Wasn't the Internet Cute Back in 1981

This vintage news report demonstrates how the news media had no real clue about the possibilities of the Internet.

Hat Tip: IO9

Helpful Reminder for All Designers

As we go about our daily design efforts under the pressure of increasingly tight schedules we sometimes forget about the people who will be sitting in front of their computer screens trying to digest the elearning we develop. This presentation - Dumping the Drone - by Cathy Moore is a helpful reminder of how we should be developing content.

Dump the Drone: Livelier Elearning

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: design instructional)

del.icio.us Tags: instructional design,instruction,writing

What Can Training Departments Learn from Our President's Experiences

A report in the New York Times last Friday provides an interesting parable for the corporate training world that is looking towards Web 2.0 as a new avenue to deliver training. The article, titled Obama 2.0: Who's Leading Who?, notes that the leadership team around our new Chief Executive is discovering that once they let the genie out of the bottle they cannot get him back in. At the heart of the story is the fact that the grassroots elements that Team Obama connected with, in part using web 2.0 technology, are now continuing to demand the face time they had during the campaign.

Not everyone is sure, however, that once in office, President Obama will be able to marshall his online forces and engage them against his targets. Now organized, they may decide to move against him.

That’s already happened, wrote Ari Melber yesterday at the Nation, noting that the previous week a question about whether Obama would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate possible Bush Administration war crimes had been voted to the top of citizens’ questions submitted to the new administration via Change.gov. An Obama spokesman tried to dodge the question, but it didn’t go away:

It is striking that Obama’s aides, who helped win the election by harnessing new media, believed they could just spin away from their online interlocutors. Instead, the move backfired immediately. Bob Fertik, the activist who submitted the question, campaigned for it; and progressive websites, including thenation.com, blasted the dodge. Within a day, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann picked up the story. A day later, Obama was compelled to answer the question in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, who quoted it and pressed Obama with two follow-ups. Obama’s answer, which prioritized moving “forward” but did not rule out a special prosecutor, made the front page of the January 12 New York Times.

So what does this mean for corporate training departments. I would suggest it means the end of the learning management system as a gatekeeper for training. It could signal the end of the existing static training experience (whether in the classroom or over the corporate intranet) in which information is dumped on the learner with a few exercises or multiple choice questions thrown in to break up the monotony. More importantly, learners are not going to stand by and just absorb information and then walk away and do what the training intended them to do. Web 2.0 will no longer allow that.

At least in the classroom they can ask questions and talk among themselves. I think in the elearning environment the days of the standard elearning course has to come to an end. Business likes elearning because the learner can take it at any time, any where. More importantly, the learner can be easily interrupted and pulled out of the learning experience to handle more profitable issues. If the training is programmed with bookmarking, the learner will not even lose their place.

In the future, elearning cannot be delivered in this fashion. The new generation of workers are not going to allow it. They are going to require that they have the ability to communicate with an expert and with one another. It is going to require creation of a cadre who will take the course at the same time and will have access to some form of online chat so that they can talk to one another as well as to a subject matter expert. The SME does not need to actively present the material, but he or she will be actively monitoring the chat session to answer questions as they appear.

Most important, it is going to require that the top-down model of communication in the company is going to have to relinquish some control over the learning environment.

Hat Tip to Will Thalheimer

del.icio.us Tags: elearning,learning,Web 2.0

Better Read then Dead

Okay, I know that is mighty strange headline for a blog post, but what the heck, I’m in that kind of mood. The point I’m trying to make is that I used to think I could never read an ebook. I always thought that I had to have  the dead tree version of a book to be able to enjoy the read.

I want to say right now: I WAS WRONG!!!!

To the right you see my most recent gadget. It’s a Samsung Blackjack; not as sexy as an Apple  iPhone, but for my money its just as good. I’ve coupled it with my home version of Microsoft Office 2007 so I can create and edit documents to my heart’s content.

But my most recent addition to my Blackjack is the addition of Mobipocket ebook Reader. This free software has turned my Blackjack into a mobile library of books and documents. My most recent read, which I highly recommend, is Cory Doctrow’s Little Brother, a dystopian tale of the Department of Homeland Security run amok and the efforts of a band of teenagers to resist.

