CC blog

Blackboard dashboard?

Spent some time today with Meg Houston Maker, Director of External Information Services at Dartmouth and the author of the amazing Engaging Experience blog.  

In a fast hour I learned how much I don't know about web analytics.  Meg has instrumented all the sites she designs and runs, and therefore can make arguments for campaigns and practices informed by data.

The conversation with Meg led to other conversations, and to an open source building block called Project Astro.  The Slideshare linked below provides a marvelously convincing case for the ROI of having Blackboard metrics easily available in a dashboard.

Astro alone may be enough of a compelling case (for me) to move to Blackboard 9.  Perhaps the most intriguing element would be the ability to expose the Blackboard dashboard data to our community.  Allowing all of our learners to see courses that are heavily used, or that use active learning tools such as blogs and wikis, would go a long way towards rewarding this innovation.  Learners (students and faculty) who are big users of Blackboard could be identified, supported, and celebrated.  

Bb World09 Project Astro Presentation with Screenshots

View more presentations from ekunnen.

BB world questions

Since my colleagues have largely left me to my own devices in Hanover while they attend Blackboard World I decided (in between re-arraning the furniture and throwing lavish parties in their offices) to put down some questions to which I hope folks can attach some answers.

To help BB World attendees remember these questions, as they load up on the vendor swag and redeem their free drink coupons, I placed them within an easy to remember mnemonic:  M.I.S.T.

Mobile:

What is BB saying about both adoption and roadmap for its mobile apps?  Is there excitement and innovation in the community space around Blackboard and mobile?  Are vendors offering compelling integration and building blocks in the mobile Blackboard space?  

Integrated:

The marketing for Release 9 http://www.blackboard.com/release9/whats-new.aspx highlights the Web 2.0 ish nature of the interface and the ability to integrate with other platforms such as Facebook.  

At BB World I'd like to learn exactly how BB 9 integrates with Web 2.0 platforms?  Is there any movement by Blackboard or other vendors to provide single-sign on authentication and integration with media publishing platforms such as YouTube and/or iTunesU?  

Does the platform really support pedagogies that integrate platforms such as NetVibes, Flickr, Twitter, and Web 2.0 blogging tools?  Any action with integration with Google Apps?  And how are the Facebook tools working out for schools that are using them?

Social:

Learning is social, but BB often resembles a stay in solitary confinement.  Does BB 9, and or the various vendors and building blocks, offer a way forward to the social?  

Some enhancements that I'd love to see:  

Presence awareness....the ability to see who is in the course or the system and what they are doing in real time (if they give permission).  

A news feed of my fellow learners activities (if they give permission), one that would track what folks are doing on the site (ie posting an article, contributing a discussion post or or blog, updating a wiki, taking a quiz...etc. etc.).  

The option to chat, in text voice, or video, with folks in the course through a browser tool.  This chat should be contextual around the learning activity taking place.  

Can student collaborate and communicate in BB 9 by easily uploading and sharing their own content, videos, podcasts, discussions, etc. etc?  Does BB 9 feel more like a social learning space for all learners?

Transparent:

The great shame of the C.M.S. is that all the learning, collaboration, discussion and learner created content is locked up in the course.  Unavailable for the world to see, difficult to share, impossible to locate.  

Learners in Blackboard should have the option to make everything they do public and transparent.  

I'd like to show off the course design and materials in a public way...perhaps not all the library articles and videos...but the design around that content.  Blogs and Wikis should have a public option - ideally linked to a blogging / wiki platform that is one that can have a life outside of the CMS.  

How much of what goes on in courses can be made available at the institutional level....and how can course material and content be made discoverable through search?  

How can we make best practices in course design and teaching transparent to our college/university communities, and then transparent to all learners?  

Does BB 9 gets us closer to transparency and a break down of the course-centric silo?  

How are other schools moving towards a vision of transparency, openness and sharing?  What vendors are offering building blocks or add-ons that move us in this direction?  

Have fun at the conference.....and bring back some good SWAG.

slide deck for talk on becoming an educational change agent

Will be giving this talk (with Barbara) on 5/21 for the Blended Librarian Community, part of the Learning Times Network.  http://home.learningtimes.net/library  

The invite for the talk came from the column that Barbara and I wrote for Educause Review in 2008 - Business Cards of the Future

The timing of putting together this presentation has been fortuitous given recent discussions with colleagues on change agency.  Particular thanks to Sarah Horton for turning me on to Diffusions of Innovation book.

The slide deck will be loaded into Elluminate Live for the presentation (hence the polling questions).  Any feedback before or after the presentation is always appreciated.  *Note: Slideshare is doing some funny things with the presentation...

Becoming an Educational Change

View more presentations from Joshua Kim.

presentation on Blackboard as an opportunity for conversations

Presentation was given in January during a meeting between Curricular Computing and Thayer Computing.  Goal was to introduce the Thayer folks to the work we do around Blackboard.

Wanted to get this presentation up to YouTube, and to get it on the blog so it becomes part of the record of what we were thinking and doing in 2009.

ELI 2009 reflections

ELI took place at a particularly surreal moment.  On one hand it is a time of great hope, something we shared as some members of our team sat in Anthony's hotel conference room to witness the Inauguration. At the same moment of this wonderful and positive historic event we are constantly reminded of the recession and the decline in endowments and giving that is driving the large cutbacks in IT spending and forcing hiring freezes (and possible layoffs). 

I keep thinking back to the session on 1/21 Challenge 5 - Discussion on Advancing IT in an Age of Budget Cuts Discussion Educause ELI Conference 2009.   The session notes from a Wiki are available at   http://connect.educause.edu/wiki/Advancing_Innovation  - and I originally blogged about the session here.

The general consensus of this session (as well as other talks and informal chats with colleagues) is that the financial situation is bad and will get worse. 

