Reflecting on the Journey: General Thoughts

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My eldest son is turning 5 in a few weeks. This milestone birthday- that signifies the start of school, the loosing of baby teeth, the loss of my baby- has me feeling very sentimental. Every sideways smile and giggle makes me overflow with love for my children these days. However, as all parents know, the complete opposite can be true. There are those days we count down the hours till bed-time; days when our kids make us want to pull out our hair and scream in despair. My Technology Journey mirrors my parenting journey. This inquiry project for LIBE 477 has had its moments of elation, when I felt pure joy at learning something new, and those of frustration, when I felt like chucking my lap top out the window (a familiar feeling as documented in my Autobiography of a Technology User). 

Image 3: Autobiography of a Technology User

I stated in my Project Proposal at the beginning of this journey, “My main purpose in taking LIBE 477 is to push myself in the area of technology.” Pushing can be painful. I identified the area of technology as one of my weaknesses during LIBE 461 and intentionally took this elective course, before my required courses, to remedy this. I am pleased to report that my husband recently remarked how he has noticed a transformation in my confidence levels when it comes to technology. This confidence has brought with it a new attitude towards problem solving technology hiccups.  This journey also leaves me with a new wealth of knowledge and a host of new tools to improve my teaching. Just as with parenting, in the end the pain is worth it!

At the beginning of the course, I was excited but equally intimated about entering unknown territory. I was pleasantly surprised in my explorations using Web 2.O tools such as Voicethread, Voki, Animoto, and Xtranormal how user friendly many of these tools are. In hindsight, this makes sense, as these sites need users to be sustainable. In all these tools, I found the formulaic 3 or 4 step process marked clearly with picture icons intuitively easy to navigate. The best part was the pay off- often for minimal effort. In particular, I love the way my Technology Mascot Voki and Art Animoto turned out; they were final products I shared with everyone and anyone who showed the least bit of interest. The ease of using these tools coupled with the strong final products definitely helped build my confidence level and motivated me to want to explore more.

Although, many of these tools are designed to be easy to use, it is inevitable that you encounter road blocks. The first for me was not knowing how to embed the Voki I had made onto my blog. Picture icons did not provide enough knowledge. I needed more detailed instructions. I found these in an online web tutorial posted by two middle school boys; this was a humbling experience for me. Lesson Learned: Now, if I don’t know how to do something web related, I Google it! 

I also encountered glitches in the tools themselves- a login loop with Voki and having my text repeatedly freeze while using Xtranormal. In the past, these types of hiccups would have made me easily feel like giving up; by nature, I am the type of person who feels like I need to have all the right answers and wants results right away. I had to practice problem solving with a new attitude in this course. After trial and error, I realized that certain tools worked better with certain browsers. For example,Voki works better in Firefox, while Xtranormal works more efficiently using Internet Explorer. Although I don’t understand the why of it all, I have gained the ability to problem solve better when it comes to technology related issues. This has been a great personal accomplishment for me and has opened me up to learning more about technology. 

Reflecting on my children’s growth and going through the process of trying something very challenging myself, reminded me of one of my all-time favorite Sesame Street clips, a formative message that I re-learned through this process- try and try again!

 

Avatars: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

DoppelMe Esther

I first encountered an avatar on the Pacific ChristianSchool Library website during a site search for LIBE 461. I didn’t know what it was and couldn’t fathom how to make one, but thought it was super cool. I now know an avatar is a graphical likeness that is designed to represent one self or another character. I was excited to explore this tool more and began by looking at Voki and DoppelMe.

To briefly compare the sites, DoppelMe is much more limited in capabilities than Voki. These avatars are static and do not speak. They look more like cartoons and require “coins” to purchase certain attire and accessories. While DoppelMe was very easy to use and the product I created was cute, I preferred what Voki had to offer.

Voki is a free site and only requires that you register to be able to publish the avatars you create. The process is very use-friendly, labelled with picture icons for the various steps including selecting a character, accessories, background, and voice.

There are many options in each category and you are even able to tailor choices by adjusting such things as face width, eye color etc. The voice function allows you to add your own voice or type what you wish the avatar to say, then choose from a large number of voices with different pitches, accents, and even languages to say your text. I easily followed the steps to create an avatar that I feel really resembles me- now posted as the welcome to this blog. The process of creating the avatar was easy and fun. The challenge came when it was time to publish.

The first obstacle I encountered was a login loop. Every time I tried to login, in order to enable publishing, I was redirected to another login screen and visa versa.  After some frustration and good advice from my LIBE 477 professor, I tried using another server, switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox and the problem was resolved.

The next obstacle was attempting to embed my avatar onto my blog. I am new to blogging, so began my trying to copy the URL provided on the Voki site to the embed my own gadget function on the blog, as I could not figure out which category Voki fell under from the list of gadget choices. After attempting a number of other things, I sought help from the techies in my life and fellow classmates. When none of their suggestions resulted in success, I did what every smart, adult, individual does when they have a problem- I Googled it!

Really, I should have started with this solution because my first hit was a You tube video by two boys who appear to be about 11, doing a step by step tutorial of how to upload your Voki to your blog. The piece I was missing: I had to use the HTML/Javascript gadget. I followed their instructions and voila- immediate success! Upon reflecting on this, I laughed; as the answer to my question did not come from the adults in my life experienced with technology, but rather from two young students!

I am a democratic educator who believes that I am not meant to be the distributor of all knowledge, but rather the facilitator of learning. However, this event still humbled me and served as a  reminder that technology is definitely an area where I do not and probably never will have the edge up on my students and that’s okay. In fact, it’s a good thing to turn the tables and make kids the experts sometimes, reminding us that we are a community of learners on the journey together. I am often intimated that as a TL I am expected to be a technology leader, this drives me to learn more. But this experience taught me that I don’t have to have all the answers- I just need to know where to find them!

Applications for education

It is interesting as I begin exploring various Web 2.0 tools that most sites have a section for educators. This is true of Voki with a whole section dedicated to lesson plans of how to use Voki in the classroom. These lessons range in topic from science, social studies, art, language arts, can be searched for by grade level and topic, and seem quite inventive. They at least offer a starting point from which teachers could develop how to use Vokis with their students.

I would consider using Voki with my Grade 8 art students. They do a painting project where they model a work after a famous painting. This requires they research the artist and create a very short, one paragraph biography of them. The students could easily make a Voki of their artist and have them present the info as an autobiography. Or students could make Vokis of themselves describing the key elements of the art work they selected and why they chose it.

One day in class, I had a group of boys finish a project early and tested this idea by having them create a Voki of Leonardo da Vinci for the school art blog. They had a blast doing this, breezing through the process without my help (until the publishing part), and actually learned a few facts about da Vinci along the way. They chose a heavy Italian accent as the voice, which suits the character, but makes it difficult to hear that da Vinci is praising the students at VCS for being “artistic geniuses”. You can view the boys da Vinci at the VCS Art Blog.

             

All in all, I learned that creating avatars is much easier than I expected it would be.Voki is a very user friendly site that could easily be used by lower intermediate to upper secondary students. It is a very fun tool to use, reminiscent of creating a Wii character, but one that can move and talk. I see it a great option for students and teachers to personalize blogs or websites, and as another means by which students could present their learning. I will definitely continue to use avatars in my own teaching practice and am excited that my Technology Journey now has a mascot!