Author: grabe

How I integrate online resources

It is nearly time for the holiday break, but this means it is also the time to prepare for next semester (at least for those of us who work in higher education). Some students have already asked to see my syllabus for next semester in order to make the decision of whether to take the class or not. I guess I would want to know what they are looking for before I evaluated what I think of such requests.

I just finished a piece for our resource site, describing how I would use our site if I wanted to incorporate some of the resources and I was using a different textbook or no textbook. I suggest that instructors now commonly piece together resources that might involve chapters from a traditional textbook and online content that supplements the content in the book chapters assigned. I happen to think this is the publishing model of the near future, but the focus in this post is on how to offer this set of expectations to students.

I like the idea of an online syllabus for several reasons. It allows me to make adjustments in course expectations as I go – this does require that students recognize the online syllabus as the official version for the course. Digital natives or not, I have trouble getting them not to print off a syllabus I tell them may change and then must deal with them looking only at the printed document. I also like the online syllabus because it can link students directly to the online resources I want them to review.

Commercial course management systems (e.g., Blackboard) typically have tools for building such online documents, but there is always Google Sites or similar free online tools for web site construction. Here is an example built with the Google tool.

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YouTube Isolates Educational Content

YouTube has been willing to offer everyone the opportunity to serve video content. Being open to everyone has been both a blessing and a curse. It seems we have very different opinions regarding what represents useful and entertaining content. In education settings what might be funny or entertaining to someone in some other context ends being inappropriate and distracting. Since schools cannot control which videas are available, a common solution has been to block access entirely.

Google has responded with YouTube for Schools. The idea (at least as I understand it) is to isolate content from YouTube Education in a way that allows schools to    move this content through the filter in a predictable and controllable way. You might want to start with this page for the official description.

Sometimes teachers need to advocate – this site offered for teachers may provide some encouragement.

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Geotag images with your phone

I have been working on some content explaining the educational potential of image collection and curation. A good part of the education value is likely in collecting the images (being there) and various post collection processes that use the images – organization, annotation,

Geotagging potentially represents a combination of being there and then using the location to associate other information with what is visible in the image. Potential is the key word here – there is no automatic benefit to pinning a photo on a map.

We have geotagged photos in a number of ways:

  • estimation based on memory or using another source that verifies the location
  • use of a GPS – we have a Garmin that allows us to take screen shots so we have carried tis device and our camera for some projects
  • GPS enabled camera

What prompted this new post is the discovery that Cindy’s iPhone 4S geotags images.When we were doing this before, we were using specialized cameras. It is my understanding that most phones use a type of cell tower triangulation rather than satellite referencing to figure out where they are  (Google latitude will try satellites, cell towers or known wifi spots to determine where you are ). So, the 4S will organize images within the phone according to the location of the images and transfer this location information (EXIF) as part of the file when moved to iPhoto or Flickr (note Flickr allows you to not store the location information if you consider this a privacy issue).Here is a test shot mapped in Flickr. We did this post hoc using an image we know we collected in a specific Minneapolis coffee shop. The tag was close (wrong side of the intersection). I can’t see we have conducted the same test in open spaces (plenty of those in North Dakota), but comparing GPS and phone geotag data would be interesting. Come to think of it, comparing GPS and phone location capabilities under different conditions would make a great student project.

 

I wondered about my Android phone. It has location capabilities. It turns out that one can take geotagged images using Camera 360.

This image was taken in my backyard and uploaded to iPhoto. Check out the location in in Google and it shows the image was taken in my backyard.

So, geotags can be added with several different smart phones.

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Explain Everything

Here is an iPad app recommendation.

Keeping college students in town the day before a holiday break is tough. It is a tough call on holding class – many will skip and then you have to decide what to do with the half that stay. The class in question for me was Educational Psychology and since the topic of educational technology was to be covered during this part of the course, I decided to use tech to learn about tech. I created a presentation that students would be required to view and posted it to Blackboard. As popular as online courses are, most students who attend classes FTF have never had the experience of trying to learn from online experiences.

I decided to create this presentation using tech tools that would be new to me. Instead of PowerPoint, I used the Google docs Presentation tool, downloaded the slides as PowerPoint slides, uploaded this content to DropBox, and then downloaded the file to my iPad. I decided to create the presentation on the iPad using an app my wife has been raving about – Explain Everything.

I admit learning as you attempt to accomplish actual tasks has some drawbacks. The “eat your own dog food” approach assumes you can think about the project and figure out the tool at the same time. I did take a few tries (an hour + each), but most failures were my own fault. A couple of hints from my experience – remember to save (everyone should know this, but I thought saving individual slides as you go was the same as saving the project) and understand the iPad is kind of funny about exporting large files. It turns out, you cannot upload a large video file from the iPad to Dropbox (this one was not my fault). My iPad is starting to fade from use – I am still using the iPad I – and the USB method of transferring file does not work from my machine because it appears I have worn the power/USB connector out. Wifi and bluetooth are challenging. My wife is one of those tech people who just assumes there is a way and then makes it work. She was aware of this obscure Goodreader hack that turns the iPad into a server (as close as I can come to describing what she did), loaded the video file into Goodreader, and then ask me to connect to this ip number and load the file to my desktop machine. I mean really – who knows this kind of stuff.

