Reflection!!

This week is a really overwhelming week for me because I got to clear up the house, pack my stuff, do my homework and fly! I am in New York now and still trying to settle down, get familiar with the public transport services, walk around a little and get use to things! Phew!! It's pretty crazy for me!

For this week, the tools that we are exploring seems to be really useful to create our Personal Learning Network through those tools, especially LinkedIn but specifically for me, instead of looking at my career-related personal learning network, I will be looking at fitness and health network because since the beginning of this course, I am very interested in fitness and health, started to join communities, understand how things function in those communities, created Pinterest board on fitness and health, I thought these are pretty good foundation that I can build upon to create my own personal learning network!

Week 5 is coming to an end and next week is our last week for this course! I would say this course is really intense from the start all the way to the end although the amount of things we have do did slowly goes downhill. But I learned a lot about the many tools out that can be used for different purposes. Well, I wouldn't say that I have become an expert in using these tools but the awareness that we get through this course and the opportunity to try them out, has broaden my horizon on possible Web 2.0 tools that can be used to facilitate learning or performance! It's really amazing! I am really glad that I have taken this course since I generally appreciate online tools and social media stuff, and how wonderful these tools can be to assist us in our personal life or even at work! One more week to go!! Press on!

IFTTT!

If This Then That! This particular tool is pretty straight forward and easy to use! I didn't know such tool even existed! I always wanted to have a website or application that I can manage all my social media accounts and emails all in one place rather than having to open up multiple browsers, do multiple posts on the same thing across different social media platform! This is a one stop website where you can customize how you want to manage the activities you do with your social media accounts. For example, you can connect Instagram and Twitter or vice versa, and when you post an image on Instagram, it will also be posted onto Twitter depending on your personal settings (trigger).

There are many recommended IF recipes on the website itself that you can choose or you can create your own recipe! Pretty cool huh!

I thought this tools make things really efficient in the sense that I do not have to post an image on Instagram and post it again on Facebook, you just have to create the recipe with the tool, put in your preferred settings and it will do the rest for you. Essentially, you just need to do one action on your primary social media account, the tool will help you to post things to your other social media accounts. This is a pretty good tool that can help us segregate the things we post on our social media platforms like for example, I only want my pictures on my Facebook to be posted onto Instagram, I can set this up with this tool and it will do it for me!

This tool also allows you to track things that you do such as work hours, where you have been etc., you can set it up and you will receive email notifications tracking your whereabouts!

Isn't this cool???!!! It is really useful! Personally, I am more interested in using the DO function because of the usefulness of it. While the IF function is useful, the issue for me is that my social media platforms that I use have pretty different audience and they are for different purposes too, so I would rather manage them separately and go through the hassle of posting different things specific for the different social media platform, than to make use of this function. Just my personal preference but otherwise, this is a really good tool if you want to get all your accounts connected in one way or another, or track your personal stuff! Try it out!!

MERLOT!?

Wow! MERLOT is an amazing platform FULL of learning materials of different discipline, you can find materials to conduct courses, assessment tools, assignments and there are also open journal articles! The users put all these materials on MERLOT and share them with everyone within the community, you can develop your own materials, for example if you are interested in genetics, you can create some learning materials related to genetics and submit it, to be shared on MERLOT!

When I first saw the homepage and the amount of different tabs on it, I was thrown off my chair because it looks really confusing but when I took a closer a look, it was actually pretty organized into various categories that you can search for or explore! When the materials are submitted, people within the community can use them and then provide some comments on how useful the materials are, which is a communication mean between the users within the community.

On the left side on the website, you get refine your search based on what ever things you are looking for (there are quite a lot of materials that are available on MERLOT). I decided to just visit DNA from the Beginning, which is like a learning material where you can learn some basic information regarding DNA (it stands for Deoxyribonuclei Acid).

It is really well done and ready to be used!

On the main page, it even tells you who the target audience are and some other information as well!

