Meredith Farquhar ICT 2013: Reflections on Group 2 tools

The use of Digital images, Audio and Video productions can be useful in learning design as they personalise a blog a wiki or a website. Part of being able to produce these images to a ICT is to ensure that they fit what we are using them for and are able to be effectively used in the Learning program.

Mobatek Picture Resizing.

This program was somewhat frustrating and complicated to obtain, which may in itself be a problem for the program creators. In my attempt to obtain the program I succeeded in downloading another toolbar which now must be removed from my laptop. This will be another case of explaining to my husband how this actually got there. There is that whole computer novice thing coming up again!

In assessing the program I would state as follows:

Good Points:-

Easy to use, navigate and manipulate images;

Easy to negotiate the changes;

Simplicity of design for image manipulation;

Able to easily assess the images for colour, rotation, contrast/brightness and cropping

Bad Points:-

Difficult to see sizing in the context that you may require;

Hard to assess image in terms of size for the use you may have;

Need to ensure that images that are changed are kept separate from originals to ensure original not deleted;

For less tech savvy students problems in potential permanent loss of images or image quality;

May be too complicated for use by students in Primary School without significant supervision

Interesting Points:-

There are other programs available that may also be effective e.g Pixburner for digital images, Funny Photo Maker 2.30, and of course good old Photo shop. Whilst the navigation on this tool one there was good it could easily me misused by a learner particularly if they were young and this could create complications.

Flickr images, Copyright and Attribution

This was a very interesting exercise and relevant to ensure that we are not breaching copyright ownership of images. Here is the image that I picked and the Creative Commons Permissions said that this was so with this in mind I will refer to it as follows:

Courtesy of Dr John Bullas

The Creative Commons Permissions in respect of this image were as follows:

Attribution required;
Image not used for a commercial purpose; and
Image not to be altered or changed.
Provided that this is adhered to then the image is free to be shared.

This tool was very useful and gave me a greater insight into the way that images are attributed on the internet.

There were some other images that I wanted to use but when I checked the creative commons they came up with this.

This means that the image cannot be reproduced without paying the required licence fee for that particular image.

Therefore if you seek to enjoy these images as well you will just have to go there yourself:

Funny Photo 1

and

Funny Photo 2

I wonder if those bears are discussing collaboration?

Now even though I did not use a search element that was strictly related to Pedagogy, Learning Design or Education I was able to use and utilise this tool. From a ICT teaching perspective this was a very useful and relevant exercise.

I really enjoyed using Taggalaxy (Taggalaxy, 2013) as this was very useful. In a school environment particularly if you had students utilizing I-Pads or the like this would be very effective. I found it to be more user friendly but that may be as a result of being already familiar with the matters that I would be looking for. Of the two programs I would use Taggalaxy again as I would consider that it would be more accessible to students as a searching tool.

Obviously from a Legal Perspective Flickr is crucial so you can actually work out whether you are acting in breach of copyright. Most 'Average Joe' people including students that we deal with do not understand the implications of copyright and the legislation that exists in respect of it. Australia is governed by the 1968 Copyright Act (Cth) but is it relevant to know that pursuant to agreements that arose as a result of the 2004 US-Australia Fair Trade Agreement.

The reality of breaches of copyright is this, if you are found to have breached copyright you can be required to pay a monetary penalty (damages) and if the breach is continuing the court may allow an injunction to be issued to required the breach to be rectified and not re-occur. The damages can be substantial provided that the other party is able to prove that the damage is a result of your action or omission. There is also the legal cost aspect to be considered which can run into Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars on either side and if you are unsuccessful you can be required to pay the othersides legal costs.

Audiopostings

This exercise was somewhat complicated. I actually used previously created audio-recordings and re-recording further information for the Voki.

As is detailed on my Wiki page under the heading of dressage tests (learningdesign-mf2013), Dressage is a horse sport where horses and riders are required in a specific area to complete a complicated set of movements that have been memorized by the rider. At lower levels a caller, for those tests, is permitted but as the difficultly increases, callers are not used and eventually not permitted.

Those of us that compete in this sport have been utilising the audio capacity of technology for a number of years to memorize our tests. It is requirement that we do not have a person to call our test at higher levels. One could say that from a pedagogical perspective it is an interesting usage of technology in a behaviorist learning design where rote learning is required.

I did want to add some examples of my recorded Dressage Tests but unfortunately the Blogger does not allow this. If you go to the Dressage Tests section of my Wiki Page you will be able to access these tests. I have tried to find examples of a caller for a dressage test.

If you listen here you can hear the caller calling the test. Don't try and listen to the whole thing, it is abit boring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnrjsCERR5w

I decided to have some fun with the Voki but can also see that using a humorous element to further encourage the attention of the students would be of assistance in the design of this element. As you can see from my wiki (learningdesign-mf2013) I had some fun and added a picture of a horse to my Voki. I would have liked to put the Voki here but I just could not work out how to.

Those with a knowledge of Equestrian and Dressage will truly appreciate the humour in this. On a more practical level this type of podcasting would be a useful way to learn sometimes complex material in an audio format that could be listened to when it suited the listener. I used this when driving to reinforce the elements that I was required and found it to be extremely effective, indeed more effective that other methods that I had tried to learn the tests. This is perhaps the same reason that this was produced in a commercial format for purchase. There is even now an I-Pod application that is supported by the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) for this very purpose as discussed in Horse and Hound, 2010.

There are some interesting pod cast's particularly recently relating to education and of course the Gonski reforms (ABC, 2013). I find that pod-casting is a relevant medium for being able to be utilized by a number of learning designs. Clearly in its ability to simply impart knowledge podcasting is relevant on a behaviorist and cognistivist design, as designated by my exercise with learning the Dressage tests. But the question may come up as to how to incorporate constructivist design? This could come in through having students create their own pod casts on relevant topics which might look at the information that was imparted to them through pod casts that they had listened to and then incorporating that into their own structured thoughts on a topic.