I have attached a short demo I created using Explain Everything. I am ordering a mike I can use with the iPad, but this approach (remember $3) is impressive compared to how I might have done this same thing in other ways (remember you can annotate, show images, etc.). One final note – I did convert the mp4 file to mov and resized the movie for this demonstation using Quicktime (the old version 7).

explaineverything1 (demo)

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Here are a couple of ways in which you can support content creation and infrastructure development

I am kind of like Public Radio – every so often I lay this guilt trip on people reminding them that the content they appreciate costs someone some money.

The notion of free content is mostly an illusion – you pay, you tolerate ads, you tolerate a provider’s self promotion, someone else pays, or you trade personal information for content. I like the idea of “we trade”, but I wonder how well this has worked. I can tolerate any of these options as long as I can determine the motivation and I do not have to listen to someone claim that “information just wants to be free”.

Here are a couple of ideas I endorse and have subsidized. My contributions were modest, $60 and $25 if I remember correctly, so this is about encouraging lots of people to accept responsibility rather than assuming big donors will step forward.

Readability offers users an option that gives 70% of fees (30% to Readability) to registered publishers with a Readability user stores the text from a web site for later review. This seems fair to me since this system also does not display the ads that might have originally accompanied the content. I decided to give this a try – I am in for $5 a month.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My latest investment is in the open source project “Disaspora“.  The idea here is to create an open source and unaffiliated social networking site very similar to Google +. The site is now hosted, but the long term goal would allow organizations to host their own “node” (I think that is the term). I like the idea of a more diverse environment not so narrowly linked to a few commercial providers.

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The relative value of social contributions

I tell my class that while they may not be personally interested in the research process they should appreciate that researchers perform a valuable service. Whatever the outcome of their studies,  researchers take the vague terms that we all use and throw around and translate (operationalize) these terms in a form that can be measured. It is not necessary that we agree with how this is done. Whatever is offered gives others a starting point for conversation because they can agree or disagree.

Educators must do a similar thing. They present students a task and then evaluate performance on this task in order to indicate the degree to which the performance meets expectations. Typically, educators must be able to communicate the system that has been used.

In both cases, externalizing something vague in a concrete form is challenging, but necessary.

So, as an instructor, I have asked myself how I would evaluate the contributions to a social learning community over a two week period. For what contributions would I give points and how many for each contribution. I am assuming the purpose of this social learning community is to promote personal learning and the learning of others in the group. Remember – this assumes a two week time period.

  • Membership – 1 point a day for being a member of the community. Why – membership encourages the participation of others.
  • Valuing – +1, like, etc. – 1 point for each selection with a 5 point per day limit. Why – valuing encourages the contributions of others. While valuing is more active than membership, it requires little time once involved and can be applied multiple times during a short session. Valuing has less generative value for the individual offering recognition.
  • Share link (content created by someone else) – 5-10 points each – sharing the work of others does bring important content to the attention of others. The range of points here would relate to the “value added” of additional personal comments. Sharing a link – 5 points. Sharing a link with reaction – up to 10. I think there should also be maximum value on this variable. There is a diminishing return to a group if many only share. So max of 10 points a day.
  • Comment – 5-10 points each – comments encourage the contribution of others and engage both the contributor and the commenter in generative activity. 5-10 points per comment depending on the depth of the analysis. Max of 20 points a day.
  • Share original content – 10-15 points – original content provides benefits to both the audience and the author. 10-15 points depending on the quality. Max of 30 points a day.

So, I see the maximum benefit when content is generated and discussed within a group. A group that simply shares work created elsewhere without comment looks active but accomplishes little.

 

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Recognizing the divide

Internet content related to topics that interest me seem to surface in cycles. Sometimes I try to figure our why and sometimes I don’t. The digital divide seems to be trending at the moment. I think this is reactionary – other problems dominate the news and then advocates remind us that some of cuts involved programs that helped people needing help. This is only waste in the way some folks think about government spending.

So, here are some of the sources you might explore.
1) Nice overview from Edutopia – I am likely to use this as a source for other sources sometime down the road. My present annoyance is the short sightedness of the BYOD concept.

 

2) This from the Digital Divide Initiative (new to me). An attempt to explain the long term cost of the digital divide (again the way we address immediate problems keeps setting us back in meeting long term needs). Included are data from some states (Minnesota was the only regional state for me).

3) Finally, there was a recent report from Common Sense media regarding the “screen time” of children before the age of 8. Of course, the topic of screen time goes both ways with both concerns and educational benefits. The report devoted a section to inequities. Check the contrast total media use and technology use by income (you have to explore several sections) – sad – too much passive and not enough active.

OK – there you have it, reading assignments from the “need to share” perspective. Taxes can be good – someone needs to care.

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