We've Moved

If you are looking for me

HERE

I'm not here.

But you CAN find me

HERE

February CHSS Hybrid/Online SIG Meeting

Welcome to the blog and live blog of the February CHSS Hybrid/Online SIG Meeting. Today's meeting will be taking place in Dickson Hall as well as using a pilot version of Wimba Classroom.

In addition to a presentation by Patricia Kahn, Director of the Technology Training and Integration division of the Office of Information Technology, I will also be demonstrating a product we have just started a pilot project for called CoveritLive, which is a live blogging tool. You have seen me use it here in the blog before and I will be using it for today's meeting as well.

Please feel free to join the conversation between 12pm and 2pm. You can join by simply entering your comments at the bottom of the CoveritLive insert below. Please know that comments, at least the first one, have to be moderated. So if there is a delay in your comment posting to the blog, give me a few moments to approve it.

Considering Enterprise Version of CoveritLive

Recently the folks at CoveritLive (CiL) have announced an enterprise version of their product. Those who follow my blog know that I have used CiL in the past to blog events, such as presentations, etc... The enterprise version of CiL is free for education and so the CHSS is considering what options might be available to us in this regard and if this is an opportunity we want to consider.

This afternoon at 2:30pm EST I will be doing a run through of both the back end and front end of CiL with our CHSS Director of Technology Services, Milos Topic.

So come back to this blog at 2:30pm and just type a comment in the appropriate field below. You won't see it now, but around 2:30pm when I "open" the event, then you will see a field for visitors to comment in.

Need help with video

I have dipped my toe in the pool of video making. I have several faculty members who will be using Second Life this semester and a request was made to produce a few “how to” videos the instructors can assign their students the first week of school. This way, when we meet as a group the second week they will be well on their way.

The first video to make is obviously how to sign up for an account. I’ll follow that up with how to change your password, how to down load the application to a computer (or flash drive), and how to navigate the start of NMC’s Orientation Island.

I’ve never made a machinima or video like this before. I’ve toyed around with doing it, but never actually tried to make a real nice one. So today, I set down to make a video of how to sign up for your account.

Here is the result:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YwJDQwMauA

This is what I did to create this video.

First, I downloaded Snapz Pro, the 14 day free trial, and shot the sign up process. I then imported the resulting .mov file into iMovie. I created the introduction, added the titles, music, sound effects, and then saved it. Then I SHARED it as a QuickTime file and saved that to my desktop. That is what I uploaded to YouTube.

The first time I did it I used the WEB option, but that was SO small, and unreadable, so I then saved it as WEB STREAMING. You see the result. The only other option I saw was “ORIGINAL”, which would have made the file too big to upload to YouTube.

I don’t know why it is so fuzzy. Any help anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated. We really need it to not be fuzzy and I have more to do for classes to start next week.

It would be useful to the community to post your comments here; however, if you’d prefer, you are welcome to email them to me directly.

Social Constructivism - "you are here"

Like on a map, I'm looking around academically for the big red spot that tells me
"you are here"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Frost, Robert. Mountain Interval. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920; Bartleby.com, 1999. www.bartleby.com/119/. 12 January 2009.

Recently I posted to my social networks a request for “who and what should I be reading about social constructivism”. I got the following responses:

* Dewey
* Gee
* Werstch
* Activity theory
* Vygotsky
* Jonassen
* An article by D. Robbie and L. Zeeng, published in the International Journal of Learning, called “Engaging Student Social Networks to Motivate Learning: Capturing, Analyzing, and Critiquing the Visual Image.”
* An article (or is it a series of articles, I can’t tell at first glance) I believe is titles “Philosophy of Technology Meets Social Constructivism” by Phillip Brey, from Twente University, in the Society for Philosophy and Technology. The link for that article is http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v2n3n4/brey.html

Dewey, I’m guessing is John Dewey.
Gee probably has to be James Paul Gee
Wertsch must be James Wertsch

I’m seeing a trend here – I’ll take People With the First Initial J, Alex.