Once you visit the material, the website will prompt you to rate it! And I guess based on the ratings of the materials, it helps to attract people within the community to look at the material. So it kind of serves as a way to promote the learning materials or tools. However, as we have previous discussed about the use of ratings, where it is very dependent on individual's needs and preference, it may not be a good indicator of whether a learning material is good or not. But I guess in a professional platform like MERLOT, I assumed that people within the community are more critical and professional in providing ratings and comments to these learning materials.

It is a good website where professionals working in the educational institutes or research field, can find inspirations based on the things that have been shared on MERLOT to design their own materials, or even share it! Even for people like me, who wants to learn new things, I could search for them on this website and read about things like DNA! Do try it out and it's free too!

LinkedIn!!

I decided to set up a LinkedIn account and explore it! I thought it is a really professional tool that allows people to post and share their professional background with other LinkedIn users (depending on personal privacy preference, some may set their profile as private).

I think it is a really good platform for headhunters to find and identify professionals, and recruit them to the companies.

We can also post status updates or even upload photos on our profile, quite similar to what we do on Facebook but I think it would be more about formal stuff like getting professional certifications, graduation ceremonies or attending conferences, rather than posting things like, "I had a good breakfast at Starbucks!".

You can also find networks that are related to you (I found the SAF) but most of the profiles are private, which I can understand because of security reasons. When I was updating my profile, I was also thinking about the potential implications of the professional information i.e. overseas exercises and military training, which I put up on the profile. I don't want to reveal too much information because there is always a risk involved as we do not know who is lurking out on the internet. But things like education backgrounds are fine!

With the information that I provided like the universities that I have been to, you can follow the university community, specifically University of Queensland, there are constant shares or updates on news or anything pertaining to UQ. 

You can look up for alumni of the universities that you are from, you can connect with them and read more about their professional lives. The way I see LinkedIn is that it showcase the professional lives of people, whereas Facebook on the other hand shows the social / personal lives of people. Some people wants to keep their personal and professional lives separated, LinkedIn is the way to go and you can manage your professional network with other professional people out there! I think this is a really good tool! I am not too sure if I will be using it for long term because of the nature of my job, I don't really see a point in using this tool to establish a professional network with other military personnel. But I do see a point of using this tool to establish a professional network with Instructional Designers so that we can connect with one another, and share information related to the field!

Reflection!!

Time flies!! And 2 more weeks and we will be done! Fast and furious!

This week is a pretty busy week for me because I am leaving Tallahassee for New York next Friday and I have pack up my stuff, clean up the house and prepare for the move-out inspection on Sunday, which is later in the afternoon! I am trying so hard to manage all these stuff, churning out blog post, read blogs, explore the tools, prepare the Voice Thread (took me 6 hours!!) and at the same time, I was also working on my internship task! So, it was a pretty tiring week for me!

Nevertheless, some of the tools that we have explored this week can be used as part of our produsage assignment. I read a little bit more about produsage on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Produsage), instead of presenting the information to the learners, we are getting them to create the information through various means. The students are the users of the information and at the same time, are also the producers of the information! Like what we are doing now on the Wikispace! I think in this context, the students are given the full autonomy to create content that they think or feel are important to them, while they are creating the content as a group or class, every students will also chime in to refine the content through collaboration and discussions to make the content as relevant to everyone as possible because different students will have different expectations of their own learning! This course is so fun!

Creating a Voice Thread for me was pretty crazy! It was a good experience but it took me too long! I had a slide that I wrote a pretty long script to elaborate the stuff, I was on the slide for 30 minutes re-recording my voice over and over again because I kept stumbling over my words haha! 6 hours is no joke hahaha! Moving on to week 5 tomorrow! Hang in there guys!

Pokemon Go Quick Guide!

