Instruction technology - notes on the blunt edge ;)
Bill Colucci's notes on technologies that might be useful for
instructors, including speculation, personal experience, hearsay and
readings in the research literature.
Notes on Innovations in Education Colloquium at Stony Brook, May 2009
Good review of technologies from this conference, but as usual, more
about technology, and less about "what problem they solve" or how they
have been used to improve cost, labor, learning...
Zotera Workshop
- Zotera (zotera.org) is a free add-on for Firefox that
allows automated downloading of citation information as well as
material - i.e., pdf's of articles. Users simply go to a
page with a citation on it and if Zotera recognizes a citation,
a button will appear to capture that citation (and associated
pdf). You then have available a database of citations from
which to build bibliographies or export individual citatoins in
multiple formats.
- Libex automates searching multiple library catalogs from a
web browser.
-
Web 2.0 Workshop
- Defined - Web 2.0
just means that people can post stuff easily on the web without
any special tech skills or access to servers
- Web 3.0 is now
emerging as a new generation of technologies but I believe it
means using the evaluations of others and using comparable
others to sort through the information glut research engines
return.
- Instant polling
- PollAnywhere.com & Turningpoint.com: Instant polling via
cell phone messaging. You send a text to PollAnywhere.com,
with numbers in the text area. The numbers are mapped to
answers to questions (yes/no, "Always, sometimes")
- Derek Bruff is an expert on clickers and feedback
- Social bookmarking
- In short: These sites help you
wade through the information glut by doing some basic
qualitative filtering and sorting of websites. They are websites and tools that allow you to
easily evaluate web sites and find web sites based on the
evaluations of others. There are usually also tools that
allow you to categorize and manage web sites (tag them), which
is shared with others as well. The value of this is in
sorting through and finding web sites most relevant to you based
on the evaluations of other users. For example, your
evaluations and others are compared, and web sites that others
close to your preferences would be highlighted or offered.
These web sites stand between you and typical search engines
(google, bing, yahoo) and filter, sort, highlight those results
based on your evaluations and preferences.
- social bookmarking sites are the starting place for
making web searches. These sites are not themselves
search engines but use search engines to find stuff.
The purpose is to contribute too and provide evaluations of
web sites that are found, sharing them with others who use
the social bookmarking site.
- This automates the sifting, choice and processing of
information - rather than a simple list that a search engine
would provide.
- You can rate web sites (usually using a star system)
- You can sort search results by ratings, or popularity.
- You can choose to view a list of web sites that
other similar members of the social bookmarking site have
viewed.
- DejaSpace.com - recommended for clean interface.
- Digg - search results based on popularity.
- Stumbleupon - allows results by topic
- Students are surprisingly resistant to new technology!
- Issues with using social networking technology in
class: Invasion of student/teacher privacy -
using otherwise private social networking memberships.
- Video:
- The problem with video is the size of video files.
Higher quality, the greater the size. In order to play
them, you have to download them, which can take a long time,
or they need to be 'streamed' - sent continuously over the
network by a streaming server.
- Vimeo.com allows free uploading of high definition
video, but only 500 meg per day.
- Vodpod.com - allows collecting videos in one place.
- blip.tv
- Blubrry.com - set up a channel???
- Audio
- Audio files are smaller than video, so it's easier to
just download and listen, rather than relying on a streaming
server to continously send and play.
- Vocarro.com - record audio into a browser (web site)
using a pc microphone and that is instantly posted and
available.
- TalkShoe.com - groups of people can talk via computer
audio
- Gapcast.com; gcast.com - call an 800 number to have your
voice records and posted immediately on the internet as an
mp3
- Applications and
application/document sharing available online
- Google Docs - These have many of the features of
Microsoft Office applications. They allow simultaneous editing; tracking
changes. You can assign security - who gets access to
what and at what level - i.e., editing, viewing, deleting...
- Adobe buzzword: allows comments, import/export of
office 2007; document sharing; group document work.
- Online academic oriented sites - Academia.edu; pronetos.com.
- Twitter - One
use for twitter mentioned was the ability to follow experts in
critical areas related to your work. The conference used
twitter - allowing people to send tweets with a particular tag.
Other twitter users could set their account up to look for
tweets with that tag and get a real time sense of what was going
on throughout the conference.
- Yahoo/Gmail both provide video in their free chat utilities
-
MSU summer 09 symposium
- Wiki's - Peter Campbell
- Value for metacognition - comment on, discuss, debate,
change, revert content.
- YouTube video explaining a Wiki - search for "Wiki in plain
English" - there's a series of similar videos on other topics.
- Many options, including security - who has right of
access, and who can do what (edit, delete, revert)
- suggests pbwiki.com; webpart.com
- Pronto - Peter Campbell
- Found in all blackboard courses under tools
- Automatically have Pronto groups created based on classes.
- You can create your own group and invite people to join.
- Not a one to many medium for audio/video - although it is
for chat, i.e., audio/video capable, but only between one
student and instructor at a time.
- You can do application and desktop sharing!
- I don't see a lot of difference between this and
Elluminate... You would need Elluminate only if you wanted
audio/video broadcasting. But, if chat is good enough,
then this is it. I personally found audio/video too much
trouble to use - too many technical difficulties, too few
students have equipment/ knowledge. Chat is fast, easy,
almost everyone can use it instantly.
- Blackboard 9.0 - Courtney Volpe
(upgrade coming January)
- Submit assignments to be evaluated for plagiarism.
Student papers can be added to institutional databases.
- Group creation tools - set number of students that can sign
up for groups; supports such things as group blogs, group
assignments, student peer evaluations.
- Random enrollment in groups possible
- Evaluation of groups
- anonymous; self evaluations