Request for Video Collaboration

Hello Dear Readers!

I come with you with a request.  I have been asked to go and present at my son’s elementary school tomorrow (Friday) to a bunch of 2nd grader’s about what I do.  So I am working on putting together some stuff on haptics, and iPhone/iTouch’s and other fun instructional technology stuff. 

It occured to me that one of the great things about instructional technology is the ability to connect people from all around the world.  So… 

Would anyone be interested in doing a short video conference using Skype (or google Chat something easy like that) with some groups of 2nd Grader’s?  Here are the times I am presenting:

Date: Friday, February 27th

Time: (Eastern Standard Time… I’m in North Carolina)

• 9:30-9:50am 
• 10:00-10:20am
• 10:30-10:50am

Now I am not asking for this whole time, but if I could do a couple of minute video that would be great!  

Can anyone help me out?  One or all three would be great!  Let me know and we can do a test conference today or tomorrow morning before I start.

Connecting 21st Century Students with 21st Century Technology – Videoconference…

This afternoon I had the opportunity to connect up with a whole bunch of schools for a video conference from all around North Carolina put on the by the North Carolina Connectivity Council.  It was really cool.  We could see all of them and they could see us. 🙂  There should be an archive of the video posted soon.  Here is the excerpt from the announcement.  

The challenge for North Carolina educators is to ensure that every public school student graduates from high school, globally competitive for work and postsecondary education and prepared for life in the 21st Century.  Web 2.0 technologies, such as blogs, wikis and social networking sites, provide students the opportunity to communicate, create and collaborate in new and exciting ways.  However, some educators and parents are concerned that these “just in time”technologies create an unsafe environment for our children.

Technology specialists from four NC school districts will describe their school systems’ approach to using Web 2.0 in teaching and learning.  Panelists will present the best practices from their respective districts while discussing the challenges of implementing these new technologies. 

Ideas from around North Carolina that Teacher are currently using that IS working:

• Teacher Created Wiki’s
• Teacher Created Blogs for Professional Development
• District Blog to model, share resources, and collaborate. 

Things Students are doing that is working.

• Green County Schools have a 1 to 1 laptop program.  (Wow)
• Student created Wiki’s – Creating based on the information that is created in class.  Do it in the class while the teacher is speaking. 
• Kids created blogs and commenting on other blogs. 
• Book Study through Wiki

Tools that People ARE using

• PBWiki (safer than Media Wiki and WetPaint)
• WikiSpaces (Private domain that is password protected)
• Blogger.com or EduBlogs
• Google Docs – Collaboration across district
• Teacher Tube (Block YouTube) (Use Tools to download YouTube if Teacher’s Want)
• DimDim – Collaboration
• Skype – Global Connections
• Animoto – Video Creation
• Glogster.com – Poster Creation
• Moodle – Learning Management System
• PRIVATE Ning Social Networking Group in School
• TakingItGlobal.org  – Place to find some collaborators for all sorts of subjects

Challenges

• Time on Task… there are a ton of kids online and it is hard to monitor what they are doing.  
• Social Networking (Teachers are no longer allowed to be friends with students in some schools… good idea.)
• Keeping Acceptable Use Policy up to date
• Time… there are so MANY tools… not enough time to address them all. 
• Expanding the global learning network so that learning can be global.   Finding people to collaborate with people around the world via Skype and other technologies above. 

Trainings for Teachers

I found it interesting that in many cases the instructional technologist are working with a group of teachers to train and prepare them to use this web 2.0 technology.  It is sometimes done as a monthly meeting, a mandated technology hour requirement, training classes, an annual fall conference, or using the web 2.0 technologies themselves.

• Shift Happens – Did you Know 2.0 – Used as a starting point for Faculty discussion.

Exploring the Construction Zone inside the Media Gap – Paul Jones – Founder of ibiblio.org

This afternoon a group we have here on campus, the Carolina Technology Consultants (CTC) sponsored a talk from Paul Jones here on campus.  He is a professor in the SILS department here on campus and really one of the most forward thinkers here on UNC’s campus in regard to technology.  

He titled his presentation “Exploring the Construction Zone inside the Media Gap.”  I put the important stuff here, but he did a Google presentation that can be seen here that I would highly recommend. 

Theory Background – Like any good professor, he laid out some of the history back to the early 80’s when we started thinking about media and social media and communication.  It is interesting that we have been thinking about this since then.  He also lays out three laws that guide our progression of media to social media today.  He then moves into social media. 

Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody” – Categories for publishing in the Media Gap

 

1. Sharing culture of Flickr
2. Collaborative nature of Wikipedia
3. Collective action of internet groupings, like the use of a Facebook group to force HSBC to reverse it’s decision on withdrawing students’ interest-free overdrafts.

