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Module 1: Technology Tools

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  • Technology Tools Overview for Online Safety Orientation

    For this course orientation I will be using ECTO as my Course Management System(CSM). The following technology tools  will assist you with the upcoming online orientation on workplace safety. Please utilize them as needed. 

    Hi I am Cassandra Middleton, CEO of InDesign Team. Congratulations on your destiny into distance learning. Thank you for choosing InDesign to be your employer. As you are aware safety is critical to our success, as well as a priority. Therefore, we take safety very serious in our daily routine. Businesses, nonprofit organizations and educational institutions rely on safety training to reduce liabilities, educate their workforce and teach new skills. Safety is very encompassing; it includes safety in the factories. We need to ensure they are operating properly and to follow all rules to ensure they operate safely. Safety for our customers, when customers feel safe, they relax and enjoy all the aspects our design team has to offer. Safety to our employees, “YOU” are an extremely important component for providing safety for your well being. Therefore, on an annual basis and for each new employee, we will all complete a series of mandatory compliance workplace safety courses.

  • However, before initiating the compliance course, all employees will be required to take a online distance learning orientation course to help you understand the reasons for using a non-standard or distance learning approach for the compliance training program. This course will be a blended learning course in which you are expected as an employee to participate in an asynchronous learning environment. The equivalency theory is the framework on which this orientation will be based upon. According to Simonson Distance Education can be defined as formal, institutionally-based educational activities where the learner and teacher are separated from one another, and where two-way interactive telecommunication systems are used to synchronously and asynchronously connect them for the sharing of video, voice, and data-based instruction. (Simonson, 1995). Distance learning exploits various means and methods to convey course material and education to students, who could be dispersed throughout various parts of the world. Distance learning, today, uses various means like regular mail, high-tech tools like the internet, and audio-videoconferencing to help teachers correspond with students, and vice versa (Simonson,Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2009).

     
  • Keegan (1995) suggested that electronically linking instructor and students at various locations creates a virtual classroom Web-based training offers companies the ability to reach a mass audience quickly, assess and measure results, and reduce manpower costs. Designing an online safety training course involves defining a competency, creating learning objects and validating learning achievements. The distance learning orientation course will guide you through what is expected of you in a distance learning environment, help you to get to know other co-workers virtually, how to locate the tools use to access the compliance course, provide a tour so you know how to complete the modules within the compliance course. Information and discussions from these interactions will continue when students and the instructor meet in the face-to-face classroom. The following resource will provide learners with the training necessary to be a successful distance learner. Should students have questions regarding online instruction, they should contact the online instructor Cassandra Middleton via: mrsitt29907@yahoo.com . The following resources will assist you in preparing for your upcoming webinar. 

     

  • EctoLearning Tutorial

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y8nj6jI93s 

    This course is located on Cousre Management System (CMS) called EctoLearning. Ecto- Learn is the infrastructure that is a powerful, complex virtual learning environments used to deliver asynchronous distance learning experiences. It is necessary that students are able to navigate the system. Students should watch the video prior to the start of class to famalirize themselves with the contents of EctoLearn. You will take away from this video the following:

    Learn at your own pace – You have your own individual learning style and learn at your own pace. Ecto allows me to quickly access your individual needs and assemble groups of instructional activities to address those needs

    .Monitor your own progress – You can easily and continually monitor your own progress so that you can become more motivated to set and attain goals. With Ecto you are able to maintain a record of her or his own progress. When you move from level to level in the safety module, your Ecto accounts and portfolios travels with you.

    Encourage explorations – Ecto is grounded in constructivist learning theory. As I empower you to take control of your learning experience through exploration and discovery, Ecto is an ideal environment. Although Ecto can easily support a more traditional approach, what emerges with Ecto is a collaborative learning environment. The context in which you’re accessing the content determines if you’re instructing or learning. In Ecto, you will explore, create, and share learning activities.

     

  • Webinar

    A webinar is basically an online seminar, in which a moderator presents information to an audience, but all the participants gather virtually, each at his or her own computer, for an online meeting of sorts. While a Webinar doesn’t involve face-to-face contact it can nonetheless be a very valuable way to keep in touch with clients and colleagues without hefty travel costs.Webinar Intro, (2009). Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUCaGQGsGWsThis 4 minute video will show you how to participate in a webinar.  It gives you great tools on how to navigate the webinar site.  It also provides tips and support information on how to participate in a webinar. In this webinar, you will learn how to use the valuable tools that will allow you to eventually conduct focus groups with your peers to dig beneath your company and survey data; discover how leaders are gathering qualitative information and using it to design effective strategies to promote employees to safety success; and hear from employees from sister organizations through video clips on how to promote safety focus groups.

     

  •  Discussion Forum  

    In the online environment your class discussions will be supplemented by using various online technologies which will allow for further discussion and collaboration among the class. For instance, the use of threaded discussion will allow you to participate in virtual conversations. You will also be required to subscribe via RSS feeds to each other’s discussion, blogs and wikis. “The chat room allows for brainstorming sessions, discussions of hot topics, team planning, and question-and-answer forums” (Bauer, 2002, p. 32). This will create a strategy that encourages more in depth participation is to ask students questions directly related to their posting. (Conrad & Donaldson, 2004). This type of medium allows time for you to reflect and brainstorm for later discussion online. This forum allows for learning that would not be possible within the confines of a traditional school setting. Online discussion boards provide a venue for you to interact and debate classmates on various topics. In addition, you are able to share valuable resources needed for safety assignments. Please use the following tutorial as a guide before starting the modules on workplace safety to see the concepts of posting to a discussion forum. This short (2:43) video will introduce you to the discussion forum as a means to communicate with others in your class as well as your instructor.

