Tom's Two Cents

Most folks don’t realize that some aspects of crisis response can be done from anywhere in the world using social media tools. Donating money is important, but it’s not the only way to help. I participated in an education panel at the Relief 2.0 for Haiti conference at Stanford last Friday as part of Stanford’s eWeek. It was amazing to see such a diverse group of talented people, united by a desire to help more efficiently using various forms of technology. There were folks from Google Health (I bet you didn’t know there was such a thing), Harvard Operational Medicine Institute, ESRI (Geographic Information Systems experts), and many others (list of speakers and links).

There were many great ideas and projects shared — too many to mention them all (although I tried to capture many of the links using delicious tag “rlf2haiti“). One example of how technology can be used in agile crisis response is the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Operational Medicine Institute’s use of iPhones to collect patient data. An existing app, iChart, was modified to allow relief workers to collect photos as well as electronic medical information in clinics. One specific need was the ability to locate amputees in order to provide follow up visits once prosthetics become available. Representatives from Sutter Health also shared expertise on ambulatory electronic health records. (Interestingly, Sutter Health also recently made the largest disaster-relief donation in the history of the health care system. Now that’s a company I want as my health care provider.) A group called CrisisCommons shared several project at the conference including  WeHaveWeNeed, a site for connecting resources with needs in Haiti, and Tradui, a Kreyol to English mobile app.

Read more…

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Web 2.0, twitter "agile crisis response", relief2.0, rlf2chile, rlf2haiti, socialmedia

Photography has been a hobby of mine for a long time. From developing the old black and white photos in my basement darkroom to today’s tiny digital cameras. One of the things that is much easier with digital images is sharing. Uploading photos to a site like Flickr makes sharing photos with family and friends very easy. I used to email photos to friends, but now they can go to my Flickr page and view them whenever they want. It changes sharing from a “push” to a “pull” technology. People can set up notifications or use RSS if they want to know when new content becomes available. I also have it set up to put a little blurb on Facebook when I add new photos to Flickr.

I also like seeing the different ways my amateur photography gets reused by others. For example, one of my photos of the Crab Cooker restaurant in Newport Beach, CA was reused on Wikipedia. Two other images were used on a travel site called Schmap.com. But my favorite reuse photo is one showing a row of three identical houses, all for sale in my old neighborhood in Redlands, California. It really captures the essence of housing crisis, and it has been reused in at least five different places.

Reuse & Reputation: Can they be tracked?

They say the more you give the more you get. (They also say that all you need is love, but that’s another topic.) While my photo sharing isn’t likely to generate anything more than a simple satisfaction of being appreciated, it has implications for reuse in other areas as well. Openness can pave the way for increased reputation in your profession just as easily as in your hobbies. But how do you know if you are making progress? Tracking reuse can be fairly simple if you have a fairly unique username. I have set up a Google Alert to crawl the web and notify me anytime my Flickr username (caswell_tom) pops up somewhere. Of course, this won’t track reuse in print or on password protected web pages, but it’s a start. As my collection grows I keep track by adding a “reused” tag to each of the photos. I also add a comment on my image with the URL where the photo was reused. Flickr makes adding tags and comments to your photos very easy. Here is what I have so far.

Does greater openness = greater reuse?

I have learned that unique of obscure photos get reused far more than common ones. And while greater openness does not necessarily translate to greater reuse, I have noticed that people started reusing my photos around the same time I assigned an Attribution-only Creative Commons license to all my photos. It’s just anecdotal, but I didn’t not have any cases of reuse until I made the change from CC-BY-NC to CC-BY. It seems logical that a less restricted license would be more appealing to an online journal, magazine, or other site. Of course, adding metadata also helps. I usually add a few descriptive tags to my best photos. But just as important is my willingness to open up my CC license by only asking for attribution without adding a bunch of other conditions that make reusers nervous. The truth is, I really don’t care if people use my photos commercially. And the odds of them being used for something really offensive approaches zero.

I collect reuse like some people collect coins. I think it’s fun to see what happens with them. You never know where they might end up. If you have your own story of tracking reuse, please share!

UPDATE: I just found out that my friend, Julià Minguillón from Barcelona does the same thing! He posts all the places his photos have been reused to delicious, and he has over 160 cases of reuse. Wow!

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How To's, Openness, Web 2.0 copyright, Creative Commons, flickr, license, Openness, Reuse, tracking

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

Here is a press release that went out to Wired, CNN, AP, and some other media outlets earlier today. I hope it gets picked up by one of them. It’s been a fun project so far, and this is just the beginning. Enjoy!

Contact: TOM CASWELL
Email: caswell [dot] tom [at] gmail [dot] com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
9 A.M. MST, April 28, 2009

TWEETING THE CIVIL WAR
LOGAN, UTAH, APRIL 27, 2009: TWHISTORY.COM introduces the Civil War to a techno-savvy generation using actual 19th century journals cropped down to twitter-size updates. Now users can follow the day-by-day accounts of the Civil War from actual participants, all on Twitter.

Twitter, a microblogging tool that allows users to send updates in 140 characters or less, might be a relatively new tool, but Marion Jensen, Director of OpenCourseWare at Utah State University, thinks that by applying the tool to the 19th century, people can gain new appreciation for Civil War history.

Using original sources such as diaries and journals of soldiers in the battle, Jensen and other volunteers tweet what that person did on a particular day. “So if a particular soldier had beans for breakfast on April 26, 1863, I twitter for that person on April 26, 2009: ‘had beans for breakfast.’”  Jensen says. Each soldier will be at or near Gettysburg at the time of famous Civil War Battle. The soldiers can be followed at http://twhistory.com

Jensen says that by following many soldiers over the course of days and weeks, one can really get a feel for what life was like back in the Civil war. “Each person doesn’t say a lot, but when you read all of the tweets in concert, you begin to get a picture of the whole story.”

