JT Online Learning Blog

From the ITForum archive

2007-07-21T13:03:00.000-04:00

As VoIP becomes more available and video becomes easier to create and share, both teachers and learners are taking on the new role of multimedia producer.

There have been some great discussions on the ITForum this month about audio and video -- both in terms of the role of digital media in the online and blended classroom and the nuts and bolts of audio and video production. Regustered users can access these discussions from the list's online archives (registration is free).

Educational Technology sample issue

2007-07-16T11:07:00.000-04:00

The May-June issue of Educational Technology - a special issue on Highly Mobile Computing - is available at the BooksToRead.com site as a sample issue (free, no password required.)

What makes a successful distance learner?

2007-07-12T20:47:00.000-04:00

Roy Clariana and Les Mohler's "Distance Learning Profile" instrument is used to predict on-line course achievement based on personality and other factors.

Link via ITFORUM list

Road warriors beware...

2007-06-22T10:33:00.001-04:00

Here's a good reason to allow extra time to get through security at Heathrow...

Link thanks to Bill L.

Minimal instruction

2007-06-21T21:43:00.000-04:00

Great discussion in tonight's class about viability of a minimal instruction approach in a technology training with real-world limitations.

A couple of resources of interest on this topic:

End-user training. Study comparing three kinds of hands-on practice in training users of a software package: exercises, guided-exploration, and a combination of exercises and guided- exploration.
Minimal instruction manual. Study examining the effectiveness of four self-instruction manuals: a skeletal version, an inferential version, a rehearsal version, and a lengthy version.

New crop of bloggers!

2007-06-21T17:47:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the new group of bloggers from this summer's Teaching Online class at NYU:

Hope to get back into the blogging game again with you all this semester!

Introduction to AIDS Vaccines

2007-04-09T11:59:00.000-04:00

From the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC), a nice audio-visual presentation providing an Introduction to AIDS Vaccines. While not interactive -- and it's a bit maddening that the resources at the end of the presentation aren't clickable--this is a pretty nice overview of the topic.

More comprehensive information and resources for participating in vaccine advocacy are available at the AIDS Vaccine Clearinghouse site.

12 STIs of Xmas

2006-12-01T15:25:00.000-05:00

OK, it might be in questionable taste, but continuing on the theme of World AIDS Day there's this little ditty on the 12 STIs of Xmas

Help raise a dollar on World AIDS Day...

2006-11-30T13:42:00.000-05:00

It only takes a second to raise a dollar.... Bristol Myers is donating $1 to AIDS research every time someone goes to their website and lights a candle using their animation.

https://www.lighttounite.org//

Help spread the word.

Interactive Teaching AIDS

2006-11-20T01:09:00.000-05:00

Interactive Teaching AIDS is an animation-based curriculum developed to teach HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention strategies developed through the School of Education at Stanford. This site has some great information on how the courses were developed, including images of different stages of the development process.

Games for Health competition

2006-11-02T06:40:00.000-05:00

Here's a chance to apply those game-design, storyboarding and prototyping skills...

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is sponsoring a Games for Health Competition with prizes for entrants who develop game concepts or prototypes aimed at improving aspects of health and health care.

There are three specific competitions in the contest - two for storyboards & game treatments ($5,000 prizes), and a grand prize ($20,000) for best working prototype/game. The contest runs through April 1, 2007 (hope it's not an April fool's joke) and winners will be announced by June 1.

My life as a digital migrant worker...

2006-10-07T13:27:00.000-04:00

It occurs to me that a casual visitor to my blog might notice that I haven't posted anything here since my sad little post about losing Rufus. While I still miss the little guy, I didn't decide to end it all, however -- I've just been remarkably busy the past two months.

I'm hoping to get back to regular blogging, but it's particularly hard right now, especially since I'm working within so many different online systems and discussion tools with different schools and clients -- 3 different LMSs in 3 different colleges, 2 proprietary client LMSs, 3 different discussion boards and 2 different wikis. Unfortunately, when I'm this busy and something's gotta give, it's almost always my postings to my own blog.

Particularly when I'm teaching classes, I find it so frustrating to have so much of what I have to say trapped in all these different systems, almost none of which is open to public access.

In most cases, class discussion boards and other posting areas are inaccessible to both the students and the teacher once the semester has ended and the course has been archived. While some systems automatically pick up basic course elements and incorporate them into the course shell for the next semester so the teacher doesn't have to spend all that time reposting course outlines and reading lists, there's invariably something significant that needs to be changed or added to accommodate the next course offering or schedule, and its rare for all of the key elements of the course to be ported to the next semester's shell.

This is what makes me feel like a digital migrant worker -- teachers who use online media so often have to find parallel systems for carrying around all the discussion topics, lecture notes, links, shared files, syllabi, announcements, etc., from one offering to the next -- and for those of us who teach similar courses in more than one institution, we even to keep copies of everything in multiple formats to accommodate all the quirks of the different LMSs. (Not to mention the nightmare of dealing with all of the different systems for posting official and unofficial grades - some of which are online and others of which require obtaining, filing out, and snail mailing paper documents.) ... It's almost always a matter of the teacher having to reorganize her/his own personal organization systems to accommodate the LMS -- not the other way around.

With all this accommodating going on, it's no wonder that most teachers balk whenever administrators or techs try to introduce a new piece of technology that promises to make their lives easier.

So what's the solution? I've found that Furl, del.icio.us, and similar tools are certainly a step in the right direction for helping teachers easily build portable personal knowledge management systems that are easily maintained and accessible from multiple locations - and it helps that they contain the ability to export information in multiple formats... then again, this doesn't quite solve the whole problem.

Oh, well, more on this later, I hope.... I've got a new class starting next week, so I better stop now and update my shell -- revise the syllabus, repost the FAQ and initial announcements, send out the initial messages, change the assignment due dates, upload the reading files, create the forum areas and topics, post the shared files, set up the synchronous meeting times, etc. ... a good two-three hours worth of donkey work...

Goodbye, old friend

2006-08-07T13:32:00.000-04:00

Rufus
May 1993 - August 2006

The Onion and The Elephant

2006-08-01T08:34:00.000-04:00

It seems like Wikipedia has been mentioned everywhere lately... being bashed, being defended, and, most recently being parodied.

First, there was last week's issue of The Onion, which ran a headline story titled "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence: Founding Fathers, Patriots, Mr. T. Honored."

The article references a "commemorative page" for the anniversary which, among other things, "features detailed maps of the original colonies—including Narnia, the central ice deserts, and Westeros" and "links to video clips of the First Thanksgiving, hosted by YouTube."

Then, Stephen Colbert, on last night's Colbert Report, did a bit on Wikipedia during which he invited the audience to help rewrite "Wikiality" by editing the site's page on elephants to say that the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months. He then told viewers to log in to Wikipedia in about 15 minutes to see the change.

