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Archiving the Feed: February 2010 Twitter Posts by wisepedagogy

Posted in Uncategorized on March 8th, 2010 by Anne – Be the first to comment
cc-licensed photo, archive_w_7295 via Flickr by archive_w_7295

cc-licensed photo, "archive_w_7295" via Flickr by archive_w_7295

Each month, I post a list of @wisepedagogy Twitter posts from the previous month. If you missed them the first time, you can find them here.

Mobile Learning: Educause ELI Focus Session Recap

Posted in Uncategorized on March 8th, 2010 by Anne – Be the first to comment
cc-licensed photo via Flickr by James F Clay.

cc-licensed photo, "Google G1 next to iPod Touch" via Flickr by James F Clay.

Last week I attended the Spring 2010 ELI Focus Session on Mobile Learning. Not only did the session presentations offer valuable insight into mLearning needs and pedagogy, but the session’s Twitter feed proved to be just as valuable. Participants shared their own comments and insights into the presentations play-by-play and it became a useful place to post one’s own notes. In many cases, other people’s comments were re-tweeted because they typed what I was thinking before I could finish my own tweet. I’m sharing my own Twitter posts from this session below for my notes on the session, links to external resources, and in case you want to follow any of the other participants whose insights I retweeted.

First, a few comments about the session and the subject of mobile learning in general:

  1. Mobile-assisted learning is the future of technology-assisted learning. Today’s undergraduate students are sometimes called the “Net Generation” because they grew up with the internet in mainstream homes. Today’s children are growing up with mobile devices. If the advent of the internet has affected the way we teach our students now, we can similarly expect mobile technology to become a more and more pervasive element in future pedagogy. In other words, the more we see students using the technology, the more likely and necessary it will be to design course activities and communication methods that incorporate mobile devices.
  2. Text will often get a faster response from students than email: One of the participants in our session room at the University of Illinois mentioned the case of a student who was sent an email notification that she had won a prize from the school. After a week she still had not returned the message. Then she was sent a text message to her phone. She texted back within seconds. She had seen the email, but for whatever reason, texting was the more convenient, easier, or available way for her to communicate back. While this example may not be indicative of the way all students communicate, in general texting is becoming the faster, reliable, and more commonplace way to reach students. As another person in our attendance group put it, “If you want to reach a teenager, send a text.”

    More universities are already using texts for emergency alerts. Some instructors are using them to send immediate announcements to students. A few schools are starting to use texts to send short teaching points about historical notes and holidays in other countries, moving past the concept of texting for necessary communication and on to texting for cultural enrichment.

  3. Mobile Learning is not just about smartphones. The ELI session seemed to be predominantly focused on the use of iPhones, as some schools are giving the devices to their students so that they can all incorporate them into their learning. However, as many session participants pointed out, the broader spectrum of mobile learning includes not just iPhones/iPod Touches, but other smartphones like the Blackberry and Andriod, as well as SMS (text)-enabled cell phones and netbooks.

    The ability to access the internet is a useful tool in a mobile device, but any phone that can send a text can post or receive messages on Facebook, Twitter, or other websites that allow SMS. If the device has a camera, the student can take a photo anywhere and send it to the instructor’s email address or post it to Flickr. This opens a door to several possible mobile-assisted course activities. Students can take pictures of specific leaves on a hiking trail for a biology class or snap photos of library shelves in a library science course. Students can text their thesis statement for an essay to their instructor. If the instructor can think of a course activity that can be accomplished with texting, the students can likely pull it off. Also, as participant bking23 commented, instructors can sometimes get students to help create activities that use mobile devices, as they are already using them and know what they can do. However –

  4. Sometimes less is more, if it means it gets more use by more people. Even though many students are using smartphones, iPods, and the like, many of them only know how to use a few basic functions with them. And, as many of us are working on an uneven playing field where not all students have the same device, it’s likely to be easier to get students to use a basic mobile function like texting or sending a photo than to use some of the more advanced features of a specific device.

Session notes from Twitter:

Archiving the Feed: August 2009 Twitter Posts by wisepedagogy

Posted in Uncategorized on February 2nd, 2010 by Anne – Be the first to comment
cc-licensed photo, end of summer, via Flickr by NicDC

cc-licensed photo, end of summer, via Flickr by NicDC

I am in the process of archiving the wisepedagogy Twitter announcements from past months. Links have been expanded to show the entire URL rather than bit.ly shorthand. Since these tweets began in August, this brings us up to date for 2009. Hooray!

