Campus Technology – Day 2 – Part 2

The second session I am attending today is ePortfolios For Studen Life and Academics, presented by Amy Stevens, Web Communications Manager of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

The focus of her presentation is the development of authentic assessments with a focus on ePortfolios. It is not a cheap thing to role out and she expected that the school she works at would pull the plug, but they didn’t.

Could ePortfolios be fitted into the corporate world as part of the employees individual personnel file in Human Resources.

First Year	Middle Years	Senior Year
Encounter 1: College and Academic Life	Encounter II: The World Outside the Classroom	Encounter III: Application of a discipline to the real world
Experiences Freshman expereience	Experiences Travel Service Learning (internship)	Experiences Undergraduate research Service learning in major capstone

The table above defined her schools intent to capture the high impact learning experiences they want their students to record.

They measured based on topics including:

• Student proficiency
• Could they relate it to a learning element
• Awareness of intended outcome

Within the ePortfolio system students were asked to present evidence of their working to meet the school’s diversity experience and explain what they learned from the experience. This was rolled out in 2007 and it failed because no student uploaded anything to their eportfolio. She blamed it on a failure to communication expectations.

Instead, they decided to seek out clubs to have them perform the ePortfolios. The school rolled out the ePortfolio software and required each club, as it came up to have its constitution renewed, to take on the role. They still also require individual students to establish ePortfolios. They are required to:

• Post a resume
• Set goals
• First days
• Submit a document from their first year experience course

There is a template for them to use to set up these goals. Students are advised to maintain the portfolio by alerting them that the portfolio can be accessed by employers who are using the Internet to research their potential hires. If nothing like this is available they will look for individuals on Facebook.

They are assessed based on:

• Community Reading
• First Days, Goals, and Bio
• FYE Writing

These are reviewed by academic counselors and professors and graded.

First year rubric is:

	In Progress	Satisfactory	Exemplary
Careful Reading
Critical Thinking
Reflective Writing
Citations
Content Area

Instructors will be allowed to customize. In conclusion she shared her own portfolio.

Someone asked about using Google portfolios. Found this site about how to use Google Sites for this purpose.

Campus Technology 2010 – Day 2 – Part 1

Due to further delays with Amtrak (I’m seriously having my doubts that an electrified rail service in the Northeast is ever going to work) I have made it to the 2nd day of the conference. Unfortunately due to the delay I missed the keynote session: Technology As The Architect of Self: Implications for Higher Education. So instead I am picking up with the first breakout session I am attending: Teaching with Web 2.0: Case Study and Analysis.

The speaker, Mihaela Vorvoreanu,  says “Love Technology, but don’t trust it.” those are definitely words I can live by.

Problem area: professors are not procrastinators, creative writers are. [EDITOR’S NOTE: I HAVE BEENADVISED THAT THIS WAS A JOKE, I THINK I MAY HAVE BEEN SELF REFLECTING SINCE I FANCY MYSELF A CREATIVE WRITER AND I AM A BIT OF A PROCRASTINATOR. I APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INSULT.]

Why do we have computers in the classroom?

• Because they are shiny new technology.
• Because the school purchased them and they were used for chat even though there are only 19 people in the classroom.

Her presentation is to show a

• Case study: for using social media in the classroom
• Analysis of the impact of social media use
• Argument: Purposeful integration in the classroom.

Case Study

Group 1: PR	Group 2: CT
Public relations course Purposeful quilt of web 2.0 tools	Communications Theory course Twitter used for the novelty of it.

Twitter use in Group 1 felt they were more integrated. They reported higher in motivation, teacher relationship, career impact, and learning. The caveat is that across the board males reported lower responses and the communications theory group had more males than the PR group. As a result not sure of the reason for this.

She then focused on how social media made an impact on the focus group. Tools used:

Tool	Purpose
Twitter	Connect with PR professionals, socialize into the profession; maintain relationship with teacher
Writing individual blog	Create professional online identity
Reading blogs	Independent learning; Relationship building
Skype	Virtual guests; provide real-world relevance; increase motivation.

To determine if it worked we used the self-determination theory (learning, motivation (autonomy, competence, relatedness are relevant to success), and teacher relationship) We also added career success.

They used an online survey to gather the data asking learners measure various points about scale.

The students were aged 20-23 with 90% white Black 2%. Group 1 was 26 students in Group 1 and Group 2 had 13 students.

Both groups learned how to use the social media used through activities in the course. Generally, the students’ success was predicated on learning to use Twitter and Skype. Key relationships in success were:

Learning	Motivation	Teacher Relationship	Career Success
Read Blogs	Skype (hearing professionals speak)	Twitter	Twitter
Twitter	Twitter Reading blogs Writing blogs		Skype

UPDATE: She was asked about how she addressed privacy with Skype and Twitter, she said it was not considered but it must be considered because at one point we had to lock down the accounts after a troll came after her and her students.

