etc@bmc
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Click and Double-Click: Episode 8
There's a new episode of Click and Double-Click out. Special guest Mark Colvson.
click and double-click
click and double-click
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Connectivism
Connectivism is a learning theory that truly takes advantage of the networked world we live in. George Siemens has an excellent post today on the tool vs. the possibilities of the tool. He partly explains connectivism in this way:
It's worth perusing his whole site to get a good idea of this would work practically speaking. I believe my whole CSEM is an experiment in connectivist learning. We'll find out how it goes after we're done.
The concept centers on a person’s ability to create his or her own personal learning network. Rather than learning only through courses, we learn by creating and forming connections to information and people. The sources we select are dynamic. When they change, our whole network gets smarter.
It's worth perusing his whole site to get a good idea of this would work practically speaking. I believe my whole CSEM is an experiment in connectivist learning. We'll find out how it goes after we're done.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Digital Natives
Many of our students fall into this category of people who are comfortable with all kinds of technology. There's a good definition of what a digital native is from Tom McHale. Many people consider most technology, like email, IM, the web, a distraction from the task at hand. As Will Richardson notes:
There's some really interesting research coming out about how differently these students participate in learning. Many have been too quick to dismiss this difference as inferior, but I think with the proper guidance and integration of technology, we can really capitalize on this difference and make learning more sticky.
via Educational Technology
what if technologies like IM were part of the educational process instead of a distraction from it? "Schools don't use IM. It's unbelievable," he says. "Everyone in the business world uses IM."I admit to feeling at home in the digital world and I do use IM occasionally in my work and in the class environment. Books can also be a distraction if you're not reading the book you're supposed to be reading for class.
There's some really interesting research coming out about how differently these students participate in learning. Many have been too quick to dismiss this difference as inferior, but I think with the proper guidance and integration of technology, we can really capitalize on this difference and make learning more sticky.
via Educational Technology
Documenting Documentation
I'll admit it. Writing documentation is not that much fun. I do my best to keep it up to date and to add new information as necessary. But it's not the most intellectually stimulating thing to do. Occasionally, I can enlist a student to write some for me, but I usually have to do major editing.
Ostensibly, the documentation I write is for my local community, to assist them with the software we provide for their use. However, when I check my stats, I generally find that 98% of people visiting those pages are from elsewhere. My most popular help document, CD & DVD burning, regularly gets a couple of hundred hits a day, none from local visitors.
My local clientele, of course, have the advantage of being able to call and email me directly and find out what they need to know. And I certainly don't mind helping people directly. I also offer workshops on a variety of topics, many of which I have written extensive documentation for. For the locals, there may well be something about the personal touch that they find appealing and so they shun the impersonal documentation.
Not everyone learns well from just reading a series of steps (accompanied by pictures). Though I'm working on creating screencast versions of all the existing help documents, those, too, may not meet everyone's needs. With so many different computers, software versions, and browsers, there are almost always gaps in the documentation.
All that said, I often wonder how beneficial it is for me to put effort into writing and maintaining documentation for an audience that doesn't use it. If everyone who needs help is going to call me or email me anyway, wouldn't it be better for me just to spend more time by the phone or computer? That, too, seems like a poor use of my time. There seems to be tension, then, between my wanting to provide help and my need for those seeking help to be more self-sufficient so that I can spend time in planning and thinking about the direction of educational technology at Bryn Mawr. In a small environment like this, I think this will always be a tension.
educational technology, documentation
Ostensibly, the documentation I write is for my local community, to assist them with the software we provide for their use. However, when I check my stats, I generally find that 98% of people visiting those pages are from elsewhere. My most popular help document, CD & DVD burning, regularly gets a couple of hundred hits a day, none from local visitors.
My local clientele, of course, have the advantage of being able to call and email me directly and find out what they need to know. And I certainly don't mind helping people directly. I also offer workshops on a variety of topics, many of which I have written extensive documentation for. For the locals, there may well be something about the personal touch that they find appealing and so they shun the impersonal documentation.
Not everyone learns well from just reading a series of steps (accompanied by pictures). Though I'm working on creating screencast versions of all the existing help documents, those, too, may not meet everyone's needs. With so many different computers, software versions, and browsers, there are almost always gaps in the documentation.