ELI is full of educators who are invested in transforming institutions, learning environments and courses towards authentic and active learning.  This is reflected in the conference organizers attempts to model good learning practices with the design of the sessions, from discussions, to hands-on sessions, to the promotion of interactivity and the promotion of informal social learning spaces and opportunities.  Main sessions are captured for later viewing or podcasts.  Wikis and other online social learning and information sharing tools are utilized.  This is a group that believes in change! 

But these (us) reformers attending ELI are also insiders.  We understand that in times of budget difficulties that the test for any innovations will be on saving dollars and conserving resources, less on increasing learning. 

At this point in the history of the development of the professional field of educational technology we have both well-developed technologies and robust theories of learning.  We know how to operate in an era of information abundance.  Our tools may not be perfect, and yes we may be moving towards mobile applications or games or virtual worlds, but the current state of the CMS coupled with what we know about learning is enough to get us pretty far.   But we also understand that the technology and the theory are not enough. 

The pairing of agile and robust technologies (increasingly free Web 2.0 tools) and constructivist learning theory is a necessary but not sufficient set of conditions to insure reform.  Budget issues will limit the amount of resources (in time and new projects) that learning technologists will be able to bring to spur innovation.  Our future may be one of incremental change.  If I had to guess the theme of ELI 2010 it would be "Learning and Technology in an Era of Diminished Expectations".

nytimes article on TED talks

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25wwln-medium-t.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

I have in mind a course where the sole objective is to learn how to produce a TED like talk.  We would watch all the talks and critique. 

We would have training in what makes a good talk.  We would learn the technical, audiovisual, presentation skills. 

We would get training from acting and presentation coaches. 

We would dive deep into some subject matter, doing original research and thinking to form the basis for the talks content. 

We would leave with an important set of skills, and a portfolio object that might open some doors. 

Maybe the best student would be invited to give a TED talk for real.

Challenge 5 - Discussion on Advancing IT in an Age of Budget Cuts Discussion Educause ELI Conference 2009

Facilitator:  Elizabeth A. Evans, Academic Outreach Specialist, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Abstract:

As the global financial crisis continues to impact our campus budgets, how do we do more less? How can we ensure that innovation in teaching and learning continues to be a priority on campus?  Join your colleagues in this interactive, discussion-based learning circle to begin brainstorming solutions and sharing institutional approaches to "Advancing innovation in teaching and learning (with technology) in an era of budget cuts," one of the top-five challenges facing teaching and learning with IT identified through the EDUCAUSE Top Teaching and Learning Challenges project (www.educause.edu/eli/challenges).

Notes and Analysis:

This session had a Wiki

http://connect.educause.edu/wiki/Advancing_Innovation

Which was nice as a scribe took notes, capturing what was going on.

I liked the discussion format.  Would have been improved if the room had been set up with a circular table or chairs - but that was not in control of the facilitator (who did a marvelous job).  One hope is that ELI moves towards sessions built around seminar tables - sessions that combine shorter presentations and more discussion.  Presenters could record voice-over presentations ahead of time, hit the high points for 20 minutes, and then leave time for debate and discussion.

On topic.  Thought that the discussion about the current budget realities brought forward some good creative thinking and ideas.  We talked about how Educause/ELI could help our profession, our biggest fears, and ideas we would have to make it through the budget cuts.  

Empowering Faculty to Broaden Learning Boundaries: Making the Technology Transparent (Learning Technology) Educause ELI 2009 Conference

Speaker(s)

    * Eric Alvarado, Director of Academic Technologies, The George Washington University
    * John Arpino, Manager Audiovisual Development and Engineering, Academic Technologies, The George Washington University
    * Yordanos Baharu, Director, Instructional Technology Lab, The George Washington University

Abstract

Join us to find out how we leveraged Apple's iTunes U program for a seamless capture of in-class enhanced podcasts, developed a one-click iTunes U course creation solution via Blackboard, and more. This presentation will focus on how to make the implementation of university-wide learning technologies transparent and nondisruptive to the teaching and learning process. Why? To assist faculty in expanding their teaching strategies for a more diverse student learning experience. We created a technological infrastructure that allows faculty, independent of their digital literacy skills, to make use of existing social and instructional technologies in and outside the classroom.

Session Notes:

Academic Technologies Goals:

- Empowering faculty
- Create an environment that users can readily master without the need to learn new software, interfaces, passwords. etc.
- Is not about technology but learning.

Solutions:

- Create Networked Learning Environment
- Hub that seamlessly integrates activities

Blackboard is the hub of activity. 
Spokes inlculde:
- Echo 360
- iTunes U
- Google Apps
- Turning Point
- Second Life
- elluminate (web conferencing)
- mobile apps/tools

Why Blackboard as the hub?

Answers:
- That is where the users are (2/3 of courses use Blackboard)
- Maximize learning environment by making use of API

Four Major Components:
- Blackboard
- iTunes U
- Colonial Cast
- Classroom technology infrastructure

Blackboard:
- single sign-on for users - (into iTunes U) - integrated with LDAP - not Blackboard plug-in - GW developed
- iTunes U course site creation and management

The iTunes U Piece

- Single Sign-On via Blackboard
- Course creation and scheduling via Blackboard
- In-house administration application
- To 20 authenticated iTunes U site
- 27 classrooms able to automatically capture vodcasts using Echo 360

Future Plans
- soft quotas for iTunes U
- More expanded user roles
- course management tools
- auto-scheduling captures
- iTunes U site re-design
- expand to other campuses
- more user feedback
- additional in-house developed BB tools

Instant Analysis:

GW is doing some very progressive things with iTunesU, course capture and Blackboard integration.  The iTunesU is a private site - only for GW folks - which seems to me like a wasted opportunity.  One of the main points is that about half of students consume the courses offline (as files for iPods, iPhones, Quicktime etc.).   The integration between iTunesU and Blackboard is a critical and important piece. 

Wondered if iTunes could be used for screen-capture / voice-over lecture for faculty and students.  Also wondered if Podcast Producer can do most of what Echo 360 does for much less money? 