She also expressed a concern about getting her students addicted to the internet and dumbing them down by having them read from the Internet constantly.

Campus Technology 2010 – Day 1 Summary

So I’m sitting now on the only Amtrak train currently north of Providence, RI. I’m typing this entry up while waiting to pull out. An extremely vicious storm passed through Connecticut and Rhode Island knocking down the electric wires that power Amtrak’s trains in the North east corridor, but at least I have access to an electrical outlet even if I don’t have wireless access. Also, it is a lot more comfortable sitting in this train car rather than in warm and humid South Station.

I’m also thanking my lucky stars I upgraded to business class. Lots of room. The conductor has repeatedly stated that we are fortunate that this train had made it to Providence at 11 am because its the only Amtrak train north of there. Without it we would be still waiting in the station for about 3 hours for the next train.

The reason I am thankful for an electrical outlet is because I had maxed out my battery life at the conference today where I did not have access to an electrical outlet. So much for relying on a single battery and hope for an electrical outlet. So, while I was waiting for this train at the station I had time to record my thoughts of the day, the old fashioned way: pen and paper. The following is what I wrote.

The first day of the Campus Technology session went well, but for one flaw; not enough battery power for my aptop and for the last session I had no access to a battery outlet. As a result I am now composing my thoughts using late 20th century technology: a ball point pen and a composition notebook. I may not have been a Boy Scout but I do know to come prepared. This experience is a useful reminder of how fragile our electronic technology is.

Of course Amtrak is starting to worry me. Their 4:30 Acela to Washington DC has been cancelled and trains arriving from Washington DC are anywhere from 75 minutes to 4 hours late

[ED NOTE: As I typed this the train that was 4 hours late passed my train as we were pulling out of Back Bay Station].

In addition, there is an announcement that Amtrak police with bomb  sniffing dogs are in the station; it could be a coincidence, but without any other announcement from Amtrak to explain the delays your mind can’t help thinking the worst.

[ED NOTE: As I explained earlier the delay was not due to any nefarious action by nar-do-wells, but the lack of any announcement by Amtrak about the actual cause of the delay is a severe customer relations snafu. An announcement for the reason for the delay did not come until about 5:10 pm, two hours after I originally entered the station and saw the delays.]

But back to my thoughts about the conference. The morning and afternoon sessions were, to steal from the theme song of the old Patty Duke show, was as different as night and day. The morning presenter was a true practitioner of the use of technology in the classroom while the afternoon presenter reminded me of the 1990s approach to technology in educational settings.

The morning presenter had a fully formed website for his presentation with links to a wiki where learners could connect to a form that they could use to post their thoughts about each segment of his presentation; a form he created using Google Docs and which recorded the results in a Google Docs spreadsheet. Their was also a link to a class chatroom where all people in his presentation could post questions and comments as the session progressed.

So I now see the value of real-time chat in the classroom. We humans are naturally sociable and always want to throw our two-cents into a conversation. Using chat, we can talk between ourselves without worrying about disrupting other people.

As organized and interactive was the first presenter the 2nd presenter, while apparently knowledgeable about his subject matter (integrating open content into course curriculum) his presentation was almost strictly death by PowerPoint with side trips to web sites that he did not provide links to. Only when asked by a participant whether his materials would be made available to conference goers did he say that he could email it to everyone who attended.

Campus Technology 2010 – Monday – Part 2

Mashups of Educational Tools and Open Content

Afternoon session – back from a delicious lunch and an OK presentation further dampened by tablemates who chose to talk to one another instead of listening to the presentation. Oh well, it is what it is.

We’re doing the traditional go around the room and introduce ourselves. I’m pretty much the only non college person in the room. As I listened to my cohorts introduce themselves and explain how they are trying to reposition themselves to compete for the new millennial students, I recalled once again my thought I had this morning that as the cost of college education spirals upward, when will we see businesses, who have long depended on the colleges to provide them with new employees actually start sponsoring promising students for their education in return for a commitment to work for a certain term.

This would be a lot like how baseball manages its minor leaguers and younger major leaguers in which they are committed to the parent team for a certain time or until the parent severs the relationship.

Update…

Stuart Sim is the presenter and he will be talking about open content. what is being used are two drivers:

• What students are using in their personal life – students are using cutting edge tools and when they reach school the school is still using old systems.
• Faculties need to be able to use the tools in their classrooms – some faculty don’t want to use it

Integration of these different elements can be awkward.

Personal Learning Environment – that shows everything that the campus wants the learner to access.

