Particularly among teachers of middle and high schools, I’ve seen much stronger recommendations, if not school district policies, against any social networking connections between teachers and students. Indeed, there have been a few cases where high school teachers have found themselves in trouble because of communications they have had with their students through Facebook.  Having no connection through Facebook certainly avoids a lot of pitfalls. The problem though, is that students who want to connect with teachers over Facebook do so to feel some sense of connection to the instructor. Students connect with their friends through Facebook.  If a teacher is inspiring or has established a meaningful relationship with a student, why can’t they connect with them on Facebook as well?  The answer is of course that the teacher-student relationship is different from a friend relationship.  However, that does not necessarily mean that there isn’t still the feeling of some sense of connection between teacher and student. The trouble though is trying to establish a clear-cut boundary between the teacher-student relationship area and other personal aspects of both the teacher and the student.

Among college teachers, I haven’t seen as clear guidelines about establishing connections, particularly over Facebook. The best advice I’ve seen suggests that, if teachers want to connect with their students through Facebook, they set up a professional Facebook profile which has limited personal information. It would be very much similar to any other professional website that the teacher sets up elsewhere.  That way, it is pretty clear where the boundary lies.  Students can’t access the teacher’s personal information; information a teacher would not share with students whether online or not. There are, at least, two problems with this approach. The first is that the boundary is very much a one-way mirror. A teacher’s private information is unavailable but all of the students’ private, personal information is visible. Right on the homepage, teachers might see who was drunk last night, who doesn’t feel like coming to class, and other such information that perhaps the student doesn’t intend the teacher to see, or information that the teacher wishes not to see. Advice I’ve seen recommend that teachers just ignore those sorts of information and do not respond to it.  Inevitably though, the cat is already out of the bag. The second problem is that, if other teachers are like me, we already have a personal Facebook account. It’s a bit of a hassle to have to set up another Facebook account just for students. Facebook and other third-party apps often assume you just have one Facebook account and thus managing 2+ accounts can become tedious.

The final strategy I’ve seen is to accept students as “friends” on Facebook only after they have graduated from the school/university. This avoids the whole confusion between the official teacher-student relationship.  I’m not sure if teachers necessarily desire their past students to see everything they post on their Facebook but perhaps can find no other suitable alternative to keep in touch with their past students.

I propose a different solution to the whole problem. Create a Facebook fan page of yourself. At first glance this seems to be a bit self-conceited. That opinion probably comes from the fact that some pages are fan pages of famous people/items/groups. It seems like you’d need to be popular to have a fan page. That’s not true, you can create fan pages for whatever interests you. Facebook fan pages solves much of the problems encountered in other approaches to connecting with students on Facebook. For one thing, you can continue to have your personal profile and a separate, professional “fan” page. Students that “like” your page, do not have access to your profile information and even more importantly, teachers don’t have access to student profile information either. Teachers can control the information on the page and an even greater plus, that information gets sent to each student’s profile updates. It’s right there on their homepage on Facebook. If you have important announcements, sending it through your page may be even more effective than sending it through email. You can still have a two way conversation with students as well. So, for example, even when you post an announcement on your page, a student with a question can leave it as a comment which you can then answer. When you do, not only the student sees it, but every other student as well. This avoids you having to answer the same question, over and over and over again.  Other useful functions of pages include: the ability to post pictures and videos (separate and apart from your personal profile pictures), create discussion forums, create an event and send out invitations, and get a page badge that you can place on your professional website. You can also add in extra applications that can, for example, connect your twitterfeed to your page.

Here is a video describing how to set up a Facebook fan page:

There are some drawbacks to fan pages though. One is that you lose the ability to IM your students over Facebook. This could be a good or bad thing. Sometimes teachers would rather not have students know when they are online (for example, grading papers at 2am) or be IMed with lots of questions the night before the exam. On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to IM during office hours with students. Some universities though, have other systems that can accommodate IM, including programs such as Elluminate. The second drawback is the ability to send a message to your students over Facebook. I can imagine a case where students asks a question on the page that requires a personal, private response. In such cases, you can always leave a comment, such as “This is something we need to discuss privately. Could you email me the specifics and I can get back to you?”

So, the next time a student asks you if you are on Facebook or sends you a “friend request”, you can safely point them to your fan page instead. You can have a meaningful student-teacher Facebook connection with a clear boundary.

