Tom's Two Cents

I am interested in using micro-blogging as a way to get students exploring and sharing bits of primary source documents. TwHistory seems to work particularly well with events that were documented with journals. Each student or group is assigned to a historical figure in a particular event. The students prepare and schedule a series of messages, or “tweets,” describing the event from their perspective using primary source documents. The messages from the various characters in the event are triggered chronologically and result in a virtual reenactment that can be shared with others via the Internet. The student-generated simulations are stored at TwHistory.org, a site I helped create with Marion Jensen, another doctoral student at Utah State University. Of course, other tools could be used, but we have selected Twitter for now because it has a large user base. Also, the 140-character limit forces students to make decisions about what to include in their messages.

George Orwell wrote, “History is written by the winners.” Part of the goal of TwHistory is to present more than the dominant voice in retelling past events. In wars, for example, soldiers from both sides kept journals from which we can draw different perspectives. An example of this can be found in the Battle of Gettysburg reenactment we organized last year. Participants researched journals from both Union and Confederate soldiers and leaders.

The TwHistory project is less than a year old, but has already attracted some local, national, and  international attention. Several friendly collaborations have formed with teachers and researchers in Missouri, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, and England. A high school Cold War History teacher in Missouri used our model to reenact the Cuban Missile Crisis with her students, and sent us some positive feedback on the results, but these preliminary efforts need to be followed up by more systematic research. If you have research suggestions or other thoughts, please leave me a comment.

Update: Marion and I will be presenting TwHistory at UCET in Salt Lake City this Saturday Morning (Feb. 27) at 9:15 am. More info on UCET here.

Related Posts:

• The (even more) Fun Side of TwHistory
• TwHistory.org Fund Raising with Kickstarter.com
• UNESCO Conference on Open Social Learning
• Presenting TwHistory at International Seminar of UNESCO Chair in E-Learning
• Historical Reenactments – Teaching with Twitter

Instructional_Technology, PhD, twitter dissertation, twhistory

Carla Federman, US History Teacher at Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School, is teaching her Cold War class with a new twist this year. She will be reenacting the Cuban Missile Crisis using 15 different Twitter accounts. You can follow the tweets at http://thea.micds.org/twitster/index.php, or if you use Twitter you can follow the individual characters here. TwHistory was the brainchild of Marion Jensen, and started with a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg earlier this summer (press release here). My colleagues at the Open University of Catalonia have been doing interesting work on microlearning with Twitter, including interesting work on using Twitter in language learning by Graham Stanley. They were even able to interview Jack Dorsey, CEO and founder of Twitter, about using Twitter in education (here and here). So what are your thoughts on microlearning using Twitter?

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Instructional_Technology, Mobile Learning, PLEs, Web 2.0, eLearning, twitter

I recently signed up for an online course called “Copyright for Educators.” What is truly unique about this course is that there is no official teacher. The course is being offered by P2PU (Peer-To-Peer University). The About page states that, “P2PU blurs the boundaries between students and teachers.” I’d like to think that my PhD has been a transition from student to teacher, researcher, professional, or all of the above. But why should this be limited to a PhD program? Why not allow others to join in?

Why am I taking this course?
I have worked for the OpenCourseWare Consortium for the past two years, and the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning for two years before that. I have been involved in many aspects of the OCW movement, from managing the development, testing, and localization of eduCommons (a popular OCW software platform) to creating the actual OCW courses with professors at Utah State University. As part of the process of creating OCW courses, content must be licensed in such a way that allows it to be freely available via the World Wide Web. This requires the best possible understanding of global copyright as if applies to education. I am not new to the issues of copyright in education (and have taught units on copyright in my own high school and university courses), but I feel there is still much for me to learn in this area.

While I am still working out the details of getting credit for this course in my Instructional Technology PhD program at Utah State University, I don’t think that will be a problem. I see names like Jane Park and Ahrash Bissell from ccLearn among those listed on the team and advisory group. If the folks at Creative Commons can’t facilitate an excellent course on copyright, who can? The course outline appears well-structured. I think I’m in for a treat. If any faculty from my department read this and think it sounds interesting, I would love to hear from you. BTW, I need 1 credit of independent study

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Creative Commons, Instructional_Technology, eLearning

Back in October 2008 I started using Google’s first Android phone, the T-mobile G1. By the end of January 2009 there were 800 Android apps compared to over 15,000 iPhone apps. Of course, the iPhone had been around for well over a year at that point. But I think 2009 will be the year that Google Android really comes into its own as more than a dozen new models of Android phones are introduced. There are definite pros and cons to going with an open platform like Android, and I hope I can offer a realistic view of the good and the not-so-good that I have experienced with my Android G1 phone so far.