Other challenges

• Single managed systems do not work anymore
• Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) are growing
• IT staff expect to be able to mashup services
• Demanding and sophisticated user base
• Personalized learning environments
• Social collaboration is everywhere
• Expectations have never been higher
• The web is a platform, not a destination

Just a side point, I feel spoiled from this morning with the presenter who made the materials available to all both during and after the presentation. This presentation feels so 1990s with everyone staring at a screen and being asked every once and a while if we have any questions.

Now talking about Open ID which is one ID that allows you into all participating web 2.0 tools. Or should I call it web 2.0 or is Open content the proper term. Talking about Ning as a social aggregator site, in which you can add your type of contents provided by them such as a photo page and other sites. Each of these tools are separate open content sites and Ning will use your open ID to pass you transparently to each.

Update…

At issue is that this open content does not interface with your LMS (sounds very familiar). Ways to resolve:

Develop elements of your LMS as open content that can be plugged into your open source social site.

Someone asked about the risk of betting the house on an open content site that could disappear. The presenter sez that you need to look around and see if their is open technology that will continue to support.

Of course another issue is that if any of these services crash you have little you can do…you especially don’t want them to take everything down with it.

Update…

He points us first to the OpenLearn learning space and is showing how schools in Great Britain have not only placed content on the site, but allows elements to be downloaded in various formats including Common Cartridge that allows you to download the whole curriculum and use it on your own site.

There seems to be a great deal of difficulty around licensing. Which raises an interesting conundrum…as open content tools are becoming more relevant so licensing is becoming even more difficult. Users need to be very well-versed in licensing requirements even in the so-called creative commons license, because there seems to be more flavors than ice cream at Basken-Robbins.

I’m about to post this and then I will need to shut down until I can get to an electric outlet. Unfortunately this room did not have any electric outlets to plug into…rather strange for a technology symposium. As a result I have run my battery down to about 12% power.

Campus Technology 2010 – Monday, part 2

Trends:

• in 1863, Abraham Lincoln recognized that for the U.S. to grow the 2 coasts needed to be connected by railroad reducing travel from 6 months to 6 days
• in 1954, Dwight Eisenhower recognized that a interstate highway system was needed to reduce travel from 62 days to 4 days.

Trends for cloud computing:

1. Widespread wireless access
2. Affordable mobile devices such as Ipads, smart phones, netbooks, they do have limitations – strapped to all students hips – need to find apps that talk to all of these appliances. ITunes has ITunes University – also building a K-12 initiative
3. ASP or Cloud Computing

What is cloud computing?

convergence of 3 trends

• virtualization
• utility computing across a grid
• software is a service

Bottom line it is a powerful, affordable, and scaleable like the electricity grid. Showing us the Spoon site:

He demonstrated how this site that runs applications through a server. First he demonstrated how Spoon runs apps such as Google Earth without loading a site.

Spoon’s business model offers to take campus apps and host them rather than requiring individuals to install software on individual devices.

Side note: Presenter asked if it bothers him that people are not looking at him. He said, no, in fact modern day presenters need to get over that…you have to assume they are paying attention.

Update…

Talking about 21st century learning tools

• Google Docs – Use forms to gather information that is reported in an Excel spreadsheets.
• Google Earth
• Schoolfusion – Content management system – handling
• Collaborative Mind Mapping
• Sliderocket
• ZamZar for converting to .flv.
• Mindmeister – two or three maps for free then subscribe.
• Jing – free version of Camtasia.

As he talks about using the cloud apps and how to integrate them for learning. He mentions that IT departments can’t provide this, but I’m wondering how long all of these apps will remain free. But I can’t help but be excited about these free tools.

Update:

Final hour – we’re starting to talk about DropBox, which is online storage that syncs itself across multiple devices. This is better for the educational community than the corporate world where security and intellectual property protection is paramount.

Next we talk about Jing, the online video creation tool. Like mentioned earlier it is Camtasia Lite from TechSmith. The demonstration for Jing – points out that it can be used to help people with computing issues. Microsoft’s Communicator takes it one better by providing desktop sharing during a chat.

Campus Technology 2010 - Monday

Monday is always a tough day and I found out they moved the conference away from the main convention center and it is instead at the seafront. That said…

First, up is a workshop titled Next Generation Computing: Using the Cloud to Build Learning Communities. Presented by John Kuglin.

For this session, we are starting by going to John Kuglin’s website. For this interactive session he has set up a number of tools that are launched from that website for interaction including:

• A wiki where you can post thoughts either thru
• a reflections page or
• a twitter like application.
• SlideRocket presentations

Update:

Starting to discuss “What’s Important & What’s Not?” – because there is so much information how will you know you are focusing on the right stuff.

He’s showing a video clip from TED Kirk Citron about what’s important and what’s not in the news world.

His point thatFor educators’ the ultimate goal is to move a young kindergartener to a successful college graduate.