Recently the web has been buzzing about Firesheep. For those that don’t know, Firesheep is a freely available software that will allow the user to tap into your accounts such as twitter and facebook over an unsecured wifi. Typically you use unsecure wifi at public places, such as airports, hotels, and starbucks. Mashable posted an article describing it in more detail here.  Here is also a YouTube video that shows just how easy it is to use:

The only way to protect yourself is to use a VPN. Some business and universities have their own established VPNs and you may be required to use it once off-site. But generally speaking, you can’t use your company’s VPN for personal activities. The Mashable article had a few suggestions on possible VPNs, with only one of them available for free. So far, I haven’t had much luck with the free VPN they recommended. The cheapest one mentioned was WiTopia. The price quoted ($39.99/year) is for the cheaper version which has some limitations. There is a pricier version for $59.99/year. I rarely use an unsecured, public wifi and couldn’t justify spending $40-$60/year for this service. I discovered another free VPN service called Hotspot Shield. It is incredibly easy to install and use. The only downside is that when you are browsing, advertisements appear at the top of the page. My experience has been though that the advertisement goes away after you nagivate away from your opening page. If you rarely use an unsecured, public wifi, this option seems like a good choice. You can’t beat the price, you’re safe, and the advertisements aren’t super-annoying. However, WiTopia may make more sense if you use unsecured, public wifi more often.

The other thing that VPNs do is to hide your identity while browsing the web. Web servers can tell from your ip address who your service provider is, what part of the world you are located in, and what your internet connection speed is.  You can see for yourself here: http://en.utrace.de/ As explained on WiTopia’s website, your searches and browsing habits may be retained by web servers, even if you delete it off of your computer. Using a VPN allows you to hide your identity, so that web servers can no longer access that information.

UPDATE: It’s just recently been released that there is a new extension in Firefox called Blacksheep that will detect if someone is using a Firesheep. Read more about it here on Mashable. If someone is using Firesheep you will know about it and can take steps to protect yourself: either using a VPN or signing off of the wifi network.

Security on your computer

As educators, we probably all have confidential information stored on it, such as students’ contact information, grades, etc. How much of that stored information is really secure though? Even though you may need to log into your account to access your files, it is very easy for a hacker (or tech support) to work around that login to get access to those files. So how do you secure your confidential information on your computer. A very easy to use, free resource that I’ve found (and has been around for a while) is TrueCrypt. TrueCrypt creates a secure space on your computer so that anything you put in there is inaccessible to anyone (including yourself) unless you have the password/key. It encrypts the data. TrueCrypt can also secure usb and other external drives as well. If you ever lose your usb drive, you can feel safe knowing that any confidential data you have on there is inaccessible.

The TrueCrypt website provides step-by-step instructions about how to go about setting up your secure space/usb/external drive. The great thing about it is that there is an easy set-up for beginners and then there are more advanced options for those more experienced. It even has a plausible deniability option, which will allow you to access your data under duress, without revealing your password.  A simple read through of the step-by-step instructions can set you up with relative ease.  My only other concern with using TrueCrypt was that it might take longer to get information to/from the secured space. So far my experience as been positive. I haven’t noticed any difference between writing to the secured space and writing to other areas on my drive.

When it comes to security, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Keeping track of my library of personal research articles has always been a pain for me, if only because I’m not as organized as some of my counterparts.  Over the years, when I found interesting articles related to my topic of interest and I dutifully printed them out and store them in a file cabinet somewhere. I have at least two drawers of filing cabinets filled with these research articles. Perhaps some of you share my dilemma.  If you are really good about it, you’ve probably also taken the time to sort these articles according to different subtopics, so that they are easier to find.  I, myself, having overflowing hanging folders of articles in my cabinet drawers.  Perhaps, if you were really trying to keep up with the times, there are folders on your computer with electronic copies of these research articles, very much resembling the drawers in a filing cabinet.

A while ago I came across an interesting service called Mendeley. Like EndNote, it provides a way of keeping track of references, being able to insert references into manuscripts, and automatically create a reference/bibliography section based on the references you used. These services are nice because the process is relatively automatic and saves you time from having to compile these things for yourself over and over again across manuscripts. However, there is a big difference between EndNote and Mendeley. Mendeley lets you upload your electronic articles online. EndNote only has your references, Mendeley has your references AND the original article.

If you go to the Mendeley website, it will invite you to download their free software (PC, Mac, or Linux). You will also need create a free account as well. Once you’ve set up your account and you’ve downloaded the software, you can start uploading articles. All of the electronic articles I have are in pdf format, so that’s what I’ve uploaded into Mendeley. Mendeley will scan your document and try to determine the reference items for the article (authors, title, publication name, date, abstract, keywords, etc). The newer the article, the easier time it has getting these reference items correct. It’s all editable, so if it doesn’t get the reference items correct, you can always go back and change it. It also allows you to add in your own keywords as well, something handy you can use if you make up your own keywords. Once saved, Mendeley will upload the document to the “cloud.” This means that any computer that has the Mendeley program and your account information will download that article. Your library is also available online through the Mendeley site as well. Just recently they have added an iphone and ipad app, and will soon be launching an Android app also. The mobile apps allow you to read your articles on your phone. It also has a nifty embedded pdf reader in the desktop program. If you click on an article it opens right up in the Mendeley program, no need to view it separately in Adobe Reader. The embedded reader allows you to annotate your article as well, including adding highlights and additional notes.  It also has a very neat tab feature so that you can easily toggle between several articles.

