Reflectional Journal
#1> #2> #3 > #4 > #5 > #6 > #7 > #8 > #9
#1 Toward the "Flow"
The in-class exam was the next day, but I could hardly concentrate on reading the book. I found myself circulating the same page for half an hour. I felt like my brain stopped. I opened my diary to check up the schedule for the week. A series of due dates for assignments, quizzes, and exams took up most of the space. I really needed some time to refresh myself. And I noticed the short memo at the bottom of the page, which I wrote a few days ago. There I wrote, “Taking a walk around the Lake Harrick, I really thank God for locating me in this calm and beautiful place. Oh, Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! I cannot but sing for joy.” That was my reflection on the Bible verse which I read that day. I asked myself, ‘How can I be joyful like this when I study?’
Despite my interest in a certain subject, I am not likely to enjoy the learning when I have to take an exam which tests my knowledge within a limited time. I think I am a kind of person who learns better when given more autonomy in learning. Deciding to take the EDIT 6190 second time this semester, I may seek for a chance to learn something that way. Unlike the first time, now I am more comfortable with the class and less burdened with my project. I think this time I can really enjoy EDIT 6190 with real understanding of its pedagogical advantages. I hope this course will renew my joy in learning.
Work-related project topics are not off limits, but participants are counseled not to choose a project that will seem like “work.” It is explicitly hoped that students who follow this advice will experience the kind of optimal life experience that Csikszentmihalyi identified as “flow” during the completion of their 19 projects (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). (Clinton & Rieber, 2006, p.19)
Reference: Clinton, G., & Rieber, L.P. (2006). The Studio Experience at the University of Georgia: An example of constructionist learning for adults. Unpublished manuscript. [PDF]
[Things to do]
To come up with ideas for the basic storyline
To practice some introductory skills for making Flash animation
#2 A thought on 'learner control'
I glanced through the web pages providing good Flash animation resources for novices. I could find a useful tutorial for learning basic animation effects. I have been practicing some of the examples. I realized that the whole steps of creating animation are complex than I expected. The most complicated thing to me was that I should consider the movement of a character carefully and delicately changes the location of each symbol to make a smooth action. I think I have to practice more with various samples to understand how they work. I also realized that each frame needs to be well-knit so the viewers can infer the omitted scenes.
I have learned how to create 4-frame-cartoon before. I remember my instructor advised me not to express too much within limited space when I submitted the first product. He said I should abstract my message as simple as possible and allow the readers think more. I was always not that good at that. He also told me that I could deliver powerful message just by drawing a circle in the blank page. According to individual interpretation, various stories can be created and different lessons can be learned from the simple drawing.
I extended this thought to the reading this week. It somehow reminds me of ‘Learner Control’, one of the strategies of six C’s motivation. It basically means that students’ more involvement in the process of classroom control makes the students more responsible and self-regulated in learning. To me, the term of ‘learner control’ always sounds like a cliché emphasizing the importance of a learner-centered interface design. Thinking about the way to deliver a message through a short cartoon, however, I revisited the meaning of the term and asked myself why I often forgot it might mean allowing the learners to have more control on their own thinking. I mean, to think and imagine more freely. For this 6190 project, I really want to create something that gives learners time for deep thinking and free imagination.
At this point, the title for my project is “The studio”. I’d like to express what I think during the studio classes within a short animation. I still keep sketching, but I couldn’t reach any conclusion so far. Hope I will be able to start something next week.
Things to do
- Practice animation effects with samples.
- Finalize the 4-frame cartoon.
Reference
M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching and Technology. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia, Department of Instructional Technology [On-line]. Available: http://www.coe.uga.edu/epltt/
#3 Dream a little dream
I finalized the story line for the 6190 project. The cartoon character is a skeleton man with a big head. I realized that it would be more convenient for me to use the simplified character in creating motions. Learning through trials and errors, I think I am now quite comfortable with creating motions. At first, I failed to create a motion twining because I put all the parts on the same layer. For making each part move separately, I had to locate each one on the different layer. I could easily learn about the general concept of Flash animation. However, it seems to require more efforts for working on the details of the animation such as drawing setting and designing each frame. Overall, my project so far appears to show quite satisfactory progress. It looks a little childish but I am planning to elaborate the whole scenes more.