Update:

When considering cloud computing need to consider

• hardware
• software
• network infrastructure
• policies and procedures
• professinal development
• culture
• staff proficiencies
• student proficiencies

Update:

What are student expectations: because they are expected to drive their own learning they expect to be provided the opportunities to learn.

The target for technology professionals is to address this target:

The red area is the firewall that can be found in all schools. As technology specialists you need to be aware of what the Horizon Report is stating.

Update:

Question was asked about SlideRocket and its usability within Apple Ipad and Iphone. It was noted that Cloud Browser will allow you to view Flash movies on the Iphone and Ipad.

Interesting point that Bloom’s Taxonomy was updated in 2001 to reflect technology. the New version uses verbs versus nouns.

Intel provides a site to assist teachers to build HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) into the curriculum

I want to: ScreenToaster closing: alternatives

So is this just a growing pain for the Internet or something users need to accept as a fact of life?

The online screen recorder, which I really liked, is closing down. This is a great shame, and what's worse is that your videos will no longer be available on the web after July 31st. This is a real pain, since I'll have to re-do a few of mine that I've put up. What are the alternatives?

I want to: ScreenToaster closing: alternatives

Social Media in the Workplace webinar

This looks like an interesting session on implementing social media in the workplace. Obviously there won’t be much detail, but for newbies its probably a good starting point. The link is to a Facebook page so I’m not sure whether you need to be a member of Facebook to register for the webinar.

Leveraging Social Media Tools to Improve Workplace Learning

Wednesday, 31 March 2010, 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada)

People are communicating, collaborating, and learning in new ways. Building communities powered by social media provides a way to blend formal and informal learning into an integrated method for overall performance improvement. However, social media is often misunderstood. Professional networking features and user-generated content/Web 2.0 features are easy to develop but bring additional challenges around how to make social media work. This session will explore how organizations can use social media tools to improve learning in the workplace. Attendees will learn:

• How social media has changed the way we communicate and collaborate
• How social media can support overall performance improvement
• Tips for building productive communities of practice

NOTE: Audio for this session will be provided using VoIP. You will require headphones or speakers connected to your computer to hear this presentation.

Freezing a laptop

This video suggests the fault lines that are rapidly developing in the real-time learning world over the use of technology in the classroom.  The person who posted this video states that it was not a functioning laptop and the incident was staged, presumably to make a point.

I can appreciate the instructor’s point-of-view. I teach a religious education class to sixth graders one night a week and I am constantly having to tell them to put away their smart phones as they text their friends that are not in class. On the other hand, I would have killed to have a laptop or a netbook to take notes with when I was in college.

The big question is whether outright banning of technology from the classroom to try and force students to pay attention to the lecture the route to go? I don’t think it is, but somehow students do need to learn the proper time, place, and decorum for using technology in the classroom. Who should be teaching this and when?

Huh?

I understand that you want to take precautions in the face of a winter storm, but I was left dumbfounded by this early closing announcement in my local newspaper. I thought the whole purpose of holding a webinar is for people to participate without leaving their home or office.

Source: The Day of New London

I’m not dead yet!

I’ve always liked this part of the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I use the line “I’m not dead yet!” whenever someone asks how I’m doing. But it also seems appropriate for the recurring discussion of the state of instructional design.

The latest discussion is cropping up on the University of Georgia’s Instructional Technology list service. It began with  a post by Bev Ferrell who points to a blog by Cathy Moore who uses Google Trends to start a discussion about whether instructional design is still valued. Since you need to subscribe to the list service to read it (which is free) I will copy and paste his post and some of the relevant responses here.

http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2009/06/no-time-for-design/#more-597<http://elearndev.blogspot.com/2006/07/learning-trends-isd-down-web20-upway.html>

No time for design? Quality? Does rapid design make ID irrelevant? ADDIE
dead?

Bev Ferrell
Moderator ITF

The posting she pointed to is more fascinating for the comments section, which Bev noted in an early response, than the original post. The comments turned into a B***h session for IDs. I highly recommend reading it. Bev’s initial post lay dormant for a day, but then resulted in a response from Rod Sims.

Interesting that this question should emerge again!

I can recall many years ago (1992 @ AECT) when we put "ISD on Trial" - I recall Dave Merrill as one of the participants ... and ISD was sentenced to 10 years Drill & Practice. All in good fun yes, but the questions were being asked nearly 20 years ago!

While 'instruction' is more commonly used in the US than many other parts of the world, the real questions for me relate to how we view learning, how we view performance and what are the best strategies to achieve learning or performance.

What can be argued is that the creation of formal courses, delivered by instructors and based on assumptions that students 'do not know' just miss the point. That is contrary to current philosophical and theoretical perspectives.

Similarly, the growth of networks (not just social) now provides the opportunity for learning from those networks - with 'experts' emerging as the knowledge-need arises. In this case we don't need ID, we just need an interest in 'learning'.