No longer will I have to waste time searching for that article I misplaced in my cabinet drawer! Mendeley has an excellent search function. This makes gathering up the necessary articles for a particular topic very easy to do.

The other neat and unique feature of Mendeley is your ability to share your articles (or a select subset of articles) with small groups of people.  The free account allows you to make five private groups with 10 users each. Each group can see selected pdf articles you’ve uploaded. It’s great for private research groups or for a graduate seminar.  You can also make a public group as well, but they don’t have access to the pdf articles, just the reference items including the abstract.

Aside from a personal online library, Mendeley is also attempting to be social in a variety of different ways. Each user can create a profile, including articles they have published. Articles you’ve published can be made available to Mendeley members if you desire. You can search for other users or public groups. This is an excellent way to find reference lists related to particular topics based on professionals in the field. The web interface, to some degree, mimics Facebook with status updates, a “people you might know” section, and “most read articles.”

I think Mendeley is a great resource, at the very least, for keeping track of your own personal library of electronic research articles. But given the social aspect, it has the potential for helping researchers collaborate with others to find relevant information.

To end, here’s a video of Mendeley’s founder talking about how Mendeley is like Last.fm:

According to the Trailmeme website, the service allows users to tell a story using websites.  Unlike social bookmarking services, like Delicious that simply tags and lists websites, Trailmeme allows users to create “trails” where websites are linked together.  Here, for example, is a Trail showing the History of Coffee through websites: http://www.trailmeme.com/trails/The_History_of_Coffee. ReadWriteWeb also mentions Pearltrees as a currently existing alternative but mention that Pearltrees does not allow for the more complex interconnections as available in Trailmeme. A far more simplified version I have used is: Jog the Web, which merely provides a list of websites in a neat fashion. Jog the Web is good for someone who wanted to present a number of websites to an audience and Pearltrees and Trailmeme seems more appropriate for individual usage and self-discovery.

When I saw the video discussing Trailmeme, there was an instant realization that this tool could be very useful in education. Both instructors and students can create Trails as an educational experience. On the instructor side, a Trail could be constructed as a reference where students can explore different concepts or ideas in further detail. I can see different variations such as: having one trail for the entire course, one trail per main section in the course, or one trail per concept depending upon the needs of the instructor. For example, I teach Lifespan Development. I can definitely see myself constructing trails for each of the main lifespan periods (infancy, toddler, preschool, etc.). As we cover a particular lifespan period, I can make trails available and students can use it as a reference site, probably in response to an assignment I have provided.

I think students constructing Trails is even more interesting. A while ago I came across the idea of the WebQuest. WebQuest.org defines a web quest as: an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. Students are given an assignment to find out about a particular topic and then scour the internet searching for information about the topic. You can visit the WebQuest website to get some ideas about what WebQuests look like. The results of the websites are reported in different formats, such as a paper or a publisher document. Trailmeme comes in as a very interesting alternative for the way WebQuests are presented. Students can be given a WebQuest and then they can use Trailmeme to present the information that they found. Trailmeme interconnects the websites, so students have to think about how each of the websites are related to one another and how to present the story to the audience.  What an interesting way to learn about a topic!

1. There is only one copy of it. If someone hands you a piece of paper and you misplace it somewhere it becomes really difficult to find it. The information essentially is lost unless you can find a copy of it from someone else.
2. It’s only available in one place. Working from home and you can’t find that important piece of paper you left in the office?  You’re stuck until you can get in the office again.
3. It takes up a lot of space. If you are not very organized (as I can be), paper can very quickly become a messy situation.
4. It is linear and lacks interactivity. For example, I’d find myself writing an essay and wanting to find a quote or point from a particular research paper. After finding the paper, I’d have to read it through to find exactly what point it is I was looking for.
5. It is not ecologically friendly. It is estimated that the United States alone uses about 4 million tons of copy paper.
6. It is costly. It costs money to create it, to print on it, and then eventually to destroy it.
7. Filing it in multiple places means making multiple copies.

To stress the point of the inefficiency of paper, Amazon recently reported that it sold more Kindle ebooks than hardcover books. This is in line with a previous finding that more Kindle ebooks were sold in December 2009 than real books.  There are a number of reasons why this trend is occurring but it seems plausible that the inefficiencies of paper are some of the contributing factors to this trend.

