PicMonkey – simple, user-friendly online image editing

When I deliver professional development activities with teachers, I often need to point them to easy and effective online tools for working with media. Typically, they need to learn how to optimise images for the web (eg cropping and sizing), do some simple tweaks to correct exposure problems, or add some simple labels to images. Most don’t have the budget or inclination to commit to ‘proper’ image editing software such as Photoshop or Gimp.

Picnik has been a favourite since even those with limited skills and confidence find it an easy way to get started on working with images for the web. And since it is an online tool accessed with a browser, no installation is necessary. It was well-deserved recognition when Picnik was acquired and incorporated into Google+. Unfortunately Picnik has now announced it is closing its stand-alone site on 19 April 2012, so those without a Google+ account will be out of luck.

The good news is that in the last day or so, PicMonkey has become available. PicMonkey has a very similar interface and feature set to Picnik (see the screenshot) so those familiar with Picnik will find it easy to use. Like Picnik, PicMonkey has a set of free features and some which require registration for a premium account.

The really good news is that PicMonkey seems at first glance to be better than Picnik – it’s significantly faster to load and apply edits. From now on, I’ll be pointing teachers to PicMonkey as a fast and simple tool for editing and optimising images for the web.

Zapd: fast and easy websites

Teachers and students often need a fast and easy way to create a simple website to share text and photos. A full-featured blog can seem too complex or unwieldy for some situations. Zapd is an app for iPhone, iPod touch or iPad which has a limited set of features but which makes it really easy and fast to create a good looking site.

Once you’ve download the app and set up your profile, you can quickly create a new site using one of the supplied themes. The themes are generally clean and clear and can be changed at any time. Then it’s just a matter of adding content – note from the screen shot that there are only 3 content types available: text, photo or link. Content items are normally added to the bottom or top of the page, but you can drag the items to re-order them.

Each site created in Zapd has a unique and short URL – my test site is located at http://59x.zapd.co. It took me about 10 minutes to make my simple online portfolio of photographs – that is, about 1 minute to add the photos and text, and the rest of the time playing with the themes 🙂 Fun.

The bottom line

Why use Zapd? I do like the flexibility and much greater feature set of Tumblr, but I would recommend Zapd to any teachers who want an entry-level tool for creating simple sites. It lowers the barriers to creating online content for both teachers and students.

Challenges for an online community for teaching and learning

Unitec’s Diana Ayling (pictured) spoke at an Elearning Community workshop about an online community she’s involved with which focuses on teaching and learning. These are my brief reflections on her presentation.

Diana and audience members identified some challenges for members of a teaching and learning community:

• Teachers take time to develop a voice online because creating and managing content is a complex skill set. There is a growing need for teachers to develop ‘real-world’ technology skills such as working with social network technology. We need to ‘go to where the learners are’ so need to move beyond the institutional  Learning Management System.
• Teachers have varying levels of resilience – when something goes wrong such as a technical problem, some are inclined to give up straight away while others see it as only a temporary setback.
• There is a tendency to form splinter groups, as some are more comfortable with interacting a small group. This may have the effect of decreasing overall activity and interaction.
• Data protection and copyright are ongoing issues as teachers move to more open technologies such as social network tools.
• Online safety and privacy is an issue for both teachers and learners. Separating the personal and professional online presence is complicated but necessary.
• When working with teachers as community members, we should not make assumptions about their level of technical skills – patronising them is a real turn-off.
• Finding time to contribute actively to multiple communities and online spaces is difficult for busy teachers. RSS is a great tool for managing all the sources you read, but it doesn’t really help with contributing through writing.

