Google Docs Become More Student-Friendly

Google Docs Become More Student-Friendly.

Follow the link to read about the addition of math equation tools to Google Docs. In addition to enabling students to write with these tools, this gives faculty another tool for grading online–gotta save those trees and the printer ink!

Here’s my lame English major attempt to use the equation editor:

google equation editor

Filed under: Web 2.0, free stuff, hypertext, online learning, open source, technology , google

eportfolio tools

Creating eportfolios as a course project is a good way to engage students in their coursework, if you present the eportfolio as an exercise in digital storytelling–specifically the story of their work and progress. If your institution has a campus-wide deployment of an eportfolio system, such as Epsilen or the Carnegie Foundation’s KEEP Toolkit (see comment below about availability), you can draw on common resources with which to introduce and support your students’ work.

There are a variety of free tools on the web, though, with which you and your students can be creative in crafting eportfolios to suit your course situation. Yours might be an essay-driven course, or perhaps yours requires students to create a lot of graphs and data-driven material. Or yours might focus on research and collaboration. Sometimes its easier to find the tools that work best for you than to reconfigure a template-based system.

Helen Barrett is a name you will run across in your research on eportfolios, and she not only provides expertise on the purpose of such work and lots of links to resources, she puts her money where her mouth is and has created a staggering list of eportfolios using all sorts of tools and methods, so that you have good models to view. Here are some of her resources:

Online Portfolio Tools (with links to models): http://electronicportfolios.org/web20portfolios.html

Portfolio and How-To on WordPress: http://hbarrett.wordpress.com/my-portfolio/

• Dr. Barrett’s Portfolio in a blog format with a special tab on how to create a portfolio in a WordPress blog.

Electronic Portfolios.org: http://electronicportfolios.org/

• This is a gateway site to many of her pages. She’s been at this for almost two decades and her examples are well worth visiting

I have used course portfolios in composition courses, in which students select drafts and graded papers, reflect on the process of creating them, and evaluate their own writing process and progress in a course. It is the truth that I find some of their best writing in their reflections and in their presentation of the portfolio. I have not asked students to use online tools for such a project, but look forward to doing it soon. Now that we can take advantage of more methods of telling stories, using audio, video, and photos, I think the results could be very interesting.

How would you use today’s tools to suggest creating an eportfolio?

Filed under: Web 2.0, blogging, collaboration, computers, digital literacy, education, grading, innovation, online learning, presentation , eportfolio

crowdsourcing, smart mobs, ideagoras: more collaboration or something else?

First a few terms.

crowdsourcing: from Wikipedia, “a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call.” Other terms for this act: “community-based design” and “distributed participatory design.” Some also call it spec work because members of the community can bid on doing the job or hope to be chosen for the job, instead of going through normal hiring methods. crowdSPRING is an online company that facilitates crowdsourcing for its members.

smart mobs: From Wikipedia, “A smart mob is a form of self-structuring social organization through technology-mediated, intelligent emergent behavior. The concept was introduced by Howard Rheingold in his book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.” Such mobs can physically gather just to create a scene, or they might have some social/political motivation, as in Meetups (remember how popular those were a few elections ago?). Are these virtual entities examples of the smart mob/crowdsourcing phenomenon: eBay (business built and powered by users), Second Life (a virtual world built by users), and Wikipedia, itself (an encyclopedia built and maintained by users)?

ideagoras: Depending on the context, a place/space/network/marketplace for ideas. Drawing on the popular concept of crowdsourcing, the focus is on innovation. Take the Innovate-Ideagora, related to the journal Innovate, it describes itself as “an open agora, where problems seek solutions, new visions are explored, and the status quo is challenged.” Or there’s this take on ideagoras in business that sounds a lot like any crowdsourcing article, but the concept in business often leans toward consulting services. I suppose the old think-tank is an instance of an ideagora.

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What’s in it for education?

Here’s an interesting section of the blog Education Innovation on Crowdsourcing. It’s more than one post, so scroll down through all. The first post looks forward to a crowdsourced type of wikipedia of video content that is that is educational and research driven. More likely to happen in the near future are the crowdsourced textbooks envisioned in the second post, and I expect that they would also take advantage of the participatory wiki format. Can you imagine a wikipedia-like site with tones of content on one subject? Let’s say you need course material (no longer called a textbook) for a course in Nursing and there’s a comprehensive and searchable wiki on the topic that allows you to pick and choose where to send students for readings and resources, like videos and images with Creative Commons licenses, links to professional organizations and journal articles. And you might even ask your students to work on editing a page or topic in the wiki as a way to both contribute to the profession and learn more through research.

You could have students experiment with crowdsourcing an idea on Twitter or some other microblogging service and reporting the results. Or introduce a group project using the concept of crowdsourcing to give students a fresh approach to the old group project that so many students dread. Have them create a wiki for the project or use Twitter to discuss it or let them decide what tool to use.

