web 2.0 Tools that Work. And ... are free!

Free tools

1. Skype
2. Elluminate - very flexible, but almost always need to update constantly so doesn't always come up instantly
3. DimDim - web meeting allows more connections than free Elluminate.  quick and easy
4. Livestream - provides access to www.livestream.com/boydtv a live feed (used to be called Mogulus)  seems like something really good to play with.  backchannel chat   no authenticate so anyone can come in and look. 
5. Voicethread.com  group conversations   introductions for a meet-greet
6. jrboyd.posterous.com
7. Jing - a free version of camtasia
8. FlipCam - 2 hours video possible  quick and easy  approx $180 on sale
9. ooVoo - video call (like Skype)sometimes better clarity than Skype   Can't use full screen in ooVoo  group meetings outside class.

Didn't cover but were listed:

1. pibb
2. fan pages
   

Other suggestions from group:

1. mebeam (another video call) 

This might make a good poster-type session where one tool per presenter for 20 minutes or so.

The Tools for Performance: Building Information Fluency by Risking your Life to Disrupt Inefficient Practice

An interesting session that I need to review the archived copy.  

One calls himself a disruptive (subversive in a nice way) technologist

I liked the chart, I need to retrieve it from slideshare.

1. Digital literacy hasn't truly been figured out yet.
2. What is critical thinking exactly?   in one study, it caused test scores to actually go down.
3. relying on "sophistry".  Framing thing they've been told.
4. If you cannot engage out there, then you are alone and and isolated insight.   (made me stop and think, I do lurk a lot)
5. Incremental transformation isn't possible, there is simply too much happening to plan thoroughly.
6. Clouds are messy but jump into the heart of it.

Perfect Storm or Perfect Opportunity for Higher Education

Adult-friendly was an interesting phrase from this end-of-the day session.   Are we adult-friendly or do we treat our students like children, infantilizing them instead of respect.   The discussion of reading skills, vital to independent learners, was interesting.  The digital divide, and the need for inexpensive computers came up as well.

Hard to accept who we really are, rather than who we think we are.

Peer groups make a major difference.

Online Learning Effective Practices: Providing Greater Access to Education with Blackboard

The slides and a white paper will soon be available from Blackboard.   By far the most interesting was a brief overview of BYU's Financial Compensation Model, which rewards those that use tests that aren't computer graded, that require a substantial amount of communication and similar items we know will aid learning and retention.

Hands-on-Computer Lab: Web Fusion: Integrating Twitter, Widgets and Web 2.0 Technologies into Learning

This turned out to be using DNN and its modules.  It was interesting what could have been possible for us  if IT hadn't locked our version down so hard.

Poster sessions and odds/ends I collected during the conference

Use of facebook by the distance education programs is well worth looking into.   In the first day, they had 200 fans!  They also produce a newsletter just for their distance education students to help them develop a relationship with the school.

Elatewiki - Electronic Learning and Teaching Exchange.  

TTIX - Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange

Intelecom - Learning Object Repository

Creative uses and examples of using tools

Questions, Methods, Results: Reshaping the Future of E-Learning Research

Note:  I need to listen to the archive, it just went very fast and my notes have holes that need filling.

Speaker 1:  Norm Friesen, Canada Research Chair in E-Learning Practices, Thompson Rivers University
How is the technology being used? 

• Missing lessons if we don't differentiate between the casual use from the innovative use.
• "Domesticating" technologies - using them in but not necessarily in the same ways the designers thought they would but instead making them integral parts of their lives
• Open o many uses, non-use or improvisations

Speaker 2: Terry Anderson, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Distance Education, Athabasca University

Learning:

• Social Learning
• Media rich
• Participatory and connectivist pedagogies
• Umbiquity and persistance
• .....

Open Access Journals have no significant different in citations from closed journals.

