Image by Flickr user Globalism Pictures (CC-BY)

I am graduating today, and along with my faculty advisors and my family, I have Creative Commons to thank.

Not long before graduation I received a friendly email reminder informing me that I still needed to submit a capstone paper to complete my Ed.S. degree in Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences. I had just moved and started a new job that was keeping me very busy. I didn’t have time to write a capstone paper from scratch, and it looked like I would need to delay my graduation.

Fortunately I have written many articles as a graduate student. Surely I could republish one of my earlier papers, couldn’t I? The answer I got from my advisors was “no” because the rights to all my published papers were now owned by publishers. All except one. I had written a report for Creative Commons while working as a consultant on their Student Journalism 2.0 project. The report was openly licensed with a CC-BY license, which meant I had permission to modify and republish it to fit the requirements of the capstone paper.

So as I celebrate my graduation here from the OpenCourseWare Consortium Global conference, I am grateful to Creative Commons who helped make it possible. This is yet another example of how being open can be useful in unexpected ways. Thanks, CC!

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.

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

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.

6. Twidroid – Still the best twitter client for the G1.
7. Toggle Settings – A great app for dimming the screen and turning off the ringer, etc. (Keeping the screen brightness down is a great way to save your battery.)
8. Locale – Uses your location, time of day, and other conditions to automatically adjust ringer, volume, wifi, and other phone settings. You can even have it change your phone’s background image based on where you are! (I was thinking of having a nice, sunny landscape appear everytime I leave Logan. Then when I get back in town, it would revert to a picture of a cold, snowy mountain.)
9. aTrackDog – Keeps track of your updates. Also lets you list all your installed apps and email them to others or yourself. A good app to have especially if you are going to root your G1 or change your ROM frequently.
10. ShopSavvy – The barcode scanner app that allows you to compare prices and read reviews
11. Shazam – Analyzes and (somehow) recognizes songs being played on radio, TV, anywhere you can get a 10 second sample.
12. Meebo IM – A nice IM app that works with most IM clients. And, unlike the built-in IM app, this one doesn’t cout each message as an SMS.
13. JET CET PDF – ($0.99) Still one of the only PDF viewers currently available.
14. My Maps Editor – If you don’t use GoogleMaps much then you can skip this app. My Maps Editor lets you create and save custom maps right from your phone. It also lets you access maps you have created and saved from your computer.
15. Orienteer (displays compass and GPS coordinates — a must for geocaching)
16. GeoBeagle – Fun for geocachers. Uses you current position to identify the closest geocaches in your area via a search on geocaching.com.
17. Linda File Manager – A good file manager for browsing your files on your phone and microSD card
18. Meridian – One of the best video players out there.
19. Voice Recorder – Allows you to record audio using a very small format (.3gp) that plays with any quicktime player. Even a 30 minute recording is small enough to email to someone – and this app has email functionality built-in.
20. Camcorder – This is the only app I will mention of the ones included with the phone. It’s not that the video even looks very good on my G1. But the new cupcake version of Android allows you to upload video directly to YouTube. It won’t be long before the hardware is good enough to leave the camera and camcorder at home. (For example, here is Sony Ericsson’s version upcoming Android phone. 1 GHz processor. 7 megapixel autofocus camera. Enough said.)

Honorable mentions

1. Nav4All – Currently this is an app without a user interface. They say it’s coming. I haven’t used it much because it’s still so clunky, but Nav4All is an example of the potential the G1 has to be a voice-enabled navigation system. The good news is that Nav4All is free (for now, at least). If you want a more developed system and have $35 to spend, try CoPilot Live. gNaviHelper is also an option at $9.99. (I haven’t tried either.)
2. GPS Tracker – This app allows you to post your current position to hidden or public URL — even has a Facebook plugin. I have young kids, but I can see lots of uses for this app coming soon. The only problem with this app (other than the creepiness of broadcasting where you are all the time) is that it uses a lot of battery to keep it running.
3. PF Voicemail – A nifty app that replaces your regular voice mail, allowing you to see who has called and let you listen to only the messges you want. I would like to see voice mail transcriptions similar to Google Voice. The only issue with this app is that you have to set your phone to permanently forward voicemail to a new location. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it would be a pain to change it back to regular voicemail. (You would have to call your carrier to have it changed back.) Fortunately the app works great, so this switch worked out fine for me.
4. BarTor ($1.49) – If I were a pirate (and of course I am not) — I would buy the G1 in a second for one app and one alone. BarTor (aka Torrent Droid). While there’s no denying the legal, um drawbacks, the ability to scan a barcode somewhere and have it magically sent to your home computer where it starts a BitTorrent download while you are still out “shopping” is enough to make you want to talk like a pirate and run around wearing  a fake eyepatch.

Root apps

5 more apps for those with root access (from my last post):

• Wifi tether (free here) — This is the single coolest reason to root your G1 phone. It allows your to use your G1’s data connection as a wifi access point. This is great alternative when staying in a hotel that charges for wifi. For those on a 3G network, this is actually pretty fast (a little less than DSL speeds). The G1 will prompt you when someone is trying to connect, so you can control who uses it. (It also works via Bluetooth, if you prefer that.) I’ve used wifi tether to create a mobile access point in the car. My wife used it to surf around on her iPod Touch on a recent road trip. Very cool.
• Backup for Root Users (free on Android market) — Backs/restores all your apps and settings to your micro SD card. Even compatible with App2SD.
• SetCPU ($0.99) — This app overclocks the G1 up to 528 MHz (384 is normal) when you are using it or when it’s plugged in, and can also “underclock” the processor down to 128 MHz when in sleep mode to save battery life. No reported problems with this level of overclocking. Very cool!
• App2SD ($0.99) — This app partitions the micro SD card of your G1 so you can install and run apps from there. It seems to have some compatibility issues with JF 1.5.1, so unless you really need the extra space for apps, you may want to wait until the installation is a little easier. Here are some folks who seem to have figured out a workaround for anyone who is feeling adventurous.
• JF Updater (free on Android market) — Since you can no longer receive OTA (over the air) updates, this app does the same thing for rooted G1s. When a new JF update is available, it will offer to download and install it for you.

A Caveat

In all my praise for the G1 I should point out that my experience with the Android phone includes some long pauses and a few “not responding” messages too. This probably has as much to do with all the programs I run at the same time as it does with Android. Besides this and the woefully short battery life, my only other complaint is that the processor they chose for the G1 is really not adequate for many of the apps that have been showing up on the Android Market. I’m frankly disappointed that the G2 does nothing to remedy this problem. I have been able to overclock my processor, so for now this is not a major problem for me.

So while I have quite enjoyed the first 10 months of using Android, I am not claiming that this is the perfect phone for a businessman at this point. My old Blackberry was definitely more solid for the basic email and the few other things it could do. But Android phones do so much more that it’s hardly a fair comparison. And don’t be too quick to judge Android as a “geeks-only” system. I think this cell phone OS is poised to give the iPhone (and every other smart phone out there) are real run for its money.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.