iSean

i am always on the lookout for tools that I can use in my teaching. i recently had a colleague make a very neat YouTube style video using Sony Vegas. . . but it’s only for PC users. technically I have a PC on my Mac, but I’d have to start up and select the XP partition. that’s fine and my Mac literally becomes a PC. unfortunately, i have all of the files and websites on my Mac side that I’d want to use. so, I’d have to transfer everything over and then restart into the PC just to make a screencast. yuck.

well i just came across a neat new app for Mac user called ScreenFlow. wow! this is a terrific application for screen and podcasting. i can run a Keynote or PowerPoint presentation and have it recorded while recording myself talking about the presentation content. Later I can show the presentation and the video of me at the same time or switch back and forth or only use the audio, etc. — there’s much more it can do and many neat editing features. It only works in the latest version of the Mac OS because it takes advantage of the features built into the OS including Core Animation, QuickLook, Spotlight, QTKit, Quartz Composer, OpenGL, Core Data, etc. Using the OS allows the app to be very lightweight and still very powerful. i am going to try and make something for this semester and perhaps i can post a sample here just for kicks. stay tuned.

so a few years ago i decided to spend a little of my professional development funds on SurveyMonkey. Surveymonkey.com is a site that provides a tool for making surveys. pretty simple stuff really, but they do the job they claim and they do it well. i first subscribed because i was tired of the end of semester evaluations that students complete getting turned in and then not getting the results until a month after the next semester started. if there were any changes recommended to improve my teaching and my classes then I would not get that feedback until well into the next semester. so i wanted to take matters into my own hands. i used my professional development money and subscribed to surveymonkey.com and have been using it ever since.

now that i am realizing the benefits of more instant feedback, particularly as compared to the typical end of semester evaluation, i am going overboard with surveys. i now use surveymonkey to conduct key formative assessments each week and my students complete for participation points. so every week i send out a survey of about 20 questions that range from the time my students spent on various components of the class to questions about the content that was taught that week to questions about how people are accessing my online sessions (e.g. dial-up, cable) to the kinds of equipment people are using and whether they are traveling, etc. — I try and get a nice profile of students, but I also ask about satisfaction levels with parts of the class. and i have open-ended questions about how they’d improve the session/class, etc. they are going to be future teachers so i like putting them in my shoes from time to time. a great thing about surveying my students at the end of the week and through the weekend is that i am now able to change my course and teaching nearly instantly instead of waiting for January. and next semester when i go to teach a particular lesson i can look back at the feedback my students made this past semester.

a nice thing about surveymonkey is that you can use it for free, right now. anyone can create an account and use the service for as long as you need for free as long as you are not getting more than 100 responses per survey (most of us don’t teach more than 30 or so in any given class). unfortunately, the free version only allows up to 10 questions per survey. but free is free. the professional and unlimited version is $200/year. i now have years of data collected in surveymonkey to compare and some of it is quite fascinating — e.g., i used to have nearly everyone on dial-up and now very few people have stuck with dial-up. i can’t reveal the specifics of my data because that would be considered publishing it and i haven’t gone through our institutional review board for human subjects review. i am actually on the IRB committee at my university so i need to be particularly careful.

so i survey my students each week through the semester. i pose questions about the previous week’s work (e.g., how difficult, how long did it take) and i ask about the technology students use as well as what they liked and didn’t like. i even get a few questions in that get to the heart of the previous week’s objectives (sort of like a quiz that isn’t graded). well, on my last survey i asked how my students viewed me politically. i try and teach from a Devil’s advocate-type perspective and make sure many sides of various issues are discussed/debated, etc. here’s the results:

if that’s all it was i might draw certain conclusions and not know whether my conclusions are accurate or not. so, my next question asks, “Was there anything specific that lead you to respond the way you did on that last question?” and most students left this blank. however, the most commonly cited reason for choosing “liberal” was that i am an education professor and that i use a Macintosh computer. even those these results are skewed, nobody really had anything substantive for why they chose the response they did. i think most students selected the option that represents their own thinking. i also noted that nobody chose “strongly liberal” or “strongly conservative.”

i guess that means i do a good job of staying neutral. my question to myself is this . . . is that a good thing? should i stay neutral or should i come out with a position and say that i try and teach from a neutral perspective, but my actual position on issues may seep into discussions from time to time? i know i have colleagues who tell their students right up front. hmmm.