Speaker 3:  Katrina Meyer, Associate Professor, University of Memphis

10 pieces of somewhat no-brainer advice

1. Submitting to wrong journal - know their preferences by reading them.  Follow all submission directions. 
2. Poor comprehension of literature.
1. incomplete
2. out-of-date
3. lacks analysis
4. dull
3. Research questions not tied to review
4. Research may not be necessary
1. Comparison studies - does it make a difference?
2. Satisfaction studies -
3. So What?? questions
5. No or poor link to theory.
6. Wrong research method
7. Incomplete methods section - vague or didn't even follow a method
8. Method lacks credibility
1. reliability/validity
2. Sample population
3. Counter evidence
9. Conclusion not tied to results.  Hypothesis beyond what is reasonable
10. Poor or incomplete writing.  Grammar. Spelling. Disconnected sentences

Positive advice:

1. Mechanisms/process of learning online
2. Application of pre-internet theories are desirable
3. .... effectiveness of online learnings
4. Intended/unintended consequences
5. 1/3 literature  1/3 methodology  1/3 results/discussion
6. Attention to careful design
7. Focus on measurements
8. Every word, phrase, sentence out to add to article. 

Enhancing the Human Potential: Innovative Tools for Teaching in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Nancy Matchett, Institute of Professional Ethics, University of Northern Colorado

• Navigation as open as possible, self-directed ever-deepening understanding
• Used text boxes to add info and stored in database.  Then that info redisplayed with additional questions and more empty text bloxes to respond to additional.   Then that info stored and again redisplayed with additional deeper questions.    Can find it at the Center for Ethical Deliberation

Maps
Chaudhuri, Science Reference Librarian/Assistant Professor, University of Northern Colorado

• I have a full double-sided page of links that she talked about, some of which allowed download of data as well.

Conversion of a Ground-based Music Education course to OLT
Benjamin Smith, Head, Music Department, Hibbing Community College (MN)

• Had a cool keyboard that allowed the user to play music.  From somewhere in England.
• Uses Rhapsody music service (students get a 4 month subscription) to listen to high quality recordings

Second Life & Social Networks: Permeable Worldware Everywhere

Christen Bouffard, Instructional Designer, University of Alaska, Fairbanks

Demo of Second life and installing various elements that display blogs, twitter, flickr, etc.   Christen doesn't teach using Second Life.  At this point, she does have property though.  Slare Board, PingFM (look up this one) and a blog tool as well as RSS feeds were used in the demo.

Ritchie Boyd, Teaching and Learning Technology Specialist, Montana State University

• Technology-rich learning   How we use it is far more important than what tool.
• 55% online teens use social networks  85% myspace 7% facebook.  Almost half check it at least once per day
• Fully half of the teens could be considered content creators
• Technology intrudes deep into lives, 15% americans stopped having relations to answer a cell phone!
• Medial Hauntings - trying to use a new tool similar to the way they use old tools and not seeing any difference.  For example, someone used to a typewriter that still hits hard-returns at the end of each line.
• The trouble with Twitter - no scaffolding, no guidance,
• A whole series of conflicting articles from well-known sites shows how little we really know what is going on. A tiny sampling that showed students prefer real classroom to a Virtual World.
• I liked the chart demoing appropriate place for tools that looked somewhat like

Smart People
(arrows pointing up/down)
Tools
(arrows pointing up/down)
Me

Disrupt vs Assimilate -  new tools do one or the other.

Hands on Computer Lab: Create your own Ning by Ed Bowen

Started one to find a place to talk to others that share his interests and also a place to share materials and ideas. Why should I use this?   Does this make sense to me?  Is it useful?

Learning environment has 3 things   information, experience, reflect
The more dialog increases, the less structure there is.   The more structure, the less dialog

• personal tutoring - high dialog, low structure
• correspondence course-low dialog, high structure

Photopeach.com   a free and useful tool that displays the powerpoint slides in an interesting swirl


Before doing a ning,

• think about what you will use it
• Can be free or paid for.   
• Can be open to anyone or invite only.
• Can be deleted when no longer needed
• Write a purpose
• Look at other Nings.  Watch for features/functions that I think I can use, and also for what is good/bad to help know what to choose
• Is the Ning design that is pleasing and purposeful, inviting people in.

