Skip to content

What the iPad means

09-Mar-10

Books in the Age of the iPad, by Craig Mod, is perhaps the most beautiful and thoughtful post I’ve read in years. In it, Mod argues that the iPad is a universal container for rich media and what he calls “well-formed content”— I’ll let you read the article (you should) to understand what he means. He notes that the iPad might minimize the production, distribution, and consumption of the printed book, saving significant resources. The iPad also “brings the excellent text readability of the iPhone/Kindle to a larger canvas. It combines the intimacy and comfort of reading on those devices with a canvas both large enough and versatile enough to allow for well considered layouts” — although it will also serve as a catchall basin for “disposable books” (those not really worthy of quality printing). He proposes the following for The Books We Make (i.e. those worthy of the traditional book format):

  • The Books We Make embrace their physicality — working in concert with the content to illuminate the narrative.
  • The Books We Make are confident in form and usage of material.
  • The Books We Make exploit the advantages of print.
  • The Books We Make are built to last

The article is, again, worth the read.

Filed in Academic Technology, Eco, Interests, Learning, Literacy, Mobile, eLearning, work | | Comments (0) »

ELI message #1: Mobile is medium

09-Mar-10

Summary: Mobile Learning is not a new form, but a new medium that allows easier access and more face-time with learning content at times when students are ready and able to learn. As such, institutions can maximize learning (and therefore teaching effectiveness) by developing and supporting this medium. This means we need to integrate and standardize information so students don’t have to waste time finding and organizing their own learning environments (e.g. departmental forms where students need to find, learn, and navigate practices specific to that department).

The EDUCAUSE ELI Spring focus on Mobile Learning was last week, and I’ve been compiling my thoughts and reactions to what I heard there. Much of it is not new, and I’ve been dreaming and blogging about many of the ideas since 2005. It was wonderful to see that mobile is catching on an institutional level across the nation.

One of the concerns that was addressed was that institutions sometimes see their “administrative side” as somewhat removed from their “teaching side” — that is, they see the development of student services, though (perhaps) crucial, as not being “real learning” but more like frills or bonus content. This idea was pushed back strongly by those in the backchannel (Twitter feed #elifocus) who typically saw learning as a lifelong 24/7 activity that has traditionally been weak in engaging and holding attention in the 23 hours outside of class. If course content and processes are available via the medium of mobile, students have the ability to have more of “impressions” — and advertisers (very motivated educators) have long known that more ad impressions = more sales. There’s learning research to back this up as well (source coming).

I have much more to say about this, but in this post, let me just end by sharing the proceedings, and adding red stars (**)to my favorites:

(http://net.educause.edu/Program/1024363) under each speaker’s session.

DAY ONE PROCEEDINGS
Opening Session
* Judy Brown, A Revolution in Learning is Taking Place in Our Hands
Access the Archive

Plenary Session
** Aaron Wasserman, Your Campus on a Smartphone and the Future of Mobile Education
Access the Archive

Community Project Parlor
Alan Livingston, Beyond Emergency Notification
Shan Evans, MOCA: It’s Not Just Chocolate Anymore
Douglas Johnson, Student iPhone App. Development and Institutional IT: The Story So Far
Access the Archive

Plenary Session
** Jack Shannon, Enabling Personalized Learning
Access the Archive

Content Project Parlor
Samantha Earp, It’s Flipping Easy! How Easy-to-Use Portable Digital Camcorders Bring the Larger World and New Pedagogies into the Classroom
Chad Haefele, Low-Effort, High-Impact Mobile Development: Designing a Mobile Website with iUI
Daniel Bracken and Michael Reuter, Lowering the Barriers to Mobile Device Adoption
Access the Archive

Mobile Scavenger Hunt Wrap-Up and Daily Themes
Malcolm Brown and Veronica Diaz
Access the Archive

