Google Groups vs Lefora

When browsing the Internet to find a suitable forum to use for my VLE I came across two main contenders so this is:

Google Groups and Lefora are both platforms for the creation of a forum and the invitation of persons to take part. 

Google Groups is the more basic of the two. You set up a Group to which you can invite students via e-mail and create discussion topics as well as general announcements for viewing or editing. One of the main benefits of this forum is that notifications can automatically be sent to the students e-mail. If a new topic is created for example, the student can receive and e-mail notifying them of it. This should mean that students will never miss an important announcement or topic for discussion.

The other main benefit of Google Groups is that it is completely compatible with Google Sites. This means that the forum is easily embedded into the Site and can exist both on the VLE as well as its own entity. 

Moving onto Lefora the benefits of this forum are quite different. Although it does provide a notification system it is not as useful as the Google Groups feature. Also, Google has recently disabled the ability to embed the forum onto Google Sites. Therefore a link must be provided to the forum itself.

The benefits of Lefora lie in its customisation. Everything from the look of the forum to the type of forum and topic you want to create can be customised. Unlike Google Groups (in my opinion) Lefora actually looks like a forum. One of the best features that can be customised is the post count 'levelling up' system. This means that the more posts students make the different level they can achieve. These levels can be named whatever the teacher wishes and can be linked to rewards both on the forum and in the classroom. Having frequented football forums for quite some time I have found the Lefora template to be the most user friendly and simply the best template to use. 

A payoff of all the customisation is the fact that the Lefora forum becomes its own stand alone entity. Whereas Google Groups would be embedded into the VLE and has the look of a formal almost administrative forum, Lefora provides students with somewhat of an escape. As a student myself I know that I am more likely to use applications that are not strictly college based. As Lefora is its own forum with its own customisation I feel that students will be more willing to visit the site and interact with it. 

For the reasons stated therefore, I have decided to create a Lefora forum and provide a link for it on my VLE. Additionally however, I have created a makeshift forum directly through my VLE for those students who do not wish to frequent an outside forum but may still have issues to discuss.

The Hitchhiker's guide to ICT

When scouring the library for textbooks to use in my assignment I managed to find this gem:

Hidden amongst the burgeoning textbooks and handbooks this small guide caught my eye and I am very glad it did. Without giving too much away, this guide provides ICT support and ideas for all kinds of teachers.

Ranging from how best to put together a presentation to a multitude of games that can be created and used in the classroom this guide has something for everyone.

If anyone has a number of lessons to teach in which ICT can be incorporated I highly suggest a look!

The Professional Professors

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I was very adamant that I wanted a quiz engine to embed into my VLE. To achieve this I went through about 3 different quiz generator sites until I settled on the site known as ProProfs.

ProProfs offers seemingly unlimited quizzes to be made by free users in a quick and simple manner.

Firstly, the user either needs to sign up to a free account or alternatively use an existing social media account.

From there the proverbial world is your oyster. Clicking the create a quiz button brings the user to this page:

As you can see ProProfs provides a number of different styles of quizzes which may be useful for blogs or general interest websites. The most suitable for the VLE I was creating however was th simple scored quiz. 

When creating this type of quiz the user is again given a number of options:

These provide the different types of questions that can be inserted into the quiz, and appear as such:

As you can see this allows you to ask any question you like and fill in as many possible answers as you wish selecting the correct one. There is also a feature allowing the user to drag the answers into any order they want to.

Once the quiz is completed and named the user can delegate points to each question and then save the quiz. At this point the quiz may be embedded by selecting the share option and copying the code.

This should then be placed in the html of your Site.

Spicy Node

It is with a heavy heart that I write this post. In my post regarding useful applications for teaching I was almost enamored with the website Spicy Node. Having used this in my teaching however, I am disappointed to reveal that it is not something I will be revisiting.

Spicy Node is a website that allows users to create their own mind maps in a variety of styles and colours. "Great!" I thought, "this would be perfect for my teaching!" Isn't it funny how we often look back on ourselves and think "What an idiot"?

The creation of a mind map is fairly straight forward. You create a master 'node' and continue to edit further nodes to your preference. However I found that, on a number of occasions, nodes would delete themselves. I would spend 10 minutes creating a node with a detailed description of discrimination only to realise it hadn't saved itself and I was left with "New Node #14".

Once completed however, the mind map was very presentable. The major problems came when I started teaching. 

Issue #1

During all of my lessons I have the benefit of a SMART board. Unfortunately, Spicy Node is only compatible with this in a very limited way. You can click each node and navigate through them easily, but you cannot drag the nodes around for a better view without using the mouse. This meant that I was forever switching between the SMART board and the computer to prevent my nodes cowering behind their brothers.

