Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2008/05/bb-and-facebook-control-of-lear

Oh, no - this is all wrong... Blackboard believes our students want to add social networking to their learning experience. Well yes, I agree. Bb thinks that this can be acvhieved by integrating our Blackboard experience with Facebook. What!!!?

“Let’s face it,” the app’s introduction page says. “You would live on Facebook if you could. Imagine a world where you could manage your entire life from Facebook — it’s not that far off!”
But there’s one exception: “You have to access a different system to get your course information and you don’t always know when something new has been posted or assigned, so it’s difficult for you to stay on top of your studies. We get it. That’s why Blackboard is offering Blackboard Sync™, an application that delivers course information and updates from Blackboard to you inside Facebook.”

What are we after in any educational environment we develop? Security, privacy, permanence - these should not be sacrificed in search of convenience, data and profile portability. We can have it all - we just have to look beyond the proprietary systems - elgg integrates w Blackboard and Moodle - open ID can give us the profile portability - why go to bed with proprietary systems?

Facebook owns your data, covets your connections, mines your profile and postings, and Blackbioard confines your learning and harbours your artefacts. Educational institutions need to start taking some of the responsibility for student lifelong learning - create and host personal learning environments that include social networking, collaborative tools and link to any learning mgmt system - then a student has a life wide space to post, share, socialize and throughout their life they can access their artefacts and connections.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/05/16/weblin/

I’ve just discovered weblin from Aleks’ links. I’ll be interested to see what use this can be put to. I seem to vaguely remember a feature in IE 6 that let you discuss pages with other users, but I never worked out how to use it. I think that one was asynchronous, where this is Synchronous.

I’ve yet to work out how to register, though. There doesn’t seem to be a link to register. I can login, get it to re-send my activation link, get it to remind my of my password … if I could only create a password in the first place!

Listen to this podcast

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/05/frankensteining-with-mupples-a-

There are so many conferences at them moment it is hard to know what to go to. But this workshop is on a theme close to my heart and I have agreed to join the programme committee. Here is an abridged version of the call for papers.

“A change in perspective can be certified in the recent years to technology-enhanced learning research and development: More and more learning applications on the web are putting the learner centre stage, not the organisation. They empower learners with capabilities to customize and even construct their own personal learning environments (PLEs).

These PLEs typically consist of distributed web-applications and services that support system-spanning collaborative and  individual learning activities in formal as well as informal settings.

Technologically speaking, this shift manifests in a learning web where information is distributed across sites and activities can easily encompass the use of a greater number of pages and services offered through web-based learning applications. Mash-ups, the ‘frankensteining’ of software artefacts and data, have emerged to be the software development approach for these long-tail and perpetual-beta  niche markets. Core technologies facilitating this paradigm  shift are Ajax, javascript-based widget-collections, and

microformats that help to glue together public web APIs in individual applications.

In a wide range of European IST-funded research projects such as iCamp, LTfLL, LUISA, Palette, and TENcompetence a rising passion for these technologies can be identified.

This workshop therefore serves as a forum to bring together  researchers and developers from these projects and an open public that have an interest in understanding and engineering  mash-up personal learning environments (MUPPLEs).”

Can you resist a MUPPLE? Want to find out more? See http://mupple08.icamp.eu for more details.

TOPICS OF INTEREST (but not limited to):

* Architectures:

e.g. from cross-domain java scripting

up to to embedding of pedagogy

* Learning Models:

e.g. Activity Models, Environment

Design Models, including their theoretical bases

* Learning Services:

e.g. Concepts and Demonstrators for recombinable

learning services

* Authoring:

e.g. editors, user-interfaces for mash-up creation,

drag&drop mash-up creation, in-place editing

* Data formats:

e.g. microformats, new data models for

fragmented data such as streaming data, recombination models

needed to establish data interoperability

* User Interfaces:

Concepts, Metaphors, Workflows

* Mash-Up Strategies:

cooperative, value-chain oriented, master

and slave

* Development Methodologies: for building and sustaining communities

and services, including analyses of success factors, constraints,

characteristics of user uptake including long-tail requirements

engineering and software development

Digam de vossa justiça

Fulbright Hays Group Project Abroad Grant Awarded to the Center for Latin American Studies

The Center for Latin American Studies was recently awarded a grant in the amount of $66,574  from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fulbright Hays Program  to provide a four-week curriculum development project in Ecuador and Peru entitled "The Andean "HATSS" Project: Reaching High Achievement for Teachers and Students of Spanish in Florida Schools". The HATSS project is a collaborative endeavor between the Center for Latin American Studies, the College of Education and Florida schools to design and implement innovative curricula using new technologies that will prepare students for an increasingly global and diverse society.  The curriculum team consists of twelve K-12 foreign language teachers from eleven Florida counties and two UF faculty members. 
 
