Gravity Forms at sites.psu.edu going “bye bye”?

I’ve been working with Ryan Wetzel on building a tool for faculty that will hopefully help them to understand options for using video content for instructional purposes.

We began this project almost a year ago, before CampusPress took over the duty of hosting our Penn State WordPress sites. The transition has been rocky for me as I’ve blogged about in earlier entries.

The newest hiccup is that there are apparently issues with Gravity Forms on this new platform. I’ll share Ryan’s assessment of what he has seen…

For us, Gravity Forms is still working more or less as it is supposed to, however we are getting locked out of forms with no way to unlock them to edit content. Campuspress recommends we clone the form and delete the original whenever this happens then replace the form ID with the new form ID on the page where the form is located. This works for awhile until the form locks us out again.

My staff has been working on duplicating our existing forms in Formidable. It mostly does the same stuff however it formats dates and time in strange ways and allows the user to submit incorrect data (rather than supply a calendar or limiting selections to real HH:MM selections).

It’s hard to say about the conditional logical until we actually spend time building something out with it. However I do believe that Campuspress plans on doing away with Gravity Forms at some point, not sure when, and that Formidable is their forms platform going forward.

I began porting our content over from Gravity Forms into Formidable Forms this morning. Thankfully the process has gone well so far. At worst, this will be additional work because we have to copy and paste all of the content from one form into another. There is not automatic export-import function from what I can tell.

We’ll keep pushing ahead for the time being and hope that all goes well. Do you have any experiences with either Gravity Forms or Formidable? Has your transition to CampusPress gone well?

2012 TLT Symposium and Crowd Sourcing Projects

This past weekend was the TLT Symposium. I was disappointed that I missed most of the event. My daughter’s second birthday party fell on the same day. I’m going to have to check out Jane’s keynote. I was looking forward…

This past weekend was the TLT Symposium. I was disappointed that I missed most of the event. My daughter’s second birthday party fell on the same day. I’m going to have to check out Jane’s keynote. I was looking forward to that event more than any other this year.

I missed a lot more than Jane’s presentation however. I had the privilege of working on two of the planning committees: the Program Team and the Gamification Team.

I was able to make one of the sessions that I had volunteered for. I spent the last session in the Arcade (room 218) talking with faculty and staff about getting traction with their ideas. While I was there I spoke with:

  • Larry Ragan & Drew
  • Lori Shontz
  • Susana Garcia Prudencio
  • Shivaani Aruna Selvaraj and Chris Stubbs

I definitely want to check back with Lori and Susana about some of their ideas and help them with their next steps. Lori was talking about lower levels of participation in her blended offering of COMM 260W course. Susana was interested in games that would help strengthen vocabulary games for SPAN 001-003.

There’s a lot happening and I can imagine that the Educational Gaming Commons is keeping pretty busy these days. I was talking with Ravi and we came up with some great ideas around creating a crowd-sourcing resource that would help people with ideas get their projects implemented. This web-based resource would match people with certain skills to specific needs of different projects. For example, I might indicated that I had certain competencies with instructional design, project management, and intermediate multimedia development. The website would send me emails when certain projects needed certain forms of support at specific stages. I could choose to pitch in for as much or as little as I was able to. After the project was finished, Ravi had a great idea that everyone involved in the project could get together and reflect. I was just thinking it would be a great time to celebrate as well! We don’t celebrate completed projects enough around PSU it seems… so busy with what’s next 🙂

2011 Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium: Clay Shirky

This past weekend, I attended my second TLT Symposium. The keynote was Clay Shirky. He was very well received.One of the reasons he impressed me was how well constructed his presentation was. He’s obviously been thinking about these topics for…

This past weekend, I attended my second TLT Symposium. The keynote was Clay Shirky. He was very well received.

