Michael Hotrum :: Blog

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2009/04/knewton-adaptive-testing-tool.h

Adaptive learning tests are taken on computers. The questions get progressively harder or easier depending on each student’s answers. Thus, they adapt to each student’s knowledge and abilities. Knewton is taking the adaptive learning concept and applying it first to online test preparation services.

The service combines live video chat with an instructor in a whiteboard environment, along with learn-at-your-own-pace sample questions and tutorials. Knewton finds the best teachers it can get and pays them $500 to $800 an hour. In addition to the virtual classroom, Knewton keeps track of each student’s progress in mastering the thousand or so concepts that can be covered in each test. A “concept queue” keeps the students abreast of what concepts they have mastered and which ones they are weak on. They can click on each concept tag to dig deeper.

Read the full review here (it digs pretty deep).

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2008/01/making-social-sites-social.html

Further to Facebook cease and desist to Robert Scoble's scraping of his own data in Facebook -

1. Facebook doesn't play well with others.
Facebook Open Like A Granite Wall Compiler from Wired.com:
"As we’ve been repeating over an over again, Facebook doesn’t have an API. Flickr has an API, del.icio.us has an API, but Facebook doesn’t and that they would take legal action against code that allows what any self-respecting API is designed to do — import and export data — further demonstrates that Facebook just doesn’t get it."

2. We social members of innumerable social networks need an open social network protocol:
Content access controls - the ability to make some content visible to everyone and at the same time reserve other parts of content only for those visitors I’ve designated as “friends.”
Cross-interaction for existing Social Networks - Why can't I have all my social networks connected? Need: Incorporate your existing data while providing a way to define new friends without resorting to any specific social networking site.

3. Those connections I've made, that profile, those addresses, that content - it has no value unless I own it and can access it anywhere, anytime, across the web. So social networks! Be truly social. Play fair. Be nice. Share. Promote data portability.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2008/01/facebook-as-hotel-california.ht

As the eagles song Hotel California says - "You can checkout any time you like,But you can never leave!" Like so many services - proprietary services - like Google, yahoo, Facebook, etc. - they want us in but we can't get out - unless they say so - and they keep our luggage ! And they can, arbitrarily, as discovered by Robert Scoble - lock us out and just delete our account and data.

This should be a flag for all those educators espousing the use of third party social networks like Facebook in education. Alternatives, like Elgg, allow universities or educational foundations to run their own social networks, and not be prey to the whims of proprietary systems. As Robert also discovered the open ownership of our data and the portability thereof should be of prime concern! We are visitors to these sites, not seeking to become an inhabitant that is treated like a chattel. We own our ID and must be able to port our data whenever and wherever we want - see these principles espoused by the dataportability movement.

As Stephen Downes cites Steve O'hear " "the resistance of Facebook, MySpace, Google and most of the leading players in the user data space to offer easy data portability (I can't even backup my gmail with a simple one-click) is based on an old fashioned notion that lock-in is the best way to protect a strong market position." The whole promise of social software and open source was NOT to be locked in - that's why many of us in ed tech find the proprietary Learning Managment System as so much less than the grazing commons of the personal learning environment (PLE).

As a side note I am on Facebook and am also involved in an effort to search out our family roots. I found others on Facebook with the same surname and was sending them a message of introduction and inviting them to our surname site. The Facebook robots warned me that I was "spamming" and shoud desist. So much for a social site.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/12/teens-top-online-creators.html

Just another set of facts to indicate higher education better get it's shared space, social networking act together -

A new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that the next generation is switched on and producing content.
59% of all (U.S.) teenagers engage in at least one form of online content creation. Of those 35% of all teen girls blog, compared with 20% of online boys, and 54% of girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys. Boys however like their video, with 19% of boys posting video online vs. 10% of girls.
39% of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos
33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments
28% have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2004.
27% maintain their own personal webpage
26% remix content they find online into their own creations

Students will want to be active learners, dealing with authentic, relevant content, and dynamically collaborating in the development of new content. And they will want personalizable learning spaces where they have access control.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/12/old-world-copyright-does-not-co

Fair Use Vs. Free Speech in the Internet Age: The Lane Hartwell Problem

Item: non-profit music group Richter Scales create mash up video to present with their new song "The Bubble" - a parody on making it in the next big net bubble

Problem: after a million views on YouTube, video taken down because photographer Lane Hartwell objected to the unauthorized use of one of her photos in the video, then put up again with the offending photo replaced and a list of credits at the end for all the images used.