All that said, I often wonder how beneficial it is for me to put effort into writing and maintaining documentation for an audience that doesn't use it. If everyone who needs help is going to call me or email me anyway, wouldn't it be better for me just to spend more time by the phone or computer? That, too, seems like a poor use of my time. There seems to be tension, then, between my wanting to provide help and my need for those seeking help to be more self-sufficient so that I can spend time in planning and thinking about the direction of educational technology at Bryn Mawr. In a small environment like this, I think this will always be a tension.
educational technology, documentation
Friday, September 23, 2005
Technology Barriers
When I sang the praises yesterday of Writely, the main reason I did so was that it was so absolutely simple to use. There was really nothing cumbersome about it at all.
What I've found this semester especially is there are so many walls in the way of getting things to work. The web has been around for a long time now and computers even longer. I am of the mind that things should just work. If someone says, I want to do x, you should be able to say, okay, here's how. Far too often, I find myself saying, nope, won't work. Or, find that the solution is really, really complicated.
Two cases in point. First, I've been working with David Karen in Sociology to use the Tablet PC with Blackboard to comment on papers. I thought that the Tablet PC would be the biggest stumbling block, but it turned out to be Blackboard. David wanted a simple way to collect the papers via Blackboard, scribble on them with the tablet and then send them back. We found a way to collect papers, but resubmitting them turned out to be a one-by-one process. Our ideal solution would have been to open the paper within Blackboard (or some other system), mark them up, click "Send back" or something and be done with it. And it took us a while to walk through the one-by-one process. It wasn't an intuitive process at all. It should be. Tasks like this (collecting papers) which professors do all the time should be obvious. So while I was happy we came up with a process for David to work with, it's not seamless in any way. I'm open to suggestion.
Second case also involves the tablet. Another professor wants to be able to mark up web sites in class. He likes to visit sites and then write on them, circle things, etc. One possible solution is to pull the site into Acrobat and write on it from there. But that seems silly. Shouldn't you just have the equivalent of a transparency? So I have no good, simple, seamless solution. I did find some interesting ideas and plugins, but nothing that fit my needs.
These little things frustrate me. And sometimes what frustrates me more is that we often don't have the foresight to think of the importance of the seamless integration of various tools. As a power user, I can piece together something that might work, but an average user isn't going to even think to do that. We need to make this easier.
educational technology, tablet pc, blackboard
What I've found this semester especially is there are so many walls in the way of getting things to work. The web has been around for a long time now and computers even longer. I am of the mind that things should just work. If someone says, I want to do x, you should be able to say, okay, here's how. Far too often, I find myself saying, nope, won't work. Or, find that the solution is really, really complicated.
Two cases in point. First, I've been working with David Karen in Sociology to use the Tablet PC with Blackboard to comment on papers. I thought that the Tablet PC would be the biggest stumbling block, but it turned out to be Blackboard. David wanted a simple way to collect the papers via Blackboard, scribble on them with the tablet and then send them back. We found a way to collect papers, but resubmitting them turned out to be a one-by-one process. Our ideal solution would have been to open the paper within Blackboard (or some other system), mark them up, click "Send back" or something and be done with it. And it took us a while to walk through the one-by-one process. It wasn't an intuitive process at all. It should be. Tasks like this (collecting papers) which professors do all the time should be obvious. So while I was happy we came up with a process for David to work with, it's not seamless in any way. I'm open to suggestion.
Second case also involves the tablet. Another professor wants to be able to mark up web sites in class. He likes to visit sites and then write on them, circle things, etc. One possible solution is to pull the site into Acrobat and write on it from there. But that seems silly. Shouldn't you just have the equivalent of a transparency? So I have no good, simple, seamless solution. I did find some interesting ideas and plugins, but nothing that fit my needs.
These little things frustrate me. And sometimes what frustrates me more is that we often don't have the foresight to think of the importance of the seamless integration of various tools. As a power user, I can piece together something that might work, but an average user isn't going to even think to do that. We need to make this easier.
educational technology, tablet pc, blackboard
Monday, September 19, 2005
Word processing on the web
Honestly, I think this program is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It is a fully online word processor. It is wysiwyg (what you see is what you get), very simple and straightforward. I tried it out for a while this morning from my Mac using Firefox and it worked perfectly.