This leads to my topic of interactive syllabus. Up until recently I have been required to give paper copies of my syllabi to students at the beginning of the semester. Presumably the reason for this is to ensure that students cannot say they did not receive a copy of the syllabus since they were given a hardcopy at the beginning of the semester. So at the beginning of each semester, I would lug around huge stacks of paper to each of my classes to distribute to students. I have always provided an electronic version of the paper syllabus (usually a pdf) on Blackboard in addition to the paper copy.  Whether due to budget cuts or other reasons, the requirement for distributing paper syllabi has changed and I am no longer required to give out the paper versions.  However my electronic versions of the syllabi were essentially the paper version, just in a pdf format on Blackboard.  I realized that I was under-utilizing the abilities of electronic media and I began to rethink how I presented my syllabus (and other information, such as assignment instructions) on Blackboard.

For us college instructors, we’ve probably all encountered questions from students for which the answer is clearly stated in the syllabus. I often get questions like, “what did we cover in class yesterday”, “how much is this assignment worth”, “when is this assignment due”, etc. I have often lamented with my colleagues that students don’t read the syllabus – the syllabus that I spend hours preparing and including all the necessary information they would need for the course. Because my syllabi are so comprehensive, they tend to be at least 9 pages long and includes just about everything.  Of course I know where to find everything because I wrote it, but imagine a student looking for a specific piece of information and having to wade through 9+ pages to find it. It certainly becomes understandable that students would just prefer to ask the instructor than having to do that each and every time they wanted to find out something.  In addition, this is also the Google generation where they are used to finding out information quickly and effortlessly.  If they need to find the answer to something, they just type their term into the search box and the answer pops out at them instantaneous. Having to deal with this pdf document must seem somewhat tedious to them.

At that point I realized that I needed to change the way I presented my syllabi over Blackboard. I needed to make it interactive and thus easy to find the needed information. Therefore I set out compartmentalizing the different components of my syllabus and placing these as distinct units in Blackboard (typically a folder).  Here is an example of my Blackboard course menu (utilizing Blackboard 9.0):

You can see from the course menu that students have quick and immediate access to the salient parts of the course. One thing I have recently added on is a “quick access” section. This section gives students immediate access to questions they commonly have but may have difficulty finding. With one click they can find the class schedule, so they will know “what we covered yesterday” and the course grade distribution, so they will know how much assignments and exams are worth and how many they are.  The syllabus has been compartmentalized as well, so students can access different parts without having to read through everything. Here’s a screenshot:

I have organized most syllabus instructions into folders on Blackboard. The “Assignment Information” is an example where you can place things in the syllabus section yet it is linked to other areas in Blackboard.  Everything becomes interlinked and it is easy for students to move between compartments to find the information they need quickly and efficiently.  One other screen-shot example:

This is a section I developed based on student feedback on evaluations. Because the syllabus contains a lot of information, it’s very easy for students to lose track of all the activities they need to cover in the class. Hence in this section “What do I need to complete to pass the class?” I have listed out everything they need to keep track of as they complete the course. Each of the items is a course link in Blackboard, so if a student is unsure what a particular activity is or needs more information, they can click on the link to get more information. Take note, because I have compartmentalize the information into smaller packets, it’s very easy for me to link to specific information. No need to repeat the information  in several places on Blackboard.  Based on feedback I received recently though, I think I need to change the title of this section. I found students assuming that if they missed any one of these sections they would fail the course. Perhaps a better title would be “Course Activities” or “Things to be completed in the semester.”

The general feedback I’ve received from so far is that while it takes a little while to get used to, once students get the hang of it, they find it a lot easier to find what they need.

A couple of other points:

1. Like any other new thing we try, setting this up takes some time. If there are elements in your syllabus/course that remain relatively stable over time, constructing it becomes easier. In proceeding course iterations, it just becomes a matter of copying the material into the new course.
2. It worthwhile to take some time at the beginning of the semester to walk students through the set up. Students needed some more time exploring it first before they become competent using this format. What might also be helpful is constructing a short video to walk students through the set up. You can use the free screen-capturing tool Jing to do this. This tool is very, very easy to use.
3. In Blackboard 9.0 I’ve used the folders and links functions. There are of course other ways in Blackboard or other LMS that you can do essentially the same thing. The new Blackboard 9.1 has the modules function where you can construct the same elements with a table of contents on the side. Moodle also has the book feature that I have used as well.
4. I still create a pdf paper-like version of my syllabus. Some students still like a printed copy of the syllabus and the interactive format of this syllabus makes it difficult to print. Multiple formats are also helpful in following the Universal Design model.  One thing I have had to remember is to change the pdf version in addition to the Blackboard version if there are changes to the syllabus as the semester progresses.

Comments and feedback about the interactive syllabus would be much appreciated.

Here’s a quick Youtube video providing a synopsis of the episode:

To some degree I think that edtech tools can be very much the same way. On the surface they seem to be serving teachers’ needs. But underneath, it may be that we are serving the technology. I’d like to highlight two examples of this. The first is PowerPoint. If you read any of the books written about how to use PowerPoint (my favorite is Garr Reynolds, Presentation Zen), you’ll see them mention that many people who use PowerPoint, use it incorrectly.  In fact, it has become the source of comedy. Here’s Don McMillian’s humorous video on “Death by PowerPoint.”

