Basic Course Tools

Challenge 1:  Blogs as reflective writing tools 

Criteria for successful completion of this challenge:

• A well written 2-3 paragraph blog post about your selected topic.

• The blog post includes a minimum of 1-2 clickable video/website links.

• The post should be of high quality with no spelling or grammatical errors.

Deliverables for this challenge:

• A link to the blog page that includes the blog post created for this challenge level.

Software used: GoDaddy Website Blog 

Reflection: The blog post I wrote for this challenge was about the ethnoautobiographical process I have been in over the last few years. I have actually included blogs in many of my university writing courses as ways for students to reflect on their readings and our class discussions. I think it's a very effective way of getting a student to reflect, and it can also be a very easy way for them to earn points toward their class total. Frequently, I would use blogs as low-stakes credit/no credit assignments. I would comment on their posts and sometimes also have them pick a blog post to expand on as an essay. I enjoyed this challenge because it was an opportunity to reflect on connecting LDT to ethnoautobiography (EAB).

I fall into the category of people who are lifelong learners. I thrive when my mind is challenged and when I have opportunities to grow and expand.  In the last five years, I've been able to explore a side of my past and my present in a way that I wish I had learned about sooner through EAB. The brief explanation about what EAB is can be summed up as open-ended, creative, and cross-disciplinary reflections on self, place, and others. The best way to frame one's mind around this is to just consider how many ways you can be an open-minded person who not only "sees" what's in front of her face, but also who actively "looks" for what is there but unseen--inside yourself, in relation to others, and in relation to place. 

Along my EAB journey, I have been expanding my understanding of indigenous spaces and people, and deeply understanding how much we need to learn about both in relation to not only where we are physically and geographically located, but how we interact with the people and the world around us. There are many learning and teaching opportunities within this EAB process, and when I think of learning design, I am now concurrently thinking about my EAB process.  Therefore, for the blog post for Basic Tools Challenge 1, I wrote about an indigneous artist out of Minneapolis, Marlena Myles, who uses Augmented Reality to teach people about indigenous spaces through her Dakota Spirit Walk.  Link to her website: https://marlenamyl.es/public-art/.

I found out about Marlena Myles through my EAB process. What does that mean? That just means that I have been actively seeking indigenous voices to learn from, and along the way, I found her! I think what she does is both unique and crucial to an EAB-based reflection on self, place, and others because her AR walks bring indigenous stories, concepts, and entities into the present-day experience of being on a piece of land. This is an important teaching and learning experience to reflect on from a learning design standpoint because it is centered on not only indigenous voices and representation but in literally keeping the spirit of a place alive. 

In 2021, my fiance and I went to Colorado and visited the Ute Mountain Tribal Park (website). This is in SW Colorado just before you cross into New Mexico near Shiprock, and relatively nearby Mesa Verde National Park. We had invested in the National Park Pass and had intended to go to Mesa Verde, but after our tour with Wolf, our guide at the Ute Mountain Tribal Park, we personally boycotted the space because of what we learned from him--that Mesa Verde was "spiritually dead." He said this many times throughout our 5-hour tour, and he showed us exactly what he meant because all along the ground, with every step we took, we saw shards of pottery and other artifacts that were thousands of years old strewn around the ground. These artifacts were literally everywhere, and you had to look where you were stepping to attempt to avoid stepping on them! It's hard to describe the sheer volume of artifacts on the ground--almost as many as there were grains of sand. He even showed us an ancient bead that had been brough UP from underground, through layers of time, by ants! He told us, and showed us, what he meant by the spiritual deadness of Mesa Verde because ALL of those artifacts were removed from Mesa Verde, and that is why the Ute Mountain Tribal Park was so significant--it was managed by the Ute, who were stewards of the land that previously had been inhabited by ancient Pueblo people. He told us we would be haunted if we left there with any of these artifacts, and we believed him. The longer we were there, the more we could see--initially, what would look to the untrained eye as just a sandy area, after 4-5 hours of looking and SEEING, revealed itself to be an ancient kiva! They were everywhere, but to the untrained eye, they looked just like flat, wind-blown desert. 

Through my EAB process, I have found the Ute Mountain Tribal Park, I have found indigenous artists like Marlena Myles (and so many others!), and I have committed myself to seeing how I can translate the EAB process into teaching and learning experiences. In this way, EAB will be integrated into as many things as I can--not through a colonizer's attempt to teach someone about someone else's culture, but in an attempt to show my own personal experience learning process. I am intent on teaching people how to do EAB themselves so they can discover the wonders of self, place, and others right under their eyes! My blog post, to meet Challenge 1's requirements, is further reflection on the intersection of LDT and EAB as it explores an indigenous voice teaching others about place.