    Note: This video would be made specific for Ecto Learning's discussion forum in "real life." It's currently for another system, but the basic idea is the same, so I'm "borrowing."
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4sJ_NHyY6Y

  • Videos

    All correlated videos will be in .mpeg format and will be posted to each module under the content heading. They will be linked to their internet location on YouTube. You will not need to download the videos, but will be able to view them on the course website. You will be more technology savvy than ever before. Therefore finding ways to reach you through your preferred media outlets is critical. YouTube provides faculty with a wealth of content choices, ranging from music videos, movies, television shows and other online resources that can be integrated into traditional lessons to engage you and enhance learning. The following link will allow you to learn how to download youtube videos and convert.

    http://www.ilovefreesoftware.com/18/videos/video-tutorial-how-to-use-youtube-downloader-to-download-youtube-videos.html

    Podcast                    

    The term of podcast is constituted of words of iPod (portable digital audio player form apple) and broadcasting and they are basically digital audio programs that can be subscribed to and downloaded by users via RSS and listened to on either a variety of digital audio services or desktop computer (Petter et al., 2005). With on-demand nature and portability features, podcast allow you to catch up on audio content while completing other tasks without having to sit at a computer. They also have some limitations as being linear and one way, which is why they need to be integrated with blogs, online simulations and other more interactive channels (Kaplan-Leiserson, 2005). Especially as podcasting is being used with mobile devices, it can be viewed as another variant of mobile learning. Because of the time and cost resources are limitations for mobile learning, podcasting can be an alternative (Kaplan-Leiserson, 2005). Although podcasting is not a synchronous activity, it provides you with the information that will help you feel connected to learning community and this may be even pedagogically appropriate within courses to allow you to create your own podcasts for the rest of the employees to use as a reinforcement resource. Please use the following link to help make your experience with podcasting easier. http://www.rapidfeeds.com/podcasting-step-by-step.php Show comments, ratings, and tags.

  •  Blog

    Text chat is a synchronous tool that will allow you to communicate via typed text in real time. You will post messages and respond to other learners’ messages when it is received. Blogs are also called online diaries which enable you, without requirement of any technical skill, to create, publish and organize your own web pages that contain dated content, entries, comments, discussion etc. in chronological order (Alexander, 2006; Castenade, 2007).You will be able to publish information which other employees can collect from various resources on safety and establish relation between them in blogs. Additionally RSS and the possibility to post comments make blogs also a collaborative and social-interactive software application (Petter et al., 2005). It is suggested that blogs will enhance your writing skills, facilitate reflecting themselves, encourage critical thinking with collaborative learning, and provide feedback and active learning (Seitzinger, 2006). The safety blogs is well suited to serve as online personal journals because it will enable you to sharing files and resources and publishing blogs on the Internet and students has the possibility of writing for reader beyond classmates (Godwin, 2003).  Please use the following link to help gain knowledge on how to blog. http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g 

    Assessment

    In the blended environment, assessment will be done in both learning environments and must be done in such a way that they complement each other. For instance, you may earn points you’re your participation in classroom discussions as well as their online discussion, points for in face-to face class activities such as group projects. “Traditional exams with multiple-choice questions are adequate for the knowledge and comprehension levels of Bloom’s taxonomy but cannot accurately measure the depth of critical thinking and reflection that occurs in an engaged learning environment. Evaluation of critical thinking and reflection requires assessment methods that encourage individual expression, perhaps through answering open-ended questions or completing a culminating project” (Conrad and Donaldson, 2004, p. 25).

  •  Email

    Email is a form of asynchronous communication use in distance learning course to interact betweens peers and instructors, via through the course management system. The students will be able to communicate privately with the instructor or other peers in the online course. 

    The true benefit of these resources goes well beyond cost, however. Free, collaborative tools can create paperless classrooms, build staff interaction and morale, and better promote the strengths of the organization. Multimedia tools - far easier to learn than most would think - allow InDesign to capture your attention with a variety of visuals and to use digital storytelling modules to far better engage you in their learning and sharing. While this orientation will cover a multitude of tools, their importance will be considered from two frames - how they help you learn and how they save the organization safety measures.

     References:

    Alexander, B. (2006). A new way of innovation for teaching and learning. Educause Review,41(2), 32−44. Bauer, J. F. (2002). Assessing student work from chatrooms and bulletin boards. In R. S.

    Anderson, J. F. Bauer, and B. W. Speck (Eds.), Assessment strategies for the on-line     class: From theory to practice. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 91. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

    Castaneda, D. A. (2007). The Effects of Wiki-and Blog-technologies on the Students’Performance When Learning the Preterite and Imperfect Aspects in Spanish.Unpublished Doctoral, West Virginia University, Morgantown.

©2006 Cassandra Middleton (mrsitt29907)