Stories of Engagement and Disengagement: Social Media Adoption in Higher Education (Learning Technology) Educause ELI Conference

http://vcueli2009.wetpaint.com

Area where this group put together the session and gather materials to innovate their teaching.

Abstract

In this roundtable discussion, participants will have an opportunity to contribute to the ongoing conversation about factors that contribute to faculty adoption of new social media tools for teaching and learning and the implications of these practices for effective pedagogy. Faculty from a large urban research university who have engaged in sustained participation in a learning community devoted to teaching with technology will share their experiences using social media tools such as wikis, podcasts, social bookmarking, blogging, social networking sites, and Twitter in stories of engagement and disengagement in infusing Web 2.0 tools in the classroom.

Adoption should be thought of as a "dimmer" switch rather then an "on and off" switch. 

Faculty learning communities on using technology to enhance teaching and learning.

Questions:

- Do we need experience / reflection with the full buffet of social media tools in order to develop "new media literacy"?

- Does the use of social media to support personal learning seem to be a pre-cursor for more meaningful and effective pedagogical use?

- What factors play the most significant role in faculty adoption of social media to support teaching and learning?

Listened to 4 faculty narratives of the journey they went through to become engaged in social media.

Discussed in small groups the 3 questions above.

Instant Analysis:

The questions above would be good to put forth to faculty at a DCAL group.  Would be great to surface the thinking and ideas of faculty around these questions in a public forum such as a blog or Wiki.

From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-able: Experiments in New Media Literacy Educause ELI 2009 Conference

Speaker:  Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State University

Abstract

It took tens of thousands of years for writing to emerge after speech, thousands more before the printing press was invented, and a few hundred more for the telegraph to arrive. Today, new ways of relating are constantly created and a new communication medium emerges every time someone creates a web application—a Flickr here, a Twitter there. How can we use new media to foster the kinds of communication and community we desire in education? This presentation will discuss both successful and unsuccessful attempts to integrate emerging technologies into the classroom to create a rich virtual learning environment.

http://hosted.mediasite.com/hosted5/Viewer/?peid=d614130681da4bbcb5e602cad4d67176

*Off the top:  This was a great keynote - one of the best I've seen.  Shared with my students in a capstone graduate consulting class - as I'm hoping they will reflect on their own process.

Session Notes:

Survey:  How many of you do not like school (half students).  How many do not like learning (none).

Students:  "Facebook through classes".  "I bring my laptop to class, but I'm not working on class stuff".

information:  equavilent of 60 books per second

Future:  One trend -
-ubiquitous networks, computing, information
at unlimited speed

from knowledge to knowledgeable

Compares current moment to Sputnik (1957) - Woods Hole conference n 1959,  Bruner the Process of Education 1962
How Children Fail (1964)
Teachers as Subversive Activity

What we do today was done 30 years ago by secondary education folks.....

What these walls sa?y - what our classroom lecture structure says:

- to learn is to acquire information
- information is scarce and hard to find
- trust authority for good informatin
- authorized information is beyond discussion
- obey authority
- follow along

Postman book:  Teaching as a Conserving Activity

Postman on why the Revolution Failed:
- war ending
- stagnating economy
- utopian hype difficult to implement
- back to basics movement

2009:
similar things going on

Back to Basics Movement  - "The Dumbest Generation"

Critiques of New Media Literacy

- pandering to students
- neglects basic literacy skills
- difficult to implement

Response:

- pandering to students (because students love to sit back and hear the lecture, regurgitate facts
- neglect basic literacy - in that literacy in new media is crucial
- difficulty to implement - in reality students are not retaining lecture materials

Back to Basics:  Asking Good questions

The questions we actually get from students:
- "how many points is this worth"
- "how long does this paper need to be"
- "what do we need to know for the test"

A crisis of significance.

Wesch:
 - "To learn is to share and create information"
-  It's about creating meaningful connections and creating significance

Questions become?
How can we create meaningful connections and significance for our students?"

Answers:
- Engage real problems, do it with students, use existing media environment. 

(existing media environment does not have to be solely digital - can be libraries and books).

Consumer digital technologies that students use are less then 4 years old - "there are no natives".

Facebook great place for connections, becoming a worse place for education.

Wesch radically simplified his Netvibes page - highlighted the Wiki and the RSS feed.  

"The real thing is not the technology but the creation of community"

Wesch believes that this new revolution will succeed.

Why:
- Urgency for new media literacy is not grounded in a single political agenda.
- mostly free (is not impacted by stagnating economy)
- implemented in many diverse bits and pieces (does not have to implemented on a grand scale)
- driven by "Rethinking the Basics" movement -  we are asking things like "what are basic literacy skills".

Are these classroom walls necessary?
- How should I deliver my content - to should I deliver content?
- What am I really teaching? 
- Is my teaching a hindrance to learning?
- What is learning?

Normal faculty plagued by these questions of what is learning.  What is education for?  What are we doing?

Be skeptical of easy answers and embrace the questions.

Instant Analysis:

This was one of the best keynotes I've seen.  Wesch is not only very smart with his content/message - but he demonstrates how to give an engaging public talk.  Fast paced, lots of slides, visual, grounded in real practice, and funny.  Wesch has the confidence to talk about his failures as well as his successes.   He talked about how he is evolving his tools - for instance pulling back on the applications in his NetVibes site.  Very much liked his critical take on Facebook for learning.

One aspect of the keynote that I particularly enjoyed was how Wesch tied the current move towards new media literacy and student-centered learning into the history of educational reform.  In higher ed, we tend to think that we are doing something really "innovative" - where the fact is that constructivist theory in education has been discussed for at least 50 years by primary educators.  We need to learn our own history.  Wesch talked about where and why educational reform movements succeeded and failed - and what lessons we can draw in higher education.

Some of the questions that Wesch asks should be questions that all graduate students need to engage in as they move towards teaching roles.  These are questions that existing faculty should ask themselves and each other. 

