Presentation Day

On this day, we spent most of the time preparing and finalizing our presentation. Things didn't go according to plan, but the presentation went well. I believe the 7 or less people who watched our presentation liked our idea of creating an online tutoring course where the alumni are the tutors. Something that didn't go according to plan was that we were unable to fully present our program. In other words, we didn't get two people to use wiziq during our presentation, even though we had pictures of people using it the previous day. We accomplished a great deal during Creativity Week. We are many steps closer to finishing our project.

Day Two

On Day 2, we had a big success.We figured out how to make the video chat work. Cesar and I were on our chinquapin account, where we decided to video chat right next to each other. I admit it was lame but the reason we did this was because we wanted to see if our camera was working. Prior to this, we went on our wiziq account to test the online tutoring course since we ran into a setback the previous day. As before, it didn't work. Once we were able to video chat on our chinquapin account, we verified that our video cams we working. We were puzzled and couldn't quite figure out why it didn't work on our wiziq account. So we decided, for some odd reason, to check wiziq without logging off of our video chat in our chinquapin account. We were surprised to find that the video chat worked on wiziq if the video cam was already in use. We finally solved one obstacle. For the remainder of the day, we worked and finished our alumni ad and Susan helped us form a group on Facebook. With the help of Bridget Anderson and Betsy Phillips (two very lovely and helpful women), we named our group Tutoring by Alumni Cultivating Knowledge, Learning and Education. T.A.C.K.L.E.

Day One

Just as planned, we explored wiziq and learned new things about using an online tutoring course. We learned how to give the students control of the lesson. Before giving the students any privileges, they start off only with audio controls, meaning they are only able to hear the teacher. There is a button that the students can push to ask for access to video, microphone and other tools. We also learned how to upload a video from youtube and how to share a screen shot. This sharing of the screen shot tool is very unique and a key tool for this website. We ran into a problem, which we were anticipating. We couldn't figure out how to get my video chat to work. We tried everything to get it to work but couldn't. We tried for hours. We went to a FAQs page where we found out our problem and still couldn't get it to work. Susan tried to help us but couldn't. Due to the fact that Francisco was gone all morning, we couldn't find time in our schedule to ask him to help us with this problem. We were also unable to create a Facebook page because we were blocked from that website. I am satisfied with the progress we made. I'm ready for day two!

Creativity Week

After much debate, we have finally figured out what exactly we plan to do for Creativity Week. Tuesday, we plan to explore wiziq and learn how to use the applications and tools on this website. Cesar and I have already created accounts for wiziq. During this first day, we plan to find out the best/worst circumstances for wiziq. We will jot down notes so that in the end, we will create a how-to manual for the students and alumni who choose to participate in this tutoring. We talk to Francisco Perez about the difficulties we come across so that we can know what to do when others come across those problems. We also plan on creating a group for Chinquapin Students and alumni on FaceBook, inviting them to create a wiziq account. We also plan on blogging more about what we did during that day. Wednesday, we will continue exploring wiziq to see if we have mastered using the website. Next we will starting a draft on our ad that we plan to send out to the Chinquapin alumni, asking them to contribute to our online tutoring. We will contact our panel members, informing them about the changes we've made to our project. We will ask for a time that is best to meet with them in this email. We will finish our final ad on Thurday and talk to Francisco about making the ad. After that we will set up our presentation for Friday. Friday, we will show our ad that we created and briefly show students how wiziq works. We will need to be using a classroom. It will be in the Fan Room.