Tuesday, March 25th
I contacted Dr. Value this week to ask her if she needed some help and to reschedule our meeting this week (I have a doctor's appointment so I need to meet her earlier than we planned)
She told me she did some work, but when I looked at the page, I was so impressed with all the work she has done over the break! It is wonderful. I am so happy that she managed to add some features and improve the whole design of the page. I can see it is getting there.
Dr. Value told me she has had some constraints regarding three aspects: a) the forum form, b) the gallery of pictures, and c) the login member feature. She explained in detail the difficulties she has had. I will check and investigate how to solve these difficulties in order to have a consistent design.
Dr. Value has sent the link to our first beta version of the website to the members of the SIG group, and we have had positive feedback. They are eager to see more resources and options, so I think we will work on that. (Their feedback is so great!)
We will meet on Friday and we will discuss other details and features to add. I have a feeling of accomplishment that is very rewarding. I was so worried at the beginning of this project but now I feel we are doing fine. I know that we still have a long way to have our final version done, but I am so happy that we can come up with something so professional and well done. I will be more than happy to continue with this project next semester...I would love to.
Tuesday, 25 March 2014
WEEK 10 (mentoring)
Monday, March 17th
This week Dr. Value will be working on her own and adding more features to the website. I suggested her to contact me in case she needed some support.
Our next meeting will be after Spring break, on March 28th. Although we have done a lot, I am a bit worried about time. We are interested in having a bet version of the page for the upcoming conference. I hope we can do as much as we can.
This week Dr. Value will be working on her own and adding more features to the website. I suggested her to contact me in case she needed some support.
Our next meeting will be after Spring break, on March 28th. Although we have done a lot, I am a bit worried about time. We are interested in having a bet version of the page for the upcoming conference. I hope we can do as much as we can.
Wednesday, 12 March 2014
WEEK 8 (class reflections)
March 6,
Discussion Questions
Knowledge Base
I don’t think it is necessary to know the subject our
mentees teach in order to help them learn and implement technology. It certainly
will help if the changes are going to be focused on the creation of an online
or blended course. The knowledge about the subject will help us make them
visualize what can be done and what cannot be done with technology. In my case
I do not need to know about her subject because we are focusing on building a
website. However, I do think that mentors need to know what are the pedagogical
approaches, interests and expectations the mentees have this experience so we
can better focus on providing the best support.
I think that depending on the purpose of the technology
project, then we can start learning about their subject.
Pinar pointed out that if the professor needs help with
technology they start explaining about the subject so the mentee can provide a
suitable solution. However, I think that if we are going to help them in
designing their courses, it is important to know about teaching, pedagogy and
instructional design principles to be able to transport the traditional
classroom content to the new environment in a way that best suits objectives
and help students learn in a different learning domain.
Building trust
I think there is trust when we explain each other about our
weaknesses and strengths. I had the idea that I needed to know everything and
struggled with it at the beginning. When I work with Dr. Value I acknowledge
that I don’t know and try to figure out answers somehow. She is very
understanding and she tells me that I will be able to figure it out and she
works in something else. I think that basics of this mentor-mentee experience
is to trust each other on what we are capable of doing.
One-to-One or
One-to-Many?
Build a community of faculty mentees? I think that is a good
idea. However, we need to take into the account the purpose that we have. We as
mentors want to help and support faculty who have a need in the use of
technology. Their specific needs are individual and we need to address them in
such a way. Probably a community of mentees will help to share their own
experiences, expectations, feelings, etc so that faculty support each other at
a different level.
I agree with Zina, every mentee may have their own projects and we need to focus on those needs.I also agree with Andrea upon the idea that time and schedule may be complex if we want to take a one-to-many approach.
An interesting proposal is to have it as an independent study. Multiple case studies? We may need to think more about it.
An interesting proposal is to have it as an independent study. Multiple case studies? We may need to think more about it.
Tuesday, 11 March 2014
WEEK 7 (class reflection)
Feb 27,
How does my mentee view technology?
Well, my mentee likes to work with technology. She has her own website and uses other programs very confidently. Besides her husband is involved in the technology field so there is some input for her to be open to technology.
Her decision to start building a website for her SIG group came up because the members and officers found their Facebook webiste not professional. They need a space in which they can share their work, research and happenings in amore professional, collaborative way. As she is an officer in the SIG group she felt she wanted to contribute to the group with their own website. I do not think her approach is "because I have to" but it is more a need and commitment to engage in professional discussions in an adequate space.
Teachers teach teachers.
It is undeniable that collaborative work does make a difference in learning. I think that teachers do not teach other teachers, but teachers help and support each other.
I agree with Dr. Nadolny upon the idea that when teachers share with others what they do, it is great because that way we are creating a community of teachers-learners.
