Whitney Ransom McGowan

The PowerPoint presentation on SlideShare I chose to look at was titled Teaching Well Using Technology. This presentation immediately caught my eye because my thesis and dissertation both involve improving teaching and learning. Two years ago I also interviewed more than 60 faculty to discover the value of large and small technology projects in teaching. This PowerPoint presentation gives some good statistics profiling the average learner in college. It also provides some good thoughtful questions every faculty member should ask when thinking about using technology in the classroom.

I have attached below an excerpt from John Hilton’s blog. I highlighted a portion of his blog using Diigo, a fun tool that I like.

I am actually having the same problem John is experiencing with getting Google Analytics on my site. I believe the problem stems from not having the latest version of Word Press downloaded. I did download the files, however, the problem is that I don’t have access to the server at the moment where I can upload those files, and then insert the code into my blog. Hmm. I will have to figure something out.

We do use Google Analytics where I work at FamilyLink.com. I think analytics are very important. They help you know what is going well with your site, what is not working well, where people are visiting on your site, how long they are staying there, who is visiting, what kinds of browsers they are using, etc. Information is power. Google Analytics are powerful information.

I think we should definitely utilize analytics more readily in education. First, I think we need to teach students how to use access and use this information. Second, we need to have something in education that we are trying to measure or simply something that we want to make better. This way we can use the analytics as a guide for improvement.

I have really enjoyed this section on our class on sharing. As I was searching for interesting ways people are sharing the gospel through podcasting and other means, I came upon the following blog: http://blog.moregoodfoundation.org/148/12-ways-to-share-the-gospel-on-the-internet

This blog provides 12 ways to share the gospel on the Internet. I think these ideas are great, some of which, I haven’t really thought about. For example, one idea is to share your testimony in the language where you served your mission. I served my mission in Bucharest, Romania. It really was an amazing experience. I think about these people every single day. It’s kind of like what Silvia Allred, the First Counselor in the Relief Society General Presidency  quoted about Elder Holland during General Conference. She said, “Elder Jeffrey R. Holland describes the impact his mission has had in his life with these words: ‘My mission means everything to me 47 years after the fact. There may have been one day in those 47 years that I have not thought of my mission; I’m just not sure what day that would have been.’

So, with that being said, here is my testimony in Romanian. I also recorded my testimony in Romanian. I uploaded it to iTunes. You can also view my testimony in Romanian here:

Eu sunt foarte recunoscatoare sa fiu membra a Bisericii Lui Isus Hristos, a Sfintilor din Zilele din Urma. Eu stiu ca Isus Hristos traieste. Eu stiu ca el este Salvatorul si Mantuitorul nostru. Eu stiu ca este adevarata Cartea Lui Mormon, care este un alt testament al lui Isus Hristos. Am gasit multa pace si alinare citind din aceasta carte sfanta. Am cunoscut Salvator mai bine prin aceasta carte. Eu stiu ca Joseph Smith a fost si mai este un profet adevarat si prin el Biserica a fost restaurata chiar in zilele noastre. Eu stiu ca avem un profet viu, Presedintele Thomas S. Monson. Eu stiu ca el primeste revelatie de la Dumnezeu sa ne ajute, si sa ne binecuvanteze. Eu stiu ca Dumnezeu traieste si ca el este Tatal Nostru. Sunt foarte recunoscatoare pentru darul rugaciiunii si stiu ca putem primi raspunsuri prin rugaciunile noastre. Si scriu toate acestea in numele lui Isus Hristos, Amin.

Translation:

I am very grateful to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I know that Jesus Christ lives.  I know that He is our Savior and Redeemer. I know that the Book of Mormon is true, and that it is another testament of Jesus Christ. I have found much peace and comfort reading this sacred book. I know the Savior better through this book. I know that Joseph Smith was and still is a true prophet and that the Church was restored through him in our day. I know that we have a living prophet, President Thomas S. Monson. I know that he receives revelation from God to help us and to bless us. I know that God lives and that He is our Heavenly Father. I am very grateful for the gift of prayer and I know that we can receive answers to our prayers. I write all of this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

LDS.net is also a great place to read the testimonies of others, participate in forums, read out LDS beliefs, look at blogs of other LDS members, etc. A few weeks ago, my husband and I were asked to have a Family Home Evening with the newly married or fairly newly married couples in our ward. We decided to give a spiritual message on Elder Ballard’s talk on Sharing the Gospel Through the Internet. Afterward, we gave everyone the opportunity who wanted to, to share their testimonies. We recorded the testimonies with our video camera. We had a great experience, and it was fun hearing the testimonies of others. We will also upload these testimonies on youtube. J Look for these files within the next couple of days.

