EdVentures in Technology
teaching, learning and change
Archive for EdTech
July 30, 2008 at 10:56 am · Filed under EdTech, Higher Education, Teaching & Learning
Gary Brown, Director of Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology, Washington State University
My thoughts/comments are indicated by an asterisk (*).
Worldware refers to materials created for purposes other than teaching and learning.
Wesch – 100% want to learn, 50% want to be in classroom
We are all immigrants because we have yet to learn to think critically.
Students are swirling, using multiple institutions to facilitate learning.
Students who value critical thinking are significantly more likely to value: peer critiques, community, and self-assessment.
Testing to kill learning?
Cites AACU report American Association of Colleges and Universities survey of US 301 Business Leader. (pull quotes)
Nace 2008 webcitation.org/5XoKP5UJh
Erosion of public’s faith and good will toward higher ed.
bush satire comic tell me johnny what have you learned, mcgraw-hill
Bloom warned of the danger of confusing taxonomy with chronology.
Harvard Private Universe Project honors the power and sophoitication of (students) ideas.
The Disengagement Compact – “I won’t expect too much of you if you don’t ask too much of me.”
WSU Critical Thinking Project (http://wsuctproject.wsu.edu)
Great focus slide comparing teacher, learner and learning centricity
- Teacher centric: Assign Task, Study & Perform, Test & Submit
- Learner centric: Cooperate, Study, Interact & Perform, Test & Submit
- Learning centric: Help Define, Study, Collaborate, Discover, Generate; Share Beyond Class
Held an e-Portfolio Contest to identify innovative uses/styles of folio
The ideal ePortfolio continuum model: Select -> Reflect (initial) -> Feedback -> Loop back -> Longitudinal reflection
* How can we leverage this in working with employers?
Process over product (the process can be replicated, the product may or may not)
* I am going to get the slides and provide more reflection later. Gary shared some incredible quotes about the value of the ePortfolio
The Harvesting Gradebook
(WSU is using SharePoint) Activity Planning, Targeted Messaging, Learner Agency, Importing & Exporting Grades, Performance Over Time, Grade Calculations
Need to look into WSU model as this is perfect for our needs!
Student submits works for review using common, public rubric.
Faculty assignments can be reviewed using a similar rubric.
Presentation may be available here.
Tags: camptech08campus-technology campus technology education web2.0 next-gen worldware academic
July 30, 2008 at 9:46 am · Filed under EdTech, Social Software, Teaching & Learning, TechTalk
Susanna Wong Herndon, Associate Director, Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment, University of Texas-Austin
Robert Bruce, Associate Dean, DIIA, University of Texas-Austin
My notes are identified by an asterisk (*).
Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment (DIAA)
- Address teaching, technology and assessment needs
- Work with ALL UT colleges, schools and units
- Power to convene, advise and advocate (responsible for informing Provost and make recommendations)
Supports faculty through:
- instructional and technical consulting
- professional development
- resource development
- project development
- incentives & grants
Next-gen learners
- mobile
- digital
- connected
- experiential
- immediate
- social
* Experiment and learn through identification of cause and effect
They want to be engaged, to be part of a vibrant learning community, and have the opportunity to explore, collaborate, innovate and be challenged.
UT defines Web 2.0 in their environment as:
- social computing
- mobile learning
- educ gaming
- geospatial technologies
- immersive media
As UT scans their horizon, they are looking for tools that will:
- facilitate collaborative and group work
- connect students with ideals and information
- create experience that we could not provide students before
- merge the power of spatial analysis with geo-tagged multimedia
Identification Process
- Technology – what are the characteristics of the tech?
- Benefits – Does the tech address an important problem
- Faculty Readiness – Are faculty ready, willing and able to use it?
- Implementation – Can we implement and support it?
Funding & Dev
- Student development grants
- Provost’s incentive awards
- Digital media support
- Collaborative proposals with colleges
Incubation circles
- Inner ring: tools
- 2nd ring: new media research & support (NMRS)
- 3rd ring: Student employees retention & Training (SERT)
- 4th: faculty incentive grant (FAST TEX), Digital Media Services (DMS)
UTA – Teaching with Technology Resource Page
What is UT keeping up with?