Other books I have read using my Blackjack include:

• Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle & Michael Flynn
• West of Honor by Jerry Pournelle
• The Scarlet Plague By Jack London
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons by F Scott Fitzgerald
• Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (in progress)

All of these book, except for Atlas Shrugged are available for free. Mobipocket ebook Reader also provides the ability to import web documents, .pdf files, and office documents and converts them to their reader. Whenever I connect my Blackjack to my computer Mobipocket will ask if I want to synchronize my library. I have met the future and it is wonderful.

del.icio.us Tags: ebooks,technology

Learning in Hard Economic Times: A Delicate Balancing Act

Harold Jarche has an interesting post concerning innovation and learning that I post here in its entirety.

In Innovating in the Great Disruption, Scott Anthony suggests three disciplines necessary to foster innovation in difficult economic times - placing a premium on progress; mastering paradox; and learning to love the low end. He also discusses the importance of learning;

" Innovators will need to continue to find creative, cheap ways to bring their ideas forward. Fortunately, they can tap into a plethora of powerful tools to facilitate rapid learning."

Rapid learning is not PowerPoint slides turned into online courses but rather increasing the ways to connect ideas and people. This is the future of training and e-learning, or what I call ABC (anything but courses). Anthonys third point, love the low end, also speaks to the use of inexpensive tools such as web services or open source software. If learning professionals can be seen as catalysts for innovation, then even in difficult times will their future look bright.

While I will agree that the corporate world is mistaken in believing that a one-day or two-day training program is sufficient to develop employees in a specific process, I fear that Harold is going overboard with his "ABC" idea. Without a base, formal presentation of some sort to provide a framework for ongoing learning between people you could end up with a case of the blind men describing the elephant.

Harold is correct in stating that "[r]apid learning is not turning PowerPoint slides into online courses," but it is also not a matter of setting up a bunch of social web services to facilitate discussion. In fact what is telling about the quote he provides is what preceded it.

While more and more companies recognize the name of the game is transformation, the tolerance for blind experimentation has never been lower.

And that is too true. In times like these, the corporate world looks to cost centers such as training as the first place to make cuts. So any proposed innovation will require a balance between something old and something new, which is what I suggested way back in 2007.

Harold Jarche » Innovation and Learning

del.icio.us Tags: learning,informal learning,formal learning

Lunch and Learning Objectives

 Will Thalheimer has been providing a series of brown bag webinars called Webinoshs and the latest is about learning objectives. Here's the 411:

FREE Webinosh on Instructional Objectives This Friday January 9th, I will talk about Instructional Objectives, and some research, thereof. Instructional Objectives:

• Do they produce learning results?
• Are they all the same?
• Do we have to use them?
• Do prequestions work just as well?
• How specifically do they have to be worded?
• Can I use the word "Understand"? Answer: In some of them, but not others.
• Hey Will, do you have a new taxonomy for us?

To sign-up just go to https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/247154110.

del.icio.us Tags: learning objectives,learning,objectives

Life’s (and death’s) little jokes

 

I always get a kick out of seeing headlines  like this. No disrespect intended, but if the gentleman is dead, then he is no longer the oldest man in the United States.

It reminds us once again that the English language is a very harsh taskmaster. I know they used this caption because until he died he represented the oldest man, but that’s no longer the case.

Teaching With Online Games - Dec. 11th

This seems like an ambitious topic to cover in only one hour, but I guess for free you can't go wrong. Elluminate is hosting this presentation By Dr. David Gibson of the University of Vermont.

Can a game or simulation teach a teacher? Can it improve one's knowledge and skill as an instructor? As part of an international dialog between researchers in educational technology, this key question and many more related to it have led to this new collection of ideas, research and reflections by researchers looking for answers.This session is intended for a broad audience of anyone who is looking into games and simulations with an eye to their potential for improving teaching and learning. If this is you, then welcome to an emerging community!

Elluminate - Where Bright Ideas Meet

Going Too Far with Online Interactivity?