In his book, Presentation Zen, Reynolds mentions that a lot of presenters have slideuments, in which PowerPoint slides have way too much information/text.  In fact the slide is like a document and is created in such a way that the presenter can print out their slides like a document, which can be distributed to the audience. Here is Reynold explaining slideuments in his own words: http://bit.ly/ddQXb2.  Reynold then makes a good point, if I can understand your whole presentation by reading your slides then what is the point of you being there? I can just read the slides in my own time without having to attend your presentation.  More importantly though, in his book, he points out that presenters often get into this bad habit because of the way that PowerPoint is set up. The technology is great, no more transparencies and overhead projectors. However, at the same time the technology tries to be helpful with suggestions. There are, for example, preset layouts which allow you to arrange your slide in a certain way. The most common layouts is the “title” slide and the “title and content” slide.  Having these preset layouts, while an attempt to be helpful, has the ironic effect of stifling creativity.  We start thinking in terms of title slides, bullet points, animated text, graphs, and pictures with bullet points (and subsequently the butt of McMillian’s jokes).  It seems like that is the only way to present information on a slide.  In the process, the helpful technology has shaped us into passive, dull presenters.  And then it comes to the point where slides of this nature are considered normative and standard (and also exceptionally boring). Because of its “helpful” suggestions, the technology has literally changed our way of thinking about presentations to something that is relatively uniform and bland.

My other example deals with Learning Management Systems (LMS), such as Blackboard, WebCT or Moodle. I’ve been fortunate to have used Blackboard, WebCT, and Moodle, so I’ve had the chance to see how the different systems operate. I think that LMSs, while having flexibility, also create structures that force us to think in restricted patterns. This is very much like the preset layouts in PowerPoint.  It became quite noticeable when I used Moodle for a semester instead of Blackboard.  Blackboard creates things in compartments that students can then later explore. For example, they have “useful” preset categories such as Syllabus, Assignments, Course Documents that can be added to the course menu that students can access.  So, for the average instructor setting up a course, Blackboard gently guides you into thinking about presenting information in these compartments. Syllabus goes here, Assignments go there, Examinations go there, etc. Then students have to click around to find stuff, almost like a treasure hunt.  When I first started Moodle I was a bit dumb-founded because things weren’t neatly organized into compartments. In Moodle most everything is on one page. On the one page there are sections.  Sections are customizable by date or by topic or whatever else makes sense to the instructor.  At a glance then, students can look at the one page and see entire course broken down by sections (date/topic). In addition there is a section to put up things like the syllabus and course documents, etc. So instead of an Assignments folder that you would have in Blackboard, in Moodle you would have your assignments placed in the relevant section (the week/topic you make the assignment available).  This made much more sense to me than the way Blackboard had it structured. Now to be fair, you can construct something similar in Blackboard, but it’s not part of their helpful “preset.” You have to think about organizing your information this way and then trying to create it in Blackboard.  Indeed Blackboard had gently pushed me into being uniform and confusing with my course designs without me realizing it.

Of recent I’ve seen some new LMSs popping up. Two that are noteworthy that I’ve seen are Edmodo and Schoology. What is new about these two LMSs is that they are trying to implement social networking into the LMS design. Here are videos describing each:

Edmodo:

Schoology:

That got me thinking again about how we present information to students. Both tried to create interfaces that are similar to Facebook. And both allow for the ability to write short messages to students (typical of a status update in Facebook), post video, links, etc. If you think about it, creating an LMS that has these social networking capabilities often lends itself to a much more organic process than more traditional systems such as Blackboard and Moodle. With these traditional LMSs, you set things up beforehand, everything is in place and then as the semester progresses content is released for viewing by students. Social networking LMSs on the other hand require much more interaction between instructor and students (or between students themselves). If everything is set up beforehand, then the social networking function would be very underutilized. How much more engaging would it be to have a continuous flow of conversation throughout the semester by utilizing this social networking capability. Indeed I’ve often found that students would raise questions and topics during class that we don’t have time to explore but would be noteworthy to follow-up on. Or I might discover some interesting article/video to share with students. Indeed, if students interests are peaked, conceivably they will start sharing things amongst themselves.  And while these capabilities, to some degree, is available in more traditional LMSs, the way it is built into the new LMS allows for greater ease in creating this interaction.  It also highlights the somewhat static nature of traditional LMS as well.

The end of the Twilight Zone episode – To Serve Man is rather fatalistic, eventually we will all be on the menu. I am a bit more hopeful that despite the constraints within edtech, it will not stifle our creativity into uniform, dull learning activities. We will bend edtech to serve humankind.

