Show & Tell - Social Software: Using Blogs

As a follow up to our internship experience at CDE, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, we decided to share with our DFLSC collegues our experiences with the use of blogs during the show & tell segment of the OPS Meeting on August 15th.
Anare began our show and tell with a ppt. presenation on the following:

• What is Social Software?
• Blogs defined
• Advantages of using blogs
• Primary uses of blogs

Ala then went share some experiences of blogging during our internship at CDE.

We would like to acknowledge Chris Lott & CDE for our presentation because most of the content was derived from the teaching tips wiki page on the use of blogs.

CDE has a revamped website and it is just excellent!!!! Love it!!! Great work by the
project team!!!

As well as wikipedia for the following resources:
Definition of social software
Types of social software

For more reading, here is an article on the future of blogging by CNET news

Would also like to acknowledge our missing Alaska 3 collegue; Neelam who is away on annual leave who also contributed to this presentation.

Photos from Fiji!

Carol & Christen wanted some photos from Fiji. Here is a first of many attempts. Photos are from our main campus in Suva. Threw in a photo taken today of Anare. You can see him fanning off the heat with a piece of card board!!

On our way back to Fiji

Photos here from Seattle & Los Angeles airports whilst waiting for our flights!! Arrived safely in Suva & whew!! it is just so hot!!!!!

Santa land, North Pole

After the ice bridge, Bernice had another special treat for us - a photo opportunity at Santa land in the Community of North Pole. This is where all those letters to Santa goes to. Check out the pics!!

Crossing the Ice Bridge

Take a look at the picture & give your best guess on where we are standing!! This is actually Chena River & is used during winter as an "ice bridge". Bernice drove us across just so we can experience it!!

Dinner @ Pikes Landing

We were so honoured to be invited for dinner by Executive Dean of the College of Rural and Community Development Bernice Joseph & husband on our last night in Fairbanks. We thoroughly enjoyed our dinner at Pikes Landing. Thanks so much!!

Ni Sa Moce to Fairbanks, Alaska!

All good things must come to an end but that does not make the parting any easier!
It is with a heavy heart that we bid our wonderful friends and colleagues at CDE and UAF farewell. Your warmth and camaraderie have made our internship an enjoyable and fruitful experience. Indeed we have learnt a lot and return to Fiji with wonderful memories of our time spent in Fairbanks. The adventures we had apart from work were thoroughly enjoyable. Who would have imagined that these three islanders would one day enjoy a dogsled ride, feed reindeers, stand on top of the world, bathe outdoors at a temparature of -34F/-36C yet kept warm because of the hot springs at Chena Hot Springs, enjoy a tour of the Ice Hotel, and go to and from work every day in the snow.

We say vinaka vakalevu for all that we have learnt whilst in Fairbanks not to mention the many gifts we received: the gifts of your presence; time; knowledge; transport; and gift basket. Thank you too for inviting us to be part of your Christmas party and exchange of gifts. We are indebted to you Curt for arranging for us to meet with President Hamilton, Chancellor Jones, Deans Bernice Joseph and Carol Lewis, Professor Anthony Nakazawa and Rt. Jemesa Reynolds.
Vinaka saka vakalevu for the souvenir of Alaska that we are taking with us to share with our colleagues at DFLSC, USP.

Curt we are indebted to you for making it possible for us to come for this internship and also to DFLSC and USP for allowing us to have this learning experience. We will be sending more pictures.

Vinaka saka vakalevu and Dhanyawaad from Ala Lesuma-Fatiaki, Neelam Narayan and Anare Tuitoga.

Ni Sa Moce Saka!

Meeting with Ratu Jemesa Reynolds

Had a good talanoa with Professor James B. Reynolds, who is from the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, UAF. Professor James spent a couple of years in Fiji & have only recently returned in September of this year. He has close association with USP having spent a year at the Institute of Applied Sciences (IAS). He was working on setting up a data management system for the Land Management Area (LMA) project & conducting workshops in the process for users of the system. He is exploring the possibility of offering LMA training through the distance mode & he will fit this in his schedule when he comes back to Fiji in February next week. We have a lot of lolomas to send to the people in IAS from Ratu Jemesa.

We went on a dog sled ride!!!

This was such an exhilirating experience!! Check out the pics!!

