And here I thought I was being clever and original. Apparently, somebody beat me to the punch by several whole months (albeit with a different definition). Perhaps the correct term for self-referential blogging extasy should be “blogo-eroticism.”
Category: Ed Tech
The “Ed Tech” category includes posts about educational technology products themselves, including LMSs and other learning platforms, adaptive learning and other digital curricular materials products, learning analytics, and educational apps of all types. It also includes technical aspects of ed tech products, especially interoperability.
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When Parallel Play Matures Into Socialization
Here’s a great example of sustained and productive conversation supported by (or at least started by) weblogs and, perhaps, a counter-example to the blogging as parallel play argument. Recently, Apple Computer announced that they would be adding four extensions to HTML in order to support new features in the upcoming version of their operating system. This created an uproar in the blogosphere, but the end result (so far, anyway) was that Dave Hyatt, Apple’s chief browser technology engineer, has heard and accepted some good suggestions from the community. As a result of the conversation started in blogs, Apple will change the way its technology works.
But it goes even deeper. (more…)
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O'Reilly Network: Blogs as data stores
Here’s another instance of the blog as file cabinet meme, but with a twist:
I already “blog for Google”, which is the same thing as the old usenet practice of posting a post about some problem I encountered and how I solved it. These entries are not really for discussion, but more for the archives so that the next poor soul can find it. Randal Schwartz tells me this is how it was back in the day when he could read all of usenet in a half-hour.
Blog-as-file-cabinet + Google = KM system?
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Shot Heard 'Round the 'Net
Stephen Downes (who is almost always an interesting read), has issued a call to arms for academics and academic institutions to stop relying on proprietary content. To me, this has the ring of the inevitable to it. Universities are, among other things, content factories. With the Internet available to dramatically lower production and distribution costs, why should they pay the textbook companies anymore? Why not lower the cost of education and increase access?
Of course, there’s a flip side to this. If universities are distributing free content, then professors will no longer be able to supplement their income by writing or editing textbooks, etc. I have a few friends in academia who are already feeling threatened by online learning. It’s the usual fear that the administration will see their value in their content; once that content is pried from their hands (for no cost), they become expendable. There is some truth to this fear, too; once you have good content, why not use a standardized curriculum and pay (at lower wages) teachers to cover the content?
If you follow this train of thought to its conclusion, universities will have to develop separate and distinct compensation (and tenure credit) plans for production of research, production of pedagogical content, and teaching of classes. Somebody has to compensate professors for the time that they put into creating new teaching content. This is not to say that I think Downes is wrong or is somehow suggesting something unethical; to the contrary. I’m simply suggesting that a necessary consequence of the change that he is calling for (and perhaps predicting) is a fundamental change in faculty compensation schemes.
By the way, this article is published in a fascinating new journal/experiment called Pitch. I highly recommend checking it out.
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Interface challenge: Webster's Dictionary (Online) from 1913
While I confess that I’m partly motivated to blog this simply because it’s fun, there’s an interesting design thought experiment here too. Check out the online version of the 1913 edition of Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary. The play value is obvious; see how language has changed since then. (Here’s an easy one: try entering “car.”) The problem is that I found myself scratching my head trying to come up with good words to try. It invites sporatic poking around but not sustained exploration.
Ask yourself this: What kind of interface would make it easier for you to spend more productive time exploring the dictionary? What uses would you have for this resource, either for personal entertainment or for a class? What interfaces would support those uses?
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Teaching Hands-On Classes Online
From the Sloan Consortium, whose web site is turning out to be a gold mine of solid higher ed distance learning research, come articles on teaching electronics and Chemistry through distance learning. They used multimedia simulations of electronics in the former case while resorting to kitchen chemistry assignments in the latter case. For both courses, distance learning students tested as well or better than their classroom counterparts.
Here’s a particularly delicious nugget:
Of particular interest is the fact that, as evidenced by the results of the procedural evaluation, distance learning students were at least as competent as their traditional counterparts in utilizing laboratory equipment such as beakers, graduated cylinders and electronic balances, despite the fact that this type of equipment was not available to them in their kitchens. It appears that in the case of the first semester introductory chemistry course, the laboratory goals can be achieved equally well by the distance learners doing the Kitchen Chemistry Laboratories at home as they can by students in traditional laboratories.
In some ways, this shouldn’t be surprising; K-12 science teachers do this kind of thing all the time because the schools can’t afford real equipment. I myself (in a prior life) had great success teaching middle school science using what was essentially a kitchen chemistry curriculum out of the University of Hawaii called FAST [PDF]. Likewise, high school teachers having been using virtual frogs in bio labs for years and years. Applying the same principles on a post-secondary level is not a huge leap, especially for 101-level courses. What’s interesting is that the methods, i.e., substituting real-world items in the student’s immediate environment when that’s possible and creating online simulations when it’s not, marry so well together in an e-learning environment as strategies for dealing with what is fundamentally an environment of low situational control for instructional designers.
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Sloan-C – Resources
This article [PDF], though two years old now, has some still eye-opening figures on distance learning adoption in higher ed.
Among the more interesting findings:
- Nearly one third of all higher ed institutions and one half of all public higher ed institutions now offer complete degree programs online.
- On average, in institutions that had distance learning programs in 2002, 13% of students took courses online.
- In 2003, academic leaders anticipated a 20% growth in online learning. (I’d be grateful if somebody could send me actual figures for 2003 or anticipated figures for 2004.)
- A majority of academic officers believe that the quality of distance learning courses will equal or exceed classroom courses within three years.
Impressive.