November 2008 Archives

I will be updating this entry throughout the day, but I will not take public notes during the more technical sessions as I will be paying closer attention to the details.

The sessions are being streamed via UStream TV.

Brad Kozlek and I are at George Mason University for the WordCamp Ed unconference.

Jermy Boggs

Using WP for a Course Website

Find him online: http://clioweb.org, Twitter

Teaches history 120 at George Mason, is also a web designer, PHD student in History, and WP user sonce 2004. He is covering why he uses WP to develop his course websites:

• Make it easy for students to access course information
• Encourage student participation
• Makes it easy for faculty to manage and maintain

He is part of a team developing a set of plugins to use WP for easily creating WP powered courses sites. It can be found at scholarpress.net ... easily created basic course information, all readings, and assignments. It looks very nice to be able to turn a basic WP install in to a very nicely formatted course site.

This is something we should create at the template level for Blogs@PSU ... I wonder if that would be possible?

Courseware and Microformats

A simple way of marking up content for a computer to read data. What this gives is the ability to move data around easily. Showing how it works with scheduling ... allows the schedule to parse the HTML so another application can use. He can update easily with WP and use the microformat to allow calendars to subscribe to changes. What is nice is that not only are dates pulled into the calendar of choice, but also all related details.

His next step was to utilize WPBook Plugin. This allows the course content to flow directly into FaceBook. Students can get it in FB, while he is still only using WP. He doesn't go into FB, just in WP. He states that about 70% of students used the FB application. Another plugin we should consider for MT.

Teaching with Blogs

• Update or die
• Set an example for students
• Best course blog - 200+ posts with 500 comments

His best scenarios have been where there is one site where he and all students have accounts on one space. This is my experience as well. Begs the question of how easily we can create a way to import class lists into our Blogs. Some other things he discusses:

• Create a sense of community
• Much easier to track
• Protect the students - password protect the class list within the WP site
• Gave students the ability to add additional information about each student (interests, bio, major, goals, Flickr, youtube, slideshare)

Site Guidelines

• Plan site organization to make it easy to use for students
• Use plugins to extend the site -- how do we do this for Blogs@PSU?
• Utilize user accounts for students ... let them use the blog to post and comment with each other

Jeffrey McClurken

Teaching Undergraduates with Blogs

University of Mary Washington

The resources from his presentation are available online.

Interested in getting away from "writing just for me." He wants them to write more than they do, encourage them think and present ideas in new ways, think about where digital literacy fits into history, and more. He is also very interested in revealing the work he does in the classroom and get out of the silo of the University. Public scholarship and how it plays within History.

He has his students have their own blogs ... he wants them to be theirs and become their digital identities. This is much more in line with our view of blogs as personal reflection spaces. He is seeing some of them keeping their same blog and using it across courses. He uses aggregation from student blogs to bring all of their content into his primary course blog.

Great quote, "I want the students uncomfortable, but not paralyzed." Wants them thinking about writing in new ways. He doesn't like BlackBoard for a lot of reasons:

• Craves openness for his students
• Craves openness for his courses
• Likes to see what others are doing

An important point here is that while he likes open, some of his content is protected. This is another important issue for us ... how to make some content easily protected, while other content is open.

What Do Students Do

He hopes students use their blogs as research logs. A place where they can collect resources for their projects and work. He showed examples of students commenting on these posts, providing help and suggestions. Much of it happens well outside the walls of the classroom. One of the thing it gives him is a way to gather intel for helping students with problems.

He uses it as a read and react journal. In his freshman seminar, each student has a blog where they reflect on the readings within the class. Some of the students are using these spaces to stretch well beyond class work. what is interesting is that if he pays attention to it, these posts become part of the learning experience.

Honestly, just too many examples to capture, but it is clear that he is really pushing his students to really think about how a publishing platform can be used to expand education. His students are uncomfortable at times, find blogging difficult, and resist at first ... but, he isn't seeing any negative feedback on his evaluations. He thinks they, for the most part, find the use of blogs to be rewarding.

Issues to Consider

• Writing in the public space: He is at times concerned with FERPA, but makes sure the students are aware that they are writing in a public format. He never uses the blogs to give grades ... that comes privately.
• The ability to change the content of the posts and the time stamps. He worries about being fair, but he wrestles with students ability to change things after due dates.
• Assessing blogs is difficult. What is an assignment? If they are writing quite a bit it gets tough. Also, you can't write on a blog post.
• Getting students to provide contents with substance. He finds if students are working on projects, the comments seem to be stronger.

Jane Wells Road to WordPress 2.7: A Preview

Nice overview of the new versions of WP. Presented by the experience designer for Automatic.