Future Technology & Web Trends

This was a follow on from Chis Lott's presentation yesterday & we were just blown away with his outline of recent & future trends in web technology. The areas he covered were as follows:

• Pedagogy & its transformation due to the intergration of technology in learning
• Remixing Culture
• Web Copyright - examples; Google Print & Creative Commons, Face book
  
• Web Archiving
• Educational Gaming
• Continuation of the rise of Social Software
  
• Emergence of new learners & teachers - multitasking.

Meeting with Professor Bob Briggs

Had a meeting this morning with Bob Briggs who is the visiting scholar & research professor to CDE. Professor Briggs & Curt will be editing a special edition of the journal of Information Technology for Development. USP has been invited to submit an article in this journal. We sat together with Professor Briggs to discuss a possible topic for the journal & we have come up with something along the realms of - Bridging the Digital Divide in DFL - the USP Experience. We hope to be in constant contact with Bob on this matter.

Just Plug it in!!

You are probably wondering what the title of this posting means!! On our first day in Fairbanks, I came across a notice in the lobby of our hotel - Plug it in!! I thought it had something to do with computer plug-ins but after reading further it said something about plugging in your car 25 minutes before driving. It was later on that we found out from the CDE staff that this an important activity during the winter season to warm up car engines before being driven. You will also require to change your tyres for those most suitable for the winter season. In the picture above, Curt is plugging in his car after our visit to the President of UA.

Courtesy call to UA President

Just came back from paying a courtesy call to the President of University of Alaska (UA), President Mark Hamilton . The UA system consist of 3 universities; University of Alaska, Anchorage (UAA), University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF) - where we are at and University of Alaska, South East (UAS). We were very honoured to meet the President who was very keen to hear about our experiences in the Pacific but particularly our Alaskan experiences.

Our work space in CDE

Isa!! I am already missing Alaska!! Here are some photos of our work space in CDE!

Foundation Theory and Social Software

Had a session this morning (Thursday here) on Foundation Theory and Social Software (Weblogs, Wikis,RSS, Podcasting, etc). This was conducted by Chris Lott (in the pic). It was a very interesting and fruitful session. Chris started the presentation by explaining the theoretical background of social software. Most of the instructors at UAF are using Weblogs, Wikis and Podcasting in their courses for interaction and also for assessment purposes. In the presentation, Chris showed three models of moderating discussion boards effectively and the third model was the most effective one. Pita, this will be definitely of interest to you.

Podcasting was a totally new thing for us to discover but I guess our Online IDs may be familiar with it. It entails audio content that is delivered by an RSS feed presenting a downloadable or streaming file. In other words, Podcasting is the downloading of audio broadcasts to the iPod. iPod is an electronic gizmo that allows downloading of audio files and is battery operated. Well this is just a brief outline of the session we attended this morning and a link to Chris Lott's presentaion will be added soon. Stay tuned for Future Technology & Web Trends coming up soon!

Audio Conferencing Session

We were very fortunate to experience an audio conferencing session in CDE. This was conducted in the CDE conference room. The class in session was ECE101: Introduction to Early Childhood. The audio conferencing system here operates slightly different from USP. In CDE & UAF, students call in from their own phones & the instructor's audio setup is done in the offices. We also participated in this session in which we explained a bit about USP & we had such keen students who wanted to know more about the Pacific asking questions about early childhood, kinds of food we eat, kava etc.. Students who were participating were located in remote parts of Alaska.

Museum Visit

After x-mas lunch that it was off with Carol & Christen to the UAF Museum. This was an educational experience for us learning more about Native Alaskan culture, wildlife & history. Check out the photos!!

CDE X-Mas Party

I know we missed the DFLSC party but we have been so blessed that we were able to be part of the CDE X-mas party experience. What an experience it was!! It was x-mas lunch in the office with all the food delights you can think of! After digging into the food we went right into the most exciting part of the whole thing!! i.e gift exchange. Each person picks out a number from a box. When a number is called out you have 2 options; you can either choose a gift from the gift table or choose or take a gift from anyone else whose number has been called out. The person you take the gift from will then either choose a gift from the gift table or take someone else's gift!! A gift can only be taken away 3 times & after the 3rd round, the gift will remain with that person. It was loads of fun & we could only imagine how this would work for us!! I'm missing CDE already!!!!

