Meyer Learning

Thoughts on EDUCAUSE 2011

By MATTHEW N MEYER on October 27, 2011 1:28 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks for me on many levels but it's been all great stuff except for the cold I developed and kept with me during my recent adventures. My latest trip was to Educause 2011 in Philadelphia. This was a bit of a homecoming for me since I lived in the area for 15 years, including a 3 year stint working in Center City. Before refocusing on topic, I just want to relay that my experience working in the city was transformative for me personally. I went into the job as a born-and-raised country kid, ready to hate being stuck in the city. It took me all of 2 weeks to do a 180 and absolutely love working in the city. So it was great to be back in the area. And with all the travel and fatigue of being sick, one of the first orders of business was some city diner coffee. I was ready.

Vendor Driven Event...Again

Upon arriving at the convention center in Philadelphia for EDUCAUSE 2011, the first thing that struck me was the overwhelming vendor presence. Perhaps it's no different than it was last year but I had just come from the much smaller CIC Tech Forum the week before so that was the more recent comparison I had going. Honestly, you couldn't move 10 feet in any direction without seeing some form of advertising (banners, poster boards, kiosks, etc.) that didn't have vendor ads. The most obvious was Blackboard, followed by Pearson. And this was without walking into the Exhibit Hall! Clearly, this is event is circled on the marketing unit's calendar for these companies. They clearly spend big money because, well, there's big money to be made for these folks. One thing about business, as much as you think they are shelling out ridiculous money, they are VERY aware of the return on such investments. All that being said, I'm not sure how this large presence of vendors selling solutions fits with the movement of open educational resources. Just sayin'.

My Ovaltine Moment

Speaking of advertising, my first session turned out to be one. Perry Samson's "Using Web 2.0 Technology to Make Large Classes Smaller" seemed to be a good session to attend as I wanted to get an expanded look at emerging uses of Web 2.0 technology by faculty. I knew LectureTools would be in the discussion, I just didn't realize it would be THE discussion. I'd seen a little of LectureTools before. More or less, it's a platform based upon the uploading of powerpoint presentations and then adding some web 2.0 functions around it. Think online powerpoint peppered with polling, quizzes, student note taking features and other goodies all to be enjoyed synchronously or asynchronously. I liked what I saw but it was quickly apparent that this was going to be the entire session. So I browsed to the lecture tools website, went to the "company" link and lo and behold, the "Our Story" section details Perry Samson's development of the tool. Don't get me wrong, LectureTools is intriguing but it was a bit of an "Ovaltine" moment.

More encouraging was a session by Kathleen King, "Faculty Ramp-Up Session: Options for Easy, Accessible Online Tools for Teaching and Learning". She took a packed room through a list of current tools that she personally uses including Articulate, Prezi, and lecture capture tools such as Tegrity and Echo360. She emphasized that lecture capture has "changed my life" this past year. Her point was noteworthy because Kathleen has experience using video tools to record lectures and then doing the post-production work to make it available. She now says she can wrap up the lecture, press a button and in the 15 minute drive home, her video is available to her students. This is technology making a big difference in teaching and learning. I suspect the next year will hear more about these types of stories.

Accessibility

Like the prior week, I attended the session on accessibility. There were similar discussions about approaching compliance but my takeaway was their economic discussion around the issue. For instance, their research showed that by 2018, there will be a need for 22 million additional professional jobs. The problem? Current workforce projections for these types of jobs show that the US will be 3 million workers short of that need. These projections, however, do not currently include students/future workers who have accessibility needs. Basically, it's imperative to reach out to learners with accessibility needs to ensure they will be part of the labor pool in order to plug the 3 million job shortfall in 2018. I feel this is the kind of information that should help drive universities to enhance their migration to accessibility; not lawsuits.

Having a "Penn State University" on your badge is like having a honing device for anyone from anywhere that wanted to know about accessibility. People wanted to know "how's it going?" with the lawsuit and the PSU solution. Perhaps the oddest question I got about the settlement was, "So tell us really, who won?". How do you answer that? I went the political route and said "everyone". And because that's what I believe.

Mobility

The session on mobility I attended was "As Learning Goes Mobile". Lee Rainie provided research data on how young adults are using mobile devices and then related it to implications in teaching and learning. I'd intended to share some of the slide data via my use of Evernote picture taking on my iPad. It sure seemed like a great idea but for some reason, when I went to synch, none of my pics made it.