As a note about the segment on Wikipedia's Colbert page reads:

Colbert mentioned Wikipedia less than one minute ago on his show, planning for it to appear on Wikipedia in 15 minutes or so. Mr. Colbert vastly underestimated the speed of the average Wiki user. (At least the page read that way 5 minutes ago)

According to Wikipedia, the changes began to occur on the elephant page almost instantly, causing most of the site's elephant-related pages to be locked "because of recent vandalism or other disruption." It's interesting to look through the relevant page histories and discussions that have occurred in the short time since this incident ... and ironically, all of this highlights the site's strengths as an open and living resource. The incident prompted a particularly interesting comment on the site's Colbert Report page:

Although the specific example of edits against the elephants article may be considered vandalism (and reverted), it illustrates how people can easily create a modern spin on the aphorism "might makes right", or put in other terms "history is written by the victors". This distortion of reality may blend well on websites such as wikipedia, as evidenced by the wikipedia article on "Reality" itself disputing what is real by containing unverified or non-neutral claims.

Doesn't that just about say it all?

Colr Pickr for Flickr

2006-07-27T00:40:00.000-04:00

Colr pickr is a very cool mashup from KrazyDad that lets you select a color from a wheel and then instantly finds and links to a bunch of Flickr photos where that that color is dominant.

(link via eelearning)

Reading Room: JOHO

2006-07-26T23:23:00.000-04:00

The new issue of David Weinberger's JOHO (Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization) is available. Of particular note:

Why believe Wikipedia?: Simply by appearing in the Britannica, an article has credibility. But that's not true for Wikipedia because you might hit an article a moment after a loon has altered it. Yet, Wikipedia has (and deserves) credibility, in part because of its willingness to acknowledge its fallibility.
The end of the story (Or: The tyranny of rectangles): Journalism can't get stories right because the world doesn't fit into rectangles. Be sure to follow the link to info on Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.net and the link to Jeff Jarvis's piece on "networked journalism."
Bogus contest: Challenge to come up with appropriate warning stickers for traditional knowledge authorities

Artcasting: Museum-a-go-go

2006-07-23T10:55:00.000-04:00

In addition to posting virtual museum tours and interactive art educational materials, museums are increasingly making their in-house audio tours - and special audio programming - available as free podcasts. Visitors can use the podcasts to listen on site or off, and subscribers can automatically receive feeds for new shows.

But it doesn't have to stop there, of course.... art educators and students can make their own artcasts to syndicate or use during their own museum visits. (Though some museum sites invite users to create and send in their own artcasts, I'm not quite sure what becomes of most of these.)

Museum podcasts has a nice directory of feeds you can subscribe to individually or all at once.

Now this explains everything...

2006-07-22T22:00:00.000-04:00

Ever think that your teachers or colleages were behaving a bit... um... mechanically?

In an article in Wired News this week, we learn about Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro's mechanical double, "Geminoid HI-1," which sometimes takes Ishiguro's place in meetings and classes.

Powered by pressurized air and small actuators, it blinks, fidgets, and copies the voice, posture and lip movements of Ishiguro, who broadcasts sound through a speaker inside the robot and wears a motion-capture system to control its movements.

Howard Reingold Interview

2006-07-22T20:22:00.000-04:00

In this zdnet interview, he talks briefly about technological change over the past four years, open access, power, and control. There are links to much much more, of course on his web site. (Incidentally, if you're not already familiar with CooperationCommons, you'll probably want to check it out.)

(via Slashdot)

Insider Art

2006-07-22T19:26:00.000-04:00

Pelican Bay State Prisoner Donny Johnson, a lifer, makes his abstract paintings on the back of postcards using paints made from M&Ms and a paintbrush made from strands of his own hair, according to this NY Times article.

(link via BoingBoing)

No-So-Fun Facts

2006-07-22T15:17:00.000-04:00

Source: Kaiser Family Foundation - globalhealthfacts.org

World Population - 6,446,131,400
People with HIV/AIDS - 40,300,000
People with Tuberculosis - 15,430,000
Malaria Cases - 408,388,001

(via the Communication Initiative)

Other Places

2006-07-19T21:10:00.000-04:00

A few items from around the blogosphere:

Thanks to JMaddrell who tosses the constructivism/groupthink meme back up into the air... I hope to give it a tap a bit later in the week.
Jen also responds to my post yesterday about the Chicago Virtual Charter School with links to two other online programs - the Wisconsin Virtual Academy and the Wisconsin Virtual School
Mr Superfluities restarts his podcasting efforts today -- a longish post on drama and erotics, among other things
Congratulations this week to Lucas Krech (or is it Luka Creche?)
Spindarella is backto the blog - and with photos

And...If you're in Brooklyn on Thursday between 8-11, stop by Perch for a rare chance to catch the Au Pair minimalist chick jazz duo Christiana Drapkin (vocals) and Stephanie Greig (bass) joined by Michael Kanan on piano in an intimate space. (no cover)

Virtual K-8 Charter School

2006-07-18T23:59:00.000-04:00

If approved by the state board of education, the Chicago Virtual Charter School, allowing students to complete about 20% of their work online, will be available to Chicago students this fall. According to this article, the Chicago Teachers Union is not impressed.

(via slashdot)

Digital Generation Data

2006-07-18T23:41:00.000-04:00

Some fun facts from survey results reported in this BBC article:

One-third of children in the UK use blogs and social network websites; two-thirds of parents do not even know what they are
Of the 1,003 children aged 11-16 surveyed, almost half said they could disable parent controls
A tenth of the 11-year-olds who took part in the survey said their parents did not know about the people with whom they communicated online
13% revealed they were never supervised while using computers at home
69% of parents thought they knew less than their children about mobile phones
A Mori survey of 2,300 11 to 16-year-olds in England and Wales has found that three fifths liked the idea of using computer games in the classroom. Half of those aged 15 and 16 did not

Categorization Revisited

2006-07-16T20:03:00.000-04:00

It's amazing how much my thinking has changed since I characterized tagging as "chaotic and counterintuitive" in a post last October ... now I'm closer to thinking along these lines, which David Weinberger elegantly begins with:

The narrative that tells of the first man and woman encountering the tree of knowledge focuses on its tempting fruit. But after we took the bite, we apparently looked up and got the idea that knowledge is shaped like the tree's branching structure: Big concepts contain smaller ones that contain smaller ones yet. Over the millennia, we have fashioned the structures of knowledge in just such tree-like ways, from the departmental organization of universities (liberal arts contains history and history contains ancient Chinese history) to the hierarchy of species. The idea that knowledge is shaped like a tree is perhaps our oldest knowledge about knowledge.

Now autumn has come to the forest of knowledge, thanks to the digital revolution. The leaves are falling and the trees are looking bare. We are discovering that traditional knowledge hierarchies that have served us so well are unnecessarily restricted when it comes to organizing information in the digital world.

Multiple Me: Integrating my digital self

2006-07-14T17:57:00.000-04:00

I seem to be thinking a lot about integration these days, and I'm now trying to find the best way (and the time) to better integrate my online self, even as I find I want more online outlets for different kinds of thoughts and work.