Okay, I'm for making learning more interactive as much as the next person, but I think this proposal in an otherwise interesting post by Dr. Trent Batson in Campus Technology - Tipping Point for "Content"--Dynamic Interaction, Not Static Stuff - is taking immersion a little too far.

Or a class discussion carried on in a chat room (while in a real classroom) so students can interact with each other as much as with the teacher.

Why would anyone want to have learners who are gathered together in a real classroom carry on their discussion through an online chat room? I have a difficult time getting around the vision of a room full of learners all studiously clicking away at their i-Phones, laptops, etc. without a word being said.

About the only value that I can see from this exercise is that it creates a record of the conversations through the chat room log. If that's what a teacher wants then just buy a digital tape recorder.

Learning "Webinoshes"

Will Thalheimer's newsletter announced the following two Webinoshes

Upcoming Schedule:

Friday November 7th, Noon U.S. East Coast Time Can We Improve Our Smile Sheets? Link to Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/345686876

Friday November 21st, Noon U.S. East Coast Time Does Context Matter? Link to Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/796752726

Available through both the phone and VOIP so folks from around the world can attend.

Will describes his webinoshes as "short, intimate webinars covering one essential topic in human learning and performance. I add questions, learning myths, and question-and-answer sessions (where you can ask me anything) to the mix to keep things interesting. These Brown Bag Learning experiences are provided using a "Subscription Learning" methodology, so that themes will be repeated over time for deeper, more impactful learning.

Chrome's impact on Web-based Learning

With Google's release of Chrome, it's new browser, one has to wonder what impact it will have on the web-based learning development community. For those of us who create courseware for the corporate world we have long used Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the standard by which we measure the functionality of our output.

Part of this is because the corporate world has viewed Microsoft and its products, the software equivalent of General Motors. And to paraphrase the old saying, "What's good for Microsoft is good for the country." (In fairness, it appears that saying was a mis-characterization of what Charles Wilson, then CEO of GM actually said. ) Internet Explorer is so intertwined with the Window's operating system that it has become defacto corporate browser of choice.

But can this corporate mindset stand much longer. Mozilla Firefox is slowly cutting into IE's overall hold as the world's preferred browser. In the past eight months IE's percentage of the browser market has decreased over 6 percent, although it still controls a large 73% market share. It will definitely take a more secure release before Chrome can even be considered by the corporate world. But the overall concept is intriguing because it is taking Microsoft's approach to grabbing the lion's share of the browser market but in reverse. By bundling it with Google Gears, it has made it easy to use Google's online office application tools including setting up desktop icons to access Google Docs, Google Gmail, etc.

Time will tell whether Chrome becomes a hit or miss, but my gut feeling is that it will find its niche market in the small and medium corporate world. Google already bundles secure solutions with its other main services and Chrome could become the icing on the cake. Even if Chrome does not catch on, the publicity will make people start to reconsider IE and we, as an industry, will no longer be able to rely on IE as the sole yardstick for usability.

del.icio.us Tags: browsers,Microsoft,Google

Sunday Morning Respite

I’d never heard of Webb Wilder until today. Wikipedia describes him as "a musician who famously mixes the sounds of country, surf guitar and rock & roll known as "swampedelic". He also produced an award-winning collection of short films under the title of Corn Flicks." Below are two videos that Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds displayed on his blog this weekend.

The first is a 1989 music video that cpatures Webb's musical stylings.

The second video is a short that provides a taste of his "Corn Flicks" films.

Does it have anything to do with learning, training, or education? Nahh, but it is certainly fun to watch and listen to.

Controlling the Information Fire Hose

I confess, I’m an information junkie. Left to my own devices I would spend my life researching and reading about the things that interest me. The wonder of the Internet is that I can do this from the comfort of my own home thanks to my computer and the Internet. For instance, I have always had a fascination with the history of baseball and like to dabble in researching some arcane aspect of it. In the past, if I wanted to read newspaper and magazine accounts from the period I was researching I would have to visit a library and crank up the microfilm machine. Now many of these sources – both still publishing and deceased – can be found on the web.