- Changes in technology
- Shifts in student characteristics and expectations
- New approaches to teaching and learning
- The emergence of global communities
- New knowledge
What if we don’t keep up?
- We will have “Digital students at analog schools”
- We will lose out on opportunities to engage students
- We will fail to raise the bar in teaching & learning
- We will fail to be a leader in higher education
- We will fall short in support of the 21st century workplace and society
- We will fail to contirbiture toa culture of innovation
* I changed the bullets above to statements as they seemed to be more powerful in conveying the message about a need for change and attention to our students.
Robert Bruce made a good link back to the tech problems early on in the presentation. The speaker’s IM failed to connect, as she used the tool to stay in touch with her children (said it’s the only way she can reach them). The corollary is that we will fail to connect with our students if we cannot adopt technologies that reach them.
Tags: camptech08campus-technology campus technology education web2.0 next-gem academic
July 29, 2008 at 10:56 am · Filed under EdTech, Teaching & Learning, TechTalk
Sarah Robbins, Ball State University and author of Second Life for Dummies
Pedagogy first, technology second
* Amen!
Students first, universities second
*Again, amen!
Chickering and Gamson 7 Principles for Good Practice in Higher Eduation (look up after)
*wOOt!
PPT is on blog, address on last slide
She is against idea of immigrants v. natives, no supporting data, causes divisiveness and problems. It’s a crutch.
Real difference is in the digital divide in terms of lifestyle, engagement and motivation. UK study – 15-18 yr olds least likely to give up cell phone, older folks more likely to give up cell phone and sex rather than liquor, caffeine and chocolate. *Scary!*
Don’t build a creepy treehouse! (http://technagogy.learningfield.org)
Approach
Identify problems and/or opportunities first, then match technologies with opportunities. What problem will tool X solve? Primary point of hesitancy and push-back. How will this HELP me?
From Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, The Promise -> The Tool -> The Bargain
Establishes offering, expectations, operating norms, and rules of conduct. Focus on The Promise and The Bargain, not The Tool.
What is the Second Life Promise? Increased sense of presence, community bonding, more engaging and immersive learning (when SL used correctly), fun
What is the Second Life Tool? Stigmergy (ability to manipulate environment to send a message to someone who comes after you-we have the ability to build and create, change/modify, leave something for those who follow), Customized Avatars (allowing students to make changes, reading the student by who they choose or allow students to role play in a realistic setting), Global Community , Multi-modal Communication (text chat, voice 1 to 1, group and area and ability to emote)
She cites a great example of using it to teach rejection and social interactions such as discrimination in a safe environment.
Sarah also shared a great example of modifying environment to experience LD life, what happens when your environment is upside down? How do you cope?
What is the Second Life Bargain? What we need to accept: There is a Learning Curve (install and learn to get around, build avatar, learn to build, learn to script), Students need to suspend self-limitations (Loyalist College Border Crossing), That we are using the tool as the best, justified use of the tools, Necessary expertise to serve as guide, advisor, AND instructor.
Resources
http://ubernoggin.com
http://SL-educationblog.org
SLED Mailing List
SLRL Mailing List
SL Avatar: Intellagirl Tully
http://intellagirl.com
Tags: camptech08campus-technology campus technology education seond-life SL
July 29, 2008 at 10:08 am · Filed under EdTech, Social Software, TechTalk
Jim Wolfgang, Director, Georgia Digital Innovation Group, Georgia College and State University
Keith Politte, Corporate Relations Officer, University of Missouri
Frank Lowney, Manager, Web Enabled Resources and Professor of Educational Foundations, Georgia College and State University
*Indicates my thoughts
Service-learning: The campus and beyond
Developing a community, a sense of belonging and common purpose/intent
*The bourgeoning growth of offline apps: Google Gears, Adobe AIR, MS Silverlight leading to innovation.
Real world application – Reynolds Journalism Institute “programming” competition
http://rji.missouri.edu
*Integrate technology using real world projects that lead to a real product/service as opposed to a theoretical one. Develop local history resources, develop materials to benefit your peers, profession, community.
