March 24, 2010

Good Morning Developers,

We are nearing the 50% completion date of March 29 for your new developments and I am anxious to take a peek at how things are progressing. Monday morning I will begin to review your course developments and will be in contact with each of you individually with feedback. If you anticipate not being able to meet the 50% deadline, please let me know ASAP. Particularly with needing to convert the courses to the 10-week masters in preparation for Early Fall roll-out, it is essential that the developments stay as closely on track as possible.

Also, please remember that the Blackboard system will be offline for system enhancements next Tuesday, March 30, starting at 3:30 a.m. and will be down until 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 31. So plan your development work accordingly, but if you do plan to work on your courses offline during this time, please remember that copying and pasting from a Microsoft Word document into Blackboard does not work well. It negatively affects font layout and overall HTML coding.

Now for my discussion topic of the week. As you know, a primary focus this development cycle is the incorporation of audio lectures and up to this point I've shared various resources for voice lecture with you. But have you thought of the role or impact music and visuals could play in making a concept or idea that much more engaging and thought provoking for students? A great resource available to you is Animoto.

You are probably asking, what is an Animoto. Well, Animoto is a Web 2.0 tool that allows us to make amazing videos to the beat of music. It does all the work of timing and "popping" the pictures to the tune for us and is an excellent way to illustrate through pictures, text, and sound, what a term or concept means to us. If there is a particularly abstract concept you are trying to get students to think about in a new way, this is a great option. For example, how might visuals of a marketing campaign illustrate in a new way a specific marketing strategy?

Click here for a sample Animoto on the concept of culture. And to start your own Animoto presentation, simply go to the Animoto site. This Jing Training on Animoto is also a great tool as you are using this resource.

Incorporating Animoto into a discussion board topic or an assignment is another great idea that requires students to take a concept or idea and demonstrate their understanding or perspective of it in a new and unique fashion. It has been used in our intercultural communications courses for a couple of quarters and students have responded very well to it, and as an instructor I've really seen the critical thinking and processing heightened as they work on the assignment.

To give you an idea how this is being used in the classroom as an assignment, here is the actual assignment for intercultural communications. Please note that there is a reflection component that students must also complete so they not only create the Animoto but they also reflect upon the experience and what they learned as a result, which brings critical thinking to the next level. I could see this approach being condensed to serve as a great discussion board topic as well.

Sample Assignment:
Cultural Values

Based on what you have learned in this unit, what does the term "Value" mean to you? What can we learn about a culture based on values? How are values expressed and made known?

Values are subjective and as such this assignment is designed to give you the opportunity to define Cultural Value from what you have learned in this unit. To do so you will be creating a short-length Animoto demonstrating what the term Cultural Value means to you.

You are probably asking, what is an Animoto. Animoto is a Web 2.0 tool that allows us to make amazing videos to the beat of music. It does all the work of timing and "popping" the pictures to the tune for us and is an excellent way to illustrate through pictures, text, and sound, what a term or concept means to us.

So, once again, for this assignment, you will be creating your own short-length (12-15 slide image) Animoto defining/expressing/illustrating the concept of Cultural Value.

To help you in the creation of an Animoto video, please access the Jing tutorial found in this unit's Additional Learning Resources folder. This Jing training does a fantastic job of showcasing the step by step instructions of how to set up a video!

In the Additional Learning Resources folder you will also find a sample Animoto video representing the concept of Culture. I hope you find it helpful.

Once you have created your Animoto video, please copy and paste the video web address link in the below view/complete assignment message board as well as a brief reflection on what you learned about Values as a result of the creation of this video.

As always, if you have any questions on your course development work, please let me know. Otherwise, I'll be in touch individually next week after I've had a chance to review your course development progress.

Thanks and have a great rest of the week!
Heather