iterativelearning

Google Docs is great and certainly has achieved its fair share of fans and positive press (Wired Campus, SquaredPeg) in higher education. Not only does it benefit from high name recognition and a very familiar interface, but it saves faculty from the tedious cycle of downloading and uploading MS Word docs. One of the few features where I find MS Word still wins, though, is when it comes to annotations. Periodically, I want to use the scribble or arrow tool to call a student’s attention to something in their draft (e.g., recommend organizational revisions) and MSW’s tools for doing this are quite handy. I’d love to see the big G add this sometime in the not-too-distant future.

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Google_Docs, Microsoft, Word

This summer I’m teaching a technical writing class and as I’ve done in previous semesters with this online class, I’m using a wiki. One of the collaborative writing assignments is an FAQ and although I don’t require them to use the class wiki for this particular assignment, I encourage them to do so (and for any other similar sort of group work).

In order to get some sense of the collaborative dynamics, I ask them to write a reflection memo that they usually submit a day or two after they’ve submitted the assignment. Today while I was reading their reflection memos I noticed an interesting pattern: heavy reliance on email. They describe how they used email to exchange drafts, delegate responsibilities, and coordinate other related project management details. Now on its face, this doesn’t seem all that remarkable, but rather entirely predictable; however, with this particular class, I aim to make the wiki a more central feature. And even though I’ve posted various materials that describe the ways in which wikis typically work better than email for group projects, their memos document a gravitation towards that ol’ stand-by.

In mulling over this hesitation to adopt the wiki as their workspace, a couple of thoughts come to mind. Maybe it’s not just out of habit, but also an anxiety of working on projects in a more public space. Working in the wiki not only makes their group processes available to the members, but the other students in the class as well. Another speculation is that they perceive it as another kind of LMS or stratified space that should be managed and maintained by me, the instructor. Or maybe it’s just inertia: email works well enough and the evidence for migrating to a wiki needs to be more dramatically displayed when they’ve got busy schedules and a myriad of responsibilities.

Flock has represented a real advancement in web browsers with its emphasis on the integration of popular social tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Digg.

This week it offered a pretty significant update. Two changes I like are how you can use the Media Bar to preview photos and videos and store Twitter searches for future reference.

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Flock

John Timmer of Ars Technica has a piece on California’s Governor Schwarzenegger move towards free, digital textbooks. He points to the economy as one key factor propelling the move, but the one I find particularly persuasive has to do with the very real limitations of a six-year textbook-review cycle, especially when it comes to math and science.

In announcing the decision, Governor Schwarzenegger also emphasized its pedagogical value. Printed textbooks, he noted, are on a six-year approval cycle, meaning that many recent historic and scientific events get left out of the classrooms.

Needless to say, the knowledge base of science and technology grows much faster than at six-year increments. Another interesting and related development will be the platform (e.g., Kindle’s .mobi?, ePub?)

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Ars Technica, John Timmer, California

Like many universities, mine uses WebCT for its LMS. Today, I was working a bit on the home page for the course and while arranging some icons, I was thinking how Ajax could speed up the process. I’m not sure if it’s an accessibility issue (e.g., W3C), but ever since I spent some time with 37signals’ products back in 2006, I’ve been hooked on how it creates a desktop-like experience. Perhaps with Blackboard/WebCT’s recent acquisition of Angel, developers will begin to build it in.

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WebCT, Blackboard, Angel, 37signals, LMS

Like traditional academic departments, writing and tutoring centers have been exploring and implementing digital options. One of the best known among writing centers is Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab. In last month’s issue of Innovate Online, Mark Rabinovich, of Queensborough Community College, shares some insights about iPass – an online tutoring system that they’ve been working with since 2006.

One of the iPass features is a Writing Clinic. In relaying some details on the design history, he points out that it accommodates visual and auditory learning styles, as well as, of course, textual/verbal. The visual component includes capabilities for both image and video; even more intriguing is the audio integration.

The Writing Clinic includes an audio component that allows students to highlight a part of the text, select a voice type (according to pitch and speed), and click a “Read” button. An advanced text-to-speech engine converts the text to an audio recording, compresses it as an MP3 file (as the compact format greatly improves system response time), and sends the file to an embedded audio player in the student’s browser window.

Providing multiple access points seems particularly relevant for tutoring contexts where students typically struggle with the material, and especially for those whose life and work schedules make it difficult to coordinate face-to-face sessions.

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Innovate_Online, iPass

I’ve seen more and more netbooks pop up on campus and in talking with a few students, I’ve been pretty impressed with the stability and robustness of these machines. While there are plenty of netbooks that offer a Microsoft OS, there are also Linux-based flavors such as Ubuntu Netbook Remix, Fedora, and Google’s Android. MIT Technology Review looks at Moblin – a relatively new entrant to the Netbook OS market.

They gave it a spin on three different machines (Lenovo S10, Acer AspireOne, Asus Eee 901) and found it performed pretty well on basic tasks. While it’s not without its problems (e.g., the interface), it certainly seems like one worth keeping an eye on.

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Ubuntu, Moblin, MIT Technology Review, Fedora, netbook