Wesch seems hopeful that post-secondary education will transform to conform to both advanced pedagogies of how people learn and the new enabling technologies.  I wonder how many years will pass until lecture class start to look more like Wesch's model and less like the traditional stand-and-deliver.  In what year will Wesch's own teaching no longer seem innovative but normative?

Ready, Fire, Aim: A Case Study in Transformation (Innovative Practice) ELI Educause Conference 2009

Speaker(s)

    * Benjamin Hambelton, Director, Academic Technologies, Boise State University
    * Allan Heaps, Elearning Manager and Instructional Designer, Boise State University

Abstract

Transforming a teaching and learning culture to focus on engagement, digital content creation, collaboration, and social learning requires a systematic attention to the necessary and sufficient conditions that promote adoption of new practices and tools. Application of these principles that can help bring about such a transformation will be illustrated in an interactive session using a case study of the transformative project currently under way at Boise State University.

Session Notes:

The Charge:  Transform the teaching & learning culture to improve learning outcomes - make a difference.

Presenter was charged with transforming teaching and learning culture on campus.  Move away from a boutique model towards a training model.

1997 - 1998:  Faculty centric was the norm.

Key Assumptions:  Engage Mainstream Faculty

- Key gate keeper to improve teaching and learning
- Faculty will often re-examine and change their practices when engaged in adopting and using appropriate technology
- Appropriate use of academic technology itself generally improves learning outcomes.

Question:  How do you bridge the chasm between early adopters and the pragmatists? 

Answer:  Make it in the pragmatist self-interest to cross the chasm.

Insights based on Moore:

- There are different "necessary and sufficient" conditions required for each group to enable them to become engaged.

- Bridging the chasm to reach the majority populations requires strategic institutional initiatives.

Partnered with NCAT - National Center for Academic Transformation

Lessons from projects:

Lesson 1:  Provide effective training.

Effective training insights:
- Skills training can be used to highlight pedagogy and instructional design
- Immediate & incremental application: graduated development model
- Value of experiential learning
- Immersive development
- Peer review towards a recognized standard

Lesson 2: Create an Enabling Environment

- Robust technical infrastructure
- Supportive policies
- Supportive administrative procedures
- Public recognition and rewards

Principal strategy:  Develop strategic institutional initiatives aimed at specific curricular targets or specific audiences.

Individual Initiatives:

Moved away from individual initiatives towards cohorts of faculty.

Benefits of individual initiatives:

Downsides of individual initiatives:
- lacks sustainability
- barrier removal
- low impact
- limited replicability

Institutional Sponsored Initiatives:

- Barriers and impediments are addressed institutionally.
- Vests ownership and responsibility across entire institution
- Generates facilitative responses.
- Enlists those who would otherwise not participate

Student Digital Media Fluency: 21st Century Literacies

- Multi media digital production lab for student academic projects
- Video, camtasia, photostory, podcasting, web pages, PowerPoints, Flash

Attention to Collaborative Learning - instructors getting excited (Google Apps, Blackboard, Wikis for distributed group work).

Attention to learning spaces:
- classroom design for flexibility and technology
- informal space for group work & study
- blend social and work (learning) spaces

Sustaining and Advancing Innovation:

- Requires a diverse set of venues for faculty experimentation
- Requires basic support and infrastructure
- Utilize faculty to prove concepts
- Utilize mainstream faculty for training and mentoring

Instant Analysis:

Presentation begs the questions at what point will student-centered learning becoming a significant factor in promotion and tenure?  And a what point will part-time faculty and lecturers who engage in student-centered active learning be brought into the status and economic "elite" with long-term contracts, adequate compensation, and professional perks?   

Impossible to argue with the goals, programs, or objectives of the Boise State team who have worked to bring institutional change.  At what point will these efforts become institutionalized in the true incentive structure for faculty?  Are there examples where this transition has occurred in traditional IHE's (where promotion and tenure is based primarily on research, publication and grants - and "adequate" teaching.

The Boise State roadmap is one that we can all reflect on in our efforts to move towards institutional transformation.

Breaking the Walls of the Classroom Whether We Like It or Not: Multiplicities of Place with Mobile Media - Educause ELI 2009 Conferenc

 * Kurt Squire, Assistant Professor in Educational Communications and Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

http://www.mobilemedialearning.org/

Abstract

Emerging media such as iPhones create both challenges and opportunities for educators. On the one hand, they provide ubiquitous access to resources and social networks. On the other hand, they disrupt existing power relationships. Whereas most efforts have conceptualized learning with mobile media in terms of "any time, any where," this session reframes the challenges and opportunities in terms of place. Mobile media enable deeper experiences of place, but they also create multiplicity and hybridities of place. Drawing on work done in 30 classrooms over the past two years, this session includes a framework for thinking about how mobile media might be better integrated into classrooms.

Existing Applications:
-  clickers
- concept mappers
- participatory simulations
- probewear / data collection tools
- AR games
-
 "Handhelds are small computers"

cons:
-  small hard to read screens
- crappy input
- short battery life
-poor storage capacity

pros:
- portability
-social interacticity
- connectivity
- individuality

What happens when hand-held computers approach ubiquity?

Some questions about mobile computing:

"What happens when every student arrives with a personalized, broadband personalized media learning device?

"What kinds of applications span home - school - afterschool?

"What kinds of use scenarios might assume ubiquitous connectivity, access?

Some ways that mobile computing changes things:

- Remediation of Place
-Personalization of Learning

Three key practices - emerging mobile devices
- Cocooning
- Camping
- Footprinting

How smart phones are being used:
- citizen journalism
- unsanctioned information (Burma)

Link between Mobile Media and Internet Publishing.

Example of Facebook on the iPhone/Touch.  The Obama iPhone application another very impressive tool (turns people into community organizers.).

Challenges our notion of place and virtuality. 