 

Online Learning Communities: resources and references

A bibliography of useful books, articles and online resources

Australian Flexible Learning Framework. Effective Online Facilitation. Downloaded 5 January 2010 from http://pre2005.flexiblelearning.net.au/guides/facilitation.html

Australian Flexible Learning Framework. What are the conditions for and characteristics of effective online learning communities? Downloaded 5 January 2010 from http://pre2005.flexiblelearning.net.au/guides/community.pdf

Brook, C Oliver, R (2003). Online learning communities: Investigating a design framework. Downloaded 4 April 2010 from http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet19/brook.html

Cann, A et al (2010). Google Wave in Education. Downloaded 2 march 2010 from http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/1civo6vnixg

Carr T, Jaffer S, Smuts J. Facilitating Online: A course leader’s guide. Downloaded from 6 February 2010 http://www.cet.uct.ac.za/files/file/Facilitating_online.pdf

Chatti M A. LaaN vs. Situated Learning. Downloaded 18 February 2010 from http://mohamedaminechatti.blogspot.com/2010/02/laan-vs-situated-learning.html

Chromatic. Building Online Communities. Downloaded 5 January 2010 from http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/10/21/community.html

Clark, RC, Mayer RE (2003). E-learning and the Science of Instruction. Wiley & Sons.

Downes, S (2007). Learning networks in practice. Downloaded 25 February 2011 from http://www.downes.ca/files/Learning_Networks_In_Practice.pdf

Garrison, D., & Anderson, T. (2002). E-Learning in the 21st Century: A Framework for Research and Practice. Routledge Falmer.

Green, P (2010). How to create a live online learning event. Downloaded 2 March 2010 from http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/ovsn7pmtanz

Left, P (2010). 8 tips for online learning community activities. Downloaded 20 June 2010 from http://www.verso.co.nz/learning-communities/832/8tips-for-online-learning-community-activities/

Left, P (2010). Evaluating online community activities. Downloaded 20 June 2010 from http://www.verso.co.nz/learning-communities/780/evaluating-online-community-activities/

Left, P (2010). Planning online learning activities: problems with technology. Downloaded 20 June 2010 from http://www.verso.co.nz/learning-communities/735/planning-online-learning-activities-problems-with-technology/

McKeachie, W. J. (2002). McKeachie’s Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers. Houghton Mifflin Co.

McPherson, M., & Nunes, M. B. (2004). Developing Innovation in Online Learning: An Action Research Framework (Open & Flexible Learning S.). Routledge Falmer.

Nussbaum-Beach, S. The Art of Building Virtual Communities. Downloaded 5 January 2010 from http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/the-art-of-buil.html

Palloff, R. M. (2003). The Virtual Student: A Guide to Understanding and Working with Online Learners. Jossey Bass Wiley.

Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2004). Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community. Jossey Bass Wiley.

Palloff, R M & Pratt, K. Beyond Facilitation. Downloaded 5 January 2010 from http://xroadservices.com/home/download/webenhancedmoda.ppt

Siemens G. Learning Ecology, Communities, and Networks: Extending the classroom. Downloaded 5 January 2010 from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/learning_communities.htm

Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Harvard Business School Press.

Wenger, E. Communities of practice: a brief introduction. Downloaded 5 January 2010 from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm

Wenger, E. Communities of Practice: Learning as a social system. Downloaded 5 January 2010 from http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml

Wenger, E. and Trayner, B. Frequently Asked Questions. Downloaded 5 February 2012 from http://wenger-trayner.com/map-of-resources/

White N. How Some Folks Have Tried to Describe Community. Downloaded 5 January 2010 from http://www.fullcirc.com/community/definingcommunity.htm

White N. Communities, networks and what sits in between. Downloaded 5 January 2010 from http://www.fullcirc.com/wp/2009/08/06/communities-networks-and-what-sits-in-between/

Android for teachers: simple, tasty photos for the web

One thing I really like about my Android phone (LG P500) is the camera feature. It’ll never replace my real camera but it’s always with me, so I can take a quick snap even when I’m teaching. Plus there are imaging apps which make it a great tool for fast and easy creation of images.

For example, Vignette is a camera app for Android which has a free demo version as well as a paid version. The free version is limited to .3M pixel images, but these are fine for small illustrative images on a web page. The software has a wide range of effects which are fast and easy to use. And they provide some useful tweaks for web display.

For example, some of these effects produce a small square image (about 500 x 500) with a white border. So it’s really easy to produce a web-optimised image that is small and fast to download and has a built in margin for text wrapping. The image shown here is just 49KB and uses the Velvia filter which increases colour saturation. It’s not a great photo, but I love how fast and easy it is to capture an image like this, all ready for sharing on the web.

