PennEduTech

Editor’s note: This blog entry was written by Lisa Minetti, Curriculum Design and Assessment Specialist at the College of Liberal and Professional Studies.

New to social media tools and web 2.o technologies? Check out Common Craft: Explanations in Plain English.

Common Craft owners Sachi and Lee LeFever are

dedicated to building a library of videos that are focused on helping influencers and educators create change through better explanations. Our videos are short, simple and focused on making complex ideas easy to understand.

Want to learn more about wikis? blogs? podcasting? social networking? You can find the free, online versions of their videos on The Common Craft Show.

Check out this four-minute video on wikis, for example. Ed Dixon describes how he uses wikis in his classes. How might you use wikis in your instructional practice?

Blackboards’s Wiki

I have found that wikis can provide students and teachers with a number of ways to collaborate with each other on written documents. A wiki is frequently an article that has been created, edited and developed by several authors over an extended or limited period of time. One of the prime examples of using a wiki in this way are the articles collaborated on by countless authors in wikipedia.org.  Authors can add information to a text but also edit incorrect information. Most recently, a friend of mine discovered in wikipedia.org an article about the streets of Philadelphia an inaccuracy pertaining to the direction of the numbered and named street. The author supplying the incorrect information wrote that the numbered streets of the city ran in an east-west direction and the named streets ran in a north-south direction. Owing to the nature of the wiki, my friend was able to open the text online, edit it and correct the error, so that the information on the directions of the named and numbered streets was factual and true.

My point with the above example is that students like my friend are able with wikis to engage with texts in a way that actively involves them with vetting, checking, and commenting on the information they read or write. Writing with a wiki can encourage a critical eye for style as well as for the careful construction and veracity of information provided.

Collaboration can take the form of many different scenarios in a wiki, i.e., individual students can collaborate with a large number of students, e.g. with the all members of a particular  class or in much smaller groups involving only pairs. Last year in one wiki project from my German 101 class, each of my students collaborated with me as the instructor (and not with each other) on an extended writing assignment. Each student had their own personal wiki in which they wrote an essay about their reactions to the characters and action in a film based on a novel by Heinrich Böll entitled “Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum.” Basically, my part in the collaboration involved providing each individual student with feedback and suggestions for correcting mistakes and improving the structure and content of their essays, which I did within the wiki environment. This project extended over a period of five weeks and as a result students produced texts with content and grammatical structures that surpassed those in both quality and quantity from my classes in previous years. Research would be needed to adequately explain the reasons for the students’ performance in the wiki but it is clear that the wiki created a different kind of learning environment that was more interactive then more traditional ways of essay writing where students hand-in hard copy versions of their work that the instructor corrects and later returns with hand-written comments. In one instance, a student using the wiki had edited and revised her text 24 times over the 5 week period. I was able to see her revisions by tracing the development of her essay in the “history” which is a feature in the wiki application.

The ongoing feedback and also the fact that the students could read each other’s texts online produced for each student an audience for their writing that may easily have had a motivating effect to write texts, in which students tried harder to accurately communicate their ideas to me and to each other. Ultimately, I believe the wiki environment helped the students to be more conscious of their writing and to focus more on the task of writing as a communicative one.

In subsequent entries to this forum, I will describe other uses for wikis for teaching and learning.

Do you have a research collaborator, subject matter expert or other guest whom you would like to invite to speak with your class?

It’s no longer necessary to reserve special videoconferencing rooms in order to make a  connection between your class and a remote participant.  The new breed of web conferencing tools – iChat, Skype, Windows Messenger and others – along with a simple webcam and microphone makes it  possible for your guest to connect directly from their office, lab or even their homes.  SAS Computing has assembled a portable system that lets us bring these desktop conferencing technologies to your classroom.   The system includes a laptop computer, video camera and wireless microphones; it connects to the classroom projection system.    The result is that we can get good pictures and sound transmission in most classrooms with as little as 15 minutes of setup time.  If your guest doesn’t have access to a webcam, they can simply connect via telephone and we’ll be able to set up an audio-only session.

SAS Computing portable conferencing equipment

Even though the technology is relatively simple, a successful videoconference session requires some planning.  You and your guest will want to agree on goals for the session, and how to structure the conversation.  Will they start with a presentation, and then open up to Q&A?  Will your students be presenting their work for evaluation and comment by the guest expert?  Will you need to display Powerpoint slides or other visual material in the session. Consider how you will moderate the discussion in the classroom.  You’ll want to encourage a lively exchange but avoid having people talking over each other.

SAS faculty who want more information about videoconferecing for their classes should visit http://www.sas.upenn.edu/computing/mms/video_conferencing_services or contact the staff at SAS Computing Multi-Media Services.  Faculty from other schools at Penn should check with their computing support providers to what options are available.