Personalization of Learning:
- Any student will have the ability to access most any content
- Will carry with them at all time
- Will be able to access social networks on demand
- To "be" wherever you want

Mobile media may threaten basic power dynamics, such as control over information.

Designing for mobile media:
- ubiquitous information access
- over-lapping co-presences
- collective intelligence
- producing information rather then only consuming
- learners as designers of messages
- authentic participation
- student autonomy and control

"As Mobile Media remediates our experiences of place, opportunities exist to realize long-held dreams of transforming education to become participatory and less cleaved from social practice.  In fact, as they invade our schools, we may not have a choice but to make learning more relevant".

Instant Analysis:

- Gorgeously designed presentation.  Predominantly visual.  Text was readable and brief.

- The Media Site player really helped me follow-along the presentation - as I could go back to slides that already passed me by.   Also...I was in the back of the room (for power purposes)...so being able to have a window with the live stream was great.  An example of how lecture capture can work in real-time.   http://hosted.mediasite.com/hosted5/Viewer/?peid=1f4cf98e49ce42dfac9ad477b1bdb338

- This feels like we are glimpsing the future.  We know smart phones and mobile media devices are coming as the dominant communication/computing device - but we don't know what this will mean for education.  Presenters seem to see this shift as an opportunity to break with old faculty centric practices of education and adopt a student-centered approach.  Another step along the road of a constructivist model of education.  I wonder if we can cross this chasm - or if our efforts should be focussed on more "doable" changes - such as integrating CMS systems into mobile devices.

- I wonder how much we need the mobile device to re-engineer and re-design curriculum.  We have not been able to do this re-design and a wholesale basis with laptops - even in schools that have required laptop programs.

- Would be great to see some brainstorming on how mobile devices can change the conference experience.  Conferences are great opportunities to try some of these ideas out.  At conferences I find that my iTouch is in no way a substitute for my laptop.  Mobile devices have moved to ubiquity as social communication tools - but are they the proper tools for the production of content? 

Great session..

Are We Ready for Mobile Technologies and Their Impact on Pedagogy, Tool Development, and Assessment? (Learning Technology) Educause ELI 2009 Conference

Speaker(s)

    * Thomas C. Laughner, Director, Educational Technology Services, Smith College
    * Scott Payne, Director of Academic Technology Services, Amherst College
    * Session convener: Christopher Higgins, Manager, Learning Technologies, University of Maryland

Abstract

The promise of mobile learning has recently attracted a great deal of attention among educational technologists. Numerous institutions have begun using a range of mobile technologies to support anytime, anywhere learning; however, the impact of the mobile web has been limited. In this presentation, we will argue that the capabilities of the iPhone and iPod touch and emerging data on adoption rates of these devices may herald a shift in how students access information and instructional tools and interact with instructors and peers. We will discuss potential implications for pedagogy, tool development, and assessment.

Notes:

Had us go to:  http://www.polleverywhere.com/vote   great online tool -

Focus in on smart phone (I need to get one of these clearly!)

Student iPhone ownership at Amherst College.   Big surge.  (Wondering what percentages are...gave  raw numbers.....)

Amherst has Blackboard and a content management system from Drupal....

Amherst is realizing that "something big is coming".  Drupal does not have iPhone hooks.  Blackboard is talking about it - does not have it yet.

Systematic move from fixed devices (desktops) to portable (laptops) to smart phones). 

What are the implications of this shift?  Pedagogy / Tool Development / Assessment

Incremental vs. Transformative:

Incremental:  A new technology allows you to do something differently that you are already doing.  More evolutionary then revolutionary.

Transformative:  A complete paradigm shift from the way things used to be done.

Examples:

The early days of film.  First thing they did was to film a play.  Next came editing and splicing. 

Pedagogical Practice:
Chickering and Gamson (1987)  Good practice in undergraduate education.

incremental change:
anytime / anywhere acces to content, exercises, quizzes, discussion forums etc. on a mobile device.

transformative change:
Applications that enable immersive learning.
- real time access to databases
- interaction with intelligent pedagogical agents
- group problem solving with peers
- discussion with domain experts

Traditional pedagogy is a didacticized process.  Presenters are suggesting that good teaching is providing a very rich set of resources (more constructivist learning environment).  Faculty is creating a rich learning space.

Group Discussion:  How can this technology take advantage of effective pedagogical practice

- Broke us up into groups of 4.  Had a nice 10 minute discussion.   *Note:  This would have been a good opportunity to use a group editing tool to show results....

notes to tlaughner@smith.edu

Current state of mobile application development:

- Student information applications:  examples MIT Mobile Web / Stanford iApps Project

LMS Support for Mobile Platforms

- Blackboard - currently being developed
- Moodle - no plans
- Sakai - mobile device portal
- ANGEL - no plans

Asked - how does new device allow us to do something differently? 

Taking advantage of the new smartphone technology:

- GPS / Touch Screen / Accelerometer / Camera / Networking - all tools that we did not have before.  (audience pointed out that voice-recording was left out).

Tool Development:

- Most of current education apps are Flashcard-based
- Poll Everywhere
- Okarina
- Google Earth

Amherst College
- iLooger:  scientific data logger for field research  (will release for free on the App store)
- Images, voice recordings and field notes with GPS coordinates
- Synch data with server
- Data browsing: show data near me, projects, recent entries
- Google maps mash-ups

Assessment:

- Getting away from product and moving towards process.
- Very hard to measure process.
- New tools from mobile devices may help us track behavior (how are people engaging in tasks?)
-  Looking at cognitive capacity, revision analysis, idea development.

Challenges for doing assessment on "process" from mobile device data include:  massive data sets and the need for new (non-linear) statistical techniques.

Group Discussion:

What are some of the other implications of using this technology on assessment:

Instant Analysis:

Great session.  Worked very well to have two presenters, with practicioners emerged in this field.  I asked a question about the importance (and difficulty) of making incremental steps to mobilize curriculum.  Are libraries and academic computing areas set-up to support the transition of content so it be used on a mobile device.   The answer from the presenters is that this is not an either or (incremental vs. transformative) - and that many incremental steps can add up to a significant change in practices.