And because Android is a very ‘open’ OS, once you’ve captured the image there are many options for sharing it. Vignette will send the photo to Twitter, Facebook, email or other apps you use. I use the WordPress app which allows me to edit posts and pages on my phone, and Android makes it easy to send the photo directly from Vignette to a new WordPress post. Again, fast and easy – and a lot more flexible than just having a ‘Send via email’ option which I got used to on an iPhone.

Where there is a need for high resolution and high quality images a phone camera is not going to be appropriate. But where all that’s needed is a quick informal snap, a phone camera can be a great tool. Many of the teachers I work with don’t find it easy to get to grips with optimising images for the web. An Android phone* with Vignette is an easy way to get images into a blog or an LMS like Moodle, and it also integrates well with many of the social software platforms they use. I’d recommend it as a useful tool for teachers wanting a simple and convenient way to enhance their online presence with images.

* Note: not all phone cameras are equal. I chose one with 3 MP resolution and macro capability, but no flash as I prefer to use natural light anyway. Others will have very different needs.

The iPad: a tool for teachers

When the iPad was first announced I posted some brief thoughts about its potential for education. Since then, it’s been released and I’ve had the chance to spend some time playing with one. It’s been an opportunity to see to what extent the device itself and the software available would be a useful tool for supporting the work of teachers and lecturers.

My initial impressions that the iPad functionally resembles a giant iPod Touch have been confirmed. Still, I use my iPod Touch all the time, so all the advantages of a bigger display are very attractive. The key question for me is to what extent the bigger display makes the iPad a great device not just for consuming media but also for generating content.

The iPad is a great device to view content – it’s fast and the display quality is impressive. And of course there is a huge number of apps available for it,  given that it’ll run existing iPhone / iPod Touch apps as well as apps developed just for the iPad.

But as a working teacher I also want to generate content. And it has limitations here:

• Want to edit online content such as Moodle or mediawiki pages? Results vary – you’ll almost certainly need to use HTML or wiki markup since the iPad is unlikely to work with wysiswyg editors. I don’t mind that – in fact I prefer to use HTML or wiki markup – but many teachers will find this a real drawback. And things are worse if you’re one of the many educators using the PBWorks wiki- at the time of writing it was impossible to edit a page with the iPad.
• You can’t print. So you’ll need to rely on a desktop or laptop computer for this.
• Using Google Docs? At the time of writing you can view but not edit using an iPad.
• Want to create media resources?  There are useful apps becoming available, but the lack of native support for accessing the iPad file system and the use of proprietary file formats is likely to be a barrier. My two-year-old grandson loved using the built-in mike to make that cursed animated cat speak funny – but there is no obvious way just yet to record audio to standard file formats that can be moved easily to a desktop, edited in other applications and published.

In my mind, Apple has focused too much on the entertainment aspect of its portable devices and neglected their use for real-world work. I’d like to see both, and I don’t believe they need to be mutually exclusive. The iPad is not quite ready to meet my needs as a working teacher – can’t wait to see the next version.

Image: Glenn Fleishman

Six tips for setting up a small-scale e-learning site

I often hear from educators and others wanting to set up a simple, small-scale e-learning platform to support their activities. While such a site has the potential to be more flexible and adaptable than a large institutional setup, it’s important to start it off on a sound footing to avoid wasting time and money.

My suggestions:

1. Start with and maintain a strong focus on using the web to support learning, not to merely publish information. This should underlie all the decisions you make on technical matters.
2. Don’t spend any money on arranging hosting until you have made decisions about the software platform (eg LMS or CMS) that will best meet your needs. Some platforms require much more robust hosting than others do.
3. Don’t spend any money on a software platform until you have made some decisions about exactly how you are going to use the site to support learning. In fact, once you have done this it’s very likely that you can identify free and open source software (FOSS) that will be very suitable.
4. Get help to identify your needs and make decisions. Not just because you may not have all the knowledge required, but also because an outside perspective is invaluable.
5. Seek out independent help and advice. Talk to lots of people, but be aware that many of the people who will offer advice may not  have an objective understanding of what you want to achieve.
6. Spend money on what matters – apart from ongoing payments for hosting, you probably have a small budget for initial set up. Since it’s very likely you won’t need to spend anything on software (see point 3 above), set aside at least some of your budget for buying the time of someone independent to help you identify needs and make decisions.