 

How American Nerds Fill the Gap

This was really one of my favorite parts of the presentation.  He obviously spoke to me as a nerd, but also used traits of nerds to lay out the emergence of social media.  We as nerds have these strange weaknesses that are “engineered away’ ===> into 5 SuperPowers!

 

1. Attention Deficit Disorder ===> Multi-Tasking
2. Asperger inablity to get visual emotional cues ===> Text-based interactions replace human Face2Face.  Visual cues become emoticons ;->
3. Hyper-literality; jargon of the tasks and games ===> OMG!  Mainstreaming of our jargon into slang.
4. Friendless geeks ===> Redefining Friendship (Dunbar’s number)
5. Idiocentric Humor ===> The power of Internet memes; our shared mindspace.

 

Future of the Nerd

Someone asked about the future of the Nerd.  This is really a great question.  “Nerds” have become mainstream.  Everyone is now using social media.  Everyone has 4000 friends on Facebook.  So what do you think?  What is the future of the Nerd?  What is our future?

Bibliography

Paul put together an AWESOME bibliography for anyone interested in social media.  This is fantastic.  He said it as okay to share so I thought I might post it here for y’all.  Thanks Paul!!

 

• Neuman, W. Russell. The Future of the Mass Audience. 1991 – Cambridge University Press New York.
• Moore, Gordon E. (1965). “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits” [PDF] Electronics April 19, 1965. See also Wikipedia
• Metcalfe, Robert. See Wikipedia 
• Gilder, George.  Metcalfe’s Law and Legacy. Forbes ASAP, September 13, 1993.
• Reed, David P. That Sneaky Exponential—Beyond Metcalfe’s Law to the Power of Community Building. Context. Spring 1999. See also Wikipedia
• Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody:  The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Penguin Press (February 28, 2008). See also Shirky.com
• Nugent, Benjamin. American Nerd: The Story of My People. (Scribners, 2008). 
• Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. (University of California Press, 2006).  
• Kelty, Christopher. Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. (Duke Press, 2008). Or online 
• Bumgarner, Brett. You have been poked: Exploring the uses and gratifications of Facebook among emerging adults. First Monday (Volume 12 Number 11 – 5 November 2007).
• Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook “friends:” Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), article 1. 
• Small, Gary and Gigi Vorgan. iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. Collins Living (October 14, 2008)
•  Hamilton, Jon. Think You’re Multitasking? Think Again. Morning Edition, NPR. October 2, 2008.  
•  Granovetter, Mark S. Strength of Weak Ties. The American Journal of Sociology. 1973. The University of Chicago Press. 
• Tomita, Tetsuro. “The new electronic media and their place in the information market of the future” in Newspapers and Democracy: international essays on a changing medium. Anthony Smith, ed. MIT Press. 1980.
• Rushkoff, Douglas. Playing the Future: What We Can  Learn From Digital Kids. HarperCollins 1996.
• Boyd, danah and Mimi Ito. “Kids’ Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures” November, 2008.

How to Back Up your Data – Mozy.com

Let me start this post off with a little story.  I started working in IT about 5 years ago.  One of the downfalls of working with technology is that sometimes you think you can fix anything.  Well… I knew I should be backing up my data and made some paltry CD backups, but never really took it seriously.  I told myself “I am a techie and can fix anything.”

Well… let me just tell you that there are some things I can’t fix.  And hard drives DO FAIL!

Since my unfortunate hard drive failure and the resulting loss of pictures and data I have researched dozens of back-up options.  I now have a complex techie solution I use for my pictures, videos and documents that involves a script and automated backups to my own personal off site server where it duplicated the data once more on a Raid network device.  But that is obviously not for everyone.  🙂

That being said I have long looked for a good solution that I could recommend to others.  I finally found it.  It is the Mozy.com folks.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have signed up for an affiliate program that gives me a little bit on money when people do sign up so if you are going to sign up, please consider going there from any of the links on my blog.  I figure this can help pay for the domain name and space I use to maintain this blog out of my own pocket. 🙂

Versions

• A FREE version with up to 2GB of data (enough to back up important documents!)
• A super cheap version for $4.95/mo with UNLIMITED DATA (pictures, videos, etc!)
• Even an Educational and Business Version with local institutional administration capabilities.

Check out this comparison page for more information.

They even have a Mac version!  How awesome is that?  I have it installed and running now and it is GREAT!

How it Works:

You install it once, leave it and you can sleep at night knowing you have a backup.  The first time takes a while, but it uses slow network time.  I could still surf and even watch streaming video while it did the initial backup.

