iSean

so, my experience with the knowledge tree is now done and was quite a fun experience. but, now i have some free time to focus on some projects that were on the back burner. and, perhaps my number 1 project is a wiki based textbook for educational technology (preservice teachers). in fact, i will be presenting on wikitextbooks early next year and hope to have a draft to show off at that time. i have spoken with other instructors who will use this textbook and they helped me conceptualize the project. my vision was to have many folks contributing, but i don’t think that will be the case as much as i had hoped. one of the things i won’t do is just open the writing process to anyone. since we’re writing this textbook to meet Michigan ed tech standards (closely aligned to the national standards, fwiw), i want to have some control. i am probably not using the wiki nature of the tool to the best of its abilities, but i have liked the look and feel of wikitextbooks that i’ve perused thus far. one of the first items that our little group decided was whether to write a textbook that could be read from beginning to end (similar to most textbooks now) or whether we would stick to topics. the group thought that topics would be best and that each instructor could piece together various topics to form assigned readings. this is much easier than writing a textbook, but it also loses some of the cohesion that can be had when a formal chapter is written. somehow i need to find a bit of a happy medium. i am also considering scrapping the wiki altogether and just using the book module in Drupal; though, that sure wouldn’t bode well for my presentation on wikitextbooks, eh? ;~)

so, i think i will take a few weeks to view many textbooks and to try and get a better sense of why i want to use a wiki over Drupal (or visa versa) and then choose the best took. i think i want students to have the ability to print the book that is online in case they want a hard copy (perhaps using Lulu.com, which is a cheap way to publish books — perhaps under $10 for a textbook).

please note that the image above shows a screen shot from Lulu.com when i selected a 200 page book that is perfectly bound like many books you find on bookshelves. compare this price ($8.54) to just about any textbook that is published by a publisher and you can immediately see the benefit of using this service over traditional companies. and, students wouldn’t have to get a printed version, but they should probably have the option available. unfortunately, i still get students who don’t own a computer and have to rely on campus computer labs for classwork. i am not sure that printing from a wiki environment would be easy, but that’s something i need to explore. same with the Drupal book option. there’s much to learn, but i am full steam ahead.

Technorati Tags: drupal, education, online learning, wikitext

whether you think there is too much hype over web 2.0 or not, the fact is that there are some neat web-based applications that are emerging and have been emerging. i have been very busy with work and an article I was writing that I haven’t been posting much here lately. hopefully i am back on track now.

anyway, i came across a blog site last month that listed many web-based applications that are alternatives to desktop office applications. i bookmarked it using listmixer (my favorite social bookmarking site — even though i am not social about it; it keeps me synced between machines for websites i want to come back to) about a month ago and am just now getting around to reading it, but figured i’d share it since it is a continuation of some thinking i started on this blog earlier this year with regard to writely as an Microsoft Word replacement. here’s the link: http://www.solutionwatch.com/515/back-to-school-with-the-class-of-web-20-part-2/

Technorati Tags: education, web 2.0, web-based applications, spreadsheets, word processing

my university recently started subscribing to the Chronicles of Higher Education. i’d never really read it, but i figured i’d check it out. it’s a bit cumbersome to visit the library and go through the login stuff, but at least the end result is a duplicate of the actual Chronicle website. when i want to read the op-ed pieces in the NY Times, i have to use LexisNexis. it’s interface is less appealing. i have to search for the title or the author of the piece i seek and then i can read the op-ed pieces that are reserved for NY Times select subscribers. then again, i could always pay for the select service. but, back to my topic . . .

in the Chronicles yesterday, there was an article about ‘Students Lack of Information Literacy.” i have talked about this before, but it’s nice to see a large organization addressing this issue. apparently ETS has developed a new test designed to measure students’ information literacy and computer savviness. the test is called the ICT Literacy Assessment Core Level. with a name like that, it’s bound to catch on quickly. [/sarcasm]

ETS ran a pilot study on 3000 college students and 800 high school students and found:

According to the preliminary report, only 13 percent of the test-takers were information literate. ETS set what company officials described as a rough, unofficial information-literacy bar using information from a variety of sources, including the Association of College and Research Libraries.