I'm not the most diligent blogger out there, but I've been teaching about blogs in my NYU classes for several years. I first used my old archived movable type blog as a way to start getting comments and thoughts I wanted access to out of the prison of the school's LMS, but I wanted to try and get more than comments to my posts from the group --- it was still a little too much like lecturing.

I started using a collective blog for the class, but it never really seemed to take root. Posts by James Farmer and others suggested better success with individual blogs and gave me the inspiration to give that a try, but the setup and management of all those blogs quickly proved to be too much ... and it kept me in a position of being a centralized source when I was really looking for decentralization.

I couldn't handle two blogs, so I abandoned my old blog when my classes started collective blogging, and I started using Blogger last fall again mostly to support my classes -- I had run across Ulises Mejias's draft syllabus last summer (one of the bases for this article) and wanted to try something similar (though more modestly) in a graduate and a certificate class at NYU's Virtual College. (Incidentally, there's a webcast on the Mejias article scheduled for Thursday.) I felt that I had to change software though -- I was afraid that trying to incorporate RSS feeds into blogs using movable type would have had too high a learning curve -- particularly for the 10-week certificate class.

Using Blogger combined with Bloglines has worked pretty well for classes so far as a way to begin exploring programs like Flickr, Furl and del.icio.us, but now I'm itching a bit to start up my old blog again and post more substantially with a more customizable platform than Blogger affords. ... Of course, that means maintaining two blogs if I want to keep this blog going.

Here's where the multiples problem comes in... I already have a personal site that is languishing, and another that's pretty much a museum of the Web of the mid-1990s -- as well as a site for my consultancy collective, Grafeio that we're too busy working on projects to maintain and expand. (Thank goodness we don't have to rely on the site to bring in business.)

... Not to mention the content and misinformation related to me collecting on other sites that I don't have direct access to -- Just today I noticed that my faculty bio on the NYU SCPS web site is bizarrely incorrect. (How did anyone ever get confused enough to list my occupation as "Typographer"??? especially since I've been teaching and doing instructional design there for years now.)

I don't expect to be able to control everything posted about me out there, but some sort of integrated online presence is in order. Slowly, I'm starting to organize things a bit better and get a more coherent approach working... Having all my feeds and blogrolls linked from blog and to my Suprglu account is a start, but I have a ton of work ahead of me. And once I finish with that, I still have to tackle the problem of dealing with the dozen of email accounts I've accumulated....

Making Group Work

2006-07-11T08:55:00.000-04:00

A really on-target reply from JM of Designed to Inspire to my rant on the lame application of "constructivist" approaches:

... hand in hand with your observation is the overused and abused "group collaboration" element found in all learning experiences (from pre-school through grad school). Now, I regognize that out in the real world we all need to work together to get things done, but then why don't we have a class in 1st grade on Team Work 101 (maybe even offer a few Team Work 200 level classes in college... heck, maybe even offer a PhD in it). But, does it make sense to embed these group lessons in every learning environment?

I sometimes wonder if "learning" of the subject matter (you know . . . the subject matter that is implied in the course title) ever occurs during some group work (busy work?) projects? Or is all that forced peer interaction just a crafty babysitting mechanism (an extended talk among yourselves gimmick)? Also, when we give our group buddy a 5 out of 5 at the end of the semester for "team work" (contributions made to the project), what do we think she "learned" about the subject matter during the process?

This feeds right into the discussions I'm having with the participants in my NYU classes this week on evaluation and assessment.

It's amazing how little is often done to really guide, assess and evaluate group work in actually practice.... one response I often hear from teachers when I ask about how they know what's being accomplished in group work is "I can tell if they're all on task." I have to be skeptical about this...

To me, this sounds just like the "I don't need a rubric; I know an A paper when I see one" approach. Lots of teachers say this, but when I ask them to actually specify and weight their evaluation criteria, they're often surprised by the results.

Then there's the whole "they're interacting, so they're obviously learning something" philosophy. Something, yes, but how do you know what exactly? There are ways to give a group ownership over discussions and activities while doing some evaluation and assessment, too. ... They just take a little planning, thought, and preparation.

I love Constructivism; It's Constructivists I can't stand

2006-07-10T22:12:00.000-04:00

rant warning...

I'm a busy person, and my time -- both in class and out -- is valuable to me. I assume that the same is true for every one of the participants in every class I teach.

To me, rule #1 when teaching adult learners is "Don't waste their time." I spend a lot of time and effort thinking about the most efficient ways to manage my own time and my own learning, and I take a lot of care in trying to design activities that are an asset to participants in their efforts to do the same.

Now, I don't always succeed, but it's never for lack of trying.

So why is it that so many academics seem to think that simply calling their approach "constructivist" or "experimental" automatically legitimizes their unfocused - and sometimes, frankly, downright lazy - approach to teaching?

To them I say: Look, people, if you don't want to teach or haven't planned and organized your class, fine. Your students will either drop the class or wait out the semester. Feel free to find some way to make it look like you're doing something during class, but don't assign busywork for the evenings unless you're going to at least pretend there was some point to the effort.

In other words, stop wasting everybody's time. You're giving the rest of us a bad name.

/rant

Gliffy: My new favorite Web 2.0 application....

2006-07-09T04:54:00.000-04:00

Talk about timing... just as I was beginning to dread having to figure out once again the best way to diagram an ID model to share with a group, I happen across Alan Levine's post about Gliffy, a tool for in-browser creation and collaboration for-- you guessed it -- creating diagrams.

All I can say is "Wow." Simple, fast registration, amazing intuitive interface, share-edit ability, automatic publication to the web, 3 export options, and a library of symbols built in. I built this silly sample about 2 minutes after registration.

Now that's what I call serendipity...

Microsoft and Creative Commons Partnership

2006-07-07T19:29:00.000-04:00

Geez ... Looks like I'm the last person on the internet to blog about this, but I'm happy to see that users will now be able to embed a Creative Commons copyright license directly in a Word, PowerPoint or Excel file.

Seems like a step in the right direction....

(Link via ext337)

Your computer may be proctoring you...

2006-06-30T09:03:00.000-04:00

Every semester, I'm asked about issues related to student authentication in online courses -- particularly in terms of how to verify that the person who signed up for a class is the one taking tests, writing papers and doing other class work and in terms of how to verify that no cheating occurs during test taking.

My usual response in terms of verification is to say that one could ask the same questions about most F2F classes but that people don't seem to worry about this nearly as much. Student logins and passwords are the online equivalent of the student ID card used to access brick-and-mortar classes, and -- while there are sometimes valid reasons to go to extraordinary lengths to prove identity and proctor student tests and work -- it's usually not necessary or efficient to do more than this kind of casual verification for an online class unless one would go to significant lengths to verify identity for the same kind of activity in the F2F world.

Proctoring test to keep students from cheating is another issue entirely. In general, I advise developers who are concerned about this issue to design assessment activities that make cheating unlikely and impractical -- e.g., avoiding simple objective testing methods and tests of rote learning, designing situated assessment activities that require a unique response, etc. However, I also do recognize that there are situations in which a more standardized objective testing approach is the most practical, cost-effective, and efficient way to conduct assessment activities.