Lev Vygotsky is of course a must for this. I should probably read JeanPiaget also, although clearly Piaget is less about social constructivism, but still.
David Jonassen I’ve already run into, so he is definitely on my list
The two specific articles provided are definitely going to be looked into.
I’d also found Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Frances K. Stage _ I’ll be looking into them a bit more.

This is clearly a great start – but there has to be more. Is there a specific work you like that deals with constructivism, specifically social constructivism?

If the theoretical hair on the back of your neck stands up when you think about social constructivism (a lot of hooey, you think), then what should I be reading that you believes supports that viewpoint. Academic need to be critical thinkers – we need to be able to take a 360 degree look at something. I might not end up agreeing but at the very least I’ll have a better idea why I’m focusing on this.

Post your thoughts here – or reach out to me by email, through Facebook, or through Twitter.

Langauge, Race, and Power

Today I'll be covering the MSU Center of Pedagogy 2009 Advance. We're meeting in the 7th Floor Conference Center of University Hall on the campus of Montclair State University. See the LiveBlog below for details throughout the day AND you are invited to add your own comments, which will appear in the blog and, if you have questions, I'll be able to ask them on your behalf.

SLER makes the Highlights of 2008 list

Each week, on Tuesday night, from 5:30pm to 6:30pm Eastern time, I host the Second Life Education Roundtable, or SLER for short.

The meetings started last spring. I was looking for a place to meet other education professionals to talk about issues that were important. Nothing met at a time that was convenient for me so I decided to start my own meeting.

I determined that I wanted it to be a place where everyone would feel welcome, and anyone could chime in when the wanted. The best way to do that would be for everyone to sit around a round table - no head of the table, everyone can see everyone else, etc...

The idea took off and at one point we were hitting from 40-50 people each week.

This last Tuesday we held our first meeting of the year and had a blow out. The meeting featured Chris Collins, Sarah Robbins, Jonathon Richter, Jeremy Kemp, Anthony Fontana, and Daniel Livingston. It was our first "panel" discussion - where each of the panelist talked briefly about their view on the potential, possible, and probable future of higher education in virtual worlds.

We had 90 people at one point. I had to cap the sim at 90 (meaning I blocked any more than 90 from coming in). I wanted to make sure we did not crash out. Even then, close to a dozen people that I know of were IMing me and others to try and get in.

Certainly the response was mainly for the star power of the panel. If you don't know those people, Google them!

How nice to have as a follow up to our best and biggest meeting ever, to be featured in the Second Life Highlights in Education 2008 blog.
http://blog.secondlife.com/2009/01/09/education-in-second-life-highlights-from-2008/

Montclair State University has made an exceptional commitment to Second Life. They trusted me nearly 2 years ago when people were still really joking about virtual environments. They have committed resources, time, and great support, for all the work that is going on - not just the Roundtable.

A small but dedicated faculty is engaged in what is going on. Congrats to everyone from MSU - the nod to the SLER is only one indication of the great work that is going on.

SnapSession - DimDim

For today’s SnapSession I’ve decided to look into DimDim. DimDim is a web based collaboration tool. According to their main splash page, you can – “Host web conferences for up to 20 people free.” and they claim its the “worlds easiest web conference – lets you deliver synchronized live presentations, whiteboards, and web pages while sharing voice and video over the Internet – with no download required.”

The sign up process, including glancing over the main web page, took me – literally, less than 3 minutes. They don’t ask for a ton of information up front, there is always an option to update SETTINGS and information later on. This is smart in that it gets people in fast. I suppose, they run the risk of NOT getting this information, but clearly this is a strategy of doing what is good for the user as opposed to the company.

The first time you sign in, after setting up the account, a pop up comes up that asks you if you want help setting up your preferences. One could opt out here and go right to the main page or fine-tune some of the settings. The options seemed fairly straight forward, although I did not take too much time trying to figure things out.

The main options presented (biggest buttons) are to join a meeting or host a meeting. Quite logical, since that is really what most people are coming in for. Since I didn’t have anyone to chat with at the moment, I decided to poke around a bit.