obviously, the result are pretty pathetic, but what do we expect? not a single state test that is required under No Child Left Behind is testing information literacy skills. why would a school spend valuable resources and time trying to promote these skills if a portion of their funding is going to be based on NCLB testing results? even if it’s the right thing to do and will help students in the long run, school administrators are really in a bind.

i applaud ETS for trying. i am 100% behind their efforts to start measuring information literacy skills. that being said, i also realize that changes to NCLB are going to have to happen first . . . and our students continue to miss out.

and, to provide you a little snippet for those who don’t subscribe, here is a finding that was labeled as “good” by ETS: Students generally recognized that Web sites whose addresses end in .edu or .gov were less likely to contain biased material than those with addresses ending in .com.

and here is a finding that was labeled as “bad” by ETS: Students were generally poor at identifying biased Web content.

this is right in line with an activity that i do with my students, unfortunately. i wish ETS all the luck in the world as they try and get this new test to catch on with educational institutions and states.

Technorati Tags: education, information literacy, NCLB, Chronicles of Higher Education

okay, it’s not often that i get off-topic, but i have to make an exception. apple announced yesterday that they are now selling movies through their iTunes store. i’ve checked it out and i think this is doomed. here’s why:

1. movies are not DVD quality. they are 640 x 480, to boot.
2. movies cannot be burned to a DVD.
3. each movie is going to be a Gigabyte or more, so many users won’t have the room to build a library.
4. downloads take more than an hour on DSL and are impossible on dial-up.
5. the price is barely better than many of these same movies on DVD at Best Buy or Walmart.

personally, i would have considered the idea if apple had gotten into the movie rental business (ala netflix), but for the price of a movie, i can have 2 movies mailed to my house and return them and do that again many times in a month — same price. sure, i don’t keep the movies, but most movies i watch are only worth watching once.

i predict a failure here.

but, i think the new iTunes is really nice. And, the iPod shuffle is quite neat. that’s what we’re giving my son for his birthday in a few weeks.

Technorati Tags: iTunes, Movies, iPod

two posts in one day . . . sorry about that. but, the creative guy just turned me on to ecto. this is the killer app i was looking for in a blog editor. i get to test it for 21 days, but i have a feeling that they’ll have my $20 by the end of the day.

they make a windows version as well, but the Mac version is definitely made for the Mac. it has all of the features i wrote about below. this is it. i need to test how adding an image works — how about wilt chamberlain when he played at Kansas?

whew!

Technorati Tags: ecto, blogging, wordpress

one of the things that i’ve not enjoyed about blogging is the tool i have been using. i have been using Qumana, which is available for Macs and PCs. I use a Mac. Qumana has been in beta since i started using it earlier this year. i guess i had forgotten that until i noticed that version 3 was released yesterday. i’ve used it long enough to know that i don’t want to pay for it so that got me looking for a replacement. to be fair to Qumana, i appreciate that they make a Mac application and a PC application. my guess is that they built Qumana using Java. i don’t particularly like Java apps. selecting text is more cumbersome and some keystrokes that i am used to don’t work. the environment is just slower in response to my typing, etc. the little things added up and realizing i was going to have to pay finally pushed me over the edge.

i fiddled with Bleezer. this is also available for Macs and PCs. i can tell from the interface that this app is also not Mac native. probably Java again??? i think i actually like Bleezer over Qumana, so if nothing else, i’ll come back and play with Bleezer before i return to Qumana.

i am currently testing out MacJournal version 4. something tells me this isn’t a native blogging tool, but it is clearly written for Macs and the spellchecking works just like in MS Word (with the red underline). i had to customize the toolbar just to get it ready to use as a blog editor. i also can’t find an easy way to add tags to a blog entry, which is something that Qumana and Bleezer do with ease. i added “keywords” so we’ll see what that does. the other thing that is easy with Qumana and Bleezer is the ability to make my entry have a category. i don’t see categories with MacJournal. hmmm. i don’t think i’ve found my solution just yet. i’ll keep fiddling with this tool (15 day trial), but also searching for the killer Mac blog editor on the side.

aha, i just went to send this to my blog and a little window popped up that allowed me to choose the categories i wanted. that’s a bonus. but, i had to manually add the tags below. that’s crummy.