Artifact: Here is a direct link to the Blog post, "A Fantastic LDT Voyage."  

Challenge 2:  Screencast Tools

Criteria for successful completion of this challenge:

• A successfully uploaded link to a short screencast video that includes clear audio narration about a topic of your choice.

• Audio and video must be of good quality, easy to hear/see, and contain relevant information that can be readily understood.

Deliverables for this challenge:

• A link to a personally produced 60-120 second screencast video.

Software used: Camtasia, YouTube, & the internet

Reflection: As I mentioned above in my Challenge 1 Reflection, I am committed to an ethnoautobiographical (EAB) process, and that means that I see opportunities to share the EAB process with others whenever I can. For Challenge 2 and the screencast that was required, I decided to design a hypothetical assignment that would ask students to visit https://native-land.ca/ to search for native tribes/nations that inhabit(ed) three places they are familiar with. In this hypothetical assignment, they were asked to complete a worksheet, which I have referenced briefly in the screencast. Now that I have started the EAB process for myself, I can't help but want to share it with others, and honestly, I integrate it directly or subtly in many learning experiences--in video tutorials on writing and critical thinking that are posted on the website of one of my former jobs, to integrating it into staff training and professional development. 

For this particular screencast, I showed just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how to use the website considering the primary purpose was to demonstrate I could create a screencast. I used Camtasia to do the screencast and recorded it multiple times until I was efficiently at 60-seconds. Camtasia is easy enough to use for a basic screencast. I did not feel like I could use any transitions or other graphics due to the limiting nature of the 60-120 second maximum, but in a slightly larger timeline, I could have done that with this video and even explained more about the hypothetical assignment. I actually like that the timeframe was shorter because, let's be honest, most people don't want to watch long videos, and won't! So it was good practice to refine what I wanted to say and show, and keep out any superfluous information.  Had I recorded this for an actual class, it probably would have ended up about 3 minutes long so I could more thoroughly review the assignment.

Artifact: I have created a tutorial video on how to use a website in order to complete a hypothetical assignment.  The assignment asks students to visit native-land.ca and look up three different geographical locations; then, they are to complete a worksheet based on what they found.

Below, please find a screencast video documenting the assignment and Challenge, which I have posted on YouTube here.

Secondary Artifact:  Here is a link to the Job Aid/Worksheet I created for this hypothetical assignment. You will see I fully designed the Assignment and Job Aid.

Challenge 3:  Cloud Storage and Sharing Tools

Criteria for successful completion of this challenge:

• A short, concise screencast video that clearly explains the structure of your cloud storage area and demonstrates how the storage area is utilized. 

Deliverables for this challenge:

• A link to the screencast that reviews the cloud storage structure and how it works. 

Software used: Camtasia, Google Drive, & YouTube

Reflection: For this challenge, I chose to use Google Drive to demonstrate cloud storage and cloud sharing because I use this in my personal life. I also have a lot of experience with OneDrive & Sharepoint (from the Microsoft Office 365 Suite), but since I'm using one of my Google accounts for my LDT work, I thought I would demonstrate using Google Drive.

The first thing I did was brainstorm what I would put into the main folder to demonstrate how you add documents or other folders to it. I merely utilized previous documents and information I created for the other Basic Tools challenges in order to build on what I had already created. I used Camtasia to create the screencast and had to record it multiple times to achieve an efficiency of communication. This challenge didn't specify a length of the video, so I sought to get the video to 6 minutes max to hold the viewer's attention.

During the video, I demonstrated both creating new folders and sharing documents and folders a multitude of ways. Cloud storage is a very effective method of sharing items with others as long as you have the space to store what you need. In my case, I pay for a little extra storage for this particular Google Drive because I've had to store large files in it--like a video file I created when I completed a "barre teacher training" and had to record myself teaching a 50-minute class and send it to the evaluation committee. I have also used this Google Drive to send high-res photos or other videos to private clients. Now, I am also using it for my learning design and technology storage for challenges like this!

Artifact: Below is a YouTube video of the screencast I completed for Challenge 3 in the Basic Tools Badge. It covers using Google Drive for cloud storage and cloud sharing. It is linked here for convenience as well.