Restoring Data – There are three easy ways to restore data with the Free version.

• Use the client version to restore it right on machine.
• Web version to restore
• DVD sent to your home ($)

Overall, I am VERY pleased with this and highly recommend it to everyone!  Even if you only use it for the free version to back up the important documents… give it a try!

Collaborate and Learn AND EARN MONEY doing it! StudyBlue.com

I ran across a great website called StudyBlue.com.  I have long been a fan of these types of websites and there are more than a few of them, but what makes this one really stick out in my mind is the ability for students to earn money.  I was one of those students that took copious notes and often shared my labors, notecards, and flashcards with other students in the class to help them out.  This not only helps make this easier, but it actually pays people for it too!  AWESOME!  What student can’t use a little extra food money?

Annotating Documents iTouch/iPhone – U.S. Historical Documents Application

Anyone that has read my blog for any amount of time knows that I am a big fan of digital books… but I am also a big fan of annotation and marking up documents and text. I especially love things that combine the two into one! That is the case with a recently released application called “U.S. Historical Documents.” (iTunes link, Website). (Cost is .99 cents). 

I have been a user of their Scriptures App for a while and am glad to see them branching out their AWESOME highlighting system to allow the ability to annotate other documents!  Here is a description from their site:

“U.S. Historical Documents contains over 100 of the most influential documents in U.S. history and they will be stored directly on your iPhone/iTouch. Quickly and easily find any text from any document with the fastest and most powerful search engine available on the iPhone. Watch the documents scroll automatically for you in both portrait and landscape mode. Create notes for each paragraph which can be displayed inline. You can even assign bookmarks to any paragraph in any document for future reference. Highlight important words or phrases using the best highlighting system available.”

INCLUDED DOCUMENTS:

• Magna Carta
• Christopher Columbus Letter
• Virginia Charters
• Mayflower Compact
• First Thanksgiving Proclamation
• Stamp Act
• Declaration of Arms
• Declaration of Independence
• Fugitive Slave Law
• US Constitution
• Star Spangled Banner
• CSA Constitution
• Gettysburg Address
• Emancipation Proclamation
• World War II Documents
• I Have A Dream
• All Inaugural Address of All Presidents
• State of the Union Addresses
• 9/11 Documents
• And many more…

MAIN APPLICATION FEATURES:

• Auto-scrolling (both timed and tilt) – Helps me read books faster!
• Adjustable fonts, size, colors, margins, spacing, and alignment (you can even adjust the font size by using a pinching gesture while reading!)
• Highlighting – 12 background colors, 12 foreground colors, bold, italic, and underline  – Helps me really interact with the text!!
• Night (low light mode) – Black background with white text
• Application tips
• Bookmarks and bookmark folders
• Last location in each document is remembered
• When re-launched, you’re returned to the exact location you were last at while reading
• Search by words or phrases with instant search results
• Powerful advanced search options
• Create notes for each paragraph which can be displayed inline

This really is a GREAT app… I highly recommend it and look forward to some more releases!  As you think about eBooks and education you can really begin to see the potential for eBooks replacing traditional books. 

I’ve said it before… and I’m sure I’ll say it again.  When you can use technology to do something better than real life… that is when you really have succeeded!! This is a perfect example of that!

Medical Simulations

A friend of mine, Libby Evans, just posted this on the learn listserv here on campus… I thought it was great and wanted to pass it along.

=============

I wonder if any of the health care folks on this list are already using any of the simulations described here: http://www.madsci.com/products.html

Information about each simulation below is extracted from the company’s Web site. Prices look like they range from $69 to $149 for a single user.

CME credits can be awarded for an additional fee. There’s a package deal to get all 6 simluations for $399.

The simulations include:

Cardiac Arrest!
===============
Cardiac Arrest! casts you in the role of emergency physician. The patient’s history is presented, and the resuscitation efforts begin. You read the ECG on the computer screen, interpret the vital signs and laboratory data. Give treatment orders using a simple point and click interface, or type in plain English. Cardiac Arrest! provides drug information, an on-line text book and algorithm flowcharts for the ultimate learning environment.

Featuring 45 patients (30 adult & 15 PALS), Cardiac Arrest provides 22.5 Category 1 CME credits (requires separate registration and $60 fee.) Perfect ACLS re-certification preparation. Combine with Code Team! for the ultimate ACLS training.

Code Team! (Includes 3 modules)
==========
Cardio Quiz — ten self-teaching tutorials mixed with quiz questions prepare you for the written ACLS certification test. Covers airway management, IV techniques, cardiac drugs, case management priorities, Basic Life Support review, and more.