What I would argue is that we need different approaches and understanding of the world in which we live and thus different approaches to enabling learning - but the notion of rapid ID or other fads seems more about making a dead horse interesting rather than a serious attempt to make learning better.

Surely ID, traditionally, is about an empowered teacher and disempowered learner. If that's what you want, then ID is the answer. If not (which seems to align with current rhetoric) then we need something different - and why not? ID has been around for decades and surely approaches more aligned with today's world will achieve the environments we are looking for.

This then produced a posting by Timothy Spannaus who wrote:

Ah, yes, I remember it well. I was the defense attorney for ID, though I think it might have been at one of the last conventions of ADCIS - the late Association for Development of Computer-based Instructional Systems.

Another take on the long-running argument, Rod, is that,in spite of twenty years of efforts to kill ID, it's still here, still useful, still evolving. It was never about "an empowered teacher and disempowered learner."

For a really good discussion of the topic, see the edited book by Tobias and Duffy, Constructivist Instruction: Success or Failure? It gets beyond the typical constructivist/ID discussion and gets to the research and philosophy that drive the discussion.

Instructional design as a formal activity has only been around since World War II and in my mind is evolving. The ADDIE model is sound in its approach if applied wisely. The concept of rapid training design still applies ADDIE, but tries to only condense it to a smaller window. Informal learning is heralded as just-in-time learning, but I fear that corporations are latching on to it as another way to save money by eliminating formal instructional elements.

Bottom line: to paraphrase Mark Twain: The report of instructional design death is an exaggeration.

Curious Pages: Grammar Can Be Fun

The picture says it all:

 

Curious Pages: Grammar Can Be Fun

January Thiagi Gameletter

The first 2010 Thiagi Gameletter has been released by Sivasailam (Thiagi) Thiagaraja. For anyone unfamiliar with Thiagi, he is a long-time advocate of developing training that is both fun and to the point. The January edition contains a thought-provoking piece for any instructional designer labeled Ten Exciting Ways to Waste Your Training Dollars. In this piece Thiagi skewers conventional wisdom around analysis and planning, content, and delivery. For example, here is his take on multimedia.

5. Multimedia Spectacular

Conventional wisdom: Invest time and money in producing slick media materials. Participants are used to watching TV shows and animated computer graphics and reading five-color printed materials. They have high expectations for production quality. So use the latest technology and the most attractive layout for your training package.

Reality: As my friend Richard Clark points out, it is not the production quality but the instructional design quality that contributes to effective instruction. For example, a fancy television documentary may not result in more effective learning than an inexpensive handout. Also, most non-print media take a longer time to produce and much longer time to revise than paper and pencil approaches. And as my friend Ruth Clark points out, sophisticated graphics and animation may actually distract people from learning.

Recommendation: Use the least expensive and most portable medium for training. In most cases this turns out to be paper and pencil.

All 10 of his items serve as a sobering wake-up call to instructional designers everywhere. Other topics covered in his January newsletter are:

• An article about synthetic culture activities, which are a special type of simulation game.
• A positive psychology activity about five approaches to increasing your feelings of subjective well-being.
• An Guest Gamer interview with Scott Nicholson.
• A Textra game with the immodest objective of bringing about world peace.
• 99 words of advice from Brian Remer on how to ride out life's turmoils.
• Articles and activities by Brian about different aspects of breathing.
• Information about game design workshops in Zurich and Chicago.
• Tracy's single topic survey about new-year's resolutions.
• A report on last month's single topic survey.
• An invitation to our podcasts, hosted by Matthew Richter.

TGL: January 2010

Podcasters Beware.

I place this in the category, the closing of the internet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is constantly battling to keep the internet open for all to use, has posted this statement about how they are now taking up arms to defend the rights for anyone who has a microphone, computer, and access to Internet to create and distribute podcasts. It seems a company named Volomedia has received a patent for exclusive rights to the process of podcasting.

The Volomedia patent covers "a method for providing episodic media." It's a ridiculously broad patent, covering something that many folks have been doing for many years. Worse, it could create a whole new layer of ongoing costs for podcasters and their listeners. Right now, just about anyone can create their own on-demand talk radio program, earning an audience on the strength of their ideas. But more costs and hassle means that podcasting could go the way of mainstream radio -- with only the big guys able to afford an audience. And we'd have a bogus patent to blame.

EFF Tackles Bogus Podcasting Patent - And We Need Your Help | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Research Online

The University of Wollongong in Australia has made a book on mobile learning available for download as a series of .pdfs: New technologies, new pedagogies: Mobile learning in higher education. The following is the table of contents and the preface.

