2004¦~10¤ë28¤é

Can blogs drive better business?. Note from Tony Perkins to AO readers: Sun Microsystems just launched their own Keiretsu (private group and weblog) within AO this week which may be joined and viewed at http://sun.alwayson-network.com As part of this launch, I agreed to be interviewed by Sun on my favorite subject. The beginning of the interview follows. To read and comment upon the entire interview you can check out Sun's... [AlwaysOn Network] 11:36:31 AM

Picture Mosaic Bulding Tools. http://andreaplanet.com/andreamosaic/ 10:46:35 AM

Article: Honey, I Shrunk the eLearning 0 Reads     Handheld computers are ready to deliver robust eLearning–like the media-rich learning experiences normally run on powerful desktop computers–and a Canadian company has developed a powerful new technology to bring full-bodied online instruction into the palms of learners everywhere. Fredericton, New Brunswick (PRWEB) October 22, 2004 -- The year is 2006. Midnight. The place is a small village in Nigeria where Dr. Pat Howe, after a grueling day of treating dozens of typhus cases, lies in his tent miles away from the nearest electrical outlet and brushes up on how to care for diabetic patients with acute coronary syndrome. His learning platform is a 2 by 3 inch backlit screen that he holds in his hand and manipulates with a tiny plastic stylus. The course he’s taking resides on a server several thousand miles away. Today, handheld computers such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) are saving thousands of lives in underdeveloped areas like Botswana and Uganda. Information beamed to these devices by satellite provides instant access to diagnostic and treatment procedures, patient profiles and drug effectiveness analyses to doctors working in remote locations where land-based Internet connections don’t exist. So far their use has been restricted mostly to reference materials. The kind of media-rich presentation features necessary for effective learning – features such as animation, simulation, graphically enhanced scenarios, video and audio – have not been possible given the small screen and limited memory of handhelds. This has been changed by a new generation of PDAs. Devices like the Hewlett-Packard iPaq, the Toshiba GENIOe and the Casio Cassiopeia are more powerful than many desktop computers a few years ago. Engage Interactive, an eLearning company in Atlantic Canada, has developed a courseware technology that takes advantage of the increased muscle power of PDAs to make media-rich eLearning possible anywhere in the world. “Since the beginning, the standard slogan for computer-based training has been training anywhere…anytime,” said John Heinstein, VP of Software Development at Engage Interactive. “The wireless delivery of training through handheld computers finally makes this true.” “In the past,” said Mr. Heinstein, “the devices weren’t powerful enough. Now they are. Now we can bring the feature-rich learning potential of Flash-based eLearning into the wireless realm of PDAs and deliver high quality instruction to anywhere.” Creating an engine capable of developing PDA-ready courseware was no small task. “One thing that helped greatly,” said Mr. Heinstein, “was the efficiency of our existing courseware engine. It separates content from presentation. In other words, content components like the actual instruction are separated from components like navigation, menus, bookmarking and other functionality.” “Even the new generation of PDAs are still not as powerful as current desktops,” said Engage’s VP of Instructional Design, Jeff Maston, “and the screens are still small. We had to optimize the instruction to make it work smoothly on handhelds. We kept file sizes as small as possible and used animation, simulations and graphics only when they were essential to the instruction. In effect, strictly enforcing sound instructional principles helped us to optimize the courseware for PDAs.” “The underlying technologies that allow the content to be delivered are important,” said Mr. Maston. “But not as important as the content itself – the actual instruction. So there’s a degree of aesthetic appeal that must accompany the interface.” “Our training is packed with features,” said Liz Goulard, Director of Media Arts. “We needed to shrink things for the smaller PDA screen without compromising usability. And we needed to avoid having the screen look cluttered. It forced us to re-think our interface and come up with new ways to present its components. For instance, instead of a fly-out menu, we used a drop-down menu. For large complex charts, we created a zoomable viewer. It allows you to see an expanded view of sections of the chart.” “Rather than create a whole new system for PDA courseware,” said Mr. Heinstein, “we integrated the PDA presentation features into our existing system. We made some changes to the underlying programming and wrote some new utilities. Now, with just a few changes the same training can be served up as both desktop and PDA courseware.” “This technology is available on higher end PDAs,” said Mr. Heinstein, “which are becoming increasingly more popular as people integrate learning into their workflow. A couple of years ago, the Stanford School of Medicine set a goal to have a PDA in the lab coat pocket of every one of its Medical School students. Since then the use of handheld computers in medicine has developed into a phenomenon called eHealth that integrates learning, reference and a wide variety of medical tools into electronic delivery.” “Even outside the applications in remote areas and medicine, there’s a general trend toward mobility and the need for instant access to information anytime and anywhere,” said Mr. Heinstein. “This includes access to learning.” “We expect our PDA courseware technology to be especially popular outside North America,” said Mr. Heinstein. “According to the market firm IDC, China has become the second largest market in the world for handheld computers. Mark Perkins at iBIZ claims the PDA and handheld market is exploding in Europe. And Latin America already has more wireless Internet subscribers than land-based. The market for small wireless internet devices is expected to grow to $73 billion dollars in 2005.” “According to eLearning authority Brandon Hall,” said Mr. Heinstein, “the mobile eLearning market alone is expected to top $5 billion by 2006. As handhelds become more prevalent world-wide, we expect the demand for our PDA courseware to increase dramatically.” Engage Interactive is a learning technology company in New Brunswick, Canada providing online learning systems for business, medicine, and telecommunications. The PDA project received financial backing from the National Research Council (NRC) through their Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP). Find out more: Engage Interactive 10:12:15 AM

