Tag Archives: wcld

NMC2010 – Reflections on Mimi Ito Keynote

Posted on by

According to her bio on the NMC conference program, Mimi Ito is a “cultural anthropologist who studies new media use.” She studies informal learning among peers and has conducted extensive studies of the online Japanese anime fandom community. danah boyd (@zephoria on Twitter), another new media scholar whose work I’ve admired for years, is excited to be here:

Aviary twitter-com Picture 1.png

Given this ringing endorsement, I expected a powerhouse of a talk. I was not disappointed.

Mimi opens by mentioning The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, a highly rated new release on Amazon by Nicholas Carr. In the book, Carr talks about distracted culture in the internet age and its perceived negative effects on human intelligence. A similar theme can be found in The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. In contrast, you have the work of technology embracers like Don Tapscott (Wikinomics, Grown Up Digital) It’s all too familiar according to Ito (and I agree) – the same old polarization: those who embrace new technology or other cultural elements vs. those who blast them. But both views are correct. It helps to remember that “opportunities and risks are inextricably entwined” (missed attribution). I’ll highlight at this point one quote from Ms. Ito that had the audience applauding:

Google isn’t making us stupid, we have only ourselves to blame for that.

Indeed. If we are distractable, we will find something to distract us. The technology itself is a neutral entity. There is indeed great opportunity with the social internet: information at our fingertips, on our desks or in our pockets. There’s also an undeniable temptation to distraction. But again, we can’t blame the technology.

Now for the meat of Mimi’s talk. There is an opportunity for peer-to-peer learning here that has not yet been fully realized. Very few institutions are taking advantage of the opportunity. We have a mindset of separating entertainment and learning and so we’re looking at these social networks and online cultures as outside of the realm of education. This is wrong – we need to tap into the spaces where the learners are clearly engaged.

There is a culture clash here. We expect students to meet a standardized set of objectives year after year, and get upset when they copy each others’ work. We need to reward the act of building on the work of others when creativity and depth is added. We watched some hilarious videos of the “lip synch” and, um, “crazy antics” variety set to popular music, and we viewed other types of remixes.

Jonathan McIntosh remixes TV advertisements to create a whole new critical narrative:

Buffy vs Edward  – more than just a funny video, it offers a critical view of gender roles:



So, what would it look like to use that deep peer interaction and engagement as the actual focus of learning? Students are interacting in their networks and not just with static content – we know this. So why are we not working to create social interactive wrappers around our content? Twitter user @skiley13 quips on this point:

Aviary twitter-com Picture 2.png

Indeed. So which version of the “net generation” is correct? Socially engaged or dumbed down? Is that even the question we should be asking as educators? Kids and adults of all ages have always found means of distraction; indeed, a New York Times editorial by Steven Pinker published just today (well worth the click-through and a read) argues this very point – there have always been detractors arguing that new media makes us stupid whether that new media is the printing press or the Internet. Rather, today we have a unique opportunity to utilize these technologies in a way that will keep our students engaged. If we don’t meet this challenge, we will be the ones “dumbing down” our students by forcing them to conform to old models of teaching and learning, and ultimately losing them. There are already examples of faculty and institutions doing this – the rest of us need to get on board.

MacArthur foundation – re-imagining learning in the 21st century 

I would love to hear your take on the keynote or on any point I’ve made on this evolving topic.

Mobile phone development

Posted on by

At the end of October last year, I attended a day-long workshop on Quickbase. The sessions at this “Tech Fest” were led by real world developers who had come up with unique solutions in their own deployments of the Quickbase product. Now, I have blogged previously about the intricacies of the productivity problems we’re trying to solve with our own Quickbase solution, and I believe we’re getting closer to implementing some real solutions that will make everyone’s job in the office easier (thanks in NO SMALL PART to the efforts of our database guru Jeanette Condo). The Tech Fest really got me thinking on a grander scale about what possibilities there are not only with Quickbase but with other ed-tech related projects as well. Two sessions in particular that really inspired me to run with it were a session on jQuery and one on using jQtouch for iPhone development.