While there are ways to have teachers proctor distance learners during test taking, most of these approaches are difficult to set up and administer -- particularly if an institution really wants to allow students to take tests at any time and from any location. There just isn't an efficient way to have teachers "virtually" stand over the distance student's shoulder and watch them work.

Until recently, that is.

This article from Inside Higher Ed describes Troy University's attempts to develop a remote "electronic proctor." This device, which would hook into the USB port and could be used by multiple students, sits next to a computer and includes a fingerprint reader, a camera with 360-degree-view capabilities, and a microphone.

The device -- which is expected to cost about $200 each -- would take and record real-time audio and video of the test taker’s environment, allowing instructors to choose whether to observe students taking the test or to review the recording. Unusual activity (e.g., a voice speaking or another person walking into the room) would cause the device to send a red-flag message to the instructor.

I find this fascinating, though a bit creepy -- and I really have to wonder how effective it will be. I'm sure there will be dozens of ways to "beat" the device once it's officially in use, and I know that I'm barely able to keep up with reviewing homework assignments and maintaining communications with my students... I can't imaging myself or any other online instructors having the time or inclination to sit through dozens of tedious videos of students taking online tests...

(link via the DEOS-L list)

Flickr User Model

2006-06-29T11:30:00.000-04:00

I love informational graphics... and this diagram from Soldier Ant showing the Flickr user model does a nice job of visually connecting the key concepts.

(link via information aesthetics)

Making your desktop look like your desk top

2006-06-24T02:21:00.000-04:00

Computer "desktops" rarely resemble real-life workspaces -- at least, assuming that most people's actual desktops have more in common with the mess I see in front of me than they do with the tidy little icons on my screen.

The BumpTop 3D desktop prototype attempts to extend the desktop metaphor by focusing on "piling instead of filing" -- allowing files to be loosely arranged, piled, sorted, and tossed around the way they are in the physical world.

The idea is to allow users to access information from their "piles" at a glance and to eschew rigid categorization and filing schemes in favor of supporting the more casual organization methods used in the real world.

A paper on the prototype is available here (in PDF). There's also video to look at if you don't have the patience to read the paper -- and if you don't have the patience to view the full 7-minute video , you can even check out the 20-second Hip-Hop version.

(Link via elearningpost)

Jumpcut -- Online movie making

2006-06-23T14:47:00.000-04:00

Online video keeps getting easier... Jumpcut is another great new online media application that allows you to create movies from stills and clips - or to remix the movies of others - through an easy-to-use browser interface.

International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning

2006-06-19T16:28:00.000-04:00

The latest issue, Vol. 7, No. 1, of the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (www.irrodl.org <http://www.irrodl.org> ) is now online. Articles of note in this issue:

Your Brain on Alzheimer's

2006-06-11T18:27:00.000-04:00

What happens in the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease? This site contains an interactive tour from the Alzheimer's Association explaining how the brain works and presenting an overview of the effects of the disease.

Though mostly a slide show with rollovers for key terms that show graphics of different structures, the site is nicely organized and has a good level of detail for an introduction to this topic.

Cool Stuff for your blog's sidebar

2006-06-11T13:52:00.000-04:00

Is your blog's sidebar a bit blah? Check out this Listible page for some resources you can include

(Link via the e-Learning Centre)

Math on your iPod

2006-06-11T13:36:00.000-04:00

MathTutor offers video tutorials, with diagnostics, summary text and exercises via DVDs or iPod downloads.

From the MathTutor web site:

Never understood Pythagoras's Theorem? Baffled by sines and cosines? Now you can get better grades (and impress your friends) by learning on your video iPod!

Tabblo

2006-06-11T13:18:00.000-04:00

Tabblo is an interesting application for digital storytelling, online albums, and word/picture portfolios.

AAfter being created using a template and a set of online editing tools, the final product can be shared, printed as posters or prints, or published to blogs or websites.

(link via e-Literate)

Teaching and online resources

2006-06-11T13:04:00.000-04:00

One interesting reflection on how online resources can affect the classroom interaction

(link via Abject Learning)

Unintended online resumes

2006-06-11T12:35:00.000-04:00

Be careful of what you publish on your MySpace, Facebook, or Friendster account... a potential employer might just be checking up on you, according to this Times article, which cites a trend of employers checking out applicants' social network pages.

It's easy for online users to forget that they're in a public place when they post personal information meant for family and friends. (And many don't know that even pages that are cited as "restricted" to friends and fellow students aren't necessarily "private")

In general, it's a good idea for anything posted online that might be Googled under your name or otherwise might track back to you -- email, blogs, web sites, social software applications, etc. -- to be treated as public and kept SFW (safe for work).

Zoho Web 2.0 Applications

2006-06-09T09:26:00.000-04:00

Zoho has an impressive array of online tools -- many of them great for collaboration with peers or groups of students. I've tested about half of these and am pretty impressed so far.

Zoho Writer: Networked word processing program with a nice WYSIWYG interface. You can import and opt to share documents in the online environment, or you can"export" the documents to your own computer in a number of formats, including .doc and PDF formats.
Zoho Planner: Another online "to do" list program, though much easier to use than some similar applications
Zoho Challenge: Online tests (primarily designed for testing job candidates)
Zoho Chat: Chat program (with archive)
Zoho Sheet: Spreadsheets
Zoho Creator: Create your own customized, networked web application either based on one of their existing templates or from your own data
Zoho CRM: A range of related Customer Relations Management tools that also includes a world clock and calculator in the main interface.
Zoho Virtual Office: Networked groupware for collaboration

The free online registration for these couldn't be easier. Most are also 100% free to use, but the CRM and Virtual Office applications have a limit on users for the free version.

(link via Designed to Inspire)

June-July 06 issue of Innovate

2006-06-05T06:00:00.000-04:00

The June-July '06 issue of Innovate is out. Articles I found to be of particular interest:

From Digital Divide to Digital Dividend: What Will It Take? Outlines the important steps that such entities can take and have already taken to maximize the digital dividends that ICTs provide for populations across the digital divide
Teaching Social Software with Social Software. Ulises Mejias writes about his experience in teaching a course on social software with social software
Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom. After addressing some controversies over the use of wikis as scholarly and educational resources, the authors advocate the use of wikis as a teaching and learning tool.
Synchronous Discussion in Online Courses: A Pedagogical Strategy for Taming the Chat Beast. Describes a protocol for virtual classroom etiquette—or "chatiquette"—based on research on classroom discourse and conversational turn-taking.

10x10 - Current news at a glance

2006-06-04T13:13:00.000-04:00

Every hour, 10x10 presents a snapshot and interactive exploration of the words and pictures that "define the time."

After performing a weighted linguistic analysis of the text in the RSS feeds of news sources, the program selects the 100 key words and corresponding images deemed most important and presents them as a sort of mosaic postcard.

