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Glogster - Poster Yourself.

I found the really neat site today called Glogster. A glog is a digital poster that can contain images, video and sound. Creators can share them with other people via their social network or website and say what is special to them about their lives.



Brenda at Education World notes, "Glogster goes beyond being just another “scrapbbooky" tool -- it introduces students to 3-D communication skills, requiring them to merge the left and right sides of the brain as they seek to communicate and evaluate both information and meaning. The visual, audio, and textual capacity of Glogster not only will appeal to digital learners, it has the potential to support the visual literacy skills that are becoming essential skill sets for 21st century learners."



Glogster recently launched an educational version for teachers at http://www.glogster.com/edu/. Glogster has tried to make this tool as teacher-friendly as possible by making it easy to set up a class account, which provides a private account for each student (and generates passwords and e-mails them to the teacher). Traci Blazosky has developed a Glogster Tutorial page. Can you imagine how Glogster could change the face of book reports, biographies, creative writing? Below is a glog on Web 2.0 tools. It includes hyperlinks and interaction.

A Vision of K-12 Students Today

I came across this video on TeacherTube. It's a reconfiguration of a couple of YouTube videos I've seen with the focus now on K-12. I really like the fact that Nesbitt got 16 digital natives to help with the production of the video.

One comment asked, "At what point did students transition from "I am engaged in learning because I value education" to "Engage me and make me learn?" It is scary to think that current educational philosophy puts ALL of the onus on teachers to MAKE their students learn, rather than on students." I'm wondering if the majority of students were ever involved in education simply because they valued learning--whether that is a myth we tell ourselves. What is it about today's education that students should value? Are we teaching them the skills that they can use to get a job, to be productive citizens? If they are using technology daily, then it is our responsibility to teach them how to use it appropriately, ethically, efficiently, effectively.

I don't think that technology puts all the onus on the teachers. I think technology allows teachers to be co-learners, to provide learning opportunities that have never been available to the majority of people before. My students can now sit in the Globe Theater and participate in an Elizabethan production in Second Life. Using i3D technology, they can go into a cell and see protein synthesis occurring--and even manipulate DNA to create mutations. They can tour the Louvre without leaving the United States. On the other hand, they can also be creators of knowledge. They can collaborate on a group project using wikis or publish essays previously only seen by the teacher in their blogs for the whole world to see. They can participate in peer-reviews, share research, and meet experts--all on the Internet.

It is our job as teachers to move out of the Industrial model of "sage on the stage" and dispensing of knowledge into "empty containers." We must realize that not only has our world changed, but our students have also changed. They have different expectations--and the business world has different expectations also. We have a responsibility to produce technologically literate citizens, which means that we HAVE to use technology and have our students use technology in their learning activities.

Games, Simulations, and MUVEs

Educational (or serious) games, simulations and multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) range from games that require simple, repetitive actions, such as Tetris, to complex digital worlds such as Second Life. Interactive 3D learning objects currently being developed at Fayetteville Technical Community College provide a tiered approach: simple demonstration, demonstration and narration, practice, and evaluation/self-assessment.

Games, simulations, MUVEs, or i3D learning objects designed for the educational community embed tasks or problems within a virtual context. Users can explore the environment and examine digital objects. In simulations, they can operate machines, perform experiments, and test hypotheses. With all this media, whether game, simulation, MUVE, or i3D learning object, a primary advantage is the interaction--the user participation. One additional advantage of the MUVE, is there is also a means to communicate with other users and online experts.

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ChemSense
Chemsense provides software that simulates an environment in which students can explore chemical processes and see the effects of changes. Students also can collaborate on their work in this environment.

Froguts

Froguts is subscription-based software that students can use to simulate dissecting several different animals, including frogs, fetal pigs, squids, and starfish.

Rabbits and Wolves

Shodor's mission is to advance science and math education through the use of computational science, modeling and technology. With the Rabbits and Wolves simulation developed by Shodor, students explore how nature keeps balance by varying the number of rabbits and wolves that live in a defined space. It includes directions and activities for students as well as background information for teachers.

