Was doing some work in Ubuntu today and discovered an interesting little shortcut (or at least alternative for accessing files).

Quick Background
When I want to quickly navigate to a specific application, I usually press Alt+Tab … but what I didn’t know is what happens if I let the cursor hang or pause for a couple of seconds over an application that has more than one window open … it displays all the active sub-windows.

Example
So for example, let’s say I have the following applications open: Firefox, Libre Office, Thunderbird, and Banshee. And in Libre Office I have 3 documents I’m working on. When I Alt+Tab to skim through the open apps and then let my cursor hang or pause over Libre, the system will display all 3 docs (which I can then quickly access with a simple click).

… innovative thinking has less to do with original creations and more to do with creatively combining existing resources (p. 23)

via: (2010) Design Literacies, Learning and Innovation in the Digital Age

As the story was wrapping up, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone suggested Kickstarter as a way to re-start it?

A quick post on a little idiosyncrasy with Zotero.

Normally, when I click the icon in the address bar, Zotero automatically downloads the cite to whichever folder I have highlighted (e.g., Instructional Design), but when using Gale this doesn’t seem to happen. Not a big deal in the grand scheme, … so I’d do a quick global library search, then find, select and drag it to the desired library.

Still curious, though, and looking for an opportunity to procrastinate, I did a little investigation. It turns out that the Gale cites are downloaded as a top-level item to the main, “My Library” folder. While it still requires a drag-and-drop, I’m spared the extra step of entering a title search.

Maybe there’s a work-around or something obvious I’m missing. If not, I hope this little tidbit is helpful.

… the problem was not that companies overpromise, but that schools often do not properly deploy the products or train teachers to use them.

Finger-pointing aside, I think there would be many teachers who would actually agree that one of the factors is the lack of training (and lack of money to make that training possible). Of course, training also has its detractors who argue over ROI. But where I think training gets a bad reputation is its short-sightedness. Instead of a quick one or two-day workshop to learn the basic functionalities of the software, why not also complement it with a more sustained learning initiative designed to facilitate creative strategies for engaging students? Why not have the teachers work with the tool on a regular basis and collaborate with their colleagues on different approaches to using it in their classrooms? Instead of setting it up as a workshop, perhaps a studio concept might be more appropriate?

Via Not[Trivial]

You can find more info here.

She and her Duke colleagues worked with Apple to give every entering freshmen an iPod, and then they sat back and watched as students and teachers developed innovate [sic] and collaborative ways to incorporate iPods into their work … No one could have predicted all the ways the iPods enhanced learning once they were in the hands of students and teachers — and that’s a central point of Cathy Davidson’s new book Now You See It.

So what was the key ingredient to this deviation from the established line of thought? Was it the demographic (e.g., college-aged students as opposed to a younger, K-12 crowd)? Were students asked to take more active roles in the instructional designs? Or was it just an outlier? I’m curious to know if Davidson elaborates on this in her book.

When Web 2.0 first started to catch fire among faculty teaching online, the widespread assumption was that the NetGen students would be extremely adept at using the tools because they used them all the time to connect with their friends, check out new music and videos, and so on. But some recent research has been chipping away at this assumption (e.g., Digital Learners not Digital Natives and Not so techno-savvy).

Continuing this trend is a story from the Chronicle of Higher Ed. on researchers from the Community College Research Center at Columbia’s Teacher College who looked at students taking online classes from various community colleges in Washington state. One of the key take-aways was how this assumption overlooks the factor of socio-economics:

People assume this generation is super-technologically sophisticated, but that’s not necessarily true, especially in the community-college population, which tends to be low income, disadvantaged …

As anyone who has taught online already knows, blogs certainly have solid potential as a platform for facilitating discussions, but as blogs mature, students can perceive them as just another assignment-box to check. Aware of this reality, teachers then don their creativity caps with the hope of designing blog assignments that encourage discussions to flow more organically, where students are participating in more self-directed styles. Who knows, maybe a more topically organized interface would allow for better usability, and therefore help faculty with meeting this goal? Perhaps the topics could be arranged in one or more circles with each topic being click-able. And to add a little more usability sugar to the mix, maybe topics could be named (e.g., folksonomy) and managed by assigned student-facilitators. Perhaps it’s time to think about alternative designs for the education blog.

Flickr image credit: cogdogblog