Teaching in a Recession

• Navigational buttons in addition to the menu to draw attention

TxDLA Ning

• Clear purpose

Librarian Ning

• restricted to those who sign up

Desideratum (his ning)

• TED
• Kick lets you download youtube to desktop in your format.  Kiss does too
• Ken Robinson  
• Slideshare
• Can RSS or Google Alerts
• Ed's Diigo
• Universal Design for Learning
• Ikeepit (all kinds of formats)
  

WCET-Opening Session 10/22/2009 Ed Lazowska,

Ed Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington

eScience
*Jim Gray-Turing award winner-database metadata

• SDSS SLow guided tours of the heavens. Data rich & tagged
• worldwide telescope (allows students to develop paths thru the heavens by themselves)
• users want the government/science database and develop tools that let me create the report my way
• the incredible amount of data that is being produced daily, from Point of Sale to science
• eScience is working with this data and making sense of it. analyzing it
• There is simply too much information to process it by hand
• sensors& networks
• databases
• data mining
• eSience capabilities must be broadly available in any organization. if not, the organization will simply cease to be competitive.
• top faculty across all disciplines understand the coming data tsunami. Computational science focused faculty will help identify what
• How do we track the IT needs of our college's leading researchers? 
• what extent are we meeting those needs 
• How well do we understand? 

Understanding how Google manages to support millions of data requests, and deliver what it does, helps understand how to manage all this data.

• map/reduce to relevant results
• eScience using the cloud, renting compute cloud
• animoto's use of amazon's cloud
• Universities getting out of the computing business.  stop processing email and stop providing computing services

broadband and the role of higher education

• * it is ed's access to broadband that is bringing it to the underserved areas 
• * everyone needs access
• , even Microsoft gets that social good must rule on the use of these funds 

 Once upon a time the content of the goods we produced was predominately physical. Now it is predominately intellectual.

• What is the chart of how we distribute our faculty/departments vs projected growth for jobs.
• if we train our students in low-growth, low paying jobs, we prepare them to remain poverty. 
• we hurt our local businesses by not preparing the local students to stay. Not everyone can afford to recruit nationally. Don't gamble with the future of our young. 

Sharepoint - 10/20/2009

• Overview of the process
• Evangelize November/December
• Start introducing SharePoint in January
• Serious implementation during Fall, 2010.
• 2010 won't be implemented until it has been out for 3 years.
• Smart Start is a different technology so it cannot be integrated.
• Live at EPCC (basically hotmail).  
• Migration is not thought through yet, they are investigating the auto-upload.
• includes chat
• Permission levels
• Owners have full control of the whole site.
• Contribute
• design/manage hierarchy required for Designer
• 3 groups will be created for a site automatically:  Members, owners and visitors
• Groups are vital to avoid confusion and frustration since you add (people to the group or permission to the group) once and the permissions automatically fall in line for everyone.  Managing by groups is more effective.
• Inheritance allows you to use the same settings across multiple sites.   It is more manageable than individual sites.
• Inheritance means you can't add people unless you add them to the group.  You must 'break' the tie if you want to a person added only to a specific subsite.  But it is definitely harder to manage.
• Keep in mind, adding to a group means everywhere that group has access, the individual automatically has access to everywhere that group has access at the level it has access.
• When adding to a group, make sure you look at group permissions to see exactly what that group has access and at what level.

The Changing Nature of Professional Development In Education

Read an interesting article in the blog: Educational Paradigms, authored by Andrew T. Garcia, Music/Technology teacher in the Central Berkshire Schools.  He is talking about training/professional development as it is often delivered.

The problem with this mass approach was that topics had to be general enough for teachers of all subject areas. How to go about implementing the initiative was up to the teacher which usually meant a low adoption rate. Surveys of teachers about professional development offered by districts paints dismal pictures about the relevance of in-service in schools. 

A serious problem that certainly isn't unique to education. 

 It will require a leap of faith for school districts to 'trust' staff members to independently pursue their own relevant professional development but that's exactly what's necessary now. Imagine a professional development day where the in-service memo indicates that "all teachers will independently find, read, investigate, and synthesize any information they may find relevant to their classroom teaching assignment and share that information on the school professional development network. PDP's will be issued once a reflective essay is published on the school's server indicating the learning you achieved and how you will apply it to classroom teaching."

That would be meaningful Professional Development, 21st century style.

We definitely need to pursue this.   How do we manage it?   What would be the standards?   While this is certainly do-able, is it scalable for 3,300 employees?   Fortunately, the repository can handle it easily.