I’ve recently upgraded to a paid personal account on Safari since Penn State’s access only includes a subset of the full Safari library, and not a lot of recent works. I’m learning jQuery fast and finding that I really love it. Just like css, jQuery allows you to keep your HTML pages clean and uncluttered. Unlike css, which controls the styles on and appearance of your pages, jQuery adds dynamic and interactive effects. It’s pretty slick and easy to learn. It helps to know some javaScript, but luckily I’m not too rusty from my days coding javaScript in the 90’s. Back then, a lot of javascript actions were inserted directly into the HTML, as was any element styling or document layout coding (read: HTML tables for layout). I’m most familiar and comfortable with client-side scripting, which is how jQuery primarily works, so this is all a piece of cake!
Here are the books I have on my Safari shelf for learning jQuery (with links to their Amazon pages):
Now to return to the title and the original purpose of this post. Knowing jQuery is a good foundation for becoming familiar with jQTouch, which is the library of javascript methods used by the iPhone and other mobile devices (so I’m told, but only real-world testing will tell). Supposedly too there are utilities for turning your jQTouch-based mobile apps into native iPhone apps (negating the need to learn much Objective C). Mobile apps for productivity purposes in the workplace sound intriguing to me. Time tracking or project management while on the go? Would potentially eliminate some of the inevitable “catching up” time on these necessary evils when returning from a conference or offsite meeting. Maybe I am just dreaming, but I think it would be fun to try. Besides, in a more mission-focused sense, if we are to pay attention to the needs of our learners, mobile learning is really looking like the next big thing. Perhaps it is better to rephrase “mobile learning” as “reaching our learners where they are” because I think that is really what we are looking at enabling with mobile phone development. The 2010 Horizon Report lists mobile computing (their term) as a technology for educators to adopt in one year or less. We are here now, folks!
In that vein, I plan to read about mobile phone development from a strategic and planning standpoint by reading this:
This book seems to touch on the actual details of mobile app development but does not delve much into it. For the real nitty-gritty, I plan to read this:
One more thing on the jQuery front. I have some ideas, based on the exercises I’ve done, for ways to improve the usability and interactivity of our course content pages that I plan to share with the Evolution programming team.
That’s all. If you have any thoughts on any of this, please leave a comment. In particular, if you know of any good resources or books on jQuery, jQTouch, or mobile development that I haven’t listed, please let me know.

Google Wave possibilities

Posted on by

There’s a lot of discussion taking place in the teaching and learning community about Google Wave. Google Wave is a new communications tool that’s a little hard to describe but I’d say it’s a combination of a real-time threaded discussion and wiki tool. Not only can you use the tool to reply to the postings of others (the “threaded discussion” part), but you can also edit the posts of others and even create collaborative documents (the “wiki” part). It’s a little tricky to get used to (the real time typing feature is disconcerting to many) and it’s still a little buggy (currently it’s still invitation only). Oh I must mention too the ability to embed media, share images, and embed “gadgets” which look like collaborative tools that are developed by the community to work with Google Wave (a “poll” tool is one that I have seen).

Like many early adopters that have been kicking the tires with this tool, I’ve been playing around while developing a small community of contacts to collaborate with. While I have yet to use this tool on any “real” projects, I think I’ve finally seen the light in terms of potential in my personal sphere of work and life. Let me elaborate.
Recently I returned from a somewhat extended vacation, during which I was largely out of touch with my workmates. As I was coming home on the train (a great way to travel if you have the opportunity, by the way), I started to feel the dread of returning to the office and sorting through the inevitable pile of e-mail. Don’t get me wrong, I love most aspects of my job, but e-mail is one of those things I tend to feel neutral-to-hostile towards. One of the things that is especially challenging is doing the detective work of piecing together an ongoing e-mail conversation. We’ve all seen it and dealt with it: the chain of “Reply All”s within a workgroup. Not only does this become inefficient over time, since most actors in the chain simply copy the same text over from earlier in the chain, but it’s terribly difficult, at least for me, to do the detective work of reconstructing the conversation as it happened over time. Essentially I end up reading “backwards” since my instinct is to read from top-to-bottom but this happens to be the reverse of the conversation timeline. (Incidentally, this is why Twitter is not a top tool within my personal learning environment – I face the same conundrum of trying to reconstruct conversations in reverse and generally find this frustrating.) 
How I see Google Wave really working for me to overcome this scenario is that I can easily jump in or back in to a conversation and not feel like I really missed anything. Conversations are threaded so I can easily see the context of replies. I can even use the “playback” feature to get a sense for exactly how the conversation played out, when edits were made, etc. Essentially the conversation and the collaboration are all there in one place for my review. No need to don my “detective” hat and try to recreate based on the bits and pieces I’ve gathered. Sort of like putting my work on “Tivo” while I’m away.
I welcome your thoughts and comments, as I am still learning about this new tool.

