Application of a new tool at NMU

Glenna Pendleton: I was very energized by the conference. I became friends with my colleagues at CTIP. Also, there are so many things we can use in our undergrad classes at NMU that were showcased at the conference!!! What I am especialy fired up about is the possibility of an alternative to WebCT that was introduced in one of the sessions. Epsilen is a management option that incorporates new technologies into the course management process. For example, at the touch of a button on the screen, the professor can create a Wiki for collaborative learning in the class. NMU can experiement with this tool at no charge for one semester. It only requres that the innnovators evaluating this management tool have specific courses and class lists for the trial process. This allows the students in the chosen classes to sign into the platform similar to WebCT. There are many interesting tool bar options and the creators, associated with the NY Times, are designing a way to soon incorporate the grades for rubrics right into the grade computation process. This means the professor will not need to import Excel files or manually transfer grades from rubrics. What a savings in time and a way to cut down on the chance for human error....

Liz's Ending Thoughts of the Conference

I didn't want to want another 90 minutes for this to be posted, and I'll be traveling all day tomorrow, so here are my ending thoughts of the ELI 2010 Conference.

While I did not find too many things helpful on Tuesday beyond what I already posted, a couple of bumps on Wednesday including when the session I wanted to see was replaced by another, and Thursday was a short day, I am coming away with a few items of interest:

1. Sophie is definitely something I would like to try. It has many possibilities in all levels of writing classes. I can see projects from instructions & manuals, digital story-telling, pedagogical tools created by graduate students for their writing class etc. I will be emailing the presenters about the possibility of coming to our university for a demo of the software. Holly and Susan mentioned that if a group of 10 could be assembled, they’d be willing to travel to various universities; I’m hoping their grant allows them to travel for free!
2. Google Wave may have potential as far as collaboration for small groups that really require the need for a wiki space, or the training that may be required to go into a wiki (specifically Mediawiki). Even though I didn’t discuss my experience with the Google Wave session, I did have fun laughing and was reminded that it’s amazing what’s on the web as far as edited material. April & I were directed to a couple of resources.
3. The discussion from John Palfrey was inspirational from the standpoint of reinforcing that getting my students to think about their technological literacies and expanding those, as well as being responsible in virtual environments.
4. I found that the poster session were sometimes of more value to me than the actual sessions. I thought they more clearly reflected the majority of audience of the conference (faculty).
5. I definitely want the Flip materials from Duke University’s Flip project. I loved the idea that Flips were used in service learning projects. I even signed up for the pathable website to get the materials.
6. I REALLY want to explore prezi.com as a presentational software! The slides are aesthetically pleasing and interactive. The presentations aren’t linear in a traditional sense and can possible keep people’s attentions much better (or at least mine).
7. Pack extra batteries for the Flip. I wasn’t able to get everyone’s best moments, conference and other.

Ending Personal Austin Comments:

Personally, I found Austin to be a neat town. It was entertaining, safe to walk, abundant in great places to eat, and full of nice people. Sixth Street reminds me of a safe Bourbon Street. I had the best Red Velvet Cake ever.

Thanks April, Carolyn, Michelle, Kristi, Tom, Patti, and Glenna for making this a really fun trip. I’m glad I got to know everyone a little better.

Corrections to earlier blog posting: Erin James’ husband’s family is living in Harvey. It is April’s husband’s mother who lives in Chassel.

Liz's Last Day at the Conference: January 21

Starting out the morning, I was hoping for more social networking time with my table colleagues from Occidental University in California [one in particular who came literally moments before the next session] but as the lights dimmed, I knew I needed to move onto the Kindle use in the English classroom, since this was one of two sessions I really wanted to see.

Kindles and two representatives from Cal Lutheran

Research question to consider: the effect of uncontextualized text

Design Issue: problems with accessibility; in initial start up problems with transfer of pdfs from Blackboard to Kindle (changed with new updates); qwerty vs # pad, keyboard layout; no backlighting (iphone app has backlighting);

Collaboration between Center for Teaching and Learning and Library

Student responsibilities: personal Amazon accounts, credit cards, personal content purchase, care of the Kindle, reading the assignments, downloading updates of software
Important Things to NOTE: Free texts have lots of errors; text to speech feature offers students options; students are able to download music to “read” by; My Clippings feature allows for highlighting & bookmarked passages, comments, class notes, and other materials, and then is able to copy and paste into Word; search function allows for keywords within the text; Writing Outcomes: builds vocabulary using Kindle’s New Oxford American Dictionary; enhanced reading experience; My Clippings feature allows students to start collecting information and develop their writing assignments earlier and easier; Brought more awareness of audience due to writing in blogs; writing became clearer and more concise.

