CogBlogged Tagged ‘ed tech’

It was pretty much another curious link click of serendipity last May that led me to Stewart Mader’s Wiki/Blog Using Wiki in Education. I gotta like a domain he chose that is “wiki” spelled backwards http://www.ikiw.org/. Today Stewart is unveiling his new book/web site project Using Wiki in Education, headlined there as “A Wiki-Based Book”. I got a sneak peek a few days ago, and am rather excited to see this work go out. It includes 10 in depth case studies of educators who are using wikis in the classroom: It contains 10 case studies written by teachers that describe how they’re using the wiki to transform courses and engage today’s students in a range of environments including high school, small college, major research university, online/distance learning and research lab. This is the first book to focus specifically on the wiki in education and be developed and published using a [...]

flickr foto I know The Little Rose is Thereavailable on flickr Playing the Second Life memory game at the NMC 2006 Summer Conference Duriung the late afternoon Corporate Partner’s Showcase at the 2006 Summer Conference, for the NMC booth, we set up a station connected to Second Life (with thanks to Case for the big wide plasma screen). Participants had a chance to play the in-world Memory game with cash prizes for the best time. Here, Joann is highly focused on finding that orange circle object.

Oh man, taking about 100 foot high flames of jealousy! Gardner Campbell, a.k.a. Campnell D. Gardner a.k.a Dr Glu is recognized in a major way by one of our shred über gurus, Jon Udell. In Easing app deployment with an open source sandbox, Udell reflects on his visit for Gardner and Gang’s Faculty Academy at the University of Mary Washington. Dr. Glu had snagged Udell for a keynote. In his column, Udell praised Gardner’s strategy of settting up R&D space on an external hosted ISP, so his team could explore and develop new ideas with social software: It was just as enjoyable to hear about the approach that UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies is taking to the evaluation and acquisition of enterprise software. If you’re working in a higher-ed IT shop, you’re likely supporting one of several course management systems, Blackboard and WebCT being the two names that [...]

Michael Feldstein has written in a few concise paragraphs, one of the best frameworks for looking at electronic portfolios, via a “box of stuff” in the basement metaphor: Anyway, I’ve said on a number of occasions that ePortfolios are a lot like artificial intelligence in that they will be only a year away for the next ten years… The real problem is that, for all the many different definitions of ePortfolios out there, we have a bizillion different sets of application requirements which are not being looked at holistically. We’re trying to solve the wrong problems. … the box of papers in the basement. You know, the one with all your notebooks, your tests, your essays…maybe your thesis…? … does anybody ever really think of that box as a portfolio? Personally, I think of it as my “stuff.” If I want to put together a portfolio, I’ll go through my [...]

I am seeking some more voices to use as demos for my podcast presentation next week (it will be shared, but of course first it must be created). The focus is “Podcasting on the Cheap” how to do this with free/cheap readily available tools. If anyone has time, like less than 3 minutes, can you say “hello” and perhaps share some ideas for interesting uses of podcast technology beyond “recorded lectures”? Or tell me the methods you are using to do “podcasting on the cheap” Just send me an Odeo: I wish I could offer more than thanks (and Cole and Gardner, you are off the hook since you’ve previously responded). Audio will be shared/casted from http://www.odeo.com/channel/69807/view Thanks. Thanks.

Here’s an example of something we’d love to see more of via our Maricopa ePortfolio system — a faculty member or any employee using the built in blog tool to provide coverage or notes from a professional conference attended. Phoenix College Biology faculty and Ocotillo Chair John Arle did just that this week as he participated in the Instructional Technology Council e-learning 2006 Conference. You can find his notes at: http://eport.maricopa.edu/published/j/ar/jarle/weblog/1/. Session coverage included among others, “Tailoring Discussions to the Asynchronous Environment”, “Proprietary v. Open Source Course Management Systems”, “Logon or Retire? Getting Senior Faculty On-line“, “Blackboard vs. Moodle: A Comparison of Online Teaching & Learning Tools”, and more. And it is RSS-ified. And if John had been set up for it, he could have also podcasted coverage, since that feature is built in as well. Doing this has that double impact of Social Software- it gives Johns a record [...]

Wow, and some people think I have an edgy tone in this here blog, especially towards the sacred cow of reusable learning objects, which frankly after several years of looking at, thinking at, I just still do not buy. Yes, RLOs are R.I.P and I have questions lke If All The Learning Objects Are Web Pages Who Needs a Repository? Then yesterday, I stumbled across the Artichoke blog, where a posts on Mr Ed the talking horse on those Digital Learning Objects and Dear Horse God, about those Digital Learning Objects, the Artichoke takes some nice big bites: You cannot earjack a conversation between card-carrying members of the MoE digerati “A-list” at the moment without picking up terms like Learning Management Systems and Digital Learning Object. These terms are tossed like Brassica sprouts into the (e) conversations of the digerati with a facility and confidence that belies the fact that [...]

I was pretty sure I had seen it before in quick passing, by Michael Feldstein’s recent mention of Instructables led me back for a slight deeper scan: Here’s a nice little tool, community, and design pattern for creating and sharing how-to learning objects. Basically, it provides a wizard for inputting text step descriptions and illustrative images. Mix in some Flickr-style usability principles and some folksonomic tagging goodness, and you have a nice little instructional confection. Following a long line of resources for the Do It Your Self Type leading up and through MakeZine, Istructables provides both a collection of information for those interested and a platfom for building illustrated guides on how to build stuff. What can you learn to make? A bike rack made of PVC pipe, Computer-controlled music-synchronized Flashing Christmas Tree Lights, 3D chocolate printer made from LEGO, Patternmakiing tips for Bras, and my favorite, How to turn [...]

For well over a year, we have had a fantastic electronic portfolio software sitting idly for faculty, staff, and students here at Maricopa to put to use. This is the same MyEport developed at Chandler-Gilbert Community College by the brilliant Audree Thurman. It has uncommons features of blogs inside an eport, RSS all over the place, embedding of RSS feed content in pages, automatic streaming media, podcast generation, wiki page types, quizzes and polls, and more. At Chandler-Gilbert Community College the have actually extended the functionality there to be the editing platform for their college web site, what they call a “webport” so that individuals have the editing control over department and program web pages vis some friendly easy tools. But I digress. This semester there has been a steady increase of eport account creation by students, especially a lot of Art students from Phoenix College and Paradise Valley Community [...]

Taking the cue from Stephen Downes who took it from Jay Cross, I quickly checked out SuperGlu a new Web.0 tool that aggregates anything that you may have stored elswhere that provides an RSS feed… SuprGlu is about bringing the pieces of your web content together into one central place for you, your friends, and maybe even your friends to-be. Do you already use services like del.icio.us, flickr, blogger, typepad, etc? SuprGlu is a new way to gather all your content from those sites. In a nutshell, SuprGlu: * gathers your content from popular webservices and publishes them in one convenient place. * presents your content with simple, great looking templates which you can customize. * is FREE to use! So in less than 10 minutes, I had glued together 4 or five pieces of my extended, syndicated self. The beauty of the glue is that it uses info that [...]