River City Project

The River City Project, developed by Harvard under an National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, provides a virtual nineteenth century American town plagued by disease. Students work in teams to develop a hypothesis regarding the disease’s cause. They can interview citizens of River City, read relevant documents, visit the hospital, and review photographs. Research indicated that users showed greater improvement in their inquiry skills and a better understanding of the science content than did control students who used a paper-based curriculum. Unfortunately, support for the River City Research Project will end this summer (2009). It seems unlikely that River City will be available in the next school year.

Quest Atlantis (through Indiana University) is an international learning and teaching project that uses a 3D multi-user environment to immerse children, ages 9-15, in educational tasks. QA combines strategies used in the commercial gaming environment with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. It allows users to travel to virtual places to perform educational activities (known as Quests), talk with other users and mentors, and build virtual personae. Over the last four years, more than 10,000 children on five continents have participated in the project. Research has demonstrated learning gains in science, language arts, and social studies.

The Education Arcade was established by leading scholars of digital games and education. Researchers at MIT explored key issues in the use of a wide variety of media in teaching and learning through the Games-to-Teach Project, a Microsoft-funded initiative with MIT Comparative Media Studies that ran between 2001 and 2003. The project resulted in a suite of conceptual frameworks designed to support learning across math, science, engineering, and humanities curricula. Working with top game designers from industry and with faculty across MIT's five schools, researchers produced 15 game concepts with supporting pedagogy that showed how advanced math, science and humanities content could be uniquely blended with state-of-the-art game play.

• One of those projects was Revolution, a multiplayer role playing game where students experience history and the American Revolution by participating in a virtual community set in Williamsburg, VA on the eve of the American Revolution. Revolution is designed to be played in a 45-minute classroom session in a networked environment. Revolution is a modification (or "mod") of the game Neverwinter Nights Gold, and users will need to acquire that game and install it (Windows only) first. The game is offered as a free download.

Virtually where? Are 3-D virtual worlds such as Second Life having an impact on learning?

View more presentations from eduservfoundation.

Virtual Learning in Second Life

Interactive 3D Learning

Traditional education primarily relies on books and lectures. Such methods of teaching facts, concepts, and structure rely on “two dimensional” lectures and textbooks to convey material that is inherently three-dimensional and dynamic, creating for many people gaps in understanding. i3D visual learning objects (VLOs) allow for the visualization of information that is difficult to describe textually. In addition, today’s student is a multi-channel, multi-tasking receiving entity. Lecture represents a single-channel, single-mode of distributing information. Interactivity provides the means to make knowledge “come alive”, facilitating comprehension and interest. Studies have shown that employing such visualization techniques will help the learner understand the message 33% faster, remember the message 37% longer, and make decisions 48% quicker. The queue time in effective knowledge transfer is reduced through the more natural medium: i3D.

Immersive and simulation learning offers intense experiences that are difficult to obtain in real life. Learners can address multiple different aspects of cognitive and psychomotor skills, including knowledge, tasks and skills, decision-making/problem-solving.

“Simulation” refers to a set of techniques that replace or augment real experiences with planned experiences. Often immersive in nature, they seek to replicate substantial aspects of the real world in a fully interactive fashion. “Interactivity” is important because it allows the user to navigate, communicate, and perform various activities. “Immersive” conveys the sense that participants have of being completing engaged in a task or setting as they would if it were the real world. While seamless immersion is not currently possible, research shows that participants in immersive simulations easily suspend disbelief and speak and act much as they do in their real jobs. Applications of simulations relate the intended goals of the activity to specific target populations of participants and to specific types of simulation and curricula.

Interactive simulation learning provides a bridge between students’ theoretical knowledge and the actual practices and decisions entailed in real-world situations. Using simulation technologies, learners are free to build on their current knowledge base and develop important skills before they work in real-world settings. They are able to make and learn from their mistakes prior to the real-world experience. i3D simulations enhance training or demonstrate concepts that can’t adequately be taught in the real world . Students are also able to participate in procedures or diagnose ailments not evident on a frequent basis in the real world. In addition, because any situation can be portrayed at will, these learning activities can be scheduled whenever convenient and repeated as often as necessary.

