Campus Technology 2010 – Day 3 – Part 4

In which, I your humble author being extremely punchy from lack of sleep and the wear and tear of traveling by rail (always an iffy occupation) attempts to record his impressions of the presentation I Always Wondered What that Was: SCORM in Non-technical, Simple and Plain English, presented by Mike Rustici, the owner of Rustici Software.

1. What is SCORM?
It is a collection of standards: stands for Standard Collection Object Reference Model. It started with the military who wanted to be able to reuse content across different military systems. SCORM sets standards for how to create online content and LMS so that they can function together.

Standards are everywhere, how dvds play and electricity is delivered to your appliance. Problem is SCORM, like all standards, have room for interpretation. In the perfect world SCORM blends into the background.

2. What does SCORM do?
SCORM does not say anything about content whether it is good or not.

What SCORM does provide is interoperability on LMS. As a user it keeps you from being “locked in” by a vendor; you can move your content to another hosting site.

There are several versions of SCORM. First version 1.1, the main version is SCORM 1.2, a newer version is SCORM 2004

Another thing SCORM does is provide great data tracking. You can track what users are doing and how well they are doing it. This is big in the corporate world and SCORM helps to track compliance training.

3. Reusable Pieces
The idea is that all content is tagged with metadata so that you could develop customized SCOs for individuals based upon what each learner needs. As an industry we are not there yet. Within a SCORM course it can be broken into individual parts or clusters. These parts or clusters are the smallest part, a SCO (Single Content Object) and each part can be reused.

It has not been overwhelmingly taken off because it is not for the faint of heart. Reasons:

• Ransom Note Effect – all these objects pulled from different sources and developed by different units will look like a ransom note not looking the same.
• Maintaining the licenses on all elements can be problematic.

4. Why do we care about SCORM
Well, not everyone may care about SCORM. Not all data needs SCORM compliancy and it has become a standard and so people not knowing better demand that it be in an RFP.

You don’t need SCORM if you are

• creating something for use in your LMS
• Presenting material and you don’t want to track it, then its not needed just post it on a webpage or a blog.
• only to be used once

You DO want to use SCORM if you want to:

• Track learner success
• Buying content and an LMS from different vendors
• Create a library of reusable objects

Campus Technology – Day 3 – Part 3

For the third session of the day, it is Building a Foundation for Integrating Rich Media on a Web 2.0 Campus presented by a panel of Adam Smeets, John Drevs, and Bruce Monte.

This is a great plus, they have added a work site that we can view as the presentation proceeds. The three gentlemen represent Loyola University in Chicago, a private Catholic university. This is the 2nd Catholic private school I have seen presenting. What is it with Catholic schools being innovative?

The goal of the session is to present an overview of how they integrated digital content onto the site. The problems they were seeking to resolve was the need to

• communicate effectively and efficiently
• support a community that already embraces Web 2.0 technologies

Web 2.o helps Loyala through marketing by providing a means to tell an authentic story. Showed a picture of a student attending an alternate break immersion to help the poor – she kept a blog to highlight what she did. This blog was distributed so we can show the public what Loyala means by championing Social Justice.

In a teaching environment professors incorporated rich media into the classroom. This allows the teacher to engage students in a medium where they are comfortable.

From an administrative perspective it provides a means of opening dialog

Tools they used meet their needs include:

• Video
• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Wikis
• and integrated currently available resources
  • iTunesU
  • Blackboard
  • PeopleSoft
  • Serena collage
  • Facebook
  • Proprietary Resources

Loyala already had Twitter and Facebook sites, blogs and wanted to bring them all together. The result is igNation an aggregator of all these data sources.

This is an interesting approach in that they are attempting to meet three distinct goals. They pulled together various administrative functions to ensure that they have obtained buy in and that they have all issues, such as copyright and privacy, covered.

From a technical perspective they performed a needs assessments they asked:

• What hardware and software constraints need to be considered
• What restrictions need to be made against file content?
• What is the current architecture/landscape?
• What financial resources are needed to extend over lifetime?

Campus Technology – Day 3 – Part 2

In which I attend a session titled Use of Video Objects as Exemplars for Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy presented by Jerald Cole, the chair of the Education Department at the University of Bridgeport…Oops…

Strike that, that session was cancelled. So instead I am sitting in a rather nippy amphitheater about to attend Virtual Support Center for Geographically Dispersed Faculty & Students. It is being presented by JoAnn Gonzalez-Major and Amanda Albright of the University of Alaska Anchorage. At the risk of sounding a bit prejudicial I have to wonder if the climate was not acclimated for the presenters. My bad!

