Edited by Owen Barritt, Thursday, 2 Oct 2008, 21:21
It took a while for me to get started in week 1. Work and issues with having 2 versions of Acrobat preventing me from viewing pdfs via either IE or Firefox slowed the start a bit as I couldn't initially access the course and assessment guides. However, once fixed (I told firefox to open pdfs externally using the latest Acrobat rather than trying to open them in the window) things got started.
The first activity was interesting, in that everyone seemed to approach it from different directions. Some people focused in their posts on the introduction of themselves and why they were taking the course whilst others focused on their thoughts on the team members views on elearning. Not many people went into detail in both aspects. Personally, I was in the former group, but I shall take the opportunity to consider the latter in a separate post shortly.
I found staying focused on the podcast for 30 minutes challenging. My attention drifted off several times. Although the podcast was split into sections it was presented as one file on the website, with no way to easily skip to the next section.
As podcasts historically developed to present radio-style shows, which can be downloaded to mp3 players, I can see that it would seem normally to compile all these pieces into one "show". However, as most mp3 players will happily play a playlist of mp3s and the world wide web has developed to be able to present information non-linearly, there seems no requirement for them to be 1 file.
As it is presented there are 3 ways to access the content of the audio
download the mp3
listen to the audio on the web
download/view the transcription
Having done the later 2, I can see that it would have been a real aid to concentration to have had something to view whilst listening to the audio. Maybe this is an argument for making the streamed content video based, so you could see the person talking in each case also.
H808 Week 1
The first activity was interesting, in that everyone seemed to approach it from different directions. Some people focused in their posts on the introduction of themselves and why they were taking the course whilst others focused on their thoughts on the team members views on elearning. Not many people went into detail in both aspects. Personally, I was in the former group, but I shall take the opportunity to consider the latter in a separate post shortly.
I found staying focused on the podcast for 30 minutes challenging. My attention drifted off several times. Although the podcast was split into sections it was presented as one file on the website, with no way to easily skip to the next section.
As podcasts historically developed to present radio-style shows, which can be downloaded to mp3 players, I can see that it would seem normally to compile all these pieces into one "show". However, as most mp3 players will happily play a playlist of mp3s and the world wide web has developed to be able to present information non-linearly, there seems no requirement for them to be 1 file.
As it is presented there are 3 ways to access the content of the audio
- download the mp3
- listen to the audio on the web
- download/view the transcription
Having done the later 2, I can see that it would have been a real aid to concentration to have had something to view whilst listening to the audio. Maybe this is an argument for making the streamed content video based, so you could see the person talking in each case also.