EKG Teaching — Live EKG with sound, stimulating tutorials and quizzes teach 3-lead rhythm strip interpretation. Covers normal and abnormal ECG parts and rhythms, with pathology pattern and recognition such as hypercalcemia, hyperkalemia, and hypothermia.

ACLS Protocols — features multiple interactive simulations that teach application of the AHA’s arrhythmia treatment algorithms to clinical situations. Among the protocols practiced are asystole, brachychardia with
and without pulse, V-tach with and without pulse, V-fib, PAT, endotracheal drugs, and acidosis therapy. Perfect preparation for the dreaded MEGACODE portion of the ACLS certification.

MicroEKG
========
Learn 12-lead ECG interpretation on your computer! Browse through ECGs and rhythm strips. Pull up a diagnosis and see if you can recognize all the features on the ECG. Pop up a table or chart at any time while taking a lesson. With multiple levels of interactive tutorials and quizzes, Micro EKG is perfect no matter what your current level of expertise:

* Basic – cardiac anatomy, ECG theory, lead placement, wave-forms, and intervals.

* Intermediate – rhythm strip interpretation and meanings of abnormal wave forms, abnormal intervals, and arrhythmias.

* Advanced- 12-lead ECG interpretation, including QRS axis, infarct diagnosis, infarct location, and infarct age. Identify the causes of ST depression. Master the diagnosis of chamber enlargement or hypertrophy,
acute and chronic pericarditis, ischemia, and more.

Trauma One!
===========
With 36 critical patients, Trauma One! solidifies your approach to the trauma victim. It teaches therapeutic priorities, threshold for action, and completeness of workup. With a complete trauma-management manual,
Trauma One! Is the best way to learn solid trauma management.

Blood Gases
===========
This valuable training aid teaches some of the most difficult, yet most important material in medicine. Use interactive tutorials, drills and quizzes to learn:

* Normal values
* Aa gradient calculation and interpretation
* Bedside acid-base balance interpretation
* Acidosis correction
* Bicarbonate dosage calculation

Blood Gases will even interpret lung function, acid-base balance, and blood gas values for you. A detailed on-line manual features helpful hints, explanations, and extra information.

Chest Pain Simulator
====================
Practice the workup, diagnosis, and treatment of chest pain patients with this “chest pain ER” trainer. Chest Pain Simulator teaches a rapid, safe, and thorough approach to chest pain through tutorials, self teaching
quizzes, and an online textbook. It includes history and exam, testing, differential diagnosis, and thrombolytic therapy.

Applied Peda-Blog-y: Using Course Blogs as a Motivational Teaching Tool

Presenters:

• Dr. Paula Hudson – Assistant Professor, Doctor of Physical Therapy Program – Elon University
• Rick Palmer – Instructional Designer, Instructional Design & Development – Elon University

Example Blog They Used in Classroom:

• Tests and Measures

Possible Assignment Candidate’s for Blogging

• A flat assignment – an assignment that is boring. Something that students hate to learn and teachers hate to teach.
• Bored?
• Collaboration is an active model, but you don’t have enough time in the classroom
• Struggle to stay Relevant

How does Blogging Address these Issues?

• Extends the time students are actively involved in the class
• Expands the collaboration between students in the classroom

Other Cool things:

• This assignment can go outside of the classroom
• Can tap into the innate competitiveness in the classroom to kick up the energy
• Small groups can easily work together to create content
• Comments can be moderated (beneficial posted, others not)

Cons

• There is some time and labor on the setup
• There are some things to learn from it.

Response from Students

• They loved it already
• They are looking for something that sets them apart from their peers when they graduate. They liked that they could put on their resume that they have a web publication.
• Anywhere – they can do this assignment at home, in PJ’s, in kitchen.
• My work matters – people are using it and coming to it.

Response from Teacher

• Less time in class
• Achieve goals
• Final product that is awesome, and can be shared
• Students were very engaged
• Liked that students could be competitive and responsive

Game we Played

This was really a cool part of the class. They set up a mystery activity where we all logged in and posted our clues and then read the clues and tried to post a solution. It was great!

Thoughts about Blogging and Us at UNC

I have had the opportunity to help a professor in the past with a cinema course. He had students post video’s online that they found on YouTube and other sites that had to do with the genre they were studying. He also had a course requirement that they post a certain number of posts and comment a certain number of times. It was really productive and when they were done it was a great resource for others.

It would be great to take a look at a syllabus with a faculty member to see what kind of ideas we could generate about boring, but necessary, activities.

Any takers?

