Cool Aggregation

Week 10 of my course thought me how to bring all my social networking sites together through an aggregation tool. I choose Yahoo! since I already have an account. This is a really cool tool. I am learning to link all my other sites into one - FB, travel sites, news sites, blogs etc.

This makes it easier to access. It's like getting a new toy. I will be experimenting with more!

Cheerios!

My Facebook Link

I started using Facebook early this year. It was because so many of my friends tagged me but I didn't bother much initially as the interest wasn't there. One day however, one of my friends called me and said they found so and so on FB and who are they now, what they were doing. These are all my ex-classmates from primary right up to uni days. Wow! I thought this is interesting so I gave it a try. I am really enjoying it since. Here's my link:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=730299327&ref=profile

I noticed the links posted by some of you is a little different. Your URL has your name in it but mine is different. I wonder why? Can anyone explain please?

Educational resources online

There are more and more educational resources out there and one can find these materials quite easily. This is all thanks to technology and the many brilliant people out there creating the various platforms for sharing of information. All we need to do is ask and you shall be given.

I came across this on youtube about technology and student learning. It makes learning easy and fun.

Studywiz and iPods Improve Student Learning
Check out this link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfN6xTa5HUQ

And the very fact that we are blogging about our experiences and sharing our links and ideas with others says it all.

I am really glad to have enrolled in this emergent technology course. Looking forward for more

Tweet.......tweet.......twittering

My first attempt at twittering. Tried all the usernames I wanted but none went through, it was all taken up! Can you believe it, there are so many Christine Wong out there. Anyway, I was getting frustrated when Dr. Irene suggested this name 'Chubbycheeks'. "Hahahaha....sure no takers" she said. "Try it" she laughed. "No way am I gonna use that name" I said.
Anyway, I tried it and it was available, as predicted. What a name right but I didnt use it. I got another one instead.

My twitter link is

http://twitter.com/christine6975

later.......

A PASS session in action!

In my previous posting, I did a podcast on what PASS is all about. PASS or Peer Assisted Study Session is a program where students work together to consolidate understanding, reinforce key concepts, and develop effetive study strategies. PASS consists of weekly one-hour, non-compulsory sessions let by a PASS Leader, who are students who have excelled at the subject in the past. PASS is provided to all students who want to improve their understanding of the course content and ultimately improve their grades.

A PASS Leader does not provide answers but confirms the students' understanding of how the answers are derived. A PASS session is not just another tutorial session, but a structured and progressive program assisting students with mastering and integrating subject content with learning and study strategies. It has been proven that with regular attendance, it increases students understanding of the subject matter and hence overall increase in performance and retention rate. The effective study skills acquired during these PASS sessions are transferrable across to other subjects.

Check out some of the pictures of the PASS students in action. This picture shows the Calculus 2 PASS session in progress. An Internationl student from Nigeria explaining his understanding of how to solve an integration by parts equation to his fellow coursemates. The one below is a session for Music History 2. I managed to video some of my PASS students in action. Will upload it soon. This caputures the essence of PASS and the dynamics of the program as well.

PASS session on Calculus & Analytical Geometry 2


PASS session on Music History 2

....to be continued

Oopss!

It didn't work! Hmmm.......I wonder what happened! Thanks guys for your feedback. I will try to go back and look at the process again. I downloaded i Tunes as well but it didn't work. Will do this week's assignment first then get back to podcasting again.

Wish me luck!

My Experience with Podcasting

Wow! I thought to myself. I was just getting the hang of tagging and blogging and now I am learning podcasting. This is great. What else is out there? Technology is limitless! I was excited about it at first but then found out, oh...no! my desktop PC does not have voice recording features, what do I do?

I had to bring my notebook from home to the office, took it to the ICT department to have it configured so that I can access the wireless settings on campus. When that was done, I could download audacity and start my recording.

I did a brief recording on the introduction of the PASS (Peer Assisted Study Session) program to UCSI University. This is my second attempt as my first recording had too many pauses in between, probably because I was not used to speaking and looking at the recording at the same time. In my second attempt, I did not look at the monitor, I just spoke into the mic. It didn't sound too bad.

Here's what I have, check it out!

Blogging for Learning

Yeah, our main purpose of showing students how to blog is of course for learning purposes. But just how do we get them excited enough to blog? I was talking to one of the students the other day about blogging. Here's the conversation:

Chris: "Do you like blogging?"

Student: "No, I don't blog. No time to just sit down and blog about stuff. Too busy with homework and studies"

Chris: "Ok. But what if blogging becomes part of your assignment and you are required to create a blog about your life as a student, about issues you discussed in class, about current world issues etc..?"

Student: "Well, if it becomes part of our assignment, we sure have to do it. But, later after the semester, I dont think I will maintain it"

Chris: "Oh! Why so?"

Student: "I don't know about the rest but I have no interest"

So, how do we get students to want to blog and sustain the interest?

More to blogging

My e-learning journey has been very interesting so far. The past 4 weeks in the course taught me many technologies related to teaching and learning. Learning to tag on delicious was fun and it made it easier to organize articles and navigate to my favorite sites in a jiffy.

The article in Week 4: The Art of Blogging, I find the part on uses for blogging very apt. Blogging has become so popular and so part of a daily lifestyle (for the bloggers) that it has become (from the article) a platform for all the following:
 Knowledge sharing and knowledge management
 Customer service
 Interactive journalism
 Communication
 Self-expression
 Learning
 Self-marketing
 Campaigning/social reform
 Community building
 Experience tracking
 Storytelling

Apart from that, advertisers are putting their ads on your blogs. For example Nuffnang, Asia’s First Blog Advertising Community. They place ads that are relevant to your blog sites. Say, if I am a food blogger and blog on good places to go to for the different types of food, I may have ads from Starbucks, Pizza Hut, etc and I will get paid for the number of hits my blog gets. Great way to advertise and earn money as well!