August 2009 Twitter Posts by wisepedagogy:

Archiving the Feed: December 2009 Twitter Posts by wisepedagogy

Posted in Articles, Collaboration, Course Activities, Fun Miscellany, Learning Aids, Library & Info Science, News in Online Education, Pedagogical Theory, Podcasting, Social Networking, Synchronous Learning, Time Management, Uncategorized, Video, Visual Aids, Web Tools on February 1st, 2010 by Anne – Be the first to comment
cc-licensed photo, Lunch Time! via Flickr by AR Nature Gal

cc-licensed photo, Lunch Time! via Flickr by AR Nature Gal

I am in the process of archiving the wisepedagogy Twitter announcements from past months. Links have been expanded to show the entire URL rather than bit.ly shorthand.

December 2009 Twitter Posts by wisepedagogy:

Archiving the Feed: January 2010 Twitter posts by wisepedagogy

Posted in Articles, Collaboration, Course Activities, Learning Aids, Library & Info Science, News in Online Education, Pedagogical Theory, Social Networking, Synchronous Learning, Time Management, Uncategorized, Video, Visual Aids, Web Tools on February 1st, 2010 by Anne – Be the first to comment
cc-licensed photo, Freezer Meals, via Flickr by armigeress

cc-licensed photo, Freezer Meals, via Flickr by armigeress

Thanks to Twitter I’ve been able to share a plethora of announcements about new e-learning technologies and pedagogical research studies, all in a very quick, easy manner. No thanks to Twitter, however, I’ve been announcing fewer of these announcements on this blog.

I’m hoping to reverse this trend by posting summaries of my Twitter updates at least on a monthly basis, if not more frequently. In the meantime, I’ll archive what I can in a few posts, beginning with January. Links have been expanded to show the entire URL rather than bit.ly shorthand.

January Twitter Posts by wisepedagogy:

What do online instructors have to know about H1N1?

Posted in Uncategorized on September 17th, 2009 by Anne – Be the first to comment
cc licensed photo via Flickr by Kateweb

cc licensed photo via Flickr by Kateweb

Unless you’ve been cut off from all news media over the past few months, most of the world is concerned about the spread of H1N1, aka Swine Flu. How will this affect online instructors?

Well, first of all, wash your hands! (As if you haven’t been doing that already…) If a vaccine is available to you, by all means be sure to take advantage of it.

The folks at Prof Hacker have come up with a more extensive list of preventive acts for the on-campus instructor, including wiping down your desk/table/podium prior to each class and carrying your own sanitized office supplies instead of using communal staplers, dry erase markers, and the like.

You may need to repeat information about flu prevention to your students, in case they have cut themselves off from news media or haven’t taken the warnings seriously (which, frankly, might be possible–especially with undergrads). If your on-campus courses incorporate some online course management system for grades or resources, you might ask students to use the course website for additional course functions and make it possible for them to keep up with assignments and announcements if they have to miss class.

Even if you teach off-campus and never leave your home in an underground bunker, however, there’s still a chance the flu could impact your courses this season if one (or more) of your students gets sick. Depending on how many days or assignments your students miss, you may need to be flexible with your participation grades and deadlines. This might be asking a lot of an instructor if you worry that some of your students might take advantage and claim false sicknesses to get extensions on their assignments.

Repercussions of H1N1 on Academia

You may have to use your best judgment here and compare the claims to the rest of the student’s behavior. If a student really does have the flu, that student may not have to worry about missing classroom attendance but the quality level of work is not likely to be as good. Would you rather have that student wait and complete an assignment when all the proper neurons are firing, or would you rather have them reach a finish line and be more lenient with your grading system?

The screencast “For Learning Technologists” (no author’s name is given on the Jing website, unfortunately) describes what online instructors should prioritize when making accommodations for sick students: chiefly, making lectures available online is not as crucial as figuring out what to do about completing or grading assignments. One suggestion offered, besides extended deadlines, is deciding if you are willing to waive any missed assignments. Again, you may have to make some executive decisions depending on what you want students to learn in your course and how badly your course is affected by sickness.

