PennEduTech

If you read technology news, or even the Chronicle of Higher Education, you may have heard of Wolfram Alpha, a free online tool that is somewhere between a search engine, a database, and a computer algebra system.  The launch of Wolfram Alpha in mid-May of this year was met with much fanfare in certain circles, and much consternation in others.  Some educators fear that this tool will allow students to skip the learning process of working out problems by hand, since they can get the results online.  (Whether or not this would constitute cheating is a topic for a different post.)

I decided to wait before posting about this tool until it had a few months to mature, and until I had time to really kick the tires.  Now that I’ve done that, I agree that it can be a powerful tool and that faculty in certain fields should be aware that it exists, but I don’t think that it’s going to make homework obsolete.

Since Wolfram Alpha is based on the computation engine of Mathematica, that’s where it does best.  If you enter “integrate x sin^2 x dx”, you get

But a link also appears to “show steps”, which explains each of the steps in the solution, essentially doing the students’ homework for them.  This isn’t really new, since sites like http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ have offered step-by-step solutions for some time, so people who teach courses that assign these types of problems are probably already aware of these resources and take them into account in their teaching.  But so far, mathematical problems are the only type of input that results in a solution with steps, so instructors in other fields need not worry.

On the other hand, Wolfram Alpha employs a wide variety of data sets, so if an instructor thinks that an assignment will send students to the library or to a particular electronic resource where they’ll have to hunt for information and interpret it, they may be surprised.  For example, how did the Consumer Price Index change between June 2008 and June 2009?  Just enter “consumer price index june 2009 / consumer price index june 2008″ and you get the result:  98.57%, or a drop of 1.43%.  And if you have a large data set, Wolfram Alpha will curate it for you – see http://www.wolframalpha.com/participate/structureddata.html

There are a million other things that Wolfram Alpha can do, too, like:

• balancing a chemical equation:  enter “C3H8 + O2 —> H2O + CO2″ and you’ll get You’ll get the result, but you won’t get the steps required to get there, so students can check their results but it won’t do the work for them if the assignment requires that you “show your work”.
• calculating the nutritional value of my favorite smoothie recipe (which makes 2 servings):  enter “calories in 1 banana + 3.5 cups strawberries + 0.5 cup milk + 0.5 cup orange juice + 3 teaspoons sugar + 1 teaspoon lemon juice” and you get the full nutrition information in a format that looks very similar to the panel on all packaged food products.  You also get a place to choose what type of milk you want to use and to make other ingredient choices.

I’ve used Wolfram’s Mathematica software for more than 10 years now, and I’m very interested in the ways in which it might make a positive contribution to engaging students with course material.  If you’d like to talk about ways that you might use it in your course, please contact me!

This is my first official post on the Penn Engaging Students through Technology blog so I’d like to quickly introduce myself.  My name is Erin Murphy and I work for a group at Wharton Computing called the Learning Lab.  Each year the Learning Lab receives proposals from Wharton professors to develop web-based applications that extend the reach of learning in the classroom.  Some of these applications would fall under the category of simulations that allow students to engage in real-world challenges without assuming the real-world risk (e.g., The Online Trading and Investment Simulator allows students to experiment with different trading methods without losing real money). 

Through my experience with the simulations, I’ve come to realize that game theory in general is a particularly useful concept to understand and can be applied to different segments of life that one would not ordinarily associate with game theory.  In fact, I’ve been following a blog online (Mind Your Decisions blog) that is entirely dedicated to game theory and how it can be found in interesting places.  In this particular post from several months ago, the author details how game theory played a role in significant events like the financial crisis all the way to more trivial daily activities like waiting for the bus in the morning.  It is also being used to predict political events – see Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on TED.com using game theory to predict the future of Iran. 

Technology (especially simulations) is great at capturing game theories because they often deal with the actions/interactions/and negotiations of two or more players in a closed system.  As Bruce Bueno de Mesquita mentions in his TED talk, computers successfully keep track of these actions/interactions/and negotiations much better than people and we can then analyze the data to predict a player’s future actions.  On that note, I’d like to discuss two of the most frequently used game theory types in Learning Lab applications.

• Tragedy of the Commons:  The notion of tragedy of the commons developed from an article of the same title written by Garrett Hardin in the journal Science in 1968.  “The article describes a dilemma in which multiple individuals acting independently in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long term interest for this to happen”(Wikipedia, 2009).  The tragedy of the commons scenario can be used to demonstrate the effects of any group’s actions on a limited resource in a closed system from specific things like oil or TUNA to more complex resources like the environment.  
• Prisoner’s Dilemma:  “A game frequently displayed in television police dramas. Two partners in crime are separated into separate rooms at the police station and given a similar deal. If one implicates the other, he may go free while the other receives a life in prison. If neither implicates the other, both are given moderate sentences, and if both implicate the other, the sentences for both are severe. Each player has a dominant strategy to implicate the other, and thus in equilibrium each receives a harsh punishment, but both would be better off if each remained silent. In a repeated or iterated prisoner’s dilemma, cooperation may be sustained through trigger strategies such as tit for tat” (GameTheory.net, 2009).