The latest craze that took the world by storm! Pokemon Go! It is a really fun game! I am not a Pokemon fan (Digimon yes! haha) but I thought it was pretty cool to just try out the game and have some fun! It is pretty fun though but it can take quite a while to get powerful Pokemon, to level up, hatch the eggs, fill up the Pokedex, walk thousands and thousands of miles away from home or around your house to get your desire Pokemon! It is a good cardio exercise isn't it? As I promise on Tweeter to compile a few tips and guides, as well as some of my own strategy, which many Pokemon GOers out there have been doing to eventually become a true Pokemon Master. If you not the competitive type like me, you will do fine just hanging around your backyard to catch the Pokemons, level up and when you happen to travel to other countries for holidays or work trips, you can (if you want to) also check out what Pokemons are lurking around you! The screenshots that I am going to share are my personal Pokemon Go profile and you will be able to see my progress so far too!

Profile

Your own profile tells you what level you are at, the amount of experience you need to get in order to level up, there is a journal that tracks what activities you engaged in, it also shows you which Team you chose to join (I am with Team Mystic), it tells you when did you first started to play this game and how many Gold coins you have. If you click on the Journal, this is what you will see:

It is like a tracking device where it tracks whatever things that you have done like caught a Pokemon, a Pokemon ran away, what items did you receive from the Pokestops when you spin the thingy. It even tells you what time and date you did that! It will also keep a record of when the eggs hatched. It's pretty detailed!

Team

When you reach level 5, you will be asked to join a team! There are 3 teams and you can only select 1, and it will be permanent! So choose wisely! haha! There is Team Instinct, Yellow color, which is represented by the legendary bird Pokemon Zapdos.

Image from: http://pokemon.wikia.com/wiki/Zapdos

Team Mystic (I am in this Team!), Blue color, which is represented by the legendary bird Pokemon Articuno.

Image from: http://pokemon.wikia.com/wiki/Articuno

Team Valor, Red color, which is represented by the legendary bird Pokemon Motress

Image from: http://pokemon.wikia.com/wiki/Moltres

It doesn't matter which team you join, it is just a matter of personal preference!

Hatching Eggs

When you are spinning the thingy at the Pokestops, you will be also have a chance of getting eggs! They come in 2 km, 5 km and 10 km categories, and each categories of eggs will give you different type of Pokemons, and you would have figure out that the longer the distance, the more powerful and rarer the Pokemon will be when they hatch! This is a pretty good website that you can visit to see what kind of Pokemon you will get for each category Link: http://www.touchtapplay.com/pokemon-go-egg-list-a-chart-to-know-what-pokemon-you-will-get/

The eggs need to be put into the incubator in order for them to hatch! Below are some of my screenshots and I show you how to incubate them! When you go to your Eggs, you will see their categories, all you need to do is click on any one of it.

It will show you the Egg and just click on "Start Incubation"

It will show you the incubators that you have in your inventory. Just click on the incubator and use it! That's all you need to do to get your eggs into the incubator!

Everyone of us have a personal incubator that you can use and reuse again after hatch each egg. And then, when you level up to certain levels, you will receive a finite amount of incubator and you can use them, and each time when an hatch from the finite incubator, it will break and it is just one use kind of item. When your eggs are going hatch as you are walking in the park, your phone will just vibrate and you can watch your egg hatch! Don't forget to continue to incubate other eggs after hatching one!

There will be times when your phone hang while the hatching takes place, don't worry about it, the Pokemon will still be in your Pokemon inventory! I personally verified that! So don't worry about it!

Pokemon

These are the stats of the Pokemon, the higher the Combat Power (CP), the more powerful the Pokemon! There is a maximum CP limit if you take a look at the semi circle line drawn across the Pokemon, you will see where it ends. For this Eevee, the CP is pretty high but not at its maximum! This is important because if you have a high CP pokemon and when you evolve it, the new evolved form of the Pokemon will have a very high CP as well! There is a mathematical calculation to that but it is more for geeks like me who wants the best of everything hahaha!

Every time you catch a Pokemon, you will be given a few candies of that specific Pokemon. You can use the candy to power up your pokemon or collect enough of them to evolve it. (Do note that there are Pokemons that do not have any evolution at all). If you have caught too many of the same Pokemon, it is actually good. You can transfer the ones with the lowest CP to Professor Oaks, just scroll down and you will see the "transfer" button! It is just that simple!

