Find one or two TED videos that you find interesting

http://www.ted.com/talks/hyeonseo_lee_my_escape_from_north_korea.html


It is no doubt that many north Korean refugees have tried to head to South Korea for their lives in the last few decades. Some of the defectors was arrested by North Korean army and ended to die. Some of them successfully escaped from North Korean forward China, however they might be caught by Chinese police so that Chinese police could return them to North Korea. The speaker on the video went through those kinds of risk, and now she could give us a real speech about her life and dream in the future. Her speech based on her fearful experience was strongly perusable to audience. In particular, when she was speaking, we could see many photos relevant to her story on the screen. It added a dramatic effect on her speech.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Moodle to deliver course content?

I have been learning how to use Moodle site for 2 months in the EDT532 class. There are advantages and disadvantages of using the Moodle site to deliver course content. For advantages, if anyone wants to design and delivery any kind of instruction on the internet, I will really recommend him/her to use the Moodle site because it is very easy to use the website. The frame and design of Moodle site is already set up for people to use it. For example, there are a lot of activity’s functions such as uploading files, forum, quiz and so on. We can handle with these kinds of activity’s functions depending on the each content. In addition, a number of large knowledge and information can be added to the Moodle site through links to many websites so that the diverse learning needs of many learners could be met on the Moodle site. On the other hand, for disadvantages, we can not use the Moodle site on the smart phone because there is no any application for smart phone users. This means that we should always have a computer to use the Moodle site, and we are not able to use the Moodle site on the street or in the public transportation without a computer.

What things in Educational Technology do you feel least comfortable doing? Any reason(s) why?

The least comfortable I have ever felt in educational technology was to doing on recording my voice and editing audio file. I used a Audacity and Garage Band program last semester in order to record my voice reading English text. Basically I was so week about speaking English that I could not complete recording my voice without any mistakes at one time. Secondly, I felt like the editing of audio file with Audacity and Garage Band was much more difficult than using of other program such as Power Point, Word. This was because I had to know the more professional vocabularies and information about audio to edit it. Moreover, it was hard to find some audio sources of intro and outro for free download on the internet. However, I have been getting familiar with using the two programs by repeating the usage of the two since then.

Your best experiences using educational technology

I think that my best experiences using educational technology were SMART notebook & board and i-book author. I had never used both technologies in my hometown before I came to U.S last year. They had me be shocked and surprised because each of two included a lot of function about interactivity. First, for SMART notebook & board, the learner could actively participate in the class where SMART notebook & board is used. This is because normally, we have used the POWERPOINT for instruction, however it focuses on an instructor or a lecturer and does not have diverse of interactivity function such as flashes, games, quizzes and so on. Second, for i-book author, it could be an alternative material instead of the paper material or hand-out. In addition, it also has a diverse interactivity function such as videos, pictures, diagrams, quizzes. Those kinds of interactivity might make us come true that we an interactive instruction between an instructor and learners would be successful.

Which instructional websites are the most useful for you? Can you create something similar for your Moodle.

I have used NAVER(www.naver.com) site for long time. It is a sort of portal site which many Koreans are currently using like GOOGLE. Basically, it shows us a number of diverse articles about any section such as politics, economy, sports, and so on. The reason why I think it is the most useful for me is that it includes a function of knowledge management. If someone wants to know about what he wonders, he would ask something by typing on the NAVER site. Some of the users using the site would answer the question. In this way, there are a lot of question and answer on the site. We could quickly obtain lots of information and knowledge through this site, no matter what we question because nowadays, people like to share what they have known or experienced for others.

What are your (my) best instructional resources?

<Movies>

I believe that Movies should be one of the most powerful instructional resources for learners. In the most training programs of my company, a lot of movies relevant to the training topic are being provided for employees in the classroom. This is because the movies help the learner enable to understand what they learn easily. The general way to show the learners the movies is to insert the movies into Powerpoint file. In particular, the movies could be more effective to learners after the lecturer explain something about the topic.

<Diagram>

Sometimes, we might not easily understand the meaning when we read some long article and text. At that time, we might understand the meaning when we see the diagram or graphic showing summary or the most important point of the whole text. I think that diagram and graphic next to the text could be more helpful for learners.

<Websites>

I think that most learners of e-learning are like self directed learners. When they feel like they need to learn something by themselves, they would search for some articles and resources on the internet or participate in e-learning courses. However, any instructional content can not meet each learner’s needs at one time. If a number of linked websites related with the instructional content are provided for learners, learners will search the linked websites and could find what they want to know more.