Table of Contents

• 1 - Introduction: Using mobile technologies to develop new ways of teaching and learning³, Jan Herrington, Anthony Herrington, Jessica Mantei, Ian Olney and Brian Ferry
• 2 - Professional development: Faculty development for new technologies: Putting mobile learning in the hands of the teachers⁴, Geraldine Lefoe, Ian Olney, Rob Wright and Anthony Herrington
• 3 - Adult education: Using a smartphone to create digital teaching episodes as resources in adult education⁵, Anthony Herrington
• 4 - Early childhood education: Digital story telling using iPods⁶, Ian Olney, Jan Herrington and Irina Verenikina
• 5 - Environmental education: Using mobile phones to enhance teacher learning in environmental education⁷, Brian Ferry
• 6 - Information technology education: Incorporating mobile technologies within constructivist-based curriculum resources⁸, Anthony Herrington
• 7 - Language and literacy education: Using iPods to capture professional dialogue between early career teachers to enrich reflective practice⁹, Jessica Mantei and Lisa Kervin
• 8 - Mathematics education: Role of mobile digital technology in fostering the construction of pedagogical and content knowledge of mathematics¹⁰, Mohan Chinnappan
• 9 - Physical education: Using iPods to enhance the teaching of games in physical education¹¹, Greg Forrest
• 10 - Reflective practice: Collaborative gathering, evaluating and communicating ‘wisdom’ using iPods¹², Lisa Kervin and Jessica Mantei
• 11 - Science education: Using mobile phone cameras to capture images for slowmations: Student-generated science animations¹³, Garry Hoban
• 12 - Visual arts education: Art on the move: Mobility – a way of life¹⁴, Ian Brown
• 13 - Design principles: Design principles for mobile learning¹⁵, Anthony Herrington, Jan Herrington and Jessica Mantei

Preface: While mobile technologies such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and digital music players (mp3 players) have permeated popular culture, they have not found widespread acceptance as pedagogical tools in higher education.

The purpose of this e-book is to explore the use of mobile devices in learning in higher education, and to provide examples of good pedagogy. We are sure that the rich variety of examples of mobile learning found in this book will provide the reader with the inspiration to teach their own subjects and courses in ways that employ mobile devices in authentic and creative ways. This book is made up of a collection of double blind peer-reviewed chapters written by participants in the project New technologies, new pedagogies: Using mobile technologies to develop new ways of teaching and learning.

The book begins with an introductory chapter that describes the overall project, its aims and methods. The second chapter describes the professional development process that was used for the teacher participants involved in the project. This is followed by 10 chapters, each describing a mobile learning pedagogy that was employed in the context of a subject area within a Faculty of Education. The final chapter presents guidelines or design principles for the use of mobile learning in higher education learning environments.

We wish to acknowledge the support provided for the project on which this book is based by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. This research was also funded by generous support from the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Wollongong. Jan Herrington, Anthony Herrington, Jessica Mantei, Ian Olney & Brian Ferry, April 2009

The chapters and full text are arranged alphabetically by author below:

Research Online

The Curse of my.barackobama.com

Whether you approve or disapprove of President Barak Obama or the Tea Bag rallies, this piece in Newgeography is certainly a clarion call to leaderships concerning the double-edged sword that is social media.

The days of politics as usual are over. The Obama team will have to play the game under a set of rules that have not all been written yet. This new era in politics will be much more open and subject to more public scrutiny than at any time in history.

The same communications tactics that won President Obama an election in 2008 may prove to be his greatest challenge in building public consensus for action going forward. In the age of “buzz” our young President will face challenges like none other. His greatest challenge may be in learning how to tame and control the inherently unruly politics of the information age.

There are unintended consequences to all leadership – be it politicians, business executives, or educators – to giving the masses an unfettered voice. It can be invigorating or frustrating since everyone is talking at once and those who would lead us are incapable of deciding whom to address first.

Even if they do make a decision, many will stop listening and starting talking themselves which will further infuriate and insult the leader. The leader unprepared for this eventuality will likely dismiss those individuals as we witnessed this summer with the Democratic leadership in Congress and in the old “media” where leadership is still struggling to come to grips with the loss of power that social media has stripped from them.

From an educational perspective, leadership must come to grips with the fact that social media is stripping the last vestiges of the “sage on the stage” from their hands. Sure they talked a good talk about being the “guide on the side” letting learners explore topics on their own, but make no mistake that as long as the “guide” was controlling the curriculum and the timing then the “sage” was still present as a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing.

In fact the guide on the side is even more insulting than the sage on the stage because the guide only provides a veneer of autonomy to the student, but it was the “sage” that continued to hold the ropes and was the ultimate arbiter of whether the student had mastered a specific skill.

With social media students are free to draw their own conclusions and post them without the pressure of meeting an instructor’s predetermined outcomes. Conflicting ideas that gain grass roots support cannot be ignored or silenced by the leader without serious repercussions. I’m not sure there are many leaders out there that are willing to take that chance.

