Final Unit DIW2420

My initial ideas for this unit is as follows, I teach a course in my Foundation Degree called Network Fundamentals, this year we have associated this unit to CompTIA Network+ a professional qualification in the industry.

I plan to take Domain 1 from CompTIA Network+ and make a English version interactive video package, rather than the American versions we get in this country that most of my students turn off to when the dull tones of the American start up.

I will take Domain 1 as the initial part for this course and unit, but I wish to develop all 12 Domains in to a full developed English Network+ programme (eventually)

This is my initial idea, I really hope I manage to achieve my goal

Paul :-)

Want to Buy your own Domain Name?

If you want to buy your own domain name such as a .com, .org, .co.uk etc, then why not have a look at this website, I have now used this company for about 6 years and they are very good. Prices can start from as little as £1.50 per year up to £50 or £60 per year, minimum has to be 2 years rental, and up to 20 years.

After registering, and paying, of course, they will send a certificate of proof that the Domain name belongs to you.

If you have an ISP such as Tiscali, you recieve free of charge 50 - 100 MB of storage space for website materials, Freeparking .co.uk will for free direct your address from the domain to that webspace.

http://www.freeparking.co.uk/

Web 2.0 Weblog

Hi Folks

Just to let you know for this unit, I have all my work for Web 2.0 unit on a new blogger site called myviews web2, please visit and do some comments I'm lonely.
http://myviewsweb2.blogspot.com/ the link is on the right hand side

Paul :-)

Notebook

My Notebook Page

Podcast 1

Hi Folks

I did my first podcast last night, was fairly simple, added the tracking music and my audio with no problems, I even managed to splice pieces together, the one and only thing I didn't manage to do was change the pitch of my voice, what ever I did, well I just didn't like any of it. I either sounded like Orson Wells or an all in westler woman, so stuck with my boring mono tones.

Please have a listen and tell me what you thought whilst listening.

I have placed my podcast on the 'box' on the right hand side of this page, I really like this box as you can listen live without downloading the mp3, and it was very easy to place on the podcast site.

See you all in class Wednesday

Paul :-)

Breeze Presentation

Video 3 Breeze Presentation

The Breeze presentation was really fantastic, the whole event was well planned and executed, the language was clear and well understood, un-rushed, east to jump from any section to section if and when required, you could leave at anytime and start where you finsihed from.

The whole idea had everything built inside the programme allowing for lectures, video clips, assessments and quizzes, the whole thing altogether.

The whole concept was easy to follow and did not find any part difficult to use and I did learn some interesting facts from the lectures. Overall I think this was a really good piece of work and shows us what e-learning is really all about, this presentation if I was marking it would get my full backing, really excellent.

Paul :-)

Video 2

Part 2 Video 2

This video blog was very much different to Graham’s, I found it to be very structured, fun, extremely well planned, good visualisations, and the main content showed that blogging can be fun, useful and easy to do.

Michael Wesch authored this innovated piece of work and I really enjoyed watching it, and like the previous video I watched it more than once but only because I liked it watching the video.

Some good points was also brought up in this video and these are questions some of my colleagues in the class have mentioned over the last 2 years together, such as Copyrights, ethics, legality and the big one privacy.

Still the video showed blogging to be fun, easy and something we can all do, plus education can be used to strengthen what we do in the classroom on our courses, and the main point was the video was trying to demonstrate that we can all blog, the goal was achieved in my opinion and doing so I enjoyed the show, isn't that what education is supposed to do?

Please comment!!

Paul :-)

What is Web 2.0

While Dave is away enjoying the sunshine in Dubai he has set us all some tasks to complete, my approach is to try and incorporate all 3 tasks within my podcast and at the same time not make this to long, secondly not to make it boring and I will also blog the contents of my podcasts

Video 1
I watched video 1 from Graham Attwell, whether it was me or everyone thought the same I found listening to this blog extremely difficult, personally I think it was the welsh accent I may have struggled with and also the ferocity and speed of the presentation. I had to constantly stop to re-listen and I also had to play over again to try and digest what was happening.

Graham’s comments I found to be of good sound context, privatising education for one isn’t the way to go, covering the PLE’s or Personal Learning environments within 8 minutes was also a very tall order, Graham did not as far as I was concerned make clear from the beginning what PLE’s are and what is meant by them.

So doing these podcasts I believe we need to be very careful on how we do them, the planning of them, make them clear as possible, and covering peoples accents so that the podcast isn’t restricted to one localised controlled area, at the end of the day the teacher, tutor, trainer, lecturer what ever their title has now got to be a big and better actor than before.

The video did nothing for me apart from bring up some of these points, i would also like to apologise to anyone who found the video to be good, this is only my viewpoint.

Comments please!!

Paul

Lev Vygotsky and his Social Development Theory

Lev Vygotsky was a Russian Psychologist who in his mere 38 years of life developed a new educational theory for the beginning in the first stages of the new Soviet Union. Lev changed the way Psychology was perceived, and even though he did well in the USSR his work was not recognised outside the USSR until some 28 years later in 1962, after that his theory has gone though some minor changes in the Western world.

Social development means for a better word social interaction, the ability to learn from others by interacting with those others. The social development theory was based on two distinct areas:

MKO or more knowledge other
ZPD or Zone of Proximal Development

MKO is interpreted as being that of someone that has a better understanding or knowledge than that of the learner, this could be a friend, a boss, a teacher, a colleague anyone that has that knowledge that you have not got or at least not at the same level as that person.

ZPD is interpreted as the learner needs to work in a team environment to achieve the goal, the task cannot be completed solely on their own and the interaction of the fellow colleagues is essential, generally the others helping would be giving guidance to each other and learning from each person as they went along.

Lev’s theory had two outcomes to its development, besides this theory effecting the learning it also effected the teacher.

Firstly the learner was affected as they have more control on their own learning, rather than the teacher dictating the goal and expecting the learning to recite that information back, the teacher and learner will now work more in tandem with each other.

Secondly the teacher is affected in their approach to teaching, their learners would be placed in to small groups and take turns as the facilitator and gain knowledge from each person in the group and take their leads from their peers. The teacher however would only be used to point in the right direction, assist when needed and give guidance when asked.

Lev Vygotsky theory is extremely informative about the roles of learner and teacher and in this short piece cannot be fully comprehended and understood. I am going to read more about Lev and his theories and try and discover his secrets.

Paul Ashby

Two sites that I found Interesting
http://chd.gse.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/theorists/constructivism/vygotsky.htm
http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/sdtheory/index.htm

Welcome

Foundation Degree in Computer System Support FdSc

Welcome to my new blog website.

In these pages I want to post messages and comments about topics we will be discussing in our Computer Platform Engineering Degree course. This will allow us to share and respond quickly to issues that might affect us during the course and the assignments that we are doing.

Generally, blogs will be set on this site, and other work such as a sharing space for resources will either be set on my website on the Mancat VLE as soon as I get round to setting these up.

As you already may know, the FdSc course has changed its name from CPE to System Support, no other changes should occur

http://www.pashby1.co.uk

Good Luck and Welcome to 2007 and our new blog site