Considerations: pedagogical adjustment, “Separation anxiety” from the printed hard copy page, no page numbers and location numbers (leads to problems in teaching and citing)

Even though this session is dealing with “Mobile Learning”, I am extremely happy that this session did not talk about the iphone touch!

Next, I’m going to the Rethinking WAC session. Since WAC issues are dear to my heart, I am hoping for this session to have something pertinent that I can relay to NMU. We started out with a writing to learn activity—work with a partner to write responses to 2 questions: what did you not like about writing and did you write anything that was worthwhile

Recommended we check out the materials on the Writing Center website at University of Illinois.

Why Write? Frequent writing in all disciplines helps students better comprehend, retain, synthesize…(This was a good quote, but I can’t type THAT quickly!)

Quoted and discussed Janet Emig—Writing as a Mode of Learning and the theoretical foundations of WAC...fond memories. Personal note: reading her study of the “Writing Processes of Twelfth Graders” helped me, as an originally undergrad Biology major, helped me to think that I could make it as a scholar in the field the field of writing.

Writing for exploration and writing for understanding—he mentioned that it helps promote advanced literacy as well as introduces the students into the discourse communities.

How does Web 2.0 enhance WAC? Audience, community, and multimodality Using things like Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs have the potential with understanding these three things.

2 Examples: A journalism class’s blog that incorporated interview and editorial work; Wikibook from a Blended Learning in k-12

Writing becomes social and not a singular, independent process.

Comic life? Making a graphic novel. http://comiclife.com/ It costs money, but may be helpful in some cases. Many of my EN 205: Intro to Professional Writing class want to make a graphic novel thanks to Watchmen, Sin City, etc.

Discussion on Jay Bolter’s Immediacy to Hypermediacy; Transparency to Hypermediation from Writing Space, “Hypertext and the Question of Visual Literacy”

http://prologue.com/# examples of multimedia

Final thoughts about this presentation: Wished there had been some strategies to encourage or promote interdisciplinary collaboration or more resources for writing to learn activities. Overall, I did feel this presentation was worthwhile, but I felt that from a 2.0 perspective, more could have been done and newer computers and writing (while I enjoy Bolter) research could have been used. Computers and Composition Online recently published their Web 2.0 special issue. Janet Emig is foundational theory, but there could have also been more recent WAC research. Most people would not be reading Emig. I think more resources would have been helpful for people.

Before April left, the remaining girls went to lunch at the Iron Cactus. We got to eat on the rooftop, where I got sunburned. I then got to embarrass myself for a few minutes.

Even though I really wanted to see my former student Janice who couldn’t meet because her son’s babysitter was sick, we made plans to meet up in March when I’m in San Antonio for the College English Association. (San Antonio is only 45 minutes away.)

Michelle and Kristi have more details about the Capitol shooter, but on my way to meet them at the Texas Museum Imax in a taxi, I got to hear how a Houston man was arrested for shooting a gun at the capitol. Considering I was on my way to go behind the capital grounds, it was a little weird. Avatar at the Imax was amazing. The Moonshine restaurant was good the second time around (again); my bacon, bleu cheese burger tasted amazingly like the brisket and ribs from the Salt Lick. I got a piece of the red velvet cake to eat tomorrow at the airport for breakfast; I’m going to call it my birthday breakfast. :)

Michelle Johnson Post: Doing More with Much Less

(From Michelle) Doing More with Much Less: Pursing an Innovative Teaching & Learning Agenda in a Time of Fiscal Austerity
Three different schools present what they have done and are continuing to do with decrease in staff and/or funding. The schools all had to look at what do they want to emphasize or stop supporting. Some of the solutions that came out of this presentation had to do with sharing resources with other nearby institutions. This may include the type of server that is being used or having a different type of personal for the various platforms that you plan on supporting, one stationed at your school and one at another. Faculty who were using different teaching methods within the platform was tapped into for presentations to new faculty. The universities looked at holding a week long session in the summer after finding out what area of interest to cover. This way they were able to cover topics of interest for multiple people at a cost effective price, instead of just one or two people able to go to the conference. This is a topic that we are all very aware at our university and discussing and working with other institutions may assist us in managing to keep more resources with less.

What Students Want

Attended a session wherein the presenters had surveyed 1,000 students, 300+ faculty across the nation (private & public schools) re. the definition and requirements of a 21st-century campus. Major findings: The number one student priority is ACCESS-preferably wireless. (So, NMU seems right on target here). Students want to attend universities with cutting-edge technology and most appreciate interactive experiences with real-life professionals via video or internet conferencing. (Connecting the classroom to the work environment). I found it interesting that students in particular reiterated a desire for archived lectures especially when one IT representative shared that their school audits consistently indicate that only 1% of students actually access these digitalized lectures. Expensive security blanket.

