iSean

i am one of the select few individuals working this summer to revamp and update our teacher education program. i get to help figure out how to best provide our future teachers with the strategies, skills, and know-how to use technology in their future classrooms. wow. currently, we have a single technology course for preservice educators that is required. it is a prerequisite for getting into the College of Education and is taken before any students can apply to the COE. i hate this model. getting a college sophomore in ED 205 who doesn’t have experience with lesson plans and who doesn’t have teaching experiences to draw makes much that is taught in ED 205 seem like an abstract concept. so, i have much higher expectations for the new model we create.

in the best case scenario, the various classes and professors in the COE would work together to teach all of the ISTE NETS-T (that’s the standards for teachers with regard to technology in education) and a technology course wouldn’t be necessary. i spent much time reading up on things in the Journal of Computing in Teacher Education. the bottom line is what i already knew . . . that most college of education faculty are not prepared to teach their students the various technology standards or even a decent sized nugget of the standards. thus, an educational technology course is still fairly necessary. but, i am going to push for some of the easier standards to be transferred to other courses. i am going to make a case that other professors should be modeling the use of technology in their teaching and some standards rely on access to classrooms, so they are more ideal for student teaching.

we had our initial committee meeting and i think (still early) that our technology course is going to be moved away from being a prerequisite. in fact, the course might now be moved to occur in the semester before student teaching. this is also the semester that will occur after a semester where students go into the classroom for a field experience called student assisting (not as interactive as student teaching, but not a passive experience either). i am quite pleased with the potential of this model. our students will have actual classroom experiences to draw on when doing the ED 205 requirements. i am keeping my fingers crossed the end model turns out this well. but, our whole College of Education is just now being emailed the minutes and results from our initial meeting. hmmm.

Technorati Tags: ed tech, undergraduate, teacher, preservice, technology in education

i am back on my blog after a few weeks of intensive teaching. the next 2 months are devoted to writing materials for use in an undergraduate educational technology course for education majors. i have dibbled and dabbled with various iterations of this “textbook” in the past. i am currently an author for the textbook that been used previously in this course. i get 50 cents a copy when the textbook is bought new. we have between 400 - 500 students take this course per semester, but most buy the book used as my royalty check is typically just over $100/year. given the time i put into writing the textbook, i think that works out to about 2 cents an hour (kidding). seriously though, the profit i make is meaningless. i see no reason to help a publisher and a college book store rake in well over $20 off of my students so that i can get enough money to buy my students pizza once per semester. this is the thrust of why i want to bypass the publisher and the bookstore. my contract with the publisher will not allow me to write another textbook for profit to compete with the current textbook so i have no intention of doing so. i do have the intent to have a new product for our students this fall. moreover, i have no intent of claiming authorship, so i think it would be hard for McGraw-Hill to come after me.

i wrote an article last year called, “wiki . . . wiki . . . wiki textbook?” i argued that wiki-based textbook should be replacing the paper textbooks most educational institutions are using. i really liked the open source nature of the wiki engines. well, after time to reflect and test things out and hold many conversations (including a conference presentation in March of 2007) i have come to a new conclusion — i am abandoning my wiki-based textbook ideas. instead, i am going with the open source CMS tool called Drupal. Drupal has a module I’ve installed called, “Books.” my experience is that the Drupal book module will help to produce a much better product for learning. Much like a wiki engine, Drupal can allow for anyone to edit and contribute content. however, i have no intention of being that open with my textbook. for one, i had a wiki-based textbook started and after more than a year, i am dealing with spammers signing up and adding spam far too often. i’ve forced users to register to make changes and they even jump through this hoop. i am going to be trying some strategies with the Drupal book tool, but I still am planning on allowing anyone to potentially contribute material and everyone will encouraged to add comments to various material pages. but a textbook cannot be edited during a school semester, so taking advantage of the technology is somewhat limited. i do plan to have a mechanism in place to allow for content to be added and edited but it will be in a queue waiting for the appropriate time. while in queue, folks who are interested can view this text/edit/revisions, etc. and discuss, etc.