Google Form Scavenger Hunt Results: Day 1

DAY TWO PROCEEDINGS
Opening Keynote
 Gary Marrer, Strategic Analysis: A Typical Community College Wondering How to Take Advantage of mLearning
Access the Archive

Plenary Session
** William Rankin and Kyle Dickson, Mobile Collaboration: Redefining the Classroom
Access the Archive

Collaboration Project Parlor
 Gary Marrer, Assessment of Mobile Learning
Peyton Jobe, Student Engagement in the Age of Mobile Devices
Berlin Fang, Transforming Digital Toys into Study Buddies: Using Mobile Devices to Engage Students
Access the Archive

Closing Keynote
* Nabeel Ahmad, Mobile Devices in Higher Ed … for Learning? You Bet

Access the Archive

Mobile Learning Scenarios
A report out from the scenario activity.
Access the Archive


Filed in Academic Technology, Community, Design, Learning, Mobile, Place-Based Inquiry, Uncategorized, eLearning, work | | Comments (0) »

Bigger, Faster, Easier

26-Feb-10

“Yes, today you can chat with friends, collaborate on projects, read the news, play games, or share videos of your kids, all online. But you could do all that stuff offline before 1991. It’s just much easier and faster now. What’s different—what’s fundamentally different—is the size of your social space, and of course the size of everyone else’s. The Internet has made these spaces much, much bigger.”

This is an excerpt from What Is Good Teaching? — and it in addition to what he suggests above,  Joshua Fisher makes the point that this is ushering in an unprecedented level of participation (a point made my others), and that unless educators address it, this level of participation will bring about Clay Shirky’s predication:

    This shock of inclusion, where professional media gives way to participation by two billion amateurs (a threshold we will cross this year) means that average quality of public thought has collapsed; when anyone can say anything any time, how could it not? If all that happens from this influx of amateurs is the destruction of existing models for producing high-quality material, we would be at the beginning of another Dark Ages.

Essentially, that we’d head to Idiocracy (2006). How can we save the world?


Filed in Academic Technology, Community, Learning, Literacy, Research, eLearning, work | | Comments (0) »

Minds on Fire—the BIG Shift in Education

24-Feb-10

Read this article!Is it fair to suggest that most educators are feeling a shift (or a need for a shift) in education? Are we moving quickly enough from the Cartesian model of learning to a more open learner-centered one that focuses on participatory learning (learner-created content), social learning (learning by interacting), and niche learning — what Crowley, K., & Jacobs, M. (2002) call “islands of expertise.” To adapt, I think we need to meet students where they’re at in their day-to-day lives, their wants, needs, and values. This requires relying more on observing and listening to real-time needs and trends of student life, and less on top-down surveys that ask questions we think are important. Today’s challenge to you is to ask a student how they think the educational system can change (and do so in a way that doesn’t taint the honesty of the answer).

This excerpt is from a fantastic, more-relevant-than-ever 2008 Educause article by visionaries John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler titled

Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0

The latest evolution of the Internet, the so-called Web 2.0, has blurred the line between producers and consumers of content and has shifted attention from access to information toward access to other people. New kinds of online resources—such as social networking sites, blogs, wikis, and virtual communities—have allowed people with common interests to meet, share ideas, and collaborate in innovative ways. Indeed, the Web 2.0 is creating a new kind of participatory medium that is ideal for supporting multiple modes of learning.

Social Learning

The most profound impact of the Internet, an impact that has yet to be fully realized, is its ability to support and expand the various aspects of social learning. What do we mean by “social learning”? Perhaps the simplest way to explain this concept is to note that social learning is based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions. The focus is not so much on what we are learning but on how we are learning.5

Compelling evidence for the importance of social interaction to learning comes from the landmark study by Richard J. Light, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, of students’ college/university experience. Light discovered that one of the strongest determinants of students’ success in higher education—more important than the details of their instructors’ teaching styles—was their ability to form or participate in small study groups. Students who studied in groups, even only once a week, were more engaged in their studies, were better prepared for class, and learned significantly more than students who worked on their own.6

The emphasis on social learning stands in sharp contrast to the traditional Cartesian view of knowledge and learning—a view that has largely dominated the way education has been structured for over one hundred years. The Cartesian perspective assumes that knowledge is a kind of substance and that pedagogy concerns the best way to transfer this substance from teachers to students. By contrast, instead of starting from the Cartesian premise of “I think, therefore I am,” and from the assumption that knowledge is something that is transferred to the student via various pedagogical strategies, the social view of learning says, “We participate, therefore we are.”


