Recently in Blogs Category

If you are like me and have a blog whose sole purpose is to deliver information to the ETS community, then you may want to tag everything "psuets".

There are some tools in the Blogs at Penn State which can help manage this. First, to batch tag all past entries as "psuets", you can do this as follows:

1. Log in and open blog.
2. Go to the Manage » Entries Preferences. You will see a list of your previous entries.
3. Check the box on top to indicate you want to tag all past entries (or select the ones you want to add the tag too).
4. In the More Actions drop down, select Add Tags. Click the Go button.
5. In the pop-up window, enter the tag "psuets". Click OK to close window.

6. Click the Publish link or the recycle icon to post updated entries.

This is a good way to back tag entries if you begin using new tags.

The next step...create a way to include "psuets" as a default tag. I was able to create a "Default Tag" field following Chris Millet's custom field instructions. When you create a custom field, there's a Default field for default values in a field. Now new entries have a default tag field with "psuests".

I admit I'm stuck on figuring out how to have the Tag cloud widget recognize the new field, but at least I can cut and paste this into the real tag field. This is an improvement since my typing & memory skills are not as good as they could be.

Last week, I attended the CALICO conference on technology use for foreign language teaching. Since foreign languages involve communication skills, it's always a good conference to see communication tools in action as well as other developments such as gaming.

ESL Homework "Game"

There was only one game element in this English as a Foreign Language class (taught in Thailand), but it really changed the dynamics of doing homework. The students were assigned the usual reading & grammar exercises, but with the following conditions.

* Students earned "money" for completing exercises.
* The money could be used to open up more exercises and gain more money
* Students start at $0, but can continue to earn higher amounts of money to open more advanced exercises. The most "expensive" was $1400.

This simple device turned homework into a "beat the system" competition in which students were asking instructors to grade assignments more quickly so they could earn more money (reminds me of Mafia Wars). Students could see each other scores, but only the top 1/2 liked that feature. The presenter said he might disable scores, but I wonder if it should be a top 5 or top 10 list (like the old arcade games).

Very interesting psychology, and it might be easy to program.

Other CMC

As always, CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) was a major topic with presentations on Twitter, Second Life, blogs, RSS and wikis. Presentations were mixed, but one blog presentation was able to document that using blogs with a second language pen-pal was as effective as e-mail (if not more so) in positively changing student attitudes towards a foreign culture.

Neverwinter Nights

The best demo was probably Neverwinter Nights, a system where you can create custom "quest" modules. The instructor made a Neverwinter Nights module with a mystery. The wizard has to go through a village (where everyone speaks in a different language) and determine if a witch has cursed the town. The answer was that it was her chickens who caught the bird flu (and later stolen) that was the problem (interesting plot twist). It also showed the use of both dialogues and "realia" (maps and signs in the target language). The speaker also noted that you can set traps to destroy wizards who refuse to help the town.

Then of course we saw her insert an attack grizzly bear into the module and eat a character. Totally realistic.

Tech Room Design

We got to see some of the computer lab & tech classroom layouts at ASU. First there were lots of electrical outlets for our laptops, many built right into the desk. Clearly the school had a lot of money available in the recent past, and it seems to have been well spent.

But it seems like the designers are thinking about facilitating collaboration. Many labs grouped computers in groups of 3-4 at a round table. It would be pretty easy to swing around to one screen or compare screens. The newer flatscreens also make it much easier to move monitors around, and some were set on special arms (so you could lower the monitors for a compelling lecture).

Another room that was interesting was my seminar room in the Cronkite School of Journalism (yes that would be Walter Cronkite). It had the Macs all along the wall, but a central table in the middle. I think the idea was to do a mini-lecture than have people work on their own machine (maybe research a story). Interesting idea, but awkward for a hands on training session because the students in the back would be have to face me or their monitor. Fortunately, the class was small enough that everyone was on the side and could face both me and the monitor.

As a way of promoting the use of Movable Type as a portfolio tool for the Teaching with Technology Certificate program, I decided to create a Sample Teaching with Technology Portfolio.

You can also see the "Classic Blog version" of the portfolio and the Plain 1.0 version. I think you'll agree that the new Professional template is a vast improvement!

When Cole issued his once-a-day blog challenge in August, I did not participate, and unfortunately, I may not participate in the new once-a-day challenge issued by Allan for February. However, I am glad the challenge was issued anyway.

I was inspired by the August challenge to increase my output - to once a week for two blogs. Since September, I've been able to post once a week to this blog and the Got Unicode blog (even if I did a few "Scheduled" tricks). That's a pretty good record if I may say so.