*Beginning to see my “need” for an iPod Touch
Budget – how do you develop these innovations without money? Approach Provost for innovation funding – cross-disciplinary. Tell story to possible supporters. Match funds from other sources. Interdisciplinary Innovations Fund, Univ of Missouri 2008-09 Projects – iPhone Student Developer Competition, Building Dashboard, Sustainable Agriculture, FilmTech, Solar Decathlon
*Market and reach out!
Business of Innovation – how do you develop your innovative practice?
Consider: ownership, marketing, branding, promotion
ROI, it’s not all about money!
How others are using web 2.0 beyond the classroom?
*PELI, touted at #camptech08 for outreach and resource research and connection facilitation. I forgot to mention how we’d like to work with the State Dept and aid orgs for mapping and developing complementary efforts
Tags: camptech08campus-technology campus technology education web2.0
July 29, 2008 at 9:06 am · Filed under EdTech, TechTalk
Notes to be filled in later, so stay tuned.
Faith in technology – tech will solve our problems
Extend education will increase excellence
We can’t see how amazing the age we live in is.
Progression of phones – Switchboard in Mayberry to cell phones for 8-year olds
Adoption 85 yrs for phone, decade for cells
Ray Kurzweil –
Static v. dynamic
portfolios are a representation but are not learning
How do we leverage technology for learning, for synthesis rather than re-presentation?
Frank Rhodes, Creation of the Future
How do we measure a university, what would we do if we were to start a university today?
Context to Core
ASU wants to go from 60K to 100K students, how long can we compete when we try to do it all ourselves? At what point are we wasting our resources trying to replicate what others can provide for less?
“Core processes… are the ones that differentiate you… so that customers select you over your competition. Everything else is context.” – Geoffrey Moore
How do we move from context to core? Eliminate inefficiencies, redundancies…
Research – The concept of one, do it once, do it well, do it everywhere
The concept of zero – don’t do it, let someone else who is better at what they do, do it for you. It’s a simple matter of scale, and Service Level Agreements.
Cop to Concierge
Amazon.com-ification – cut out the middleman
Info to Intelligence
Fractured business intelligence – Dashboards to die for
Create a data singularity where you train people to manage data from dashboards rather than fracturing their attention and time
Cattle-car to 1:1
Promote don’t prevent technology adoption on campus. Provide apps online, provide anytime, anywhere learning.
Physical to digital
Burn the libraries, stop air conditioning the books
We need change now
Traditional to hybrid
Abilene Christian University – 0 to warp speed
Is it time for a radical infusion of tech into higher ed?
Does the role of IT declien?
Does the CIO cease to be a strategic officer?
Tags: camptech08campus-technology campus technology conference education adrian-sannier asu
June 19, 2008 at 2:58 pm · Filed under EdTech, Random Thoughts, TechTalk
If you don’t, you soon may if many wiki platforms have success in promoting their Firefox extension for the Universal Edit Button. The idea is akin to the now almost ubiquitous RSS icon. When you come across a page that is editable, this icon will appear in your address bar letting you know that you have the ability to edit this page. It is hoped that this branding will serve as an open invitation resulting in an increase in the participatory culture that has made the wiki world so unique.
While a terrific step in the right direction, my desire is that wiki developers will seriously consider embedding this functionality into the web experience such that an extension is unnecessary.
“The amazing quality of many wikis, especially wikipedia, makes people afraid to contribute. But wikis want you to edit them. This button is meant as an invitation for surfers to contribute as much or as little as they want.” — Ehud Lamm.
Thanks to ReadWriteWeb for the alert.
Photo and quote provided by UniversalEditButton.org
Tags: wiki, universal-edit-button, ueb, edit, participate, culture
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June 18, 2008 at 9:05 pm · Filed under EdTech, Random Thoughts, Web 2.0
Like many others in the EdTech arena, I’ve been playing about with the tag/word cloud imaging app Wordle. Below is an image which represents the data in my most recent C.V. Interesting to note that in a technology career of nearly 20 years, the most prevalent terms, outside of technology and my online persona EdVentures, are: learning, development and management.
Tags: wordlecv resume vita tagcloud wordcloud visualization
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March 28, 2008 at 5:39 pm · Filed under EdTech, Higher Education, PSU E-Learning Blog
A busy day in RSS-Land. These just flew across my Google Reader account. Apparently the US Patent & Trademark Office (USP&TO) has issued a preliminary finding that rejects all 44 of Blackboard’s patent claims. According to both Desire2Learn and Blackboard, this is just the first step in a lengthy review process but it is interesting for those of us who have been following this saga. Desire2Learn has made a PDF copy of this finding available on their website here.
