iterativelearning

Good sessions today at PSU’s Teaching and Learning with Technology conference.

It opened with a keynote by The headliner was Michael Wesch. He, of course, gave us lots to think about, but one detail I’ve been mulling over for the moment is the connection between his early anthropological research in Papua New Guinea and his recent work on the impact of social media in education (Digital Ethnography). More to the point, he explained how when he first traveled to New Guinea he didn’t know the language, was unknown to those who lived there, and generally speaking, had no connection to speak of; and so, he was confronted with the challenge of creating a new identity. He then went on to explain that in a similar way, we are challenged to forge identities in this (comparatively) new and rapidly expanding social media landscape. How will these identities be developed by students in online learning spaces? How will these identities be reflected in personal avatars? Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab is doing some interesting work in this area.

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Michael Wesch, Penn State University, Stanford University

There’s been an expanding circle of discussion over the last few years about education delivered in the spirit of an open source model. And beyond the talk, there have been various implementations of it (MIT, Utah State, Tufts).

Perhaps an interesting variation on this trend is a company like Google who is not in the education business (in the traditional sense anyway), but has their Google Code University in which they make programming classes available via a Creative Commons license. So let’s say you have an interest in learning a programming language but aren’t sure you want to register for a full-fledged, traditional course. And let’s also say, you’re interested in learning Python because you’ve read that it’s one of the better languages for newbies to start with (e.g., 1, 2). Well, Google Code University would be a good option.

They organize the material into three categories: explanatory text, video, and applied exercises. The course designers have done a nice job of analyzing their audience as it doesn’t inundate the newbie with every little nuance related to Python, but enough to get the ‘programming hands’ a little dirty. Another interesting detail has to do with the video; it includes captioning, which not only accommodates hearing-impaired learners, but makes it easy for any one who may have missed a certain technical term, or its pronunciation to go back and see exactly what it was.

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Creative Commons, Google_Code_University

Was skimming one of the recent editions of the The Scout Report and saw this little Scholarpress gem for using your WordPress blog as a course management tool. Of course this has been happening for a while already, but one kind of feature that’s kind of nifty about this plugin is the assignments feature where you can link multiple assignments to one due date.

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Scholarpress, Scout Report, WordPress

Screencasts are a popular alternative to documentation since most people would rather see how something works than search through a manual. Still, some screencasts can be awfully boring (e.g., monotone); others can go over the top with trying to be too funny or sarcastic. The screencast for the task manager Teudeux strikes a nice balance.

Even though it’s in vogue to beat up on PowerPoint presentations, and of course, there are plenty of cases where this is justified. Yet, the fact remains that they are still widely used. I don’t know, maybe it’s something about those concisely cordoned title boxes and bullets that make it just irresistible. So if it’s going to stick around for a while, why not sprinkle it with a little added value?

SlideRocket has a backchannel feature that incorporates Twitter and polling among other things. In education circles, there’s been more buzz about backchannelling both in terms of supporters and detractors. Supporters like how it accommodates multiple conversations; detractors are turned off for that very same reason (e.g., lack of cohesion). More on this can be found at places such as Educause and the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. I think, as it goes with lots of these sorts of tools, instructors should pay careful attention to the specific context and purpose, and if the backchannel option seems to be a good fit, then start looking for some tools for some sort of best practices that helps to avoid common pitfalls.

Interesting evolution of instructional technology going on over at Bowling Green State University where one of the instructors introduces the course syllabus by way of a video embedded in a blog post. Behind the scenes, it looks like they’ve made this very easy by combining WordPress as the authoring platform and Screenr as the video (screencast) tool. Especially for those teaching online, this offers yet another way to enrich the level of social presence. Of course, the possibilities are more than one-way, since it would be very easy for students to produce creative, engaging posts as part of any assignment.

Journals like Kairos show some very creative approaches to sharing research. Although, it’s primarily an academic research journal, the creativity of its multimodal publications, recently got me thinking again about the different questions that instructors who read this journal must grapple with when they start brainstorming strategies for moving away from using MSWord (or any other conventional word processing application) as the default publication platform. With all the hubbub surrounding Web 2.0, they want to move away from requiring students to submit formal writing assignments as static text, but find a few uneasy questions along the way.

• How can I make it easy for students to create engaging multimedia compositions that don’t require them to learn programming?
• How can I find a tool that’s affordable?
• How can I find a platform that makes it easy for multiple peers to comment and question?

Blogs offer an option, but it’s more diary-like orientation isn’t really compatible with an assignment that has a definite closing date and essentially constitutes a different genre. One option that shows some intriguing possibilities is Sophie. Developed by the University of Southern California’s Institute for Media Literacy, it offers many of the capabilities that make a mono-modal composition into a multimodal one (image, video, sound). It also comes with a timeline and a reply/comment feature so readers can interact with authors. This is ideal for instructors who want peer discussion of a student work to occur in a more closed environment than the web, but not to be relegated to something as brittle as the comment feature in MSWord or a similar word-processing app. Sophie definitely deserves exploration by any faculty looking to move student writing or publication projects into realms more consistent with 21st century expression.

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Kairos, Institute for Media Literacy

The Unofficial Apple Weblog reports that iTunes U has reached 100 million downloads. Given this number, I’m curious as to what’s happening post-download: how many people are researching how iTunes U resources are being used? What kinds of effects do they seem to have on learning, especially in Distance Ed environments? One interesting example is from Dani McKinney of SUNY-Fredonia who found a positive effect when it came to taking an exam.

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TUAW, iTunes U

Just a little north of my hometown, Seattle, was this year’s OpenEd conference in Vancouver BC and if you weren’t able to make it (like me), they assembled a montage of different attendees’ impressions that include some folks well known in the Open Education community such as Stephen Downes and David Wiley. One interesting detail that was new to me was the Peer-to-Peer University.

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OER, Open Education, conference

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