I am starting a new Departmental website using Sharepoint. The reason behind this decision was that the University was using Sharepoint, it is free and you can integrate wikis and blogs. I wanted to experiment with NING as well which I thought was a great social network but realized that for 1 credit hour courses, the students do not necessarily want to spend time interacting with each other. The 1 credit hour PEAC courses are mainly activity based except for Fitness Concepts. Although, ever since I have started to teach here I have added a web component to it. Reason: to deepen the students' understanding of the concepts behind the activity e.g. bowling, jogging. I have used Pbwiki for the first semester and now I am contemplating to use Sharepoint just so I can keep it all together. PBWiki is great and you can get free wikis that are basic and fairly easy to use. I have had a lower amount of issues with students using them ever since I gave them a scavenger hunt type assignment in the beginning.
Tomorrow I have another Sharepoint session focused on wikis and blogs so after that I will make my decision. So far I think Sharepoint can be helpful for creating books and discussions on the PEAC courses. For the other course, PHED 3301, Practicum in PE, I do believe a social network such as NING can be more benificial. Not sure. I want to do a pilot study, perhaps using NING one time and using Sharepoint another time? When I would use ning I would use it for its blogging, discussion board and would add a PBWiki to it for the project (creating lesson plans).
I know that a tool may not work for everything but I am need to find one platform that can have various possibilities such as wikis, blogs, discussion boards,... That is why I am thinking Sharepoint may work. I did do a Sharepoint session on workflow today which was to me very overwhelming. I have absolutely no notion of HTML or other coding system so I was not able to follow anything. In order to do well in creating workflows (which was the topic of the workshop) I needed to know Designer (which was cancelled last week). So I was lost and a bit discouraged. I am hoping the wiki and blog session on Thursday will provide me with the needed information ready to develop my departemental website. I want to create one mainly for GA's to collect all the info they need regarding the PEAC courses that are being offered or even other courses they are responsible for. No need to create the wheel, better to improve on what went on before. So, placing the info on one site may help out in the teaching of the GA's.
Anyway... these are my thoughts. If Sharepoint does not work, I will go with NING and PBwiki. Too many options. I can also look into Moodle but every student must pay a small fee, which I don't really want to do at this time. So I am experimenting and I hope by the summer I can define my dissertation topic so I can begin an independent reading course on the topic and jumpstart my research.
Here is a screenshot of the Sharepoint Website I have created. I have different sections: Kinesiology, Recreation and Health Science or the 3 streams within the Faculty, the H.O.G.S. is the site for the HKRD graduate student organization and PEAC is the site that will hold all the PEAC courses (activity based courses).
Tomorrow I have another Sharepoint session focused on wikis and blogs so after that I will make my decision. So far I think Sharepoint can be helpful for creating books and discussions on the PEAC courses. For the other course, PHED 3301, Practicum in PE, I do believe a social network such as NING can be more benificial. Not sure. I want to do a pilot study, perhaps using NING one time and using Sharepoint another time? When I would use ning I would use it for its blogging, discussion board and would add a PBWiki to it for the project (creating lesson plans).
I know that a tool may not work for everything but I am need to find one platform that can have various possibilities such as wikis, blogs, discussion boards,... That is why I am thinking Sharepoint may work. I did do a Sharepoint session on workflow today which was to me very overwhelming. I have absolutely no notion of HTML or other coding system so I was not able to follow anything. In order to do well in creating workflows (which was the topic of the workshop) I needed to know Designer (which was cancelled last week). So I was lost and a bit discouraged. I am hoping the wiki and blog session on Thursday will provide me with the needed information ready to develop my departemental website. I want to create one mainly for GA's to collect all the info they need regarding the PEAC courses that are being offered or even other courses they are responsible for. No need to create the wheel, better to improve on what went on before. So, placing the info on one site may help out in the teaching of the GA's.
Anyway... these are my thoughts. If Sharepoint does not work, I will go with NING and PBwiki. Too many options. I can also look into Moodle but every student must pay a small fee, which I don't really want to do at this time. So I am experimenting and I hope by the summer I can define my dissertation topic so I can begin an independent reading course on the topic and jumpstart my research.
Here is a screenshot of the Sharepoint Website I have created. I have different sections: Kinesiology, Recreation and Health Science or the 3 streams within the Faculty, the H.O.G.S. is the site for the HKRD graduate student organization and PEAC is the site that will hold all the PEAC courses (activity based courses).
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