Several Penn folks from different schools have been meeting every so often to discuss Second Life and other virtual worlds. Here at the Weigle Information Commons, we have rented some space on a library-focused island – this SL space looks much like the real commons with a central conference area suitable for a class or meeting of up to 20 people and two data diner booths with six seats each. Three video screens in the space can play any quicktime video on the web. We welcome interested folks to join the Penn Libraries group and start to hold events in Second Life.

So far, we have held several beginner workshops (how to walk, chat and fly in Second Life) and one building workshop by the builder of our space, Tim Allen. There seems to be broad interest in Second Life as people try to figure out what role it could play at Penn. Our online resource links to some educational resources.

This Halloween, we will try our first SL event – an avatar contest to go with the Penn Reading Project’s Inner Fish activities. Do you have suggestions on how to reach students who may be interested in Second Life avatar building?

This news just in from the New Media Consortium: a virtual symposia exploring emerging forms of collaboration and tools.  Anyone interested in co-presenting a project at Penn?

Rock the Academy
Radical Teaching, Unbounded Learning
The 12th in the Series of NMC Virtual Symposia

November 4-6, 2008, via the Internet

Proposals for presentations for Rock the Academy: Radical Teaching, Unbounded Learning, a special 2-day, live online event to be held November 4-6, 2008, are being solicited through October 17. See http://www.nmc.org/2008-fall-virtual-symposium for full details.

About the Symposium
Rock the Academy, the twelfth in the NMC’s Series of Virtual Symposia, will explore the kinds of ideas and activities that are changing the shape of education today. Revolutionary practices are breaking apart old models of teaching and learning; students are using new tools to construct meaning and contribute to the design of their own education; teachers are sharing the power that has traditionally been theirs alone.

Examples of unconventional, yet highly effective, methods of teaching and learning may be found in pockets all over the world, at all levels of education. When the multitude of examples are taken together, we begin to sense a profound change in the making that will alter our concept of education itself.

The symposium will take place in both the Adobe Connect 2D web environment and in the 3D virtual world of Second Life.  All events in Second Life will also be streamed into Adobe Connect; participants will also be able to access Adobe Connect from within Second Life.

Proposals are encouraged on any of the following themes, but this list is not exhaustive and selections will not be limited to these categories:

• open education resources and open content
• social networking and global connections
• guerilla learning, games, and activist learning
• the next killer apps for education
• alternatives to course management systems
• real-time data, maps, and mobiles
• backchannels and alternative communication tools
• students who do research in their fields
• any technology or practice that shows promise for engaging students and supporting subversive teaching and learning

Sessions should describe new approaches, illustrate case studies, or address the implications for learning and teaching of themes like those above.

Proposals may be submitted online at http://www.nmc.org/2008-fall-virtual-symposium/proposals

I have begun exploring push technologies recently and wanted to share my experiences. Keeping up with new developments in my areas of interest has often been difficult, especially since instructional technology always seems to have new trends. I began by creating an iGoogle page where I added feeds of interest to me including the Penn Calendar and NMC Campus Observer. I explored Google Gadgets such as “Your Daily Al”. I created my own Google Gadget – surprisingly easy. I added RSS feeds from blogs I read occasionally – now my home page has headlines of new posts.

One aspect I love is the creation of customized alerts. You can make your own at Google Alerts (Beta) and put in phrases – topics, names of people, organizations. You will then receive daily or weekly alerts when web content containing your phrase is posted. You may get too many hits with a common phrase, but I have found this effective with targeted search terms. For example, my Google alert for the phrase “Weigle Information Commons” led me to a new architectural website that I may never have learned about otherwise.

Editor’s note: This blog entry was written by Lisa Minetti, Curriculum Design and Assessment Specialist at the College of Liberal and Professional Studies.

Flat World Knowledge offers a new approach to textbooks: open them up and bundle them with social learning tools. Founded by Jeff Shelstad and  Eric Frank, two former textbook industry executives, Flat World Knowledge’s mission statement reads:

We preserve the best of the old – books by leading experts that are rigorously reviewed and developed to the highest standards. Then we flip it all on its head. Our books are free online. We offer convenient, low-cost choices for students – print, audio, by-the-chapter, and more. Our books are open for instructors to mix, mash, and make their own. Our books are the hub of a social learning network where students learn from the book and each other.

While the content of their Open Textbooks is free and accessible to all, they charge for convenient ways to consume the Open Textbooks (print, audio, PDF) and efficient ways to study (study aids). Most interesting of all, IMHO is their description the social learning tools:

Students can chat live with other readers, take and share digital notes, set up study groups, and even find partners for cross border projects. They can do all of this at our site or tap into the collaborative features of Facebook using our Facebook app for this. They are part of a global community of learners. Or not. Their call.

To read more about Flat World Knowledge, browse through their website or check out this article from Wired’s blog network. Potential authors can learn more about joining the “little textbook revolution” on Flat World Knowledge’s website.

Wonder if anyone at Penn might like to pilot a project with a Flat World text? LPS Online would be very interested in talking with faculty members about the possibilities. Email me if you’d like to chat.