So where am I going with this? I was inspired to write this by Jay Cross who posted a blog entry on his Informal Learning Blog entitled Flow of Information. He wrote:

Google Reader is excellent for managing your subscriptions with RSS. Google Reader makes it easy to subscribe to a site, to see what’s new, and to read previously unread items. Sometimes that works for me; other times I might prefer picking through a list of titles for what I want or having articles flow by one-by-one.

I commented on that post that “I am constantly battling information overdose and RSS feeds are the hypodermic needle that delivers my fix.” It’s true. I am constantly battling to maintain some control over my feeds. Constantly having to reluctantly pick and choose who I might read. At the present I have more than 90 different subscriptions just for educational feeds. I have a separate RSS reader for general feeds that number more than 40 feeds. What can I say, I’m a collector. Can I read them all every day? No, at best I can only glance at their titles.

Which got me thinking about my previous career path as a newspaper journalist. One of the hardest tasks for an editor is to write an attention grabbing headline. With the amount of news slotted into a daily newspaper or a weekly news magazine articles are constantly jostling for your attention, and their means of doing so was with headlines, those big bold titles made up of three or four words. They are like carnival sideshow barkers competing to grab your attention.

Now, with the Internet and social media giving everyone the capability to be journalists the competition for attention is getting even tougher. We all need to learn how to write headlines. Think of the occasions we write headlines:

• Every time we complete an email subject line
• Posting a blog entry
• Creation of a wiki entry

Each time we are fighting to grab our readers’ attention. Yet, I think little thought is given to what we name them especially email subject lines. As a result nuggets of important information gets missed because its just one drop in the spray of water from a fire hose.

Campus Technology 2008 - Day 2: Planning and Budgeting panel discussion

This session is a panel discussion of planning and budgeting for the next-gen classroom. The panel includes

• Moderator Scott Walker of Waveguide Consulting, Inc.
• Panelists:
• Randy Jackson, University of Washington, Seattle - 20 year veteran of providing educational technology leadership at the university. His campus is large and diverse.
• Michael Kubit, Case Western Reserve University - director of MediaVision, part of IT - a 25 year veteran - Case Western is a private research university. The university has 200+ technology enhanced classrooms that are refreshed every 5 years.
• Matthew Silverman, George Mason University - about 30,000 students - 138 technology-enhanced classrooms - four standard installations - classrooms are monitored and managed via the network.

First question: What are the key drivers to funding technology on your campus?

Randy: Upgrading older campus buildings that are between 80 to 100 years old. We contact the state legislature and ask for electrical upgrade for safety and once funding is approved we ask to upgrade technology.

Michael: The primary driver is does the classroom scale and can we support with the staff we currently have. You can design a facility hoping you will get the staff. We design rooms for middle of the adoption curve, we design to needs of the faculty. What goes into the room is designed to 80% of our faculty.

Matthew: We try to ensure that the faculty can move from classroom to classroom and they will find most of the same equipment. We are playing a lot of catchup.

Second question: Do you have any good metrics for use in technology planning and budgeting?

Randy: As far as FTE staffing, its a different argument from technology planning. We know we need staff to support it, but on our campus its a separate argument. Facilities Design Instruction Manual expresses what we want our classrooms to look like. We update it constantly and its available to the campus and consultants. By documenting this it provides details on what you need.

Michael: We develop a "total cost of ownership" of classroom - develop a five-year plan that is readily available and then we have to calculate operating costs which cannot be neglected. It's easy to get capital money to build, but more difficult to get operating costs. Key is to find problems before a professor does, because don't want the professor lectures to be delayed while we fix equipment.

Matthew: We use specific budget numbers based on our standards to begin budget process.

Third question: What kind of strategies of breaking a cycle of putting technology improvements on back burner?

Randy: We used to look at technology in classroom as items you put in there, but now with next-gen you have to also consider lighting and ambient sound. Part of this is being aware of issues and making the argument that we need to consider these issues.

Matthew: We all have instances of classrooms that are horrible, and we have got the major stakeholders in the classroom to have them experience sitting in these classrooms so that they can appreciate the student's experience.