Real problem: the norms of the offline world and the emerging norms of the Internet are in conflict. People communicate on the web by sharing - reshaping images, audio - if you make it available expect it to be used. If you want to be part of a community - expect to share.

Solution - Payback: think of other forms than buying rights - maybe licensing - maybe trackbacks, leading to paid work

P.S. I just mashed techcrunch text - even stole straight lines. Copyright issue?

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/12/hosting-communities-and-trust.h

Further to Stephen Downe's discussion on trust and communities. Eduspaces, a free elgg powered community space managed and hosted by two entrepreneurs (Ben and Dave), fostered an active environment of educators discussing the use of and demonstrating the use of educational technologies. Eduspaces is being used by faculty, individuals and institutions for a variety of purposes - learning delivery, research space and respository, personal blogging, community creation, resource sharing, touchstone for learning, community of practice.

Now, seemingly out of the blue, the site is going down in mid January and folks are being advised to port their data elsewhere. Understandably, criticism has followed the surprise of this announcemnt. It is untimely. It is abrupt. It is unexpected. But is it a callous disregard for those who have invested data and time into developing their own spaces in Eduspaces? Have Ben and Dave, as Graham Attwell suggests, broken a bond of trust - a necessary component for community building - and impacted on the future acceptance and adoption of social software environments?

But it is always risky to have your activities housed on an external host. Eduspaces was a free service, hosted and moderated (without compensation) by two individuals interested in the advancement of free, open source software for use by the educational community, we should be a little thankful.

Many schools and faculty are making use of proprietary web services - like Facebook. If it should shut down I doubt there would be much chance of retrieving data. Were Dave and Ben great communicators? That's debatable. Were they funded and supported by those who benefitied from the use of Elgg and eduspaces? Hmm? No. And Elgg isn't suffering as an environment simply because Eduspaces is shutting down. Heck, even if Elgg shuts down we will continue to use the elgg installations we have on our server, and we will continue to add functions as required. Dave and Ben have established a platform, and made it available for personal customization. They have also left a legacy by contributing to the demise of proprietary learning and content mgmt systems and adding social components to authentic, reflective learning, and the creation and development of learning communities that thrive within and without and beyond the confines of program length and institutional membership. Lifelong, lifewide learning and the integration of formal and informal learning is now a true possibility thanks to advances like Elgg.

I agree that their actions are rushed, and they didn't 'discuss" with the community. And the optics aren't good - especially since eduspaces was a demonstration site of Elgg - Elgg may suffer as a result.

But the real question, as Graham rightly points out is that there was no organization to the comunity. We talk about organic development of free and open learning space like elgg, (eg. eduspaces) yet we often don't put an organizational framework around it (not management framework). What are the roles and responsibilities of site managment, moderation and of community members?

What the actions of Dave and Ben have demonstrated is that organic growth should not mean a hands off laissez-faire approach to community development. Organic Communities need cultivation. Trust must be earned , but it cannot be assumed. We trusted that Eduspaces would always be there for us, even if we as part of that community never contributed to its management. perhaps dave and Ben never saw eduspaces as their community - it was ours. maybe we are the ones who never established trust. Inevitably, all things come to an end. Even free, open, organic spaces.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/12/when-i-die-who-mourns-my-cyberl