Lastly, as a professional concept, how do you feel about crowdsourcing a solution to a problem in teaching? Have you built a professional learning network (PLN) on Twitter that could respond to your questions? Does your institution or department have a wiki or blog that can serve as an ideagora? Maybe if college committees were called Smart Mobs and allowed to behave like them, they would be more productive and would be more interested in meeting.

I knew there was one good example of using Twitter as a crowdsourcing tool for a library project: http://b2e.nitle.org/index.php/2008/12/05/crowdsourcing_ideas_about_libraries_in_2

Filed under: Web 2.0, blogging, collaboration, communication, crowdsourcing, ideagora, innovation, smart mobs, wiki

love the cloud, fear the cloud

I had two interesting experiences with clouds yesterday–as in those spaces on the Internet where you can access software as a service (SaaS) and store files, for example.

I sync my Outlook calendar (Entourage, really, on my Mac) with my Mac iCalendar and then with my Google calendar, so that I can always see what I should be doing when I don’t have access to the school network. In addition, it allows me to embed my Google calendar on my personal web page, so others can see where I am. All my information and the syncing process works through my account on Mobile Me, an Apple service that provides email, calendar, and storage.

Well, something went wrong yesterday, meaning I did something wrong. Wasn’t paying attention. Said yes when I should have said no. In an instant, all my calendars were empty, and I realized how much I depend on them to guide my work and schedule. I had some frightful moments, until I realized I had published my iCal as a web page for sharing and that it still existed, but I didn’t know for how long. So I subscribed to it and then went about fixing everything in a backwards fashion. So, yesterday, was clearly an example of the love/hate relationship with one cloud in my sky.

Later, there was a flurry of discontent on every social network about Facebook’s new terms of service which spelled out what seemed to be a right to everyone’s posted material, such as photos and videos, forever. Here’s how Mark Zuckerberg explained the situation, and let’s see if he objects to my using the photo he uses on Facebook:

Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.

One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear. Read the rest . . . .

As I noted on Twitter yesterday before this was posted, to quote myself, “I sorta figure when I post any content that I am tacitly agreeing to share it with anyone who can right-click–what’s the FB difference?” So, it didn’t come as a surprise to me that Facebook made clear that it was one of anyone. Some people were talking about how to delete your entire Facebook account, but in social networking, aren’t we making the first step of trusting the network itself? Sure, there are ways to work safely, to be selective in the information you share, but if you fear the software/application/site/etc. you are paralyzed. I’m not worried about my content on Facebook, but I can tell you that I do not share everything. I am not playing the 8, 16, 20 or whatever number things-you-don’t-know-about-me game that’s going around. Let’s leave some things unknown and still socialize for our own reasons.

P.S I could have posted any number of page images from Facebook to illustrate my post, but decided on the Tri-C libraries fan page, in case you didn’t know about it and wanted to be a fan.

Update 2/18/09: Facebook reconsiders its TOS, reverting to the old TOS in the meantime:

Filed under: Web 2.0, cloud computing, communication, computers, social network

technology for whom?

It’s encouraging to hear that the new administration is calling for “an investment in technology” in education, but what are you thinking when you hear that and how do you put it into action? Too often, as faculty, we don’t go far enough in exploring and utilizing new technologies. Too often we learn new technologies to employ in the classroom–f2f or online–but we don’t look into technologies that our students can work in and learn from, whether they are discipline-specific technologies they will use in their professions or technologies that will sharpen their skills and general comfort level with technology.

That’s why you always hear instructional technologists pushing technologies that require collaboration and interaction among students, and why we encourage the use of what we all may think are everyday technologies. Even if you can’t find a technology that pertains to your field of study, you can use ones that will make students into good digital citizens. What are some of the skills all our students need to sharpen?

• Email etiquette and development. Students need to know good practices for communicating by email, since that is the standard for professional communication today. Did you know that the youngest of our students think of email as a tool for old people? That usually translates into poor writing habits, particularly when students start using SMS shorthand in emails–not appropriate. Such components as subject lines, greetings, closings, and signatures can be addressed in your syllabus–if it sounds like an exercise in letter writing, it is.
• Uploading and downloading documents and all that goes with it. Our students need a good understanding of how to handle document exchange. They are wrong if they think it’s only a process needed at school. You can offer a variety of opportunities to work with documents, particularly if you use Blackboard. Use the Assignments feature and the Digital Dropbox to require uploading; use email to require attachments. Educate your students on how to avoid problems when others view their files, from file formats to good filenaming conventions.
• Make sure that your students have had instruction on how to search effectively and how to evaluate information for validity. Here’s a short video explaining that: 

The next time you are adopting a technology, think about whether it helps you or your students. That’s fine if it’s a tool to improve your teaching, but do you also have enough uses of technology to help improve your studetns’ skills?