i will spend more time on this new textbook over the next month, but this is where i am right now. i am not ready to give the web address to the new book yet, but i will post it soon enough with another link to the older wiki-based version so that folks can see the differences back to back. stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: drupal, ed tech, technology, wikis, wikitext

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.

i have an assignment in my undergraduate education technology course that has my students using Technorati to find other educational technology related blogs. my students are supposed to find a blog entry and read it and then add a comment to the blog site. of course, i then need to visit every single comment to see what my students wrote and i will inevitably read the blog entry. i also check the other comments to see if a conversation develops and to see if the blog author has engaged in a dialog with my students. overwhelmingly, my students will write a thoughtful response and that’s that. No response back from the original blogger. I should add a caveat, some of my students find older blog entries and I can see how a blogger might tend to ignore an entry they wrote many months ago. fine. but many of my students are finding very current stuff and still being ignored. i don’t think busy bloggers need to respond to every comment, but i think the strength of the blogging tool is that it allows for a certain level of interactivity. if you are not trying to build this interactivity then i wonder why you blog in the first place — merely sharing information perhaps? and, i realize i may not understand the ins-and-outs of a busy blog as i rarely get more than 5 or so comments for any blog entry i add; however, most of the blogs my students found have just a few comments as well. perhaps i checked in too quickly. the responses were due on a Sunday and I checked things out 3 days later on a Wednesday. i’ll give my peers the benefit of the doubt this time, but i have my eyes on you mr. blogging community. ;~)

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogs, ed tech, students, technology in education

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

well, my first spring/summer class begins tonight and it’s a Computer in Education course for undergraduates who hope to become teachers. in the past, i have used various tools to teach this course and i take great care to try and choose the best tools for my students each semester. when i last taught this course, i used Drupal for all course content and student blogs and I used phpBB forums for my class discussions. this setup worked well for me.

i was content to try these tools again; however, i ran into some snags. first, my previous installation of Drupal somehow got corrupted when i was fiddling, so i couldn’t even get logged in to see all of the settings and modification i had made. my spring course is only 6 weeks long and i didn’t think it was fair to myself to start over using Drupal. i am going to get this straightened out for the fall semester and get back to using Drupal, which is also in version 5.x now — i used 4.x previously. Instead, i have reverted back to using Dreamweaver and CSS/HMTL for all course content. this is slightly disappointing, but i work very quickly using Dreamweaver and this was really the sensible choice for me for this course at this time.

since i no longer have easy to use student blogs like i would when i use Drupal, i received a recommendation from a teaching colleague who suggested wordpress.com. i checked it out and decided to give it a whirl. i like the thought of using wordpress even though it’s a bit more high end than blogger and drupal-based blogs. for students who are willing to put in extra effort, the wordpress blogs can pay off bunches.

and, my biggest change this semester also comes from a recommendation . . . this time from a former student. i have been using phpBB forums for all class discussions for about 5 - 6 years. i finally got around to checking out the competition and decided that i liked SMF forums better. i was actually excited about the upcoming phpBB version 3.0 forums, but these are currently in beta and i am not going to use a beta that hasn’t even reached a release candidate stage in my classes. i could use the current stable release — version 2.22 or something like that, but i honestly felt like the SMF forums were better. who knows if i’ll stick with SMF when phpBB 3.0 comes out, but that needs to happen before mid August or i’ll stick with SMF again. here’s a snapshot into how the forums look for my class (from the perspective of my account):

(click for a larger view)

when i add items to a news feed, they are constantly cycled on the front page of the forums. i like that my announcements are so prominent. previously, i had to request students to visit an announcements forum when there were new messages (announcements) therein.

so, i have made some big changes and reverted back to some old methods, but i hope the end results is a quality learning experience for my students. time will tell . . .