I wanted to see what would happen if I started a meeting, without someone to join me. When you start a meeting, it asks you what features you want to include – so you can say yes to voice, but no to video, or any combination of 6 or 7 things. I like the flexibility of this – options, but no bells/whistles that aren’t needed for each instance – and things can be changed for the next time. Then, before beginning, it asks you for permission to use the voice and camera – I like this a lot. This tells me they care about privacy, somewhat, but also that THEY want to make sure YOU know you are now “on.”

One thing I could not figure out, when I started the meeting it did not automatically find my built in web cam. It was picking up my voice from the mic, but not the video.

At first I thought the only way you can get people to your conference is to use the built in email invite tool. I did find that there is a way to get a URL and give it to people, but it was not intuitive as to where it was. Perhaps going through one of the tutorials would be beneficial, but the point of these SnapsSessions is to see how much can I figure out in 15 minutes without help or tutorials.

One other good note, people can dial in – they give you a phone number and pass code – so one does not even need Internet access.

Another plus, you can share your computer screen, but something needs to be installed in order to do that.

So I started the meeting and sent the URL out to my network. A few minutes later, someone signed in and joined my meeting. When she joined in I started recording the session. We were able to chat – ALMOST in real time. There was a delay of a second or two and if you don’t have a headset on, you get that “Yankee Stadium Announcer” feedback loop. So everyone needs headsets! I thought the video might work if someone joined me, but we still couldn’t figure out how it worked. If someone out there knows, please let me know.

When the preset time to end the meeting came up (that was one of the settings I played around with), it asked me if I wanted to extent the meeting – nice feature! I said yes and we continued for another few minutes.

When she signed off, I stopped the recording and a pop up let me know that each recording session is separate and that if I hit record again it would overwrite the first one. Then it asked me if I was sure I wanted to stop. When I said yes, it told me that once I ended the meeting (as opposed to the recording), it would put it together and eventually email it to me. That’s ANOTHER cool feature.

Here is what I got in the email:
You have a recorded DimDim Web Meeting session that can be viewed or downloaded.

*****

View

Click here to view Recording

Click here to view Chat Transcript

Download

Click here to download Recording

Click here to download Chat Transcript

*****

Clicking the “view recording” opened a web browser and gave me a black screen with the video only – but the audio was really pretty good.

I’d like to get a group together to test this out – a bigger group. If you’re up for it, leave a comment here or email me directly.

All in all, this product gets a thumbs up. Easy to use and fills a need. This could work for a classroom, although not as well as Wimba Classroom. But it is an alternative for small groups, impromptu groups, or meetings.

Undergraduate Students and Technology - Part 6

Continuing commentary and opinions on content of The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008.

On page 14 of this report, after briefly discussing the Digital Divide, the authors launch into a discussion on Social Networking Sites, or SNSs. Based on the responses to their surveys “Overall, 85.2% of respondents are now using SNSs” (p14).

Although they had close to 100 institutions participating in the 2008 survey, there were only 44 institutions that had participated in the three years (p14). Of those, there was an increase in usage of 14% over 36 months (74.8% to 88.8%) and that daily usage is up 26%! (32.8% to 58.8%).

In the conclusion of the Executive Summary, the authors indicate that they “found a widespread attitude about IT resources – no matter how students thing about tem – are best situated in learning environments where technology is balanced with other learning activities, especially face-to-face interactions with faculty and students in the classroom.” (p16) This is not entirely surprising to me since I’d have to guess that the vast majority of the institutions surveyed were primarily traditional brick-and-mortar institutions. There is certainly a representation of students who have taken hybrid, blended, and even entirely online courses, but the statistics might be different if there were a few entirely online institutions represented.

If you are interested in having your institution participate in the 2009 survey, the URL for more information and the survey is http://www.educause.edu/ECAR/Reference/StudentStudy/5822.

The Introduction is titled “Reshaping Campus Communications and Community through Social Network Sites”, was written by Nicole B. Ellison from Michigan State University, and begins on page 19.