Filed under: Web 2.0, digital literacy, student-centered learning, teaching, technology

voicethread–create a conversation

After an interesting Second Life session yesterday, I heard about VoiceThread, a free technology that lets you create a conversation around a photo or video or text document. You could create a public conversation or have students use it to create a presentation. Feel free to comment on mine, and notice that even though the tool is called voicethread, you can choose to write a text comment [there is no embed code that works for WordPress, so follow the link]:

http://voicethread.com/share/305552/

Filed under: Web 2.0, collaboration, communication, digital literacy, discussion board, peer review

evolution of clickers to no clickers?

I’m collecting information on how faculty can employ classroom response (clicker) technology on the cheap. Before we buy into a product, particularly one that students have to purchase that are of no use outside the classroom, I think we need to explore using cell phone text messaging or SMS.

Even a top company like Turning Technologies has been moving fast in the direction away from the independent clicker. First they created the anytime, anywhere Response Card Anywhere that you could use on a field trip, and now they have software for your phone–Responseware.

That’s cool, but why payware in a world of freeware?

Then there’s the Open Source Poll Everywhere software that is free for classes of 30 or less. That’s a pretty tight limitation that would only work for a select few classes. I will be trying it out and reporting in a formal document to distribute to faculty.

Here’s a sample poll from Poll Everywhere. The Keyword is the phrase that begins with “cast”:

Make your own poll voting question with Poll Everywhere

I’m sure that if there’s not one already, that the Apple iTunes App Store will have one soon for free, but then there’s the cost of an iPod Touch or iPhone to deal with, and that’s an even bigger cost.

I’m probably going to suggest a wait and see how it all turns out before we commit to a campus-wide contract.

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In response to the comment, below, I tried a Google form poll (although not with any respondents, yet). They are really easy to make, and you’ll notice in my second question that you could choose other, and that would become part of the class discussion. Alternatively, I could have let the audience type in their “other” response.

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As noted in Chris’ blog description, students would need to be in a computer lab or have individual access (mobile or laptop). In such a situation, I think the Google option is good. I especially like that it is not connected to PowerPoint. I certainly don’t want to promote PPT unless necessary and done very well. Breaking up a presentation/discussion by going to the Google form, seems a good way to keep a variety of actions in a class.

Filed under: Web 2.0, grading, pedagogy, student-centered learning

there are Pilots and pilots

You’re all familiar with college pilots of technologies that are being considered for campus-wide adoption–those are the pilots with a capital P that seem to drag out over a good portion of a year, all with the best intentions, not necessarily in this order:

• arrange with a company for a pilot
• recruit volunteer faculty to participate
• form a committee
• train faculty
• troubleshoot the technology
• gather feedback from faculty and students
• evaluate the technology
• decide whether or not to commit to the technology

I’m surely leaving something out, but you know the process. Such a process is necessary for contracted technologies that are going to cost a pretty penny to implement.

Then there are the pilots that you might be implementing on your own from a wide choice of free Web 2.0 or Open Source tools. Certainly, it’s not necessary for a college to go through a formal adoption strategy for a free tool–no money changes hands, and what works in your discipline and class might not be the best tool for the next person’s class. We’re missing the point of teaching creatively if we try to stifle creative experimentation with free tools.

That said, Ruth Reynard suggests that you can run your own pilot in your own classroom with these free tools, and that it becomes a good learning experience for your students to be involved in evaluating the effectiveness of the pilot with the small p. In “6 Ways not to become Rote Using Technology,” Reynard suggests using a pattern of implementation similar to the one above, but more tailored to your course:

1. Get your hands dirty;
2. Set up the “pilot” parameters and criteria;
3. Involve the students in your reflective evaluation;
4. Always survey students about the technology specifically;
5. Always identify the connection with learning outcomes; and
6. Modify your use and adjust when needed (remain open to change).

I’m reminded of the EDUCAUSE surveys of students that reveal student preferences for technology that faculty know how to use well, and think this approach strikes a balance between the creative innovator and the expert. Capital P pilots aim for achieving a standard of expertise before implementation and lower-case p pilots engage students in innovation and evaluation of technology and learning. There is good cause for both to be happening.

What Web 2.0 tools have you tried out in your courses and to what success?

Image Author: Luca Cremonini Source: http://www.railsonwave.it/railsonwave/2007/1/2/web-2-0-map Original Source: Markus Angermeier Source: http://kosmar.de/archives/2005/11/11/the-huge-cloud-lens-bubble-map-web20/
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5

Filed under: Web 2.0, free stuff, learning, open source, pedagogy, pilots, teaching, technology

cartoon videos

I think you knew after seeing my ToonDoo cartoons that I would be up for the next opportunity to create a little narrative, as long as I don’t have to draw–that would be ugly!

