I am one of the many users who felt the need to create yet more TLT Tech Tags
Unicode
This version is the syllable /yu/ in Sanskrit. Dave also made one that was a therefore operator (⊃) symbol which resembles a sideways U.
Accessibility
The & symbol in Braille.
From the Penn State Web Standards list
http://deeplinking.net/paper-web/.
For my own reference, this site has some good examples of different interfaces sketched on legal paper (and maybe some cocktail napkins). Also has a video showing a usability test with a paper set of paper prototypes.
While I'm at it, I should add this link from A List Apart
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/sketchingincode
Interestingly the author argues for a "medium quality" prototype because wireframes may be so bare that users may not be able to infer functionality. FYI - The problem with "professional" quality is that users get distracted with suggestions on fonts and colors (been there, done that).
I've had some success with the "mid level", but I've seen projects where the bare paper does work, so the key seems to be keeping the concept minimal enough for users to focus on function and not fonts.
An important, but not always acknowledged, aspect of team work in social loafing or the tendency in some individuals on some teams to slack off and let others fill in the gaps. I think we've all experienced it from either end.
It's not a pretty aspect of team work, but since it can impact overall performance, I'm glad there is research on this topic such as this article on social learning on online student teams. If nothing else, I think it gave me some real insights on why some conflicts seem to recur on almost every team and what I may be able to do to mitigate it.
In the "Literature Review" section, the author pointed out some findings from non-online teams, namely that:
- Effect of Size - The larger the team, the larger the temptation to loaf. A smaller team may have more productive members than a large one.
- Distributive Justice - Members who felt they were more likely to share in rewards and recognition were less likely to loaf.
- Sucker Effect - Actually more like avoiding being a sucker. If a team member senses that they may be "stuck" with a lot of additional work from a social loafer, then that person will become resistant to taking on too much work (possibly to the point of loafing).
- Task Visibility - Members who felt that outsiders (an instructor, supervisor, audience) were more likely to examine the final product were less likely to loaf.
- Dominance - If a team leader or dominant team member devalues a member's task/position/contribution, then loafing is more likely to increase. Interestingly, this can lead to a feedback loop because Dominant Person A can either try to do everything or assigning task elsewhere while Person B starts to loaf and gets a reputation of not being able to perform.
Do these sound familiar? They do to me. I think there are strategies a team leader can take to mitigate these such as making sure recognition comes to the entire team, taking on largish tasks if possible and understanding and acknowledging every member's contribution (and maybe bring cookies every so often). Instructors in courses can build anti-social loafing strategies into team tutorials.
To these, I would also add that if you feel that some is "loafing", it may be important to check with that person if something you don't know about is going on. I remember scheduling a weekly meeting that a student was always late for only to find out he was leaving class on campus and trying to get downtown in 10 minutes - Oops.
I think the one thing that does NOT work is asking people to be "a better team player" without acknowledging that social loafing is a real and ever-present hazard of team work and a major source of conflict.
P.S. - I should point out that I think many of these findings assume that many team members are more extrinsically motivated (looking for external rewards) than intrinsically motivated (doing it for the love of it), but I think many teams in school and work are powered by extrinsic motivation. We can't love all our duties/courses equally.
Recently a colleague challenged us to do a diagram or concept map of our own PLE in the Learning Design Hub. OK...but what is a PLE? It's a Personal Learning Environment, which I'm interpreting as what tools users are using to manage their own learning (thank you Google). This is an important topic, because as a keybote speaker recently pointed out, the goal of education at the university level isn't just learning a set of facts, but being able to develop a system for learning more AFTER you graduate.
I decided to diagram my system, but I realized that I don't usually conceptualize this as learning, but rather as research. So the diagram below is my Personal Research Environment or the tools I use to gather input or research different topics.
About the Diagram
As a mental stretching exercise, I decided to do a process-oreiented or task driven system. I decided to classify my learning/research into three type - Random Browsing or things I learn while cruising around my environment (e.g. the Web, TV or people watching), Experiments and Focused Learning - which normally leads to a formal process such as a paper, Web site or Powerpoint Presentation.
As you can see I use different tools for the different stages. I use "push" communication tools like e-Mail, RSS and television for the browsing, but combine search with "pull" communication tools when I am actively researching a focused topic. Experimentation is sort of a catch all - this is there I play around with different tools and see what happens. This is an important strategy for technologists and creative professionals. However, it's nice when some of those experiments are documented and published so other people can learn from them.
One Tool or Many?
Traditionally, a PLE is supposed to be a unified tool which integrates other tools together, but oddly enough I'm not sure this is what I would want. I'm happy to tweak with cutting and paste or export tools to get everything to play together.