Tags: qumana, bleezer, macjournal, blogging, wordpress, macintosh

i have finally made a sample of what Quicktime 7 looks like using an enhanced podcast (video images added to the audio). in a previous blog entry, i mentioned that i was creating enhanced podcasts this semester for my students and Chris Conway asked for a sample, so that’s where this blog entry comes in. this is a very small file at 228 KB. i will provide a link to the file for anyone who wants to fiddle with it. here’s how it looks:

Click here to download the file (228 KB) — you might need to right-click and save the file to your computer first.

make sure you fiddle with the chapters (click on the Enhanced Podcast box on the lower right side of the QT interface).

Tags: Quicktime, podcast, enhanced podcast, videocast, m4b

our college of education was successful in our recent bid for accreditation from the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). this accreditation process occurs every 6 years, so we are now safe until 2012 or so. that being said, one of the items we were told to focus on in the future is the concept of student dispositions. NCATE provides their own definition for dispositions as, “the values, commitments, and professional ethics that influence behaviors towards students, families, colleagues, and communities and affect student learning, motivation, and development as well as the educator’s own professional growth” (NCATE 2000 Standards: March 31, 2000, p. 31).

so, the question for a preservice education program is how you assess and improve student dispositions. and, are some students more predisposed to becoming teachers? this is an issue that our college of education will be tackling in the future. on a more personal level,  i am curios to explore ways that individual instructors can assess and change student dispositions. further, i want to explore how technology can be used to facilitate this process. i have to admit, i haven’t made dispositions a very prominent part of my teaching previously . . . maybe a bit indirectly, but certainly not overtly. i think it’s important when teaching preservice educators that we not only teach, but get our students thinking about our teaching.

delving more into this issue of dispositions . . . i want to provide my students with knowledge and skills that they can take with them and hopefully use in the future when they have their own classroom. of course, this is probably a common goal for most teachers. but, we all know that there is a huge difference between having this knowledge  and then actually using it. i can have assessments in my class that force students to demonstrate their understanding of a concept or skill, etc., but can i really know that the student is changing his/her disposition towards the future and not just quickly fulfilling my requirement? i am stuck at this point.

i recently saw some research by Katz (1991 or 92) that explained how kids who receive early formal reading instruction and are required to do drill and practice to help become successful readers actually end up not being as disposed to be readers. in other words, this research indicated that trying to change a learners dispositions can actually be counterintuitive. you want to teach kids the skills they need to read, but there is a fine line between using those skills to actually read early and between having that instruction undermine the process. this is quickly becoming a heady-type discussion and i can lose track of where i am going with it quite easily. i’ll focus the rest of this entry on a specific example and how i see technology being used.

i want to help bridge the gap between research and practice. i haven’t searched the literature, but i am sure folks have various strategies with most not being very successful given the status quo, which is a large gap still existing. anyway, i want my students to learn to investigate hypotheses and search through literature. i want my students use summative and formative evaluation in their own teaching. how does this happen you ask? i think i need to demonstrate that i am doing this when i teach — i want to be a role model. everyone has heard the old saying that people tend to teach the way they were taught. if true, then i need to be much more overt in how i am teaching; i need to continue to teach well, but i have to be more in tune with how i am teaching and share that. when i make an online session, i need to start demonstrating how i developed that lesson and each component in it. i can use technology to provide screen shots of various stages in the development of the content. maybe instead of a screen shot i just briefly provide a snippet in a sidebar that helps to explain why i picked this external article. or, i can use technology to help demonstrate how i searched Google to find supplementary resources and how i searched the literature in my field to find research on any given topic to get a better grasp of the subject. perhaps every lesson i teach should have a follow up podcast where i talk about teaching that lesson? if a lesson is not going well, i need to help my students understand why i am making changes midstream (formative evaluation) and how i might teach this lesson differently in the future (using summative evaluation). this is going to take a lot of effort to provide my instruction but to also provide a look into the behind the scenes of my instruction, but i think it will be worth it. i think i owe it to my students (preservice teachers) to provide a model of what i hope they can become. i don’t know that this will change dispositions, but don’t i owe it to my students to make this effort? if you teach preservice educators, how are you assessing student dispositions and what do you do to make positive changes?

