Session 5: New Media

A review of two new media tools, one that would support a described eLearning activity and one that would not support that same activity with a discussion about the differences between the two tools that make on suitable and one unsuitable to support your described activity.

SUPPORTIVE MEDIA

Media	Blog
URL	www.WordPress.com (www.faithtime.me)
Review -Features -Characteristics -Media Theory -Compare LMS	DEVELOPING THE BLOG Just prior to returning to the IT program, in December 2014, I found myself seaching for an online platform where I could make course material available to students. I knew, I needed a place where students could interact by posting and commenting on each others work. For sure, I did not want to build a website, I then remember about a blog I kept on Wordpress as part of a church website. During the course of my investigation, I was also starting my ETEC 541 course where Dr. Newberry, the instructor, required we post our assignments on a blog. For ETEC 541, I decided to use www.blogger.com. I felt blogger was easier to use and less complicated, for it seemed to have less features than Wordpress did. Experiencing the simplicity of Blogger, I understood that using it to build the virtual classroom were slim. That alone encouraged me to opt for Wordpress. As I began to use Wordpress to build the interactive platform I envisioned, I realized, this blog had enough features, that I could make it into almost a website. I did. I use the pages, to post different information about the class and also the students.  Wordpress gave me option of choosing which page would be the active blog, I decided to place the student blog as the third tab on the menu, making the first HOME, a static page with a welcome message, the second tab ABOUT, which gives an explanation of why the blog exists, and third, the BLOG, which is the only "active page". OTHER FEATURES Other features, I felt I needed to integrate on this eLearning-blog, were a link to an online gradebook, a link to information about the instructor, and the course documents. Knowing, ahead of time, half of my students, a) were non English speaker, and most of them, if not all, had never blogged, I knew I did not want them to have to upkeep their own blog. Therefore I decided to make a tab for "mini profiles". As part of the initial assignment, students were to email me or text me a picture of themselves and a one paragraph information they wanted to share about themselves. With this information I created a series of subpages that introduced the "authors of the blog". The last tab on the blog is a resource page. Unknowingly , I was attempting to replicate a LMS/CMS system. I used my knowlegde and experience as an educator, and set out to build an online space where I would be able to interact, grade, and provide a student to student interaction for my pupils. Another reason I knew, I had to have an online "meeting space" and not only rely on physical, real time meetings, is that my students live in different places from Whittier, CA to San Diego,CA, to Indio,CA to El Salvador in Central America. In developing this personal assignment, I came to understand that blogs differed from webpages in that, blogs did not allow me to upload documents, except images. Wordpress does offer other features including storage space, for a fee. Knowing that I had free storage on Google docs, I decided to not spend money on purchasing storage space, instead, I purchased a domain name: www.faithtime.me to replace the free domain www.jennylopezbc.wordpress.com. SUPPORT TO eLEARNING Using a blog, as a means to deliver instruction, allowed me to accomplished the following objectives: i. Student-Instructor Interaction I gave feedback to students on their posts, and provided course documents, and other resources in the form of audio file, google docs, or online links to more information regarding the course topics. ii. Student-Content Interaction Students had access to all course material, including syllabus, course schedule, online forms, google documents, lectures in the form of mp3 files, powerpoint presentation of each class session. I also included a list of online resources and readings. iii. Student-Student Interaction Inevitably, students learned to blog...some, only using their cell phones, and as the course required, they also posted two comments every two weeks. Some students posted more than others, but most of them did what was required. The online student-Student interaction also had a real-life impact on the relationships these specific learners formed. Most of the students, did not know each other, other than being informally greeting or seeing each other at church during Sunday service. Another factor that I would like to mention is the age range of the students; 18 year old- early 60's. A few of the younger students took it upon themselves to learn Wordpress in order to help the rest of the group during their required study sessions. The dynamics of the group changed. Everyone turned into a valuable resource, the youth became a technical support to the older students, and the older students, in a way stood as spiritual mentors to the younger students who approached them to hear on their input for Biblical interpretation and life experiences. On the blog, you will see, interaction between Spanish blogger and English posts and viceversa. HIGHLIGHT Building a strong student-student interaction was key to the success of this course. I, in the Student-Instructor, became a resource of clarification of content and assignments. Content was always available to them online. I would say, I could not have been able to teach and accomplished the objective of the course without the experience the student-student support and communication created.
Critique -supports eLearning?	I mentioned above, my reason why choosing Wordpress over Blogger. As a designer, I had many more options and extra tools that suited my design. My students on the other hand felt so overwhelm trying to figure out how to login, and to accept my invitation to become an author. When registering onto Wordpress means a list of things to do, 1. by registering the new user also gets a blog, that they have to set up, even if they will not use it. 2. In order to start posting, my students had to receive an invitation from my blog. 3. Also if they wanted their own picture to appear of their comments, they had to also register with gavatar.com, other wise they get a generic avatar. 4. Another frustration was for students to post on the right blog. It is was confusing and many of my students ended up posting their assignments on their personal blog.  Due to may experience, I would say a generic Wordpress blog is conducive of learning and delivering information online, and a great place to create or host student-student interaction as long as there is enough technical support for the blogger. Here are some of the student evaluation of the course.