On page 21 Ellison refers to an article from the New York Time, written by Brian Stelter and published on January 21st, 2008, which indicates that MySpace is the “largest SNS in the United States”. I don’t have the reference handy but I do remember recently hearing that Facebook has since surpassed that. If anyone knows where that information is (or if I can find it again), please go ahead and post it into the comments.

That’s all for now, more on this next time.

Undergraduate Students and Technology - Part 5

Continuing commentary and opinions on content of The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008.

I’ve decided to forgo the discussion about students and plagiarism; I’ll save that for another day, and go on with the discussion from the ECAR paper.

“The majority of comments, however, were negative. Four themes emerged – that the lack of face-to-face interaction detracts from learning, that online courses facilitate cheating, that technical problems still exist, and that online courses require students to “teach themselves”, making the course more demanding.

Ok – wow – where do I start with this.

1. Lack of face-to-face interaction detracts from learning
Ok, so I’m not sure I disagree with this, but probably NOT for the same reasons as the students. I do believe that it’s important to be face-to-face during a portion of the class. I hold with high regard whatever is happening, physically, when two or more people are in the same place at the same time. Call it vibes, call it aura, call it energy, call it whatever you want. However, this “thing” does not exist when people meet in cyberspace (or don’t meet at all, if the non-face-to-face portion is asynchronous.)
That’s my perspective, and I’d guess a small percentage of student think the same thing. But I’m willing to bet that there is more behind this for most students. We’ve seen that students are social and we’ve also seen that they don’t want their social networking tools to be taken over by the educational process. But it is that very social thing that students get from each other. They make friends, they develop relationships, they distract each other, they cover for each other, they do a lot of things that can’t be done when one is sitting on campus in his/her dorm and the other is at home in her/his bedroom, and one is at Starbucks.

2. That online courses facilitate cheating
Ok – so students are worried about cheating? LOL, no really? Students are worried about cheating? ROFLMAO!!!!! Oh, pull the other one! I’m not going to paint all students with the same brush, only MOST of them. I think the only reasons students are worried about cheating, most of them, is that they are afraid someone is going to get credit for cheating and a) they won’t be able to take advantage of it, b) they think it will make them look worse, of c) all of the above! There is this belief out there that classroom learning is a race, and that only so many people can get “good” grades, and if someone gets an A, and they cheated, then I might not get as good a grade because that other people took my A. I don’t buy the lion’s share of the bell curve of students care about cheating.

3. That technical problems still exist
This one still cracks me up, especially today. They have no problems teaching themselves how to use mobile devices, social networking spaces, and advanced video or computer games, but they think Blackboard is too hard to learn! I’ve actually had students tell me they couldn’t watch the YouTube video I assigned because it wouldn’t work on their computer

4. That online courses require students to “teach themselves” making the course more demanding.
To me, this translates to “Holy crap, look at all this work I have to do which I can’t fake now because I can’t sit in the back of the class an pretend that I read, answered, followed.” The use of technology actually makes the students do the amount of work they would have had to do had they participated in the class as it was designed. This is, of course, based on the idea that the course was designed properly. There is always the case that a technology is NOT being used properly and that, in fact, the class is harder then it would have been if it had been offered in person.
The other part of this is that students want us to give them the answers, because they believe learning is being able to tell us what we want them to tell us when we test them. We (and I mean society here) have these student so accustomed to the pitchers/vessels way of learning that if we are not giving them the answer, well, how are they going to know what to tell us back on the test. You want US to come up with the answer, they ask? Are you kidding, just tell me, so I can get a good grade on the test.

My goodness, there is so much more wrapped up in that. Perhaps I’ll come back and revisit that sometime, for now I’ll wrap up and move on in the next post.

Undergraduate Students and Technology - Part 4

Continuing commentary and opinions on content of The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008.