The coolest thing about it is not just the fact that it's a word processor on the web (meaning, no need to purcase separate software), but that it takes advantage of the very fact that it's on the web. It allows you to collaborate on documents with others, make documents publishable, post a document to a blog, gives you the html so that you can turn the result into a fully-designed web page (and it's way cleaner than the html produced by word). You can also save the file as a word document.
Here's the result of the page I created both in Writely and as I published it on the ETC site using their html. I also was able to save it as a word document and it looks good.
People talk about Web 2.0 and this moves us more in that direction, away from a focus on the desktop and desktop applications and more toward connectedness.
web 2.0, writely
The coolest thing about it is not just the fact that it's a word processor on the web (meaning, no need to purcase separate software), but that it takes advantage of the very fact that it's on the web. It allows you to collaborate on documents with others, make documents publishable, post a document to a blog, gives you the html so that you can turn the result into a fully-designed web page (and it's way cleaner than the html produced by word). You can also save the file as a word document.
Here's the result of the page I created both in Writely and as I published it on the ETC site using their html. I also was able to save it as a word document and it looks good.
People talk about Web 2.0 and this moves us more in that direction, away from a focus on the desktop and desktop applications and more toward connectedness.
web 2.0, writely
Thursday, September 15, 2005
SMDI Presentations
Today was the capstone to the Summer Multimedia Program, the presentation of the projects. This summer, we completed 17 projects, all varying in form and function. Some contributed to the campus, such as a redesign and reorganization of the Facilities website. And there were others that were centered around a specific course, such as Rosi Song's Spanish 318, a course on Spanish cinema for which the students create a site with resources, film clips, and a class blog.
To me, this whole program represents a wonderful collaboration between the students, the staff and the faculty to forward the mission of the college. I encourage you to explore some of the projects from this year and years past through the Summer Institute site.
To me, this whole program represents a wonderful collaboration between the students, the staff and the faculty to forward the mission of the college. I encourage you to explore some of the projects from this year and years past through the Summer Institute site.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Faculty and the internet
A good article is out this month about the effect of the internet on professors. Titled "Professors Online: The Internet's Impact on College Faculty," the article focused primarily on email but touched on the use of the web more broadly as well. One thing I noticed was that there was little mention of blogs at all except through a few comments, though they may have been included under course web sites and web boards. The most fascinating aspects of the article are the quotes from the faculty.
These are two very important components of online communication; basically, the faculty members are trying to draw the students into their intellectual community by treating them essentially as colleagues. There is still concern about the impersonal nature of the internet. One faculty member noted:
Several faculty members extolled the virtues of being able to exchange ideas, articles and to collaborate with far-flung colleagues. That's certainly something I've observed myself and heard from other faculty.
To be expected were the quotes complaining about the lack of support from IT departments, most of which I don't disagree with. Here are a few of my favorites:
When I first read the final quote about the gap between IT and academics, at first I was somewhat offended. After all, I consider myself an academic, with classroom and research experience. However, when I think about the way the administrative side of a college functions compared to the academic side, I see that there are some cultural differences. For example, the staff tend to work 9-5, 5 days a week and no more. They shut off their computers and don't think about work again until 9 the next morning. Faculty may work many more hours than that and may have expectations that an email sent at 10 pm will get an immediate response while on the other side, the staff may be unaware that there may be urgent matters to attend to outside of regular hours. There's also the calendar year problem. Staff are around during the summer months while faculty aren't. I think both sides need to think about how the other side works and come up with compromises that allow faculty to get the support they need without infringing on the rights of the staff.
It's also true that the IT departmentss don't always know what faculty need. Mentioning something to someone in the hallway doesn't necessarily translate into action. In many organizations, there aren't good channels for asking for support. Ours has a few, but it's often hard to differentiate between a need/request vs. fixing a problem. A bigger problem is often a lack of vision as it relates to academic computing. What is the broad vision for how technology should fit within the curriculum? Into research? When you have a vision, you can begin to determine what resources you need, including the human ones. Often, technology needs evolve an emerge, but still, once you begin to see patterns emerging, you can decide how best to handle them. I think that vision or the patterns emerging have to be assessed by both faculty and IT staff. Leaving either side out would result in poor results.
I'm doing what I can on my end. Mostly, I'm listening. Listening to faculty. Listening to students. I'm happy to hear from anyone. What are your needs? Your complaints?
education, internet, instructional technology
Others noted that they use the Internet to send students material on the spur of the moment, such as "articles, things I get in my e–mail that might be interesting for them to read," or to notify them of events and lectures that are class related. Still others noted the importance of Internet contact with students as a means to provide "encouragement (and) building community" and "to foster intellectual community, to enable students to see how academic conversations might unfold, and to encourage them to participate in an intellectual community."
