Blogger Review

Throughout this semester we have been using blogger.com for the presentation of our assessments.  This is the first occasion that I have used blogger.com; in fact, it's the first time I have blogged full stop.  I have found the blogging aspect of the assessments challenging and for educational purposes I am not entirely convinced that it has a place within the assessment criteria, nevertheless I have found the experience interesting and I have learnt a lot about blogs. 

In our first couple of sessions we set up our blog, designed it and learnt to manoeuvre our way around the site enabling us to create posts and view our blog.  Further seminars enabled us to complete more complex tasks like adding gadgets and making our blogs more personal to us.

 

 

When completing the assignment for Caroline using blogger I noticed that some of my work had been shared publicly, as I mentioned before this is not suitable for the assessment scenarios as you are making your work readily available for people to copy.  Fellow students are 'following you' so they are able to see a live feed of all of your work as it is being posted and it is being sent directly to their news feed.  Going forward to make the assessments less accessible it could be suggested that maybe students shouldn't be told to follow each other.

 

 

With regards to using blogger.com again; I like the site and the idea of blogging, however it is not something that I find enjoyable, having not used it for anything other than the work requested of me, and I cannot see myself wanting to blog in the future, if I were to use blogger.com again it would either be for educational or professional reasons; not personal.

Visual Communication

This is a reflective post, based on what I have learnt since starting the IT based module for Visual Communication: Culture and Creativity in October 2013.  The module mainly focused on blogging although there were other areas that were covered too.

In this module I feel that I have learnt a vast amount of useful tips when it comes to the technological side of assessments, whether it be more professional ways of presenting work and thinking more creatively in the presentation or learning to add citations and references to essays using word. 

Throughout this blog the different techniques we have been taught are demonstrated; embedding videos, creating animations, creating videos from images and making a mind map online to name just a few; as well as things that I didn't even know existed like glogs which, if used correctly are fantastically powerful visual tools.

I have gained a great insight to IT and Visual Communication during the semester which will no doubt enrich my future academic career.

Referencing 21/11/2013

I found the Visual Communication: Culture and Creativity session on Thursday extremely insightful.  I learnt how to use the referencing tool on Windows 7.  It is a fantastic tool that will inevitably save me time when writing assignments in the future.  By being able to create a database of readings, that with one click on completion of the assignment turns into the bibliography / References section, I will save a great deal of time and prevent error when compiling the list.

Although I have used MS Office throughout my professional career, my educational career is revealing my shortfalls with the programmes as the aspects we are required to use are very different.  With this in mind Mandy's sessions have become invaluable to me as I am learning vast amounts about programmes that I would have previously deemed myself experienced in, it turns out I actually am not as versed in the programmes as I thought.

Mind Mapping

 

Returning to Experience

 

I have created a mind map using bubbl.us to visually document 'Reflection'.  This links in to my previous reflective post dated 11/11/2013 on models of reflection.  Mandy Peace uploaded a task to Moodle asking us to familiarise ourselves with virtual mind mapping and have a go at creating a mind map online.

 

 

Attending to Feelings

 

I found the tool extremely useful and easy to navigate.  I created a mind map on 'Reflective Learning'.  The site had clearly marked tabs to enable me, as a new user, to create this mind map with ease.  The colour coding gave the mind map clear differentiation between categories and I was able to display the mind map in a way that was appealing to me.

 

 

Evaluating the Experience

I will definitely be using bubbl.us for future mind maps as I thought it was a great programme.  In the past when I have created mind maps by hand I have found they are unorganised, hard to read and difficult to digest when returning to them.  The great thing I found with bubbl.us was that I could adjust the layout of the mind map if i wanted to go back and add another bubble, whereas by hand this could have resulted in there not being enough space on the page meaning that the bubble was in the wrong place.  All in all, great tool and I look forward to using it again throughout my studies.

Reflection 11/11/2013

Description:

Over the past couple of weeks I have learnt about 'blogging'; what a blog is, creating a blog and writing practice blog posts. 

I have been tasked with writing a reflective blog to form the assessment criteria for two modules; Visual Communications: Culture and Creativity and Caroline Lewis' assessment of 21^st Century Learning: Theories and Contexts.

I have also read 'Reflective Journals' and  'Reflective Learning' posted to Moodle by Mandy Peace to gain a greater understanding of reflection.  I already have a basic understanding of the Gibbs 1988 model so I will be including this model and comparing it to the other methods discussed in the document

Feelings:

As I have never written a blog before, let alone formally reflected, I have been finding the thought of a 'reflective blog' fairly daunting.  I am also excited to practice these methods and vary my reflective style throughout my degree.

Evaluation:

In my opinion the Dewey (1910, 1933) model over complicated the process of reflection by asking for a possible solution as the first point of the reflection.   Boud, Keogh and Walker's model of reflection is the most logical out of the models documented in 'Reflective Journals'.  I will explore this method in later reflections as I believe I would easily transition from Gibbs 1988 style to the Boud, Keogh and Walker model.  I felt that Kolb's model was less complicated than Dewey, however, the 'watching' element of the model would suggest that this may be a useful method to use when reflecting on an observation.

Analysis:

After reading the Reflective Journals document and considering all of the styles of reflection within the document, I found Gibbs model the easiest and most logical for my thought process in my first formal reflection.

Conclusion:

Although I had a prior knowledge of the Gibb model, I had never formally reflected before today.  I could have used one of the styles documented in the 'Reflection Journals' document for this blog which would have taken me further out of my comfort zone.

Action Plan:

When the opportunity arises again I will use one of the other models of reflection to blog; I may find that I prefer a different style for this type of reflective writing.  The models I will be experimenting with for reflections in the immediate future will include; Boud, Keogh and Walker's, and Kolb's models.