However, there are teachers whose negative work or attitudes do not help at all and rather than contribution to creating a nice environment and community of professionals, they contribute to foster negative attitudes.
I also agree with Zina, if teachers have had bad experiences with technology they will not be able to manage their emotions and way to release them is to express their negative ideas about that technology. I, myself, have experienced this and feel that technology is not helping me. However, the support from my fellow colleagues has helped me overcome that frustration and work towards a better understanding on how to handle difficulties with the programs I use.
Zina mentions that competition may play a role in the view of technology. But I think that it is more the feeling of being embarrassed in front of others because teachers may not know how to handle technology problems.
Teachers as mentors?
I am not sure whether teachers can become effective mentors. What are mentors' characteristics that teachers need to have to become mentors?
How does my mentee view technology?
Well, my mentee likes to work with technology. She has her own website and uses other programs very confidently. Besides her husband is involved in the technology field so there is some input for her to be open to technology.
Her decision to start building a website for her SIG group came up because the members and officers found their Facebook webiste not professional. They need a space in which they can share their work, research and happenings in amore professional, collaborative way. As she is an officer in the SIG group she felt she wanted to contribute to the group with their own website. I do not think her approach is "because I have to" but it is more a need and commitment to engage in professional discussions in an adequate space.
Teachers teach teachers.
It is undeniable that collaborative work does make a difference in learning. I think that teachers do not teach other teachers, but teachers help and support each other.
I agree with Dr. Nadolny upon the idea that when teachers share with others what they do, it is great because that way we are creating a community of teachers-learners.
However, there are teachers whose negative work or attitudes do not help at all and rather than contribution to creating a nice environment and community of professionals, they contribute to foster negative attitudes.
I also agree with Zina, if teachers have had bad experiences with technology they will not be able to manage their emotions and way to release them is to express their negative ideas about that technology. I, myself, have experienced this and feel that technology is not helping me. However, the support from my fellow colleagues has helped me overcome that frustration and work towards a better understanding on how to handle difficulties with the programs I use.
Zina mentions that competition may play a role in the view of technology. But I think that it is more the feeling of being embarrassed in front of others because teachers may not know how to handle technology problems.
Teachers as mentors?
I am not sure whether teachers can become effective mentors. What are mentors' characteristics that teachers need to have to become mentors?
WEEK 9 (mentoring)
March 11, 2014
I met Dr. Value today. We worked hard and we accomplished a great deal of work!. I feel really happy that things are working out well, a little slow but we have come to work as a team.
Dr. Value works on her own laptop and I work on my own. She does the design on her own and I help her with suggestions and guide her through the use of other elements for the website.
Today Dr. Value created a new page to post information about Kudos & Happenings. We created a slide show gallery with photos and short descriptions about the events. It was a little hard to come up with an appropriate design because the slideshow gallery feature in Wix combines the picture and text together and if we want to resize the text, the picture best resized as well, and viceversa.
I was trying to see how we can effectively create the slideshow gallery and Dr. Value moved forward and started working on something else. This approach was really good, because that way we could work more effectively. Once I found an alternative, I explained it to her and she was able to create the slideshow gallery very easily. Something that I may need to address next time we meet is that we need to have the pictures for the website consistent (dimensions and quality). Today we had some problems with this, we need to resize pictures and they became blurred. So if we do some picture editing beforehand will be better. It may imply the need to use a photo editor...I will see how we can solve this.
Dr. Value got some bio and other information from the officers of the SIG group so we are working on uploading that information and links to publications, books and other resources.
We agreed to meet after Spring Break, but she will do some work during the break. I told her to contact me is she has any problem with any of the features.
We also learnt about some tricks that we ourselves "discovered". It was so funny that we found some ways to solve the problems. We always check in the Wix forums about other options or "fix" trick to be able to do what we want.
A funny part of today's meeting was that we tried to get rid of three out of the four icons for social media. Every time that she tried to delete the three, the F for Facebook went away and we could not understand why neither where it went. We did not actually select it to be deleted, it just disappeared. So then we had to move the Facebook icon somewhere else in the page and then delete the others. We successfully accomplished this.
Something I have noticed Dr. Value does from time to time is to save the work. I suggested saving the work since the beginning of our work in Wix. I have learnt this the hard way and did not want that Dr. Value experienced frustration when losing work and time. She told me "this is what I learnt from my mentor, you"
We had connection difficulties today. Dr. Value could not save the work she was doing, so I accessed the website on my computer and saved the changes for her. She then logged out and logged in again to continue working. It was good to work as a team.
I met Dr. Value today. We worked hard and we accomplished a great deal of work!. I feel really happy that things are working out well, a little slow but we have come to work as a team.
Dr. Value works on her own laptop and I work on my own. She does the design on her own and I help her with suggestions and guide her through the use of other elements for the website.
