CI438 Blog #3

This reference actually comes from a wikispaces site but I found it while searching the Bloglines resources.  This is, by far, the most useful, informative and practical resource related to Second Life I have found so far: http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/page/diff/educationaluses?v=5289255  The wikispace is entitled “Educational Uses of Second Life”.  It’s well-organized and gives excellent examples of how this emerging tool can be applied to an average educational setting.  The categories index of the site is awesome!  This feature allows the user to quick link from the introductory material to the educational examples.  The distance and flexible education section currently provides two examples, one for mock trials and one for a course in Second Life from Ball State.  This resource is of the quality and caliber of a well-reviewed resource in Wikipedia.  This resource also mentions Infoisland of which the central Illinois library alliance is a part.

My personal experience with Second Life has been that my office computers were not powerful enough to run the program, first.  Second, I had trouble orienting myself to walking, flying or doing whatever it took to move about the environment.  However, I don’t think this is a fad.  This wikispace has made Second Life content more accessible to my brain even if I can’t technically access it with my computer!  At this point in online learning we have course delivery systems such as WebCT, Blackboard and IVC.  We also have places on the web where we can free download and use learning objects and open courseware  such as what is found at a site like merlot.org.  I think what Second Life is promising to be is a convergence of delivery systems and content — the one stop shopping approach that we strive for in so many other processes and experiences in life!  As I consider my use of Blackboard right now I setup a site by creating an organized menu of buttons and links.  I can create and link content but it’s somewhat limited in function, basically text, audio and video.  Second Life brings the 3D aspect and movement into the scene.  So, the future could mean that rather than having to plug the content into the delivery system the delivery and content systems are one in the same!

It can’t be long before Second Life is made more efficient and accessible by the everyday computer. Or, maybe Second Life will be a predecessor and the system that comes next will have little or no overhead?  Either way, it’s an exciting time to be hearing and experiencing (as much as we can) educational uses of emerging technologies!

Blog #4 CI538

Doug Johnson has posted “rubrics for restructuring” on his blog: http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/rubrics-for-restructuring.html Johnson notes, “The Indispensable Teacher’s Guide to Computer Skills, 2nd edition, Linworth Publishing.”  I need to get a copy of this!

I am very fond of rubrics, checklists or other grading/evaluation criteria tools.  Rubrics allow me to organize my thoughts and present them to students in a logical way.  Rubrics allow students to see what will be criteria for grading with no surprises.  Although there is still bound to be some subjectivity in using a rubric for evaluation there is a better chance that the teacher will get what he/she is aiming for (of course as aligned to the course objectives) and the student will be more successful with the assignment.

The standards for adminstratie computing are an excellent place to start.  Academic administrators should use these standards to do self-assessments.  Academic leaders who are responsible for schools or districts who cannot perform above Level 1 rubric will not be able to lead faculty and students into the 21st century.  A top-level academic administrator should be leading with the basic tools as describe in these standards; shared calendars, data integration, web presence and public electronic communication, online research, competent use of technology by faculty and students, proactive planning and ethical use of technological tools.

Among the many technology standards, these rubrics are excellent tools for self-assessment and school reform!  These standards no longer describe progressive schools or the schools that receive the most funding.  These standards describe the levels of operation and function required of administrators, teachers and students who want to be contributing members of the 21st century.

Blog #3 CI538

In Clarence Fisher’s blog entry on June 4 he describes how his students’ online postings are much richer if they “get a life” or, as he suggests, are viewed and read by others.  (original post: http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/) 

This brings up an issue I’ve always had trouble with in prompting for and assessing online discussion.  I generally use asynchronous discussion forums as repositories for information and what in the traditional classroom would be considered probably “homework”.  My students are given an assignment for which they do the work and post their results in a forum.  Very rarely do I require students to comment on the work of other students as I feel that this is sometimes contrived.  Therefore I allow the dialogue to naturally occur and, well, if it doesn’t occur it simply doesn’t occur.  This has an affect on the points earned and motivation to dialogue online.  I have always understood that student postings are motivated by points and discussion forums, just because they exist, do not encourage students to engage in online dialogue.  However, I do think there are situations such as guided peer review or collaborative tasks which help motivate students to dialogue online with purpose and meaning.  The strategy I attempted with this week’s discussion in my class is to provide 8 ready-made prompts.  I divided the class into two; one half taking one of the prompts and the other half required to reply to at least two of the original prompts.  I was pleasantly suprised that most of the responders posted more than twice which leads me to believe that they are reading most of the original posts in the process of selecting two to which they want to respond.  I will try this process again with another week’s discussion, but of course I will switch the groups to make the original posters the new repsonders and vice versa.