The presenters are very interested in how mobile tools can change the educational model towards a learner-centered, constructivist model.  Hard to argue with the goal.  On a practical level I think that one way course management systems can be transformative is that they are universal.  Everyone gets the same thing.  For transformative change to occur with mobile devices perhaps all learners (faculty and students) need to be on a similar platform.  With tuition costing so much it is only a marginal expense to equip all learners with standard tools (laptops and smart phones) - perhaps we could go in that direction (or use some nudges like specials and campus deals to achieve a similar result).

Collaboration and Participation: Social Learning for the 21st Century - Educause ELI 2009 Conference

The Fifth Annual Robert C. Heterick, Jr., Lecture

Abstract:  Despite dismissals, video games have emerged as an important research topic. Recent studies suggest that engagement in video games, particularly virtual worlds, promotes valued forms of thinking and learning. This session will review findings of a five-year investigation into the forms of cognition and learning that arise in virtual worlds and how they function as naturally occurring versions of successful online learning communities, present findings from across a range of topics, and highlight how certain intellectual practices coalesce into "pop cosmopolitanism"—a form of civic engagement that’s shaping the everyday lives of today's adolescents and young adults.

Constance Steinkuehler, Assistant Professor, Educational Communication & Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

http://website.education.wisc.edu/steinkuehler/blog/

Studies massively multiplayer online games

Notes from the talk:

World of WarCraft  (Constance says game will help her get tenure).  The most successful PC game ever created.  Social.

Why are they significant spaces?

- Population 13.5 million.   Global population playing game ~150 million.
- Time investment significant.  Adolescents 50 minutes a day homework - about the same for video games.
- Culturally significant.   The "new golf".  Places where people hang--out and build relationships.
- Intellectually significant.  The intellectual work matters.

Scientific Habits of the Mind:  

"Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones, but an accumulation of facts is not more science than a heap of stones is a house" (Poincare 1905)

Going after the practices of sciences and not the content.   (Verbs rather then nouns)

- 86% of communication in games is "social knowledge" construction

- Participants in games use evidence to support arguments.

-  Over 60% of online games use evaluative research/analysis techniques (which is good - high compared to the general populations.  Skills we want learners to gain).

Question....is this selection bias?  Analytical thinkers drawn to games....or do games create analytical thinking?  Doing longitudinal research.

"An adolescent space where it is cool to be smart".

Mandatory science education has not been very effective in teaching scientific literacy. 

- Takes on the idea that video (games/tv) are replacing literacy.

- Get kids around games and they end up reading at the 11th grade level (these are kids who are disengaged from school).

- Made point how Obama's 2008 campaign's use of technology (the neighbor to neighbor tool) connects to massively multiplayer games.  What people are doing in their play spaces looks a lot like what other people are doing to elect presidents.  Games can be preparation for civic engagement.   Better then reading a textbook.

- People are showing collective intelligence and self-organizing.

- Are games the new 3rd place.  Compares to Cheers.  Bonding relationships (family, best friends - there for you in times of turmoil) - and bridging relationships (informal, loose relationships) 

We tend to ignore bridging relationships.  It is in bridging relationships that we run into diversity.  Exposure to new art.  Jobs (power of weak ties)

Question:  How do we incubate what's good in online multiplayer games in school?  Answer:  Treat games like a gateway drug! 

Videogames are push technology.  In other words...video games push technology to new heights.  Dragging technology with it......Not just hardware...but also social norms and practices..

Gamers are normalizing collective intelligence.

"The gamer's mindset - the fact that they are in a totally new way - means they will treat the world as a place for creation not consumption.  This is the true impact videogames will have on our culture""  - Will Wright - (creator of the Sims)

Instant Analysis:

- Wish slides were bigger.

- Sometimes I feel old.  Here is an example.  As a parent I think I'd rather have my girls doing something physical, or reading a book, then playing online games.  I guess if the choice is passively consuming video vs. participating in a social game then I'd choose the game. 

- My big takeaway from this is that it probably does not make sense to look down on games or to not take into account their importance in the mental space of young learns or the larger geography of our culture. 

- Would have liked to hear Constance's thoughts on the future of gaming.  Will changes in technology make massively multi-player online games as ubiquitous as social networking?  Will people play these games on mobile devices?

- Can games be explicitly used to teach educational content (the nouns and not the verbs).  For instance, could games through mobile devices teach language skills, basic hygiene or literacy, etc. etc?

flying with content - first post traveling to the Educause ELI Conference in Orlando

A brief list of content accompanying me to the Educause ELI conference in Orlando:

iPod Nano - Audiobooks from Audible:

- Appetite for Self-Destruction, Steve Knopper

- Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, Leslie T. Chang

Paper Book:

- Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger (thanks for the loan Anthony)

Magazines: 

- Current issues of Wired and Fast Company

iPod Touch - Videos:

 - The Tudors, Season 2

- Battlestar Galactica -  Season 4.

- Next Stop Wonderland

I need the Nano for running.  Replacing the Touch with an iPhone would eliminate one device.  Next year I'm betting the book and magazines will be replaced by a Kindle (which would hopefully swallow-up the pdf files of conference reading also crowding my back-pack.   Could the iPhone be the reader as well?

Thoughts as I packed: 

Traveling with this much content still feels novel and interesting to me.  As I was ripping and syncing and preparing it felt like traveling had changed - that become a walking library and human gadget swiss-army knife is something different then the pre-portable content days. 

My intuition is that our students are, and have been for a while now, native ambulatory content libraries.  I'm betting they come to school with large libraries of video and audio already on their mobile devices (laptops, iPhones, Touches), and if we stopped a random sample on the green and added up the hours of content they had on their person at any one time then it would greatly surpass the whole of my WashU dorm floor circa 1989.  Students as walking multi-media human content management systems.