1. resources that instructors can use in class to assist with group work
2. presentation resources for groups
3. collaborative web 2.0 resources
4. group project collaborative tools.

You can review all of the resources on my Jog the Web

It was just about a year ago I was really submersed into the wonderful world of Web 2.0 technologies. Well, Web 2.0 technologies along with the breath of edtech tools that are available to teachers. I don’t think there are that many faculty that are aware just how many different types of technologies exist that can do a variety of different things. Indeed it is an exciting new world, with lots and lots of possibilities. My Delicious feed that attached to this blog can attest to the different technologies I come across on a regular basis that can be invaluable to teaching.

All this wonderful technology though does have a bad side. I was reading a blog post http://bit.ly/bhqNNJ which was talking about Poll Everywhere’s difficulty in dealing with the free educator plans that they currently have available. The blog starts off: “Web services are not free to provide. Someone pays.”  Currently they still have a free plan but who knows for how long.  I, myself, have gotten burned from coming to rely on such free educator plans that eventually go away. My particularly distressing experience involved the very cool survey tool called QuestionPro (http://www.questionpro.com). They had, for a number of years, offered a free educator plan (with some restrictions of course). It was great to be able to use a very powerful survey tool for free and as one can imagine I used it for just about everything – from informal feedback from students to small, unfunded student research projects. And then, without warning, it was gone, my free license will no longer be renewed. To get the same level of service as in the past, I’d have to pay $99/month. Not within my budget range.

What is worrisome is that there are these wonderful technologies that are available today, but who knows if they will be tomorrow. It’s not just simply a matter of paying for a service, it’s a matter of whether that service will be around a year or two from now. It’s quite conceivable that a particular web tool that I am fond of using today may just disappear because the company went bankrupt or decided to move in a different direction. Then all my hard work setting things up and integrating it into my pedagogy would be lost and I would have little say in it. That thought worries me and I often wonder if it makes sense adopting some of these wonderful technologies I run across because they might be gone tomorrow.

My other big gripe is with the LMS that are currently available. My campus is cursed (yes, I’m using the word “cursed”) with Blackboard. We have the latest and greatest version, Blackboard 9. I’ve also had a chance to use their sister LMS, WebCT and in addition had an excellent comparison by being able to use Moodle. I’ll admit I’m no expert in LMS but from what I know, the currently Learning Management Systems are inadequate. These technologies were developed before the dawn of the popularity of Facebook and MySpace. And they do offer some good tools: discussion boards, blogs, wikis (for Moodle), etc. Still though, in the world of web technologies, their offerings tend to be very sparse and very simplistic.  Inevitably, if you are an active edtech user interested in bring more technology into your courses, you are forced to rely on these 3rd party sites to get more dynamic features. And there are a whole host of problems associated with using these 3rd party sites. Just a couple off the top of my head include: having to take the time to have students set up accounts with each 3rd party site, the cost of using these sites, the uncertainly of whether it will be available over time, accessibility issues, and lack of gradebook integration (and people wonder why I have two screens in my office!).

This is where my Apple App Store idea comes in. Why not have these 3rd party clients develop apps that instructors can purchase and download for their use in their LMS. Say you like the way that 3rd party app creates wikis, they go ahead and purchase it to use in your courses. Want to use a mindmap assignment? Then purchase that app to use in your course.  I know that there is some of this currently available in open-source LMS like Moodle. But I don’t think it’s quite at the level that I’m thinking about as in an app store. And just to be clear, I did say “purchase and download.” I acknowledge that “Web services are not free to provide.” Certainly if I develop a cool piece of technology and you want to use it, you should pay for it. But, in an app store type format, the thought is that it would be more affordably priced for instructors. There might even be an institutional price and therefore make it available across the entire campus. And I’m not knocking free stuff, but in my general experience, if there’s a price tag attached to something, even if minimal, it tends to be better than the free stuff.

Imagine the flexibility that would be available if you can take your favorite web tech tools and have then right in your LMS. No extra signing up for students, reduced accessibility issues, and you know it’s going to be there because it’s an app in the LMS. Even if the company goes away, you still have the app (though admittedly with a lot less support).

My biggest problem with Learning Management Systems right now is the lack of flexibility. I say that acknowledging my bias of being forced to use Blackboard 9, which is probably with worse of the lot in terms of flexibility. I am certainly in favor of LMS having a few basic services like they have now. However, what the Apple App Store teaches us is that one company can’t create it all and a single tool (such as the iphone) can become really useful when it becomes highly flexible with diverse, numerous options.  Sure, we don’t need 15,000 apps but among that 15,000 there’s sure to be that one app that you’re looking for that will do exactly what you needed it to go. Why can’t our LMS do the same thing?

