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| Graduation is Near |
Well, I completed my project with Chase Bank interested in not only my project, but my topic area, which I felt I had reason to use in my near future. Too often we focus on our portfolio to finish our degree and forget we need a job in our new career field after we graduate. My hope with this topic - Career Portfolio was to raise awareness to those in Lyn's class who, like me, will be graduating this December and face the "now what?" questions.
I reflected a lot on what was right or wrong with my project- I think I am glad the project had hiccups and detours because I learned more than I expected about my approach to social media. I went from the panicked "I can't do Twitter" person to being followed by people not just in our class. I actually love the contacts I have made on Twitter and have been working on my Twitter resume-portfolio so I can add to my course project materials. I also found the discussions on Twitter - a few conferences I linked into, were great fun and networking treasures.
But alas, our semester closes and we all move on. In the words of one of my favorite TV stars - Carol Burnett..."I so glad we had this time together". I will continue this blog as I find more social media and other interesting eLearning information. I hope to hear from you if you pass by my Blog. It has been fun.
Creating the material in a website format was only step one, restricting it to be a "phone" view website and link it to Lyn's weekly email assignments was quite different as the students then were directed to Mahara's e portfolio non-school related freeware - foliofor.me ( http://foliofor.me/ ) to create a personal account or to About.me for the next step - the creating a portfolio or bio.
Although my hiccup with Moodle proved to cost me time and my original plan, the beta testing using the website alternative was great experience in redoing a plan based on learner's habits. Accessing my assignment by way of an email sent to their phones, the majority of students then accessed the website by their cellphone and could build their portfolios or bios by way of the links with their phones too. I was impressed. However, for those not enrolled in Lyn's course/my beta test group, you can only see this material in pieces - website then find foliofor.me on your own...
But it gave me great sense of social communication as alternatives for developing course project materials for the "cellphone" learning generation. I also see this over previous methods of using PowerPoint or Prezi for online lectures or material that the students usually skip or never review due to it not "fitting" on their phones.
I even motivated Lyn to consider a few of her "original lecture- ideas" and project assignments to be moved into a similar use of a website overview of a topic, then linked to an actual project using a cellphone as the "computer". By doing this, it allows her to keep ownership of her course based materials and gives her students a take-away product, not tied to the college student accounts or Blackboard passwords, yet easy to show on their phones.
Most loved that their portfolios or bios were linkable to their Facebook or other social media too...that was biggest comment...I am now moving onto other people I know professionally or socially in LinkedIn to try out my email based course or to view the website course on their cellphones or tablets for feedback. Longer term, I want to find out how to host it all together on VoiceThread (which costs) as a total three part course and allows discussion boards and galleries for students to share projects views. I am working on my Learnest version, but wanted to make sure I made the deadlines with my first test of this idea.
In my research in a number of classes, I have kept coming back to cellphones for educational use in courses for third world countries or places where access to computers is limited, but never thought about developing my materials for delivery onto cellphones, then computers. How you develop, write, and design is very different. Can't be too wordy - must have clear narrative, build upon previous topic, be organized, and most of all be bite sized- to the point seconds.
None are my best qualities ...but I believe that cellphone course designs are important to us all to have in mind when developing materials - as one of the learners told me, "who has time?" Condensing my material was hard. But the course runs fast...and within thirty minutes, the learner has a portfolio started or /and a bio too that they can link anywhere, all from their cellphone.
I released my course live at : http://careerportfolio101.weebly.com and hope to hear from those beyond the Triton students. I tried to fix a few issues that occurred and found the free website experience to be interesting. Definitely limited in what was available and I didn't adjust code, although you can I found out.
I would consider this for those who want something quick and have materials pre-created as making pages from scratch was harder as the pages sometimes freeze and you lose everything. Still getting data from the testers, as deadline was to Tuesday due to holiday and their other homework.
My learning curves have been steeper than expected for my "simple" lesson plan sketch. Deciding to use the available social media available and easy to use tools, I decided to try Weebly for my website development. Translating my sketches into their system has been interesting. More back three to five steps than forward, but I have gained more interest in my subject as a course than expected. In fact, I bounced up to 3rd on Google searches....making me feel more pressure than ever.