Having said that though, I do know that I want to be able to STORE everything in one location. So far that has been primarily Penn State PASS and other server space. Anything up on a service such as Flickr usually has a local backup somewhere. Isn't paranoia great?
Why "Research"?
I'm using the term "research" because I think it captures an important aspect of lifelong learning - namely that in most cases what you need to learn often has no instructor. Unlike school where almost all "required" learning is guided by an instructor or mentor, the percentage of mentorship will drop rapidly after school, especially as you need to learn more specialized topics.
At some point, you will have to be able to learn new information on your own. If you are the "designated" expert in your department, you may need to read updated information before it ever comes out in seminar form. Or...you may even need to design a seminar on the topic. And sometimes when the topic is really new, you get to be the person who experiments. Fun but scary.
I'm not saying that formal instruction completely disappears, but it definitely becomes more fuzzy over time. While you could generally trust what you were told in 100 level class as "established" fact, by the time you get to a 400 level class, you likely enter the realm of "interpretation" - either because the data is too new or it's not available at all and the scholars are speculating on what they already know. At this point, you have to learn to filter what is being said and form your own conclusion (hence the importance of multiple sources).
I still attend seminars, but they are no longer the primary way I learn. Often I can find a helpful tutorial online, but this is one-way. Colleagues are also helpful, but alas their time is not as open as my instructors (3 hours a week is still more than what a colleague usually has). In the end, it's up to me to filter my input and turn it into something helpful for me.
So what about our undergrads? I think most educators feel that this is the stage that educated adults must reach. The interesting question is how short we can make this process. The Internet is exposing students to more alternate points of view, but it looks like we still have to teach information literacy. Clearly the instructor still has a lot on his or her plate.
I'm a fairly cynical creature, so it's not often that I find a philiosophical presentation mind-blowing, but this one did it. The presentation was innocently title Religion Online, but the speaker, Edward Lamoreux of Bradley University (a practicing ethnographer), raised some questions about the relation of religion and the Internet that would never have occured to me.
I should note that the questions raised are ones that may touch your most cherished assumptions. If the entry offends, it is unintentional, but possible unavoidable.
Potential Hazards of a Media Revolution
First, I applaud him for remembering that other great media revolution - the invention of the Gutenberg printing press in the West. This was the invention that made it practical for more people to have access to key documents such as the Bible...and yes this did have some major consequences such as the Protestant Revolution (one of the debates was whether the Bible should be translated for anyone to read or kept in the original language for trained specialists). As Lamoreaux points out, a major religious schism is not what Gutenberg had in mind when he created a press with Movable Type.
Information vs. Ritual
Back in the 21st century, the main question is whether the Internet can be used as a source of information only or whether actual religuous ritual can happen online. For mainstream religions, the answer seems to be that certain "peripheral" activities are OK online, but there is a hesitation to conduct the most important rituals online.
To take Second Life (or chat room) as an example, it is fairly common for users to meet for Bible study (or Torah study) or for counseling sessions sponsored by religious groups. However, Second Life is less rarely used for weekly services even though there are virtual churches/synogogues available. For instance there is NO sanctioned Catholic mass online. One exception is for some non-mainstream services such as the Church of Elvis or the Church of Linden.
Contemplative Building
Interestingly though, a common activity is for users to build elaborate churches, cathedrals, abbeys or other places of worship. In fact so many graphic designers have built churches that it is difficult to separate non-sanctioned churches from islands sponsored by official religious organizations. However, Lamoreux speculates that the act of building is itself a religious or meditative activity for many people. Even in the secular world, Lamoreaux stated that the most common type of Second Life building was avatars creating a personal space to "chill."
However, it may be that for some people, the building can have an even deeper connection to their spiritual life. To be sure there are many religions in which creating or building a design is considered to be a way to connect to God or a higher plane - the most obvious example is creating sand mandalas in Tibetan buddhism. "Contemplative" art is fairly common in the Internet (e.g. fractal art galleries), but I'm not sure it's something I've seen discussed in a serious manner.
Is the Interet Worth the Risk?
Returning to the "hazards" of new technology, Lamoreaux discusses that for many religious groups, the Internet is a double-edged sword. After all the Internet can expose your group to pornography, alternate theology and the temptations of a secular lifestyle. Having said that though, I think more religious groups are taking advantage of this new outlet than we might think.
Looking back through my personal bookmarks, some interesting sites I have encountered have been:
- The Original Ten Commandments in the Original Semitic Script ($75.00)
- Hebrew Alphabet (Judaism 101)
- Art of Arabic Calligraphy
- New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia
- Liturgical Year (Vatican) - excellent color-coded rollovers
- Virtual Christianity Bibles (Multiple versions, multiple languages)
- Internet Sacred Text Archive
- Sikh History Com
- Ásatrú (neo Nordic) - for those who practice neo-Nordic (pagan) religion
- Hellenion (neo Hellenic) - if you want to still worship the Greek Gods seriously, you can
- Arguments we think creationists should NOT use - Alas, I'm still a neo Darwinsit myself.