Weblog Yin and Yang. Ran across a site called "Visit My Class" that seems to be offering up free Weblog space for educators. While there, I found this post from Chris Burnett: It amazes me how feedback from someone other than "The Teacher" can motivate a student! This morning there were a few feedback comments and I read them to the class. I did that mainly to let the kids know that someone other than me is reading their writing. If you ever wanted to see a room of 28 8th graders be stone silent, you should have been in my classroom this morning. A couple of the kids actually looked at the computer to make sure I wasn't making any of this up. Now I discover that there are about 15 feedback comments for my kids and I can't wait to get to school tomorrow and read them out loud. I think a new morning activity has been created..."Let's find out what people had to say!" My kids have been told all too often that "They can't" and now I can show them that "They can!" Thanks to all who have commented on their writing. Your comments are priceless. With each piece that my kids write, they will get better. The power of audience revealed, and one of the best parts of Weblogs. Good stuff. But contrast it to this from Kairosnews: I used to love blogs. I thought they were going to be the Next Great Thing to introduce in the classroom. After three semesters, however, blogs are losing their lustre. Students are confused by them, unable to write, paralyzed with fear of blogging, or they are already light years ahead of the class with their own LiveJournals which have all the bells and whistles. I have discovered that my honeymoon with blogs is over, mostly because there really is no room for spirited interaction between my students and myself in the blogs. Yes, I can require that they respond to another person's blog, but one student said that, compared to a discussion forum, leaving responses to blogs felt more like leaving a note for someone who is out. The discussion forum, she said, felt more like an ongoing conversation which was more fun. I agree with this sentiment, to some extent. Discussion is hard to get started in blogs, and it just doesn't work if it's forced or required. I mean it's fine if you want students to respond to pieces of writing, as a way of archiving feedback. Sustaining a back a forth conversation on a blog post is not easy, however. But having said that, I'm not sure how a discussion board is any better... Look, the strength of Weblogs lies in the blogging process, the reading, thinking, writing, publishing, responding process. But to get students to do that effectively, we have to be able to let them own their own spaces by allowing them to write about their own passions and develop their own audiences. That's a tougher task, no doubt, than asking for specific responses. But I still believe we can nurture those spaces, and at least expose them to the possibilities. [Weblogg-ed News] 9:30:34 AM