This discussion is still taking place within the confines of our password-protected environment.  However, I do think that the use of wikis and blogs opens up the possibilities that studnets’ writings will be viewed by anyone, not just the members of the class.  Yet, I do feel that it’s simply chance that the postings on the public internet will be read and it would be extremely difficult to assess asynchronous posts based on the chance that someone else reads them.

I’m still trying to find the right mix to prompt and motivate students to express their ideas in writing and engage in dialogue without forcing a patterned response.  I think this changes, too, wit the make up of the students.  In this summer course I have many proactive reverse transfer students who are native to four-year institutions.  In the regular fall and spring terms students need a bit more prodding to get involved in online discussion.

Blog #2 C&I538

Blog entry #2 for 538 is coming your way from an article in TechLearning, http://techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604461, as blogged by Ray Schroeder of University of Illinois.  I checked into Ray’s writings this week because I know he’s well-respected and well-recognized in DL circles. I also received today the Madison Distance Learning conference flier and found Ray’s picture for a workshop he’s facilitating along with U of I employee and former ICC employee, Emily Welch.  I’m glad to see that Emily is working in the online learning field. She was a great asset to ICC for the short time she worked with us.

Anyway, back to the topic.  Scott McLeod’s article, Professors Who Blog, discusses professors’ uses of the blog.  McLeod notes that faculty he interviewed blog to connect with the larger world, express your ideas to a larger audience and share ideas with others.  Interestingly, McLeod notes that professors he interviewed do document their use of blogging as a professional activity but categorize it under outreach or service and not under a more scholarly classification.

Maybe I’m a bit self-centered but I think of my blog as a tool for my personal reflection and development.  Although I understand the technology and the fact that my blog is public I don’t think of it as disappointing if people aren’t reading MY blog on a regular basis.  I didn’t really think about it, though, but it makes sense that a blog following is a sign of being an expert in a field or at least somewhat interesting or intriguing.  I blog for this class and for a way to express my opinions and feelings, not because I think my blog is going to be “discovered” and become a regular destination on the web for readers.  Maybe that is why I prefer a traditional asynchronous discussion board over a blog format for discussion and reflection in the classes I teach?  There is something about blogging that evokes more personal and informal tone, thoughts and language.

I agree with the interviwee in McLeod’s article that blogs allow the author to express passion which connects to the idea that blog entries are sometimes more personal in nature.  The author suggests that as adoption and buy-in increases we will see many more professors blogging and perhaps blogs will meet or exceed the use of professional journals.  This concept is a challenge to me considering that blogs aren’t peer-reviewed.  However, I think there is a great opportunity for promoting and increasing the use of blogs as a professional academic development tool.

Blog #2 – C&I438 Distance Learning

I take great pride in originality but it’s almost impossible to be original anymore with the access to information and ideas on the Web.  I found the link to the simple 3-minute video to understanding wikis on YouTube and also found it blogged about in many other blogs than mine.  At the risk of looking like a follower instead of an aspiring leader, though, I’m going to link and blog about this video because it’s GREAT!

http://www.langwitches.org/blog/2007/05/31/wikis-explained-in-plain-english/

What really fascinates me about this video is the simplistic approach to the instructional materials.  However, what seems like a bunch of simple cut outs is really a complex set of instructional materials.  This video is a perfect example of how great instructional materials don’t have to be high-tech.  The creator of this video used everyday text and images, even hand-drawn images, to create the instructional materials.  What makes this high-tech is the video broadcast component.  Yet, recording and uploading video is getting much easier with more user-friendly digital cameras and access to tools like YouTube and TeacherTube.  Two things make this video particularly good; 1. the fact that the video takes a complex idea like a wiki (a term that is not common to all) and explains it visually and verbally and 2. the fact that the video is readily-accessible by all who have access to the Internet.  I did think it was rather interesting that the author chose to describe the use of the wiki in a very linear fashion, going around the square created by the positioning of the wiki contributors.  Perhaps the video could be slightly improved by demonstrating the hypermedia function of the wiki with not following the contributing authors around the square in a clockwise pattern. 

I am hoping to include a wiki exercise in my summer or fall class. I will add this to the collection of “what is a wiki” instructional materials for the course.

Blog #1 – C&I538 Eval of Instruction

I stumbled across a useful blog, 21st Century Collaborative, authored by Sheryl Beach: http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/  Sheryl’s blog purpose is to write about virtual learning experiences and preparation of students for the 21st century.  In Sheryl’s most recent postings she describes a few online/virtual professional development conferences.  Professional development plays a big role in the creation of high-quality learning experiences.  Some people are just born teachers who have the ability to consistently design and deliver meaningful learning experiences. Any teacher, even the best, has the potential to improve however.  Online professional conferences have great potential to provide excellent information.  I have personally participated and presented in the Illinois Online Conference (IOC) which occurs in February each year.  The most important lesson I learned during the first IOC was that although being “at home” in my office at school was a true perk I had to make sure I scheduled time to visit the online conference site.  The first year I participated in the online conference I missed most of the presentations because I allowed the tyranny of the urgent and my physical presence at work take precedence over the fact that I was supposed to be engaging in conference events.  The best part of an online conference is that it’s recorded so you can go back and listen to the audio archives and read the presentation materials. However, the archives do not provide the opportunity to speak synchronously with the conference presenter.

