Special Themes
This is the second part of our course, we were introduced to Learning Managment Systems, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, I will elaborate a little on each one. Learning Management system is a software program that helps you create, manage and deliver eLearning courses. I find it efficient for universities that have international students, for example, an online course. Such courses will eliminate the distance obstacle that most of the students face. But in my country they won’t be that efficient in this period at least because the internet connection is not that fast so, there will be some connectivity problems that will prohibit from having an easy-going class. Next semester my husband is going to give an online course in his university in Lebanon using Moodle, I am curious to know how it will go. I will give feedback about how is it going when he starts.
Eliademy is a creative idea that is helping educators and saves time of installing softwares and incompatibility problems between the computers and the softwares, it is classrooms in the Cloud based on open source technology. Just open an account, create or import course and add participants. Can’t be easier than that. With all the softwares and communities and shared resources for creating any lesson, there is no alibi for a teacher not to be creative in his teaching.
Osmo products to me were my best, it needs your iPad and attaches the mirror to it, download the app according to which game you are going to play and that’s it, start having fun. The idea of playing with your real hands in the real world and how it is reflected in the tablets will fascinate the kids. Sometimes I feel they are addictive if you start you can’t stop easily; like Osmo coding where my friend was exploring it and played with it for more than an hour when she finally decides that she will not get it for her kids because it is addictive, this leads us to think how important to regulate the use of technological gadgets among the kids. As for me, I’m planning to buy it for my kids, especially coding Osmo, tangram and Osmo words, these games will help in increasing creativity and will let their minds work in the right direction, not to forget to increase their vocabulary.
Augmented reality was mind blowing, how you see things just through the lense of tablets or you’re your phone. I was downloading the Aurasma application to show it to my kids some Aura pictures but then I found that there is no Aurasma anymore and the name was changed into Hp Reveal even the logo was changed but the contents are the same, but honestly I didn’t like the layouts they are offering, I would prefer if they managed to present more realistic figures.
Green screen to me was a bad experience, it took too much time just to stand in the right position according to the picture that you can’t see and after taking the picture you have limited options to do with it and I sent it by email to me but I didn’t receive it, only God knows in which cloud the picture is. For the new classroom that I’m looking forward to see I hope that there will be some reflective gadget that shows you where are you standing according to the picture you chose without the directions of your friend “go right, go left, no more left, ah this is too much left”. This picture was taken by my classmate Sara and I thank her a lot for it because it is the only proof I used the green screen.
As for virtual reality, I really preferred it than the augmented one, the ability to see from the phone all what is surrounding the camera when it took the shot, even watching a video for some places that a lot of us won’t be able to visit for example swimming with the sharks underwater was breathtaking. Thinking of how this feature can help in the educational field, for example, the science teacher would be able to take all her students into the forest to introduce different types of plants and animals just by wearing these glasses and the teacher would have prepared an interactive 360-degree picture using thinglink. I’m sure that the kids will be able to remember each type of plant and animal easily, one the students commented after using VR cardboard goggles, “it brings the lesson to you”. It opens a new world of teaching with no boundaries.
The only challenge in this class is that it didn't fit my phone because mine was too big so I had to borrow Larissa's phone in order to try it. There were several types of goggles each with different budgets so you can buy the cheap one like the cardboard goggles or the professional one.
Discovering Adobe connect was opposite to my expectations, I thought it will be hard and complicated based on previous obstacles we encountered in class with Jari, but on the contrary me and Dora managed to upload our power point presentation and activate voice recording, though we repeated our recording couple of times. We chose open badges as our topic, and we gathered some information about it, prepared some related pictures then recorded our explanation while flipping and highlighting some important points on the slides at the same time. Open badges are really beneficial in this digital world and I was thinking why don’t you make a badge for this course and include the tasks you gave us in it. With every task, we finish we can accomplish partial badge until we finish all the needed tasks and we earn the badge, that way you will make sure that we have done every single task that was asked from us.
One of the first pictures I took with Ricoh Theta 360 camera was inside the science museum and I was very happy with it, I planned to visit it again to discover everything inside because I didn’t have the chance to do it, but unfortunately now the museum has closed and will be placed in another place. This makes me took the decision that if I want to discover or see something I should never postpone it or say I will check it later, no one knows what might happen. I enjoyed taking pictures and videos for different places and uploading these pictures and videos into thinglink, where I can edit them and make them more interactive, I was lucky that my account is still premium till now and didn't return as an ordinary one that doesn't allow me to upload anything. I also used this camera for our Rajakyla project too. It was helpful and helped us in recording all what is happening inside the class. It is impressive how the concept of pictures is changing. And can't wait to use the new 360 new Cameras that are coming to Jari's class next semester. I will be able to zoom in and zoom out which is an unavailable option in this camera.
you can check some of my pictures that I took in the products section.
