Final+Essay

6 August 2011

 * ====//During this class, you examined a number of Web 2.0 resources through the Richardson book. Using your current situation, discuss each resource read about with the potential uses in your employment including the pros and cons of its uses. Examples within your answer will strengthen your answer and the resulting credit you earn. Opinion without support will result in a lower grade for your examination answer.//====

====Course work in EDU 653, the Read/Write Web, required careful examination and exploration of a multitude of Web 2.0 technologies, several of which could still be considered emerging with respect to their prevalence, proliferation and use as educational tools. The catalog of examined technologies includes but was not limited to, blogs, digital storytelling, screencasting, social networking – including Facebook and Twitter, collaborative editing, podcasting, RSS, social bookmarking and virtual realities such as Second Life. Each technology exhibits its own unique set of potential strengths as well as would-be pitfalls and possible areas of weakness. What follows is brief consideration of each technology, as it relates to the role of this author, an adjunct community college instructor, highlighting of strengths and weakness as they relate to a context-specific application.====

====With respect to blogging, I intend to follow a model based upon the one used in the EDU 653 experience with my own students. In future semesters of my Business Communication II course, students will have required blogging activity. A blog, as defined by Merriam Webster, is “ a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.” (Blog: Definition and More, 2011) Due to the nature of //blogging//, students will engage in writing which goes beyond the typical mechanical experience and allow them to integrate reflections and publish their writing to a wider audience, where it can be commented upon. In a business writing context, the exploration of a web 2.0 tool, wherein the author creates web content is in itself beneficial. ====

==== Several of the other technologies, including screencapture, digital storytelling and podcasting will be useful in my teaching as I look for ways to press students out of a Power Point based presentation model. To the detriment of many presentations, Power Point has become the single go-to-tool. An article on the damaging impact of Power Point offered this perspective, “too many presenters think that just by using the PowerPoint tool, they don’t need to properly plan their presentation.” (Paradi, 2003) While I find the over-arching claim of the article ($250M in wasted spending laid at Power Point’s door) a stretch, Paradi’s other sentiments resonate as valid. In short, Power Point does not a presentation make. If students are to develop presentation skills – which is to say comfort finding, synthesizing and summarizing data, planning and organizing relevant points and sharing them in a large-group setting, much more than Power Point aptitude is needed. Near the end of the article, Paradi offers this crisp thought, “We would like to see relevant images and a clean presentation of ideas that gives enough visual variety to keep our mind working, but also gives the majority of the mindshare to the message being delivered.” (Paradi, 2003) My plan is to require the use of an alternate tool – be it those used in EDU 653, such as PhotoStory, iMovie, etc., or Prezi. In doing so, I hope to compel students to create fresh new and perhaps even less linear presentations. Support for this perspective on effective presentations can be found in many places; not the least of which is facultyfocus.com. A July 2010 piece observes “The best presentations on TED are not accompanied by a PowerPoint of bulleted lists, but rather photos or other imagery that illustrate a point or make an effect…” and goes on to encourage would be presenters “to use Prezi. This web-based tool allows the user to create a single canvas of text, images, videos, etc. online. The presenter flies from location to location on the canvas, sometimes turning elements upside down, sometimes zooming in or out, to explore the relationship between ideas. Like a painter, the canvas draws the developer to choose visual imagery to create the presentation, in contrast to the text-heavy, outline-based methodology of PowerPoint.” (Orlando Ph.D., 2010)====

==== Another attractive benefit of some of the tools discussed above is the potentially asynchronous nature of the final product. Too often presentations are viewed as synchronous events which cannot or are not re-creatable. In reality, producing something with PhotoStory, iMovie or Prezi can and will likely be publishable and playable for future audiences. ====

==== Social Networking tools is the next and final category of web 2.0 tools I wish to address in this essay. At present, my use of these tools in my own teaching has been non-existent. I have, however, begun to think of tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others in a more educational context. My thinking leans toward perhaps less use of these sorts of tools in instruction and more for the purposes of increased engagement and interactivity, which puts me in good company. In fact, some sources suggest that leveraging Social Networking tools in education may even contribute to increased retention rates. In February of 2011, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced it would “… invest $2 million in [|Inigral]— a company that is trying to build virtual college communities by creating school-based Facebook sites. It's the first time that the Gates nonprofit foundation has bought an actual equity stake in a for-profit company.” (Abramson, 2011) While the article admitted that determining the effectiveness of such efforts would be “tough to show” and indicated that such investigation would be “a subject for future research” (Abramson, 2011) the premise is interesting and compelling enough for me to further consider creating a class ‘Facebook page’ to keep students connected, with one another and the course content. A challenge I perceive will be helping students to simultaneously recognize the value while helping them distinguish the conduct appropriate in a business-related social networking context, versus one of a personal nature. Whether this will actually become an issue remains to be seen.====

====Teaching with tools such as those discussed earlier at my disposal is both exciting and daunting. The master syllabus objectives in neither my business communications nor computer information systems courses make anything close to a specific reference to any of them. Yet, as a twenty-first century educator it would seem irresponsible not to prudently introduce the means to communicate and prosper in our present times to the students and to do so in the specific context of my courses. After all, to understand today is to be better prepared to understand the trends of tomorrow.====