The project will take place in three phases.  In Phase I, teachers will form an online community and participate in a two day pre-departure orientation program at UF which will take place May 16-17 in Gainesville.   The orientation experience will prepare participants to travel to Latin America through sessions on Latin American culture and educational technology.  Phase II consists of on-site experiences in Ecuador and Peru in which participants acquire knowledge of local languages and cultures, guided by local on-site experts and in conjunction with U.S. project personnel. Finally, in Phase III participants will utilize knowledge, technologies, materials, and language acquired to create curriculum units. Participants will disseminate their work through local, state and national conferences in addition to making their materials available at no cost to educators and students online.
          

Sources:  

Mary E. Risner, Associate Director of Outreach and Latin American Business Programs at the Center for Latin American Studies.  mrisner@latam.ufl.edu ,  352-392-0375, x811

Catherine Cavanaugh, Associate Professor, College of Education,  School of Teaching and Learning.  cathycavanaugh@coe.ufl.edu, 352-392-9191,  x295

Director of Creative Learning Services

The director provides leadership in the planning, direction, supervision and instructional design in the development of interactive college credit courses. S/he supervises staff involved with the design and development of courses which can be delivered in all modes (face-to-face, blended and fully online), using the latest findings in the fields of learning, motivation and technology, with emphasis on the constructivist approach. The director also works directly with faculty teams as an instructional designer in the design and development of courses.

The director works collaboratively with the Office of Professional Development and the Virtual College in coordinating efforts to improve student learning and serves as liaison with McGraw-Hill and other college partners in the publishing of courses. The position reports to the Executive Director of Organizational Learning Services. Further information concerning SIRIUS is available at www.sirius-education.org. A full description of the position is available at https://jobs.fccj.edu.  

Preferred qualifications for the position include a doctoral degree or ABD from an accredited college or university in instructional technology, instructional design, psychology, or related field supplemented by five (5) years of instructional design and development or related work, two of which must have been in a supervisory position. Completion of the doctorate may be substituted for up to two years of non-supervisory experience. Extensive knowledge of the applications of learning and motivation research and theory (with emphasis on the constructivist approach) and technology in support of adult learning, extensive experience teaching/developing online courses, and a strong background in the development and use of multimedia learning objects are expected.

The position is available immediately; starting salary is $57,144-$68,328 and the benefits package is excellent. Review of applications begins May 19, 2008. Please submit letter of interest, FCCJ application, resume and unofficial college transcripts to Office of Human Resources, Florida Community College at Jacksonville, 501 W. State Street, Jacksonville, FL 32202.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/05/15/facebook-meet

How to put students off Facebook in one easy step?

I’ve tried to add it, but I’m told that our administrator has blocked access to it. I’m not quite sure whether I think that’s a good idea, or a bad one.

In someways it’s good, as there is the worry that Facebook may use the data inappropriately, however,

When it was still open only to college students, Facebook profiles often featured users’ course schedules with links to their classmates. Sync offers similar functionality, but within the private space of the application itself. In other words, it doesn’t show up on profiles at all.

“It’s a private application, so there’s sensitive information there that you wouldn’t want published to all your friends,” Gage said. Still, she said Blackboard hopes that students will use the application to connect with classmates and form study groups in what Michael L. Chasen, Blackboard’s president and CEO, referred to as “a new kind of social learning community” in the company’s announcement.

“Sync offers similar functionality, but within the private space of the application itself. In other words, it doesn’t show up on profiles at all” suggests to me that the data should be relatively safe; though, of course we have the issue that it’s on a US server, and we’re bound by stricter, EU regulations. So presumably that’s why they’ve blocked it.

I also wonder how much we want to encourage students to by pass Victory, it may be better to ensure that they go to it initially, and then (inevitably!) to Facebook.

The other issue is, of course, that students will start to move from Facebook to something else…

Overall, I think that blocking it was the right decision.

Listen to this podcast

http://elgg.ell.aau.dk/ryberg/weblog/805.html

http://ryberg.blog.hum.aau.dk/2008/05/15/social-networking-for-justic

As mentioned in my previous post I have recently returned from lovely Greece and the Networked Learning Conference, so now it is time to return to some of the issues and presentations that I found thought-provoking and interesting.

The conference actually started off with a very interesting keynote delivered by Charalambos Vrasidas with the title ‘Social Networking for Social Justice: Challenges and Possibilities‘ (Grainne Conole has already posted a good summary and discussion of the keynote on her excellent blog where she has also commented on other presentations from the conference).

The keynote was a thought provoking reminder of the unequal access to education in the world (and the general inequality in terms of the economical and social distribution of power and goods) - something we should really keep in mind every time we talk about “open education”, “digital generations” or the “world wide web” which is really not that “world wide” in terms of access and the capacity to utilise the online resources (a good point I shall return to).

Charalambos Vrasidas argued against the notion that ‘the world is flat’ (adopted from Friedman) and drawing on Richard Florida he suggested instead that the world is ’spiky’ - meaning that even though we are indeed seeing new power centers and super economies emerge (e.g. in Asia) there are still billions of people around the world (in both developing and developed countries) living in (extreme) poverty not benefiting from the apparently ‘flat world’.