Fourth question: what about integrating technology into historic buildings

Randy: Dealt with it in several ways, we save the shell and completely gutted the inside of these buildings because they are incompatible for technology. Fortunately these buildings are not "historic" that prohibit touching the interiors. We use ADA architecture.

Michael: You need to strike a balance between form and fashion. We try to keep it simple so we use simple switch zoning so not complicated and costs. Need to work with physical plant people so that when renovations are proposed you have a seat at the table.

Fifth question: What is a next-gen classroom for you?

Randy: For me it means interactivity and flexibility. If you are not letting student to be connected and interact with each other. It involves room space and technology. Current popular items is coursecasting and audience response. We can measure use by surveys and downloads.

Michael: In 2002 we innovated our own lecture capture and distribution. Lecture capture provided students with opportunity to review lectures. Provide mp3s of lectures, but not downloading them, surveyed them and they said that online courses were visually rich and audio-only lectures were not useful. Students are not enamored by technology, they are not impressed by it or surprised by it. Developing "classroom-flip" - faculty pre-recorded lecture and in classroom they are working on homework in classroom.

Campus Technology 2008, Day 2: Podcasting as Educational Inspiration at UConn

The first breakout session was presented by David Miller, a professor of Psychology at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Two main podcast series produced at UConn:

1. Icube: Issues in Intro: General Psychology
2. Animal Behavior

Many students coming into college not knowing what a podcast is, and the specific requirements to listen to a podcast. He said he has to tell his students they don’t have to buy a podcast. He said a whole ecosystem has grown around the iPod. There has been a real cultural shift in portable media from transistor radio to the iPod and iPhone. He shows off the accessories available for the iPod ranging from iBoxers to a toilet dispenser with an iPod docking station.

Why should we think about podcasting? he posed. It is a course enhancement with added depth and content beyond classroom discussions. It can also promote interaction between students and professors including student produced content. “It shrinks a large class,” he said. Some professors use podcasts to deliver content in order to free up classroom for other purposes. Lectures can be recorded to help out students who cannot attend class because of inclement weather or specific religious holidays.

Types of podcasts

• Basic – audio only
• Enhanced podcast includes
  • Audio
  • Images
  • Chapter stops

He said there are some students who refuse to use iTunes so to resolve that problem he also generates the podcast as a .mov. He then looked at the use of podcasts to present lectures. He said many fear that using podcasting to present lectures will cut into notetaking. He said  that if you do course cast you could use class time for examples/applications, demonstrations, videos, clicker interactivity, and student presentation.

He said his podcasts for reflection and expansion on in-classroom lectures, to clarify comments, to generate interaction by recording student/professor lectures. For ICube there are three components

• Weekly discussions with students
• Precasts – previews of what is going to occur in the next class – main points to look for in the next lecture. They stay up the entire semester. Since I don’t coursecast, people who miss a class know what the main points were and can look for them in a classmates’ notes.
• Postcasts – If he does not feel that he was clear about a topic in the class he can reiterate the important points from the lecture. These are not planned.

Based on evaluations, 41% of his students would listen to the weekly discussions and over 50% for the precasts. The precasts were extremely popular. He also found, and he said he couldn’t figure out why, his podcasts are listened to internationally.

His second podcast is for his animal behaviors class. He has a number of Honors students. The Honors students get Honors credit for participating in the discussion podcasts.

He also podcasts Review sessions before tests. Open only to Introductory Psychology class. He gives two midterms and a final and he holds review sessions that he records. The sessions are used to clarify and amplify lectures, and he thought it would be great to podcast the sessions. He also uses special podcasts to acknowledge highly successful students and asks them to explain what special skills or tools they use to succeed in the class.

Other uses outside the classroom

• Student interviews about freshmen impressions of his/her experience at UConn as well as seniors about to graduate. They are asked about their experiences.
• Freshman orientation: The orientation describes the differences between high school and university academic requirements.