In terms of the assignment of finding an educational use of podcasting…I had the opportunity to work on a podcasting project for Namibia this summer. The purpose of the project was to start a podcast program for a community radio station – the first of its kind. This project was educational because students in Namibia can now obtain the information from the news on the podcast. The news is also archived for anyone throughout the world who would like access to the information broadcast on the radio station in Katatura. Here is a link from the Daily Herald to one of the articles in the paper about the project.

Today’s blog combines the thoughts of both Whitney and Yvette. (Since this section is on SHARING, we thought that would be fine.) Yvette works with Whitney and wanted to discuss the topic of sharing. So, here are a few of our thoughts.

It was fun to go through and play around on Flickr, Delicious, and Photo Bucket. I (Whitney) already had a Flickr account (Here is the link to Whitney’s Flickr account - http://flickr.com/photos/55881894@N00/ - Search under soraransom). I have used it for a while, but recently I received a notification that said I had uploaded 178 photos, and once I reach 200, I need to upgrade to a Pro Account. Now, once I saw that, I immediately decided that I would upload the rest of my pictures elsewhere. (Sorry, Flickr, but there are many sites that offer free hosting of photos – such as Photobucket.) Now, I have to admit that I have never used, nor heard of Photobucket. I checked it out and was impressed. They claim to be the number one photo sharing site in the US. Wow! People can upload their photos for free, and they also have a place where you can browse the photos that others have posted. Going back to Flickr, we both enjoyed viewing the interesting pictures on the site. I actually loved it.

In the process of researching these collaborative sharing spaces, we discovered Woophy. I (Whitney) actually sent Yvette a little card of a beetle I found. It was very easy to send and arrived in Yvette’s inbox in a matter of moments. Yvette actually loves beetles (for they are the workers of the earth). When I first met her, she showed me a book she had purchased on beetles. I did enjoy going through the pictures and never realized that so many species of beetles exist. In fact, one in every seven species is indeed a beetle. Could be one in ever 3 (more research is needed to clarify that thought. If someone wants to SHARE the answer, that would be great).

Here is the picture of the beetle:

Using Woophy, you can see a map that shows the photo distribution of those who have contributed photos throughout the world. It is also designed so that you can search by keywords. This is a great educational site and allows users to search by categories, such as animals, culture, landmarks and buildings, objects, nature, and people.

And now moving on to Delicious…which is very difficult to remember where the periods are in that word. (Alas, when we looked to see where the dots were located in the word, they have indeed been removed. They knew intuitively that it was difficult for them and others to remember where the dots fell in the word Delicious as well.) Delicious is pretty cool. It was actually rated number one, in the top 100 educational tools by 209 educators. We were quite surprised when I saw these results. It passed up educational tools such as PowerPoint, Skype, Word Press, Firefox, Google Search, etc. Here is the link, if you want to read the article and see for yourself the rankings: http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html

The tagging article,The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems, as part of our assignment was useful in several ways, although much of the content we thought was common sense. Yvette and I have not been avid users of tagging, although when we first started our job, it was a requirement to use Delicious as a collaborative tagging tool for our research team. We can see the value in tagging. We learned from the article, that tagging is about sensemaking and that “collaborative tagging is most useful when there is nobody in the ‘librarian’ role or there is simply too much content for a single authority to classify.” (See article above.)

As part of our assignment, we were asked to talk about educational uses of these tools. There are many educational uses in using Flickr. For example this article, Using Flickr in the Classroom discusses a variety of ways that they are using this tool.  For example, it can be used to build literacy skills in students, to do geographical locations of the source, or to study a particular place, to create virtual field trips, or even for students to use the photos for presentation. It can also be used to teach students about copyright issues. One fun feature for students and faculty is that Flickr has an RSS feed where subscribers to any account can be notified when new photos are added.

Delicious can also be used in a variety of ways for education as well. In fact, many librarians are also finding it relevant and useful. Here is a link that describes some of the ways. This link also shows the periods as deli.icio.us. There it is. Using deli.icio.us., the students and faculty can manage the Web resources they use for research. Students can share their research with others. Schools can share with other schools their tagging for certain courses. They can also organize research for the next semester. It is also good for personal knowledge management. There are many more ways, but you’ll have to read the article to find them out. Have fun!