One of the reasons he impressed me was how well constructed his presentation was. He’s obviously been thinking about these topics for a long time in a lot of detail.
I did a tweet search from the event and you can find the start of the keynote at: http://bit.ly/gkbW2X
I really wish I took notes at the beginning of his presentation. He mentioned three dynamics that are having an effect in social media today.
He began talking about the individual vs. group I believe. He used the example of Ryerson College vs. a student, Chris Avenir who used Facebook to create a study group (http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/309855). It was an example of how antiquated, traditional, institutional oxymorons collide. In the past institutions could broadcast one message, but institute a different code of conduct within their walls. From Ryerson’s perspective, Avenir was using Facebook to cheat. From Avenir’s perspective, they were use Facebook as a virtual study hall. Clay lamented that the settlement was undisclosed. However he was interested in something that wasn’t argued or addressed by the university: given that there were 146 members of this virtual study group, how could anyone regulate the participation? Clay used this as a segue into his next point:
Participation drops off in a power scale and is more dramatic in large groups. He used the Pluto page in Wikipedia as an example (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pluto&action=history). There are over 2,500 contributors to that page, but a disproportionate amount of those edits were made by a relative few and one in particular. Clay said this pattern appears with any example of group participation. The only pedagogical solution was to use small groups for those types of activities.
Clay then warned that our institutions do not reflect the reality of the greater world that we are a part of. He used the Library of Congress to make his point. We are segmenting our knowledge based on the size of a book shelf. Looking at the “D’s” for example (http://www.loc.gov/aba/cataloging/classification/lcco/lcco_d.pdf), we see some familar countries at the top of the list, but then it lumps Asia and Africa into the same heirarchtical level as the “Romanies” and “Great Britain.”
He concluded with a final example of all three dynamics at play. I have to admit that I kind of lost Clay here. He talked about a mathematical proof N=NP or N≠NP or something like that. The point of his example was that modern publishers didn’t want to couldn’t accept research that had an undefined pool of authors. There were other points he made, but it was an interesting look at how social media is changing and how if our institutions don’t change as well, we’ll be left behind and literally become extinct.
I’ve been reading his latest book: Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010) and he talks about how the sitcom has supplanted our free time with enormous amounts of consumption. He claims that the US watches 200 billion hours of TV a year. By comparison, all of wikipedia has taken 100 million hours to develop-that’s equal to how many commercials we watch on TV in a single weekend!
Clay observes that people are social and want to share. TV has displaced the balance between consuming, creating and sharing. The internet and social media has changed the options people have and they are exercising that potential in very new ways.
Going back to the keynote, Clay mentioned a few other interesting points that I don’t really know how to weave into a recollection of his presentation, but even on their own, they are very interesting to think about.
Serious people do silly things and silly people do serious things. His examples were that for every wikipedia, there are a thousand lolcats. People have been using technology to do all sorts of benign and silly things. So much so, that we all ask “who has time to do that?” about almost anything we don’t understand or relate to. Clay used the example of gnarlykitty, a freelance lifestyle writer. She is known for her act of journalism around the relatively recent coup in Thailand. She has an interesting blog post reflecting back on some of her own work (http://gnarlykitty.org/?s=coup). This was an example that we are interacting in ways that traditional media outlets won’t and can’t function. This was an example of what is happening and will continue to grow.
People have to make things happen with the technology we have to support our social values. This kind of goes back to the people will do silly things comment earlier. Clay pointed out that once we had the printing press, people began to publish erotica. It took something like 150 years before the first scientific journal was published. We have to work in a concerted effort to use these tools to support our values.
In the question and answer period, Clay closed with a statement that we should try lots of smaller ideas and avoid the dogma of developing that one big perfect plan or vision. His point was that projects like wikipedia and linux began with very modest calls of action. We never know where the next big idea will come from, but people like Clay are helping us to understand how to best cultivate that potential.
As you can imagine, I’m still just processing the raw data. I’m not sure what all of this means for me, my team, my unit, my organization, my school. But, I kinda don’t have to worry about all of that. The best thing to do is to tear off a small piece, try it out, chuck it if it doesn’t stick and run with anything that looks good.
One of the initial things I’m thinking about is the relationship between cognitive surplus and work. Most of Clay’s examples were extra-curricular. They weren’t related to the workplace. Our bosses can’t make us use our free time to think about work. That statement doesn’t even make sense from Clay’s perspective (not that I can speak for him). Some questions I had about this are:
  • How do these ideas impact developing our workforce?
  • What do I do in my free time that has a greater impact? How am I spending my free time? I have an idea, but how skewed is it based on my subjectiveness and sheer ability to recall. Keep in mind that my daughter just turned one-year old and I still don’t feel like I’m getting enough sleep. David Norloff was the first to warn me that won’t change much as she grows older 🙂
  • How can we foster a culture that acknowledges encourages our innate urges to share and socialize? What kinds of other tensions do these ideas draw out between workplace paradigms?
  • Who would be eligible for contributing to the cognitive surplus? Better stated, how can we, as a country, better use and develop our cognitive surplus? Frankly, I look around the world and see a lot of things that would lead me to believe there’s a cognitive deficit, but I know that Clay isn’t making a value statement as much as drawing our attention to a latent potential that is shaking up the norm and will likely be a growing trend and that it’s really up to us.
I’m sure there are many more questions I want to explore. I’ll have to add them as I go along.
I have an interesting opportunity coming up with a new online Italian series of courses. I think we might be able to use many of these ideas in how we approach things.
How can you best use your cognitive surplus?

A “long” look back

It has been a while since I’ve made any posts here in my ePortfolio. I’ve been struggling about how this tool/process fits into my workflow. I’m not the only one struggling to find time and a focus for my ePortfolio….

It has been a while since I’ve made any posts here in my ePortfolio. I’ve been struggling about how this tool/process fits into my workflow. I’m not the only one struggling to find time and a focus for my ePortfolio. The biggest issue I’ve had, like many others, is that I have a wide range of things to track for my courses and projects. Some are very detailed tasks and others are high-level operational updates.