New Slideshow Posted to Slideshare

I recently created a PowerPoint presentation as an overview of the content for our Tech in the Classroom course. I finally got around to putting it up on my SlideShare account. Although SlideShare says you can now include YouTube videos in your slide shows, it limits the number to 5. Therefore, I deleted many of the videos I had included for how-to and clarification information. Unfortunately, I could only get the first video to play. So...back to the drawing board. This time, I took a screen shot of the video and hyperlinked it to the original. Luckily, the hyperlinks worked on the videos. They didn't always work for the hyperlinked text within the presentation. Sometimes, all I got was a hand allowing me to go forward or backward in the presentation rather than go to the site. Oh, well...

I hope you take the time to check out my slideshow. My Web 2.0: Imagine presentation, which I uploaded about 2 years ago has over 12000 views and 52 embeds. The newest presentation has similar information, but cleaner and more informative.

YouTube Edu Launches

I noticed that Cool Cat Teacher discussed the launch of YouTube Edu and was intrigued. This is what I found. YouTube launched a new section of its site March 29. The site organizes the video channels of more than 100 colleges and universities--no mention of K-12 though.

According to Andrew Leville, "YouTube Edu lets viewers sort clips by school or number of views, and the schools offer content ranging from complete courses to campus events to information for prospective students. Currently, University of Minnesota commands the top spots, with videos on the science of “Watchmen” and HIV/AIDS advancements, but there’s also “Advanced Finite Elements Analysis,” a lecture from the Indian Institutes of Technology, and a mass performance of University of Kansas’s alma mater among the most-viewed."

According to the YouTube blog, "Using YouTube as a vehicle to democratize learning is one of the coolest, unintended outcomes of its existence. YouTube EDU is a volunteer project sparked by a group of employees who wanted to find a better way to collect and highlight all the great educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities."

Tech in the Classroom

I am currently co-teaching a professional development course at FTCC called Technology in the Classroom. Roseann and I have arranged the course into modules which categorize the tools. The categories are: Communication, Collaboration, Organization/Management, Content Development, Assessment. We have found that many of the Web 2.0 tools can go under several categories.

Communication Tools

* Virtual Conferencing

o Elluminate

o Chats

o Skype

* Asynchronous Communication

o E-mail

o Blackboard Discussion Boards

* Social Networking

Collaboration Tools

* Google Groups

* Blogs

* Wikis

* Second Life

Organization/Management Tools

* Course Management Systems

o Blackboard

* RSS Feeds

o iGoogle

o Bloglines

* de.licio.us

* Flickr

* Slideshare

Content Development

* Microsoft Office

o Word

o PowerPoint

v o Excel

* Google Apps

* Learning Object Repositories

* YouTube/TeacherTube

* i3D

o Assets/Learning Objects

o Simulations

* Podcasts

* WebQuests

Assessment Tools

* Respondus

* Rubrics

* Project-Based Learning

* Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs)

* Blackboard Test Manager

Our approach, in some ways, is modeled on the Learning 2.0 Program designed by the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County. Since its inception, over 200 libraries worldwide have launched similar programs. We have provided our teacher/learners with resources and Discovery Exercise "Assignments." Our goal is to not only introduce the technology tool but to also have instructors discuss and devise ways to incorporate/integrate the tools into their teaching methodologies.

Brain Rules for Presenters (and Instructors, too)

Brain Rules for Presenters

View more presentations from garr. (tags: reynolds garr)

Faculty Perceptions of a CMS

As online learning has evolved, so have the choices involved in the creation and delivery of instruction. With each new generation, more and more features are being added to the online learning repertoire and it is the responsibility of individual instructors to select the features that will best facilitate learning. Course Management Systems (CMS) provide an integrated approach to developing courses and teaching using web-based technologies. Course management software allows students and faculty access to several communication features and other benefits through one source. Harrington, Staffo, and Wright (2006) noted an increased interest in the effectiveness of course management systems and suggested that the proliferation of course management systems in higher education indicates that more research on their effectiveness is required.

Elgort (2005) found that the rate of adoption of online teaching and learning was, in part, facilitated by the institution’s introduction of a CMS because it appeared to reduce the learning curve for non-technologically-inclined instructors. Mitchell, Clayton, Gower, Barr, and Bright (2005) also found that the use of course management systems such as Blackboard, WebCT and Moodle highly correlated with faculty’s levels of adoption of online teaching and learning. These faculty also tended to rate the CMS as being valuable or very valuable, where non-adopters did not value the application highly.