Still in the Executive Summary section,
“A much never mode of communication, social networking, has become nearly ubiquitous as well: 85.2% of respondents use SNSs (Primarily Facebook), and most do so on a daily basis to keep in touch with others. Text messaging (used by 83.6%) and instant messaging (IM) (used by 73.8%) are immensely popular, especially among younger students. More than one-third of respondents are also interactive on the Internet by contributing content to blogs, wikis, and photo or video websites.” (11)

I don’t have much to say about this, but I thought it was interesting. From time to time I may just pop out there a quote I underlined, even though I have no real commentary to add to it.

A reminder that the n on this was 27,317 from ninety-eight institutions, consisting of only Freshman and Seniors, as identified by the institution.

Another note I found interesting in this section was that “the emerging online virtual worlds (such as Second Life) are already being used by about 1 in 11 respondents (8.8%).” (p11) Over 8%? Almost 9%? Nearly 1 in 10 students are already using Second Life? Really? That just seems like a huge number to me, especially given the conversations I’m used to seeing on the Second Life Educators (SLED) list. To find archives and sign up for the SLED list, go here:
https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators

To find out more about SL’s commitment to Education, go here:
http://secondlifegrid.net/slfe/education-use-virtual-world

“Although respondents are generally enthusiastic about IT, most say they prefer only a “moderate” amount of IT in their courses (59.3%).” (p11). I do not find this surprising in some way and in other ways I do. I guess students don’t see computers or email or other standard technology as technology and what they DO consider technology, they use for fun (or social reasons) and they don’t want to do work with a social tool.

“Of special note is that although few respondents (4.2%) used podcasts this quarter/semester, student comments from focus groups and from the survey were extremely positive about podcasts as a supplemental tool for courses. This mimics last year’s finding. ECAR also asked students if they liked to learn using specific types of technologies. The most frequently cited item was running Internet searches (80.2%). More than one-third of respondents (44.3%) say they like to learn through text-based conversations over e-mail, IM , and text messaging or by contributing to websites, blogs, or wikis (35.5%). Interestingly, a solid half (50.8%) like to learn through programs they can control, such as video games or simulations. This is important in the context of discussion about digital game-based learning in higher education and whether the extent of learning justifies the resources required to implement a game.” (p12). From this they also have a footnote, referencing VanEck’s EDUCAUSE Review article “Digital Game-Based Learning: It’s Not Just the Digital Natives Who Are Restless”, which can be found at http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/DigitalGameBasedLearningl/40614

The Internet searches answer doesn’t surprise me at all – this is how students find content for their papers. I often wonder how genuine they are when they say they didn’t realize they’d copied and pasted something from the Internet right into their paper.

Ok – that a subject all by itself, I’ll have to cover that next time.

Undergrad Students and Technology - Part 3

Continuing commentary and opinions on content of The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008.


In the Executive Summery of this ECAR report, the authors note, “social networking sites (SNSs) [are} a technology that students are enthusiastically adopting and that is already changing the social fabric of universities.” (p9) Does this make the SNS the latest iPod?

Being a devote Mac person, I use iPod and not the more general MP3 player. iPod has, much to Apple’s delight, become the “Kleenex” or “Xerox” of music players. So many people still make Xerox copies, even if they are using a Canon, Kyocera, or other type of machine – it is still a Xerox machine. To that same end, most people say iPod when meaning an MP3 player.

Back to my point, are SNSs the next iPod. How many instructors out their use podcasts in their classes? Ok, keep your hands up. Now, how many would like to use podcasts in their teaching? Ok, probably a pretty good amount. Why? Did someone one day wake up and say “hey, podcasts might be a great way to get information to the students so they can listen to it any place or any time!” Or is it more that students were carrying around the iPods already and someone got smart and said “Hey, they already have the tool, lets figure out how to leverage that. Lets give them content the can keep on their iPods.”

Students already carry around mobile devices with them. We can’t say “cell phone” any more because voice services are only a fraction of what some of these devices do. More and more we are seeing faculty adopt the transmission of whatever content (or process) they want to utilize for their courses to easy access on these mobile devices.