Online Reading & Writing with Wikis

Taught by Edward F. Gehringer from NC State (Associate Professor of Computer Science)

Advantages of Wiki’s

• Co-editing: Howework done on wiki’s promote collaboration between students
• Co-assembly: Different people can contribute different parts
• Write more than a traditional word document
• Don’t have to worry about location and version (it’s all online and available)

Pitfalls

• Other’s can “deface” wiki pages (bots) – Precreate accounts and disable login, or don’t put links in public_html space.
• Some techonlogy-adverse students have trouble learning to use wiki’s
• Under FERPA, students need to consent for their required work to be posted publicly.
• Some students are uncomfortable with public writing
• Wiki’s use their own markup language, wich is not as flexible in HTML

Assessing Wikis

• Instructor/TA assessment (but there is a lot to go through and it can be time consuming)
• Student Assessment – Students write up short commentaries on their contributions and collaborations and suggest a grade.
• Wikis are new, so not everyone assesses …
• Peer Assessment – Score authors based on a rubric. (This seems to be the best in his opinion)

Advantages to Peer Assessment

• Adds a new dimension to collaboration
• Electronic peer review of wiki contribution like real world and real job.

Types of Assignments:

• Posting Links to other online resources
• Posting an assignment (using links to online resources and articles)
• Collaboration on Research Project
• Post class notes
• Comments on Articles
• Vocabulary List
• Research Report
• Online Debates
• Class Discussions
• Peer Review
• Really almost anything that can be done online… 🙂

There is a correlation between those that do a type of research assignment and those that responded that the wiki had helped them “think critically.”

How this might be important at UNC-CH and for me:

I support several foreign language departments and I think that the literature courses could really benefit from a classroom space where they can discuss what they are reading and link off to other spaces.

The real beauty of a wiki is that it is a webpage that is being built in real time.

I can also think that departments that need a lot of coordination could use a wiki to get stuff together. It is always updated and always available… at least on our campus. 🙂

Anyone at UNC want to get together and talk more?

Lessons from New Guinea for the Global Village with Michael Wesch

For those who don’t know Michael Wesch, he is the author of the classic Web 2.0 video’s on YouTube that I wrote about a while ago.

This presentation was really great. A lot of it was taken from his “A Vision of Students Today” video. If you haven’t see it.. start out with that!

Notes:

Starts out with description of annual summer trips to New Guinea – no water, no running water, no electricity, and certainly no internet.

Built a house (240 people that helped build) – installed solar panels for computer – no email, but they give it a pilot once a month or two and will send emails off when he gets to somewhere.

Lessons we can learn from the small village in New Guinea

• Sustainable – they can continue to live the way they do now for thousands of years
• Equality – they share everything.

Tragedy of our time and problems with Education

We are clothing ourselves in the global fabric. Everything comes from all around the world… but we don’t realize it.

The most significant problem in higher education is the problem of significance itself.

This means they are just getting by and trying to figure out who they are and what they are doing.

Question – How many students don’t like school – 1/2 of them. How many don’t like learning – No hands. They don’t like the model we’ve set out for them to learn…

So… how do we engage them? 🙂

Solution

THIS is NOT just a TECHNOLOGY GAP… it is a CULTURAL GAP!

Teaching has not changed… but learning has.

8 books read – 3000 webpages read – profile reads – That is what they are reading.
They are writing in emails… not that much in papers.

Students are learning through technology… not as much through traditional methods.

Problems with Current System

He gave a great example about what the traditional lecture hall is teaching the students.

Students are not seeing the significance of the learning beyond the grade.

How things are Changing

There is something in the air… the web. WiFi. They have access to the entire human body of knowledge.

There is a massive amount of knowledge that is going to be created this year.

Digital information is different. This is how it being created.

What he is doing in his classroom and what we can do.

Focus less on content but connections. Content is still important, because that is what is used to make connections, but by focusing on connections, students become voracious learners trying to make connections.

Students become experts on some part of the world.

It should become less of an information dump and more of an interactive learning experience! 🙂

World of total information is that is enveloping us right now – This is what is going on with iPhone and GPS and always on Internet. A meta-level of data for the world. Imagine standing next to a tree and looking it up on wikipedia and seeing other pictures of that tree from others, and maybe even a history.

We need to move from just simply creating students who are knowledgeable, to those that are knowledge able. One’s that are able to use that knowledge to do good and make a difference!

How I can apply this at UNC-CH and my organization

You know… I’m not totally sure. This is all good information. I think we just need to really take a critical look at the way we are teaching our courses. Is there anything else we can do to engage the students? How can we use the tools here? Not just to incorporate them, but to use them if they are useful.

Anyone want to talk more about this?