I’m not saying I haven’t done anything. On the contrary, this pilot helped me to develop a GoogleSite that is able to capture almost everything I need for work.
This ePortfolio still has a place for reflection. Frankly, it still seems a little forced since my GoogleSite is more than capable of handling reflective pieces. In fact I could argue that writing my reflections directly in my GoogleSite makes more sense because I have all of the project information there as well. I am going to try to keep my reflections and mention artifacts here, at least until the end of the pilot.
This week has been, yet another. busy one. I started the week off on Sunday, trying to work on my idea for a game engine that I’ve affectionately been calling Otaku. I had a meeting on Monday with Cece Merkel and Tom Wilson to explore this as a potential idea for an M&LD proposal. I wanted to get their feedback whether it would be worth the time. They were both interested in the project and Tom had some great feedback about defining the gameplay of the events more clearly. I had a separate discussion with Dean Blackstock about my project idea and realized that I have a lot of work to do on communicating my ideas more clearly. I have them in my head, but still need to get them down on paper. Dean had a great suggestion to follow through with scenarios that clearly share a narrative about how the game engine might be used in various contexts. El sent me an email later in the week that Rick was aware of my potential proposal and is interested in calling a larger meeting to talk about the game engine and another proposal I had for a voice recognition engine.
My Spanish portfolio continues to demand a lot of my attention. I’m still getting requests to fix elements in the course. One of which was particularly confusing since our student was clearly having problems with a quiz, but we weren’t able to recreate the problem. I’m also working to improve my relationships and communication channels with the instructors. I sat down and met Susana for the first time yesterday and had a wonderful lunch with her. The newest thing I’m trying out is a VoiceThread for our faculty that I hope to keep up with every month. It still in draft, but I’ll post a finalized version when it’s ready.
OL2000 started this week and I got a good start in the class, but still have to get in there to finish this week’s assignments and meet more of my class. Two instructors I am supporting are in the class with me, so that’s very cool. I love to see instructors taking the initiative to expand their horizons. I hope to teach OL2000 again soon. It’s a great experience.
I’ve got a lot do to this upcoming week. Most of it has to do with preparing the SPAN faculty for SU ’11.

PSU ETS Team: Google Apps for Education

I just received an invitation to join a ETS team pulled together by Allan Gyorke on Google Apps for Education:Hi Everyone.Google Apps for Education (http://www.google.com/a/edu) is an initiative that provides a suite of communication and collaboration services to educational organizations….

I just received an invitation to join a ETS team pulled together by Allan Gyorke on Google Apps for Education:

Hi Everyone.

Google Apps for Education (http://www.google.com/a/edu) is an initiative that provides a suite of communication and collaboration services to educational organizations.  While many institutions have adopted it as a way to outsource their e-mail services, the suite can do so much more.  All of you have used Google Docs to collaborate with your students and colleagues, but no one at this university fully understands the potential for Google Apps to transform teaching and learning at Penn State.  This is where you come in.

Currently, we are in discussions with Google about licensing, policy, and technical issues.  While those discussions are taking place, John Harwood has asked me to form a team to investigate the pedagogical implications of the services within Google Apps for Education.  This would involve an examination and a write-up of each tool that would concisely describe what it does and how it could be used to enrich teaching and learning.  John would also like to see a plan for informing the university about this new service and getting faculty, staff, and students prepared for its launch.  If and when team has concerns with the suite, those issues should be brought to John’s attention so they can be addressed.  We have contacts at other large universities who have implemented this service, so they can serve as a resource in addition to what the team discovers on its own.

If we do sign an agreement with Google, we should be prepared to implement this service by the beginning of the fall semester.  John would like to have a draft of our research and the training/implementation plan by May 1, 2010 and would like to have monthly updates as the committee does its work.

Please let Jane Houlihan and me know if you are willing to accept this invitation.  Jane will try to schedule the first meeting of this group in the next few weeks and then meet once every two weeks until May.  Not everyone will be able to make every meeting, but that’s fine – I’d like to do most of the work asynchronously using the tools in Google Apps where they make sense.

     Thanks,
      -Allan-

Our first meeting is Fri 12 Feb and I’m really looking forward to it because it’ll be an opportunity to work with a new collection of educators from around the university.

One of my questions will be related to the comment from an SOS member that said that Google’s inability to guarantee which servers would service PSU effectively ruled them out as an option because of security concerns.

UPDATE Fri 12 Feb – Kickoff Meeting

  • Walked into a conversation on how identities will integrate.
  • Documentation will have to be addressed in the documentation
  • GoogleVideo is an institutional framework, only 100 people will be able to upload videos across PSU
  • Look into using Google Contacts to sync/store contacts instead of Apple Address Book
  • there is a test domain that has single sign-on and is stable
  • Roxanne Toto and Kent on Documents – single page front and back written for various groups with scenarios, links, etc.
  • we aren’t creating training materials, just overview docs
  • 4 weeks, 2 weeks check-in, f2f meeting to work through the ideas
  • real-world scenarios
  • we should also capture barriers to implementation
  • how do we establish priority
  • hotseat, Purdue, check it out… voting, etc.
  • Google Moderator – is it included?
  • our tool in isolation vs. integrated with other apps – perhaps an eight question
  • tech side testing – we’re writing papers on “nouns” but should also hit “verbs”
  • our audience are the faculty
  • check out bitly – tinyurl