Jensen is twittering both Union soldiers and generals, as well as those who fought for the Confederacy. “We are also twittering a newspaper, as well as President Lincoln.”

Jensen says he will follow these characters through the Battle of Gettysburg, in early July. “After the Gettysburg, we may continue on with these characters, or we may start a new project. Possible future projects include the Cuban Missile Crisis or the proceedings of the Continental Congress.”

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Mobile Learning, Web 2.0, twitter civil war, social media, twhistory, twitter

I first got interested in barcodes and mobile phones when I discovered I could scan UPC at the store and look up prices and reviews from my G1 Google phone. ShopSavvy and Compare Everywhere are still two of the most popular Android apps on the Android Market. But a recent post to the UNESCO OER list led me to think about applying 2D barcodes to mobile learning.

At a very basic level, I can imagine a lecture where the last powerpoint slide is a 2D barcode which includes the presenter’s contact info or a link to the presentation on slideshare. and a URL. 2D barcodes are quite common in Japan, in magazines and on billboards. For those with a camera-enabled cell phone, there’s no need to write down the URL or contact info.

I am part of a graduate class that is designing a location-based game for a local museum. We are putting a lot of time designing a game that will work on PCs and a limited number of GPS-enbled, PocketPC and Garmin devices using an application called WhereIGo. But what if the same game could be designed using 2D barcodes, so that anyone with a web-enabled camera phone could play? More and more cell phones now come with built-in 2D barcode readers, not just smart phones. Does anyone know of a game engine that uses 2D barcode readers? Just curious.

So how do you make these fancy barcodes, you ask? One of the easiest ways is on a site called Kaywa. Anyone can create a 2D barcode that represents a web link, a vCard, a phone number, or some hidden text (like a clue or something). Another option is called Snappr.net. But unfortunately, Snappr.net insists on linking back to itself, even for basic contact info. So don’t use it if you want an independent 2D barcode that doesn’t require web access. Still, Snappr.net has some neat functionality like the barcodes survey below. Instead of banning cell phones from our public schools, why don’t we start using them to engage students and other learners?

Here is a 2D barcode that will load a survey. You can take it from almost any mobile phone with a camera and web access. (If you don’t already have barcode scanner for your phone, visit http://code.google.com/p/zxing/wiki/GetTheReader.)

If you want to read more here’s an interesting post on mobile learning with 2D barcodes: http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/2008/07/qr-codesintegration-into-learning.html. It looks like a company called BrightCookie is already working on making this technology work in Moodle. I would like to see it implemented as a mobile game.

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Android, Gadgets, Games, Mobile Learning, Software, Tech Tools, Web 2.0

If you like OpenCourseWare and Facebook, you need to check out CourseFeed.

CourseFeed started out as a virtual classroom app that supported Blackboard announcements and content, but it is growing into much more. Currently CourseFeed allows anyone on Facebook to add OCW courses from Stanford, Notre Dame, and Utah State University. The class wall allows anyone to discuss the course materials. CourseFeed is a simple concept, and yet a big step toward personalized, lifelong learning!

Check it out here: http://apps.facebook.com/coursefeed/?display=landingPage

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OpenCourseWare, PLEs, Web 2.0 CourseFeed, PLE

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

How would you write a story with GoogleMaps? It turns out that Charles Cumming has done it, and it’s very clever. I ended up reading the whole thing: http://wetellstories.co.uk/stories/week1/ The 21 Steps is a real page turner — except there aren’t any pages. Just GoogleMaps bubbles. If you have a chance to read it, let me know what you think of the format.

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Web 2.0 GoogleMaps, stories

I’m reblogging and expanding on a comment I left on Jon Mott’s blog post about the demise of Lively, Google’s Second Life clone. He and I and lots of others are interested in the idea of using collections of social web apps to form Personal Learning Environments in “the cloud.” Institutions are showing interest, but with obvious concerns about lack of control. While Jon’s post focused on the need for caution with cloud apps that can be temporary in nature, I think his words of caution can be applied more generally to any app that doesn’t come with clearly marked exits. Usually, these exits come in the form of standards-based content export capabilities. Look for them. Like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, robust import/export is the sign of a good app.

Now let’s look at this from a marketing perspective. If you are Blackboard, why would you ever allow anyone to export anything useful? If a customers are packing up their content that means they might be leaving. That’s like a crab trap with a big hole at the other end. That is unacceptable.

If you are Blackboard, you talk about IMS Common Cartridge compliance. But don’t do anything to make it actually happen. Take your time talking about it. Heck, you can even join the IMS Global Learning Consortium. That looks good. But don’t write any code until you absolutely have to. And when you are finally forced to implement CC, don’t give users an exit that works too well. They might use it.

Anyway, here is my comment from Jon’s blog:

Seriously, people have been painting themselves into corners ever since the invention of… um… paint. Whether you are talking about cloud-based apps or a Blackboard server nestled safely in your institution’s server farm, you can still wind up stuck… either locked out or locked in. While parts of the cloud will likely blow away, new ones will likely take their place.

The real question is “Can you get in or out of where you currently are, and can you take your data with you?” Frankly, I would rather take my chances on being locked out of a few cloud apps than locked into a single, proprietary LMS. Interestingly, I’m working with a group on an IMS CC-Blackboard converter that should get around the import/export problem despite Bb’s foot-dragging. Guess where it will live? In the cloud… with all those risky, new-fangled apps.

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PLEs, Web 2.0, eLearning Blackboard, LMS, PLE

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