EDUC639 Media Artifacts Assignment

Two New Software Skills Developed during EDUC639

1. Microsoft Teams Collaboration Tool

Once our team was established, I decided to recommend using Microsoft Teams as the collaboration tool for the creation of our Wiki. For any team project, it is important to choose tools that allow collaboration. Microsoft Teams is a great tool for that and turned out to be valuable as we shared our wiki creation efforts.

We posted an outline for our wiki, and each team member was able to comment and make changes to the outline. Working in such a collaborative fashion truly contributes to my learning development. Each of the team members has different backgrounds and knowledge pools they bring. By sharing collaboratively in an asynchronous fashion in Microsoft Teams, we worked together to create the wiki in HTML format for public viewing, and also the wiki in APA printed format for the Public Development Submission assignment.

2. Online Wiki Creation at Wikidot.com

The second tool I learned during this process was creating, managing, and updating an online wiki website. We choose wikidot.com as the online location for our wiki. I have created formatting on HTML based artifacts in the past (mostly on LMSs such as Moodle and Blackboard). It was interesting learning how to present our information on the wikidot.com portal.

Wikidot.com required setting up an account. Once the account was established, I was able to look at some training materials to better understand how to create the Wiki document online at wikidot.com.

One issue that complicates things is the HTML editor on wikidot.com is not a "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) editor. You have to use codes in a programming box and then click preview to see what it will look like. I found it much harder to get what I wanted when compared to a WYSIWYG editor like Microsoft Word. Also, graphics must be uploaded first into a storage location before use. That caused me to jump back and forth between the uploader and editor.

All in all, it was a good experience as the knowledge and experience gained will be beneficial in using other HTML based editors in the future.