Michelle Johnson Post:Technology and Learner Motivation in Library Instruction: A study of Personal Response Systems

This is Michelle blogging-can't get access to blog directly. This presentation was done by the Library staff and how they used i-clickers. They were trying to engage their students during the orientation period to the library. Honestly I give them credit for their presentation and the continued study they are doing. However, they are using the i-clicker in the most inefficient way, recording pre and post test results of the students. The school obtained the clickers and staff was basically told to use them so this is why I believe they have not thought of a more interactive means of utilizing them. I was disappointed in the overall content because it did not tell me anything that I did not all ready know. The audience did give them some suggestions on how to make these sessions more engaging to future students which they seemed to think were good ideas.

Robinia Tidbit #1

Interesting to learn what universities can do with resources! Imagine President Wong meeting a Swiss philanthropist at the Nobel peace prize ceremonies and leaving with $15 million to establish an innovative, technology-enhanced Center for learning. Stanford University was the recipient of such a gift from Mr. Wallenberg in 1998. Dissatisfied with the traditional higher learning structure, Wallenberg challenged Stanford to create a state of the art facility devoted to experimenting and developing new paradigms for learning. Robert Smith, director of the Center, shared that, “we have learned that bad teaching with technology is still bad teaching” (no kidding-right?). However, he did share an interesting story about a law professor who taught contract negotiation through virtual connectivity. Students were distributed in small groups with designated role identities and assigned into different rooms in the building. Through internet connectivity, a real-life scenario was introduced and played out as the groups had to negotiate and renegotiate with each other to resolve a litigation suit. Other than that, I left wondering how I would have used the $15 million for innovative teaching………

Educational Tech and Web-Based Tools

I have seen some great educational uses for technology both in and out of the classroom over the past two days. The video below demonstrates the Optoma pocket projector which is about the size and shape of a Flip camera, and can be connected to one as well. With it, you can display your video to a small group without the need for everyone to crowd around the small screen of your portable video device.

Others are using tools like PollDaddy to obtain feedback from students and share results instantaneously. These polls along with other tools fit on web pages that can be viewed easily even with mobile devices such as smartphones or the iPod Touch.

Thought I would attach the article I mentioned

from Marc Prensky that I mentioned in my quote, but why can't I figure out how to attach it? I see what I can attach video and images. Anyone else know?

I need to post the flip videos from earlier, like the one with Patti talking with the Born Digital guy--is anyone automatically singing "Born Free...Free as the wind blows..." in their heads? and then the guy talking about flips. Remind me! :)

Last night and January 20

Last night was a good time. We had new friends Scott and Shawn, courtesy of April, bring us to the original Salt Lick, which was a great experience. After eating a large amount of beef and pork we decided to go out to 6th Street. Unfortunately, Patti and Glenna did not go out with us; April, Tom, Michelle, Kristi, our new friend Dan, I mean Chad, from Michigan Tech went to an Irish Pub and then saw a band—Erin James and the Bad Habits. Her husband is from Chassell (in the UP). It’s such a small world.

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with the keynote speaker this morning, even at 8:30 a.m. He was discussing the concept of digital native versus digital immigrant, which is something I was introduced to during my doctoral program by my mentor Dr. Kristine Blair who required us to read an article by Marc Prensky entitled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. (If I can attach that article, I will.) I can’t wait to look at the book, http://borndigitalbook.com/, which I find very pertinent to teaching freshmen. I think his presentation may inspire me to reorganize my EN 111: Composition I class for the future. I think that I have already started with this direction based on my beginning the semester with the Technological Literacy Narrative and the Day in the Life Profile Assignment, where they need to use the Flips and record and write about what goes on in their life.

After leaving the 10:00 a.m. session 20 minutes into it (I’ll not waste any additional time speaking of its inadequacies.), I spent time looking over three of the poster sessions. The thought that went through my mind as I went through reading the various presentations was “why weren’t these actual sessions?” What I found was that I continually thought, these are the types of projects that I would like to learn more about, specifically about the logistics of set-up, funding, sustainability, student perceptions etc.

