Category: General

When we first began writing about the Internet, we tried to make the point to educators that the Internet was not developed for you. The Internet is for everyone and serves a wide variety of purposes. Some material may have been developed for the purpose you have in mind, but much of the material would have been developed for other purposes.

I am reminded of this same point today. USA Today has an article describing adolescent blogs and the type of information that is contained in such blogs. In commenting on this article Will Richardson takes issue with the use of the term blog and attempts to differentiate journal from blog. I understand the distinction, but many will not care. It is blogging software, the content is hosted on sites described as blog sites, so participants describe what they are doing as blogging.

Schools are caught in a difficult position. While they may see the educational benefits of blogging, they may prefer that students within the school walls not read the other material that is posted to blogs. What can I say – it is the Internet and it has no priority customers.

Perhaps special purpose and protected blogs are the answer for some. However, like the Internet in general, a protected approach will eliminate access to both bad and good stuff.

I think anyone who uses Google or perhaps other search engines is likely to be continually amazed at what information problem solving tasks can be accomplished with such services. Or, perhaps everyone is not amazed and perhaps how we use such services is one of those differences that separates those of us who are supposedly digital immigrants from those who are digital natives. Perhaps it is not so much your level of technical sophistication or what you know, but what assumptions you make.

I have stumbled into what is for me a new use of Internet search – providing examples used in test construction. I mostly teach very large classes (400 students in Introductory Psychology this semester) and multiple choice examinations are a necessary part of my evaluation scheme. I write a significant number of questions for each examination and I also believe in allowing students to keep their exams. This combination means I have to write a large number of questions. It is a time consuming process – I get on my computer, bring up my lecture notes in one window, and write questions in another window that I store in a database. My goal is to write a significant proportion of quetions that require students to apply course concepts. Writing questions at this level is a creative and challenging process. Application questions require the use of examples that students have not experienced in class (or the example would not require application) and examples that students understand or have experienced so that they can attempt to apply their knowledge to a novel situation. Sometimes, I struggle to generate examples that meet these criteria.

I do what students do when working on the computer – I get off task and use my computer for other things. Call this multitasking if you want to spin this tendancy in a positive direction. While I write questions, I “break” to check my email and read blogs. Somehow, out of this combination of tasks, I started searching for examples. For example, I was attempting to generate a good example of negative reinforcement. I searched online and found lists of examples and lecture notes used by other profs. The first item on the list of examples (who generates such things) was the warning bell that goes off in your car when the driver fails to buckle his/her seat belt. What a great example? A situation that fits the definition and that is likely to be part of the experience of a high proportion of students. This Internet thing may last.

Back to writing questions.

DigiTales is a site addressing all aspects of digital storytelling (and digital projects). The site organizes resources, offers opportunities for developing collaborative relationships, and promotes books and workshop opportunities.

One resource I think is unique is the “Scoring Guides“. This resources identifies project types and then offers suggestions for attributes of each type that the instructor might consider evaluating. This combination provides educators a great way to think through the creation of rubrics for project evaluation.

File this one in the “I am not sure what this means, but it looks cool and it may eventually be important” category.

gOffice intends to be a browser-based office suite. At present, it is a browser-based word processing program (kind of).

Using standard browsers (at least some of them), a user can create, save, and modify text documents (saved as PDFs). There are some limitations in what can be accomplished, but who knows where this may go.

This is a free product (the company wants $1 per month for some additional capabilities).

Imagine a situation in which most application software is used online rather than purchased and installed on individual machines. Perhaps there is no charge or the usage fee is very low. Consider how PCs could be made much more inexpensively (e.g., perhaps no harddrive if the data were also stored remotely). Note that any machine connected to the Internet would do.

(Forget that the client/server model is what those of us who have done this for many years started on and we discovered that we like being in charge of our own machines. Forget that java-based netPCs were going to change computing as we know it a few years ago and never materialized)

Speculation: When fully developed, I would bet this product will be bought up by a bigger player. I don’t see the business opportunities for the developers, but I can see how the product would extend the services offered by major (and competing) providers.

See Wired News analysis of the trend toward browser-based applications and how this trend may create change within the technology sector.

eWeek.com has a recent article describing Sun Microsystem’s interest in education and the creation of a free-standing project – Global Education Learning Community (GELC). The GELC site is intended to offer access to open source learning resources.

The GELC site offers resources for primary, secondary and university students. I did not find a lot of content when I visited and the site seems presently to be mostly a shell to be populated by participants. So those interested in open source educational content might want to put this site of the list to watch.

I have not posted for several days because we have been out of town and our time has been occupied. We made a trip to Ames, Iowa, for Iowa State University’s homecoming festivities. Cindy and I graduated from ISU MANY years ago and we returned for homecoming because we were recognized by ISU with an alumni achievement award.

Dean of Human Sciences, Cindy, Mark

We did have an opportunity to meet with faculty members involved in preparing teachers to use technology to share ideas and experiences. It was a special weekend for us and I was reminded of George Siemen’s comment on the importance of connections in a rapidly changing worlds. We have the opportunity to remain connected to our educational institutions.

We also had a great time attending traditional homecoming activities.

Perhaps the challenge is to expand the more common connections (e.g., following the athletic teams) to connections with the academic mission of the institutions. Maybe such connections should be two-way – how can the academic mission tap into the diverse “real world” experiences of graduates and how can graduates continue to benefit from the academic mission of our institutions?

This is a blog entry written in Flock – a new open source “social browser.” Flock is considered beta at this point, but if you see this post it works.

If you want to experiment, the website for downloading is http://www.flock.com

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ZDNet Description of the Flog Project