NITROREV: Virtual Wake As I see Eduspaces - a social network I am part of - about to die and untimely death - I was wondering how to mourn the loss of those connections I made through this network. Then I encountered Stephen Taylor's blog entry where he muses about an actual incident of cyber friendship loss. It caused me a moment of thought. When I physically die, my cyber identityt continues on. The data remnants of my cyber activity exists - how will those I never met physically, yet socialized with electronically express condolences and grief? What happens to me cyber properties - do they revert to my heirs who have no interest in maintaining my blog entries and other data? Are they parsed out to my cyber friends? Further to this discussion I have a number of social software sites I maintain for educational institutions. Students post comments, reflections, artefacts and compile eportfolios. If a student does die, what is to be done with their entries? Do we just arbitrarily delete their account or maintain it in a condolences area? The expressions of grief, condolences and maintenance of cyber properties upon one's earthly death - these are issues we are yet to grapple with.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/12/cormiers-top-ten-ed-stories-200

Dave’s Educational Blog Dave Cormier lists his top ten tech ed stories of 2007 - number 10 is connectivism, number 1 is the action of one hacker to remove filtering software - what permeates all selections is openness and freedom and the need for effective education on the safe and efficient use of that openneness and freedom - kudos to Dave - always insightful

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2008/08/training-materials-developmentd

Bryan Chapman culled these from Brandon Hall surveys of real life experiences - in answer to how long does it take to develop training materials? development time: delivery "seat" time -

Ratio for each Type of learning

34:1 Instructor-Led Training (ILT), including design, lesson plans, handouts, PowerPoint slides, etc.

33:1 PowerPoint to E-Learning Conversion. Not sure why it takes less time then creating ILT, but that’s what we discovered when surveying 200 companies about this practice

220:1 Standard e-learning which includes presentation, audio, some video, test questions, and 20% interactivity

345:1 Time it takes for online learning publishers to design, create, test and package 3rd party courseware

750:1 Simulations from scratch. Creating highly interactive content

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Here are the bibliographies for each, in case you want to cite these in research:

34:1 Chapman, B. and the staff of Brandon Hall Research (2007). LCMS Knowledgebase 2007: A Comparison of 30+ Enterprise Learning Content Mangement Systems [online database, no page numbers]. Published by Brandon Hall Research, Sunnyvale, CA

33:1 Chapman, B. and the staff of Brandon Hall Research (2006). PowerPoint to E-Learning Development Tools: Comparative Analysis of 20 Leading Systems. Published by Brandon Hall Research, Sunnyvale, CA, p. 20.

220:1 Chapman, B. and the staff of Brandon Hall Research (2006). PowerPoint to E-Learning Development Tools: Comparative Analysis of 20 Leading Systems. Published by Brandon Hall Research, Sunnyvale, CA, p. 20.

345:1 Private study, done for a consulting client, information was not published. No bibliographical reference.

 750:1 Chapman, B. and the staff of Brandon Hall Research (2006). Online Simulations 2006: A Knowledgebase of 100+ Simulation Development Tools and Services [online database, no page numbers]. Published by Brandon Hall Research, Sunnyvale, CA

Of course I would add two more ratios with innumerable citations:

It Depends: 1
get it Done or Else: 1

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2008/08/illusionary-learning.html

THE DOCTOR FOX LECTURE: A PARADIGM OF EDUCATIONAL SEDUCTIONDonald H. Naftulin, M.D., John E. Ware, Jr., and Frank A. Donnelly
Journal of Medical Education, vol. 48, July 1973, p. 630-635


Abstract - On the basis of publications supporting the hypothesis that student ratings of educators depend largely on personality variables and not educational content, the authors programmed an actor to teach charismatically and non substantively on a topic about which he knew nothing. The authors hypothesized that given a sufficiently impressive lecture paradigm, even experienced educators participating in a new learning experience can be seduced into feeling satisfied that they have learned despite irrelevant, conflicting, and meaningless content conveyed by the lecturer. The hypothesis was supported when 55 subjects responded favorably at the significant level to an eight-item questionnaire concerning their attitudes toward the lecture. The study serves as an example to educators that their effectiveness must be evaluated beyond the satisfaction with which students view them and raises the possibility of training actors to give "legitimate" lectures as an innovative approach toward effective education. The authors conclude by emphasizing that student satisfaction with learning may represent little more than the illusion of having learned.