Reflection (week 12) - Websites

Definitely Internet has become the primary tool used by organizations to expand and broaden their field of action. This because of the large coverage that already has this economical way turns out to be, because right now there are many ways to create or obtain access to a website without spending much or anything.

This time, has been created an website for the staff that works in the Front Desk of the Department of International Admissions and Services. Through this resource, they will have access to key information about the department and university as well. All in one technological tool!

For this work we used google sites because it is a free way to create websites. The versatility of this tool is quite extensive and resources that can be included are many.

To include the use of this website within the daily work, will be required to all the Front Desk employees to indicate IAS_Access as default home page. In it, employees can find the essential information for users who are looking for any information to IAS either by phone, email or in person. Here, staff will have access to information of tuition and fees, counselors, important documents, scholarships, requirements and deadlines. This tool will be very useful to have all the basic information needed.

Thus, printing costs will be avoided, the material will be up to date and the work will be performed efficiently. Through this tool the IAS will incorporate the use of technology in the work environment for the benefit of the institution.

Reflection (week 11) - Concept Mapping

Concept mapping is a technique that's used every day in various activities both instructional and business. They are used as technique to study and even as a learning tool, as it allows the instructor to go with their learners building concepts and explore in these prior knowledge, and allows students to organize, interrelate and set the studied knowledge. Concept maps (also called charts) are an effective way to graphically represent ideas or concepts that are related. This procedure will take advantage of the conceptual power of images, facilitating learning and memory of a subject. Certainly not about memorizing maps and plays them in detail, but to use them to organize the content of study.

By means of this technique can be developed multiple activities that allow the instruction to show a system of ideas and concepts and the relationship they have. For this particular exercise, we will present the organizational structure of the Department of International Admissions and Services in WMU.

This chart is a graphical representation of the organizational structure of the IAS. It is an abstract and systematic model, which allows a uniform notion about an organization, revealing the functions of the various offices that are there. It's good that the staff working in the office knows the internal hierarchy of the department, since daily it receives students, teachers and other staff members who go in search of information and that is why the front desk (principally) must know where they have to lead the person so that he can then be addressed. Thus through this graphical representation are disclosed the essential features of the organization represented.

Finally, when training the new staff that will be working at the IAS, can be used this concept map, since the functions of each area are shown and who are the main responsible for the same. So assistance may be provided and give a good service to the person that needs it, directing him to the right personnel, whether admissions or immigration. The technique of concept mapping is a powerful teaching tool to organize information, synthesize and present it. It can be used to expose and develop any subject in a logical and orderly manner.

Reflection (week 10) - Screencasting

Among the lessons that I have planned for my students is presenting the cultures of different countries in Latin America and that includes the music of various artists from these countries. This time I will use a resource where you can create a playlist for this lesson, the program is Spotify.

Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs online. Music can be searched by artist, album, genre, playlist or record label, as well as by direct searches. Users can create and share playlists, or edit them with other users. Many Web sites support sharing playlists and Spotify songs and allow users to share, rate and discuss.

Through this video, I’ll show how to create a playlist looking for artists from a specific country, in this case Colombia and adding their songs to our playlist. The steps are:

1 - Create the playlist with the name of Colombian music.

2 - On the search bar, write the names of the artists that we will use in this case Juanes, Carlos Vives and Shakira.

3 - Once we find the artists we select the song we are interested in and use the right mouse click to add this song to our playlist.

4 - When have all the songs that would help us to present the artists, we play the playlist that will be ready for use!

I think this tool is very good because it allows students to be actively involved in school activities and be the protagonists of their own learning as they learn how to manage technology for the benefit of his knowledge.