Diigo Account and Bookmarks

My Diigo Account: https://www.diigo.com/profile/thestevex

Bookmarks:
Google Tilt Brush: https://groups.diigo.com/group/mvcr-tech-tools/content/google-tilt-brush-15134066

UE4 Docs: https://groups.diigo.com/group/mvcr-tech-tools/content/unreal-engine-4-documentation-15235858

Ted Ed: https://groups.diigo.com/group/mvcr-tech-tools/content/education-15235891

survey monkey classroom assessment

This week, I created a classroom assessment by use of Survey Monkey.  I found it very easy to use and put together.  A general concern is that since it is not through LMS, anyone could potentially take the survey and skew classroom results, or a student can even take the survey multiple times to skew results. But using it as classroom assessment really gives me the opportunity to improve my classes, and students will get the feeling that their opinions matter which helps build a better report among students.
This is a survey I created for my classes https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LWMYFNK

Catching Cheaters...

I teach in the Gaming area meaning that I have to cover very diverse mediums.  That being said, the primary pieces of data that I find plagiarized most often are code and art.  In the linked video, I cover two tools that are great for catching cheaters, one of them is Code Compare www.devart.com/codecompare
The other  is Turbosquid www.turbosquid.com which many students use to find 3D models instead of making their own.
Here is my video: http://screencast.com/t/fR187TsjN

Jing UE4 tutorial

This particular week was spent using research that we have made on technology tools used for online delivery and to create a short lesson that is 5 minutes or less using a technology we HAVE NOT used before.  I chose to do a short video tutorial on creating AI in Unreal Engine using Jing.  I found Jing to be very intuitive and easy to use since Jing does not give you very many options, only the options to record, save and share for the most part... Jing only allows you to record a 5 minute video which was perfect for this assignment, but in practice, I wouldn't use Jing ever again because in order for my hands on lectures to work well, I need at least 10-15 minute modules (even that amount of time would be rushing things).  Below is the video I created for class.
http://screencast.com/t/b6t8PsbE

How to make online discussions beneficial regardless of class size

This week, we talked about a variety of things, but all topics revolved around how to make a class with online components more beneficial to students.  In a discussion, I chose to give my two cents on what class size considerations we should take regarding online discussions and whether or not there is an ideal class size for online discussions... Rather than summarize what my answer was, I thought I would give my full answer here.  Instructors who had discussed this with also agreed with my points listed out here...

I don’t think there is necessarily a right or wrong answer this question, but I would think we would need at least 4 students to carry out a good discussion, especially if it is a discussion that is to revolve around an entire week’s worth of information.  I say this because there should be at least two people to initiate a discussion in a timely manner, and at least two additional people to reply and help evolve the discussion into something deeper. 

If the class is too large, a great way to make discussions beneficial to all is to separate the class into smaller groups for discussion.  I don’t think all discussions need smaller groups, for instance if the discussion requires much shorter and more generalized answers, a discussion with 20 or so students would be just fine.  But if we are looking at a discussion like this one, where students are to formulate detailed answers and replies, it would be best to separate the class off into smaller groups of size 4-8 so that the discussion stays more focused.  

I think Administrators need to be mindful of general class size though, because while it can be easy on students to separate the class off into smaller groups for many discussions, it can be too difficult for an instructor if the general class size is too large.  I know a number of universities that allows for 60 students to be in one class handled by a single instructor.  That is way too much for any instructor to pay close attention to or grade.  Even 30 students, which is a standard maximum is “pushing it.”  An ideal maximum number of students per class would be 20-25 regardless of how you handle the class discussions so that we can actually get to every student.

Synchronous Communications

This week was mostly exploring advantages and disadvantages of synchronous communications.  There are a lot of great tools out there to use when considering synchronous activities like Skype, Google Hangouts, Blackboard Collaborate, Adobe Connect, ect.  And most of these tools are very intuitive, so even instructors in our class who did not have prior experience with these tools had an easy time picking up and using them.
I think the biggest challenge with using these tools wasn't necessarily "how" to use them, but how to plan for a synchronous activity.  Many students including myself didn't connect with somebody in the class because times of the planned sessions changed last minute (which happened to me twice), or "life" got in the way.  So my take away is to pick a day and time and stick with it if you are planning a synchronous session with peers, and if you are planning an activity for the entire class to participate in, try to use a tool that doubles as an asynchronous tool by way of letting you view past sessions (Blackboard Collaborate and Adobe Connect save all past sessions if you want them to).

Unreal Wiki

https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Main_Page

The Unreal Engine Wiki site is a great addition to many of our courses.  We have a number of game design and development courses which use Unreal Engine 4 as a standard software package.  Students typically have official documentation for Unreal Engine 4, but this wiki has even more tutorials and videos that will help students in addition to the official documentation.

Twitter and Education

This week in our online Technology Tools course, we told to create a Twitter handle and experience posting/retweeting/following/hastags.  From this experience we went through a critical thinking exercise, analyzing whether or not Twitter could meet an instrctructional need and whether or not it fits with our pedagogy.  In short, I think it does fit a number of instructional needs, and fits well with my pedagogy... Here was my answer:

Twitter would work very well for meeting an instructional need.  Part of being an active professor is to supply resources and announcements to your students.  If an instructor were to integrate Twitter into their course, it would be a very simple way of reaching the students to send them a short announcement through the use of a hashtag and to send them instructional resources in a very easy to navigate format.  Because Twitter is very well optimized for mobile devices, and can notify students when they receive a message, students can easily view any class information posted on Twitter in a much more convenient place than most instructional online services like Blackboard or LMS.

This really supports my pedagogy because I think students should "live and breath" my courses when they take them.  Since social media has become an integral part of life in American society today, and Twitter is a leading social media service, integrating my class in some way through Twitter would be one powerful way to integrate my class into a student's every day life.