- What a Biblical Scholar should Know about Unicode - couldn't resist
As you can see it's a varied list, but the sites all have one thing in common. As far as I can tell, they were all built by people who are genuinely devout or at least believe in the importance of spirituality. Clearly, the Internet is being used creatively for spritual outreach.
I should say that we did NOT touch on a notorious use of the Internet and that is as a communication tool for some extremists to plan acts of destruction. Hopefully though, these sites may show that we may be able to co-exist peacefully one day (if nor amicably). Even a cynic sometimes likes to dream.
My colleagues commented that some of the sessions were mislabelled (see below), but I was actually satisfied with what I got to see - which were some interesting examples of how new technology is playing out in the classroom
Maps & iPhone
Probably the presentation with the newest tech was Columbia's iPhone project for mapping African American historical places in New York City. This was one which has been evolving over time for them. First that added some text, video and images (borrowing heavily from the NY Public Library archives), then they added a Google Map overlay...and then the iPhone. More interestingly, the entire site was built in Movable Type - but they did a lot of clever manipulation of the templates to make less of a blog and even more of a content managment system.
MAAP: Mapping the African American Past
http://maap.columbia.edu/
Because iPhone already works well with Google Maps, they did not need to add too much to the backend, although they did create a Movable Type template which generates an iPhone friendly version for each page - if you go the Web site on an iPhone, you will go directly to the maps.
I had been seeing educational applications, especially for museums, incorporating mobile phones with GIS data, but this is the first iPhone version. It looks like the iPhone is that smart phone in the U.S. with wide enough acceptance to make it worthwhile for a U.S. academic institution. At Penn State, I know there are a few applications in agriculture and sciences as well as history. At one point, we had been thinking of using a guided tour of Penn State landscape features via a Palm Pilot, but this could be easily ported to the iPhone.
Mapping in the Humanities
As if that weren't enough GIS, I went to the Mapping in the Humanities session lead by a panel of Princeton professors. This was a good panel if you were interested in some of the guts of GIS manipulation. For instance, we got a quick demo of ESRI.
I have to admit that for humanities, the big question is how you handle historical maps. The answer is that you use "custom tiles" from the Google Map API to build your own world. Apparently the historical maps of Venice are too difficult to align with modern Venice satellite maps even though both are fairly accurate.
The most memorable classroom application was a course in which students were able to travel to Venice over spring break and make blog entries about different historical sites. Another semester they got to go to Crete (and report on Venetian sites there). Myself, I'm thinking we can document some sites in Pine Grove Mills or Bellefonte.
Decision Making Seminar (actually Games)
The most misleading label for a session was probably the one about "Decision Making" in different courses (doesn't that sound exciting). Surprisingly this was a session about GAMES (I actually hit the motherload). This presentation was done by a group out of the University of North Carolina Greensboro, who admitted that they had a lot of (ahem) budgetary support from the Provost, so everything was very WOW.
The highlight was a course in economics which was constructed as a game where students in the post-apocopolyptic Earth have to re-establish mini trading economies. Fortunately, they get rescued in the end. One module that was especially interesting was a game where students had to allocate resources to rescue a neighboring community from an incoming hurricane. Clearly, this game could have applications beyond economics, so the group said that they made it portable so that it could be adapted for other courses...good forward thinking.
For a preconference tutorial, I chose to go to the Quicktime Pro (QT Pro) seminar, partly because I have been working with a lot of video material lately. The thing I like about Quicktime Pro is that it has a lot of basic functionality (trimming, extraction, rencoding, captioning, etc) but it costs only $30. I'm not a video professional, but I do sometimes have to go in do some basic media edits. From a budget point of view, it's much easier to justify a license for QT Pro than say for Premiere or Final Cut Pro (although I hear there is Final Cut Express out there....)
.In addition to the basics edits, I learned some interesting tricks. As I was so recently reminded, video takes up a heck of a lot of file space, so anything you can do to reduce file space is always a plus. One auch application was a basic slideshow which is basically a built-in script to show a series of JPEGs. The file then is only slightly larger than the sum of the JPEGs - very handy.
I also learned a whole lot about the mechanics of captioning. I'll still leave captioning to the experts, but for a quick fix, know that you may only need to adjust a text file and reimport it could be very handy down the road.