Moving your mouse around the grid highlights the terms corresponding to each image, and clicking on an image brings up a window with links to the corresponding news headlines. Clicking the image again presents a larger view. You can also view results from previous hours or view the top words for a single day, month, or year.

Sources for 10x10 are the international news feeds from Reuters, BBC, and the NY Times ... and while this is a fascinating way to explore current events, I can't help wondering how different the end result might look if a more diverse group of sources were utilized for the feeds.

(link via The Learned Man)

Podzinger: Audio and Video Search

2006-06-03T16:00:00.000-04:00

As the use of audio and video continue to grow online, there's also been a growing need for online tools to search and use these media appropriately. One big problem has always been the inability to index most recordings -- forcing users to wade through an entire linear recording or to skip around hoping to chance across the particular snippet they're looking for.

Podzinger looks like a step in the right direction...

This search engine creates a text index of the audio data from audio and video files using speech-to-text technology to enable search within a podcast, not just within the metadata or text label. The program not only finds podcasts relevant to the search term, but also highlights the segment of the audio in which they occurred.

If you're using the right browser and media players, clicking on a key word in the results will make the audio begin to play just where you clicked. You can also back up, pause, forward, or download the entire podcast.

The speech-to-text translater isn't perfect -- making for some interesting results sometimes -- but this is definitely a promising advance for online media.

Beyond Text: using your voice online

2006-05-29T07:17:00.000-04:00

This site explores the application of online voice technologies in different learning contexts and with different learner groups to develop some models of practice and practical guides for teachers who want to integrate online voice technologies into online delivery, assessment and support services

The site includes case studies, facilitator guides, and more. (While the site navigation is a little more clumsy than I'd like, it's worth wading through the unnecessary pages to get to the content.)

[link via Abject Learning]

Bloggers earn right to protect their sources

2006-05-29T07:00:00.000-04:00

In a case in which Apple sought to subpoena email from bloggers who posted some of the company's internal documents, the Sixth District Court of Appeals on Friday rejected Apple's argument that bloggers aren't journalists and should not be protected by the laws intended to protect news agencies from being forced to reveal their sources.

Earning the right to be viewed as "legitimate journalists" is a big step forward for online writers -- and yet another signal that the journalistic landscape is changing in some profound ways.

(link via boing boing)

New domain for mobile devices

2006-05-29T06:40:00.000-04:00

Last week the .mobi domain -- aimed specifically at websites designed to be viewed on mobile phones -- finally became available, so we can expect to see more and more sites with content designed specifically for phones and other mobile devices.

Once these sites begin to proliferate, it'll be interesting to see how many online ed producers begin to design content specifically for the tiny screen, as opposed to designing regular content that is "smart" enough to work on mobile devices.

Meebo for Youbo

2006-05-28T14:08:00.000-04:00

Meebo looks like a great resource for online facilitators.... it's a way for teachers and students to use multiple IM accounts (AIM, Yahoo!, Google, ICQ, MSN) while chatting directly in a browser -- and without the use of additional software.

For instructors who like to use IM with their students, this could elminate the added time and complications of having students sign up with yet another IM service just for the class.

[link via Designed to Inspire]

... And inspire it does!

2006-05-28T14:01:00.000-04:00

Over at Designed to Inspire, Jennifer Maddrell's been posting prolifically these last few months!

Be sure to drop by and check out some of her thoughts, links, and resources

The Name Game

2006-05-26T10:23:00.000-04:00

It's always hard to pick a new domain name.... And as it gets harder to find available names that are short and memorable, it also becomes easier to make an unfortunate mistake

Pictures inside pictures inside pictures inside pictures...

2006-05-23T11:51:00.000-04:00

Information interactive is a truly amazing feature from Getty images - one of their "10 ways" of exploring interactive experiences in visual language. As their site explains:

From its content to its visual components, a photograph is filled with information. Choose a point on an image and delve deeper into it, linking one idea to another in a never-ending chain.

You can explore some of the other interactive programs in this project on this page.

Wow, it's been a while!

2006-05-22T23:20:00.000-04:00

I'm finally getting back to my blog after a 1-semester hiatus ... my first break from academic teaching in 5 years and the first time I've gone without weekly blog reading for quite some time!

While I'm a little daunted at how far behind I am in my blogs (my aggregator is packed!), I'm really looking forward to getting back into the swing of things this semester with a new class of bloggers

I think I'll be posting pretty heavily for the next few weeks as I try to catch up on a lot of reading!

International Journal of Education and Development using ICT

2006-01-22T04:11:00.000-05:00

Issue 4 of the International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology is now available online at
http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewissue.php?id=6

I found the following articles particularly interesting:

Digital Cultural Communication: Enabling new media and co-creation in Asia
Profiting from empowerment?
The Information Society and the Digital Divide: Some North-South comparisons
What role can educational multimedia play in narrowing the digital divide?
The usage of ICT for secondary education in Mongolia

Can iPlay Music on an iPod?

2006-01-20T14:43:00.000-05:00

Creating a self-study program for a musical instrument is always tricky... and while I've seen some pretty good attempts at online music lessons, my own bad personal experiences of trying to manage a guitar and instructional booklet while squinting at instructional video have kept me pretty skeptical.

Now iPlay Music, which makes some interesting karaoke-like video guitar lessons for DVD, allows users to subscribe to an iTunes video podcast and download specific song lessons.

Sounds interesting, it's but probably not the most useful approach for novices... And I think I'll leave the guitar-iPod balancing act to someone better coordinated than I.

Illustrated guide to building a website

2005-12-12T06:11:00.000-05:00

PingMag presents an easy-to-understand guide to the basic website development process - each step illustrated with photos of little plastic figurines.

The text description presents a nice overview of the process - from setting a scope of work to developing wireframes to debugging the final site - in client friendly terms.

(link via boingboing)

Yahoo gobbles up del.icio.us

2005-12-09T18:36:00.000-05:00

From the del.icio.us blog:

We're proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we'll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community. We're excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team - they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. (We're also excited to be joining our fraternal twin Flickr!)

Video complaint letter

2005-12-09T13:24:00.000-05:00

The Allen family had a very bad cruise, and they want Carnival's CEO to know all about it. View video (wmv file)

Another NYU dropout

2005-12-09T11:22:00.000-05:00

Page Six reports Mary-Kate Olsen's description of why she dropped out of NYU:

"Like, papers don't really make me happy."

Feedback - multimedia and otherwise...

2005-12-07T06:37:00.000-05:00

When I first followed Abject Learning's post to an example of multimedia feedback (presumably a screencast of a journalism teacher's response to a student's article) I was immediately both impressed and horrified.

Why horrified? I'm still not sure... part of it has to do with the passivity of the experience - and the fact that there are no user controls. As M.C. Morgan commented,

...it certainly makes the student a passive receiver of the message: there’s no room in a screencast for dialogue. You can’t even change the channel.

But I don't think that's the whole reason for my reaction, since there's not a heck of a lot of room for dialogue in a teacher's handwritten comments on the page, either.