Second oops, Only Ms. Gonzalez-Major is presenting. The University of Alaska has three campuses: Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Southeast. She starts by providing an idea of their size. Alaska is twice as large as Texas, but they also have the slowest bandwidth. Their campuses are so spread out and remote that they require staff to fly in.

The campus IT department support 6 campuses, 6 extension, 1,278 faculty, 1,211 staff and other 20,000 students. Issues that had to be considered when designing campuses:

• 4 native cultures and multitude of other cultures
• Transient population due to military and oil industry
• Students not always available either due to subsistence culture (fishing season, hunting season, etc) and tourist season

Needs for IT support

• One-on-one distance support
• Multiple campus offerings
• Learning diversity and needs of populations
• How to provide a consistent message across campuses – because of diverse campus each had diverse culture so movement between campus had to be seamless
• Adjunct faculty support
• Student resources and support
• 24/7 access to support

Solutions

For faculty support we select 12 faculty members and bring them in for one-week intensive training program to learn how to develop a course and they must share back with their other faculty. It must occur when they are off contract.

eLearning book group – choose one book published ahead of time – group pulled from all campuses – If they can reach Anchorage campus they appear in person. Those who can’t attend virtually – Each professor reviews an element of the book and share it with the others.

Subject Matter Experts brought in to help faculty with areas of expertise

Site visits in which IT visits the campus and they meet with faculty to assist them in using technology in their classes.

Meet with departments to focus on their particular needs

Multi-week workshops – asynchronous workshops: two areas of interest to faculty

1. Second Life – 8 week course to assist in setting up a 2nd life classroom
2. Developing online course – they work with colleagues using a peer review system for comment and input. – must develop 1st 3 lessons.

Shorter half-hour workshops – offered in various modalities – many are hands-on in lab, but also use eLive for remote campus faculty who meet in their labs and they work through topic. Typically focuses on one topic only that is worked through. We talk about a tool and how to implement in their classrooms.

EDITORS NOTE: Interrupted by a call, so I need to scramble to pick up where I left off. Minor snafu with my son and his car.

They developed a Resource Center within the school’s Moodle site to assist the faculty in use of technology which brought together various elements:

Faculty tutorials – series of tutorials to help faculty. She exhibits How to use a wiki in the course. They involve mashups of video and other media. Tutorials are no more than 3 pages long.

Blocks of software licenses are purchased for items such as Camtasia, Captivate, and Snagit and then the software is loaned out on an as-needed basis through a secure server.

The ebook sessions are recorded and posted to the school’s Moodle site so that they can be reviewed at any time.

Searchable FAQ built on call center queries, and if the center cannot handle the call it is referred to her and her associate, but they keep call center individuals on the call as well so that they can learn and answer the query the next time.

Results

They were able to:

• Increase access to development materials
• Enhanced call center skill sets
• Support Call Center interactions
• Reduced tier II calls

Increased faculty technical independence – they took to it and used it to learn during off hours. While the site was designed for faculty, students found it and began using the Moodle site and started setting up blogs and forums, which look and function like Facebook, and were using it to socialize.

Faculty also started sending students to the site to work through the tutorials. In response the IT department set up a Start Here site to download the plug-ins (Adobe Reader, Flash Viewer, etc.) that will be needed for the courses and provide an opportunity to test out using these plug-ins before the course begins.

Next Steps

• Increase multimedia units – to change courses from mostly text-based to multimedia
• Additional synchronous and asynchronous programs
• Increased marketing
• Continues to build new resources
• Incorporate Sloodle tools.

UPDATE: All in all this was an enlightening piece on how great things can be done with limited resources. The University of Alaska folks demonstrated that support for the end user can be conducted over a great expanse at low cost. The key I thought was that they did not try to fix everything themselves, but instead worked to provide the tools and the training to use them for the faculty and staff they supported. This freed them to innovate. It was a great capstone to the keynote address about how an IT department should be run.

Campus Technology – Day 3 – Part 1

Amtrak got me into Boston on time today and I am sitting in the Seaport Hotel’s Plaza Ballroom waiting for the day’s keynote speech to begin. The address today is by Stephen Laster, chief information officer of Harvard Business School. He will be speaking on The Road Ahead: Driving Innovation in the “New Normal”. Once again I am running on battery power; I will need to remember to use time between sessions to find an outlet and charge up. It makes me realize that one benefit the conference organizers could offer, but don’t currently, is a secure recharge area. It would be a place where you could leave your laptop or smart device to recharge while you do something like eat lunch.

The new normal is the same as the old normal; tight budgets and large demands. Plus, we have new demands. Higher education is ripe for criticism and due for consolidation. How can colleges demand higher tuition while there are high drop out rates.