Rob Pongsajapan

Running a University Wide WP Multi User Installation Georgetown University

Offered through their implementation of a Digital Commons. Their DC is a collection of new media tools -- MIT Timeline Tool, Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis, etc. It is very interesting and well positioned as a one stop shopping location for new media tools.

His discussion is mostly technical in nature, focused on WP Mu. Some interesting conversations around how to provide an open environment while still protecting the privacy of students and faculty. Another issue that overlaps with us, is what to do about end of life blog or archiving of sites. They are looking into "site sucker."

Jim Groom

Permanent Revolution

University of Mary Washington

I've been looking forward to meeting Jim in person for quite some time. He is a very open and innovative guy whom I think is really on the edge of the blogging/open publishing revolution going on in higer education. He runs the WPMU install at Mary Washington ... The Blogs at UMW. He has done fantastic work throughout the years and has become a real model for U-Wide blogging.

The "Notion of the Permanent Revolution" is at the core of what we are trying to do with education -- ways to rethink the digital space we are living in. The archive is getting so out of control, how do we think about managing it? In education, how do we take advatage of the power of the instant publishing platforms? These platforms help us think about what it means for us to need to change.

WordPress is a platform for revolution. It is now trivial to publish and syndicate media -- video, text, audio, you name it. We are liberating student content -- in the LMS/CMS model students must pour it in and then after the course it gets packaged up, deleted, and becomes inaccessible to the student. It isolates the contribution. In the blog world, it belongs to the individual.

A revolt from the systems with been locked in. We must make a quick exit ... we are spending millions protecting the interests of RIAA and others only to ignore new media publishing. We have to say enough -- enough to closed systems and enough to outside interests killing the progress of teaching and learning.

At UMW over 2,000 users have blogs. Given they are a school of only about 4,500 this is an incredible number. Their goal is to become relevant to the community through openness.

In many ways, we are thinking in very similar ways -- feed frenzy learning. Letting syndication drive the connections. Students own their content and feed posts into course blogs.

The hardest part of the revolution is sustaining it. A great talk that I could not give the justice to it that I should have ... I got busy listening and being engaged.

This is at once simple and brilliant. A post from a fellow Penn Stater, Shelby Thayer, related to her use of Twitter. If you are confounded by Twitter, have no idea why one might use it, or how to get started following people then this is a post you should read. I've done my own musings on Twitter, but never took the time to explain it like this. Worth the read for the newbie and for advanced users.

I'll be updating this post throughout the day ... I am at the IMS Global Learning Consortium Meeting being held at Penn State University today. Agenda is available online.

Opening Remarks
John Harwood - Senior Director of TLT at PSU

Penn State has 16,000 sections delivered to 93,000 students across 20+ locations 70% will use our CMS, ANGEL, but that is about all they have in common. Each teacher will be creating their own content, and those that want to share will have a terrible time with version control. What is the way forward? How do we create an environment that overcomes this issues and addresses the notions of sharing and reuse? These are some of the questions that will be addressed today.

The preview of the day looks as if it will be an excellent opportunity to learn more about practical applications and solutions of repositories, portfolios, and authoring tools.

Update on the IMS Global Learning Consortium
Rob Abel - CEO IMS Global Learning Consortium

IMS has been around since 1999. It was incubated and came out of Educause. There mission is to creates standards for the development and adoption of technologies that enable high quality, accessible, and affordable learning experiences. Learn more about IMS Global at their site.

The rest of Rob's presentation focused on the various projects and approaches being explored by IMS Global. An excellent overview of the Common Cartridge in the Digital Learning Services area ... this is something I've read about, but now have a greater appreciation for. One thing that I am taking away from that conversation is that the content does not have to be embedded in the cartridge at all -- this is critical to me as I am a firm believer in the utilization of open content that exists beyond the walls of the publisher. It allows us to point to and seamlessly provide access to content in iTunes U, youtube, OCW repositories, etc.

Content as a Platform - an Infrastructure for Sharing
Peter Van Tienen, EQUELLA

Essentially a presentation about digital repositories ... primarily a product overview and discussion. It is still an interesting view on repositories and I am very interested in their notion of content as a platform ... interesting claim. I am waiting to see if it makes sense in a more universally way or if it is a catchy marketing phrase. Mostly a presentation of Equella.

Collections -> Items (Metadata, Attachments such as documents, links, etc) = Content

As a user, once I create my content how do I get credit for it, keep track of it, share with the institution, specific people outside the institution, and so on? From their system, they stack a search engine on top of that, and then allow for what they call Equella Agents (essentially plugins for the entire system) to allow for easy sharing among other digital repositories, authoring tools, CRM, Library, ePortfolio, CMS, etc.