As a teacher, targeted feedback is a huge issue for me. I spend a lot of time providing detailed feedback to students - particularly in my online classes - and it certainly would be easier to do some of it verbally rather than having to write it all out. But something about this screencast just doesn't sit right with me.

It's funny... I started off as a journalist - in fact, I wrote my very first article for a local newspaper while I was still in high school - and detailed, often harsh, feedback was definitely the norm. That first article I wrote in 9th grade was positively shredded by the editor, but that was nothing compared with the going-over my articles got by the three editors who reviewed my work when I was a staff writer at a newspaper.

I spent a lot of time in those days writing and rewriting the same damn article (on a typewriter, not a computer), desperately trying to get it approved by the afternoon deadline... a process presumably designed to make those who survive it into better, faster writers (and typists) - and to give them a pretty thick skin.

When I first joined the staff, I'd get to meet one-on-one with each editor, who would calmly explain what was wrong with nearly every sentence I'd written - much like the journalism teacher in the screencast. (After a while, all I'd get was the butchered article itself.) Busy nursing my own bruised ego, I never really thought about what it was like on the other side of the editor's desk... until I became a managing editor myself.

The first time I reduced a writer to tears with what I thought was gentle criticism, I gained a whole new respect for those editors - and for the very fine line they had to walk in tearing apart the article without tearing apart the writer. I also realized how much harder it is for writers to avoid feeling personally attacked when they have to *hear* the criticism rather than to read it.

Maybe this is what I'm responding to in this screencast. In some ways, it seems like the worst of both worlds.... There's a certain amount of distance in a written critique that seems to be lacking in this screencast - and the fact that the interaction doesn't allow the writer any kind of response makes it seem somewhat brutal to me.

The dog ate my hard drive...

2005-12-06T14:11:00.000-05:00

Ontrack Data Recovery has unveiled its annual Top Ten list of computer mishaps for 2005 - including a dog who used a memory stick as a chew toy and a 10-year-old laptop filled with cockroaches. In each case cited, Ontrack says it was able to recover the data.

(link via BBC News article)

Podcasting and online education

2005-12-05T23:55:00.000-05:00

It's interesting, just as I posted my very first CastPost podcast this evening, Blogger began a 2-hour outage for site maintenance. Not only were many blogs (including mine) unavailable, for some reason, my mp3 file just wouldn't play at the CastPost site, though it plays fine on my own system and other files I've posted to the site play fine... after an hour or two of fiddling around with it, I was ready to give up and just uploaded the file to my server.

Just another reminder of how difficult and time consuming it can be to implement new technologies into an active class. Along with the sometimes significant benefits comes significant challenges - and for every technology that works like a dream there are plenty of little daily nightmares.

With each new technology that comes along, we all have to weigh the potential benefits against the amount of time we're willing to spend - and ask our students to spend - dealing with the initial learning curve, implementation problems, etc. I tend to be more respectful of my students' time than my own, so I generally spend a fair amount of time as a guinea pig with every new technology before I even consider making it a required part of my classes.

I've given a lot of thought to podcasting over the last year. It's a great technology with a lot of potential - especially for courses, like ESL or Speech - and one that seems a natural fit for my own online classes, since all participants already have headsets, microphones, and audio recording capabilities.

However, I'm not ready to use podcasting as anything other than an optional technology for my own classes... there's still too much of a learning curve for things like coverting file types and setting up media accounts, and I'm not quite sure which podcasting resources are likely to be around long enough to make the investment of time worthwhile. In addition, there's the problem of the amount of time needed to *listen* to a podcast... something that I think will be a barrier to my use of podcasting until it becomes much easier to tag media files so users can skim through them to points of interest. For now, this is a technology I strongly recommend to my participants who are teaching classes that are a natural fit with audio, but I don't see it becoming a standard part of my own classes for the immediate future.

However, I do thank jmaddrell for giving me a podcasting task in this class that reminds me of what it's like to be on the "student" side of the assignment... and a chance to really start playing around with vlogging in my own media blog!

TheaterBlogger Podcast

2005-12-05T19:07:00.000-05:00

Podcast interview with husband and theater blogger George Hunka from Superfluities. Thanks to jmadrell for the link and directions for using CastPost!

Additional links to content in this podcast:

Note: If audio does not play in your browser, please use this Link

Poetry to your ears

2005-12-05T09:27:00.000-05:00

The new Poetry Archive lets you listen to a collection of past and contemporary poets reading from their own work, all for free.

(link via Superfluities)

Reinventing the Wheel: Objective writing

2005-12-04T11:11:00.000-05:00

Great resource from St. Edward's University... This task-oriented question construction wheel (also available as a polygon in PDF) is designed as an aid in writing performance-based objectives

In addition to the usual practice of breaking out the behaviors for each domain in Bloom's taxonomy, each "slice" of the wheel also lists activities that can be associated with the behaviors.

While the behaviors and activities aren't always easily matched in this diagram - and there's a bit of inconsistency in the way items are presented - it's certainly easier to see the relationships of verbs to tasks in this tool than in the usual format for this type of resource listing cognitive tasks and verbs.

(link via e e learning)

Edublog Awards

2005-12-03T13:10:00.000-05:00

If you have a favorite blog to nominate for the Edublog awards, time is running out... nominations close on Dec. 4. Voting runs from Dec. 5-17, with the winners announced on the 18th.

Blogging and Personal Investment - continued

2005-12-02T22:56:00.000-05:00

jmaddrell and aperez pick up the blogging and personal investment meme...

Student Blogging and the Law

2005-12-02T10:26:00.000-05:00

With blog banning increasingly in the news, EFF's Bloggers' FAQ on Student Blogging addresses legal issues arising from student blogging. It focuses on blogging by high school (and middle school) students, but also contains information for college students.

Other places

2005-12-01T11:22:00.000-05:00

Some recent posts of note:

At Design Observer, Jessica Helfand has some thoughts about the utility of having design students interview working professionals
Juli points us to a great glossary of instructional strategies and continues her Auralog saga
Mike reflects on the internal corporate barriers to introducing better-faster-cheaper training solutions
Jennifer - fast becoming our queen of podcasting - posts part of a lesson for instructors on podcasting with Castpost

Splindarella makes some excellent points about blogging for classroom purposes in response to a post at Cogdogblog about the amount of personal investment needed for blogging. I've also struggled with this issue over the past few years .... on the one hand, I believe it's important for online instructors to understand blogging and aggregating and to get a real sense of their potential uses both in the classroom and as professional tools - and on the other hand, I find that only a handful of participants each semester seem to really gain some personal investment in blogging.

Individual blogs, collaborative blogs, directed assignments, free-form assignments, steady blogging, occasional blogging... it doesn't really seem to make much of a difference which strategy we use, the results always seem to be about the same - some participants blog just to complete assignments, some refuse to blog even when assigned, and one or two really take to it. Maybe it's just the nature of blogging, maybe it's just my approaches... the search goes on....

"I syndicate myself and ping myself...