I am currently part of a special project this semester called a faculty learning community. Basically we are a group of faculty that have gotten together to talk about how to use group activities to enhance student learning. One of the faculty in the community has decided to adopt a team-based learning approach based on the book by Larry Michaelsen, Arletta Knight, and L. Dee Fink (you can check it out here on Amazon: http://bit.ly/9oyD1R). The interesting thing about this team-based learning approach (TBL) is that there is a definite shift from the traditional “sage on the stage” to a “guide on the side.” Students are organized in teams and they work together to learn. Some of the TBL activities though can become tedious. One such activity requires students to work in their teams to answer a quiz. In order for the activity to work, each team needs to be given relatively simultaneous feedback about whether the team choice for each quiz item was correct or incorrect. Needless to say with the traditional pen and paper approach it can be a bit of a daunting task. How can you get concurrent groups doing the same activity the ability to check their answers? Their approach to the matter is to have special scratch cards, so students scratch off what they think the correct answer is. Once they scratch off their choice, underneath the scratch card would reveal if the choice is correct or not. Here is a short video on TBL:

My initial thought was, how tedious! You have to do that for every class and every semester you are using this technique. Surely technology can make this process a lot easier. Immediately I thought about how clickers might be able to accomplish the same function. However, it doesn’t seem like clickers could perfectly fit this situation either. For clickers to work, there would need to be a group clicker and all groups would have to work on the same question at the same time. That seems like a less organic process than having each group work as a team through the quiz at their own pace.

My experience with clickers

I was one of the early adopters of clickers. I started using clickers when other professors looked at it and thought it was just some fad that those “techie professors” were doing. In fact, I served on the selection committee for our university to decide which clicker system to adopt. At that time clickers were slowly beginning to be adopted by instructors on campus and it was the right juncture to decide on one system to be used. Using one system would allow for easier support from the IT department and also save students money who only had to buy one clicker instead of several different ones.  All in all, I have to say I enjoyed the use of clickers in my teaching.

I began to get annoyed with clickers because it always required students having this extra piece of hardware. The feedback was also limited to multiple choice. Sure we could make students buy the more expensive alphanumeric clicker, but the extra cost didn’t seem justified. And, in any case, the clicker the university decided to adopt (iClicker) didn’t have a alphanumeric version. Later came alternative versions of clickers that used students’ cellphones instead of a special piece of hardware. These included the popular Poll Everywhere (http://www.polleverywhere.com) and more recently, Text the Mob (http://www.textthemob.com). These alternative versions allowed for voting by SMS and also for alphanumeric responses. It now became possible to have opened ended questions in a clicker type format. The biggest down side was that they are expensive to adopt.

The idea of clickers got me thinking, if we can use clickers within the classroom experience to enhance the learning experience, what other types of technology can we use in the classroom to enhance the learning experience? This question was coupled with another dilemma I was having in my classes, a dilemma I’m sure a lot of faculty face today.  This dilemma is students texting and doing “other” things on their computer besides taking notes (such as checking their Facebook profiles). I’ve heard of the hardcore approach: just ban the whole thing and demand obedience, no texting or Facebook checking, etc! The idea is that is just rude on the part of the student and will not be tolerated in class. But I’m not so sure the heavy hand is the way to go in dealing with this issue. Surely all of us have gone to an extremely boring talk and decided that was a good time to multitask. Clearly, if I don’t have your full attention, if I’m not fully engaging you, I leave open the possibility of you being able to do something else in the process. Ideally for me, the classroom experience should be so engaging that you don’t have time to do anything else but pay attention – it becomes the idea that either you are fully present and participating or you’ll be completely lost. There is no time to text or check your Facebook profile. Can technology create such an environment in the classroom?

Simutasking

My mind began to race with possibilities. They all revolved around an idea I have labeled simutasking. This generation of students grew up in an environment where they are used to doing several things at once, especially when they are on the computer. Computers are specifically designed to multitask – for example, the whole “windows” idea, you have your email application open, your IM program open, a couple web browser windows open, etc. Larry Rosen in his book, Me, MySpace, and I for example mentioned that it is not uncommon for teenagers to be having several IM conversations at once on the computer. Potentially, listening to one person lecture on a topic could be extremely boring to the new generation of students. So, why not create a learning environment in the classroom where students can be bombarded with several different activities at once? In other words, have students simutask. Imagine a classroom and every student has a laptop. You have a PowerPoint presentation showing. The presentation shows not only on the main projector screen, but also on the screen of every student’s laptop. In addition to the presentation screen on the student’s laptop, there are a bunch of other screens available. In one screen, there is a copy of the textbook page which is related the current slide. In another screen a short quiz question related to the slide. In yet another screen, there is a space for students to take notes, or if a student wishes, they can take notes right on the presentation slide screen. And in another screen, the ability to backchannel and ask questions. Screens are optional, so if a student wishes they can focus just on the presentation screen, or if they need more stimulation, they can do more simutasking by opening up more windows. And the instructor’s screen? A master control screen with the ability to monitor each and every student.  Have a large classroom of 200 students and want to do group work? No problem, with a simple click the instructor can create virtual groups where students can interact with each other without ever having to leave their seats. TBL problem with the ability of groups to check answers independently of other groups (mentioned at the beginning of this blog) – solved!