Innovation is not about creating new technologies, but it is for using technologies smartly that produce results. How do we form an environment to address all of these issues?

He is dyslexic, so his mind worked differently, he could take things apart in his mind and remember lectures. Wasn’t until high school that he was introduced to an Apple computer which he could identify with its screen layout. The physics teacher who introduced him to the computer convinced his father to buy one. His grades grew greatly.

There are 8 factors of success.

#1  Hire and mentor a great team: technology is a people business –

• Hire nice, smart, adaptable and skilled skilled is last because if you are nice, smart and adaptable you will learn to become skilled.
• Manage the whole person – know their hopes and what they want to do
• Make the work rewarding

#2 Run the Shop as a business

• What is my competitive advantage?
• Where do we add value? What businesses are you good at.
• What business can I get out of?
• What can I offer to remain stickey?

#3 Leverage Planning and Governance – the key is transparency in operations and governance – don’t take on tasks that can’t be handled efficiently – communicate issues such as querying how they want IT to expend the hours budgeted for IT support.

• What is my capacity – operational, maintenance, project, support -
• Prioritize backlogs with customer
• Plan for the semester and the year
• Involve campus leaders in governance

#4 Take Smart Risks – during difficult times IT can become risk averse and then you are doomed.

• Look beyond core services
• Preserve time for innovation
• Deliver on the art of the possible

#5 Actively Measure – compare similar products and defects – provides a way to steer operation

• Track deliverables
• Live by your scorecard
• Include “soft” data
  • Customer perceptions
  • IT employee engagement and satisfaction

#6 Capture the Customer – we try to adopt 10 administrators to hear what frustrates them about us, does our message get out, if you have a friend in IT you will not shoot the organization and IT will help you.

• Walk in their shoes
• Leverage relationships
• Speak their language
• Understand business needs

#7 Communicate, Communicate, Communicate – need to talk to your customer in their language.

• CIO as CTE (Chief Technology Evangelist)
• Demonstrate IT’s value
• Share vision with IT team
• Invite feedback
• Make 10 friends

#8 Leverage Trusted Advisors – network can be former bosses, mentors, and advisors – ask them to review what we’re doing wrong and how we can improve and then I share that information with my boss – takes courage because you are opening a window.

• Build an external advisory board
• Be proactive
• Periodically review business to address potential weaknesses.

Campus Technology 2010 – Day 2 – Wrap up

EDITOR’S NOTE: I meant to post this last night, but I was so tired by the time I got home, ate, and finished my chores I was too tired to remember to do this.

Today was the first main day of the Campus Technology 2010 Conference; yesterday was a preconference workshop day. Today you had all of the session attendees, the trade show opened its doors and the breakout sessions were the full monty of the conference experience. Of course the day did not get off to a great start, but I thought I showed an amazing amount of patience waiting for Amtrak to arrive almost an hour late. And arrive they did and arrive I did in Boston…only an hour late, but again it didn’t bother me…then.

All I missed was the opening keynote address, titled Technology as the Architect of Self: Implications for Higher Learning presented by Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mause Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I’m writing this on the train home without Internet access (I know, what a noobie traveling without internet access) so I can’t just throw a link in to describe the focus of her talk and I can’t guarantee I will remember to do so when I get home, although I will try. But in recognition of my situation I will type in the relevant portion of it from the conference program.

Tuckle will consider how contemporary digital connectivity is changing the nature of the “self",” including our “selves” in academia. What are the deeper implications of changes in our students, especially those whose generation has grown up “tethered” to connectivity devices and in a new regime of privacy.

The folks I ate lunch with were all digital immigrants and the thought of loss of privacy seemed to scare them. I know in a pique of anger (or fear) I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts, only to find that when I calmed down and learned to accept the risks inherent in what I call the wild, wild internet I returned to re-engage with these programs. Facebook greeted me back like a long, lost friend who held on to all my digital possessions until I returned. Once back it graciously turned them back over to me without expecting any payment on return.

Twitter on the other hand was willing to take me back, but not under my old user name it said it was still in use despite no one apparently using it. I’m not sure which I am more chagrined about.

The privacy issue came up again (probably spurred on by the keynote address) in the second session I sat in on. This involved the presentation by Amy Stewart of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts who was speaking about her institution’s efforts in developing an ePortfolio service for their students. She indicated that they used the privacy issue, specifically around Facebook to encourage students to focus chronicling their college experience within the school’s ePortfolio system. She said they remind their students that employers now regularly research potential new employees on Facebook so they should not be posting materials that could be considered as unacceptable by those employers.