2005-11-28T12:01:00.000-05:00

....For every item belonging to me as good belongs to you. " (Apologies to Whitman)

I've been using it for a little over a month now, and I'm hooked on SuprGlu. This online service allows a one-stop shop for the syndicated me - my Blogger, del.icio.us, Furl, Flickr, and Reader2 syndication feeds all collected on my public feeds page at SuprGlu.

You can browse my tag cloud, follow my daily links and posts, or even aggregate my feed mix.... a much more effective way of sharing resources than posting them in a course shell, I believe (and in the ultimate act of digital narcissism, I'm aggregating myself in Bloglines).

More Fun with Google Maps

2005-11-11T11:16:00.000-05:00

Frappr Edubloggers map - International edubloggers directory for everyone blogging about education and/or facilitating education based blogging.... Put yourself on the map! (And/or use Frappr to create your own group map)
Another examlpe: Using Google maps for the online version of the board game Risk

O'Reilly Interview

2005-11-09T10:36:00.000-05:00

Definitely worth checking out...The BBC World Service presents a two-part interview with Tim O'Reilly. Part I is on open source, Part II on Web 2.0.

(If you haven't yet seen the Craig's list/Google Maps site housingmaps.com used as an example of "mash-ups" in the interview, be sure to check it out).

Note to self...

2005-11-09T10:10:00.000-05:00

Have an email address that's likely to be around for a while? Then you might want to check out this free service from Forbes that lets you send an email to yourself and have it arrive in 1, 3, 5, 10, or 20 years

How much can you handle?

2005-11-08T13:51:00.000-05:00

Like Mike, I've been thinking a lot about information overload these days...as well as about how much information anyone can reasonably be expected to track and use.

In Amy Gahran's post on why her RSS feed list is so long, she cites Ross Mayfield's assertion in “Attention Saturation” that the maximum number of feeds a person can handle for the purposes of maintaining social relationships is 150. While not taking on the question of this limit for social connections, she goes on to describe the purposes for which she uses different types of feeds - and how she can maintain a list of around 500

Questions for my fellow blogger/aggregators:

How many feeds do you aggregate and how often do you check them?
What different types of feeds are they?
What do you think your maximum is?

As for myself, I find that my own comfort level is with a list of about 100-110, and only a handful of these represent "social relationships" to me... by far, the majority of the feeds I check are for reference, research, and work-related purposes.

The "social" blogs I read on a daily basis... The majority of others I check several times a week, furling, bookmarking, and "clip blogging" anything that looks interesting but that I don't have time to fully investigate, and blogging things of particular interest after I've reviewed them further.

I also keep a "watchlist" of new blogs that I check out from time to time to see if they're worth adding to the regular list. In addition, I have a bunch of feeds that are more "for fun" - feeds that I only check when I have some spare time and want to find something interesting or unusual to investigate... and I mark these all as "read" from time to time if I don't have a chance to look at them for a while.

Getting through the network

2005-11-08T13:26:00.000-05:00

Another great post at Dipping a toe... I'm also finding that network security issues are having a bigger and bigger impact on course accessibility for the courses I develop - in fact, when students have problems with accessing the synchronous sessions at NYU, 9 times out of 10 it seems to be a problem related to a company security or a personal firewall setting.

There are so many options for firewall and proxy settings that it's nearly impossible to plan for all of them... And as this post points out, in a large organization you may be dealing with the biases and security fears of more than one IT department. (I tend to send my technical specs to each IT department involved in a company for approval of all file types and applications to be used during course analysis, but half the time they don't really read the specs before approving them, so you still end up troubleshooting these problems during pilot testing.)

The most annoying problem for me is the one mentioned in regard to .wav files - blocking file types out of the fear that employees might be using them for non-work activities ... as if it's the type of files available that causes employees to goof off!! Please.

Now that blogs are being called out in the popular press as time-wasters, I wonder how long it'll be before participants in my classes aren't able to access their class blogs from work?

Other places

2005-11-02T18:01:00.000-05:00

A Web round-up of posts you might have missed:

jmaddrell has posted a ton of great stuff lately...including a post on MIT Open Course Ware , podcasts she made at GarageBand.com, a link to a free Vlog tutorial, info on ivist, and more.
At Dipping a toe in the water of blog, a great reflection on the "cubicle dilemma" in corporate online learning... Language instructors might also want to follow the results of her research into online language training.
Frank, who says he's starting to warm to the idea of blogging, beat me to the blog with this post on Stanford and iTunes, which I had meant to post this week!
Mike wonders "are there enough good teachers to go around"? ... and in another post, he asks the eternal question "What do Buffy the Vampire Slayer and NYU have in common?"
Nelson gives us some thoughts on Furl and points out this CNN article on how to avoid getting fired for blogging at work
Adam weighs in with a thought-riff on a connectivist koan
E-Learning gives a thumbs up to E-LearningGuru.com, points to an interesting article on break-even analysis, and reflects on some learning issues.
Splindarella takes a break from knitting penguin sweaters to say "rabbits" and to build a spooky gingerbread house. (Hey, Splindarella, if you want to take up educational knitting, you might want to checked out this replica of the knitted digestive system or Baby's first DNA model.)

Design and Development Resources

2005-11-02T11:49:00.000-05:00

Page and Informational Design. Those new to the areas of information architechture, user interface design, and navigational design might want to check out some of the following links:

These Web design guidelines from IBM provide a basic introduction to the topics of site structure, navigation, text design, and visual layout. On the same site, the section on Design concepts gives a basic introduction to the topics of user-interface and user-experience design, as well as some basic principles of good site design.
This User Experience Resource Collection is a great collection of annotated links on a wide range of subtopics from user experience design specialist Dey Alexander.
This shareware course from ScratchMedia, a UK-based new media consultancy, offers practical information on good web design, including basic information about how to perform a simple analysis, "tutorials" (really these are more a series of brief essays) on design topics, and case studies that address design problems on real sites.... Nice, simple explanations with lots of supportive graphics.
In this article for the Australian Flexible Learning Community, Maish Nichani presents a nice, concise argument for taking a "big picture" approach to user experience design - with a useful description of some differences between IA & ID
Site Diagrams: Mapping an Information Space. Useful information on how to outline and diagram your "information space"
This tutorial from Webmonkey is a good place to start if you're new to IA, particularly the lessons on Site structure and Visual design.
AIfIA(The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture) provides a host of resources, including a Design tools section that includes sample process maps, content development spreadsheets, wireframe templates, and other development tools.

Guess-the-Google

2005-10-28T19:50:00.000-04:00

OK, this Guess-the-Google game may be a bit of a time waster, but I think it's also interesting to try and test your skill at matching the Google image collages to search terms.