Captivate Session

After our Elluminate session we went right into Captivate. Captivate is an application created by Macromedia for the purpose of creating interactive simulations and software demonstrations. Its a similar application to Camtasia which Val uses a lot. It has the following features:

1. audio & video insertions
2. ppt. insertions
3. provide special effects such as mouse clicking, keyboard typing
4. creation of pre-loaders
5. movie transition options
6. ability to export as a flash (fla) file.

Probably the only downside is that Captivate files can be extremely large but converting to fla. format can do a lot to reducing size.

Elluminate Session

After our meeting with Professor Nakazawa, we went into our hands-on session with Sage on Elluminate (Academic Edition). This edition of Elluminate is a real-time virtual classroom environment designed to enable & enhance collaboration via distance for academic institutions. Elluminate environment has the following interactive features; whiteboard, audio & text messaging & a raise your hands feature for students who wish to ask a question. The whiteboard operates very similar to the one in WebCT whereby drawings can be made & there is also capability to import screen captures, image files, cliparts. Text can also be inserted into the whiteboard but its quite limited in this area. There is a "point of interest" feature where it offers options such as I got an idea iconized by a light bulb, a pointing finger icon pointing to a particular part of a human organ for instance. For a session to be conducted effectively, 10-12 participants is ideal. It is also possible to share multimedia but with low bandwith environments this will present a challenge. The audio portion of Elluminate works very well in a low bandwidth environment but the images uploaded may take time loading. It is also possible to bring out various applications such as word, excel etc. & would be particularly ideal for our computer science courses for programming application demonstrations. It is also has a powerpoint feature as well. It is also possible to conduct web tours where the moderator of a session can switch to a website which may relate to subject area in session. It is also possible to create breakout or private virtual groups in a session depending upon the preferences of the moderator.
In terms of costs, obtaining a license to use Elluminate is according to the no. of seats which also includes moderators of sessions. CDE currently shares a license with K-12 schools. This arrangement is ideal for them because most sessions for CDE are conducted after 4pm & the K-12 schools take up the earlier hours within a 24 hour period. This certainly helps in meeting the costs of using Elluminate. Elluminate offers the option of hosting the application on their server as well but at an extra cost. There are other vendors that also offer similar features such as HorizonLive, Genesis and Macromedia Breeze.

Meeting with CES Director

Had a meeting this morning with Cooperative Extension Services (CES) Director, Professor Anthony Nakazawa. This was a networking exercise in which Professor Nakazawa explained a bit about CES & possible collaborations with USP. CES is similar to IRETA at Alafua Campus, Samoa. We have directed him to appropriate organisations in the Pacific such as SPC, IRETA. Anare is working very hard in initiating networks with the key organisations.

Temperature dropping!!

Since we have only a few days left in Fairbanks we noticed that the temperature is dropping. Check out the picture in the temperature sign @ UAF!!!

Visit to the UAF Printery

After the ID meeting then it was off in Heidi's car to the UAF Printery. The printery has an excellent setup & what thing that we were all in aggrement with is that once again we will have to reiterate what other DFLSC staff have recommended in internship reports presented in previous years and that is - the need to have our own dedicated University printery. Can something be done about it??

Sat in the Design Team Meeting

Just came out of a Design team meeting. This is more like a progress reporting
exercise where each ID gives updates on the various projects that they are working on. This
is not only limited to course development but extends to other things such as CDE web site, course development database etc.
Each project is allocated an estimated no. of hours & this translates to a workload indicator for each ID. This is something that DFLSC can perhaps explore. So often we say that we are overloaded with work!!. Quantifying this process will go along way to assisting course team members manage their workloads. This could be a very important differentiating factor for our course development categories in particular the distinction between a Revised & a MA course. Based on my experience, an MA can end up becoming a Revised course. With a quantifiable indicator in place it would make the distinction more clearer for course teams.

Meet Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!!

After the testing we got to see some reindeers at the UAF research farm. They are very sociable animals and ran up to us as soon as we got off the car & started walking along the fences. Currently the research farm is engaged in reindeer feed creation & testing & is hoping to collaborate with us in providing assistance in a creation of a Para-Vet course.