From Desire2Learn:
On March 25, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued its Non-Final Action on the re-examination of the Blackboard Patent. We are studying the document, found here, but in short, the PTO has rejected all 44 of Blackboard’s claims. We caution that this is a NON-final action; both Blackboard and Desire2Learn will have an opportunity to comment before a final action will issue, and after that, the decision will be subject to appeals.However, we’re still pleased.
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From Blackboard:
Dear Blackboard Community,
Today, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a first Office Action in the reexamination proceeding regarding Blackboard’s U.S. Patent 6,988,138 (“the ’138 Patent”). This Office Action was expected and is the first step in a reexamination process that often takes years to complete. It has no effect on the validity of the patent, the lawsuit between Blackboard and Desire2Learn or the pending injunction against Desire2Learn.
We remain very confident in the strength of our patent and have provided more information about today’s announcement should you have questions. Please see www.blackboard.com/patent for more information.
View Entry
All of this follows on the heels of Blackboard’s victory in their lawsuit against Desire2Learn a few weeks ago.
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Tags: blackboard, patent, lawsuit, desire2learn
December 6, 2007 at 8:00 am · Filed under EdTech, Higher Education, PSU, PSU E-Learning Blog, Social Software, TechTalk
Updated to include August through December 2007 releases
Educause has a series that highlights specific current technologies and boils them down into a mini-sheet that tech coordinators and advocates can use on their own campus. Unlike some of the Educause resources which require membership, this series is open to the general public which means that K-12 folks can access them as well. New brief sheets have followed a monthly publishing schedule with the latest being the Twitter brief posted just this month.
The series can be found here, but the individual links of papers (in PDF format) posted as of 19 July 2007 are listed below. I find looking at the timeline of releases interesting from an anthropological perspective as it illustrates where the edtech interest was focused over the past two years that these briefs have been published.
7 Things You Should Know About:
[tags]educause, 7things, technology, edtech, briefsheet, whitepaper[/tags]
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July 11, 2007 at 4:03 pm · Filed under EdTech, Higher Education, PSU E-Learning Blog
Announced at the corporate keynote at BbWorld07, SafeAssign is a plagiarism prevention service integrated with the LMS that attempt to uncover and/or deter plagiarism while educating the campus community about what plagiarism is. Leveraging a dedicated assignment tool, assignments are uploaded to a central service which compares the submission against their databases and other submitted works held in the Global Reference Database. Any institution running any of the newer Blackboard Learning Systems is eligible to download and install the PowerLink/Building Block for their campus free of charge. Future platform deliveries will have this service embedded and will not require separate installation.
SafeAssign checks submitted papers (Word, RTF, PDF, TXT, HTML and ZIP packages of these) against the Internet using Windows Live Search technology. Blackboard has partnered with ProQuest ABI/Inform and searches against their 2.5 million articles database. SafeAssign also checks against a local institutional database of locally submitted work, as well as a Global Reference Database which is comprised of submissions volunteered by students from SafeAssign campuses. Obviously this database is expected to grow over time as the SafeAssign system is adopted by Blackboard institutions. It is important to note that the Global Reference Database is an opt-in service that students may elect to take advantage of in order to protect their own work.
Beyond the course integration aspect, SafeAssign also boasts a Direct Submit feature that allows faculty (not students as of the current release) to check documents on a “one-off” basis if they receive work that triggers their “spidey-sense.”
Gradebook integration is not yet available for CE/Vista campuses meaning that after the creation of the assignment, the faculty member will also need to create a new grading column in order to provide a grade value. It is expected that a patch will be issued that will provide this service in the coming months.
General Counsel Matthew Small noted that this new service will in no way affect the PowerLink or Building Block servicing TurnItIn, and the general flavor is that TurnItIn is still considered a strong corporate partner. Greg Ritter pointed out that those institutions currently employing TurnItIn may be loath to move away and abandon the student submissions collected through their use of the TurnItIn service.
[tags]blackboard, bbworld07, safeassign, turnitin, plagiarism[/tags]
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