Writing Objectives

2005-10-28T07:49:00.000-04:00

Those in the CC class who are practicing objective-writing this week might want to check out some of the following resources:

This workbook is an interesting resource from the University of South Alabama that gives a good overview of ISD issues and would work nicely as a supplement to a more comprehensive text. It also contains some useful interactive exercises for the user to work through. (The program is in Authorware, so you may have to download a plugin to access it).
PSU has some great information on writing objectives and other course design topics
This site from NY State Office of Higher Ed has a nice focus on specifying criteria/accuracy needed for "degree"
This site from the University of Tennessee has some good, straightforward information, as well as some interactive online exercises (a bit simplistic, but fun).
For definitions and some background information about behavioral objectives, check out this site from Florida State University College of Medicine.
From the Information Designer's toolkit, this page cites some good examples of good and bad behavioral objectives.
This page includes a basic overview of the purpose of objective writing, examples of condition, behavior, and degree, and links to other resources.
Don Clark's "Big dog" site has lots of useful resources, including a quick guide to objective writing, taxonomies of the domains with examples of verbs for behavior, and more.

Read/Write Web & Connectivism

2005-10-23T16:18:00.000-04:00

Will Richardson has put together a great list he calls "a basic reading list for people interested in getting their brains around the Read/Write Web and the changes it's bringing about specifically related to education." This looks like a great start to me!

A good companion for the reading on Connectivism is this audiographic presentation in Articulate from George Siemens on connectivism and Web 2.0, which lays out some key issues and challenges for rethinking traditional learning approaches in light of concepts about learning networks and "where learning resides".

Essential freeware for the PC user

2005-10-20T15:20:00.000-04:00

This list of free software for PC users has been making the circuit around the blogosphere lately...

Music to teachers' ears

2005-10-20T15:19:00.000-04:00

An interesting article from MSNBC on the use of iPods in elementary school classrooms.

(Thanks, welogg-ed for the link)

Video and learning

2005-10-20T15:17:00.000-04:00

Some great thoughts on a personal history of working with media-rich learning from Clive Shepherd
(Link via Elearning Centre)

Information Architecture and Interaction Design

2005-10-20T15:15:00.000-04:00

Some interesting thoughts on this topic from Jonathan Korman at Cooper Design. (Thanks, elearningpost for the link)

Furl and del.icio.us

2005-10-19T12:18:00.000-04:00

For those of you in the TO class who are looking into Furl and del.icio.us this week, here are a few posts you might find useful:

20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have

2005-10-19T12:15:00.000-04:00

Whether or not you fully agree with this list from T.H.E. Journal, you'll probably find at least some of these resources useful

It's the pictures that got small[er]...

2005-10-18T09:30:00.000-04:00

I wonder what Norma Desmond would have thought about the idea of cellphone serial dramas? Interesting to think about the challenges of designing video for these tiniest screens... but can we please come up with a better name than "mobisodes"?

SimCity in the classroom

2005-10-18T09:20:00.000-04:00

I'm so jealous... I've been wanting to incorporate Simcity into a class since I first set eyes on the program years ago. At least I can live vicariously though others...

(Thanks, Headspace J for the link)

Tagging, Categorization, & Cognitive Processes

2005-10-18T09:15:00.000-04:00

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about tagging, categorization, and organization - particularly since working with a new LMS has forced me to rework some of my standard organization schemes for resources and links for my online classes.

I found Rashmi Sinha's cognitive analysis of tagging to be very useful - particularly the section on the "post-activation analysis paralysis" that occurs with categorization. (Thanks, elearningpost for the link)

I agree that the key issue really has more to do with future "findability" rather than categorization itself - and for me this has to do with setting up the right conventions to fit in with the way I find and use information ... and I still can't help but find that tagging is too chaotic and counterintuitive for me - I guess I need the discipline of forming my cateogories, hierarchies, and conventions in advance, though I agree it's sometimes maddening to try to force different types of information into my current organizational schemes and to constantly re-categorize and subcategorize. Hmmm... I guess I have to give this one a bit more thought to see if it's really my own stubborness that's keeping me from reaping the full benefits of tagging ....

Keeping Up

2005-10-17T23:39:00.000-04:00

Keeping up to date on information in this constantly-changing field is always a challenge. The Keeping Up Web Site is designed to

"help library and information science professionals, information technologists, instructional technologists, and other academic technology support professionals develop and maintain a program of self-guided professional development. A central, guiding premise of this web site is that academic librarians and technology professionals must go beyond the constraints of their own literature to really keep up and maintain their myriad skills and diversified knowledge base."

(Thanks, EduResources Weblog for the link)

Comfortably Objective

2005-10-16T23:45:00.000-04:00

A great post at Pedablogue showing some of the thought behind crafting meaningful, measurable objectives for complex learning tasks

Blogs and Blogging

2005-10-15T21:11:00.000-04:00

Some good resources and basic information on blogs from this course site.

Amy Gahran at Contentious does a good job of defining what is and isn't a blog in this post.

Who's reading your blog?

Some good free resources for finding out who's looking at your blog. (Both sites are web-based. They require free registration and the inclusion of some simple code and a site button in your HTML.)

Sitemeter: A simple, fast way to add a counter and stats. (There is also a fee version that includes additional functionality.)
Blogflux: In addition to the usual statistics and graphs, this utility uses Google Maps to show where visitors are coming from.

4,000 year-old noodles

2005-10-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

The remains of the world's oldest noodles have been unearthed in China, according to the BBC.

(link via slashdot)

More on the Blackboard acquisition of WebCT

2005-10-14T13:22:00.000-04:00

OLDaily provides a good summary of links and edublogger reactions

Apple unveils video-playing iPod

2005-10-14T13:18:00.000-04:00

According to this BBC News article, the new video iPod will be available in the US this week.

LMSs: The wrong place to start learning?

2005-10-14T12:10:00.000-04:00

Very much still relevant to discussions of LMSs is this article on managed learning from George Siemens at elearnspace.

Cheating and the online classroom

2005-10-14T09:00:00.000-04:00

This post fits in nicely with the discussion in the TO class on cheating in the online classroom. I must say that in my experience, the "Google test" he talks about works pretty well (this happens all the time in almost every class I teach).

However, I don't go out of my way to humiliate learners who plagiarize - in fact, most of the time I don't even bother to point out that I recognize the source. (This kind of intellectual laziness reaps its own punishments, I find.)

Of course, if the material is posted in a public space, some sort of remedy is needed, but is posting content within the online classroom really public?

And one more thing to worry about...

Research Papers a la Wikipedia:

Write a craptacular draft full of factual errors, incredible sources, and grammatical/mechanical mistakes.
Post it to Wikipedia.
Wait a few days and let the community clean it up for you.
Turn it in!

(From Kairosnews, after the Esquire article posted to news.com)

Nothing says "I love you" like an emitting/polling infrared transmitter

2005-10-14T08:58:00.000-04:00

The loveJacket gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "I light up every time I see you"

The "Watercooler" of learning

2005-10-13T17:12:00.000-04:00

This article is a good followup to our discussion in the TO class this week on formal vs. informal learning

Blackboard and WebCT

2005-10-13T11:39:00.000-04:00

Yikes.... WebCT & Blackboard are merging? (Thanks, EdTechPost for the link)

More on the merger at Slashdot, Inside Higher Ed, aperez_nyu, Learning Circuits Blog, and elearnspace (podcast)