Post Concept Assignment Come Down

So who's exhausted? Writing this concepts assignment has been a time consuming and difficult affair and I wonder who else would have found it all easier if we could have written twice as much on two concepts as opposed to 500 words each on four concepts. Funny how it seems to take twice as long to write half as much eh? I don't get it really but I think the reason is that 500 words is so restrictive. I put my assignment together using this process:

• read and investigate
• formulate some ideas of which way I want to go (I tended to adapt the concept to "my world")
  
• jot down a very basic list
• start writing
• read some more
• finish the assignment section
• decide what sites to put in the annotated bibliography
• change my mind and then find some more sites
• go in and adjust the assignment section if necessary
• write the annotations
• have a beer followed by a glass of red ;)
  

I saw a tweet from the ever helpful and fantastic @amyty (which I took to mean was) about spending a lot of time finding a reference to fit in to her concept assignment and it sparked a conversation here with my wife (who is studying Physiotherapy at UniSA) about this practice. (sorry in advance @amyty if I misinterpreted your tweet but this is more about my interpretation than what you may have been trying to get across). Anyway, my wife said she has a uni colleague who always looks for references to back up her ideas rather than reading and investigating first and then writing about the ideas generated. My wife seemed to think that this meant that her friend learnt less because she was finding references to support her prior thinking and learning. So is this method detrimental to learning?

Well my thoughts are that sometimes you just need to support your ideas. Sure, if you write an assignment without reading and investigating and then cobble together some references to support them you will end up with a pretty disjointed bit of writing. But if you are using this practice as an add on to your pre-assignment reading, then it could be beneficial to the process. I guess in some ways this method was evidenced in my concepts assignment with the choice of site to include in the annotated bibliography. I did tend to change my assignment so I think that this aided in my learning rather than using it to support my previously held beliefs.
Love to hear what you all think.....

Chat me up baby... Module2 Chat Task

I have been using chat for a long time but I have really found the benefits of it greatly expand for me over the past few years with it's work uses. Here is a summary of the chat tools I use often and the applications I employ with them:

• Skype is definitely the best thing since sliced bread for me. It makes my job a lot easier and certainly more flexible because I have the ability to work from home and communicate with my colleagues and boss cheaply and quickly. I do use it for personal chats with friends but not nearly as often now as I used to. The video and voice options I tend to reserve for use with family and friends because I really have no need to see my colleagues in the office and most of the time they don't have speakers, camera or microphone. I did a chat with a few folks from net11 on chat and found that we mainly had small talk. One thing I find annoying with all types of synchronous text chat is the long pauses caused by folks writing long chat messages with two finger typing.... ARRRRGH. (fortunately, this was not something I experienced with the chat I had with net11 folks)

• Facebook has a chat function which I use for catching up with friends and often e-learning colleagues as well. It is usually a ten minute quick chat. The functionality of the facebook chat is limited; I am yet to find a way to include multiple chat members; people who are offline often appear online and vice versa; messages often take a long time to come through. This article about other uses of facebook chat has given me some ideas and I guess I probably am not using it to it's full potential.

• Ning has the ability to put a chat function in it but to be honest, I think it is pretty rubbish. There doesn't seem to be any audible indication of an incoming message and chats seem to stay there for days... in hindsight I might take it away from the ning I have set up. This forum discussion on a ning website I am a part of reflects some of the problems I have experienced in the past with ning chat.

• Twitter, though not a synchronous communication chat method as such, has proved to be a very good way for me to have "chats". Though you often have to wait for a long time (maybe a whole day) the responses you get seem to be measured (usually) and thoughtful because they are public record (if you use the @reply as opposed to the DM direct message). For me the fantastic opportunity that you get with twitter which you don't with many other methods is the access to contemporaries all around the world who you otherwise would never have had access to. I have managed to have a few impromptu quick twitter chats with some of the net11 folks and these have added to the connections we have experienced in the forums.

I know these chat methods are probably not the most popular or even the most effective but they are the ones that I use and those are my reflections on them. Should I try something else? well I have used MSN, ICQ and others in the past but this is what I currently play with.I have found that the asynchronous discussions occurring in the webct forums, on blogs and other web2.0 tools to be more akin to my optimum communication style.... but I like to play with all sorts of stuff so I reckon I will be playing with another tool that is bigger and better at some stage down the track and I'll let you know how that goes too ;)