New home and name

I’m moving the blog to a new home and giving it a new name http://iterativelearning.org/iterativeblog/

Filed under: Uncategorized

iPass

Like traditional academic departments, writing and tutoring centers have been exploring and implementing digital options. One of the best known among writing centers is Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab. In last month’s issue of Innovate Online, Mark Rabinovich, of Queensborough Community College, shares some insights about iPass – an online tutoring system that they’ve been working with since 2006.

One of the iPass features is a Writing Clinic. In relaying some details on the design history, he points out that it accommodates visual and auditory learning styles, as well as, of course, textual/verbal. The visual component includes capabilities for both image and video; even more intriguing is the audio integration.

The Writing Clinic includes an audio component that allows students to highlight a part of the text, select a voice type (according to pitch and speed), and click a “Read” button. An advanced text-to-speech engine converts the text to an audio recording, compresses it as an MP3 file (as the compact format greatly improves system response time), and sends the file to an embedded audio player in the student’s browser window.

Providing multiple access points seems particularly relevant for tutoring contexts where students typically struggle with the material, and especially for those whose life and work schedules make it difficult to coordinate face-to-face sessions.

Technorati Tags:
Innovate_Online, iPass

Filed under: Design, Online learning, Teaching, software

Sakai3

I first became familiar with Sakai when I was at Virginia Tech, and at that time (around 2004-05), they were doing some very good work with their instance of it. Sakai now has a screencast that previews some upcoming features planned for its next release – version 3.

It’s got a dashboard that runs on Ajax (or something very similar) so you can move around various elements in a way that suits your needs. You can also completely customize your home page by starting with a blank page, or if you like the visual suggestions of templates, you can choose from various options there too. One key component of this next version is widgets (e.g., create a poll). Traditional LMSs can do this too, but what Sakai seems to be stressing is a better user experience — it’s easier, more intuitive and quicker.

Technorati Tags:
Sakai

Filed under: Distance Education, Online learning, Open Source, software

Embedded Ease

A while back, a colleague and I did a workshop on wikis. Although we’ve sampled other wiki tools, we like PBWiki for educational purposes because it’s easy to use and offers quite a solid variety of functions.

Since we wanted to practice what we were preaching, we wanted to display our presentation in the browser-based wiki space, rather than through the traditional, offline route of PowerPoint. This would also answer a question that we anticipated some of those who came to the workshop would likely have (i.e., How do I or my students embed presentation files?). After all, if the student is required to download it to their local drive, then this kind of works against the philosophy of working within the wiki space since this can already be done very easily with any standard LMS.

PBWiki makes embedding pretty easy to do via either one of two third-party applications (Slideshare or Google Docs/Presentation). Essentially, all you need to do is upload your presentation file (e.g., PPT), publish it, and copy the embed code into your PBWiki page.

Here are a couple of places where you can find more detailed instructions: Slideshare and Google Docs/Presentation.

Technorati Tags:
GoogleDocs, PBwiki, Slideshare

Filed under: Online learning, Teaching, software

SW TX PCA

This year was my first year at the Southwest Texas Popular Culture & American Culture Association (SW TX PCA) conference. I heard about their Technical Writing area through a posting on the ATTW listserv. In the panel I was on, the focus was primarily pedagogical issues and enjoyed some really solid papers on using wikis in the classroom, measuring the time commitment for online teaching, and mine, which looked at scaffolding digital learning environments. Another track I really enjoyed was one that explored genre theory in video games and community building with micro-blogging tools such as Twitter. An added bonus was that the conference was right here in Albuquerque and the weather was wonderfully cooperative (sunny, high 60s, low 70s).

Technorati Tags:
ATTW, SWTXPCA

Filed under: Distance Education, Online learning, Teaching

Linux-LA

Some interesting sessions at the Southern California Linux Expo this weekend

• Open Source Textbooks
• Open Source Software in Education
• College and Open Source

The current economic crisis perhaps accelerates the interest level in the whole sphere of textbook economics. (From the abstract, it looks like there is some philosophical overlap with Negroponte’s well-known One Laptop Per Child Initiative. Since I teach tech writing, I like the inclusion of FLOSS Manuals — the documentation that ideally makes open source software intelligible to more than just those who speak the language of command line. The other two look good for keeping up on changes related to developments in rapidly maturing alternative learning management systems such as Moodle and Drupal.

