EdVentures in Technology
teaching, learning and change
Archive for TechTalk
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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April 18, 2008 at 11:39 am · Filed under Social Software, TechTalk
Twitter is a pretty simple mechanism. In 140 characters or less, tell the Twitterverse what you are doing, what you’ve been doing, what you plan to do or what is holding you up from doing what needs to be done. Got it?
First, create your account
Twitter is free, but you do need that digital identity so folks can find you. So visit Twitter.com and sign up.
Second, start posting
You really don’t need to do a whole lot if you just want to sample the world of Twitter. Once you are logged into your account, start dropping your Tweets into the What Are You Doing? box.
Third, find folks to follow
Now you will want to build out your network. This is done by finding folks to follow. You may want to find those in your local area or in your industry. You may want to find those who share your interests. Or you may just start picking folks at random. There are a couple of ways to do this. One is to use Twitter’s Search feature to find folks by name or by location. 
Once you find someone that you wish to follow, take a moment to see who they are following. You can quickly and often times effectively expand your network in this fashion, growing geometrically rather than linearly. 
Another recent resource is TwitterPacks. Twitter-ites are adding themselves to this wiki and self-sorting by field, location, and interest.
Fourth, find a good Twitter app
Once your network starts growing, you will likely find that constantly refreshing your Twitter page gets old quick. Once you hit this point, you will want an application that displays your Twitter activity in near real-time. Finding a good Twitter app, or client, is sort of like finding a good pair of shoes. You have to try a few on before you’re happy with the fit. I’ve tried Tweetr, Twhirl and Snitter. I finally settled on Snitter as it had most of the features that I needed/wanted in a Twitter client.
Fifth, manage your network
Your network is organic and I would compare it to the art behind the bonsai tree. Like the bonsai, you need to nurture your network. It requires care, fertilization and sometimes, pruning. There are a number of tools you can use, but that is a topic for a future post. Managing your network is an art form and it deserves greater attention than a few lines can deliver.
Sixth, have fun!
When it comes to Twitter, if you’re not having fun then you are doing something wrong. Twitter is kind of like Cheers, where everybody knows your name. Spend some time Tweeting and responding to other Tweeters and pretty soon, when you come online, your Twitterverse will treat you just like Norm (minus the beer)!
There is a wealth of information out there but I’ve found the Twitter Wiki (http://twitter.pbwiki.com/) to be an incredible resource for all things Twitter.
Tags: twitter, how-to, community, collaboration, network
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April 18, 2008 at 9:36 am · Filed under Social Software, TechTalk
Ellen Paxton (@epaxton) asked a question on LinkedIn, Are You a Twit? A few weeks later, Allejandro Reyes (@successfool) at Successfool.com asked the same thing. Here was my response.
My LinkedIn Answer
“For me, Twitter is my professional development, late breaking news and support system in one tool. It enables me to ask and answer questions from my network and has led to more than one “A-ha!” moment. While some are quick to point out it’s rather unstructured nature, it is that very characteristic that makes it so valuable. The lack of structure has led to some unique and effective community generated processes, such as the open but specific response (
@edventures) and the TwitterPoll. Twitter does take on a life of its own and regular users will find that they will develop a sense of community with those they follow and those that follow them. The sense of ownership is strong and has led to the development of real world networking and collegial opportunities that might not have otherwise presented themselves.”
It’s been over a year since I first heard about and chose to dabble with Twitter. I’d long been frustrated with the one to one limitations of the majority of Instant Messaging services and had longed for a means to collaborate with a number of folks simultaneously. Twitter was the answer to my needs but it took nearly four more months after I used it for it to become the tool I desired.
You see I wanted a network that was a stripped down version of the Facebook/MySpace wall. I wanted a community of contacts with whom I could converse on a variety of topics without all the extraneous chrome that surrounded Social Networking sites. The problem was not with the tool as Twitter was designed for this very thing. The problem was adoption. It wasn’t enough for me to be online, I needed colleagues and contacts to adopt this tool as well. As it turned out, it was simply a matter of time. By last fall, Twitter had, for me, finally reached a critical mass. This was identified not only by the number of Twitter users, but by the number and variety of tools that sprung out of the needs and desires of the community to communicate and collaborate in different ways.
Now, a year later, my very own personal and professional network has grown. I have 421 followers and am following 352 Twitterers from all over the world. Nearly every day I add someone new to my network and as a result I have a steady stream of information flowing through my Twitter client, Snitter. Which begs the question…
How do you keep up with the flood of information?
