Publications CMS almost ready for the first 5 weeks of school. Woohoo!

Working in Moodle has been both challenging and rewarding. I have nearly completed my Publications CMS for the first five weeks of school. The only difficulty, like others experienced, is that two of my PDFs won't upload. Hopefully Dr. Ingram will figure out the problem I am having so that I can upload both documents, check all the links and submit. Then I can focus on packing for vacation.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this class the past few weeks. I've learned so much about different technologies and their uses. I've also completed useful projects that will be implemented into my Publications class and has been attached to the CMS in Moodle, which I hope to develop further and use it throughout the next school year.

The projects that I know I will use include:

• the WebQuest
• the Podcast
• the Instructional Website
• the CMS

I will also continue to use the RSS feed and tailor it to my needs at school. In fact, I will use it for some of my classes where I will encourage students to blog for different purposes.


Truly, I didn't find my time with Twitter useful, but part of that is because I didn't keep up with it and found it just another site to check. I use Facebook far more than I think I'd ever use Twitter.


All in all, I appreciate the insight of Dr. Ingram and my classmates into all the different technologies and their purposes in a wide array of topics and fields. It was an enjoyable and worthwhile five weeks which I'm glad I endured at its pace.

Almost there, but more fun ahead

I thought this week was going to be crazier than it has been. We leave for vacation this Thursday evening and I'm planning a day of sleep on Thursday so I can drive through the night on our way to Nebraska, Colorado, then Utah. Looking forward to the mental break and time with family.

Before leaving, I still have a few more things to accomplish. I am officially done with one of my two classes, and only have the CMS ahead of me in this class. I am happy to say my Instructional Website is finished (at least a work in progress kind of finished) and I will be able to use it to help deepen my journalism students' understanding of the nine ethics of journalism. I will be linking this to the CMS I am creating in Moodle for my Publications class.

I'm excited to finally be able to focus on the CMS. It's something I've been wanting to do and am glad to have the opportunity to build it for use next school year as I plan to use a blended approach to teach my Publications class. This will also include the use of Yearbook Avenue for yearbook production and Progress Book for assessments. In a way, I wish I could just do everything in Moodle like I did in a class I took spring semester, but I'll have to make do to meet the needs of students and administrators.

Off to work on the CMS so I can get it finished by Wednesday evening and prepare for my vacation. More to come as I get things finished up. Later...

Respect the Podcast

Whew! The podcast is finished. In fact, it was submitted at 10:59 p.m.

Truly, I had more fun with this than I thought I would. Maybe it will catch on and I'll use it more with my instruction, although I still think the screencast would be more beneficial.

I decided to tell my students about the importance of the ethics of journalism, covering all nine of them and suggesting that journalists earn respect through these ethics, with credibility being the most important. This would be a great supplement to or even a lead-in to their reading and study of the ethics of journalism. An opportunity to share my perspective before we even talk about or apply the ethics in class.

I had no troubles recording, editing, or saving the podcast in the correct format. I chose to upload it to folio web and submit the URL. I later attached the URL to my Moodle course, but haven't successfully uploaded the file. I'll play around with that over the weekend.

I'm happy to have the podcast finished. Now I'm ready to meet the next challenge - the instructional website. Should be fun!

Ending excitement

I'm excited to see it all come together at the end of class. I have tailored all of my assignments to work for my Publications class and am working on setting up my CMS to encompass all we have done in class this term. As I've read posts of my classmates in the discussion board about how user-unfriendly Moodle is, I have ignored them and plugged away. I've been waiting for this opportunity to work with Moodle and so far I am not disappointed. I've found it easy to navigate (so far) and have added some course content for two weeks, a couple of discussion topics, and a link to my WebQuest for week 3. My hopes are to set up the first 5 weeks of class so I can implement Moodle in my class to allow a blended approach, which I hope will deepen student learning and increase the pace a little so we can cover topics more efficiently and get to production sooner. As I am excited about finishing the instructional website and CMS, I have been dragging my feet on the podcast, mostly because I don't see how I will use it in my classes from the instructor standpoint. I can see having students use podcasts for assignments or feedback, but I would be more apt to use a screencast in my production courses to demostrate processes used. I finally was all psyched to record my podcast today, but my wife informed me that she had given away the earphones and microphone combination I purchased for her for a class she took last year. With the wind out of my sails, I asked her who she gave them to. Luckily, it was my nephew and he still has them. I will have them in hand tomorrow to get the podcast out of the way. I don't think it will be difficult as I like to talk and I understand the technology well enough to be successful. Knock on wood, everything will be just fine. Until next time...

Almost there...still so much to do.

Now that I have my WebQuest finished I'm ready to focus on the final three products of this class - the instructional website, the podcast, and the CMS on Moodle. This is a lot to do, but I'm excited to finish as all of my projects are focused on a course I teach currently. I've been excited to create a CMS and Moodle is my choice for this creation, but I'm not sure what to do for my Podcast so that it is useful and fits in with the other products I have created for this class. I'm planning to work on my Podcast and get some things worked out for the website and CMS so I don't feel overwhelmed next week when everything is due. I just want to have time to finish quality products and enjoy doing them throughout the week. Let the fun begin!

WebQuest Fun & Done

Even though I spent a lot of time on creating my WebQuest, I would have to admit it was a lot of fun to create. Even better, I learned so much about organizing pages so they are easy to navigate. Even better than that, I created an activity that I can and will use with my newspaper students in class next year.

The WebQuest I created allows newspaper students to explore the ethics of journalism through their meaning, application, and ultimately how they affect scholastic journalists, all to reach the point of writing an editorial policy for the newspaper. This will certainly deepen their understanding of the importance of the ethics and how they should be applied while working for a newspaper publication. This will also be more fun for them than reading about the ethics, dealing with one ethical dilemma scenario, and taking a quiz over the ethics. The product will have use and students will have learned far more together than on their own.

Now that I have finished this WebQuest, I am excited about putting together the Instructional Website and figuring out how to build my Publications course in Moodle. I'm not so excited about the Podcast, but I'm sure I will find a use for this in some realm of my Publications class. One more thing, in my Computer Apps. course I created an E-Portfolio for all of my Publications students to use so that they can organize their newspaper and yearbook documents online throughout th year and have all of their final products to use after the year is over, especially helpful to those planning on majoring in something journalism related in college. I've been wanting to create more of an online approach to class for a few years, so I'm excited to see it's finally coming together.

I'm happy to say that I've made it through two weeks of this five-week session and have completed all required assignments so far. Things have settled down a little, but with a new week come more tasks. I'm excited that all the projects I'm working on in my two classes can be related to one another and to a class I actually teach at my high school. I'm looking forward to finishing the WebQuest, the Instructional Website, and the course set-up in Moodle. These are things I will definitely use in my classroom. The Podcast seems to be an okay assignment, but not my favorite.

A true benefit of class and the assignments is the quality and helpful feedback I receive. This helps me to adjust my work to fit the assignment more accurately. As an educator myself, I appreciate having a teacher that takes the time to help make his students better.

Initially, I was a little concerned about the Wiki. Now that we have responsibilities distributed and I have established partners and added some content, I think the Wiki will be just fine. I plan to add some content each fo the next two weeks so that we have a finished product.

Looking forward to week three and hoping to make a lot of headway this week!