For more information on game theories, check out gametheory.net. 

Well, this isn’t really a live “report from the symposium”, but it just ended last night, so it’s fresh in my mind!  The Symposium offered a variety of interesting sessions, an it was a great way to learn about other schools’ projects and ‘meet’ others in SecondLife without having to spend money on travel.  More about the SecondLife aspect below, but first I want to talk about 2 sessions that offered content of interest to readers of this blog.

First, Anu Vedantham and Peter Decherney represented Penn admirably with their presentation “Mashup Video Projects for Classroom Creativity”  This ties in with Anu’s most recent post here about the Seltzer Family Digital Media Awards, but the presentation also covered ideas and tips for how to incorporate mashup video projects into courses not directly related to film.  Peter also generated a lot of interest with his part of this well-attended presentation, discussing copyright and related issues in mashups.  I encourage you to check the link above for more information about this great presentation.

The other session that I thought provided a lot of information that would be of interest to readers of this blog was the one titled “Your Video Projects Suck, but That’s OK ’cause So Do Your Papers: Moderating Student Expectations When Teaching New Media” by Jared Bendis of Case Western Reserve.  Anyone who has ever been to an NMC event knows that Jared is always a popular speaker, and this was no exception.  But this time he had a lot of practical tips for instructors who are assigning video projects to students who have never done any such thing before.  Of course he recommended the usual things like having several smaller “due dates” for storyboards, etc. before the completed project is due.  But he also pointed out that the “type A personalities” often end up with incomplete masterpieces, while the “slackers” set realistic expectations and often get the assignment finished with respectable work.  He also had a very interesting perspective on getting signed releases:  everyone must sign a release, including people who appear in a video and the student making the video, because the university has no control over where the video might be posted or shared after it’s submitted.

You can see the rest of Jared’s tips and some good sample videos of what to do and what not to do at http://fc.case.edu/newmedia/video/  The release form that he uses is linked in the middle of that page.

Also, a video of each session will be posted at http://www.nmc.org/2009-nml-symposium/program by March 30th if you’d like to watch it.

Now a word about SecondLife:  I had played with SecondLife briefly, but this was the first time that I ever attended a scheduled event, or even spent more than 10 minutes at a time in this virtual world.  The software has definitely become more stable since I last used it a year ago, but I did have it crash once, when I was attending a session where a video was being shown on a “screen” in SL.  And I use a computer that’s less than a year old and has a lot of RAM.  Other than that, I had a very positive experience.  I admit that I was a skeptic going in, but that’s why I wanted to register for this conference.  And it really was more engaging to watch an avatar on the screen give a talk, and be able to move around the room or change views, than it is to watch a ‘talking head’ in a rectangle of video for the same amount of time.  And I only embarrassed myself once, when I arrived at the “room” and had my avatar sit in what appeared to be an empty seat – but it turned out that the video world hadn’t fully loaded on my screen, and I was sitting on someone’s lap!  But the person was gracious, we both had a good laugh, and I ‘met’ someone I might not have.  

So that’s my report ‘from the field’.  Please let me know if I can answer any questions about it.

Many instructors want to get their students involved in contributing content to web sites for class projects; in some cases, they want the students to build a site from scratch.  IT support staff (such as myself) are typically reluctant to provision resources on University systems for such projects.  Setting up and maintaining sites can consume a lot of staff effort, plus there are concerns about system security, managing permissions, etc.

Fortunately, there are now lots of ways that instructors can have students build web sites using free services that are available to the public.  Below are links for just a few of these services.

Of course, before creating assignments that will generate publicly-viewable web sites, instructors need to make sure that the assignment will not invite students to disclose confidential or personal information.  I’ll have more about that topic in my next post.

http://www.blogger.com

It’s easy for students to create accounts and start posting within just a few minutes.
OK, a blog is not the same thing as a “web site,” but in many cases it gets the job done.  It’s one of the easiest ways to get information posted in a timely way.  Contributors can post to their blogs via email, making it possible for them update content from almost anywhere via mobile devices

http://sites.google.com/

Google Sites lets almost anyone build a site without having to know HTML.  Everything the students need to do happens in a standard web browser, so there’s no need for special software like Dreamweaver.  Many students already have google accounts, so they can get started quickly.

http://www.webs.com/

Webs  is another free service which provides an impressive array of supported features, including calendars, photo galleries, forums, various widgets, statistics tracking and much more.  Sites created through webs.com will include an advertising banner, but if you can live with that,  it’s a great resource.

http://freehostia.com/

Is an internet hosting site that offers a basic service tier for free with no advertising; there is a $10 per year fee for registering a domain name (e.g.  myclassproject.org). This is a good choice for those who want the complete flexibility for developing a site from scratch, without having to use preformatted templates, etc.  It requires that users understand how to transfer files via FTP, etc.   But it does offer a traditional Unix hosting environment for free for sites which don’t need a lot of storage space of expect large numbers of visitors; sites can be upgraded to accommodate more space and traffic for reasonable fees.