Montclair State University is a leader in this, receiving national awards for their groundbreaking participation in the RAVE Wireless program. This not only makes use of the tool the students are all carrying around but it was designed to also provide added security, especially important in a day when crisis can strike without warning.

Now, we are all noticing that students are making exceptional use of SNSs. [Palm to forehead] Of course, lets figure out how to make use of this as an educational tool. Caution! Danger Will Robinson. Students can access the content on the phone or iPod when THEY want to, so its access and availability at their own schedule and place. This might explain why they don’t want us as their “friends” in Facebook – since that gives us unfettered, or even partially fettered access to them, it gives the control to us, and not them.

The moral of this, I believe, set up systems that students can be a part of, without getting in their face (or Facebook), and you’re likely to get better buy in.

Do you agree? Are you on Facebook? (I am, feel free to find me , I’m the AJ Kelton at Montclair) Can you think of ways to use Facebook in class – if so, how? What other SNSs do you belong to? Would you want them to use them in a class you were teaching? How about one you were taking? Feel free to leave comments and we’ll pick this up again next time.

Undergrad Students and Technology - Part 2

Continuing commentary and opinions on content of The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008.

As I mentioned yesterday, in the Fall of 2007 I was teaching an introduction to college writing course, its MSU’s equivalent of first year English. The plan was to use several different social technologies in the class as part of the emphasis on the class theme, which was images of the self, perception, and identity. One of those social networking sites (SNSs) was Facebook (FB). The idea was to use FB groups to work and communicate some things but to also use it as a medium to investigate our selves (who we friend, what other groups we belong to, etc..).

The response was a pretty typical bell curve in that a few students were happy to see us using FB, the majority fell someplace between “ok, yeah, sure, whatever” and “I’m not so sure about this but you’re requiring it so I’ll do it”. A small, but very vocal, percentage, outright refused to open up their FB accounts to me as a “friend”. I told them they could do a limited view, still no deal. These few eventually obliged or opened an account under a different email and only use that account for this class. The last small, but again, very vocal percentage simply refused to use FB. They wanted no part of it, they didn’t use it, they didn’t like it, they didn’t approve of it, and they didn’t want to have any additional information about themselves out on the Web, especially on FB. All relented in the end, but it did take some coaxing.

This supports the point originally made in the last posting that students, most of them at least, will be happy to belong to a class group, or an university group, but they don’t want their teacher on their friends list. More and more, around our campus, I’ve seen student organizations saying “find us on Facebook” instead of listing a web site. FB IS their web site. No hosting cost, no HTML coding or uploading pages and links.

Educators ignore the power of social networks at their own peril. Saying that the anything “social” has no place in the educational process is doing two things that are, in my opinion, quite dangerous. First, it is ignoring the way students today communicate with each other and an essential way they process information. Second, it is suggesting that education, and learning, should NOT be a social activity and I believe there is great benefit to the social nature of learning.

I’m not suggesting we give up other avenues in favor of this, just that this gets added as an arrow in a quiver that can always use more arrows.

Perhaps, in the next entry, I’ll actually get back to the contents of the ECAR report. : -)

Undergrad Students and Technology - Part 1

I wish I had a dollar for every time I said I needed to make blogging part of my regular routine. And I have tried, a number of times. So this time I’m not going to say that. What I am going to say is that I need to get a number of things in my life into a regular routine.

I recently attended a meeting and in preparation for that we were asked to read “The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008.” This is not something that I would have had access to if it weren’t provided to me for this meeting. MSU does not have a subscription to ECAR. When my own Research Bulletin appeared in ECAR in August of 2007 I suggested MSU might want to subscribe but I think there is just not funding for this, or nobody wants to pony up.

So, in reading this I found myself underlining a LOT of things. My plan is to take 15 minutes or so out of my day and read through the report, posting into the blog what I underlined and why. I hope this can be a conversation, so feel free to post your thoughts about my thoughts in the COMMENTS sections (below). At the very least, I hope this gives you something to think about.