These are two very important components of online communication; basically, the faculty members are trying to draw the students into their intellectual community by treating them essentially as colleagues. There is still concern about the impersonal nature of the internet. One faculty member noted:
the Internet "and e-mail (have) a degree of 'detachment'" that face-to-face communication does not.While there can be an unemotional and detached nature to electronic communication, that detachment can also be used to train students to convey their thoughts in writing more effectively. A faculty member can point out in an email response or on a discussion board exactly where the student is being unclear. In a way, having to convey ideas in writing is not dissimilar from publishing peer-reviewed articles.
Several faculty members extolled the virtues of being able to exchange ideas, articles and to collaborate with far-flung colleagues. That's certainly something I've observed myself and heard from other faculty.
To be expected were the quotes complaining about the lack of support from IT departments, most of which I don't disagree with. Here are a few of my favorites:
"The Internet would be of more use to me as a teacher . . . if my institution had a more effective IT department."I think it's absolutely true that most IT departments, including our own, could do a better job supporting faculty in using technology. But we have to think about how to provide that support. When you only have one staff person dedicated to instructional technology, as we do at Bryn Mawr, the most effective method of training faculty is by providing documentation and holding classroom-based workshops. Though I have a stunning number of people signed up for tomorrow's PowerPoint workshop, typically workshops aimed specifically at faculty are not well attended, often with only 2 or 3 people. At least with such a small number of people, we can meet everyone's needs.
When technology training is provided, it "is too often classroom based and undifferentiated."
The problem is that the academic culture and the IT culture simply do not mix together well.
When I first read the final quote about the gap between IT and academics, at first I was somewhat offended. After all, I consider myself an academic, with classroom and research experience. However, when I think about the way the administrative side of a college functions compared to the academic side, I see that there are some cultural differences. For example, the staff tend to work 9-5, 5 days a week and no more. They shut off their computers and don't think about work again until 9 the next morning. Faculty may work many more hours than that and may have expectations that an email sent at 10 pm will get an immediate response while on the other side, the staff may be unaware that there may be urgent matters to attend to outside of regular hours. There's also the calendar year problem. Staff are around during the summer months while faculty aren't. I think both sides need to think about how the other side works and come up with compromises that allow faculty to get the support they need without infringing on the rights of the staff.
It's also true that the IT departmentss don't always know what faculty need. Mentioning something to someone in the hallway doesn't necessarily translate into action. In many organizations, there aren't good channels for asking for support. Ours has a few, but it's often hard to differentiate between a need/request vs. fixing a problem. A bigger problem is often a lack of vision as it relates to academic computing. What is the broad vision for how technology should fit within the curriculum? Into research? When you have a vision, you can begin to determine what resources you need, including the human ones. Often, technology needs evolve an emerge, but still, once you begin to see patterns emerging, you can decide how best to handle them. I think that vision or the patterns emerging have to be assessed by both faculty and IT staff. Leaving either side out would result in poor results.
I'm doing what I can on my end. Mostly, I'm listening. Listening to faculty. Listening to students. I'm happy to hear from anyone. What are your needs? Your complaints?
education, internet, instructional technology
Friday, September 02, 2005
Teaching Carnival
Blogging is all about the content and the connections between individual bits of content. To promote that connection around a particular topic, many bloggers host "carnivals" and ask other bloggers to submit their links to their own or others' posts related to that topic. There's a science carnival called the Tangled Bank, which Michelle Francl has participated in. It's hosted at different places, but the main site points to its various locations.
A blogger I've been reading for a while has started a Teaching Carnival, collecting posts around the web and across disciplines on the subject of teaching. The first one covers all the various aspects of getting started: creating syllabi, freshman orientation, how to establish authority in the classroom, teaching online, and more. I've already found a great resource as I venture into my own teaching this semester.
A blogger I've been reading for a while has started a Teaching Carnival, collecting posts around the web and across disciplines on the subject of teaching. The first one covers all the various aspects of getting started: creating syllabi, freshman orientation, how to establish authority in the classroom, teaching online, and more. I've already found a great resource as I venture into my own teaching this semester.