New Favorite Apps

I am still very happy overall with my G1. Especially now that I have root access to my phone I can do even more, like tether my laptop to my phone’s Internet connection via wifi. At the 1-month mark I made a list of my top 20 Android apps. That list has changed quite a bit, so here is my new list of top 20 Android apps. Interestingly, only 5 of these apps were on my first list 9 months ago. They are marked in bold. All the apps below are free unless marked otherwise.

1. Where – Displays movies, weather, etc. based on your location. It also has voice recognition and Yellowbook search, which presents you with address and phone numbers of businesses based on your location which you can then call or look up on a GoogleMap with a click or two.
2. BeyondPod ($2.99) – A Podcast app that allows you to manage podcasts and even update them over wifi. (So iPod Touch, why can’t you do this?)
3. Sky Map – Allows you to see stars, planets, and constellations just by holding your G1 in the direction you want to look (including the ones beneath the horizon). The digital compass, accelerometer, and GPS to move your phone around and see different areas of the sky. A very cool example of what augmented reality (AR) apps can do.
4. Wikitude – This is another great augmented reality app, but this one lets you “see” cities and landmarks close to you by holding the phone in front of you and turning in any direction. Selecting the names on the screen pulls up the web page for that city or point of interest in wikipedia.
5. Places Directory – Google’s version of Where. I can’t decide which one I like best so I use them both. Places uses you location to look up restaurants, shops, parks, and other points of interest. You get addresses and phone numbers you can use to locate or call whatever it is you are trying to find.

   Read more…

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• The Complete Guide To Importing Contacts Into Android’s Gmail
• How To Root Your G1 Android Phone (and why you might want to)
• Dear Google…
• Upgrading Android G1 From Older CyanogenMod Versions to 4.2.3.1
• B&N Nook: I run Android!! Please root me!!

Android, Gadgets, Google, Instructional_Technology, Reviews, Tech Tools Android, G1, Google

Do you know what I do with openly licensed YouTube videos when I think they are worthwhile? I copy the YouTube link and paste it over on dotSub.com. (DotSub can import directly from YouTube.) Why do I do this? Because YouTube isn’t very useful if you are deaf or don’t speak English.  DotSub.com allows anyone to come along and add a transcription or a translation in another language. I don’t know why YouTube doesn’t support this. It’s so easy to do. C’mon Google, what’s the harm in allowing translations like dotSub? If you don’t have time to develop it, just get out your checkbook and buy dotSub. It’s the least you can do as a huge-but-not-evil tech company.

Here’s the The Networked Student on dotSub: http://dotsub.com/view/41f08de7-68dc-4365-af4c-5733f565b9e1 Subtitles are offered in English, Czech, Portuguese, and Spanish.

The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler’s high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros’ Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century. Anyone is free to use this video for educational purposes. You may download, translate, or use as part of another presentation. Please share.

Edit: Rob points out in his comment that YouTube does support subtitles, but I see no attempt to allow others to contribute translations. I understand that this adds complexity and the possibility of malicious translations, but dotSub.com provides an easy translation interface and allows the owner of the video to control which users can translate.

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Instructional_Technology, PLEs, Web 2.0, eLearning dotsub, PLE

A note to those who cares about Instructional Technology and improving real, live classrooms: I would love your feedback.

In their article Creating a Framework for Research On Systemic Technology Innovations, Fishman et al. describe a “usability cube” and state that its purpose is to “predict the difficulty any particular innovation faces in the adoption process (p. 52). ” This is an ambitious claim that caught my attention.

The three axes represented by the cube are capability, culture, and policy and management. Fishman et al. state, “The distance between the innovation and the origin represents the gap that exists between the capacity required to successfully use the innovation and the current capacity of the district (p. 51).” The authors claim that improving usability is a case of closing the gap. Kudos to Fishman et al. for stating the obvious — and for doing it in 3D! This may be a nice visual for some, but I question its usefulness. What have the authors told me with a cube graphic that they couldn’t have told me with three bullet points? Of course technology innovations need to address capability, culture, and policy of the target school and school district. That is basic market research. Who would design and implement a product without carefully considering the target user and the systems that affect that user’s environment? The real question we should be asking is how do we do this?

I can only conclude that this article is aimed at academic researchers who are so caught up in their own grant-funded worlds that they have lost sight of the needs that they set out to address. And yet the challenges of obtaining buy-in from faculty, administrators, and even students are not always obvious. It might be valuable to invite a marketing specialist to write about successful strategies that have been used to introduce an innovation into a school district. It would be equally useful to hear from administrators and teachers who have worked with researchers, and who could point out best practices and identify potential pitfalls. The more I think of Fishman’s usability cube, the more I can visualize the cylinders that represent institutional and departmental silos that prevent real usability and actual transfer from academic research to classroom implementation.

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Instructional_Technology, PhD, eLearning "usability cube" Fishman

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

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Conferences, Instructional_Technology, OpenCourseWare, Tech Tools, Travel, Web 2.0, eLearning AECT2008, Conferences

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.

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Instructional_Technology

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.

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INST, Instructional_Technology, PhD, USU