<span style="font-size:10px;"Photo by Matan of a copy of Rodin's 'Thinker'

8 tips for online learning community activities

In a purely social community, collaboration and communication can be very open and unstructured. But when incorporating online community approaches into courses, we normally need to adopt a more structured approach to meet needs of the curriculum and the learners.

Here are some tips for this situation:

1. The start of the activity is important – so welcome people and set a positive tone. Don’t overload people with information – start gently!
2. Focus on participant needs – so exploring and sharing existing knowledge is often a great place to start.
3. Give clear instructions and information about the activity – break the activity into digestible chunks so participants can focus on one thing at a time. Move supplementary information (ie info which is not key to the activity) to subsidiary pages.
4. Use triggers to build engagement – eg provide a video or a link to an online survey, then follow with a directly-related question.
5. Use open questions – eg ‘why do you think…?‘ These are more likely to generate higher-level thinking and in-depth discussion.
6. Be a bit provocative – a trigger or question which is controversial is likely to generate engagement. But avoid topics which are too risky as these can lead to dangerous conflict – if you’re inexperienced as a facilitator this can be hard to deal with.
7. Consider the flow of the activity – it is often preferable to deal with one question at a time, allowing participants to focus on one question at a time. You can start with prior experience or knowledge, then move in a developmental sequence to more in-depth questions. If you pose multiple questions from the beginning, especially with smaller groups, the community focus can be easily dissipated and lose momentum.
8. The end of the activity is important – you should at least farewell participants and thank them for taking part. Consider also how the key points that arose can be summarised and published – true collaboration is not just discussing but generating new and powerful knowledge that should not be lost. You might ask for a volunteer to do this.

Image: Augustin Théodule Ribot: The Conversation

Evaluating online community activities

The purpose of evaluation

A key question for anyone managing or facilitating an online community is how to make it sustainable. Sustainable communities need to maintain (and grow) an active and engaged membership. Structured online events or activities can play a very important role in engaging community members and ensuring their regular and active involvement. However, these events must be effective – badly planned and/or facilitated events can turn members off and lead to the failure of the community.

The facilitator’s overall impression of whether an event is effective or not is useful. But without a more rigorous evaluation, we can miss underlying issues which have the potential to damage members’ ongoing engagement in the community. So some kind of evaluation process is vital to its ongoing success and sustainability.

This article focuses on evaluating community events: not to check that they meet a minimum standard, but as a way of engaging in a process of ‘continuous improvement’.

The evaluation process

Many educational and management approaches employ cyclical models involving reflection or evaluation – eg Kolb’s experiential learning cycle and the action research cycle. The PDSA Cycle shown here represents the stages of Deming’s approach to quality improvement in business, but can be adapted to provide a model useful in relation to online community events and activities: PLAN: plan the community event DO: facilitate the community event STUDY: evaluate the event ACT: feed the evaluation results back into further community development

Carrying out the evaluation

Most of the evaluation will take place as part of the STUDY phase. But during the event (the DO phase) the facilitator should keep notes on what’s going well and what isn’t. If it’s not too big a group, it can also be really helpful to keep notes on the level of engagement of each member – not as a form of assessment, but as data that may be useful later.

During the STUDY phase:

Decide how you will gather feedback

Without its members, the community does not exist. So feedback from participants in an event is an essential component of evaluation:

• Online tools such as surveymonkey or polldaddy are quick to complete, so community members are usually happy to complete a survey. But make the survey brief, and tell them how long it’ll take.
• Individual interviews: you may get much more meaningful information about the event’s effectiveness if you personally approach participants. This may be a phone call or skype, or using an asynchronous method such as email. Ideally, a neutral 3rd party will gather the data, since participants may be unwilling to open up to the facilitator. You may be able to set up a reciprocal arrangement with another facilitator to gather data from each other’s participants.
• Collaborative feedback: you could set up a wiki that participants can use to record their feedback. Or you could set up a forum or a synchronous discussion space that participants use to discuss the event. Ideally this would be anonymous, so you may appoint one member to gather the raw data and provide you with a summary. Again, you may be able to arrange with another facilitator to manage this and gather feedback.