Although CMS tools have become more available to faculty, the adoption process has not always gone smoothly (Kilmon & Fagan, 2007). For example, “assisting faculty to integrate technology into instruction” was identified by respondents to the Campus Computing Project survey as the number one IT issue affecting their institutions from 2000 through 2003, when network and data security overtook the top position (Hartman, Dziuban, & Brophy-Ellison, 2007). Even in cases where institutional support is high, two separate studies, conducted by Hutchins (2001) and Johnson and Howell (2005) noted that faculty attitudes may be hard to change to meet the demands of the new dynamic, and seem to suggest that a study of faculty attitudes should be a required portion of any research on the effectiveness of course management systems. Dugas (2005) found that the foremost reason for adopting or not adopting the course management system was the faculty member’s perception of the relative advantage of the software.

In the minds of many early adopters is an underlying fear about the use and applications of new technologies for teaching practices. Associated with this fear is the impact or the possible fallout of unsuccessful attempts at applying the technology. Thus, negative or positive perceptions remain a critical component in the behavior to adopt a technological innovation.

Useful Tips and Tools to Research the Deep Web

Alisa Miller's recently wrote on Online College Blog that "experts say that typical search engines like Yahoo! and Google only pick up about 1% of the information available on the Internet. The rest of that information is considered to be hidden in the deep web, also referred to as the invisible web." According to DeepWeb.com, a study by Bright Planet indicates that the deep web is estimated to be up to 550 times larger than the 'surface web' accessible through traditional search engines and over 200,000 database-driven websites are affected by the problem.



Alisa provides a list of 100 tips and tools to help get the most out of searching the Internet. I have regularly suggested to my students that they use a meta-search engine such as Dogpile or Metacrawler. This is Alisa's first suggestion. She provides a list of 12 different engines to try. UC-Berkley in Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial suggests that you create your own custom search engine. Google Custom Search Engines (CSEs) focus on selected websites within the Google database. They are easy to make at Google Coop. You will need a Google account or Gmail account. Make specialized search engines instead of using giant meta-searchers or huge search engine databases. Use them to focus on pages on a subject. For more details, see their Getting Started Creating a Custom Search Engine (PDF).




Of course, as a Ph.D. student, I've found that using specialized databases such as ProQuest, EBSCOhost, and more to be helpful. One of my favorite (fee charged) database is
Questia where you can not only access journal, magazine, and newspaper articles but also access whole books.

Unfortunately, many of the databases are just that--fee based. However, Google has worked with many publishers to gain access to some material that wouldn't ordinarily be accessible to search spiders because it is locked behind subscription barriers. This information is available through Google Scholar. Google also offers Google Books. If you want to check out a book before you buy, this is the way. One drawback--in order to comply with copyright laws, Google can't display the whole book. Whole sections of the book will be unavailable. Joel at BizzNTech provided 15 Handy Google Search Tricks.

Changes in the New Year

I am currently in the throes of packing to move to Fayetteville, NC, where I will start my new job as Instructional Designer at Fayetteville Technical Community College on January 5. I am excited about the new possibilities! I will be working on a new project to develop 3-D animated learning objects and to create an online learning objects repository.

I've received comments back from my mentor on Chapters 1 & 2 of my dissertation. I've created a survey instrument based on Roger's diffusion of innovations theory which includes questions on the perceived attributes of the course management system, organizational support, and channels of communication (specifically faculty development opportunities). I hope to be able to complete my pilot study in the next couple of months.

FETC 2009, The Educational Technology Conference in Florida

FETC 2009, The Educational Technology Conference in Florida, will take place Jan. 21-24 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., where educators will learn best practices for integrating technology into their curriculum.

Keynote speaker Philippe Cousteau, Chief Ocean Correspondent for Animal Planet, will speak on the importance of reaching beyond classroom walls in the pursuit of educational excellence. Cousteau is also the president of EarthEcho International and grandson of the legendary Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

More than 200 concurrent sessions will focus on current and emerging technologies, safety and security, social networking, collaboration and sustainability. Nearly 80 professional development workshops will target 21st century skills. More than 500 exhibitors will display the latest in technology and education resources.