I am glad I took up this challenge because it has pushed me to produce something (especially in Unicode terms). I also found that this frequency works for me, since it gives me time to edit and think of new ideas (my profoundness quotient last week was kind of low). In short, it's an rate I can sustain, and that's what important to me in the long run.

If you do go for the full-blown once-a-day challenge, I wish you the best of luck, and I hope you'll find the blogging pattern that suits you best. I know I will be looking forward to reading a few more entries. As for me, I may add a third blog to my once-a-week list.

I'm not officially attempting the 1 blog post per day feat, but if I were, I could write up a bunch over the week-end and use the schedule feature to separate the appearance by 24 hours.

Use this to reader overload.

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.

Sometimes blogs get a bad name (because, let's face it, some blogs are better than others). But if we didn't have bad blogs, where would we get parody blogs from?

Like this gem from Santa Clause:

Sunday 23 December 07 - I really can't be bothered with Christmas this year. I will give it a rest until 2009.

That's telling them Santa!

Another blog how-to article from the New York Times caught my eye, and I thought I would follow its advice and post to my blog.

like this article because it addresses a complaint I hear from my busy colleagues - namely that they are too busy to blog. This is the article that actually realizes that bloggers have a day job and may not have as much time. But maybe this article can help you think of blogging as a mini work break or "destresser".

Actually, I would say that once you get started, you may not be able to stop...

P.S. You can skip the part that mentions you probably won't make money. I think most of us knew that already.

We're selecting books to recommend for the upcoming TLT Symposium, and we thought we would blog about some of them. One of our likely selections will be Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom by Will Richardson.

Should you buy?

This book is written for the instructor who is completely new to the Web 2.0 world. If you've heard of "blogs" and "wikis" only as buzzwords, but want to know more, this is for you. I should mention that it's aimed for a K-12 instructor audience, but I think most of the principles apply to higher education. It starts out with definitions of the terms, adds educationally sound examples then shows you some tools to get you started. It also covers issues important to instructors such as making sure students understand the rules of blogging in your course. It also has great coverage of one of the most important "hidden" technologies - RSS.

Another great feature is that it's short and to the point, and for busy instructors, this could be the tipping point of whether the book gets read or not. But short does not mean incomplete - far from it. Richardson manages to touch on blogs, wikis, podcasting, RSS, tagging, mashups, social bookmarking (aka del.icio.us) and image galleries (aka "Flickr"). I think this is a book that will help you "get" Web 2.0.

The other good news is that even if you've become "Web 2.0" savvy, you'll still find great examples and new tools to consider. Even now, I'm looking at Flickr in a new way.

Sumamry

This is great for the Web 2.0 newbie who needs it all explained and helpful for Web 2.0 veterans who can always a few more new ideas.

I used to be involved in a project which created Flash animations and graphics for different courses. One question I was asked was how applicable it was across disciplines.

For instance, do I really expect a philosophy instructor be interested in an animation of supercritical fluids? Actually I don't...But would a philosophy course focusing on Greco-Roman schools of philosophies be interested in a set of historical maps, like the one we did for a Jewish history course? Maybe they would.

This leads to the larger question of whether academic discipline matters when considering tools. On the one hand, it doesn't matter. All courses have target learning outcomes (changes in skills/attitudes you want to see in your students), and the process for mapping objectives and tools should be the same no matter which course you are designing.

But here's a caveat - courses vary widely in their objectives. Even in the philosophy department, a course that focuses on ancient philosophy may share objectives with a history course as well as a course in modern policy, while a formal logic course may have goals similar to an algebra course.

I think that to expect the same courses to use tools in the same ways is doing them a disservice. So instructors naturally benchmark themselves with similar to theirs (i.e. a logic instructor is probably interested inother logic courses).

There are many tools like blogs, images and audio that can be applied in many disciplines, but the uses may have different nuances. Podcasting is a great way for students to create their own interviews (journalism), but is also a great way to capture the sounds of a natural environment (biology) or compare dialect samples (linguistics).

I can truly see three different courses in which students are creating audio, but it's not the same audio. I can also see courses where students aren't necessarily creating audio (maybe blogging is better because you need to learn the craft of writing concrete poetry, include phonetic symbols or explain still photos).

As an instructional designer, I like to look at examples from different disciplines because I do learn more about the capabilities and possibilities of a new tool. And maybe I will find that a technique from math can also work in a philosophy course like logic.