Issue #2

Whilst the map looked presentable on the computer screen, it was a different story on the board. There was a constant battle between wanting enough nodes on screen at once and making the text big enough for people to see. This may have been eased by the zoom function but this was another function that was uncontrollable using the SMART board. Therefore I was having to allow extra time for students to read through the node as they had to strain. This may have been solved by the full screen feature, but when this was enabled all the nodes opened and spread themselves across the page like water spilling off a table. It looked awful.

Issue #3

The final issue I had with this website was that, when opening the nodes, they would move in unpredictable directions across the screen. this means that I was constantly looking at the wrong place and would take a beat to discover my place. The students also complained that they were confused about what was actually going on due to the constant movement of text.

These lesson-breaking issues mean that I will retract my original opinions.

(Revised) Verdict: Not for me

NearPod as a Teaching Device

When I began teaching I felt safe and comfortable standing in front of a PowerPoint presentation and giving out questions on paper. Now, I feel that I have grown into the role of teacher and have been looking to bring more variety to my lessons.
It is not that PowerPoints are an ineffective way of teaching, I just felt that my lessons were becoming formulaic and predictable. I needed new ways to engage the learner.

This is where NearPod comes in.

Introduced to me through the E-Learning module, NearPod is an interactive presentation tool that connects with the learners through an app on their mobile devices.
When I first analysed the website i wasn't that impressed. I found the slide tools to be clunky and limited and I found very little room for customization.
However, my desire to use technology in the classroom drove me to look for a way around this. I discovered that I could screen-cap my PowerPoint slides and insert them as images. Although this limited the slides to a now still image, I was able to create effective and engaging presentations.

The beauty of NearPod is that both the presentation and any activities you may insert appear on the mobile device screens. This means that the students can interact with the presentation and answer questions in either a:
Poll
Multiple Choice Question
Open Ended Question
Matching Game
Fill in the Blanks Activity
And the answers to those questions appear on the whiteboard shortly after the students post them.

Although it may not seem as world changing as I am making it out to be, the students did really enjoy the experience. The novelty of being allowed to use a mobile device in the classroom and having the ability to create humorous nicknames for their answers provides an exciting and engaging change of pace for the students. So much so that they have fervently requested more lessons which involve the app.

For anyone who is pondering using NearPod I would advise you to stick at it. There may be an initial dislike of the clunky features but once you work around these the variety of activities available and the enthusiasm students have shown towards the lessons are more than worth it.

99 Problems and a Computer Room is 1

One of the main issues with the use of ICT in education is the fact that not every classroom is equipped with the facilities.

Unfortunately there is no easy solution to this. The benefits of ICT in lessons are well founded and unquestionable, but if the facilities are not available then there is little good speaking about the benefits. As a college, Cymoedd's Nantgarw Campus (where I am situated on placement) is one of the best equipped colleges in terms of computer facilities and yet there are still teachers frustrated.

The obvious answer would be to make every room a computer room. But while this solves one problem it creates numerous others. So what do you do?

I believe the best way to combat these types of problems is to get organised. Teachers should come together and create a general plan of what lessons they have in a computer room and what lessons they don't. That way if things are stressed around assignment time, teachers will be able to see exactly what computer rooms are taken and who is in them allowing them to request a swap.

Although this may take some time to set up, time teachers may not have, the long term benefits may just be worth it. Additionally, a computerised system could be set up in which teachers input their time table individually to create the same effect. There could also be a feature in this system that allows teachers to make special or "high priority" requests for computer rooms on specific dates. Also, other teachers may receive notifications whenever a computer room becomes free through their e-mail meaning no facilities go un-used.

The Final SIte

The website I managed to stick with was Google Sites.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Google Sites is an easy to edit, easy to access site that does not really advertise itself as a platform for a VLE. Instead, Google Sites is set up more as the basis of a blog or a basic website. Because of this it took a while for me to figure out how to engineer the features into a site that resembled a VLE,

The first problem I encountered was the fact that there is no discernable way to create folders. Folders are a great way to organise resources and pages for easy navigation around the VLE. To counter this I decided to create subpages. As it turned out the subpages were a great alternative to the folder format and the fact that I could add as many subpages as I wanted to really added to the depth the site could go to. The main issue with subpages however, is that they are effectively hidden. Users will not know that the subpage exists until they enter onto the parent page. Again I managed to find a way around this. There is a feature on the site that allows drop down lists to appear when hovering over the headings at the top of the page.  This means that as users go to click on the parent page they will be altered to the fact that there are subpages to be viewed.

A very useful element of Google sites is that it is fully compatible with all other Google applications. This meant that inserting a Google drive was an easy way to provide resources. What is also a fantastic feature, is that as soon as the Google drive is updated the resources on the Site is updated. This means that I only have to update the Google drive and do not have to alter the site at all.

But what of the quizzes? How could I leave this issues on a cliffhanger? 

Eventually I found a website known as ProProfs which was very easy to use as well as embed. So it would appear this story does indeed have a happy ending!

All in all once I got the hang of Google site's features and workings I was very happy with it as a platform for my VLE.