As much as a cold shower the thoughts of privacy are, the final session, which I posted about earlier (Campus Technology 2010 – Day 2 – Part 3) left me with a genuine feeling of elation of how learning centers can be created and run in order to make learning comfortable. Libraries have always had a warm place in my heart. I don’t feel a visit to a place is complete without experiencing the local library. Largely this is because I am an unbelievable bibliophile (I think I am using the term correctly), but the integration of technology into Santa Clara University’s library and the willingness to allow the students to arrange their study spaces (wheeled tables and chairs, fully equipped study centers, etc.) left me feeling exhilarated. I would love to be able to visit that facility and see it in use. It would put to lie the claim that with the internet the library is dead.

In between those sessions was lunch and what I call the dog-and-pony shows. Between the hours of 12:15 and 3:45 participants were basically set free to roam as they might with the hope they will visit the various vendors who have set up shop in the main convention hall. To perform this trick lunch was served at the rear of the hall, so you had to walk pass the vendors to get to lunch and then, after you finished eating you feel so fat and sassy you can’t help but wander about the hall and chat up the vendors. I did my share, while scoffing up free pens, brochures and, from Pearson Learning Solutions (whose parent company I was employed by for a whole two months before they sold my section off to another firm) a computer cleaning brush.

One recurring theme I heard over and over again was “we have apps for the iPhone and Droid.” Those last two words were music to my ear. I’ve always been appalled by Apple’s insistence on being the only source for software for their mobile devices and insisting on putting all proposed apps through their morality filter. So, the fact that Google’s Android system is now competing evenly with the iPhone gives me hope for a continued open system.

The other trend I noted revolves around the Learning Management System wars. As Blackboard continues to buy up competitors, it seems that open-source Moodle is beginning to take a meaningful bite out of BlackBoard’s market. As the competing firms (because Blackboard and Moodle are not the only players, just the two that are still in my sleep-deprived memory) duke it out there are a number of niche players offering their wares as applications that can seemlessly blend into the various LMSs.

Well, that’s about it. It has been a long day, but a hopeful day, a day in which I heard educators of all stripes talk of how they are struggling to make learning meaningful. I hope I contributed to the discussions with my questions and observations during these sessions.

Campus Technology 2010 – Day 2 – Part 3

Back to sessions after about 3 hours of eating, meeting with vendors and presenters, and sitting through mini presentations. More about that later.

The final session of the day involves a pinch hitter who is fitting in a presentation that was for some reason cancelled. The presentation is titled Creating Flexible, Technology-Enhanced Collaboration and Learning Spaces presented by Ronald Danielson, the vice provost for information services and Chief Information Officer for Santa Clara University.

This presentation is on a two-year process in developing an effective learning space. Santa Clara University is a private university located in Silicon Valley.

Three buildings involved in his story: the library, aka learning commons; business school building; and a renovated building.

Students want flexibility and comfort in their library this includes modifying the space to meet their needs. They also want technology and tools as well as staff to assist in using the resources that are available to them in the facility.

Design goals

• Light, airy, welcoming, flexible spaces
• A variety of spaces to satisfy different learning styles and needs
• Many choices in seating
• Technologies students don’t have themselves
• Adaptable for future changes in learning/teaching approaches and technologies
• Support collaboration and student-created content
• Unique features, not just more of what we already have
• Help generate new ideas

These goals were established based on ALA  studies on what people want in their library systems.

The information center area (computer centered) has more chairs than computers so people can pull together and collaborate. The library also provides video cameras that students can check out and make videos, they also offer rooms with video cameras where students can practice their presentation.

Damn, I wish I was in college now. Stuff like this is so cool I would love to have a video room where I can record and review presentations that I have to deliver.

This is the real future for libraries to serve as a learning center where learners can come together and have all of the technology necessary to facilitate learning.

The biggest problem has been providing power. In viewing other libraries the problem was that power supplies are broken. The problem has occurred at Santa Clara University’s library as well.

A lesser success was the training and instruction rooms where they could train the use of software that the university supports. The room was built with the flexible collaborative spaces, but the collaborative alignment was only used twice because the power and data connections make reconfiguring slow and difficult. So requests had to be made in advance for the reconfiguration.

Overall it has been a success; in only 27 months that have had over 2 million visits on a campus that hosts 8,500 students on average. Overall lessons learned:

• Technology is a facilitator, not an end in itself
• Collaboration in many forms is here to stay – design for it, but not to the exclusion of solitary, quiet space. Students are developing their own culture around noise in the center.
• Design for variety and flexibility of spaces and furnishings in all buildings. Remember “forgotten spaces” like hallway – it is hard on people who like order.
• If allowed, students will create spaces to meet particular needs.
• This can be hard on furnishings
• This can be hard on staff.

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