Podcast, Vodcast?

Naturally there have been a few sessions on the subject of podcasting, vodcasting, vidcasting, or the generic "netcasting." Call it what you will, many educators are intensely interested in this technology/term/stuff. And yet the conversation is plagued with warnings of tech driving pedagogy. It's a good warning, but I've heard them before. Let's move on. Remember, no significant difference.

Briefly, whatever-casting allows you (the producer) to push media content (video or audio) to subscribers (students). The types of outcomes you can hope to address by pushing media to students include review of materials, slow down of speech (nice for ESL and disability students), preview of materials, maximizing class time for more interactive activities, reaching multiple learning styles, delivering in a mode students enjoy, portably available content and probably many more.

The tools necessary to whatever-cast are readily accessible. The presenter suggested a 4th generation iPod with Belkin mic input and a lapel mic for creation. Another presenter suggested the Sony hard-drive video camera with the Sony wireless mic - pretty neat, but certainly not without some investment.

If I understood Dr. Jackson correctly, at the heart of podcasting in education is a paradigm shift from "learn this" to "learn to think" or from "cover material" to "uncover knowledge." It's compelling, but maybe there is a bit of biased spin in there.

Mingling

I am not the strongest mingler in the crowd. Never have been. But when standing in line for some food or wine or sitting next to people eating, it's hard not to say something. As such, I had the opportunity to chat with several interesting individuals whose names I have forgotten.

MICROSOFT: As I approached the wine table, a charming smile asked if Kirkwood was in Washington. I said no, but that it seemed Kirkwoods are in many places. I asked where she was from and we got to mingling. Turns out she works as a consultant for Microsoft and has been traveling all over the country showcasing Office 2007 and Vista. I asked her how fast she thought adoption of the Office suite would come about. She couldn't nail down a timeline or anything, but did say that most clients she spoke with would make the transition in Fall of '07. The wine table was free and I scored a glass of White Merlot.

BLACKBOARD: The buffet lines were always slow. In one, I waited along with an incredibly sharp Blackboard representative. I found it fascinating that she wanted to attend this conference given the less than warm reception it seems Blackboard has received here. Perhaps they are just going through a rough PR patch. That aside, she was surprised to hear that we were having difficulty with the new product name: "Blackboard Learning System CE6." I explained many faculty and staff told me it wasn't very catchy. I was surprised she was surprised. I mean, really, it isn't very catchy. In terms of product names, it must be the most clumsy I have ever heard. She graciously told me she would pass on these thoughts. Then, it seemed we were at the end of the buffet line, but most of the food was gone. She was bothered the chicken was gone.

MOODLE: This might not technically count as mingling since I actually stood at the Moodle booth while talking. In the first two minutes of our conversation, the representative made two star-trek references. I think that says something about Moodle, but I'm not sure what exactly. I remember one was the adjective "Borgish" in reference to the kind of growing collaboration Moodle was enjoying and seeking out. I didn't call him on the generally evil assimilation the Borg is typically associated with. Instead, I asked him about a complaint I often hear from our database admins: the number of users can break the system and drop data. He told me about Open University with 150,000 users. People are making this happen.

Modeling and Simulation

StarLogo software was demonstrated. It's an open-source, MIT created, simulation tool that is supposed to be easier to work with than others if its kind. Still, programming will be necessary, but the kind of programming that can be accomplished by trained 3rd-graders. Still, it might not appeal to a terribly wide audience. But if there are simulation needs, this might be a good tool for the job.

Meeting Learner Needs

The featured presentation this morning was Dr. Brent Wilson from University of Colorado at Denver. The subtitle of his talk was "Pushing and Pulling till We Get it Right."

I struggled to find the heart of Dr. Wilson's talk. He had some rather interesting slides, and with any luck the ITC will make these available in the near future, but the talk meandered through the issues of distance learning like an elephant in a city. I'm still not clear who was pushing and what was being pulled, but still, some of the slides and comments were interesting. I'm paraphrasing:

• There is a difference when instructors/students choose to teach/learn online from when they are assigned to do so.
  
• People doing matters.
  
• Practice deliberately to improve.
  
• Learn to pay attention.
  
• The online course is a learning laboratory.
  
• Think of yourself as an artist.
  
• Explore the transformation/journey of the learner (Mythic View).

My apologies to Dr. Wilson for over-bulletizing his talk.