Poster One: Not only did a get a wonderful mini paper origami swan from one of the Japanese faculty members from the cohort of 6 Japanese colleges and universities, but I received a brief look at how these “Learning Communities on a Virtual University Environment” provided, through the use of a Moodle site, were able to encourage workshops, student activities, and COLLABORATION between multiple universities! How awesome is that? I love that these universities embraced, perhaps from necessity, a way of reaching out and creating a way to share knowledge and approaches across universities—isn’t that what we should be doing (not only working with our departments, but among other departments across campus and beyond our physical landscape)? They directed me to http://eli2010.f.lecca.jp/ for more handouts.

Poster Two: The second poster session I “attended” was “Implementing Andragogy in the Online Class” where I talked with Heidi Ashbaugh. We discussed the aspects of modeling in online environments and the difficulties and benefits of these types of models for our students virtually. As we discussed, she suggested I looked into Flips if I haven’t already (which I have), and we jointly chatted about some possibilities like students filming their processes during various projects and models of service learning.

Poster Three: A joint effort between a graduate course in Engineering between Penn State and University of Seoul. While I didn’t get to talk to presenter, I could see how learning the logistical information behind this type of project could be extremely helpful. So much possibility.
Then Who Gives a Flip? (I found out that I do, and it should have lasted longer—even beyond the breakout session!)

Shawn Miller will post his materials on the pathway site, so I guess I’ll need to register soon. J
He guided us to their website www.duke.edu/ddi (This site will be redirected to http://dukedigitalinitiative.duke.edu/)

They found that flips were being used for short documentaries; class assignments; recording lectures; recording interviews; Digital diaries, self reflection of service learning projects (I’m seeing another theme!); Groups assignments; Rec events

Examples: http://thejungleblog-duke.blogspot.com/ and http://metoomonologues.wordspress.com/

Went to lunch at the Moonshine with April, which is kitty corner (I know many have different pronunciations and spellings for this, and I acknowledge these differences), to the hotel. My cobb salad was phenomenal, and having a few bites of April’s catfish was divine. What takes the cake, literally, was the Red Velvet Cake. HEAVEN on a plate! Lovely layers, moist, fluffy-from scratch frosting…ahhhhhhhhh…

On the way back up to the room, my phone notified me that I had a message. I listened to the following: “This is your mother. You said you were going to call us when you got to Austin. That was days ago! Call us when you get this.” I figured that I had waited a couple of days a couple of minutes more wasn’t going to matter because the one session I wanted to see since the beginning of this conference was in progress—eportfolios.

After having enjoyed my decadent experience and being shamed, I got to see some of the eportfolio session. My end thought: people are so limited in various systems. While I can understand to a certain extent why people use form driven programs, why not encourage students to create and develop their own hypertexts? By encouraging students to do this, they increase their technological literacy and their ability to analyze audience, purpose/situation, and usability. This type of creation of interactive documents, I feel and have witnessed, encourages critical thinking toward the internet and the sources/resources available on it.

While waiting for the Sophie session to start, I called my parents. Trying to whisper, I attempted to talk to my dad. He kept yelling, “I can’t hear you. Speak up.” So I quickly walked out and told my dad I was safe and at the conference. He said, "That's no excuse! Love you and call later."

Reimagining the Book: Multimedia Authoring with Sophie—a free/open source software (http://www.sophieproject.org/). (Just note: Some of this information was my random typing directly from their ppt.) The first speaker Susan used the word Prosumers = produces + consumers to discuss students. I liked this. Susan provided an overview of what multimedia and familiar terms, as well as the genesis of Sophie. The second speaker, Holly, discussed more intricacies of Sophie and the potential of multimedia and Sophie.

Genres of multimedia: Documentary, Thesis-driven, Essayistic, Game, Experiential, Digital storytelling

Types of Authoring Tools
Presentation: ppt, prezi
Content Authoring: NMC pachyderm, Sophie
Course Creation: Adobe Authorware, Trivantis Corp, Lectora

Resource: http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools

Examples: http://www.yhchang.com/BETTY_NKOMO.html; Kairos 14.2 Kuhn, speaking with students (I love Kairos!!! It’s in direct “competition” with Computers and Composition Online, which is where I am section editor, but I love to see something from my discipline here at the conference!); http://vectorsjournal.org/ Public Secrets by Sharon Daniel issue 4

Authoring Tool Considerations
Linear or branched? Static or interactive? Standalone or web-based? Local or hosted? Basic/simple or sophisticated/complex? Rapid or slow development? Commercial or open source? Free or costly?
Other considerations: standards, compliancy, licensing, platform, budget, development team
expertise

What are we doing? Writing? Composing? Directing? Curating? How do we write with media? (This seems like a question that has come up quite a bit at this conference. I have to say that I enjoy that people in other disciplines are thinking about these things and simply placing the responsibility solely on the rhetoric and composition faculty.)