Technorati Tags: learning, politics, students, teachers

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

i have written previously about how i am less than enthusiastic about e-Portfolios in higher education. frankly, i think the great benefits of e-Portfolios are to the programs that adopt their use, but that the students see very little benefit. i’ve heard anecdotal information about how preservice educators can use these portfolios in the hiring process, but there is no research confirming that this is often the case. you can visit electronicportfolios.com and see how cumbersome it is to develop an e-Portfolio.

in any regard, this is the background that bring me up to this past week. apparently there are folks in my department who are looking at switching the portfolio that our students currently complete from a paper portfolio to an e-Portfolio. as i mentioned previous, i saw no value in having my students in my classes develop an e-Portfolio if later in the program they would have to switch back to a paper portfolio. apparently higher level discussions have started and e-Portfolios are being considered. i was asked to talk with a woman who was visiting to help our College of Education find a way to switch to e-Portfolios last week. She wanted to know what i use for my e-Portfolios. i explained that i don’t do them, but that i would strongly consider using WordPress (a blogging tool). the committee was intrigued by this option and i have been asked to join the committee later this month to explore the viability of this option. i have to admit, i was asked to call into this meeting last week without knowing what they were discussing and only learned the topic while i was on the phone. i haven’t fully thought through the idea of blogging an e-Portfolio, but as the woman talked about how they wanted something that students could continue to use after they graduate and all that jazz, the blog option just popped into the forefront of my thinking.

i am still not thrilled with the notion of requiring an e-Portfolio, but if our whole program is going to buy in then i suppose i should be front and center helping to make the implementation go smoothly.

Technorati Tags: portfolios, blogging, blogs, e_portfolios

well, earlier yesterday Google released the next web-app to their set of office apps and it’s presentation software . . . named appropriately: Presentation. Here’s the snippet Google writes in their own intro:

Starting today, presentations — whether imported from existing files or created using the new slide editor — are listed alongside documents and spreadsheets in the Google Docs document list. They can be edited, shared, and published using the familiar Google Docs interface, with several collaborators working on a slide deck simultaneously, in real time. When it’s time to present, participants can simply click a link to follow along as the presenter takes the audience through the slideshow. Participants are connected through Google Talk and can chat about the presentation as they’re watching.

i have been playing with Spresent in my classes and i even have my students using spresent this week; however, i fiddled with Google’s Presentation and I am impressed. I added a photo from my computer to a slide and then decided i wanted it on another slide. i right-clicked the photo and cut it. i went to the next slide and chose paste and the photo appeared on the next slide. worked like a charm. now granted, this is a web-based application so it’s not yet a PowerPoint killer, but it also does things that PowerPoint can’t do. the collaboration tool that goes along with the this app is fantastic. i am sure this has a great use for my online teaching, but i don’t yet have synchronized sessions so the live collaboration piece is not high on my list, but i could certainly see how folks could be working on a presentation together and using the live chat built into this app.

and, like i always do with these free web-based apps . . . i certainly hope this new set of office applications gives some schools cause for consideration. i have no clue why any grade school would be trying to justify purchasing Microsoft Office for their computers when stuff like OpenOffice and/or these web-based solutions exist. Much money could be saved with little inconvenience to teachers and students.

hard to beat free and that’s how much Presentation is.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Presentation, OpenOffice, spresent

when the iPhone first came out, i nearly went out and bought an 8 GB one for $599. i decided to wait, which was very hard to do as my wife had given me the okay to buy one. well, with the recent news of Apple dropping the price of the iPhone by $200, i knew it was time to buy. instead of going for the 8 GB iPhone, i decided to buy 2 of the 4 GB iPhones at $299 for the same total price i nearly bought 1 a few months back. i won’t write a review of the iPhone because they’re everywhere, but i do have to say that i held off because i had some reservations . . . and now having owned one i can’t believe i waited. browsing the internet from anywhere is awesome. and, it’s not a watered down cell phone internet; rather, it’s real, real real.

i can tell AT&T is not as good as Verizon in my area because the signal strength isn’t as strong, but so far it’s working even when i get down to 1 bar. this post is more about something that sort of irks me — being charged for ringtones. This isn’t Apple; rather, it’s the music industry. i can see being charged for a midi file that is different than the songs on the iTunes Music Store as it has the vocals removed and all that jazz . . . but being charged for the same exact song???

while i think downloading illegal music is wrong and it’s something i won’t do . . . i also think there’s just something about buying a ringtone that i won’t do. i have bought the music already. i can play the music on my iPod or burn it to a CD and play it on CD player and in DVD players and i can play the music in my car or on a home stereo. why should i pay to also have this same song play on the same device just because a call comes in? the notion that ringtones are somehow in a need of a new license agreement that i’ll pay for again is ludicrous. i bought it to play on my iPhone and it plays on my iPhone and now they want me to pay again so i can play it again on my iPhone? PUHHHLEASE!!!!!! the RIAA can go after illegal downloaders like crazy for all i care, but this is just too much. why do customers put up with this?