I understand that QT Pro also uses sprites to support custom skins, interactive buttons and so forth. Our instructor even mentioned a solitaire game. QT Pro won't be replacing Flash anytime soon, but at $29.95, it may be a very handy tool for some instructional designers with serious budget issues.
At the Web 2008 conference this year I was able to listen to the keynote from Steve Krug, the author of the classic usability book Don't Make Me Think.
The one take-away I got from that session was that modern users expect the Home Page to kind of be an orientation page to the site (or part of the site). That can have several interpretations, but to me this would include linking to a table of contents, a short statement of the purpose of the site, an explanation of some tools , one or two unique features and who to contact for more information. Interestingly, the home page is likely to be the second or third page visited (after the content page Google found for the user).
It reminds me of another metaphor heard from a usability expert of comparing the home page to an entrance of a store or office complex rather than the cover of a book. That is, when you enter a new store, you may be looking for aisle labels and maybe some hot sales. You may or may not be interested in the perfume lady.
P.S. My other impression was how accurate his observations of the higher education Web culture. In fact, I was wondering if he had sent an astral projection of his spirit to some of the Web design meetings I've been. Spooky
I know it's another foreign language example, but ... I do like this Far from Moscow blog which combines audio, picture and photos to get you the latest info on the Russian pop music scene.
This is a totally Web 2.0 design, but from a usability perspective, it has some features which help you navigate the site if you're new to Russian pop music. First, I appreciate that a Front Page link is included - there really are a lot of people out there who aren't familiar with clicking the logo to return to the front page.
Second, I do like the categories links on the side (it also works with tags). Who knew there was Russian reggae? A third feature of note is that there are static tutorial Pages with information about the Web site, links to labels and other information. Again, if you're a new to the world of Russian pop music...you may know where to get a basic primer. Finally, the entries themselves are written with the general audience in mind. Many include a short intro to the artist as well as links to audio clips.
This is a good example of how a blog can introduce you to the basics of a topic, then keep you updated in little ckunks (did anyone say "Just in Time Learning").
The biggest surprise of all....it's sponsored by the UCLA Slavic Department (specifically David MacFayden). It's really great to see an Web site from an academic that really understands how to deploy the new tech!
P.S. There's some good music on here. I have no idea if it's on iTunes.
Recently the College Board group who runs the Advanced Placement AP exams decided to eliminate four exams for financial reasons. One of them was unfortunately, the Latin Literature exam which covered texts from major Latin authors. The odd thing was that they decided to keep the Vergil (exam) or just the author who wrote the Aeneid and other works.
As you can imagine, the high school Latin teacher community was very upset and confused. If you were going to cancel an exam why would you keep the more specific exam? Vergil is an important writer, but hardly the only one out there. Focusing exclusively on one epic poem could give you a very distorted view of Latin culture. It would be like asking English literature students to focus only on Milton's Paradise Lost - great work, but it means you miss out on Shakespeare, Chaucer, Donne, Dickens, Hemingway, Faulkner, Toni Morrison and many more. Weird.
As it turns out, one instructor did write a letter to the College Board with her concerns and she did get a response from the College Board - but not one I might have expected.
As I understand it, the actual reason was that the College Board doesn't want to continue this particular exam is that they don't have enough resources to continue to create "psychometrically valid" questions for all of Latin literature (sticking with one author makes it much easier to test for validity.
However, as AP Latin Literature has slowly grown, it has approached the threshold that, once reached, cannot support the type of exam design AP Latin Literature uses (a test format that actually allows students to choose which questions they do and do not answer). Because AP Latin Literature allows students to choose which questions they answer, the psychometric validity of the exam results will be subject to increased risk as the program continues to grow, so the current exam design must be discontinued following the May 2009 exam.
There is no such problem with the AP Latin: Vergil exam, which simply needs a multi-million dollar investment (which we are making) to upgrade design specifications and standard setting processes to ensure that as the volume continues to grow, there is no risk to the quality and reliability of the assessment. So we will continue to offer the AP Latin: Vergil Exam in the near term, while working at the same time with educators to determine whether we should, over time, change AP Latin: Vergil to incorporate a larger number of authors.
-http://ginlindzey.livejournal.com/74857.html
I confess to being stunned. I agree that the College Board needs to invest wisely (they point out that many languages such as Greek, Russian, Korean and Portuguese have no AP exam), but there's a disconnect in the process. Although testing validity is important, it looks like the original learning objectives are being lost. Surely one of the objectives of learning Latin literature in Latin is to be able to understand and translate a wide variety of Latin genres ranging from poetry to prose. Another must be to become acquainted with many aspects of Roman culture and political history - not just one epic poem.
Choosing psychometric validity over learning objectives is one reason "teaching to the test" has such a bad name.