Trainers Summer Social

Posted on by

John Harwood –

  • the University needs to seriously look at ways to reduce costs. One way to do this is to really look at our training needs and training efforts and see where we’re duplication efforts and can share.
  • Also in light of pandemic and seasonal flu, as well as travel costs, we need to look at alternative ways of conducting meetings and training, such as using Adobe Connect
  • increased productivity, increased employee satisfaction

Learning Design Summer Camp 2009

Posted on by

Disruptive tech – I think eye contact is still important in f2f – perhaps the lecture model is what is becoming antiquated? f2f one on one or in small groups as a way of teaching interpersonal interaction along with smart use of disruptive tech? Here’s the key and Cole answered it: faculty no longer have sole control over the classroom, the learning environment is now a two way street. Also I find by my own participation via social media in this conference I actually stay more engaged. Hard to stay focused on just ppl talking but when I force myself to react and create content I remain engaged.

NCLB has generated students who are good passive, rote learners but have the inability to generate content and be active participants in their learning – important we address this. Very important to spell out the processes and expectations in the classroom to make this transition easier. World Campus does well in current economic environment because it pushes out this easily replicated rote content that does not involve much input from the instructor. This needs to change! Students are paying big bucks and tuition is going up!
Assessment  is an issue!
Cole: administrators are not the problem. A lot of the best new tech adopters are the administrators so they are not the usually the ones standing in the way. Is it status quo?

Livescribe Pulse pen

Posted on by

My department has a small budget with which to purchase and evaluate new technologies, and recently I got the chance to evaluate the Livescribe Pulse pen. The pen uses special paper and a special pen which hides a camera and microphone inside. The camera records the pen’s motions against a special dot pattern on the special paper. The pen has ink of course, but the ink is really only for the user; it is irrelevant to the technology. The microphone is available to record the pen user’s voice, allowing for what Livescribe has dubbed “pencasting” – real time recording of writing or drawing along with an audio description of what is going on.

Some excellent possible uses for the pen include writing out and demonstrating math equations, formulas, and graphs, and also possible pen and ink drawing. Any of these uses would be useful for providing the “chalkboard” type experience to distant learners.
There are some drawbacks, however, of course. The output is a proprietary format that is hosted on the Livescribe site – not good if you’re thinking of doing in-house enhancements to the pencasts (like adding captioning for accessibility purposes). Also, though students can use the pen to demonstrate and submit their work, it does not produce a file that can then be marked up and returned by the professor.
All in all, a nice way of demonstrating problem-solving techniques, but not a great way of providing a true two-way or social experience.

The project management puzzle

Posted on by

I am currently leading a team at my workplace that’s evaluating our use of the project management software Quickbase. Quickbase is essentially an online database that manages data points such as (in our case) people, courses, programs and tasks. The tool was originally intended to facilitate collaboration and project management, enabling the use of templates to generate task lists and notifications for courses running on a repeat basis. It was also intended as a platform for designers to manage the development of new courses; pulling all their team members and resources together on one timeline. Managers have a stake too; using Quickbase they are able to easily assess at any time the status of courses or programs.

Our Quickbase use has fizzled a bit (or a lot).
One reason for this is likely due to the interface: It’s very database-y:
QB.png
Our workplace consists of instructional designers and assistants who may not be accustomed to a database interface, and honestly are not expected to be power database users as part of their skill set.
My charge, along with the team joining me in this journey, is to find what might actually work to achieve our ends. We know that the software is very good at managing data, tables and relationships. We also know that our users are drawing a blank when attempting to use it. So the question is: how do we build an interface that our users instinctively know how to use and serves the purpose of keeping team members honest and on track? There is yet another layer of complication here. The team interacts on a nearly daily basis with various data housing systems outside of Quickbase – systems that store more detailed course information, manage time tracking, store course multimedia, etc. Here in fact is a snapshot of the whiteboard from our last meeting where we were discussing all these systems:
QBwhiteboard.jpg
You can see how tangled this problem is. Many of the systems are out of our control and will probably still have to be interfaced with manually, but for the in-house solutions, there is great potential for integration, saving time and duplication of effort for everyone who uses them.
Luckily, we have Jeanette Condo on our team, a programmer with database and API experience. (yay for us!) With her help, we may come up with a win-win solution that puts Quickbase in the background while fully taking advantage of its powerful database capabilities.
Our next team meeting is next Monday. We are still in the discussion and exploration stage and have not begun any nitty-gritty development or testing yet, so the question I think I want to ask is, if we were to design a system for managing our work from the ground up, without consideration for existing systems, what would it look like?