Lure Modules

When you level up to certain levels, you will be awarded the lure module that you can use on Pokestops to lure Pokemons to where you are, and you don't have to walk anywhere, the Pokemons will come to you. This is how you set the Lure Module, did you see that white slot on top of the thingy you spin. That is where you put your lure module in!

If you have (which I don't as of now), you will just need to click on the pink color lure module that will appear at the bottom and use it!

This screenshot shows a lure module that is in place :) and everyone within the vicinity will be able to see the lure module at work! Everyone around you benefit from it!

You may have also notice that you have this incense in your inventory that you get from leveling up, it works the same too but you don't need a Pokestop to use it, you can just use it anywhere and Pokemons will come to you, and only you!

Some Quick Leveling Up Strategy

Every new Pokemon you catch will give you tons of experience, every Pokemon you evolve will award you 500 experience, every Pokemon you catch will give you 100 experience point and every Pokestop you spin will give you 50 experience point! when you level up to certain levels, you will get something called the Luck Egg in your inventory. When you use that, the experience point you gain from everything you do as mentioned above will be doubled!! The doubling effect will last for 30 minutes!

For example, I have 10 Pidgeys and I have 120 Pidgey candies, I can basically evolve all 10 Pidgeys and get 500 XP from each of it, in total I will get 5000 XP. And with Lucky Egg, it becomes 10000 XP. It is all about mathematics and some simple calculation and planning here and there! You can keep some of the similar Pokemons, get all the candies, when you think you are ready to evolve all the Pokemons that you have, use the lucky egg and evolve away! You will level up VERY FAST!

Just one thing, you can listen to how the Pokemon sound when you click on the Pokemon at the Pokemon Stat page. Try it out! haha! And Pikachu is the only Pokemon that says Pikachu! The rest are just weird noises! 

This can go on forever but these are just simple information about Pokemon Go :P

Edmodo!

I tried Edmodo and I think it is a really good platform to facilitate learning of a particular subject or even a collection of different subjects!

Edmodo has a pretty similar interface as Facebook, which I think that it may, in some way, appeal to students or teachers in this social media era! You can post things directly onto the main feed but there is no way you can private message anyone on this tool. I think it is good because in this way, it promotes the idea of group interactions, as the students come together and discuss about a particular topic openly, so everyone gets to see each other's point of view and share theirs too, instead of one student sharing with another student privately. So essentially, everything that is related to the topic is being discussed openly on the feeds and everyone gets to see what everyone has got to say! I signed up as a student and joined the EME6414 class! This is what I see on my laptop!

It's like we are trying to conduct a class on Facebook but with features like uploading of assignment files onto your profile if there are any assignments given by the teacher.

You can also monitor your progress, which are your grades on your assignments posted by your teachers!

And it is not restricted to just one course, you can be in multiple courses if all the teachers decided to put the entire semester on Edmodo! It works too! haha I think it is pretty cool but at the same time, I think being the teacher of the class on Edmodo, he or she will have to be actively engaging the students and at the same time, I think it is important to also create some form of a time line to make sure that the students are checking their profile on specific time of the day and week, to participate in any form of online class activities created by the teacher. I feel that for people in Higher Education, we know how to self-regulate ourselves and we are adults, we should know how to manage our time and do what needs to be done for the course like in this class. As for students in elementary schools or high schools, I think the teacher might need to control and manage the students because they may be easily distracted since all these will be done via the computer! Therefore, having some form of a time table for the students to follow would be ideal to keep them on tasks!

The students can even invite their parents onto Edmodo and monitor their kids learning progression! While it may be a good idea to get parents involved in the kids learning so the parents can have a better idea of what their kids have been learning in school. But I think it might be pretty stressful for the students. Taking myself for an example, I would feel really awkward when I am studying and my parents are watching me. Even if it's online, it is their presence that will make me feel awkward, which I think will limit my ability to share how I feel about certain concepts of a particular topic. I will also be worried that my parents will see my assignment scores and if I don't do well, I will be punished etc. It makes the learning environment stressful and it may have a negative impact on a student's learning. What do you think?