I have a class of 26 students at Triton College as volunteers taking my course which will give me more information than needed...and I have over 200 requests from those seeing my first beta version test which was up less than 50 minutes early Friday morning (1am). I am creating a survey assessment to get better responses and will post my finished links later when this is more perfected.
I must say this topic is very limited in actual current material on the web which surprised me. Nothing like picking a "hot" topic before it is "HOT"... I just thought it would be nice to try. I must say I hate being both the SME and designer...I find myself getting too involved in the material and perfecting it than focusing on following my learning strategy plans. Does anyone else suffer with this?
I also got very caught up reading books on my topic to see if I could add one more "great" tip or insight - forgetting that this was a simple introduction to the topic not a long, involved three to five week course. So, my update- resetting has it's pros & cons and Weebly is simple for those who never took Dreamweaver - limiting to those who have that background. But, as my student base does not know website building nor needs to know it for my course- I pushed on designing in it. Will see if they enjoy the final product.
Missing the mark is not my usual style and I am so sorry - I just realized that my comments never posted to others in our class. I read the other blogs, but my mind has had a mental fart when posting comments...I could blame Google, but it is my fault...I just missed it. And worse, I kept doing the same thing over and over..sorry.
Perhaps it has been too many late nights working on my portfolio materials to meet the November 18th deadline to present. Or my many attempts at trying to do my assignments in Gamesalad and Gamestar Mechanic which has convinced me to just keep paying for those clever games on ITunes, because I won't make my fortune there. However, the worse of all has been my time spent- hours actually, in the simple, yet complex downloads, creation of a "fake-network", and attempts at setting up of Moodle to run on my computers.
It is a major issue....with no resolve except say I miscalculated how much trouble it would be to set up and have it actually work. Not a computer wiz to start with, I took on the challenge thinking it sounded very easy to do and probably is, but I didn't post comments on Google right...so, now what??? I looked at other LMS programs, however, I see the same networking issues for them as well or added costs by paying for cloud hosting services. I did create an alternative plan for this assignment in my mind...just in case things didn't work the way I hoped and I missed the goals I set.
So, I am redoing my lesson plan and adjusting my course. Perhaps, I can improve my aim too and not miss the mark anymore. I promise to post to the blogs too... as long as my brain doesn't fart again.
While doing some brief research on my project, I realized where to start the course is vital to course development. Do I assume my learners have a resume? Do I assume they understand wordy verses to the point? I stumbled onto one of my favorite humor writer and author Scott Berkun's blog : http://scottberkun.com/2013/how-to-write-a-good-bio/ who talks about long descriptions verses to the point, yet humorous bio introductions.
Often when I have had to write a bio for a class or professional situation, I find myself either very wordy or attempting to be humorous. The free advice on the internet for this topic has been overwhelming in the many different directions to go. As a wordy type writer, I tend to add too much and take too long a time fretting over every word or phrase. But as my mother use to say, "Professionals charge for free advise. Those who give it away often don't add value to the situation". So, in the spirit of my mom, I am looking at professionally paid advise or magazine writers to create my guide for this class. Any comments or suggestions on where to start my class will be considered; billing me for your input - optional.
Career Portfolios are very popular currently in education and employment seeking graduate students, they have a long history in Human Resources and training. My concept for my IDT 516 course would be to focus on creating a lifelong electronic suitcase which would follow the traditional portfolio format, but add a few other touches which often are overlooked by those creating them. The overall goal would be to create a portfolio from a Moodle course (using Moodle as my LMS platform) which could link to creation of learner material being built in Mahara ( a portfolio builder that interfaces with Moodle). I would also like to try to create a Learnest reading list with Flipboard to link into the course and build a easel.ly (infographic) to link the modules together. My specific Learning outcomes would be declarative knowledge, concept, and procedure. The required material will be a computer, internet connection and resume-employment artifacts. My assessment would be the learner being able to connect the completed portfolio to their LinkedIn profile. I will try to complete the lessons in under 15 steps in three modules. Or at least that is the plan.