Class Wiki. Jim Rusconi was someone I met at Building Learning Communities this summer, and it looks like he's one teacher that's taken blogs and wikis to heart. He's been keeping up in his own Weblog, has been trying out Moodle with his kids, and now looks like he's set to use a wiki to construct his own Computer Graphics class text. I'm going to be really interested to watch and see how that develops since I think I'm on the verge of dipping my toe into those waters as well. I've been working with one of the Media Lit teachers and talking about a wiki text for the class. Seedwiki, by the way, looks like a pretty powerful application. Each page has it's own discussion list, you can get any changes via e-mail, update pages via e-mail, and password protect the pages. You get three wikis and up to 50 pages total for free...nice! Oh, and by the way, I stumbled across this class wiki that is a great example of the potential of the tool and also a great resource for me in my Instructional Technology postition. I just love some of the ideas for collaborative recipe books and cross Atlantic video collaborations... [Weblogg-ed News] 9:27:20 AM

Wall Street Journal on K-12 Classroom Blogs. Here's the bad news about today's Journal article...the title: "Classroom Use of Web Logs Raises Concerns" Here's the good news...the article paints a much better picture of classroom blogging than the title suggests. The WSJ is subscription only, so here are some snippets that I found interesting and relevant: But the school's experience highlights some of the issues that educators and parents face as blogs -- simple Web sites that follow a diary-like format -- gain entry into the nation's classrooms. While most agree on blogs' value for promoting student expression, critical thinking and exchange, there's no consensus on the amount of control over access and content that educators should exercise. As blogging spreads, it could revive debates over student expression similar to those that have cropped up around school newspapers. No doubt about this. And I don't think it's going to be an easy or necessarily smooth road. But I also don't think there is any stopping this read/write Web into the classroom train. This is more about expression; this is about enhancing student learning in ways that we could not do in the past. While I may at times bemoan the slow pace of adoption of these tools, it's actually probably a good thing in this respect...we need to prove that the constructivist, collaborative potential of the read/write Web is all it's cracked up to be. The use of blogs in schools remains limited but is growing, as scattered programs piloted by tech-savvy educators generate buzz and followers. Teachers are attracted to blogging for some of the same reasons blog use has exploded among techies, political commentators and would-be pundits. The buzz is growing for blogs in general, and there are more teachers in the fold. That hopefully means that we're going to push out in even more creative directions. "What we want to see is a Web log where a teacher has final control, acts as a filter for any postings or comments," says Janey Mayo, technology coordinator for Harford County Public Schools. "We're trying to be very cautious with this because we're working with kids." School administrators also want to see further research on whether blogging has educational value at the elementary-school level, but so far haven't found any. This really does sum up where we are right now. Teachers see great academic potential, administrators see great risks, and we're all in limbo waiting for the scholars to opine. The good news is, more and more of them are. The bad news is the results are mixed. Other educators say, even pending such a fix, that blogging can be used responsibly in classrooms. They argue that kids surf the Web outside of school already, so teaching them to deal with inappropriate comments on blogs is important. I've said this before, but the biggest challenge with all of this is that our kids are doing more than our teachers when it comes to mining and using the Internet, and we don't have enough role models for them to teach the best ways to use it. That's the scary part...the digital natives vs. digital immigrants issue. "It's worth taking that risk" of being exposed to inappropriate content on the Web, says Anne Davis, an information systems training specialist at Georgia State University and former elementary school teacher. You go Anne! All in all, I think the article is an accurate assessment of the current situation. There's much left to be done... [Weblogg-ed News] 9:23:35 AM

Rip Mix Feed: Learning Objects And Their Future. Thanks to Stephen Downes who has been promptly pointing at this very interesting resource brought together by Brian Lamb and Alan Levine. I truly like their open-ended approach to popularizing these new concepts and ideas as they start to emerge in the academic world. Unless you have already been... [Learning - Educational Technologies :: Robin Good's Latest News] 9:08:27 AM

Learning Object (The Buntine Oration - Reflection 2). Albert Ip continues his reflections on my paper, this time looking at the (long forgotten) origins of learning objects, exploring what he argues are essential features of the object oriented paradign. Only SCORM objects, he notes, are really like learning objects - and those aren't even learning objects, but 'sharable content objects'. "Should we put the term 'learning object' to rest and return back to use the more accurate and appropriate terms such as learning resource, teaching resource or just resource?" he asks. "If we truly believe in the value offered by the OOP, may be we should get serious about defining and agreeing on a term and improve on it." By Albert Ip, Random Walk in E-Learning, October 26, 2004 [Refer][Research][Reflect] [OLDaily] 9:06:16 AM