Distributed Content Sharing

They use Contribution Wizards that help apply meta data. Sounds like a smart idea -- faculty goes into the system and guides them through not only content creation but describing it ... the description forms the basis for the meta data acquisition. Another part of this is helping them make decisions with sharing -- generates CC license if the faculty so chooses. Once it has a CC license it is open for harvesting by other services or repositories. This is now part of an environment where the reuse of content being tracked in a more social sense.

His big claim is that their system just sits behind the existing CMS, so faculty can use tools that already know. I like this idea, because their tools do some interesting step by step integration tools. He showed how a faculty member could simply check a box that said link to audio/video and it then asked where that content was -- youtube, iTunes U, and other sources. It then allowed a search of the chosen environment to return the content one would be looking for.

Scaling Repositories to Meet Instructional Needs: Are We Thinking Too Big?
Brian Nielson, Northwestern University

I know Brian from my work with the CIC LTI group, so I am looking forward to seeing what his work is really all about. In the context of the CIC LTI, I get such a limited view of what my colleagues think about on a day to day basis.

Xythos will play a key role in this presentation as will the notions of technology, design, and context. File Bridge is a custom application they have developed that talks between BlackBoard and Xythos. Xythos is a collaboration software environment built around the sharing of files. Core characteristic is for individuals to have very granular level of permissions at the file level.

His big challenging question is not how to develop the technology, it is how to integrate it into the teaching/research culture of the Institution? He says that "technology adoption is a process of "fitting" a tool into a social context ... I find that to be very true. If I can't work it into my personal/social workflow I can't adopt. He has a bullet I love ... "A technology may be limited not by its characteristics, but by lack of vision on how it may be used in particular contexts." To me that is what my career is all about -- discovering those new contexts.

The Power of Technology to Better Serve Students - A Case Study on the applications of Web Based Content and Process Management technologies to Automate the Transfer Credit Evaluation Process at University of Maryland University College (UMUC).
Mike Knaeble, Senior Vice President, Hershey Systems
Patrick, University of Maryland University College

The thrust of this session is that the focus is on standard data transfer in information systems -- mostly for student services. Their main point is that more and more students are doing work at multiple Universities and need to be able to quickly move grades and standing around.

Sales pitch top to bottom. Also, someone needs to ask them to rethink the logo on their lead slide.

The Exquisite Librarian!
Louis E. King, Managing Producer, Digital Asset Management Systems University of Michigan

BlueStream is an implementation of a streaming environment. Still in a limited pilot -- not open to all 50,000 people. About 50 projects year. Start with digital asset and then add some stuff to it -- permissions, access, workflow.

People do not want to deal with conversion processes -- DVD, Real, QT, Flash ... we don't care, formats change. Everything happens on the server, people cannot and should not deal with this on their desktops. The server should do it.

What I like is his assertion that digital discourse is a major part of the conversation in the 20th century ... we need access to digital resources. Another thing he just said is that you never hear people say, I am going online to learn differently ... it is the same water we swim in when learning face to face. Finally.

Keys:

• Rapid Acquisition -- includes streamlined upload and managed storage.
• Flexible metadata -- Look up or user generated
• Organization and Control -- Ability to look into storage and change structure and manage access control
• Media Processing -- Image conversion that happens on the fly with granular control
• Transcripts and Annotation -- Ability to download and transcribe for annotation and then do a simple upload and sync automatically
• Media Analysis -- Voice to text to get 80% of keywords to help with search returns. Also should do facial recognition.

I missed a lot from this session, but the best for my dollar by far today. A great idea is the ability to move all of the backchannel activity into one environment for capture -- that is something we need to explore more. We can not have open resources in higher education without closed ... great comment!

ePortfolios and Employability
Darren Cambridge, George Mason University

This session is really about student portfolio efforts as they relate to employability. Interesting model to consider ... looks very much like what a career services, not a learning environment, would care about:

• Choose competency frameworks defined by employers
• Determine and document competency profile
• Compare with career goals
• Connect to learning to fill gaps
• Match with jobs

He makes the point that there is a growing alignment of the personal and professional self that will require us to keep closer track of our skills and lives. Given how scattered and non-linear our lives have become, the notion of the life-long portfolio may provide an opportunity to create a narrative or story that brings the events of my life together. Something that brings some systematic identity across my civic, academic, personal, and other phases of our lives. His assertion is to help find a "thread" in one's life.

The eFolio Minnesota initiative is open to all citizens in the state. It is used by more than 60,000 people. People who use it find it as a place where they can eave personal, professional, and civic together to connect with audiences.

He has shown about a half dozen of other examples -- some from education and some that are more civic offerings. All share the message of allowing people to reflect and assemble a more holistic view of themselves.

Network Self v Symphonic Self ... first is about building connections while the second is about achieving integrity of the whole. Interesting.