How to podcast

1. Record using a USB microphone and a mixer hooked to a computer, he is his own audio engineer.
2. Editing software for post production
3. Upload to site such as libsync (liberated syndication)
4. Generate RSS feed

Audio Capture advice

1. Decide whether to capture in stereo or mono – he recommends recording in Stereo
2. Adjust the gain to proper level
3. Have a theme song or identifier, he is in a rock band "Off Yer Rockers" as lead singer and rhythm guitar so he recorded his own music.
4. Introduce each episode
5. "Animate" your voice; exaggerate
6. Use students' first names only
7. Avoid distracting noises
8. No background music
9. For enhanced podcasts be mindful of copyright

Audio Editing Advice

1. Edit out silence and speech fillters
2. Mono can be a smaller file, but stereo provides quality
3. Adjust levels either in your audio editing software or with The Levelator freeware that does it for you .
4. Podcasting for Dummies

Campus Technology 2008 Session 3: Technology-enhanced Strategies for Engaging Your Learner

The final session of Day 1 was presented by Bethany Bovard, Instructional Designer, New Mexico State University. She posed the question What is Engagement? She said there is a disconnect on instructional design if the teacher thinks engagement is student excitement over showing what they have read the night before while the learner thinks it means completing homework assignments. Participants brainstormed over what it means to be engaged.

• Active listening and participation
• Taking questions home to discuss around the dinner table
• Model engagement by talking to them

The key she said is to communicate what your anticipation in engagement. Research has shown that the barriers to engagement are:

• Social – isolation, lack of interaction, and missing social context cues (am I being understood, Do I understand?)
• Administrative – lack of instructor feedback and inability to find materials on the web
• Learner Motivation – hardest to address, procrastination due to other two barriers, boredom

Technology that can be used to reduce social barriers by creating a sense of community

• Make first contact getting students to introduce to one another, encourage group projects, and provide audio/video message
• Use email to share syllabus, context info, and resources – though not a web 2.0 tool it encouraged students to communicate before class began.
• Create an audio/video greeting http://www.azoocacapture.com 
• Create an avatar at http://www.voki.com to create and send a greeting to learners. Can make the avatar speak in three ways, record your own voice with a microphone, call in using your phone, or type in a synthetic message and it will create a synthetic voice.
• Use blogging to encourage interaction and create continuity between classes.

Administrative barriers include:

• Missing directions/clear expectations – no way to clarify misinformation.
• Lacking timely feedback (In published research, student-instructor interactions – including timely feedback – are one of the most significant factors in student satisfaction and learning.

Technological means of overcoming administrative barriers

• Share contact information – be available to answer questions
• Repeat yourself often – state directions and expectation in various ways
• Provide feedback – vary your timing, amount, and manner of feedback - 

She used Skype (http://www.skype.com) to address all of these issues.

Motivation Barriers include:

• Overload of content
• Deadlines are not communicated frequently

Ways to overcome motivation barriers

• Chunk large assignments
• Use Calendar & reminders
• Use Multimedia resources (aggregating resources at one location – www.protopage.com www.netvibes.com www.pageflakes.com (start pages) www.protopage.com/tektrekker is her resource page for content.

Campus Technology 2008 – 2nd session: Explicit Bargain Setting

The second morning session focused on the use of Second Life in the college workplace. It was presented by Sarah “Intelligirl” Robbins of Ball State University and co-author of Second Life for Dummies. She title her program Explicit Bargain Setting: Realistic Expectations for Teaching in Virtual Worlds.

Ms Robbins started her presentation with the following two disclaimers:

Pedagogy comes first and technology second

Students come first and the university second

She argued that technology should not be used without regard to the learners and she said she offered that her guiding principle in applying technology is to adhere to Chickering & Gamson’s Seven Principles for Good Practice in Higher Education. She said that the Digital Native/Digital Immigrant argument is bogus; it’s an excuse by some not to learn new technology. She the real difference is in the Lifestyle, Engagement, and Motivation Divide. She said most people have cell phones, but older people tend to view them as a practical device to keep track of projects and people whereas teenagers and twentysomethings see them as a means of staying connected.

She said when considering the use of Second Life or any other technology we should follow Clay Shirky’s recommendations in his book Here Comes Everybody. In that book Shirky argues that when proposing the use of technology you should detail “The Promise;” explain how “The Tool” will help achieve that promise; and outline the Bargain which defines the rules of engagement between the teacher and the learner.