Technorati Tags:
Learning Management Systems, Linux, Open Source, One Laptop Per Child

Filed under: Online learning, Teaching, Tech

Polychromatic

Wiggio has updated its online collaboration space to include capabilities such as group email addresses, real-time file editing, and photo and video sharing. Although there are many other online collaboration tools (e.g., Basecamp, Zoho Projects), Wiggio primarily targets education and academics. Like these others, it has a pretty expansive array of solid features, but a couple that stand out for me are texting and voice notes.

As someone who teaches online, when I think about collaboration, ease of use is an important factor. With most of the traditional LMSs I’m aware of, texting hasn’t yet been built in, so whenever students want to participate they need to login to the site and then navigate through at least a couple of layers until they reach the place where they share thoughts, ideas, feedback, and so forth. Texting leapfrogs these layers.

The voice notes feature offers the potential to enhance the media richness of the collaborative experience. Again, here too, Wiggio makes it easy (i.e., click and record). When collaborators can not only see and read what another person has written, but also hear him or her, it introduces another dimension that expands it from essentially a monochromatic to polychromatic experience.

Technorati Tags:
Wiggio, Learning Management Systems

Filed under: Collaboration, Design, LMS, Online learning, Tech

Drafts vs. Outbox

My Nokia (6x) went down for a bit today and when it came back online, I went to my txt message drafts folder to re-send those that I presume didn’t transmit. Interestingly, these unsent messages weren’t in the Drafts folder, but in the Outbox folder.

Maybe I’m too accustomed to the Mac Mail interface, but it seems like the Drafts folder would be the better place to store unsent messages, rather than the Outbox. I wonder what testing would reveal? Would more users first check the Drafts or the Outbox? Let the testing begin …

Filed under: Design, Uncategorized , Apple, Nokia

Activating the peripheries

One of my favorite blogs, Web Worker Daily summarizes an interview they recently did with Ross Mayfield of Socialtext. While the occasion was for the launch of 3.0, the general focus of the conversation is on collaborative networks and how they relate to enterprise-level wikis.

In laying the groundwork for talking about the specific details of Socialtext, he emphasizes the value of weak ties or dynamic peripheries. Traditionally, old-school groupware mostly served the needs of the core (e.g., the group’s executive leadership ranks) or the strong ties, but Mayfield’s Socialtext focuses on activating those dynamic peripheries.

Mayfield also explained how Socialtext allows workers to customize their dashboards similar to the way in which they would customize a Facebook page (e.g., images, audio, video, slides, personal info). He goes on to point out that this can be very useful for giving people a greater sense of connectedness especially in those virtual team contexts where members can be spread out widely across time zones and continents with very little, if any, opportunity for F2F interaction. This emphasis on personalizing or customizing virtual work spaces intersects with research such as that by Sarah Hurlburt in the Journal of Online Learning & Teaching where she discusses it in the context of using blogs in her online courses — Personalization of the blog environment is necessary to create the private space effect …).

For anyone interested in reading more about collaboration/network theory and distributed cognition, there’s a hefty volume out there (Latour’s Reassembling the Social; Hutchins’ Cognition in the Wild). One of the more recent entries is Clay Spinuzzi’s Network: Theorizing Knowledge Work in Telecommunications. I haven’t had a chance to read Spinuzzi’s but definitely plan to add it to the ever-expanding reading list.

Technorati Tags:
wiki, Socialtext, Ross Mayfield, Web Worker Daily

Filed under: Collaboration, Design, Online learning

Search-less

As those who follow the distance education technology scene know, the dominant LMSs (e.g., Blackboard/WebCT) have their share of detractors. One of the most common threads of criticism is its lack of currency not only in terms of tool-related technologies (e.g., RSS, mobile phone integration), but usability as well. Today, I was reminded again of why usability remains an issue. When I needed to do a quick search of the Discussion forums today, I found no search box. It seems to me that a readily identifiable Search box is a fundamental element for an LMS. Even if BB/Wct developers haven’t received a critical mass of feedback regarding this, it should be one of those default features added to the design specs.

Filed under: Design, Online learning , LMS, WebCT, Blackboard