I selected one essay from Stephen Downes’ website for reading this week. It was a short essay about the sustainability of open educational resources (OERs). Through the article, the writer attempts to look over the definition of ‘Open Resources’ and introduce to us models for sustainable open educational resources. This essay reminded me of one of the SIGs I attended last semester. It was about ‘learning objects’, and I remember some of the studio participants had a kind of debate whether they were for or against the ‘Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM)’. Even though most of them cast a doubt on the effectiveness of SCORM by pointing out the matters of quality and access, I was more likely to agree with that because I myself really needed that kind of sharing system as an in-service teacher. At that time, I thought I would be able to try the concept within my school through establishing a site for sharing the learning objects with my colleague teachers. I also thoguht the network might be extended to the provincial-level teaching support if it would work well. It would be wonderful if we teachers can create the netwrok which realistically facilitates teaching and learning. Who knows? I can make and successully run something like Dr. Rieber’s WWILD Team website!
After reading this article, however, I realized that there are much more things we should consider to establish and sustain the open resources. The models regarding financial, content, and technical issues taught me how systematically and delicately those resources should be planned and sustained. Despite these complexities, however, I am still hooked on the following quote.
Imagine a world in which every single person is given free acess to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing. – Terry Foote, Wikipedia
Reference
Downes, S. (2006). Models for sustainable open educational resources. Retrieved March 20, 2007, from http://www.downes.ca/me/articles.htm
[Things to do]
1. Join the tool learning session for advanced FLASH action scripts.
2. Complete the intro movie.
#4 Working on the e-portfolio
This week I didn’t progress my 6190 project much. I have been pretty busy with making my Master’s portfolio. So, through the journal this week, I just want to share what I thought during this week, working on the e-portfolio and reading a journal on the paradigms of Instructional Technology.
Writing reflections on the coursework, I revisited the goals I set when starting this program. At that time, I was a notice in the field of Instructional Technology and wanted to learn more systematically about the field to design a good EFL program. Now it just three or four weeks left before my graduation. I seriously thought about what I achieved during the coursework. Am I now well ware of what Instructional Technology is? Am I now an expert in Instructional Design and Development? Hard to answer ‘Yes. Definitely’, at this point. However, I know I learned a lot from this program. Working on my e-portfolio, I came to realize that now I am not a novice any more. Making an e-portfolio provided me with an opportunity to review what I did learn through this IDD program, and how I have progressed while learning in this program. Despite the hectic schedule of this week, I was glad that I could design and create something based on my own standards; in designing my e-portfolio, I wanted it to make my own voice. I also wanted it to be a clear voice to others. I am pretty much satisfied with what I produced.
I read an article titled ‘Revisiting the paradigms of Instructional Technology” this week. It helped me a lot reading the stream of Instructional Technology and summarizing what I have learned so far. The author categorizes the dominant paradigms in IT research into CAI, ITS, Logo-as Latin, and CSCL. I thought the succinct summary of the learning theories and instructional models, and research issues belong to each paradigm is a good overview of the trends of IT research. It was quite interesting to me that the locus of research moves from individual learning to collaborative learning. I remember quite many curriculum designers in South Korea once focused on the merits of individualized learning through technology uses pointing out that classroom setting cannot facilitate the effective learning of each individual student. By assigning one laptop per one student, they may expect to gain the best effectiveness. However, establishing effective learning environment, as always, is something beyond physical changes. Sometimes, we educators do not seem to actually accept the complexity in the real field even though we admit that learning process is complex.
Reference
Koschmann, T. (2001, December). Revising the paradigms of instructional technology. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, Melbourne, Australia. [PDF]
Things to do
To complete background of the Flash cartoon.
Edit the video which will be embedded to the movie.
#5 Technology Integration in the classroom
I did a lot of work on my project this week because the studio rehearsal is at hand. I spent most of this week elaborating gaphics and drawing the rest of the cartoon. Based on the deskcrits from some of studio participants, I am trying to reorganize the story. Through the dress rehearsal, I noticed that some of the readers could not understand my cartoon without my explanation. It may be because of my project half done. However, I think I can revise the present one at least by adding some texts which would be helpful for the readers to grasp the overall message. I am pretty much satisfied with my progress this week. Hope I will be albe to master how to use the ‘mask’ fuction in Flash 8 during the rest of this week. I’d like to use the fuction for the ending of my cartoon.
This week I read an article titled “Project KID DESIGNER: Constructivism at work through play”. I really liked the project because it was rooted in the real classroom: it was implemented under the typical constraints of a public school. I was impressed by its efficient and effective uses of technology in the classroom. Especially I value the project in that it facilitates students’ learning of higher level thinking skills allowing them to actually design and create a learning artifact. I thought I should have read this article before I complete my paper for a research project of EDIT 6900. My topic for the research project was ‘Technology integration in the secondary EFL classroom’, and through the project, I wanted to find out effective uses of technology in the classroom so I can share some of the exemplary cases with my fellow teachers in Korea. Because I wanted something practical and suitable for the secondary classroom, I was a little frustrated that only a few case studies were conducted on the basis of the setting. If I had read this article before, I would have been able to synthesize my ideas a lot fancier.