Registeration is now open at www.fetc.org.

Nintendo Digital Book Reader

I found the following notice on Scholastic's blog:
Dedicated eBook readers, like Amazon's Kindle, and printed material may be on the way out with Nintendo saying that in early 2009 it will add a digital book reader software to its DS portable game machine. It’s a sure bet that most kids in just about any class has played with a DS in the previous week, so adding books to its repertoire is a big deal for education. On top of adding new volumes via WiFi, the DS eBook reader will come with a bunch of classic works. The software will be able to search for words or phrases, add bookmarks and zoom in and out of the text. Now, what’s really needed is software to turn the hundreds of standard documents, like worksheets, into eBook files so that a curriculum can be built around the DS and other eBooks.

Comprehensive Web 2.0 resource

I came across a very comprehensive resource for teaching and learning with Web 2.0 tools. It contains information about everything from blogs to podcasts to wikis to digital storytelling to resources like Animoto and Jing and Photo Story… It also provides resources for issues related to copyright and cybersafety.

State of the Blogosphere 2008 Report

Technorati has conducted their annual survey since 2004 to discover trends and themes in blogging. However, in 2008, they went beyond the numbers in the Technorati Index and surveyed more than 1.2 million bloggers who have registered with Technorati about the role of blogging in their lives, the tools, time, and resources used to produce their blogs, and how blogging has impacted them personally, professionally, and financially. The Report was released over a series of days, covering these topics.

• Introduction
• Day 1: Who Are the Bloggers?
• Day 2: The What And Why of Blogging
• Day 3: The How of Blogging
• Day 5: Brands Enter The Blogosphere

Who are the bloggers?

Wikipedia defines blogs as:

• A Blog (a contraction of the term "Web log") is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.
• The Blogosphere collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections. It is the perception that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social network.. Discussions "in the Blogosphere" have been used by the media as a gauge of public opinion on various issues.

Sloan-C resources

I have been using the resources provided by the Sloan Consortium for my doctoral research, especially Sloan-C's Effective Practices site. The Sloan-C community shares techniques, strategies, and practices in online education that have worked for them. All effective practices are peer reviewed to both insure quality and to give submitters some documentation for tenure and promotion files."

Search categories for the site:
- Search by Pillar allows you to search by the five Sloan-C pillars, the building blocks of quality online education -- learning effectiveness, scale, access, faculty satisfaction, and student satisfaction -- and/or subcategories within them.
- Search by Context allows you to search by your perspectives (roles) in online learning, organizational type, or subject area domain, as well as by special cases of online learning (such as online collaboration, or large class size), and/or by subcategories within these.
- Search by Technology allows you to search by particular technology categories -- audio, video, synchronous, asynchronous, mobile, virtual, and digital resources -- and/or by subcategories within them.
- What's New returns the most recent effective practices added to the site.

Basic Elements of an Online Course/Syllabus

Based on my research, I think an online course shell should at a minimum have these basic features:

• title page
• introduction to the course
• course schedule, and a list of objectives and requirements
• course content arranged into modules
• Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) file
• glossary of terms used in the course
• table of contents, a search engine, and/or index with a roadmap to the course
• resources page with links to useful external course related information
• credits page listing the sponsors and the people who have developed the course along with copyright statement

The course objectives should be explicitly outlined on a separate course objectives page. Make the link between the assignments and the course materials clear. Let students know what is expected of them for each individual assignment or test, and for the entire course and examinations. Clearly describe the resources that will be needed and the learning activities that will be undertaken. In that the way, both the instructors and the learners can be confidently aware of the requirements of the course.

The syllabus should show at least the following:

• number and title of the course,
• instructor's name and e-mail address,
• instructor's office and (if available) home page location,
• instructor's in-person office hours and phone number,
• course start date, length of the course, and expected time involvement of students,
• textbook(s) and other materials needed for the course,
• an outline of the course format and a clear description or exercise in the use of navigational aids used in the course,
• a concise description of the course content,
• an evaluation plan and exam and project schedule,
• an explanation of the forms of student participation and instructor expectations regarding participation, and
• a list of all students in the class and a description of means for students to communicate online with both the entire class and with individual classmates.