Online conferences can save schools and educators time and money.  However, the conference organizer should have some sort of orientation or preconfernece experience to help stress to the conference participants that time management and dedication are still issues even when the conference is virtual.

Educators who are interested in teaching online but who have not taken online courses should be encouraged to participate in an online conference.  An online conference can provide an instructor with a brief but meaningful online learning experience.  Online teachers who have been online students themselves should have more empathy for online students.

Technology advancements happen on a daily basis.  Virtual conferences are an excellent way for online teachers to engage in professional development aimed at improving online learning experiences.

Blog #1 C&I438 – Distance Learning

I’m starting to put the class name and title into the post heading because while taking both 438 and 538 simultaneously and having blogs due in both today I’m having trouble keeping the coursework and the blog entries straight! 

As a follow up to my initial post below, the actual link to the blog created by the conference presenters I heard is: http://distancelearningredefined.blogspot.com/  The presenters were from McHenry Community College in IL.  The spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at the Austin Conference Center during the NISOD conference.  The presentation began with probably the most important statement made; students need to gain new workplace skills in college.  The presenters provided us with a view of a Devil Wears Prada parody that was originally created for a Microsoft promotion.  The true message is that connectedness helps get the job done even in extreme situations.  The same can be said for distance learning.  Good distance learning experiences are all about connectedness or what we commonly call engagement.  Good distance learning experiences involve the instructor and the students, students with each other and students with the course content and perhaps people, places and content outside of the core course content. 

The presenters provided demonstrations of DL 2.0 tools including YouTube, Skype, YackPack (new to me), blogs, wikis, Google docs and Second Life.  Since I was familiar with all of these tools except YackPack I visited the YackPack site to learn more.

YackPack offers a variety of tools including a walkie talkie widget, an image and audio player and a “tag” voice tool.  If I understand the tools correctly you can install them into Web pages and blogs and allow voices to be recorded, saved and linked to the pages.  The walkie talkie widget should allow two-way communication such as the “talk” button feature found in tools like Elluminate and Skype.

Web 2.0 or the read, write, web is just starting to have an impact on distance learning.  I have this sense that we’re ”restarting” the adoption wave in instructional technology like the one that began when computers and the Internet were first used by the early adopters.  What may be different, though, is that there are many more innovations in the 2.0 wave and some seem to come and go quickly. I wonder which ones will still be around when the laggarts get around to being interested in them? 

First Unsolicited Post; Tuesday at NISOD

As I sit in a morning session at the 2007 NISOD conference I felt convicted to put notes about this session not into my paper notebook but into the blog I started for my summer courses.  This morning I listend to reporter John Merrow deliver a keynote address.   Two hours later I was sitting in a session on Web 2.0 and I received an email regarding Mr. Merrow’s latest podcast on community colleges.  There are times I feel like I’m on information overload.  Right now I’m on information astonishment – realizing first-hand how technology has an incredible way to facilitate the convergence of information.  I’ve been in sessions this week during which I have been multi-tasking to stay alert and engaged.  During this session, though, I realized that multi-tasking is allowing me to put into practice immediately the information I’m gathering from this conference.  Yesterday during a session I spent the latter half of the session searching for books the speaker recommended.  I ordered 5 books for less than 1/4 of the price retail on half.com.  During this session and a demonstration of Skype I posted a YouTube link to one of my online courses.  I don’t think we have to be in this mode all the time but how exciting it is!  I’m wondering if this note is going to be more useful to me than the paper notebook I bring back to the office?  The speaker in this session has just turned the topic to blogging.  He asked if anyone has blogged before.  Ah, yeah, I’m blogging right now as you are asking!!  He is going on to demonstrate “moblogging”, a way to use mobile and PDA devices to capture blog entries and send them to a web site.  Ok, maybe too much convergence?  If you’re sending content to  your blog this rapidly perhaps you haven’t or won’t take the time to edit and refine the content to add meaning?  This blog post isn’t in response to a blog I read but to this session I’m experiencing at this conference.  I just felt strongly about using a Web 2.0 tool with which I was familiar and to which I had access while feeling inspired to take notes and reflect during this session.  …I’ll pay attention now…