TLT Symposium 2009

Posted on by

Blogging – I largely focused on the Penn State Blogs in this year’s Symposium. I am looking at them in the context of their potential application in the iMBA program, and I see enormous potential for the platform, with many potential strengths and applications, including:

    • enabling reflections – blogging is a great way to allow in-depth reflection on a topic, increasing student retention and engagement.
    • enabling conversations – blogs can be easily aggregated into a single source, essentially allowing conversations to occur around a single topic or course.
    • student ownership of content – ANGEL supports discussion forums, chat and other forms of communication that can work in certain situations but ultimately do not give students ownership of their content. That carefully composed discussion forum posting or drop box submission that took a lot of thought and effort to create is essentially lost when the semester/term is over unless the student takes special effort to retain it.
    • portfolio – related to ownership of content, the concept of blog as portfolio has powerful implications. The Penn State Blog platform can be used to support so much more than just blogging; essentially a student can easily set up a whole Web site with a collection of artifacts (pictures, stories, etc.) related to him or herself. The portfolio can represent not only the students’ learning in the program but can include any learning or experiences that take place outside of the formal learning environment. Such an e-portfolio is a strong indicator to a potential employer of the depth of a person’s strengths and experiences.

The two sessions I went to related to blogging were entitled: Engaging Students with Program Learning Outcomes and ENGL 202C on the Blogs at Penn State Platform. I learned of real-life examples that support my thinking above. The Engaging Students session had students that were using their blogs in the context of a program experience and not just for isolated classwork. They were doing all the things I mentioned above for portfolio, but were also using them for reflections and conversations. The ENGL 202C students were able to share their writing with the class in a much more meaningful and engaging way.

I also attended a session on the future of textbooks in the digital age and a hands-on session on Adobe Connect. The textbook session gave a lot of food for thought about what’s in store for textbooks and what copyright means in the digital world. The Adobe Connect session gave me more hands-on practice with Connect and informed me of the detailed help page PSU has in place for the product – I intend to use this as a reference and source of ideas as I revise our own (World Campus) instructions for Elluminate Live.

Finally, the two keynotes with David Wiley and danah boyd were fantastic. All in all a tiring day but very well worth my time and as usual, gave me plenty of takeaways and food for thought.

2009 NMC Symposium on New Media and Learning

Posted on by

Tomorrow and Thursday I will be attending the 2009 NMC Symposium on New Media and Learning. It is a virtual conference, with all sessions taking place in Second Life. I like to go into a conference by reviewing the sessions offered and defining my objectives for participation. What do I hope to learn, discover or take away from the conference?

The conference actually begins tonight with a reception and poster session at the NMC conference center in Second Life. I like poster sessions – it provides a nice informal opportunity to interact with the poster creators. The theme of the conference is New Media and Learning so I will be paying particular attention to education professionals like myself that are using Web 2.0, learning management systems, Second Life, etc. in innovative ways to support learning. The poster creators will be there to chat with.

The full conference begins tomorrow and there are several sessions I will be paying attention to. I’ll name a few, describe them briefly and give my reasons for being “all ears”, defining my objectives in italics.

  • Imagination Engine: Rapid Media Visualization and Storyboard Creation Process. Joe Tojek (or his avatar) from Capella University will be demonstrating the process and tools his intructional design team uses to brainstorm and plan new media projects and tools in support of learning. I’ll be looking for cues and ideas for how our IT and media shop can work better with the instructional designers to provide input and support as we move to using new technologies in our courses.
  • Digital Media Tools for Replacing Traditional Methods of Instruction. This session will look at Web 2.0 tools used in the support of collaborative learning, and will show how these tools enable us to go beyond traditional instruction. I’m assuming by “traditional instruction” the presenter intends to compare Web 2.0 – enhanced learning with both f2f and older distance learning models. I’ll be focusing particularly on how we can better support and provide scaffolding for learning in new environments such as wikis and blogs, and what new learning outcomes we can expect.
  • Going GaGa for Google: Using Google in Virtual Worlds. This session will show how Google tools such as Google Docs, Google Maps and YouTube can be “mashed up” with the virtual world experience to provide a highly textured learning experience (my words). My objective here is primarily for fun – there is an interactive component to this session and we’ll actually be building something! I will be paying attention to the possibilities for learning, too, of course. :-)
  • Dramatically Different: Strategies for Socially-Engaged Learning in Virtual
    Worlds.     This session will describe the use of virtual worlds for role-playing and active learning in support of learning in the drama/theatre arts area. This session will support a meta-objective for attending this conference; since the conference is taking place entirely in Second Life, I will be experiencing first hand its power in supporting learning.

There are many other sessions too numerous to mention that have caught my interest. I’m sure I’ll be refining my objectives and coming up with new ones as I meet new people and make new discoveries at the conference. I’ll be blogging my discoveries so stay tuned.