Anyway, Lee talked about the various behaviors that mobility and constant "connectedness" has begun to unleash on our society both publicly and privately. On the positive side, the behavior of hyper-coordination for group activities has become a social norm. The idea here is that for coordinating activities we use mobility connections for "opportunism and pain avoidance". It doesn't take much to imagine how we do that in various ways. Educators can certainly take advantage of that pedagogically when it comes to group tasks. As much as we struggle with what to do with all this mobility in teaching and learning, I think this is a great place to start.

danah boyd!

danah boyd's session on "Privacy in an Era of Social Media" was definitely an extension of her talk at TLT Symposium in 2009. Her bottom line message seemed to be that as higher-education educators, we need to be ready provide students proper guidance in securing their privacy in the social webs. I like the the thought but I couldn't help but think the majority of those in attendance might not have much of an idea how to provide such mentorship for an number of reasons.

Just Noticing

Last year, I attended a session on the iPad and what to make of it in IT cultures throughout higher education. This year, it seemed most attendees had an iPad on then. Luckily, that included me. Think about how much has changed in just one year!
Blackboard and Pearson are in fierce competition for your soul. By any industry standard, they both threw some quite lavish events for the second year in a row.
All sessions I attended were packed. If you showed up 2 minutes late, you were probably going to stand.
The sessions were also quite spread out. You had to hope you picked a good session to attend. If not, picking up and going to another one could entail a lengthy walk that included an escalator or two.
As in Anaheim last year, I think EDUCAUSE had a pretty good teaching and learning track. There were a lot of sessions to choose from. I know this conference had a reputation as being pretty IT heavy but it seems to offer much more than that now and looks to continue to do so.

CIC-CIO Tech Forum 2011: Small Community Pushing Big Changes

By MATTHEW N MEYER on October 18, 2011 11:14 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

This is another post from my experience last week at the CIC-CIO Tech Forum 2011 at the University of Illinois in Champaign, IL. This post provides a brief discussion of my presentation.

What is an ID doing presenting at an IT conference?

I was asked to present a topic on how communities of practice have driven change within an organization. It seemed odd that they accepted a presentation by an Instructional Designer for delivery to an very IT audience. But, I figured there must have been some strategic reason for it so I went along with it. Once I started to think about the tie-in, it actually wasn't that difficult to map the value to this group.

Quick Description of My Presentation

I figured it was best to first present to this group what an Instructional Designer and is and what we do. After that, I introduced the dynamics of the Penn State Learning Design community and the role it had in the discovery and investigation in VoiceThread and then it's journey to becoming a University-wide service at Penn State last year. That journey yielded a number of changes in our IT community including but not limited to:

Enhanced support and service model for similar applications
Further recognition on the emphasis on pedagogical support to faculty
Overall investigation of cross-organization (TLT) processes
Increased conversations across the TLT unit in general

Versions of My Presentation

Below are two versions of my presentation: the VoiceThread version and the PDF version.

This VoiceThread version currently has no annotations from me: it is simply the slide show. It came from Keynote and it had a few builds in it so the resulting "unbuild" version has 57 slides in it. I've turned commenting on if you are interested in leaving one.

This is the PDF version of the presentation: mmeyer_small_communities_prezo_2011.pdf

CIC-CIO Tech Forum 2011: Accessibility

By MATTHEW N MEYER on October 17, 2011 2:28 PM | 1 Comment | 0 TrackBacks

Last week, I attended the CIC-CIO Tech Forum 2011 at the University of Illinois in Champaign, IL. Before going further, let me just point out that getting from State College, PA to Champaign, IL is no small travel task. To fly out is 3 separate flights and approximately a 9 to 10 hour travel investment...if everything is on time. So when I finally arrived, I was really focused on two things:

Hoping my head cold would ease up and
I would find some good sessions.

Luckily, both things happened. Instead of writing everything in one droning blog post, I'm writing a few separate ones on my experiences. This one covers the Accessibility session I attended.

Accessibility: Not What it is but What is being Done

If I recall correctly from CIC-CIO two years ago, the accessibility session was delivered by two people, our very own Elizabeth Pyatt and Christian Vinten-Johansen. This year, the accessibility session Web Accessiblity: Ptifalls, Gotchas and Solutions was a panel of 6 people from various universities. This alone is yet another clear indication of how much more important this topic has become in the IT community. Overall, the folks on this panel provided descriptions of the ongoing accessibility efforts at their universities. Ironically, the morning of the session, the announcement of the NFB and PSU complaint resolution was released, giving the Penn State member on the panel, Matt Barkau, some good news to share with the audience. The common theme was how accessibly has risen into much more strategic discussions at leadership levels.

The fact that the panel was not there to tell us what accessibly means spoke volumes. They were reporting the various organizational mechanisms and resources they have currently developed to handle accessibility at their respective universities. Not surprisingly, a consensus from each panel member's presentation was that the current biggest issue is defining accessibility to anyone outside the current 'experts' on the subject in the university environment.

