Reflective Post and Poster

Personal Learning and Reflections.

Gradually with playing around with all the tools I learnt a lot about using Google sites and many other tools. I had to enhance my skills in Microsoft word to be able to achieve my target of teaching the students the same.

There were two major changes in my project due the facts that I learnt while the production of materials of the project. The Changes were:

1. Microsoft PowerPoint was dropped as research tool to be taught to the students. The major reasons behind these changes were (I am trying to be honest here):
• I did not find any special tool in MS PowerPoint which will drastically help students to enhance the skills. This may be because I am not aware of such tools in MS PowerPoint, but I will get back to it once this end -semester rush finishes and enhance my skills first and then share the knowledge using my website, and there is no point sharing half knowledge.
• I lacked time to learn all those extra skills in MS PowerPoint to be able to teach students. As my knowledge in MS PowerPoint is also to be polished to make it a excellent research presentation tool.
2. Video from external sources was preferred to what I made. The major reasons behind these changes were (I am trying to be honest here):

• After I made some video’s to help students understand what I want to teach I realized that it was just the repetition of the detailed downloadable PDF guides I already had prepared for the course. So decided to scrap them and share you tube Video’s which told more than what I could teach, so that the students can enhance their skills further. I will seek for more videos in future and share them. And students will be alerted from RSS Feeds Subscription.
• The owners of the video have been contacted by email or comments and I am still awaiting reply. I have made a point to refer to the source of the video so that they get the credit for the work they have done. And I also have shared it using YouTube gadget so the ownership remains with YouTube and its original owner.

The communication throughout the project was fair. I was under pressure of too many thing happening around me and may have not communicated all my developments with Dr M. Veerhart. I genuinely apologize for that. This is especially for the last minute changes I made to the project in view that the Study Material for PowerPoint was large but not serving the purpose of the course to teach research tools.

Apart from this I communicated everything with my peers and my professor. That is the reason I can only rate my communication as Fair not Good.

Ethical and Accessibility Issues

I would like to emphasize the point that I have acted with utmost integrity while doing this project keeping in mind the ethical considerations surrounding the issues of plagiarism and copyrights.

I have made extensive use of Google and its various tools to assist my assignment. I also have used various relevant YouTube video's to assist learning of the students of this course. I made it a point to contact them to inform that their videos will be shared on my web-site using YouTube gadgets and also mentioned in my site in every video upload to whom these video's belong. No Videos were downloaded, they were only shared using YouTube Gadgets.

I have made this site free and has no commercial benefit attached to this web-site. All users are allowed to view and provide feedback on the website.

Technical Learning

As with all the people who have used Google Sites, it took me a while to get my head around the pages and its functions. And how can I exploit the Google Ecosystem to my advantage. I read a lot of forums and played around with many functions, committed mistakes (a lot of them) then tried to restore them and again tried tom play around till I finally got it right.

The main motive of my website was to make it as simple as possible so that any one with slight knowledge is able to access the knowledge provided in it. The web site is designed to remain open and free 24x7. I have allowed RSS Subscriptions and also will constantly try to improve it using the feedback and requests I receive from the users. I have added a form to my 'Contact Tab' which directly feeds all the feedback to my spreadsheet for me to use and develop my course further. As this course is designed for providing tools to users its important part that it is modified according to requests and feedback to keep it relevant and useful in future as well.

Teaching and Learning Effectiveness

I found the teaching of Digital Learning Technologies to be first rate. It encouraged me to think, innovate, question, analyse  and thoroughly learn various new concepts at my own pace.

And if I talk about effectiveness of the course I have designed, that can only be decided by the feedback's I receive from users. As I said earlier this course is for the people so they decide how it is and how they want it to be in the future. 

From my perspective I have tried my best to implement the idea that I had when I decided to do this project. There were some changes but that were to maintain the teaching and learning effectiveness  of my course.

Project Plan

Project plan served as my checklist and time-sheet  and the project ready to be submitted is the biggest proof of adherence of it.

Well to be true there were variations in the dates decided but the plan was designed with buffers to acclimatize those changes. The project was delayed by a day due to the last minute changes that I made. These were mentioned above, and was large considering the project size. I had to redesign the whole project and edit it with new contents and deleting the old one to make the project more effective. The project would have been deemed complete even if I had not made those changes, but morally thinking would the project have served the purpose of giving 'students who are new to Well referenced assignments', efficient tools and knowledge to counter their new ghost ? NO. So the decision to provide little but efficient knowledge was taken.

Possible Improvements and Future Extensions

A many of them will be done. Improvements will be according to the requests and feedback's that I receive. Also I will make an endeavor to enhance my skills to best level in MS Word and PowerPoint to add more skills and guides to use for the students.

I am planning to design a good template in current APA style which students can use if they lack time to learn the skills. But that is when I learn all about APA, so this is kept for the future.

Poster

My poster is based on web same as my course so that I can share it with the world without any hassle of compatibility and conversion. Simple Glog available to all 24x7 same as my Web Site.  

The link to my poster is: http://www.glogster.com/prashin/prashin-s-research-tool-s/g-6kofu52laqica3u99fon7a0
And it is easy to print too. Just click on Private Print Tab & Print.

and the link to my web site is: https://sites.google.com/site/msofficeasresearchreporttool/home

Please feel free to view and provide you precious feedback by filling the form under my 'Contact Tab' of my Web Site.

At last I would like to sincerely thank Associate Prof. M. Veerhart, for his precious time and guidance. As trust me when I say this his thought and ideology changed the way I thought. As this is the end of the course with him, I only hope I have met his expectations, And I sincerely apologize if I have let him down, during any point in time.

Thank You Sir,
God Bless & God Speed.