* After investigating more about Wordpress, and blogs design for educators, I came across the following blogs:
-edublogs.org
-Wordpress teacher plugings
-kidblog.org
I also found this Blog Platform Comparison Chart, useful for future educational blogs.

Media	GroupMe is a mobile group messaging app owned by Microsoft. It was launched in May 2010 by the private company GroupMe. In August 2011, GroupMe delivered over 100 million messages each month. By June 2012, that number had jumped to 550 million. Wikipedia
URL	www.https://app.groupme.com/chats
Review -Features -Characteristics -Media Theory -Compare LMS	About three weeks into our Bible counseling course, one of the students, introduced me to a phone application, where she was created a group chat for the class! For me, Groupme, meant easier access to everyone. For example, the few times, I needed to communicate with the students, I had to text, because most of them do not use email. I would text iphone user with my macbook using text it to Android users with my iphone...it was time consuming. Groupme is an app available to both iphones and Android devices, even computers. After joining the Groupme chat, I was able to see informal interaction among the students, and read (in real time) about issues they were facing, and how they helped and encouraged each others. I was also able to push Power Points presentations, Youtube videos, and or other course documents they would not have accessed if I would have emailed them. Groupme gave my students and myself an opportunity to interact without the formality and rigor of the blog.
Critique -supports eLearning?	A downside to using this app, was the fact that not all my students were willing to learn to use it. Out of my 21 students, about 14 did use it, and the rest did not. For some, it was because of the type of internet service they had, the app would not load or get the messages, others just did not want to deal with another "login process".

NON-SUPPORTIVE MEDIA

Media	Social Media
URL	http://www.facebook.com (https://www.facebook.com/Ministeriosfuerzayhonor)
Review -Features -Characteristics -Media Theory -Compare LMS	When I read the task for this session, I knew of the tool that would not support eLearning: Facebook. My strong reasoning included: it is only seen as a social network, too much of a distraction for any formal learning to actually occur, limited features. More than anything I could not equate fun to academics, or at least, did not want to see the two together. I printed a few articles, to see what others have done with Facebook and eLearning. This is what I found: According "Findings on Facebook in higher education: A comparison of college faculty and student uses and perceptions of social networking sites" As of 2010, higher education had been tapping into Facebook in one way or another. There at least three categories where higher education had turned to Facebook: Library uses, Faculty uses and Administrative uses. The librarian at Georgia Tech reported an estimate of about 1,300 students were on Facebook. Facebook is the way the librarian and the students communicate. A study by Mazer, Murphy, and Simonds in 2007 showed that about 297,000 Facebook users identified themselves as faculty or staff. Faculty of higher education perceive Facebook as a communication tool. I also read a blog by David M. Perry, an associate professor of history at Dominican University, in Illinois. In his post Go Where the Students Are: Facebook, he shares his experience using Facebook as a mean to promote student-student interaction and students-content interaction. His findings are positive. As he concludes, he states that whether Facebook remains where his students are or not, he will continue striving to identify and adapt to the social media the students migrate to. Facebook page with class blog posts After reading Perry's experience, I realized that my Faithtime blog also had a link to Facebook. Though I had not officially created a Facebook group for the class, every post to the blog was also published on my Facebook pages. As a result most of the students in class also became Facebook friends. The shared the blog posts of fellow classmates on their own Facebook pages.
Critique -supports eLearning?	I still see Facebook as a light tool in eLearning, in my case, it did promote our student-student interaction, in conjunction with the blog and the Groupme App.