How are you bracing for flu season in your courses? Sound off in the comments section!

CDC’s Guidance for Responses to Influenza for Institutions of Higher Education during the 2009-2010 Academic Year

WISE Pedagogy Gets Twittrified

Posted in Uncategorized on August 18th, 2009 by Anne – Be the first to comment
Steps leading from one street to another in Quebec City

Stairs leading from one street to another in Quebec City. Taken in August 2008 on my way to the IFLA Conference Center.

After two fantastic weeks of vacation, I am back at work and gradually catching up with correspondence. As anyone who has returned to the office after avoiding two weeks’ worth of messages can probably attest, it’s a formidable hill to climb. There are over 300 posts on pedagogy and technology waiting for me in my Google Reader. Before I leap into reading them, however, I thought I’d turn over a new leaf and set up a new way to share noteworthy items on this blog. That new method is via a Twitter feed.

The plan:

Set up a special Twitter account just for WISE Pedagogy and add a “tweet box” widget to this blog. Then, as I sort through updates and news for elearning, I tweet the links (while simultaneously tagging them to my Delicious account). The tweeted links are then shared on the blog so that anyone not on Twitter who follows the blog can see what has recently been tweeted. Meanwhile, anyone who is on Twitter is welcome to follow the feed directly.

The execution:

The account on Twitter has been created. You can find it here: http://twitter.com/wisepedagogy

The tweet box has been added (widgeted?) as well. Whether it turns out to be useful, however, is yet to be determined.

So far I’m surprised that the tweets are appearing in such a miniscule font. I’ve seen these on other websites and they have appeared in a legible size, so I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Basically I just copied and pasted the html code from the Twitter widget website…can any avid Twitter users offer advice for adjusting this so it’s legible?

In the meantime, this exercise is also an attempt to overcome my own hesitancy to delve into the morass of the twitterverse so I can report back to those instructors who are likewise hesitant to use it. Should more instructors use Twitter for regular (and frequent) communication? The e-learning specialists who avidly use twitter would probably answer with an emphatic YES. Many online faculty I’ve spoken with, on the other hand, would give an emphatic NO.

So, this begins an experiment in using Twitter to communicate useful information. Will it actually make its way to the people who would find it useful? We’ll see!

Do you have an opinion one way or the other about using Twitter in online learning? Leave a comment below. Why (or how) do you use Twitter? If not, why do you avoid it?

E-Learner Survival Guide & My Language Notebook

Posted in Uncategorized on July 30th, 2009 by Anne – Be the first to comment

Two interesting tidbits this week:

This could be a useful resource for first-time online learners.

This could be a useful resource for first-time online learners.

1. E-Learning Queen’s E-Learner Survival Guide

This could be a good resource to recommend to new online students. A link to the pdf file for this book is available on E-Learning Queen’s blog post here. From E-learning Queen:

This broad reaching collection of essays on e learning examines accomplishments, new directions, and challenges from many perspectives. The essays are arranged in categories, which include e learning and e learners, teaching and instruction, student engagement, learning communities, outcomes assessment and institutional leadership, all of which relate to learners and programs from college, K 12, career, to corporate training. Of special interest is a focus on successful outcomes for students and programs, and essays on often overlooked niches of learners, including generational differences (Gamers, Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y), stay at home mothers, working mother e learners, homeschoolers, bilingual online education and training.

E-learning is covered, along with mobile learning, and the use of simulations, virtual worlds, serious games, and more.

Very useful approaches to studying online, and developing effective success strategies make the articles helpful to students and instructors.

E-Learning Queen’s E-Learner Survival Guide

2. My Language Notebook

This open-source tool is primarily targeted at online language instruction, though it could have its uses in other disciplines. It looks like it’s set up to store online podcasts, from very short (just a few seconds) to long (20 minutes or so). The audio files can be combined with blog-like posts or embedded into another website. The following is a demo player window with conversational Spanish:

Outside the context of language learning, this could be an approach to creating short podcast lectures or sending brief audio notes to students that doesn’t require mastering the sometimes-tricky Audacity tool. Since I haven’t used this yet, however, it would be interesting to hear from anyone who has, and whether it’s easier to use than Audacity or not — or whether there are other advantages or disadvantages to My Language Notebook… If you have used this, sound off in the comments section: is it worthwhile?