Pre-conference Workshop

This workshop I attended, Designing and Delivering Successful Online Instructor Training, could potentially be controversial. The idea that instructors would be required to gain certification to teach online is not likely going to be widely welcomed. Still, the idea appeals to me. And I might go as far as to predict that online instructors will grow accustomed to more attention than their F2F colleagues, and they will actually welcome it. Or it could all blow up with strong emotional, moral and ethical objections that will ultimately preserve the status quo. Not that there is anything wrong with status quo. I simply enjoy tinkering in the hopes of making improvements.

With this rough context in place, let me tell you a bit about the Online Teacher Certification program at Central New Mexico Community College.

In order to teach online, adjunct faculty must enroll and complete a 12 week online certification course. The course is taught by faculty and when finished, faculty are guaranteed a section. The guarantee acts as the incentive to complete the course.

During the course of the 12 weeks, students learn about best practices, theory, research, the learning management system and what it's like to be an online learner. Faculty must complete assignments, contribute to discussion boards, participate in peer reviews, and perhaps most importantly, work on the framework for their own online course. It's intensive.

This certification course grew from the faculty at CNM in an effort to improve and ensure future online courses at CNM will continue to deliver quality education. More information at the link above.

In the end, it wouldn't be too terribly difficult to expand my current Designing Online Instruction course to include more about teaching online and course development. And then make that available to anyone interested, especially new online instructors.

Opening Keynote

eLearning 2007 kicked off last night with an opening keynote by Dr. Joel Greenberg of The Open University. The title of his talk was to be "Online Learning: Are all the Pieces Finally in Place?" but this title changed to the more vernacular "Are We Nearly There Yet?" which, in the American vernacular would just be "Are We There Yet?"

That little linguistical curiousity plagued my attention for the vast majority of the talk. It's a much more intelligent question to be asking than the American English (AE) version. In the AE version, we must take it less than literally. Naturally, if we were there, the vehicle would no longer be moving and the question would not likely need asking. The British version insinuates a longing as opposed to an eventuality, a direction as opposed to a destination. The AE version assumes too much I'm afraid.

If I didn't misinterpret Dr. Greenberg's remarks, the answer to this question is perhaps that we will always be nearly there. Or as my parents enjoyed telling us in answer to this question on our family road trips, "We're getting closer." But the footnote would be that our destination is also shifting. The Open University is certainly paving some of the road ahead with their development, research and sharing. (note to self: take a look at Moodle's ePortfolio and upgrades in May).

Image Labeler

I am on a roll today.

I created this little Flash tool, the Image Labeler, for a training session on Flash. I want instructors to come out of my training session with something useful. Hope this is useful. It is learning tool, so it might not be the absolute best way to set up a component like this, but I think it will show participants fundamental aspects of Flash and actionscript. If they want to learn more, picking this component apart is, I hope, a nice way to learn. If they just want to customize the labeler, that's also very much a possibility.

The Image Labeler is an image hot-spot annotation tool. Roll over the image to see the label associatied with that area of the image. Currently, as many as 50 hot-spots can be added to each screen, but this number is rather arbirtrary. Try out the example linked above to see what I mean.

eLearning 2007

Rule #1 of blogging is to keep it fresh. I have not been so good with rule #1 lately. But these next couple of days should change that. I am attending the annual eLearning conference hosted by the ITC (Instructional Technology Council) Network. The sun is shining in Albuquerque, the warmth is exciting, I am well rested, my luggage has yet to arrive. But who needs clean socks to absorb the teachings and learnings of colleagues in distance education?! Actually, dirty socks is just one more reason we need to improve distance education for everyone.

artpad

More creativity and more sharing and collaboration. Just more. I like it. Check it out for yourself at artpad.

Spresent

I saw this on one of my favorite vidcasts, geekbrief.tv. Spresent is a web-based presentation tool. I'm sure the world is super-saturated with powerpointesque presentations, I know I have sat through my fair share of terrible bullet screen after bullet screen. So there must be a need for these things, right? One need I would like to see more is pushing students to create presentations with these tools. And that is where something like Spresent might really come in handy. A student can share a presentation and collaborate with other students and when they are all finished, a simple publish button will send whoever an email with the finished product attached. Here is one I created for an introduction to the Flash interface.

There are some drawbacks, but this is still in beta, so with any luck these things will only get better. The most noticeable shortcoming was including images -- you need them uploaded to the web somewhere. They do offer Flickr integration, which seemed great, but for some reason, the interface did not function properly. In the end I had to upload the images to my personal site and link to them there.

I hope they make the powerpoint conversion feature part of the free service. Keep a watch on this one.