The promise made by Second Life is that involvement there will:

• Increase a sense of presence
• Allow bonding within the community of learners
• Learning will be more engaging, immersive, and fun

The tools for delivering on this promise are:

• Stigmergy – the ability to manipulate your environment for those who will follow
• The ability to customize your avatar
• Access to a global community
• Multi-modal communication (text, voice, sight, hearing)

The bargain to make the promise work is that students must suspend their self-limitations and agree to learn to function in Second Life. They will drop this self-limitation, she said, if they are given a good reason. They also must be willing to cooperate and behave in an orderly fashion. That does not mean they cannot don the avatar of a huge dragon. She had one student whose avatar was that of a mermaid and since he had no legs he flew everywhere within Second Life. She said she did have to caution her students against nudity although it is present in Second Life.

And that is the key to applying any technology to learning. You, the teacher, instructor, ISD, must justify using the tool. She dismissed the idea of holding a meeting in Second Life where all you do is sit around and talk. Such a function is overkill in Second Life and could better be performed via conference call or in a private online chat room.

She ended on a cautionary note, stating that committing to teaching in Second Life required the teacher to be extremely familiar with how Second Life operates. “The teacher has to have expertise to serve as a guide, an advisor, and as an instructor so that when her students get into trouble because they are not familiar with Second Life she, the teacher can help them out. She told how she had one student who accidentally started his avatar break dancing and couldn’t figure out how to make the avatar stop. He resisted assistance for a week and as a result everytime he stopped talking his avatar would start to break dance.

The commitment involved in becoming a Second Life expert is intense and involves a steep learning curve.

Campus Technology 2008 – 1st session: Riding Web 2.0

The first breakout session I attended was titled Riding Web 2.0 Toward Service Beyond the Classroom. This was presented by a trio of individuals:

• Jim Wolfgang, Director, Georgia Digital Innovation Group, Georgia College & State University
• Keith Politte, Corporate Relations Officer, University of Missouri, Columbia
• Frank Lowney, Manager, Web Enabled Resources & Professor of Educational Foundations School of Education, Georgia College & State University

The premise of their presentation was to talk about how Web 2.0 can serve as a collaborative tool to reach beyond the classroom and involve the learner in the community. Mr. Wolfgang offered the question of the value of posting thousands of video lectures on a school website if there was no way for the students to talk with the professor and with each other. He said the key to getting buy-in to using Web 2.0 tools is to speak in the vernacular of the individuals in position to make the decision to implement Web 2.0 tools. Too often we get caught up in the technospeak of the tools.

Mr Lowney explained that especially in the corporate world new technologies are measured in ROI or Return on Investment, but he argued that ROI can mean more than just “money.” It can also mean good PR as word spreads on how you are applying the tools. He pointed to how his own university received positive publicity when CNN reported on their works in being the first university to employ Ipods as learning tools.

Mr. Wolfgang then encouraged the participants to experiment with Web 2.0 tools. “If you wait for 100% perfection, it ain’t gonna happen,” he said. He said the key is to start slow and to explain to the people you are trying to get to use the tools how each of the particular tools work. He argued if they see each tool as a hammer you will see people hammering nails with what is in reality a wrench.

As they talked I couldn’t help but wonder if the early web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis may ultimately give way to the verbal tools such as online audio and video as the preferred means to communicate. The computer and more importantly the smartphones and digital PDAs are really more of a visual and audio medium than a textual medium. Early adaptors grew up with the printed word as the primary means of storing and communicating knowledge. So it seems only logical that wikis and blogs would be the lead agents in the web 2.0 world. But as the Next-Gen generation pick up the pace, the wikis and blogs would seem to be logical to dropped.

Campus Technology 2008 – Keynote Address

8:30 am

I’m sitting in the keynote address hall for A ‘New’ American University for Next-Gen Learners presented by Adrian Sannier. He is with Arizona State University and will talk about six transitions to the new university. Rightfully calls us a “roomful of geeks.”

