulize their fancy imagination, even though in such a 15-inch-wide screen. I was fascinated in digital arts, in graphic design, photography and digital painting. I then thought maybe I could possibly become a digital artist, or graphic designer.

Like I said, life is just like an amazing journey and you never know where the next stop is gonna possibly be (I just realized it's a little alike to Forrest Gump's famous movie lines). It is really amazing that I am now being a graduate student in another country and exploiting my journey within the academia, instead of sitting in my studio doing the graphic work. I do have bewilderment sometimes for this is really a new journey, a journey I did not expected when I was a little boy (I used to read slowly, did mathmatics slowly, did not have good memories and could only spend a lot of time to keep up my academic records). However, I am delighted to alwasy keep walking on on this journey, even though there might be obstacles. We

just need a little spirit to face them. U2 has a song named Walk On, I like it a lot. It reminds me what to do when I may sometimes become frustrated.

I set this blog as the official course blog for IT 648, and meanwhile a documentary for my such academic journey.

And P.S., I enjoying stay here in the United States, this is part of my new journey, too. I especially enjoy the flowers, nice people and the sunsets here, they're just so beautiful.

An Identity-Reflection on Learning Flash

Moore’s explanation on the relationship between the flash part and the instructional design part could be viewed as a thumbnail of the general reflection on an instructional technologist role, to the extent that we seek to know both technology and educational theories. This triggered a question that I have been pondering for a while. This is a question that I have discussed with Dr. Wang, that yet still sometimes entangles me.

One of my former teachers in college was very good at technology. He graduated from a prestigious university in central China and holds a Master’s degree on CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning). He is good at Flash and programming, he could even solve programming problems for faculty from the CS department. I admired him a lot as to his technology competence. Yet as we discussed about this, he told me that he could not survive like that because he’d been devoting to technology so much that he was not able to publish paper. On the other hand, we know a lot of educational technology professors who publish intensively actually know little about operating softwares and hands-on experience in developing instructional programs.

We are learning Flash now. We all want to, as I assume, create awesome projects with this software. That absolutely takes time. And there are tons of softwares and programming languages and different hard ware technology that could be used in education, such as Flash/ActionScript, virtual reality technology (3D Max, Maya), web development (HTML/ASP.NET/PHP), database (SQL Server/Oracle), telecommunication, film/video editing and making (Premiere/After Effect), etc. These technologies could take years of our life to learn and master.

The definition for our field (Educational Technology, AECT) used several words concerning technology, like manage, utilize, evaluate and so on. What do we actually do with technologies then? Do we learn them well, or just dabble a little bit? Do we just evaluate them, or evaluate them after mastering them? So to what degree do we need master these technologies and how do we choose to allocate our time as a graduate student in this field?

What then, is our role as an educational technologist, compared with technology expert (like Flash programmer, courseware developer, etc.)? Will they be like us if they learn some instructional design theories and learning theories? So may I tend to believe that we are supposed to shape ourselves into generalists rather than specialists (because we need to dabble into so many fields)?

The Difference between Graphic Design and Desktop Publishing

The Difference between Graphic Design and Desktop Publishing

By Rongfei Geng

 

Desktop publishing (also known as DTP) combines a personal computer and WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) page layout software to create publication documents on a computer for either large scale publishing or small scale local multifunction peripheral output & distribution (Wikipedia, 2007).

While the main focus of DTP is to publish and the page’s layout design, lets take a look at how Graphic Design is defined:

The term graphic design can refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines which focus on visual communication and presentation. Various methods are used to create and combine symbols, images and/or words to create a visual representation of ideas and messages. A graphic designer may use typography, visual arts and page layout techniques to produce the final result. Graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated (Wikipedia, 2007).

 

Despite some overlapping key words like “page layout”, “typography”, “design”, it is still not hard to discern that DTP focus on combine information together using computer softwares, serving the final purpose to print; yet graphic is to communicate with visual designs, which does not necessarily serve printing purpose. I generalize the main difference as the following points:

 

1. Importance attached on the word “publish” and “desktop”: Although graphic design do include the skills and the producing-process for create a publication, its main focus and function is not limited within it. It also covers some non-publishing products like a web-age banner design or a illustration design. DTP use skills that have also been covered by the Graphic Design area to generate publications and focus on how these publications would look like after PRINTING. Also, DTP contains the key words “desktop”, which mean using computer softwares like InDesign, Pagemaker, Photoshop etc. Yet there could surely be some possibility that a graphic design is executed manually.

 

2. Extent to which the artistic competence are needed: Although skills like typography and using color are needed in both fields, DTP focus on how to deal with different elements (text, images, solid color shapes, lines) and arrange them in a page’s layout, while graphic design may delve into a specific shape, the color of a icon, how the meaning are conveyed through a concrete pattern, how to use lines to compose a logo, or even more abstract expressions using visuals. To put it simply, the former requires less artistic competence than the latter.

 

3. Different practitioners and different products these two filed yield: DTP is being practiced by designers and non-designers, this fact is consistent with what point 2 illustrates. While graphic designers are undertaken by those who had received professional fine art training, DTP is available for all the publishing practitioners like a newspaper editor, a teacher, a military officer who want to provide some information to his soldiers, a restaurant manager, and so forth. And the products what DTP yields are primarily “newsletters, brochures, ads, posters, greeting cards, and other projects into digital files for desktop or commercial printing” (About.com). The graphic design, however, produce patterns and logos(that could be used in an ad or a poster), color themes, font-type designs, PowerPoint templates, user-interface, or the covers of magazines and journals.

 

 

 

References

 

[1] Desktop publishing, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Publishing

[2] Graphic design, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphic_design

[3] About.com, Jacci Howard Bear: What is the Difference Between Graphic Design and Desktop Publishing? http://desktoppub.about.com/od/professional/f/gd_vs_dtp.htm