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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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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.
Great to see @saylordotorg moving into K12. Position open for K12 Educational Content Development Manager: http://t.co/Abni7qKV. Pls RT #oer23 hours ago
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