Learning Links for the week of Aug. 23, 2009

Michael Erard offers a short manifesto on the future of attention. An interesting read as we race to incorporate Twitter, Facebook, etc. into the learning environment.

I imagine a retail sector for cultural products that's organized around the attention span: not around "books" or "music" but around short stories and pop songs in one aisle, poems and arias in the other. In the long store: 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzles, big novels, beer brewing equipment, DVDs of The Wire. Clerks could suggest and build attentional menus. We would develop attentional connoisseurship: the right pairings of the short and long. We would understand, and promote, attentional health.

Harold Jache writes that as companies switch from silos to networks our means of communicating will change resulting, in part, in training becoming marginalized.

History shows that significant changes in how we communicate result in significant changes in how we work. Many silos of support functions will not work in a network-centric organization as there’s too much redundancy, duplication of effort and slowness to react. It’s becoming obvious that only highly networked organizations are going to be successful.

Harold’s piece was based off of a piece written by Jay Cross and Clark Quinn regarding the future of Learning and Development in the corporate workplace. Their conclusion, is that:

[B]e aware that this is a permanent climate change, not a passing storm. Most of the time, the global economy is cyclical. It has its ups and downs, but the underlying pattern remains the same. A swing in one direction is balanced by a swing in the other. But what we are experiencing today is fundamental. Things are not going to return to where they were, for we are witnessing the birth of a new world order. We’re moving toward continuous change.

Over at 2¢ Worth, David Warlick posts an interesting list of what 21st century learning involves:

• Questioning your learning experience,
• Engaging your information environment,
• Proving (and disproving) what you find,
• Constructing (inventing) new learning and knowledge
• Teaching others what you have learned
• Being respected for the power of your learning, and
• Being responsible for your learning and its outcomes

I’m not sure I totally agree with this list, but that may be the subject of another post.

FatDux Blog offers up 20 tips for writing for the web. The eLearningPost focused on #2:

2. Apply George Orwell’s rules
George Orwell, the English author of 1984, Animal Farm and other classics, has six rules of writing. Here they are – they’re all gems:

1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.

2) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4) Never use the passive voice when you can use the active

5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday equivalent.

6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous!

At the Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Facebook Group there is a listing of a series of free webinars:

Online Learning Technologies: Past, Present, and Future
Wednesday, September 2 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Gary Woodill
http://brandon-hall.com/webinars/webinars.shtml

Leveraging Social Media Tools to Improve Workplace Learning
Thursday, September 3 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Janet Clarey
http://ems3.intellor.com/index.cgi?p=304441&t=14&do=register&s=sumtotal&rID=105&edID=89

Selecting a Learning Management System
Wednesday, September 16 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Tom Werner and Richard Nantel
http://brandon-hall.com/webinars/webinars.shtml

Improving Knowledge Flow in Organizations
Thursday, September 24 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Gary Woodill
http://sabaex.centra.com/main/saba/m/Registrar/NewRegistration.jsp?event_id=0000004e579475012263639ad100763e&locale=en_US&source

The Armed Forces Journal has an essay by retired Marine Corp Colonel Thomas X. Hammes outlining why PowerPoint is a poor decision-making tool. Top take-away:

Rather than the intellectually demanding work of condensing a complex issue to two pages of clear text, the staff instead works to create 20 to 60 slides. Time is wasted on which pictures to put on the slides, how to build complex illustrations and what bullets should be included. I have even heard conversations about what font to use and what colors. Most damaging is the reduction of complex issues to bullet points. Obviously, bullets are not the same as complete sentences, which require developing coherent thoughts. Instead of forcing officers to learn the art of summarizing complex issues into coherent arguments, staff work now places a premium on slide building. Slide-ology has become an art in itself, while thinking is often relegated to producing bullets.

The BBC reports that another study shows that the ability to multitask is highly questionable especially amongst those people who proclaim to be expert multitaskers.

At eLearn Magazine’s online blog Roger Schank asks Must e-Learning Be ‘Cool?’ His rant is focused on the use of Second Life, and I have even heard proponents of Second Life say that it is valueless if you are just going to gather people in a single virtual location in Second Life to speak with them. Money quote comes at the end of his post:

People who do e-learning need to learn to fight the demand for cool and cheap. Insist on effective.

There is interesting give-and-take in the comments between opponents and proponents of Second Life.

Jane Hart points to an article by Mind Map Inspiration outlining 100 reasons to mind map. Top ten reasons are:

1. Explore a subject
2. Study & learn a new topic, culture or country
3. Plan your schedules
4. Innovate & invent
5. Create new ideas
6. Expand existing ideas
7. Tap your unique talents
8. Increase your brain power
9. Consolidate your existing knowledge
10. Summarise your skills

Patrick Batty provides a brief discussion of Blended Learning and how social media can have a role in that environment. The post culminates in an invitation to a free, live webinar discussing social networking in the classroom.

