Since I talk about tools, and I really ‘drilled down’ on what ‘access’ means, I submit this close up of a toy drill.
There was a lot of housekeeping this week. Mostly cleaning up bits of things that were partially done.
I registered for the ITLC Lilly Online conference. It looks like there will be some not only interesting, but relevant, to me sessions.
I dusted off my old PD plan and plugged in some new things. The focus is on accessibility and accessible content. I found some websites like CAST and the Government of BC that have some great resources on the topic(s). it’s a living document so I won’t call it complete. A lot has changed since the last time I updated it (in February!). The thing that took a longer time than I planned or expected was a concept map about access. I can map a concept in my head that would make you dizzy but getting one on electronic paper was a struggle. Ironically, my document so far is not completely accessible – I turned on the accessibility helper and I need to add some alt text for some arrows and do something with wrapped text inside some shapes. Going forward I am going to check all my documents. I have a feeling it will make things take longer but I want to walk the talk.
I worked on a Blackboard course for instructors. It’s shifting as I go and think things through. I didn’t get a lot of time to spend on it and that will be my priority for Monday. I have taught instructors ‘how to teach online’ many times through the Instructional Skills Workshop Online but that was a facilitated asynchronous course – this one will be more self directed. Maybe like ISWO I could put in a reflective piece for participants that I could keep track off and provide feedback for. We’ll see how it takes shape. I like the idea.
I also played with some new tools this week:
From the OER challenge this week I experimented with Hipothes.is, the annotation tool. I added to one of my blog post to try it out. I was also introduced to the Mason OER Metafinder or MOM. A cool tool for digging deep into Open resources. I did a search for ‘teaching online’ and got over 1100 results.
I listened to the H5P webinar with Clint, Ian, and Alan (Lalonde, Linkletter, and Levine respectively) that happened last Friday. I have been curious about H5P for a while and have experimented with it a little bit, a long time ago. I listed while doing other things and then at the end there was a demo on how to add the plug in so I played along. I added a photo slider that will be at the bottom of this post. I just grabbed a couple of photos from my library. I look forward to trying out some more of the available H5P content for future posts.
These three things took minutes each to do. I’m pretty impressed with that. I’m sure each one could take one down a wormhole of experimentation but I love that I can try things out to get a taste and see if there is some use for real life. Recording them here will hopefully help me remember, and having to submit to the OER challenge makes me do more than just ‘take a glance’ at the cool things.
Here is my first H5P :