Anyway, reading this article made me think about educational uses of technology in Korea. In my opinion, technology integration in Korea does not seem to go with a firm theoretical base that carefully considers the effectiveness of language teaching and learning. I guess it’s mainly because the government initiative technology advancements have lead educational innovation before theoretical discussions become mature. Accordingly, there are some teachers in the field who cannot keep up with the new teaching and learning theories. Projecting the copy of the textbook through the latest project definitely would not be an effective use of technology. I thought we Korean teachers also need to do something like this using technology, which actually helps students improve their learning.
Things to do
Learn how to use the ‘Mask’ function.
Finalize the project.
Reference
Rieber, L. P., Luke, N., & Smith, J. (1998). Project KID DESIGNER: Constructivism at work through play. Meridian: Middle School Computer Technology [On-line], 1(1). Available http://www.ncsu.edu/meridian/index.html
# 6 "Universal Design & Assessment"
Honestly, I couldn’t do anything for my 6190 project this week. I had to finalize three assignments which were due this week. Plus, I had a portfolio oral exam. Posting journals are quite delayed but now I am really glad that I finished my portfolio oral exam. Presenting the portfolio, I thought I learned a lot from this master’s course and prepared quite enough to start what I dreamed of. Now I am sketching what to do next, but I don’t know exactly how my Lord will lead me. Feeling a little strange…Even though there are still more exams and projects to be done, I feel like I’ve done. Hope I will do my best for the rest of the semester.
The article I read this week is a chapter from “Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age”. The chapter was about how to assess student progress using universal design. Pointing out four barriers of traditional types of standardized assessment, the author made suggestions for better evaluation of student performances. According to the author, traditional assessment lack of careful considerations on individual learning differences, media constraints, appropriate support, and integration with curriculum, hinders teachers from evaluating student performances accurately. I agree with the author that technology allows teachers more flexibility in evaluating each student. The detailed explanations about flexibility in presentation, expression and strategic support, and in engagement, along with the realistic examples, taught me how I should understand the concept of Universal Design in performance assessment. While going though the portfolio exam, I myself thought e-portfolio would be a good way to assess student performance and was thinking of adopting e-portfolio as an alternative assessment for the present test of standardized multiple choice. In that sense, this chapter came closer to me. If we teachers want to assess individual students’ learning progress, we need to use right type tools for assessment. As the author stated, “embedded, flexible, ongoing assessment” has potential to improve not only both learning and teaching.
Reference
Chapter 7 from: Rose, D. & Meyer, A.(2002). Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. [On-line]: Available: http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/
#7 Cultural Issues in Instructional Design
I’m doing repetitive works of adding key frames and moving symbols. It’s not difficult at all, technically. It’s a little time-consuming, though. My project is mostly done except two things - embedding the audio and completing the ending scene. Because a few studio participants asked me to link my project for their deskcrits, I’d like to finish them as soon as possible. For embedding the audio, I will need to read the Flash tutorial more carefully. I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal. However, I guess choosing proper sounds and background music will take some time.
I read one of the recent articles posted on the ITFORUM site. The title of the article, “Cultural Competence and Instructional Design” caught my attention. I was curious about what the authors mean by “cultural competence” and how they will develop their opinion. Through the article, I actually couldn’t find any definitions clearly mention abut the ‘cultural competence’. Overall, it seems to mean the international users ability of successfully access and interpret the web content. It was quite interesting to me that the user’s ability to successfully shop on the e-commerce site was 61% on the average for the American users and 47% for the European users (Nielson, 2005, as cited in Rogers, Graham, & Mayes, 2007). Even though I am wondering if there’re any lurking variables, the percent appeared seems to be show quite large gap between two groups of users. From the case study targeting 12 participants involved with educational technologies and designing instruction cross-culturally, the authors found out that the participants “encounter certain barriers to their ability to be as responsive to cultural differences as they would like to be.”( Rogers et al., 2007, p. 18) The most salient barriers listed by the authors were “an over focus on content development, a relative lack of evaluation in real-world practice, and the less than ideal roles instructional designers assume in the larger organizational structures involved.”(Rogers et al., 2007, pp. 18-19) Even though I couldn’t reach any details on what are those Western assumptions in the field of IDT(Instructional Design and Technology) from this article, I thought the authors posed meaningful questions for the future advancement of IDT.
