Learning Aloud

This is the last post associated with last weekend’s Beyond Boundaries conference. It took me a little while to get to this.

I try to attend sessions or read materials on copyright whenever I can. I tend to interpret copyright standards conservatively and I wanted to hear someone defend a more liberal perspective. A couple of J.D.s presented so I took note.

One thing I have noticed is that everyone wants to characterize what he/she has to say as “information” and not legal advice. This session was no different.

The information presented in this Powerpoint is intended only as a general introduction to this topic and does not constitute legal advice.

I am never sure what that means. Is it –

I am not going to claim this as legal advice unless you are my client.

Everyone has an opinion – this is mine.

No one knows for sure until we go to court.

The J.D.s reviewed the position of the Minnesota State Colleges and Univerities system. You may find the resource of value.

The TEACH act is of particular interest to me. This act is an effort to provide distance educators the same Fair Use opportunities as classroom instructors. One of the problems with legal wording for me is that it is imprecise. One such phrase associated with the TEACH act is “systematic mediated instructional activity.” While the intent of the TEACH act is laudible, my interpretation has been that the law does not help distance educators much because distance education often functions in a different way than face to face classroom instruction. Classroom instruction is typically synchronous and distance education is often asynchronous. In other words, resources in distance education are often made available and used by students at multiple points in time. Many approaches to distance education do not involve the instructor and all students being online at the same time. So, I have wondered, would it be allowable to create web pages with embedded fair use content for review by students at different points in time? Would this be considered mediated instruction?

It appears the answer is no.

Put simply, educators may not electronically deliver works for student viewing outside of regular classroom time

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At least I think this means “no.” What does “regular classroom time” mean in distance education?

“An i-School has to be focused on more than some aspect of technology or computer science,” von Dran said. “It has to look at the intersection between technology and people, because it’s all about the focus on information for people.”

eSchool News offers an article on I-Schools for I-Society (information society). These doctoral level programs address issues of how information is generated, stored and used and the impact of changes in these processes on society.

The article did not offer much on information and information delivery in relationship to the education enterprise, but I would assume the process of education would be interesting to study within the perspective these programs are taking.

The Digital Story is a blog (with podcasts) dedicated to those wanting to improve their digital photography. The site is new, but the author claims he will explore a wide variety of techniques for capturing digital images. The site contains several options for adding the site to your RSS feeds.

Yahoo now has a podcast portal. The site does not offer a “main category” for educators, but the search function (series or episodes) generated plenty of hits.

The “in thing” is to use your iPod to listen to podcasts. The iTunes music store and access through iTunes on the desktop provides a convenient way to get the audio into your iPod. I must admit I don’t use my iPod in this way. Mine sits on my desk except for the “road trip” I have the opportunity to make now and then. Grand Forks is not the kind of city that requires the use of an iPod during the daily commute to work. I listen to podcasts from one of my desktop computers.

As portals compete for attention, I would suggest the advantage will go to the portal providing the best search features. iTunes has a different advantage in the integration with music content and access through the iTunes software, but in the long run may not offer the best search capabilities. We will have to see how capabilities develop around content.

You never know what you are going to get (with apologies to Forrest’s mom). Beyond Boundaries Day 2

Today I listened to one of the more interestinging conference presentations I have heard in a while. George Siemens (Red River College, Winnipeg, Manitoba) offered comments on content and connectionism (see his blog for related comments). There was a great deal of information in his comments and folks probably took away different messages from it.

Part of the presentation suggested connectionism be considered as the new learning theory. I enjoy contrasts among models of human learning and memory (as an educational psychologist), but issues of connectionism as distinct from cognitive or constructivist models to me seem matters of differences in the language interested parties use to discuss theoretical issues. My academic training focused on the cognitive perspective and I tend to continue to integrate ideas (metacognition, connections within LTM, categories of memory contents) within such models to explain new developments to myself.

What peaked my interest was his use of the concept of connections – connections among ideas, connections with people, and possibly connection to place. A course as an experience with content may no longer be enough. The message of the content may be transitory. Access to the content may not require the course. The value is likely to be in the processing of the content. The value is likely to be in the connections with people AND content. If courses and institutions are to flourish, perhaps the time duration of connections needs to be extended. Perhaps enrollment in a course/institution should include some long-term opportunities (even if such continuation involves a subscription) so that content, process, and people can continue to offer opportunities for connections.

Beyond Boundaries is the University of North Dakota’s technology in higher education conference. It is a nice regional conference with the ability to bring in some “name” presenters.

A presentation I attended this morning was provided by John Dennett, Blackboard Solutions Engineer (previously of MITs OpenCourseWare initiative). The presentation contasted open source and commercial course management systems.

Some of the arguments favoring commercial products I have heard before (e.g., total cost of ownership). A couple new suggested limitations of open source solutions also surfaced:
1) robustness – the presenter claimed that open source educational software is typically developed using something like PHP (e.g., moodle). This works well in encouraging contributions of distributed authors, but PHP was claimed not to have the robustness necessary to stand up to enterprise level applications. While WebCT and Blackboard began with Perl, the applications have moved away from scripting languages. Scripting languages also seem to come and go.
2) 508 compliance – the presenter claimed that Moodle was not 508 compliant and this will be a serious limitation for higher ed institutions willing to accept federal support. I asked for a specific example of a failure to meet 508 standards and John directed me to a Blackboard white paper. I asked whether Blackboard would fix a noncompliant web page uploaded by a faculty member and he acknowledged that no CMS can guarantee that the content provided will be 508 compliant.

I have noticed something. Other bloggers use cool names for their blogs. I did not know this when I started blogging years ago. I thought EdTech was descriptive. I like Andy Carvin’s Waste of Bandwidth – a little self-deprecation is a good thing. Mathemagenic is cool too. A little mystery draws attention. I have not encountered that word since I read Rothkopf back in the 60s and 70s. Final example – One Trick Pony (remember what I said about self-deprecation).

After a couple of minutes of careful thought (a minute more than I devoted to the original name for this blog), I have come up with Learning Aloud. In my strange way of viewing the world, this is a derivation of Think Aloud (see Kucan & Beck if this phrase is foreign). Learning aloud is what I think some bloggers do. They use a blog as an externalization of what they are learning. They externalize as a way to think through ideas and evaluate their own understanding. If others happen to find such musing of value, so much the better.

The colon?? I read somewhere that a study of research journals determined that a high proportion of the titles of published research articles contain a colon. I am a man of science and I want to do the right thing. 😉

Kucan, L. & Beck, I. (1997). Thinking aloud and reading comprehension: Inquiry, Instruction, and Social Interaction. Review of Educational Research, 67(3), 271-299