From xtranormal.com comes my first film, Find the Secret:

Filed under: Web 2.0, free stuff

you must write a blog in this course: here’s why

Yesterday’s Campus Technology article, “Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students,” is a terrific reminder that we cannot just throw technology at students and expect them to accept it blindly or use it intelligently or learn from its use.

Here are Ruth Reynard’s list of mistakes in brief:

1. ineffective contextualization
2. unclear learning outcomes
3. misuse of the environment
4. illusive grading practices
5. inadequate time allocation

I have used both group and individual blog assignments with undergraduate and graduate students. For my purposes, I found the group blogs more effective, but in either case, I made certain to tie the assignment to my course learning outcomes, and I explained in writing how to develop a blog, what I would be looking for, and how the blog would be graded, for example:

Course outcomes that could be achieved through a blog assignment: In a graduate course on information technology for leaders, a few things I wanted students to be able to do by the end of the course were (1) Develop a personal perspective on innovation and the future of information technology, (2) Work collaboratively on a topic related to information technology, and (3) Think critically about and report on issues in scholarly articles related to information technology. As you might see in these desired outcomes, students need to develop a voice on the course general topic, and a published blog is a great place to develop your voice.

Stating clearly what you want from the students and from the assignment: I informed students that  the blogs should “peak readers’ interest in a way that would make them want to comment.” I told them that I wanted “interesting and serious posts on their topic.” Finally, I told them that the “blogs should show that they are becoming well read in the area of their topic.”

Teaching how to blog: Don’t assume that students who have read or created blogs have thought much about the blog as a genre of writing or that their experience has been productive. Teach students how to blog and their learning will be better accomplished.

• I offered examples of group blogs so that students could see how team members might complement each other or how they might write opposing views on a topic without becoming a public fight.
• I suggested that “contributors on group blogs develop their own identity or personality, and that readers might look forward to hearing from one particular member of a group blog if they exhibit diverse opinions.”
• I suggested places where they might look for resources to write about, particularly news items or professional articles related to their topics, and how they could integrate their own voice and opinion into posts that cite resources.

Be clear about how the project will be graded: In addition to a required number of posts, usually 3 per week from the group, however they divided that among members, I would grade the blogs on the following elements:

• Quality and interest of posts.
• Interest to educated general readers.
• Interest of linked articles.

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Reynard makes a point in her articles that I second strongly–blogs are not discussion boards. In a workshop once, a faculty member wondered why I didn’t comment on every post and expect students to do the same with each other’s blogs, because he saw them as a public discussion board. As Reynard notes, one’s blog post is a published statement, and whether or not readers write comments is not really a concern of the blogger. Readers may carry on their own conversations, as desired, but I wouldn’t suggest that the blogger get involved, unless desired. Comments can certainly tell you if your ideas are conveyed as you meant, and you may get good ideas from readers, but the purpose of the blog, as I see it, is to polish your voice and learn to articulate your subject.

Filed under: Web 2.0, blogging, collaboration, communication, digital literacy, grading, learning, teaching, technology

a nod to the peanut gallery

From the comment on my recent post “yes yes, of course, the desk!” a homegrown innovation of the new touchscreen developments:

Filed under: Web 2.0, free stuff, innovation, open source, software, technology

yes, yes, of course, the desk!

I’ve mentioned many times in this blog that the traditional classroom technology configuration offers a glorified show and tell for the instructor. Generally, there is a computer and projector, maybe a smart board, a DVD player at the head of the classroom in the instructor’s control. The layout of the classroom is still by and large in the old lecture-format layout: rows of desks facing the instructor. So, now instructors can visit website content in class in addition to showing films; they can open documents for whatever reason, perhaps to mark them up as examples of writing; if they have a document camera, they can show details of objects. Where are the students? Still sitting at desks watching the instructor interact with content, still taking notes or dozing off.

I often try to imagine the classroom of the future, and I see moveable desks and chairs, modular arrangements of computers and projection screens, video conferencing equipment that allows for live communication with distant resources. It’s a flexible and changing vision of a classroom.

The Chronicle reports on an innovation I hadn’t envisioned: smart desks! Yes, of course, interactive desks with interactive screens ready to receive tasks for collaborative work. Great idea in the search for effective learning environments.

Some say the classroom of the future is not a physical space at all, but the concept of anytime, anywhere education writ large–it’s everywhere. I see that as a viable concept, but also don’t think that physical space is going away anytime soon. For a while, I think we will be trying to adapt physical spaces to this new world through trial and error, letting in the new and moving around the desks and changing the content of the classroom experience.

In the meantime, if you are dealing with a teacher-centered arrangement of tools, think about how you can collaborate with students, creating tasks that get them up to the front, alone or in groups, to run the show and tell for a while.

Filed under: Web 2.0, collaboration, innovation, student-centered learning, technology