The New Media Consortium (NMC) is hosting an online symposium March 24-26, 2009 that looks like it will be very good:

I’m particularly interested in this symposium because it will address “new literacies; and any technology or practice that shows promise for engaging students and supporting teaching and learning using new media”.  NMC events are always very interesting and helpful, and this one is online so you don’t have to travel or disrupt your schedule to attend.  The registration isn’t free, but it’s a lot less expensive than most in-person conferences.  

Check it out at http://www.nmc.org/2009-nml-symposium 

Once the session topics are listed, if you’d like to attend one of them by looking over my shoulder, just let me know and I’ll reserve a room with a large screen and speakers where we can watch together.

Hope to “see” you there!

Talking anyone through using new software can be difficult.  Even explaining the nuances of using an unfamiliar tool or feature in a familiar software package can be difficult unless you’re sitting right next to the person, and one demonstration may not be enough to make a complicated series of clicks and settings “stick” in the other person’s memory.  

In cases like this, pre-recording a short computer demonstration may be the solution.  Using software for PC or Mac, you can create a click-by-click “screen movie” of the demonstration, and add audio narration and/or text captions.  We’ve found this to be very helpful in efficiently disseminating training to users, and we can imagine a wide variety of ways that faculty might use the tool to help their students use applications.

When you’re creating these demos, try to imagine that you haven’t used this particular tool or technique before.  Pause after each click to give the viewer a few seconds to take in what has changed on the page, or any other result of the click.  Point out any significant things to notice or options when you do the narration or text captions.  If you’re taking the viewers through a web page, read out the web address so it’s perfectly clear and there are no confusions between “ell” and “one”, for example.  

In Multi-Media Services’ Resource Room, the software to create screen demonstrations is available on PC and on Mac, and you have access to all of the software that is installed in labs.  Please see their website at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/computing/mms/mmr for details.  If you’d like more tips about how to do this, just contact Elizabeth Scheyder in SAS Computing.

Penn Libraries recently announced a cool new way to explore the image collection at the Anne and Jerome Fisher Fine Arts Library. Here is a Michelangelo Slideshow I made in a few seconds – click the blue arrow at top to start. The CoolIris 3D software may require a plug-in download. You can create a rich browsing experience for images that you choose to include.

To make this show, I started at the image collection page, chose Michelangelo from the Artist box at right and narrowed my search to records with digital images. You can make slideshows for a particular class session and email your students the link, or use PennTags to collect them for later use. The collection also has more than 100,000 high-resolution images you can add to your PowerPoint presentations. I also foresee uses in conference presentations.

Audience Response Systems, or “clickers”, are an increasingly popular way to get students in large lecture courses engaged both with the material and with their fellow students.  More than a dozen courses across the University are using clickers this semester, with 10 courses and more than 1500 students using them in SAS alone.

Clicker and Receiver

These clickers allow students to vote on a multiple-choice question that the instructor displays on the screen, and then see the histogram of the voting results and, optionally, the correct answer .  We have standardized on clickers from TurningTechnologies.com, which provides free software for instructors to insert questions into PowerPoint presentations on either a PC or a Mac.  Students can buy the clickers next to the textbook for their course in the Penn Bookstore for $40, and sell it back like a used textbook at the end of the term – unless they want to keep it to use in future courses, which is becoming more and more likely.  SAS Computing loans instructors the receiver for the semester.

Instructors have found a variety of ways to use these clickers effectively.  Some use them to gauge student understanding of a topic and determine how much time they need to spend on it during class.  Others use it to have students answer a difficult question, or one where there are likely to be a variety of responses, and then discuss the answer with their neighbor and vote again before the correct answer is revealed.  Students’ responses can be completely anonymous, or the instructor can set it up to have the students register their clicker number in Blackboard and then have each student’s response to the questions recorded so that their scores can be uploaded to the Blackboard Grade Center.  Many instructors take a middle ground between these two approaches, having the students register their clickers, but only recording whether or not a student voted at all – not grading the actual responses.  All of these approaches seem to keep students from “zoning out” in the middle of a large lecture, and instead stay engaged throughout the 50 or 80 minutes.  They also ensure that every student’s opinion is counted, so that students in the front of the room aren’t given more attention than students toward the back, and they also avoid the peer pressure of voting with the largest group when hands are raised.

If you’re interested in learning more about this technology, please see the SAS Computing page on Using Clickers in the Classroom or the Weigle Information Commons page on Clickers – Personal Response Systems.  There’s a seminar on November 5, 2008 at the WIC where you can learn more about clickers and try them out – click here for information and registration.  We’ve also recorded a short video of two instructors discussing their use of clickers in the classroom – it’s available here.  Please just get in touch with the contacts listed on the SAS Computing page or the WIC page if you’d like more information.