Tom’s Two Cents

Thanks to all who participate in this seminar! I hope it was helpful.

Some great ideas and links were shared today as we discussed the components that make up Web2.0. Here are the presentation slides. Also, here is a link to my class website (wiki) for preservice elementary school teachers: http://lab-inst.usu.edu/groups/inst4010/. Another great place to learn more about Web2.0 in learning is David Wiley’s Blogs, Wikis, and New Media for Learning OpenCourseWare course.

And here are links to some of the most interesting sites that were shared:

http://chinswing.com/ (A versatile audio sharing site — love it!)

http://livemocha.com (A social language learning site — where was this when I was a French teacher?!)

http://zamzar.com/ (Online file conversion tool — very cool)

http://www.edu20.org/ (An interesting Learning Management System, or LMS)

http://www.toondoo.com/ (Reminds me of ComicLife on the mac)

http://edublogs.org (A blogging platform just for educators. Sue Watter’s blog is particularly good)

http://teachertube.com (Similar to YouTube, but focused on education)

http://merlot.org (A peer reviewed learning content repository)

An example of embedding/reusing content:

We also talked a bit about OpenCourseWare. Here are a few examples, and links to learn more:

http://ocw.mit.edu (MIT’s OCW)

http://ocw.nd.edu (Notre Dame’s OCW)

http://ocw.usu.edu (Utah State’s OCW)

Start an OCW Interested in starting an OpenCourseWare at your institution? Start Here!

eduCommons A Free OpenCourseWare Management System

Glad to see the field getting a boost like this. This promises to be a really positive step for US education.

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/2008/08/new_national_center_for_edtech.html

This past week, President Bush signed into law a bill that will establish a new national research center for studying digital technology and learning. The center aspires be to edtech what the National Institutes of Health have been for medical research.

….

The Federation of American Scientists, which advocated for the creation of the center, has published a fact sheet noting that the center will take on projects such as:

• Research, development and demonstrations of learning technologies that could include simulations, games, virtual worlds, intelligent tutors, performance-based assessments, and innovative approaches to pedagogy that these tools can implement.
• Design and testing of components needed to build prototype systems. This could include tools for answering questions, for building and evaluating the construction of simulations and virtual worlds that could include sophisticated physical and biological systems or reconstructions of ancient cities brought to life with intelligent avatars (models of humans in virtual spaces).
• Research to determine how these new systems can best be used to build interest and expertise in learners of different ages and backgrounds. This will give educators, parents, employers, and learners the information they need to make informed choices.

So far the USU Instructional Technology department has done a poor job convincing me that I matter as a PhD student within the department. (No, this has nothing to do with COSL or my choice of program chair.) I’ve been at it for a couple years, and I’m not even in the student directory on the INST web page. Other departments I have seen have walls with photos of their students, including their names, where they are from, and when they started the program. We have an online version, and it is completely outdated and boring. But I have a suggestion.

When I visit other departments I see photos of their grad students on their walls. It’s cool to look at, and it sends a message. “Our students matter.” Something like would help us put names with faces. I see the need for both an offline and an online version. And with our online version we could do much better. Why not add rich student profiles to the department’s web page? Like personal blogs, LinkedIn profiles, flickr or Google image accounts, and other things we want to share as part of our online identity? Do you think this would be hard to build? It’s already done. It’s called Ozmozr, and it was built right here in the USU Instructional Technology department. But I bet not many people in the department even know about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I will succeed at my goals regardless of my “headless” department. This is not about students wanting to see their own photos in the hall in front of the Instructional Technology office. It’s about interacting with faculty and grad students and sharing ideas. So an important question for any new department chair should be, “How do we convince students that they are a major focus of this department?” Start with a major overhaul of the INST website. Make the new site compelling and interactive for current students as well as alumni, with rich member profiles that leverage existing (free) online services and encourage sharing and interacting. And, just for old time’s sake, put some student pictures up in the hall as well.