Today Dr. Value created a new page to post information about Kudos & Happenings. We created a slide show gallery with photos and short descriptions about the events. It was a little hard to come up with an appropriate design because the slideshow gallery feature in Wix combines the picture and text together and if we want to resize the text, the picture best resized as well, and viceversa.
I was trying to see how we can effectively create the slideshow gallery and Dr. Value moved forward and started working on something else. This approach was really good, because that way we could work more effectively. Once I found an alternative, I explained it to her and she was able to create the slideshow gallery very easily. Something that I may need to address next time we meet is that we need to have the pictures for the website consistent (dimensions and quality). Today we had some problems with this, we need to resize pictures and they became blurred. So if we do some picture editing beforehand will be better. It may imply the need to use a photo editor...I will see how we can solve this.
Dr. Value got some bio and other information from the officers of the SIG group so we are working on uploading that information and links to publications, books and other resources.
We agreed to meet after Spring Break, but she will do some work during the break. I told her to contact me is she has any problem with any of the features.
We also learnt about some tricks that we ourselves "discovered". It was so funny that we found some ways to solve the problems. We always check in the Wix forums about other options or "fix" trick to be able to do what we want.
A funny part of today's meeting was that we tried to get rid of three out of the four icons for social media. Every time that she tried to delete the three, the F for Facebook went away and we could not understand why neither where it went. We did not actually select it to be deleted, it just disappeared. So then we had to move the Facebook icon somewhere else in the page and then delete the others. We successfully accomplished this.
Something I have noticed Dr. Value does from time to time is to save the work. I suggested saving the work since the beginning of our work in Wix. I have learnt this the hard way and did not want that Dr. Value experienced frustration when losing work and time. She told me "this is what I learnt from my mentor, you"
We had connection difficulties today. Dr. Value could not save the work she was doing, so I accessed the website on my computer and saved the changes for her. She then logged out and logged in again to continue working. It was good to work as a team.
Tuesday, 4 March 2014
WEEK 8 (mentoring)
March 4,
I met Dr. Value today to work on the SIG website. I think that today we made a lot of progress.
Prior to this meeting I had created a sample website to show Dr. Value what kind of links, lists, shapes we can build in the SIG website. She was so enthusiastic about it that immediately started to work on it. I explained to her that we needed to use HTML code to add tables in WIX but she felt a bit reluctant about it. So I suggested the option of using lists. She created a new page with the "list" option, and added pictures of the committee, their contact information and their title.
We also worked on the newsletter archive. Dr. Value added another page to the website and added another list to the page. On this page she included a picture of some of the members at different conferences and a link to the previous newsletter pdf files. It was very rewarding to seeing her so excited about it. She also used a customized button to set the link to the newsletter.
We encountered several limitations in WIX:
* we cannot add dynamic tables
* we cannot change the colors of the "link" option
* copying lists does not allow to make changes of individual sections of the list. It is better to add new lists.
* "contact form" does not include an option for "uploading file"
The way we worked today was very unusual. Dr. Value mentioned a couple of things she would like to have in the website, add several links, change the color of links, personalized the contact form. While she was working on the the design of the pages and lists, I was searching for that information. I found out that it is not possible to change the color of the links, or personalized the contact form. So i found other ways to get what she wanted. We learnt some "tricks" and get the link colour change, add a new contact form with personalized options, add links using buttons.
We did a lot today!!
We will meet again next Tuesday....:)
I met Dr. Value today to work on the SIG website. I think that today we made a lot of progress.
Prior to this meeting I had created a sample website to show Dr. Value what kind of links, lists, shapes we can build in the SIG website. She was so enthusiastic about it that immediately started to work on it. I explained to her that we needed to use HTML code to add tables in WIX but she felt a bit reluctant about it. So I suggested the option of using lists. She created a new page with the "list" option, and added pictures of the committee, their contact information and their title.
We also worked on the newsletter archive. Dr. Value added another page to the website and added another list to the page. On this page she included a picture of some of the members at different conferences and a link to the previous newsletter pdf files. It was very rewarding to seeing her so excited about it. She also used a customized button to set the link to the newsletter.
We encountered several limitations in WIX:
* we cannot add dynamic tables
* we cannot change the colors of the "link" option
* copying lists does not allow to make changes of individual sections of the list. It is better to add new lists.
* "contact form" does not include an option for "uploading file"
The way we worked today was very unusual. Dr. Value mentioned a couple of things she would like to have in the website, add several links, change the color of links, personalized the contact form. While she was working on the the design of the pages and lists, I was searching for that information. I found out that it is not possible to change the color of the links, or personalized the contact form. So i found other ways to get what she wanted. We learnt some "tricks" and get the link colour change, add a new contact form with personalized options, add links using buttons.
We did a lot today!!
We will meet again next Tuesday....:)
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