There is a literal ocean of information that floods through our processors every day: e-mail, RSS feeds, Tweets, IM, SMS, the list is endless. It is impossible to keep up with the torrent and foolish to even try. So rather than spend one’s time trying to consume it all, try a different approach. One of my colleagues (can’t remember who, so drop a comment and I’ll make sure to give you proper attribution) had an analogy about a river and fishing. Mine is quite similar.
When I was stationed in Pensacola, I used to head to Johnson Beach as often as I could to escape back to nature. One of my favorite pastimes was to throw a cast net and see what I caught. I could spend hours casting just to see what I could find, or I could spend just a little time fishing for a specific critter. And as with every endeavor, the more your refine your technique, the better you become and the more efficiently you use your time.
CC Flickr Image by jaredb
Throw a cast net and see what you catch. Sample bits and pieces and if you find something of interest, follow up. Or you can refine your technique by automating the process of searching on a specific keyword that you can identify.
Tags: twittercommunication collaboration community practice
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February 14, 2008 at 1:04 pm · Filed under TechTalk, Web 2.0
From Weblog Tools Collection comes this late breaking item.
Chris Johnston has announced the availability of a public WordPress 2.5 demo site. This site will house the most up to date version of WordPress 2.5 prior to its release in March. This is particularly useful to those who do not wish to setup an SVN install of WordPress on their local machine or web server.
I had problems with a redirect to SiteSpinner using the URL http://wp.chrisjohnston.org but adding /wp-admin to the end got me right to the login screen.
The username/password combo for the demo site is admin/demo
Below are current screenshots of the major working spaces. Click on the image to see a larger version in my Flickr account.
Dashboard
Write
Manage
Design
Comment
Plugins
Users
Settings
Blogged with Flock
Tags: wordpresswp2.5 wordpress2.5 blog
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January 27, 2008 at 10:43 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts, TechTalk
I’ve been offline for quite a while. Much of it has to do with my workload at the University but the other part is that where I live in rural New Hampshire, high-speed Internet access is mostly a sweet dream. Trying to maintain a digital identity with a dial-up connection that maxes out at 22kbps was simply an exercise in frustration. Well even that came to an end last week when our phone line suddenly went dead. Turns out that frost heaves pushed up our buried phone cable (which apparently was poorly buried by whoever installed it) and it was promptly cut when our plow guy cleaned our driveway during the last snowstorm.
That led to a decision point: do we continue to pay for a landline when both my wife and I have cell phones with excellent service here at home? Is it worth it just to suffer through on a questionable dial-up connection? Turns out that neither one of us believed it was. So begins our experiment with disconnecting from the physical and going ethereal (ok, wireless). For the cost of our landline at about $50-60/month and the cost of our dial-up connection via PeoplePC at about $10/month, we could get set up with Verizon’s Broadband Access wireless Internet service at $60/month.
I had reservations about how the service would fare at our home but I figured I’d give it a shot. I tried to swing by our local computer guy but his office is closed on the weekend. So I traveled down to another Verizon store and purchased a USB720 wireless adapter and service.
Interestingly, each connector is assigned its own phone number. I wondered how they managed to keep track of service and it turns out they do key it to a phone number. It strikes me as a bit limiting in that it would almost make more sense to attach an IPv6 number instead but I know little about the infrastructure that comprises their network.I was concerned about signing on to a contract but Verizon does have a 15-day return policy and I figured that would be plenty of time to test the typical use cases I would be employing. So now it came down to testing the device. Installation was a snap. Drop in the CD, run the configuration app wizard, attach the device and connect to the Verizon network. In less than 5 minutes I was online and connecting at 684 Kbps download/480 Kbps upload. Now this isn’t great compared to the possible connect speed of the Broadband Access service (600 Kbps – 1.4 Mbps download/500 Kbps – 800 Kbps upload), but considering that we are on the fringes of the deployment of this service and compared to my old connection speed of 22 kbps, I ain’t complaining!
SpeedTest Results – Round 1
Speed Test Results – Round 2
I was even able to install the VZAccess software on my wife’s laptop and our home desktop so that they could use it as well. So far, so good, as all three connected successfully. The only caveat to the plan is that they have a cap of 5 GB per month:
“If usage exceeds 5 GB per line during any billing period, we reserve the right to reduce throughput speeds of any application that would otherwise exceed such speed to a maximum of approximately 200 Kbps. These speeds are subject to change, in our reasonable discretion, in order to address network issues.”
It will be interesting to see how much bandwidth I consume on a monthly basis and the VZAccess software should allow me to track this.
[tags]verizon, wireless, internet, isp, online, usb720[/tags]
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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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