He defends the name of his presentation, A New American University. In the previous century universities tried to emulate the likes of Harvard and Berkeley. What makes them great is they are selective, which means you can’t go. We need to change what “access” to college means. It means reaching out to the community. The 21st century won’t be like the 20th century. What are the people going to do if they don’t get a higher education. They won’t be able to participate in the economy.

We have faith in only one thing in this country: technology. There will be all kinds of presentations around wikis and blogs and its exciting he said.

Looks back at “promises” made in the 20th century. When 2001 came around there was no HAL like in 2001, no moon base, no flying cars. But some predictions did come true. We now have a form of telepathy in the form of instant communication. It has crept up on us, but it is taken for granted by our children. It’s incredible the way they communicate. It’s like a giant hive mind.

The singularity is coming and the kids are closer to it then we are.

Says that the Encyclopedia Britannica is the greatest invention, but notes that no one has read it. Millions of copies have been sold, but no one read it. It used to be what every high school report was built upon. Then along came Wikipedia and now its free.

He notes that Amazon.con can pick out better gifts for his mother than he can.

Took 85 years to get 80% of households to adopt the landline telephone.

Think about bundled services where you get television, internet, and telephone in one service.

Universities need a revolution in technology because they are falling behind in the technology game.

Teaching kids multi-column addition like they will be a bookkeeper in 1935 will not last long. Calculators don’t matter any longer. Only ones that use it are kids in school because they can’t use computers. He railed against his son’s schools because they banned all technology. “They can teach them like its 1950 and they can work in a factory. Except there are no factories.”

He said schools are still “sage on the stage” and tell him on tests what he told us. He rails against the dullness of the classroom. “That’s the dirty little secret, schools are dull.” Next-gen students are saying we will tune you out until you tune us in.

Frank Rhodes, President Emeritus of Cornell, “most instruction is still a cottage industry…they have not diverged much from Socrates, except that they moved indoors.”

John Chambers in Forbes magazine “Many agree technology should play a role in education, but they don’t know what role it will play in our future.”

Six keys for the future

1. From Context to Core: The enabling transformation – most difficult, but most critical – it liberates resources. We have been spending money on technology for the last 30 years. – In the early 1990s we had better technology than industry. Universities are the cottage industry for IT. It’s all about climbing the value stream.
   
   Core Processes: The processes that differentiate you from competition everything else is context. Have to spend 80% of your budget on core processes, rather than 20%. No strategic advantage in investing in IT, industry has already done it. IT and bandwidth is like electricity (statement by Nicholas Carr in The Big Switch).
   
   Concept of “1”: Reduce redundency in context, the things that people do not buy your offerings.
   
   Concept of “0”: Don’t do it, get someone else to do it, someone bigger, richer, and more powerful. At ASU they hired Google to provide 65,000 students with email, storage, etc. Google delivered it in two weeks and saved them $400,000. From a corporate perspective, could Google provide similar services in a secure manner?
   
2. From info to Intelligence: ASU partnered with Oracle to manage information and transform it it into knowledge.
   
3. From Cattle-car to 1:1 No more forcing them into one form of technology. IT need to support virus-laden student laptops, not building the next email system. Also provide value in software, web-delivered services, etc.
   
4. From Cop to Concierge: IT too busy prohibiting things then helping students. Web sites are constructed that way. Finding info on university websites is like playing Twister. Calls for “Amizon.com-ification” website presence, there is no proprietary web page. To get there you need “Prune Concentrate” that requires pruning your website. ASU has thousands of webpages, but only 50 are getting the majority of hits. These should be concentrated in a single location. Help desks must be available 24/7.
   
5. Physical to digital: Burn down the library; all books are digitized. Single search brings up everything we have. Publishing should be digital as well, don’t need professional publishers. Remove the cost to look at the published documents.
   
6. From Traditional to Hybrid: Don’t know how to do this. We’re tool rich, but the problem is culture. The faculty don’t believe this. Faculty believe only technology they need is death ray from their eyes.

Feelin' like Don Quixote

Its late Friday afternoon and I'm trying to express in words the theory and acts I carry forward as I create instructional materials and for some reason Gordon Lightfoot's song Don Quixote is striking a chord with me.