Implementation - reflection

Involvement with intended users:
During the implementation phase I did not spend much time with the members of the women's group, asking them to try things out and give feedback. While I fully intended to ask for review and feedback during the evaluation phase, I feel this should have been an ongoing thing.
Feedback would have helped make decisions on how to present the information effectively.

Personal learning:
I found this project very effective for personal learning in the following ways:

• Having a purpose meant that I had to learn things better and more carefully consider shortcomings and consequences. I want people to nefit from what I've done so I made extra effort to be accurate and provide content that is easy to understand.
• Very effective. Creating something for others to learn from enabled me to learn very quickly.
• Use of different intelligences was a good way of maintaining enthusiasm. I also wanted a variety of ways to present information that was at a personal level.
  

Implementation issues - social, environmental, aesthethical

Consolidating the non-technical issues encountered and means taken to address them.

1. Accounts incl. passwords....
   
2. Computing and web 2.0 concepts for inexperienced users...
3. Copyright....
4. Personal security....
5. Data security....
   

Implementation - technical issues

Consolidating the technical issues encountered with the project implementation here:

1. The Quicktime add-on needs to be installed on browsers to play movies. This is not always easy or allowed, depending on restrictions or access. This is an advantage of embedding YouTube or TeacherTube videos but:
2. YouTube and TeacherTube are not playable in certain locations - for example my current place of work does not play YouTube. There are some YouTube videos included in the wiki
   
3. Trying to achieve a balance between quality and file size with screencast videos. They need to be watchable but if they are big they take a long time to upload to the wiki and to load when displaying the page. The quality of some of the screencasts is not as good as I would like and should be redone when time allows. For future reference, I found the YouTube HD option offered by iShowU HD to be a good balance between quality and size. Using the Stomp compression tool applying the Web 800x600 settings reduced the size to be more manageable.
4. Scanned images also can be quite large depending on the scanner software settings. I needed to be careful to reduce he image quality to around 40% - still good enough but also meaning a manageable file size.
   

Implementation issues - 'mygong' Diigo tag

An intention of the original design was to promote the use of a tag 'mygong' for tagging bookmarks in Diigo that were seen as relevant to the wider community.
I will not promote this for 2 reasons:
- It is a vague concept and users will not see the benefit of doing this so I can't expect that anyone will carry this out
- The concept is not 'portable'. I was envisaging that adding this tag to content would allow it to be accessed by people in the local community i.e. the Wollongong area. However, this only applies to one community and if people from other areas are making use of the mygong site then this is not applicable.

Implementation - issues

The quality of the screencasts is not as good as I'd like. I will keep playing around with the tool settings (iShowU HD) and the compression program (Stomp) to see if I can tweak things. However, the ones I have made already will have to stay so I can keep to schedule.

Also, I have been saving as Quicktime .mov files and uploading them to the wiki. This requires the Quicktime plug-in in the browser to play them. I tried mp4 but the quality wasn't as good.

Still working on this...

Design - feedback

I have received feedback from my project supervisor. I will respond to several of the comments below:

4. Page 6, Design Overview – could have included an explanation or definition of what Web 2.0 is, however, you have created an excellent mind map to provide an overview of your thoughts. It is very interesting that you are using technology for the project but have drawn this on paper, however, I am guessing that you used software to create the
diagram. A great mind map, nevertheless. It shows the reader exactly what you have in mind.

I used a number of techniques to produce the design diagrams and pictures and will also do the same for the implementation. I believe that just because the technology is available, you can use other methods to represent your thoughts and ideas. This picture was hand-drawn then scanned and uploaded. This blog shows more examples of this approach. I enjoy putting pencil to paper and I think it gives a more human feel to the pictures.
I know there are many people who find typing tedious, but who are artistic and can represent themselves through writing, drawing or photography. This doesn't need to be a barrier to them for documenting in digital form - e.g. blogging.
The picture in 3.1.b is a combination of cropping the individual tool icons from the scanned picture and moving them around in a drawing tool (I used Microsoft Visio for this one) and using the tool to put in the arrows.


5. Page 7, Web 2.0 Tool Selection – it would have been good to give an explanation of what the tools where and why you needed them. Some of these you have done well, others
need more information. You have explained well how you would use them, but not really well on why you would use the tool. An example is the social bookmarking section
(page 8). You have stated that it is widely used, groups can be created, that members can share links, but not what it is actually used for.

Agreed. And this is fundamental and I shouldn't have overlooked it. I will address this in the implementation in the explanations for each tool.

8. Pages 15 and 16 your diagrams refer to Web Site, Wikispaces in the centre of the drawings. A wiki is a collection of web pages, but not your website. The website of Wikispaces belongs to the people who own the site, you are “renting” out a space (pages) on their site. This needs a different name than website. Maybe you could use the heading “Wiki” and you are using “Wikispaces” to create the wiki.

Agreed. I don't think I considered the definition accurately. However, on reflection, I think the intended audience would relate to the term 'website' rather than 'wiki'. Alternatively, it may be better to define things correctly up front. I will consider this for the implementation.

9. Page 17, Bookmarking page – it would have been appropriate to include an explanation of how you would create a screencast to demonstrate the basic options.
10. Page 18, Blog page – you state that the video you have is not totally relevant to how the blog will be used in the group situation. This requires further explanation. Why not or so what. You might state that you will create the blog video.
11. Page 19, Documents page – you go straight into the contents, but don’t give any information like you have with other subsections.

Agreed


12. Page 21, Task breakdown – you will take 8 hours on the bookmarking page – this seems a lot

It is significantly more than the other sections. However, I want to take extra care to explain the Diigo tool well as it is very powerful, but has so many features it could be overwhelming for some users. Also, the wording of my explanations about bookmarking needs to be accurate and informative (something lacking from the design as you mentioned above).


13. Your wiki site is coming along. If you truly want this wiki to be used by your group, you need to have more information on the front page. Firstly, you would need a welcome message, an explanation of what the wiki is to be used for and some information for your users on how to use the wiki and all the tools that you are embedding in (on the wiki pages).

Agreed. I have moved the introductory video on to the home page which attempts to explain what the site is about.

bookmarks (weekly)

• » The Podcast: Worth Keeping Bud the Teacher

  Very interesting and useful view on the use and risks of using free online tools in schools. Main points are that how do we know that what students do and keep online will be retained? Need to have an option to get the stuff out of the tool and keep it in a safe place.
  The comments also open the way to further investigate this - particularly from Karl Fisch.

  Tags: budhunt, podcast, opensource, tools, education

Posted from Diigo. The rest of mygong group favorite links are here.