Technorati Tags: RIAA, iPhone, iTunes, ringtones

i am demonstrating something in my class right now:

so, i purchased Parallels for my Macbook. Parallels is an application that allows me to run Windows on my Mac. i was able to take my Virtual PC install on my main computer and copy the Windows and Parallels recognized it on my Macbook once i copied it over. i had Windows up and running inside of an hour. Windows runs far, far better than it ever ran in Virtual PC, fwiw. and, i am running XP as i am in no hurry to try Vista. but, the installation was so easy that i decided to try Linux as well. i chose Ubuntu as the distribution to install on my Mac. i literally hadn’t played with a version of Linux in about 6 years. Ubuntu really seems ready for prime time. with Vista doing so poorly, i am now starting to wonder if open source solutions are going to start creeping into the forefront for many businesses and schools. many people use Firefox . . . runs great on Ubuntu. i have email, a photo editor and many other apps. and Ubuntu runs fast on my Mac. i find myself spending hours in Ubuntu. i think i’ll only keep XP on the off chance that i need the PowerPoint viewer to view a new PowerPoint 2007 file. nothing else. perhaps i’ll ditch PowerPoint full time and go with spresent instead from now on in my classes? it’s not open source, but it’s free and keeps me out of XP. heh. anyway, back to my point . . . i think open source is on the move especially if Vista doesn’t gain traction.

on a side note . . . this short 6 week semester online class is kicking my tail. everything is accelerated. on top of that, i start a 2 week compressed graduate course next week, so i have been reading like crazy to try and get up-to-date material injected into that curriculum. i have come across so much neat stuff that i can’t wait to get back to blogging more regularly in July. Stay tuned.

profetic.org has an interesting analysis of wikis and their fit into education here. the focus is on the university context, but much of the thinking is more universal in nature. i am not going to get too deeply involved in an analysis of what they have written, but i am curious about some things. first, nearly every benefit described (e.g., maximize interplay, democratic, real time, collaboration) could also be applied to other tools. i only bring this up because my personal experience trying to use a wiki in education was not that pleasant. and, i admit that i probably went into it with the wrong attitude . . . but, i have done similar work to what i tried with the wiki and found better success using Google Docs. just look at these help files pertaining to using Docs for collaborative writing. Google Docs has it all and they are about as easy to use as MS Word . . . in fact, students can start in Word and transfer writing into Docs fairly seamlessly. For example, look at the tool for commenting on a collaborative piece:

Comments are a handy way of inserting notes alongside your regular document content. People added as viewers and as collaborators will be able to see any comments. Each comment is automatically stamped with your username and the date, and can be invaluable for communicating with collaborators about specific parts of the document, as well as making notes about changes you’ve made or would like to make. When you publish your document as a web page, post it to your blog, or print it, the comments will disappear.

but that feature in Google Docs also addresses one of the pitfalls mentioned for wikis:

Since wiki authors are typically anonymous; unless the group is extremely limited and/or identification of textual input is imposed, one will not normally know who the author is. Thus, unlike threaded discussions in which the writer is identified, it is usually impossible to identity contributions to a wiki (Schwartz et al, 2004).

Such anonymity poses enormous questions for academic institutions wherein rewards (grades, bursaries, grants, publications and hirings) are still typically based on individual contributions and efforts. However, it is possible to insist upon authorial identification within any given wiki. But the advantages of “non-identifiable authorship” may outweigh the disadvantages in certain academic sectors. Garcia & Steinmueller (2003) outline three potential advantages:

1) an intensification and diversification of non-ownership/non-proprietary models; 2) an emergence of self/other identification hybrids; and 3) the proliferation of consumer/producer horizontal assemblages, reflecting the multi-authored character of information goods produced through collaborations.

granted, an instructor could set up the wikis so that everyone has to register and so that no anonymous comments are allowed. but, Google Docs keeps track of every comment and edit and revision, etc. in a way that makes it very easy for instructors to evaluate the contributions, etc. i know i sound like an advertisement, but i really do believe that Google Docs will make life easier for many teachers who are trying to implement collaborative writing in their classes. plus, Google Docs don’t require MySQL space or server issues, etc. — they just work.

Technorati Tags: ed tech, Google, Google Docs, wikis, technology in education