Reference
Rogers, P. , Graham, C. R. , & Mayes, C. T. (2007). Cultural competence and instructional design: Exploration research into the delivery of online instruction cross-culturally. Retrieved April 21 from http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/Previous.html
#8 Mastering tools for better design
Today I spent most of time finalizing my project. I made the preloader showing the progress status by percent and finished embedding the sound effects. Coding action scripts was the most difficult to me. I didn’t know that coding requires such careful attention. To complete what I want to do, I had to revise some ungrammatical coding several times. It took a lot more time than I expected. I thought I won’t be able to master the action scripts with perfection. For example, the following is the action script I used for making a preloader.
“if(_root.getBytesLoaded()<_root.getBytesTotal()){gotoAndPlay(1);
percent=_root.getBytesLoaded()/_root.getBytesTotal()*100;percent=Math.floor(percent); progress_txt.text=percent+"%";}
I found it from a Flash tutorial, and could use the script by following the suggested directions step by step. But I don’t think I can retrieve the steps and scripts again. I thought it would be better for me to take notes of important scripts for later use. Embedding the sound effects also requires a lot of work. I learned that controlling the sound also needs action script through trial and error.
This week I read an article titled “A Software Design Manifesto” written by Mitchell Kapor. Through the article, he made some useful suggestions regarding software design. I tend to agree with his opinion that designers should “have a sound mastery of technical fundamentals, so that genuine communication with programmers is possible.”(Kapor, year, p.7) Even though it was an individual project, I also learned the same lesson because I worked on my 6190 project as a designer and developer. Designers really need to master a design tool and be well aware of technology fundamentals so they can design something feasible. For example, I did not know about Flash 8 in details when initiating my project. Confronting with several difficulties regarding accessibility and loading time, I thought I should have considered those issues carefully by thoroughly understanding the attributes of the tool I will use.
It also sounds reasonable that Kapor advised students to learn software design by practicing it. According to him, “design studios in which students carry out directed project to design parts of actual programs, whole, programs, and groups of programs using tools and techniques of their trade”(Kapor, year, p.7), therefore, is a major part of the professional training for designers. In this aspect, I think I got the right training for being a competent designer.
Reference
Kapor, M. (1996). A software design manifesto. In Winograd, T. (Ed.), Bringing Design to Software (pp. 1-9). New York: Addison-Wesley.
#9 Toward another ‘Sutdio’
Today’s studio showcase was successful. I was deeply impressed by the two 6210 teams especially by their professional manner of presentation. To me, it is always interesting to review various projects and get to know about different talents of each studio participant. Because my project showed at the dress rehearsal was half done, some of my friends wanted to review my final project again today to give me more detailed deskcrits. Most of their descrits were about the accessibility. I thought I needed to think more carefully about how I can address the issue.
Attending at the studio show case today, I thought things quite changed over the two years. I remember I was really curious and a little nervous as well when I joined the first showcase in 2005. Now I am more relaxed, enjoying the studio showcase as a part of ‘The studio’. Ending the first showcase, I was excited to move to the next level of studio course and thought the 6190 course was a kind of worming up phase for the next step. Now, the 6190 course is like wrapping up of my master’s program. Reflecting on the studio experiences, I thought about several take home lessons I got from the studio courses.
First of all, I could learn and internalize ‘constructionism’, which showed me a possibility that learning can be fun, through the studio experiences. I also rediscovered the potentials of computer technologies as attractive learning support tools. The following quote from this week’s article, seems to describe what I am thinking of my studio experiences quite closely.
Building and playing with castles of sand, families of dolls, houses of Lego, and collections of cards provide images of activities which are well rooted in contemporary cultures and which plausibly enter into learning processes that go beyond specific narrow skills. I do not believe that anyone fully understands what gives these activities their quality of "learning-richness." But this does not prevent one from taking them as models in benefiting from the presence of new technologies to expand the scope of activities with that quality. (Papert & Harel, 1996)
Second, I learned the value of collaborative learning. In the studio, I saw how different individuals - their different characters and abilities – get together and expand their learning capabilities with assisting each other’s learning. Learning process in the studio was interesting and dynamic, and I thought the learning process itself can be one of the strategies which facilitate the effective learning.
I am graduating in two weeks, and have no more studio courses to take. However, I hope my learning will be continued in another ‘studio’ where my dreams are. Thinking about what I learned through the studio experiences, I thanked all for allowing me to join in this wonderful learning community.
Reference
Papert, S. (1991). Situating constructionism. In I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds.), Constructionism, (pp. 1-11). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Available online: http://www.papert.org/articles/SituatingConstructionism.html