Knowledge Quest Project

I've used blogs before taking the class, and feel its a quick way to extend the online environment. I found it very useful in our first class as an introduction to online learning and for keeping track of ideas, links and resources. Its important for students to have a virtual scratchpad but also a more functional way of putting their thoughts and ideas online. These tools have become very sophisticated and are a great shortcut to getting online web pages.

My preference would be to use the Blackboard system, but I wasn't able to configure it in time. I finally figured it out and installed it on our Instructor test. I tried to produce a public link, but you need to be inside the Blackboard system to view it. For this project I used the Blogger site and created an entry for this class.

During the quest I went to various sites (blogger; https://www.blogger.com/start, wordpress) to see how the signup process and accounts functioned. I used some of our resource links provided by instructor to study issues related to web writing, such as Christopher Meeks: http://efuse.com/Design/wa-writing_and_the_web.htm. He sets down a simple process for creating web content. Starting points, organizing and outlining information. I also explored the open wiki service sponsored by wikipedia called Wikia: http://education.wikia.com/wiki/Educational_networking, it has a great set of resources and allows open editing of content.

I will definitely use this resource in online courses, but will restrict the focus, otherwise it becomes a time waster. We need to encourage students to track ideas, use it as a scratch pad, or add to the exercises rather than use it as a journal or typical blog.

I love self directed aspect of this work, but I'm prone to wandering, especially when working on the web. It can be difficult to focus and when I get side-tracked, I end up missing deadlines. The final part of this project shows this, as I became more interested in installation on my servers at HostMonster, and forgot to really build the content.

The difficulty is that there are so many options. Its challenging to decide on an application to use, they all have various strong points. Overall it was interesting to see the different models applied to blog applications, theme styles, focus, and content.

My list of resources are here:

Blog sites:
http://www.blogger.com/
http://wordpress.com/
Online blog:
http://wiringkit.blogspot.com/

Blackboard Blog installed on Test Instructor site:
http://bb.csueastbay.edu/webapps/lobj-journal-bb_bb60/wiki_home/Handler?course_id=_164758_1&content_id=course&store=course&type=loi-journal

I also used accounts at HostMonster to setup test versions of Wordpress, and some online forums.
http://www.hostmonster.com/

David Triebwasser
WiringKit
LinkedIn
QuickView

Blog experiment for CSU class

I decided to use this blog software for my Knowledge Quest project. I investigated WordPress and even installed it on a server, but this system is completely functional and works for needs I envision. In a online class, students would be required to keep daily or weekly track of their thoughts and issues on a blog. We also have the blog tool in Blackboard, which I found quite useful. I would have preferred to use it as my example but I didn't have the time to set it up on our test Blackboard account. In a real class, I would have this option in Blackboard and include it in the weekly exercises