Filed in Academic Technology, eLearning, work | | Comments (0) »

Kids these Days

18-Feb-10

(I started this as a reply to John Thomson’s post “Blogging no longer a hit with teens, but quickly realized that it’s less about what kids don’t do —blogging— and more about what they do —social networking.)

They don’t email.

They don’t tweet.

And now they don’t blog?

What *do* they do?

From the Pew report:

  • 73% of wired American teens now use social networking websites, a significant increase from previous surveys. Just over half of online teens (55%) used social networking sites in November 2006 and 65% did so in February 2008.
  • 62% of online teens get news about current events and politics online.
  • 48% of wired teens have bought things online like books, clothing or music, up from 31% who had done so in 2000 when we first asked about this.
  • 31% of online teens get health, dieting or physical fitness information from the internet. And 17% of online teens report they use the internet to gather information about health topics that are hard to discuss with others such as drug use and sexual health topics.
What this suggests (to me, at least) is that the internet is largely a social medium for teens. And thus is following social conversation norms:
  • less soapbox (hence less interest in long formats, such as blogs and email)
  • more connections and interest in the knowledge and information that their peers feel is important (social networks)
  • more quips (short formats, such as status updates and comments), but they don’t want these to be public — they want to control who sees them (thus, not Twitter).
What are the implications for technology in higher education?

These 12-17 year olds will become our students for the next 5-10 years, and the habits that they have formed will guide them as they enter into our universities. So, we should pay attention and try to meet them half way rather than force them into a system designed by (and thus according to the habits of) Academic Technologists who are a generation or two older (I include myself here).

I don’t have a set of implications in a clear and concise form that I can post here, but I invite people to post their ideas and observations into this conversation.

Filed in Academic Technology, Community, Literacy, Mobile, Research, eLearning, work | | Comments (0) »

My house

04-Feb-10

Is a very very very fine house.

Filed in Community, Friends, Life | | Comments (0) »

Better Blogging Workshop

03-Feb-10

The UW-Madison Writing Center has a blogging workshop: “Productive and Professional Blogging” — I’m going.

I've been pretty open about the ideas floating around in my head since an incident in my undergrad years when a group of colleagues realized we'd been thinking the same thing, but each thought s/he was the only one. Blogging has only increased the potential of reaching others, but does so in a fairly non-invasive way. Unlike a megaphone that folks can't get away from, or even commercials that are hard to fast forward through (or used to be), the blog is fairly innocuous. My titles hit Twitter. The title and a first line or two hit Facebook and the aggregators, which means people can decide in half a second whether to skip, scan, or click to read. 

My job as a blogger is to assemble my points accordingly. This is slightly different than what comes naturally to me.

Lucky for me, there’s help through a Writing Center Workshop. I’m signed up.

Here’s the skinny:

Productive and Professional Blogging

Overview

Many grad students blog publicly about their private lives and use blogs in their teaching, but how do they make blogs productive for themselves and useful to their students? How can a blog be an important educational asset? How can you keep a blog that complements your professional goals?

In this class, we will study the writing style and visual design of blogs kept by professors, professional organizations and grad students. We will discuss how to use blogs in and out of the classroom to advance your teaching, writing, and career.

Intended Audience

Graduate students interested in using blogs to advance their teaching, writing, and career.