Holly recommended not going into Sophie and just playing around. Instead, she suggested doing 2.5 hours of an investment to work the tutorials back to back to understand it. Sophie has a reader and an authoring tool. The reader only allows the reader to read and make sticky notes. In the future, the comment feature will be active. She walked us through an example of a book that she put together earlier in the day. Through Sophie, teachers will be able to create a conversation with students by having them read and respond through the sticky notes and then emailing them back to me. Tips: When creating a book, save the text as rtf files in order to transfer the information more easily.

10 people for a hands on experience—willing to come to campus to demo Sophie! I think this would be something to consider.

Tip from the audience: Rename the zip file s2.

I can see a lot of potential for this type of software in all avenues of writing. Exciting!

Good afternoon. I just attended a session on the authoring tool, Sophie.

I was hoping I could attach my notes since I was working in Word (am not aware of how to copy and paste). Will need to re-type when I have more time.

Prior to this session, I had a conversation with an Associate Dean from Duke about a poster display which was an overview of renovated building design in which the library, multiple classrooms, digital media rooms, and the helpdesk are in the same building. It appeared to be a holistic sense of combining faculty, students, resoures and media technology under one roof. Students and faculty alike really appreciate the functionality as well as the ambiance (not blue and white centric). Students increase traffic to this building 68% in the first year after the remodel. Students were not just going to check out a book and leaving (it appeared to be solely a library prior to 2008).

Also at this same time, a colleague from MTU, was hosting a project briefing on Acrobat Connect. Since I am familiar with it, I wanted to see if he had anything new to offer. Individuals were asking a lot of questions and I was pleased to know that I knew the answers thanks to my training in the CTIP computer bootcamp, our CTIP informal practice sessions and my classroom experience with it. So...while he may have had new information, I didn't hear anything based on questions that were asked.

Need to get moving to the next session.

the good and the bad

I went to a couple of sessions that were okay. One (which I won't be specific about here since I am not intending to offend the presenters) was one I was really excited to attend but which did not meet my expectations. Two were outstanding. The Second Life presentation was very interesting and I was very surprised and pleased when the folks viewing live in Second Life not only greeted me when I introduced myself to answer a question but also posted my blog http://simbioticbiome.wordpress.com.

The other presentation was amazing and very informative. It was about using Twitter in the classroom (and how that can be done effectively) as a back-chatter discussion during class. There was a librarian moderating the tweets and then subsequently archived them for future reference by the students. One thing that was mentioned is that by students discussing project ideas, the librarian could either help them focus better or shoot references their way early in the process. It really impacted that "last minute" thing that students do. I learned that I need to learn about things like hash tags, tweetdeck and other tools that can be used to facilitate it better.

On another note about Twitter, I am tweeting about sessions from the conference (I need to add the hash tags) and my students from ED 483 Technology and Media in Education are required to follow my tweets and then post replies on a discussion forum. I chose to use Ning since my preservice teachers will almost certainly not be able to use Blackboard/WebCT in a K-12 classroom. If you want to follow me on Twitter you can search for my name or my username which is cloweygreenwood.

As for the Ning - the students in ED483 are discussing on some readings, videos and presentations I gave them. The quality of their posts and discussions are very good. The first few were very good which set the standard I think. Carolyn Lowe

Online orientation presentation did not happen

So I may have had the smoothest flight here to Austin, but I striking out on sessions. This morning's session was changed (with no real warning) and because the goal of the presentation was different than what was promoted (on-line learning orientations for students), I departed, attempted another session nearby (which was so full there were no seats left), left that room and now I'm updating my blog.

However, I didn't leave completely empty-handed. Here is a quote for all educators to consider.
Envision your college being best for the world, rather than best in the world.(Candace Introcaso)

****

More on this morning's general session with John Palfrey. These are not my personal notes, but this colleague did a nice summary.

Also (for Matt) was able to take some pics with our faculty asking Palfrey some questions as well as some flip video of the conversation (audio might be soft).

Born Digital - General Session

This morning's general session, "Born Digital", included five areas of critique/concern for students who utilize electronic items/technologies more than 50 hours a week on average:

• Security
• Privacy
• Intellectual Property
• Credibility
• Information Overload

The following video nicely summarizes the trail of information or "Digital Dossier" left behind as an individual and their network of friends, family, and associates who utilize technology to search for and share information.

Digital Dossier

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79IYZVYIVLA

This YouTube video was shared as part of the opening session. Author, lawyer, Harvard professor John Palfrey spoke about his work "Digital Natives." More notes to come later as I took handwritten notes on this one.