Brandon Hall offers free webinars

At the Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Facebook Group there is a listing of a series of free webinars:

Online Learning Technologies: Past, Present, and Future
Wednesday, September 2 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Gary Woodill
http://brandon-hall.com/webinars/webinars.shtml

Leveraging Social Media Tools to Improve Workplace Learning
Thursday, September 3 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Janet Clarey
http://ems3.intellor.com/index.cgi?p=304441&t=14&do=register&s=sumtotal&rID=105&edID=89

Selecting a Learning Management System
Wednesday, September 16 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Tom Werner and Richard Nantel
http://brandon-hall.com/webinars/webinars.shtml

Improving Knowledge Flow in Organizations
Thursday, September 24 — 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time (U.S. & Canada) (GMT-4:00)
Presented by Gary Woodill
http://sabaex.centra.com/main/saba/m/Registrar/NewRegistration.jsp?event_id=0000004e579475012263639ad100763e&locale=en_US&source

A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention: Observatory: Design Observer

Michael Erard offers a short manifesto on the future of attention. An interesting read as we race to incorporate Twitter, Facebook, etc. into the learning environment.

I imagine a retail sector for cultural products that's organized around the attention span: not around "books" or "music" but around short stories and pop songs in one aisle, poems and arias in the other. In the long store: 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzles, big novels, beer brewing equipment, DVDs of The Wire. Clerks could suggest and build attentional menus. We would develop attentional connoisseurship: the right pairings of the short and long. We would understand, and promote, attentional health.

Learning Links for the week of Aug. 16, 2009

The Training Zone provides a high-level review of what it takes to be a successful coach. Of course being the iconoclast that I am, I was put off by the statement that in the marketplace for coaches, credentials are becoming more important. “A post-graduate qualification or equivalent should be the benchmark for all professional coaches.” Verity Gough, the author, admits that proof that you passed a test does not prove you are a good coach, but it does signal that you are interested enough to pursue formal training.

Via Facebook: Greg Walker notes that the faculty of Education at the University of Regina is offering an open access course on Social Media & Open Education. He notes that it open to both registered and non-registered students and features live and recorded presentations. The course is built upon the wikispaces environment.

An interesting online forum on Monday, Aug. 24th at 1 pm. The Ontario Educator Meetup is holding a free online session on the strengths and challenges of mobile learning. The forum will be held in an Adobe Connect conference room and headset and microphone is required to participate.

An unnerving article in Slate about our instinctual desire to search is addictive and can be as dangerous as any other drug addiction. Money quote:

Actually all our electronic communication devices—e-mail, Facebook feeds, texts, Twitter—are feeding the same drive as our searches. Since we're restless, easily bored creatures, our gadgets give us in abundance qualities the seeking/wanting system finds particularly exciting. Novelty is one. Panksepp says the dopamine system is activated by finding something unexpected or by the anticipation of something new. If the rewards come unpredictably—as e-mail, texts, updates do—we get even more carried away. No wonder we call it a "CrackBerry."

Cole Camplese provides a fascinating review of the recent OpenEd conference in Vancouver B.C. Not only does he recap, but he provides links to actual videos of the talks given. These were posted to UpStream (a YouTube video hosting site. Here is Gardner Campbell presenting “No Digital Facelifts.” He argues that the changes in communication brought on by social media is as civilization changing as the invention of the alphabet.

Elliot Masie is soliciting thoughts on how learning will have changed by the year 2019.

Jane Hart is seeking input on how organizations are using social media for learning purposes.

I've decided the best way to do this is to use a Google Docs form and collect them in a spreadsheet where users can easily view and sort responses. So below you will find the form embedded in this posting if you'd like to contribute and start the ball rolling.  Once I have gathered a number of responses, I will, of course, share the URL.

Over at the eLearning Post, the author’s point to a sample chapter of  Kristina Halvorson’s new book Content Strategy for the Web, in which she argues that content audits are necessary before creating additional content.

Before you ever begin to brainstorm about which content you need, you must understand exactly what you have. Before you can decide where to focus your web improvement efforts (and allocate your budget), you need to know exactly what needs improving and why.

The TrainingZone celebrates PowerPoint’s 25th anniversary with some useful do’s and don’ts for learning professionals.

Gina Minks at Adventures in Corporate Education writes about how social media in the enterprise may never take off due to malware that is accidentally installed by following links found in social media. Read the whole thing at Will zombies be social media’s downfall in the Enterprise?

Using Social Media Tools To Improve Workplace Learning

View more documents from Janet Clarey.