Duration

2 hours

Schedule for Fall 2009 [Spring 2010]

Thurs., 2/18, 4:00 – 5:30 pm (Sec. 1)
Filed in Academic Technology, Blog admin, Learning, Life, Literacy, eLearning, work | | Comments (0) »

My iPad Thoughts (e-Napkin)

02-Feb-10

I helped slow the web last week by hitting refresh on a number of live blogs during the unveiling of the iPad. The hype and expectations had been almost overwhelming, and pretty much anything that Jobs could have unveiled would have caused some to bemoan the lack of *something*. Here’s my take: it’s a nice balance of a device designed for the consumption of media/information and one designed for production.

Most critics have focused on it’s “closed” state, calling it a boon for the media producers. What they’re missing is that it’s going to produce media producers. Though it doesn’t have a camera, it’s got a lot of better tools for thinking.

What it is

It’s a napkin. It’s a note pad. A sketchpad. A journal. A browser, a dictionary, a game console, an email machine, an address book, an eBook, an mp3 player, an audio-recorder, an alarm clock, a calendar, and a whole bunch of other things. But I want to focus on the first three I mentioned.

I think visually, and still carry a notebook and pen with me to write in. In order to understand things, I often need to draw in order to understand things or develop ideas more fully. I’ve tried to move my thought processes to a laptop, and applications like Apple’s Keynote and OmniGraffle have helped me that attempt, but nothing has come close to replacing the direct connection between my brain and the thinking that occurs between my pencil and paper. I’ve tried using the Wacom tablet to bridge that gap, but it too requires too big of a jump between the invisible marks I pretend to make on the tablet and the disempenciled marks that appear on screen.

The base-level, low-end iPad could be the electronic Napkin that bridges that gap. As is, with apps like Brushes and Keynote, I envision it solving many of the troubles I’ve been having in moving my cognitive process to computers.

What it will become

It will evolve.

It will probably get a camera and GPS, and may get bloated with an SD slot and USB port and a thousand other things that people are demanding. I secretly hate Flash and hope that Apple can force people off that bad habit. I’d like to see Apple team up with Pixar to create an easy animation app, but I’ve been dreaming of that since Toy Story.

How it may affect teaching and learning

Like paper. How do we use paper in education? (reading books and magazines and newspapers and each other’s papers and writings, note-taking, tests and quizzes, sketching and drawing and creative writing, recording grades and attendance and other administrative duties).

All these things, except in the physical space of of one notebook. It can replace the Trapper-Keeper, textbooks, notebooks, and whiteboard.

And…

And because it’s also an almost-mobile [see below] wifi-enabled computer, it can be used for 90% (or more) of what education currently uses computers for (web research, social, videos, record-keeping, writing process, simulations and games, Smartboard, etc.).

And…

And because it’s portable and fairly sturdy it *may* replace the clipboard on field trips. It’s relatively inexpensive, when compared to fieldwork computers and instruments.

And…

When I was a kid, my father made me one of those 101 Electronics kits, except mine was cooler because my dad made it. I could hook up a battery to a resistor and flashlight bulb and electric motor, and switch and dimmer, etc. This can be done on the iPad (times 1,000).

Remember the gear toys that you can assemble however you want, and then turn one and see how the others turn? Easy on an iPad.

Arguments that the iPad won’t allow tinkering are narrowly construed into a “Since it doesn’t let me hack and ruin the OS with ResEdit, it doesn’t count as tinkering” -style argument. These folks don’t recognize the power of simulation. Imagine what Logo, Star Logo, or Boxer could be with a touch interface?

Need to hack? I can envision a Commodore 64 App emulated on it for them to completely reprogram, and when they outgrow it, they can open the Mac 512 App. Wanna create your first virus? There could be a Windows 95 App for that. And when they crash, they don’t take down the rest of the contents in your Trapper Keeper 2000.

This will be big for education. It’s about time.