Technorati Tags: blogs, drupal, ed tech, phpBB, dreamweaver, students, teachers, SMF

I am taking a blog vacation until the spring semester starts on May 5th (or 7th) — that Monday. I’ll then try and get back to a twice a week schedule. I am currently upgrading all of my tools to the latest versions — e.g., Drupal, phpBB, etc. i have much customization to do and then there will be much testing to ensure that things work the way i hope.

this is the last full week of classes at GVSU and i am bombarded with theses from students trying to wrap the semester up. nothing new there, but i have neglected my blog. blogs are an interesting development the past many years. my family blog started in about 2000; though, i didn’t call it a blog at the time . . . it was called our journal back then. i used HTML to update entries. 2000 is when our first child was born, so most entries were required to include photos to keep grandparents happy. i eventually (later 2001ish) moved from HTML to postnuke or phpnuke (a CMS tool) and continued the “blog” running. once blogging took off, i decided to convert my family journal to a blog, but i kept it in the tool i was using . . . mostly because i didn’t understand MySQL stuff enough to export the database and import it into a new tool. actually, i still don’t. but i finally moved it all to Wordpress and i’ve spent the past 1.5 years trying to copy-and-paste old entries from HTML and from the CMS into Wordpress. i think i only have about a year gap left to transfer. it’s one of those back-burner projects that always comes after everything else. we update our family blog about once a month these days. a little more when bigger things happen. but the blog serves a purpose and the audience is consistent and fairly static.

this blog, however, serves an entirely different purpose. sometimes i tend to forget why i started this blog and i often feel like it’s a chore to do. on the other hand, writing for the blog forces me to try and follow the ed tech blogging community to see what’s going on, so i still enjoy the blog as a motivation for staying active. but, i thought it would be nice to evaluate my blog up to this point nearly 2 years after i started it. in my second post here i wrote, “i will use this blog to help trace my steps as i try and improve my online teaching and as i test out new tools along the way.” if i look back, i can clearly see many blog entries that highlight tools i’ve tried and strategies i’ve used in my online teaching. i have had a fairly light semester this semester with a weekend class (Jan./Feb.) and thesis students, so i haven’t had much to experiment with lately. in a few weeks, our spring/summer semester starts and i will be back in the saddle as i am scheduled to teach an online undergrad ed tech course and a 2 week long grad course in ed tech. i plan to upgrade to the new phpBB 3.0 forums, which you can see here; though, the beta has been out since January (beta 5) and there’s no sign of the final release, so i have to decide whether to use a near finished beta (#5) if i don’t hear anything in the next 2 weeks. i am also going to upgrade my course to the latest Drupal (5.1), so i have new tools to learn. as i finish more preparations for the course, i want to come back and explain some of the curricular changes that i am going to try in my undergraduate course. i have much to say, but i just didn’t have the best semester to write about the kinds of things that were the reason for making this blog in the first place. hopefully that’s about to change. whew! ;~)

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, drupal, CMS, phpBB, drupal

i don’t know about you, but i have fiddled with e-books in the past and i never got past the fiddling. i really tried to like the experience, but it just took too much trying. and, there’s a reason they never really took off; most people agree with my assessment; though, not because it’s my assessment. heh.

well, e-paper is taking small steps towards becoming more common in our lives. i just came across an article that describes on e-paper manufacturer (E Ink) and how they have increased production of their parts from tens of thousands 9 months ago to millions today. before i explain more, i’ll share a sample photo:

one of the companies who buy the parts from E Ink is Sony. from the article:

Among those products are Sony’s Reader tablet, whose black-and-white displays can be read in bright sunlight or a dimly lit room from almost any angle — just like paper — without traditional back-lit screens that chew up power.

While the displays are becoming more flexible and conserve power, they face other limitations such as working only in monochrome and failing to display video — areas critical to attracting advertisers and consumers to the technology.

personally, i think that’s promising. the textbook i use in one of my classes is all black and white, so that’s no biggie. and, the textbook also can’t display video. of course, for the price i am guessing one would pay to use e-paper, these things better be upgraded soon, eh? then again, if they can achieve color and video then they could be the death of LCDs. hmmm, perhaps time to buy some stock. ;~)

Technorati Tags: e-paper, e-books, E Ink, textbook