Innovate: Moving from Theory to Real-World Experiences in an e-Learning Community

Innovate: Moving from Theory to Real-World Experiences in an e-Learning Community

Picking up Steam!

We have two different things rolling at this point. For Aaron's class we had talked about a one month unit during the month of February. This would culminate in a festival of some sort. By having a nice neat month we could build and keep momentum for snow snakes with active collaboration zones, expert chats, etc. This would be done within the school day primarily with after school activities as needed.

For the grant project I am working on, and which is the underlying driving force behind this; a munch lengthier approach is being explored with only after school connotations. For an after school session we are looking at up to two hours a day. And for all practical purposes you could have as many days as you want. I think that approach might get a little bigger and a tad unwieldy for our original AL game plan. So the long answer is lets do it all and then we can cut back and sharpen as needed.

I talked on the phone yesterday to an Ojibwe elder who I was pointed to as someone who knows snow snakes. It was kind of funny because he had to do research much like we are doing to find out about snow snakes. He talked to elders before him and they didn't have much to say about the subject. Anyway, I passed along what we have for our AL project, including pdf articles and book chapters. He will look it over and see what kind of involvement he is interested in. I will be emailing Jim Brickwedde after this post to sit down and put some fresh eyes on our curriculum progress.
I am not much of a cheerleader but a cheer sounds great! Maybe a dance too!

Question

I just hammered out a ton of stuff. It is now past my bedtime and my brain has officially shut down, but I had a question for Brant. How long are these after-school sessions and how frequently do they occur? Of course, I sat down to write a quick little lesson and it blossomed into something kind of huge.

Cool stuff

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you set your mind to it! I called my parents when I got home because they live within the Leech Lake Reservation and they have somewhat all-access to the Cass County Museum, which has a wonderful collection of Ojibwe art. My dad is going to stop by there and hopefully take some pictures and talk to the curator, who is a font of knowledge of all sorts of Native things. After asking about all of that, I thought maybe I should tell them a little about the project and both of them exclaimed, "snow snakes!" like I'd just told them they won a million dollars. Turns out that my dad has made a number of them and conducted tournaments as a Boy Scout leader. So he's going to write up the direction on how to make them (not sure if they kids will be able to do it - depends on whether they're able to use a skill saw and whether they would have access to that...he suggests having them made, but we'll see) and send those to me. It seemed like that would be way better coming from someone who has done it before. My mom is going to talk to the Indian Ed department at Walker-Hackensack-Akeley tomorrow when she subs, so maybe she can get something from them. Once you get my mom going on something, she delivers results. Trust me.

So they're on a mission and I am working on the lessons I decided I'd be responsible for. It is going to be a little history, a little sports, a little art, some shop class and who knows what else.

Allison

Components are a Good Thing

I downloaded a few more components for the site today. I loaded all of my snow snakes photos into a slideshow component, set up a blogging component, and set up the videos that I have of snow snakes into a video component. The media components both work quite well, but I have yet to figure out the Mamblog component, but it should give the site a place where registered members can blog about their experiences. I also reloaded the Xplorer component because the old one never worked for me. I could see using this FTP tool to upload some HTML and make our site even more pleasing to the eye.

Now is the time for my team to start applying their stuff onto the site: Photos, videos, lessons, FAQS, A-Z, links, and whatever goes into the "Snake Zone" should be applied to the site. Most of these can be done from the front end (except the photos which need to be loaded through the Component menu item called "Xtreme"). Things are progressing nicely and I can't wait to see where this is going to go now.

QTVR and Audacity

I have been going back and forth on Panorama Factory trying to save a QTVR image. I can see the image all ready to go on my machine but when I begin to save it (which takes a long time) it comes right to the end and notifies me that I am out of memory and the application closes. I am not sure where to go from here. I went through my machine and cleaned it up as best I could to open up memory. I also attempted to use a USB drive to no avail. I may revisit this a little bit later. I am very interested in the image not only for the class assignment but also for personal. Any thoughts on a solution would be appreciated.

I also downloaded audacity. I thought that for one of our media pieces I could read an Ojibwa legend or two and we could post this on our site.

For a video addition I am working on getting a clip of some snow snakery up at White Earth. The clip is part of a greater project video. I will keep you posted. All of the aforementioned will surely need some technical assistance with Joomla. Until next time................

Returning to Desgin

After an evening of pure frustration (see previous post), I returned to Joomla. Luckily for my cohorts in this Snow Snakes adventure, I am not one to take defeat and wanted immediate retribution on this evil CMS. This time I avoided the html and page style procedures in favor of the design of the site. I found that this was much more satisfying in many aspects, yet frustrating as hell on other tasks.

My successes included getting the Chat and Forum components to launch (see two posts ago) and I switched the Links menu item to a "Content" sub-menu item. These tasks were successfully completed through manipulation of miles of checklists and drop-down menus within each Content item. I discovered that the Components needed to also be listed among the Content to be included in the lists that appear when the main menu items are pressed. I completed this feature for the "Content" button on the main menu.

My failures included not being able to duplicate the same procedure, as described above for the "Content" button, for the "Collaboration" button. I'm not sure why I couldn't do the same for this button, but I either lost some path in the procedure previously used or this is its own dilemma totally disjoint from the other success. I'm going away for the weekend and when I return on Sunday, I'll attempt to make this all good. My goal is to get everything on the site to a point where people can start adding the actual content. I'm fearful of returning back to the design side of the site, but, knowing my tenacity, I'll be jumping back into that horrid pool of discontent soon as well.