Filed in Academic Technology, Learning, Literacy, Mobile, Research, Uncategorized, eLearning | | Comments (0) »

Playful Learning

02-Feb-10

A wonderful Op-Ed in today’s New York Times on the role of play in the learning process. Though specifically referring to the development cycle of students under the age of 12, the post makes a number of great points that can be applicable for learners of all ages. Here are a few points.

Play n' Learn1. Desired outcomes sometimes evolve from a practice that looks different from the desired outcomes:

In order to design a curriculum that teaches what truly matters, educators should remember a basic precept of modern developmental science: developmental precursors don’t always resemble the skill to which they are leading. For example, saying the alphabet does not particularly help children learn to read. But having extended and complex conversations during toddlerhood does. Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on.

2. Content must be personally meaningful to the learner (what some call Authentic Learning), and

3. Understanding can be enhanced by communicating (and designing learner-created content):

Children would also spend an hour a day writing things that have actual meaning to them — stories, newspaper articles, captions for cartoons, letters to one another. People write best when they use writing to think and to communicate, rather than to get a good grade.

In our theoretical classroom, children would also spend a short period of time each day practicing computation — adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Once children are proficient in those basics they would be free to turn to other activities that are equally essential for math and science: devising original experiments, observing the natural world and counting things, whether they be words, events or people. These are all activities children naturally love, if given a chance to do them in a genuine way.

What they shouldn’t do is spend tedious hours learning isolated mathematical formulas or memorizing sheets of science facts that are unlikely to matter much in the long run. Scientists know that children learn best by putting experiences together in new ways. They construct knowledge; they don’t swallow it.

4. Play is an important part of learning:

During the school day, there should be extended time for play. Research has shown unequivocally that children learn best when they are interested in the material or activity they are learning. Play — from building contraptions to enacting stories to inventing games — can allow children to satisfy their curiosity about the things that interest them in their own way. It can also help them acquire higher-order thinking skills, like generating testable hypotheses, imagining situations from someone else’s perspective and thinking of alternate solutions.

Filed in Academic Technology, Games, Learning, eLearning, work | | Comments (0) »

CFP: GLS 6.0 Conference

29-Jan-10


GLS 6.0 conference: June 9, 10, 11, 2010


June 9-11, 2010 Madison, WI

CALL FOR PAPERS

The time has never been more right for the Games+Learning+Society Conference! The world is finally beginning to catch on: Great videogames can be great learning tools. This year’s conference will further the work we started six years ago, exploring the impact of games and game culture on learning and society.

Conference Themes:

1) Formal & informal science literacy

2) Media production & identity

3) Game design & learning

Conference highlights include: keynotes by leaders in both academics and industry; interactive workshops on game research and game design; both individual and symposia presentation sessions; “chat n’ frags” and hands-on gameplay in the arcade; an evening poster session over cocktails & hors d’oeuvres; an evening machinima festival in the playhouse theatre; fireside chats that enable thorough, cozy conversations among VIP speakers and attendees; and our signature Thursday night dinner and marquee presentation.

Confirmed Speakers include: Henry Jenkins, James Paul Gee, Drew Davidson, Alan Collins, David Wiley, Kurt Squire, Reed Stevens, and Rich Lemarchand.

We encourage the submission of traditional paper sessions as well as innovative talk formats which focus on game design, game culture, and games’ potential for learning and society more broadly.

We have pushed the deadline by two weeks, so submissions are now due online by February 15, 2010. Complete submission guidelines can be found on the submissions site at http://glsconference.org.

The Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference is sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Morgridge Institute for Research. For information on how to sponsor this event, contact the conference coordinator at gls(at)seanmichaeldargan(dot)com.

Filed in Community, Games, Learning, Literacy, Mobile, Uncategorized | | Comments (0) »

Bad Behavior has blocked 205 access attempts in the last 7 days.

Switch to our mobile site

This website uses a Hackadelic PlugIn, Hackadelic Sliding Notes 1.6.4.