Tags: student dispositions, NCATE, accreditation, teaching, learning

i coordinate the undergraduate ed tech course at a public university in michigan with over 22,000 students. the students who take our ED 205 Computers in Education course are all studying to become teachers and the course covers the ISTE NETS standards. we have over 450 students a semester taking our class, which turns out to be about 20 or so sections a semester. i tend to teach 2 or 3 sections per semester. we have 3 full time affiliate professors who each teach 4 sections. in fact, one of our affiliates finished her PhD and is off to a full time tenure-track position. so, if you know anyone interested in her position, it’s open.

i end up having to hire about 6 (+/-) adjunct instructors each semester. and, i realize that adjunct instructors are not paid as well as i’d like. instead of having each adjunct recreate the wheel, i try and provide curricular materials to all instructors. even if i wasn’t doing it to be nice, i would do it just to ensure that our students are getting the same key course objectives regardless of the section they end up taking. so, i have a secret website that is password protected where PowerPoint files are provided that supplement the textbook chapters. the website also has lab activities that instructors can assign to help meet course objectives. finally, i place curricular materials that supplement everything else just in case an instructor wants to study something more in-depth. nobody is forced to use any of these materials; however, i encourage them to be used.

well, the labs that were a part of the program when i started were fairly diverse and they do meet the NETS. that being said, we’ve been slow as a group to update the labs. individual instructors change a lab here and there and add a lab to take advantage of current trends in technology. the past few years, i’ve had a lab that was focused on web 2.0 issues. but, this one lab was covered in one week. i am thinking of creating a web 2.0 series of labs that cover 1/2 of the class. i won’t call it web 2.0 in title, but the labs will focus on technologies that take advantage of web 2.0 features. i think we could change our digital photography lab that we currently have and add a feature to the lab where students upload photos to Flickr and use tags, etc. Rather than learning about MS Excel, perhaps the students could try Google’s spreadsheet. Personally, i dropped the spreadsheet lab from my class a while ago and made it a part of another Office-type lab, but i still have that component and what we do would work just swell in Google’s spreadsheet. i could also see students mashing up Google’s maps (or, another online service).

the thought of making this shift is exciting, but i have to ensure that i meet the NETS standards as they are written . . . or do i? perhaps i think my students would be better served to focus on one standard much more than others (e.g., demonstrate continual growth in technology knowledge and skills to stay abreast of current and emerging technologies). is it fair for my students to spend a disproportionate amount of time on this component as compared to other universities? the NETS standards were written many years ago; though, most of the standards are worded generically enough to grow with the times (so, that’s a plus, eh?). but, knowing what i know about technology in education and from working with graduate students (read: current teachers), i think some of the examples provided to meet various standards are really not as relevant in current educational settings. this PDF provides exemplary examples of how to meet the NETS with regard to social studies and here’s an example that i think is dated:

In small groups, brainstorm and record in Inspiration (Rapid Fire mode) answers to the question “Where Do I Live?”

Label the elements of the resulting Inspiration/Kidspiration diagram with the social studies standards.

i could easily see using Google maps and mash up technology to improve upon this example. then again, if we try and move beyond ISTE then how do we know that what we are valuing is what the field would want? moreover, do i even have the authority to change our course objectives without a vote from the faculty? the answer to that is NO. that being said, the course could just loosely cover material that we think is outdated to make room for the new stuff. obviously, that’s the dilemma that i’ll be wrestling with in the near future. fortunately, the top-level NETS are malleable enough to accommodate the changes that i think are necessary.

Tags: ISTE, NETS, standards, web 2.0, Google, teaching, ed tech

I am off to Kansas for a wedding, class reunion, and just the general enjoyment of 98 degree heat ; however, I will return to blogging on the 4th. I want to discuss my use the editing tools built into Microsoft Word. I also plan to start developing Quicktime 7 video enhanced podcasts now that my university has finally upgraded to QT 7, which supports chapters. I plan to offer Quicktime movies and Flash movies and see which version my students prefer.

I also have a lot of data from this past spring semester (I surveyed my students weekly) and I plan to share some of the preliminary findings on class discussion forums versus blogging. Stay tuned.