The notion of a ‘flat world’ also seems to include the idea that more people have been given access to information through the ‘world wide web’, which to some extent is also true. Here, however, I think that Charalambos made a great point! While initiatives like MIT Opencourseware and OER Commons (open educational resources) give people free access to wonderful resources for teaching and learning two questions should be asked: whom are they actually open to - or rather what languages are they available in? But actually more important - where are the infrastructures (e.g. teachers, context and networks, accreditation systems etc.) to make sense and use of these resources? While having access to material is of course a great thing it may not be enough in and off itself.

If we assume that learning arises, not only from reading/internalising information, but equally through participation, dialogue and students’ active self-governed, problem-based and collaborative activities, then we might need to think about how we can leverage the access to active networks, dialogues and spaces of meaning making - just as much as access to materials and resources.

One other point (out of many others) mentioned in Charalambos’ presentation was the idea of how social networking and ‘Online Activism’ might be a way to promote and strengthen social justice. He used a video from Amnesty International and mentioned the power of networks in (virally) distributing the video, thereby raising awareness about Human Rights and that ‘your signature counts‘. Distributing videos and utilising the power of networks certainly help in getting messages across to a broader public, and Charalambos also gave other examples of how technology and social networks can be used to promote social justice (e.g. games such as food-force or the empowerment experienced by peasants being able to check crop prices on the net).

However, I have come to think of if certain forms of ‘Online Activism’ may actually lead to a sort of ‘laid back’ or even ‘lazy activism’. For instance it is great that just by using Facebook I can (apparently) help reduce C02 emission, give rice to poor people and save the rain forest by nursing my (Lil) Green Patch…but on the other hand - do they actually engage me or disengage me (one is helping while maybe not being particularly aware of or reflexive about it)? A lot of great work is going on within the field of ‘motivating design’ or persuasive design’ (for instance I would recommend the blog Architectures of Control? Design with Intent that is maintained by Dan Lockton). Here one of the ideas is to embed ‘good, sustainable practices’ into the design and function of various technologies causing people to automatically save water, electricity and so forth. Like many of the Facebook-application this is a really great idea (assuming that they actually do work), but I do have one concern! While such ‘persuasive or motivational’ designs surely can change people’s behaviour, do they also raise awareness and engagement - do they change our minds and not only our behaviour?

Likewise, it is great that I can easily sign petitions at Avaaz.org and hope that politicians will listen and take action correspondingly - also it is wonderful that I can quickly send an sms to the Danish Red Cross to donate money for the victims in Myanmar. But do such initiatives and ‘the easiness’ also eschew our collective focus from long-term, difficult efforts of capacity building, sustainability onto ’causes’ and ‘immediate solutions’. Not that these two are mutually exclusive, but some Danish charity and developmental organisations have pointed out that while people are willing to donate a lot of money for specific ’causes’ and ‘events’ it is harder to promote and ensure support for more long-term and slow-moving projects which may take decades to succeed. With ‘direct’ support and aid we can see the value and results (or imagine the impact) quickly (people get rice, blankets, water or the popular ‘donate a goat’ presents etc.), whereas with an ‘indirect’ support (building up public administration, training teachers, collaborating on building up capacity on Universities or in other sectors) it is somewhat more difficult to see immediate and concrete results.

Of course this is not to argue that we should not engage with motivating or persuasive design and embedding good practices into technology; that we should not easily be able to donate money, school books, goats etc. to poor people needing the help - or raising awareness by distributing widely videos like the one from Amnesty International. However, what would be very interesting to study is how and if such initiatives and technologies affect or transform our ways of engaging with the world and our ways of taking action?

http://www.commun-it.org/community/timh/weblog/2318.html

Just in case anyone missed it (I would have if my wife hadn't brought her copy home), the latest ETFO magazine ("Voice") had 3 great articles

http://www.etfo.ca/Publications/Voice/Pages/default.aspx

(coincidentally, 2 of the articles were about/by Commun-IT.org members!)

 

Also of note on the graphic novels idea, OSAPAC has announced that licensing a piece of software to help teachers/students author their own graphic novels/comics this year (http://www.osapac.org)

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/10/trust-test-blogs-or-websites.ht

I have repetitive stress injury, and need to investigate a new mouse and keyboard that can help with my condition. I went to Google, searched on ergonomic keyboards and received a number of hits - websites, mostly corporate or trade journals with reviews (paid for? promotions?) - extremely limited and not very helpful. So, I decide to search on blogs - and my first hit is a real Hit - Amy Hengst who maintains a blog devoted to home treatment for RSI . And lo and behold she has a comprehensive, informative list (and up to date) on ergonomic keyboards.

So here is my opinion drawn from this search experience. Websites are primarily corporate, designed to deliver a message leading to a sale, and often dated. The weblog - personal ones - can be corporate and sales driven but then there are also gems like Amy's where the message is up to date and more important than the sale. She as a blogger wants to share information and experience, not generate a sale. So for this trust test I side with the weblog.