So let's add to their content!  I bet they are not carrying audio versions of books assigned in courses.  Or e-book versions of these texts.  Shouldn't we be instilling lifelong habits of reading in the mediums that they already love?  Portable class lectures, voice-over presentations, relevant videos to the curriculum.  Let's mobilize it all.  They've already done most of the work for us.  They come with their own devices.  They are already listening, watching, interacting.  Just not with our curriculum.  Not with our courses.

How much time do students spend in motion?  Going from the dorm to the class.  From class to the gym.  From school to home and back.  From school to away games.  Motion is where portable content becomes most relevant. 

This summer I'll be experimenting with trying to mobilize my curriculum in the introductory sociology course I'll be teaching.   How will my curriculum choices be shaped by my desire to provide mobile versions of the content? (in addition to traditional options).   How will I get audio versions of readings?  e-Book versions?  What sort of assistance, content, and materials will the Library be able to provide?  How difficult will it be to record voice-over lectures that are available for the browser and the the portable device?  Will I be able to mobilize formative assessments?  And connect these assessments to content?  Will the mobile aspect of the course be only for content - or can any social learning, collaboration and peer review touch the mobile devices?  Will all this work many any difference in the learning of my students?  In their engagement with the material?  What will be the return on investment?

Hoping that maybe ELI will provide some ideas, best-practices and War stories from this front.

technology and professional conferences - the teaching mirror

As I prepare to go to the ELI 2009 Annual Meeting (my first ELI) the sociology of conferences is much on my mind. 

The recent Educause 2008 was the first conference that I fully blogged, and I found the experience to be rewarding, exhilarating and exhausting.  I plan to blog ELI (and subsequent conferences) as I found that the process of writing down a synthesis and thoughts about sessions helped consolidate and document my thinking.  Having colleagues read the blog is great, but only a side benefit, as the value of blogging a conference accrues mostly to the blogger.

Blogging the conference made me realize what a mistake we make in trying to take away student laptops in lecture class.  I would have been lost if I could not blog the conference...and I now think it is counterproductive and cruel to take away student laptops.  Rather, we need to find some way to get students to blog the lectures.  Perhaps create word clouds from blogs in real time.....or take a break in the middle of the lecture to read blog entries out loud (choosing new people each time) - but harness that energy.

The largest problem with blogging a conference is power.  Batteries simply don't last long enough (a great argument for the 17 MacbookPro with an 8 hour battery), meaning that the seats near outlets are highly coveted.

*Note:  I think in 5 years we will have wireless electricity - and charging will be a thing of the past.

A good article on technology and conferences can be found in the March/April 2008 Educause Review

Conference Connections: Rewiring the Circuit

http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/ConferenceConnectionsRewi/46312

A passage from the article I particularly like sums up what I call the "learning consensus" that has emerged in our discipline and informs all of the work in educational technology:

These parallel changes are also reflected in traditional classrooms: the knowledge-authority of the instructor is increasingly balanced with the awareness of the social developments in learning. The social basis of learning is extended through pedagogies of exploration (problem-based learning, experience-based learning) instead of through an exclusive emphasis on presentation and lecture. These trends in learning theories and the pedagogy of exploration follow a progressive trend in education since the late nineteenth century. Though subject to criticism,4 the shift in our understanding of learning and our approaches to teaching runs parallel to the growth of technology use in minimizing traditional control-based barriers.

The authors close with an 8 point set of guidelines for using technology to increase conference connections.  I quote them in full as many of these 8 guiding principles I think work pretty well for normal, everyday lecture classes.  Conferences are worth going to partly to track and sample the innovation that we can (hopefully) filter down into our classrooms.

1. Record presentations (with audio at a minimum, video preferred). Keynotes should be streamed and recorded. Ideally, all conference sessions would be recorded and made available online.

2. Permit flexibility in the conference schedule for“soft periods,” when attendees are encouraged to self-organize on themes of personal interest.

3. Provide pre-conference interviews, podcasts, or online discussions with keynote speakers and thought leaders in the field.

4. Promote conference tags for bloggers to use so that discussions can be found and aggregated for those attendees who are less technically inclined or interested.

5. Aggregate conference discussions and centralize the many voices in a site such as Pageflakes. Distributed conversations can be overwhelming for many. Promote the conference aggregation page during introductory sessions and daily opening presentations.

6. Provide all conference notes, papers, and presentations in wiki form for others to review after the conference. Better yet, involve students or other interested parties in blogging and summarizing conference sessions.

7. Create opportunities for connections and networking through tools like introNetworks, Elgg, or similar networking services (by completing a personal profile, attendees can connect with others of shared interest), Facebook communities, Ning networks, and Second Life meetings.

8. Use a web-based conference organization, proposal adjudication, and scheduling program.

NCAT - conference and some thoughts about course transformation

When the history of the educational technology movement (are we a movement?) is eventually written, I'm convinced that one chapter will be reserved for Carol Twigg and the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT).

NCAT is having their national conference in March - and this is one conference that I hope to get to in the future.

NCAT has been a pioneer in catalyzing large-scale course design in order to create student-centered learning environments.   It often feels to me that us folks in educational technology and learning design work at the margins of a course, where NCAT funds the complete re-design of entire courses.  Their model brings together a team of educational specialists (subject matter experts, learning designers, multimedia experts, developers) to re-think and re-engineer a course from the ground up.  This is a very effective method of moving away from traditional, faculty-centric lecture courses to learning engagements that reach all kinds of minds.  Technology usually plays a crucial part in the course transformation, but only as a means to an end of meeting educational and learning goals.

NCAT has gained the most traction in state schools, where it is expensive for taxpayers to have students fail intro courses (as they end-up re-taking them or dropping out of college). 

I wonder how appropriate the NCAT model is to the smaller, private college environment.  I'd be curious about the process that schools like ours went through to decide to systematically re-design introductory courses - building on methods, models, best practices and lessons learned from the NCAT community.