My Language Notebook

Watchitoo combines asynchronous video with synchronous chat

Posted in Uncategorized on July 24th, 2009 by Anne – Be the first to comment

The past couple weeks have been quiet on this blog, though WISE Pedagogy has been active. At the American Library Association in Chicago I presented a poster on the on-demand Introduction to Online Pedagogy workshop and had the opportunity to talk to lots of interesting people (and take a picture of my feet standing in a glass box in the former Sears Tower).

feet2

Since then I’ve come across several great teaching technology resources and articles, as well as the flu — which slowed down my productivity for a while. Rather than presenting a barrage of posts all at once about these resources, I’d like to point readers to my Delicious account, where I have a growing collection of information about collaborative learning tools, articles in online pedagogy, and other items that would be useful to online instructors.

Watchitoo is one item I would like to blog about specifically, however, because I’m trying to decide if this could be really beneficial in certain online learning situations, or just a cultural flash in the pan.

Basically, this is a social network that combines YouTube video with instant messaging and multi-user synchronous video screens. Each room features a pre-recorded video, a text chat box, and smaller video screens for a moderator and participants. Participants are listed at the bottom (with small photo icons) and if they have webcams and microphones they can drag-and-drop themselves into one of four video screens underneath the moderator’s.

In a way it reminds me of a DVD film commentary that shows the commentators in a small window along with the main film…if you could also add yourself to the commentary and adjust the volumes. I’m guessing that with any live software that offers audio participation there will be some time spent with people testing their mics and asking “Can you hear me now?” Still, I haven’t seen many other resources quite like this.

Although this shot doesnt include the text chat box on the left, it shows the possibilities for multi-user video chat.

Although this shot doesn't include the text chat box on the left, it shows the possibilities for multi-user video chat.

This just came out in the last week, so it’s still currently in beta. Hopefully if this catches on, there will be more file-sharing options included to create PowerPoint video lectures and more. In the meantime, the following are some possible ways this could be used in online teaching:

  • Bring more face-to-face interaction for full-class discussion — few live session software packages allow for videos of the instructor, and fewer still allow for video (or audio, for that matter) commentary from students. And, as anyone who has played the awkward game of “pass the mic” in Elluminate could contend, allowing more speakers at once opens more possibilities for lively discussion.
  • Make video tutorials livelier and more interactive — If you are already creating video screencast tutorials or demonstrations, you can play the video with your students and let them ask questions as they arise. If it’s a physical demonstration, students might be able to attempt an action in front of their webcams and ask you if they have done something correctly. This could make online learning more accessible for fine arts, harder sciences, or other subjects that were previously thought to be f2f-only.
  • Group work & presentations — If students are working in groups on a project, they could use this for meeting and working together. When it’s finished, you could have them present their project in front of the rest of the class.
  • Office hours — Have a video room open during your office hours with your webcam on and let students know they can come and chat with you f2f. If you’re working on something else and someone enters the room, I don’t know if you’ll receive any sort of pop-up indicator (I still need to explore their site more fully) but if they have a mic you’ll at least hear someone say “Hello-oooo….?”

Is anyone else using this? If you have an opinion, it would be great to hear what others think. Would you want to use this with your students?

Watchitoo

Cheap webcam deal

Posted in Uncategorized on May 5th, 2009 by Anne – Be the first to comment

I saw this today:

Buy.com is retailing this for $9.99, free shipping. Original price: $49.99. If you have been curious about integrating video lectures or video messaging into your online course but you aren’t sure you want to spend $50 to try it out, this might be a cheap way to experiment.

I don’t know much about this brand to assess its quality as a product, and the site doesn’t have any product reviews. It looks like an old model, if the operating system requirements are anything to go by: Windows® 98SE*, ME, 2000 or XP. Since Microsoft is no longer going to support XP it’s no wonder that this product is going for 80% off.

If you are willing to spend a bit more to have a higher-quality webcam and/or you need something Vista-compliant, I’ve had good luck with Logitech’s line of webcams. If you’re on XP, however, and looking to save a few $$, Labtec might be more your style.

Labtec Webcam plus Web Camera

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