The reason we were asked to review this had to do with an entire section on social networking sites, or SNSs. In the forward, on page 5, Ron Yanosky proclaims SNSs a “quintessential new [form] that define a generation.” I found this to be a bold statement right up front, but I don’t disagree. In fact, I hope to make this very issue part of my ongoing research.

The survey that this report is based on found that 85% of the respondents use SNSs and that number jumped to “95% of those 18-19 years old” (p5). The n on this is 27,317 students from a variety of different institutions, both in size and focus, and only those who the schools identified as freshman or seniors. The n is the response number and not those who received the email invite.

Another surprise is that their findings indicate that “students are neither obsessed with [SNSs} nor careless in the way they share information about themselves.” (p5) I found this most interesting given the number of young people who foolishly post pictures of themselves on sites like Facebook that they will certainly later come to regret anyone else having seen, like a potential employer. Forget that some are posting pictures of themselves doing things that are illegal.

In written comments that were provided, “some students vociferously objects in their written comments to any institutional intrusion into SNSs.” (p6) To that same extent, I’ve found many students like to see groups and organizations from the school in Facebook. So they want us in their they just don’t want us to “friend” them.

Last year I required Facebook for the class that I was teaching and I got a very interesting response from the students. More on this next blog.

Snap Session - Word Clouds

Tsk tsk – shame on me, I know. I haven’t posted one of my 15-minute Snap Sessions in a while. Things have been hectic, with a lot of travel and many presentations.

Want to know what I’ve been up to since the last snap session posted here? Check here
http://www.sorry-afk.com/Publications/Publications.html
and here
http://www.sorry-afk.com/Presentations/Presentations.html
and here
http://www.sorry-afk.com/Committees/Committees.html

I poke into my bag of “apps to try” and decided instead of focusing on one, I would mention a few that I like. There are little apps that dedicated 15 minutes to figure out and test would have been over kill. They have pretty dedicated purposes, as you will see.

The first one I really like is called Wordle. Wordle (http://www.wordle.net) creates a “word cloud”, which is a visual image of the words used in a document, with used the most often appearing larger than other words.



The sample above is a word cloud of this blog entry up to the point above the image.

You can also take a URL and create a word cloud from that. For example, here is a word cloud of my last blog.



An excellent example of the use of word clouds is the recent blog posted by the President-Elect Obama’s transition team on the subject of health care
http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/join_the_discussion_daschles_healthcare_response/

One of my plans is to go back into my web site and make word clouds for my publications. I might even do that for my blog entries here and at
http://ajblogsat.wordpress.com/

Well – it looks like I was actually able to spend a good deal of time talking about this one application. I can see some great uses of this, especially in writing class.

One idea, not just for a writing class, might be to have students do a word cloud for a paper they are working on in order to get a good visual idea of the words they are using.

How else could word clouds be used in education?

first stab

The first suggestion is to work on your "about" page. I think this is a good idea since it, as the instruction says, is how readers get information about you in order to contextualize the content of the blog.

I don't have an about page in my blog but I do have an area in the top header. I decided to add some text there - which includes my name, my title, where I work, how to get me by email, and a link to my web site (which explains why I use "sorry.afk" - http://www.sorry-afk.com)

I'll come back to this first days entry as there was more to read and perhaps more to update. Until then....

30D2BBB

href="http://www.teach42.com/2008/10/23/be-a-better-blogger-in-just-30-days/">
I'm going to give the 30 days to being a better blogger (30d2bbb) a stab.

#NC08MSU Portrait of a Micro-Blogger: Have You Twittered or Plurked Recently?

Portrait of a Micro-Blogger: Have You Twittered or Plurked Recently? Presenter: Laura Nicosia

#NC08MSU Pageflakes vs. Blackboard: An Exploration of Content Delivery in Foreign Language Education

Pageflakes vs. Blackboard: An Exploration of Content Delivery in Foreign Language Education
Presenter:Enza Conforti

Keynote Address: Curt Garbett, Spencer Johnson Partners

Keynote for this year's Northeast Connect 08