While I am unable to attend this years conference, I'm going to try to use the web and some networking to answer some of these questions....and try to understand if and how the work of NCAT relates to our situation.

some good thinking by Martin Weller on how educators are now broadcasters - voice-over presentation

What does changes in broadcast mean for educators?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: blog podcast)

A Report from Educause 2010

Notes from Educause 2010.  

Looking back on Educause 2008, the focus that year was on cloud computing, lecture capture, and mobile devices.  Educause 2010 was the year that all the emerging trends that were being talked about two-years earlier finally coalesced into new techniques at the conference.   In so many ways the mechanics of a conference track and mirror the mechanics of producing, delivering and consuming higher education – and this years conference mirrors much of the changes we've seen on our campuses.

Highlights:

2010:

• All Educause attendees given a Google Android Pad, although many attendees continued to use their own devices.  Conference sessions quickly moved into interactive discussions as session goers posted questions and comments in real time.

• Since all the presentation materials were available prior to the sessions – and could be accessed, annotated, and mashed up – sessions often started with a debate.  This was the first year that the line between presenter and attendee seemed to blur.

• One improvement this year was the ability with our Google Android Pad (or using your own device)  to visualize the flow of participants through sessions and vendor booths, view real time ratings of presentations, instantly hook up with any attendee, and to form instant constituent groups. 

• Educause 2010 was also the first year that the relationship between place and presentation was finally eroded. Since all presentations were captured and streamed in real-time, and could be viewed and participated in with our mobile devices, it became hard to tell who was “at”a session. Some attendees would consume multiple sessions at once – and it was not uncommon to see conference goers sitting in one session while listening to and asking questions about another one down the hall.

• Much of the talk at Educause 2010 was concern about if people would stop “going to” the conference, as the majority of participants this year were attending sessions and participating in debates without ever physically coming ot the Conference.  This debate tracked the discussions of classroom capture back at our home institutions, with some in the Educause leadership fearing that de-coupling attendance from place would mean the end of the Conference.

Overall...a great conference...and I'm already getting excited for Educause 2011 in Tokyo.

DCAL Talk - Open Courseware at MIT and Beyond by Shigeru Miyagawa

Shigeru Miyagawa

Amazing lunchtime talk and discussion by one of our heroes, Shigeru Miyagaw, linguist and original founding member of M.I.T.s Open Courseware movement.

A group of Dartmouth faculty and administrators, led by Allen Hockley, has been meeting regularly to discuss issues of Open Education at the College.   Allen and Shigeru are colleagues in the Visualizing Cultures project, giving the College a strong foundation in open educational resources to build on.

Shigeru promised to share his slide deck, which I will blog as it is well worth spending some time on.

For me, the main takeaways of the talk were:

M.I.T. and other institutions that have openned up their curriculum (joining the OpenCourseWare Consortium) have seen large (and unexpected) benefits in.  These include:

- 35% of prospective students say OCW influenced choice to apply to M.I.T.

- 90% of students, 84% of faculty, 50% of alumni utilize the resource

- 84% of faculty use other colleagues materials for their own teaching!

- 70% of students use site to complement course materials,   

 -46% to research which courses to teach.

Some other (fairly raw) notes from the presentation:

OpenCourseWare began as  a committee in 2000 - president Charles Vest and volunteer consultants from Booz Hamilton.  Their charge was to come up with e-learning strategy for MIT.  At that point, MIT seen as behind.  Thi was the year of the dot com bubble (fathom.com etc.).  They interviewed vendors, faculty, alumni - came to conclusion that MIT should not do: MIT.com

From interviews with 60 faculty members who had put materials on the Web:  they said:

a.  They were doing this to improve their own teaching.

b.   They were not being compensated.

Faculty sharing materials out of "spirit of education".  

Stipulations for making MIT courseware open:

-No MIT credit, no MIT degree, no MIT education.

OpenCourseware is a slice of education - teaching materials.

Susan Hockfield....current MIT president, has embraced idea.

"Knowledge is different from money.  When you spend money you have less.  When you share knowledge it grows.  Example is research."

Surprises:

- content - range and depth

- global community

- benefits host institution (

-over 200 institutions around the world taking up the movement

78% of MIT faculty voluntarily contribute.

Over 500 courses translated into other languages (~400 Chinese courses)

Use iTunesU  (200,000 downloads per month)  YouTube 70,000 downloads per month

- Over 1 million people use MIT content each month throughout the world

Stanford and Yale have begun to feature interactive materials

http://see.stanford.edu/

http://oyc.yale.edu/

Initial funding $36 million dollars.

Steady state for $1,800 courses is 4 million a year 

>1,800 courses (basically the whole curriculum).   Part of commitment when project founded to Mellon and Hewlitt foundation.

> Material becomes available on OpenCourseware after class is taught

> MIT has a CMS system - place where Copyrighted materials can be held.

> Materials put on OCW is licensed under non-commercial Creative Commons license.

Questions I asked - and which Shigeru graciously answered:

• Increasingly in our courses are scarcest commodity in delivering education is effective pedagogy - our most abundant resource is content.  In fact, we spend lots of time trying to work with faculty to pull back on content to add more time for interactive learning and collaboration.   Can you speak to the risk of putting our energy towards openness when there is so much work to do in transforming the traditional lecture class?

• We know that knowledge is constructed.  We also have learned that there is a much longer tail of expertise then we had previously realized?  Any thought in the OCW community for opening up the platforms for community generated tagging of existing materials or uploading of materials?  So the OCW content is a catalyst for new creation of knowledge rather then the end-point?

• MIT has done some really innovative work with Mobile Learning - any connections with OCW (such as making material ready for mobile devices) - Same questions about One Laptop Per Child - such as pre-loaded content?

Questions I would have liked to ask:

Cost of 10 to 15K per course.....can't Web 2.0 tools drive down these costs?

Is part of the 10 - 15K per course lecture capture?   Is lecture capture part of the roadmap for OCW?