The closest thing I’ve seen to this (that is even mildly affordable to me) is something called Lecture Tools (http://www.lecturetools.com).  But from what I’ve seen of it, it’s still a little clunky and doesn’t have nearly all the features that this type of system needs to have. If such a system could be created and implemented, imagine how passe clickers would be! The ability to give and get feedback from the class moves to an entirely different level. Indeed Lecture Tools gives some demonstration of this. One of their interesting feedback tools is image-based, where students can select where on the image their answer is and then the instructor can show the proportion of students that selected different parts of the image.

Perhaps the greatest critique of such a system is the fact that it requires every student to have access to a device that can browse the internet. I don’t see this as a big problem though. Even on my campus (with a lot of students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds), at least 80% of students have a laptop (or some kind of netbook I’m guessing). And with the growing interest in tablets (Apple’s ipad and Microsoft’s Courier) it’s not unreasonable to envision that sometime in the near future students can have access to some kind of internet browsing device for classes.

Let’s get this off the ground!

I spoke with one of the sales rep for one of the big clicker companies about my ideas. I told the rep, “you know in a couple years clickers are going to be obsolete. What’s your next big thing?” And sadly, they were stuck in the same place they were in 2 years ago and seemingly unwilling to change.  If anyone can design this vision of a simutasking system that is versatile and easy to use, they will definitely redefine the classroom experience. I want to be a part of that movement, who will join me?

The problem though is that technology has a funny way of doing more than you ask it to do. So while we are telling the “machine” what to do, the “machine,” somewhat ironically, is also telling us what to do. I was watching an interesting TED video of Evan Williams, a co-founder of the Twitter:

One interesting thing that Even mentions is that Twitter started off as a side project of another main project. Not only that, but they conceptualized Twitter as a basic service providing updates of people’s status – very much like the Facebook status feature except through text messages and such. That one basic idea however, evolved into something far different from what it was originally intended to be and the side project became a main project. Twitter moved from being what most people who don’t Twitter fear it is – a bunch of random updates about people’s activities (“Just took a dump and now brushing my teeth”) to a resource that provides up-to-date, cutting edge information (“Check out this new blog about Edtech and the Red Pill”). It’s like a kid being given a seemingly simple object, like a stick, and their use of it is only limited by their imagination (using it as a magic wand, baseball bat, walking stick, etc.).

I think that educational technologies are all that way in some sense.  It’s similar to buying a cell phone.  At some point, we bought cell phones just to make a telephone call. At some point cell phones inevitably came with other in-built functions, like cameras, calendars, mobile web, texting, etc.  Like it or not, it was there on our phone and we could choose to use it or ignore it.  In the past, these may have been considered “extras” that weren’t essential to the phone, but as time passed they have become essential.  Just buying a cell phone to make telephone calls would seem really outdated now (for the very least we should at least be able to text).  In other words, technology has changed the way we communicate with one another, it provided options which we had not considered as necessary, but over time changed our way of communicating. So the “machine” is influencing us, the tool is shaping the way we interact with one another.

This was mentioned in another interesting video by Stefana Broadbent that highlights how the advances in technology have changed the way we communicate:

Arguably then educational technologies are changing the way we are teaching. While the edtech gurus are right in saying, pick the edtech tools that would fit appropriately in the course and fulfill the educational objectives, it is a bit foolhardy to think that this is a one-way street. The minute be begin to use educational technologies, our teaching changes to accommodate the technology. The results from some of these accommodations are unintended and, like my Twitter and cellphone examples, can be positive.  Part of the reason for this, I believe, is because college teaching itself is moving away from the “sage on the stage” idea of doing pure lecturing during class time, to more active learning, involved teaching strategies.  And most educational technologies (including Web 2.0) are exactly that, a way of facilitating and co-constructing knowledge.  So, for example, in the past, a course may have a journaling assignment and students write weekly journal papers. Now instead a teacher decides to use a blog.  A blog can essential do the same thing, BUT it also can do more.  It also allows other classmates to read these blogs and comment on them (and in a much quicker fashion). Conversations can be started based on the original blog, conversations that facilitate learning. In essence you used the tool to get what you wanted, but the tool influenced you to do things a little differently as well.

I think that realizing this is important. Using educational technology is like taking the Red Pill, which in The Matrix opens up to a whole new world of reality.  And as we seek to continue to adopt new educational technologies, we should have in the back of minds the simple question, how can this tool transform my teaching in a way I never thought of before?