Develop evaluation questions and tools

• Communicate clearly what you are evaluating – point the participants back to the activity if possible so they can reflect on it. Be specific – make sure the questions clearly identify aspects of the activity that you want feedback on.
• Focus on how well the activity met their needs, not just on how much they enjoyed the process. If possible, ask for feedback at the higher levels of Kirkpatrick’s model – eg has the activity had a positive result, has it made a difference, have they been able to apply what they learned during the activity?
• Focus separately on the design of the activity and its facilitation: they are distinct, and the effectiveness of each is essential.
• Include questions that are open and qualitative so you can find out why things happened the way they did.

Gather feedback from community members.

• Tell participants how you will make use of the feedback: if you focus on improvement and they believe you are sincerely interested in making things better next time, they are more likely to engage in the evaluation process.
• Gather feedback not just from those that took part in the event, but also from those who chose not to. Asking those who didn’t take part why they didn’t can tell you a lot about the design of the event and the way it was communicated to community members!

Reflect and evaluate
Feedback from participants is just one form of information on which to base the evaluation. Your own reflection is another essential component.

• You may want to reflect on the activity before you gather data from participants – that way your own thoughts won’t be overly influenced by feedback. But once you have gathered the data, that’s a chance to reflect on and learn from the feedback from participants.
• In your reflection, avoid placing blame on participants. Assume you can do better and learn from mistakes. If people go wrong, ask yourself how could I have communicated more clearly?
• Use your own recollections and notes from during the activity to triangulate – compare them with what participants have told you about the activity, what happened and why.
• Focus on improvement – even where you think the activity was effective, try to identify specific things you could do to make it better next time.
• Share your evaluation with the participants – it’s a community, right? Sharing the evaluation means it becomes part of the larger community collaboration and conversation, and can enhance member commitment. But… if there are comments or conclusions that you feel are private or could offend members, leave them out of the published version.

Image: A Midnight Modern Conversation by William Hogarth.

Bibliography

Davies, C (nd). Kolb Learning Cycle Tutorial. Downloaded 30 May 2010 from http://www.ldu.leeds.ac.uk/ldu/sddu_multimedia/kolb/static_version.php

Unknown author, Business Performance Ltd (nd). Why Measure Training Effectiveness? Downloaded 30 May 2010 from http://www.businessperform.com/workplace-training/evaluating_training_effectiven.html

Unknown author, Carpenter group (nd). The Deming Cycle. Downloaded 30 May 2010 from http://www.quality-improvement-matters.com/deming-cycle.html

Unknown author, Warwick University (2008). Action Research. Downloaded 30 May 2010 from http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/ldc/resource/evaluation/tools/action/

Assessing what’s important in online discussion

One of the problems with assessment is common to all forms of measurement: ”what is easy to measure may not be important, what is important is often hard to measure.” This is true of online assessment as well as more traditional forms.

The assessment dilemma

This dilemma can cause assessment developers to assess what is less important: they focus on easily quantifiable criteria or standards but neglect to include more important criteria because they are not so easily quantified or measured.

In assessment of online discussion, we see the effects of this dilemma when assessment criteria call for a quantifiable contribution from learners: ‘At least 3 contributions to the forum’ or ‘One forum thread started and responses to at least three others’. This can lead to lightweight discussion as learners post superficial responses to achieve their tally. And this of course is contagious – every lightweight posting says to everyone else: ‘Look, this is all you need to do’. Even worse, genuinely thoughtful postings can get lost in the tide of mediocre ones.

To avoid this, we need to focus on what really is important: usually, what we’d like to see each learner achieve is something like ‘Make a significant contribution to the development of ideas through the discussion forum‘. But since that is clearly more subjective and harder to measure, we need to spell out how this might occur and what it might look like:

• Contributes original ideas which are relevant and well-developed
• Provides significant insights into the existing body of literature
• Helps synthesise ideas and concepts
• Contributes detailed and relevant examples from their own practice
• Helps others to explore ideas in depth

Of course, such a list is still relatively subjective – but it does start to establish what is important to me as an educator. And since I’d rather see one ‘significant’ posting than ten which don’t really add anything substantial, I prefer to avoid the use of quantitative measures when developing rubrics and other assessment tools.