Accessiblilty- Usability- Mobility: All In the Same Direction

One of the panelists was Julie Hardesty, a UI Design specialist at the University of Indiana and her message centered around designs that are not just accessible but 'usable'. She discussed how her teams approach this seemingly dual-objective and it made a lot of sense. Interestingly, she made the natural tie-in to current mobile interfaces and how the accessible-usable principle of interface design carries over into mobile design. Personally I am able to relate to this with what VoiceThread has done recently in which they first developed an accessible version of their application and then carried over the basics of that UI into their mobile offering on the iOS.

Note: VoiceThread's Mobile Version just became officially available at the iTunes store.

I enjoyed Julie's viewpoint the most out of this session. It carried accessibility further than compliance; she talked about how proper design can not only provide compliance but also enhanced user experiences. This is the kind of stuff Steve Jobs (RIP, my man) would have attacked full-force.

My Politically Incorrect Question...I Guess

I spent 17 years as a custom web-based-training/e-learning project manager/director, etc. so there are some development issues I still see through that lens. Since coming to PSU and learning more about the issues of accessibility, I have come to understand the idea that considerable time and effort is necessary in order be to design and make the various digital media accessible. The number one thing is actually acquiring the subject matter expertise in the area of accessibility. And being that accessibility is not a clean cut punch list of requirements for every situation, this expertise certainly takes a while. Follow that up with the time and resources for other tasks (closed captioning of videos, auditing websites and remediation, etc.) and you can see how resource and time needs pile up.

So, I asked the panel if any of them have gotten a handle on the resources required to the point where they have real budget dollars allotted for accessibility. In other words, has anyone come up with a bottom line budget for accessibility? No one could answer. Unfortunately, by just asking the question, some in the room felt that I don't view accessibility as important in some way. The answer seemed to always start with something like, "To do this, we all have to be aware and understand that it's important..." It's a bit frustrating because I feel I'm being framed as the 'non-believer' in the room when that's not the case at all. Coming from my background, there is an associated cost with everything and this is no different. Pretending there is no associated cost or effort to do something leads to a high risk of multiple-level failure. I simply want to know because I think it's critical data to manage from the highest levels on down. Knowing what it takes to do something helps guide strategic thinking and eventually execution. Sure, you can start work on it but eventually, if something is strategically important, you need to have a handle on what it takes in order to plan for it.

So my main takeaways from this session:

There is a heightened sense of action across all CIC member schools in regard to accessibility
This includes increasing numbers of dedicated resources and units that aim to reach across the entire university through training, support, consulting and service
A big current challenge is working with software vendors and persuading them to do more for accessibility. Vendors with little grasp of how to do it and are not as market driven to do it...yet.
Opportunity in accessibility design for usability and mobility; have just started to tap this in higher education.

iPad-Only for a Week. Sort Of....

By MATTHEW N MEYER on August 23, 2011 10:09 AM | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

A few weeks ago, I headed down to the Outer Banks for a week of vacation with the family. Typically on these vacations, I pack the laptop. The main reason is to 'check in' with things at work but as I really think about it, perhaps the real reason is simply habit. For the past 10 years or so, I have just always seemed to bring my laptop with me to the point where I feel kind of vulnerable without it. For this trip, however, I was going to leave it behind. My wife was encouraged by this news until I let her know what I planned to do instead: bring my new iPad instead.

I know others out there have been living on the iPad for well over a year now but I'm not an early-adopter type. Actually, I did try out an iPad loaner last year for 3 weeks but I had no intention of experimenting with it as my only work station like Cole Camplese did last year. This time, however, the iPad is indeed mine on a full-time basis and being a "baby-steps first" kind of guy, figured I could experiment on my vacation by doing all the things I typically do with my laptop with the iPad instead.

Typing or "Why the iPad Can Not be my Primary Work Station"

Luckily, I am a home row typer as opposed to the hunt-and-peck type. For me, however, I need a sizable keyboard to accommodate my hand size and configuration (meaty fingers accompanied with these oddly jointed thumbs). See for yourself:

As much as I try, the virtual keyboard on the iPad screen is limiting for the way I type:

I can type well in small stretches before I run into one of the variances of typical typing such as numbers, punctuation, etc. It is tough to really get into a flow without having to look up, look around, fix and finally move on.
It hurts my hands. Squeezing my fingers and wrist into home row position is an open invitation to expedite the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome. The ergonomics of typing are not good for me at all.

In my workflows, I do a lot of writing/typing. I noticed that as I responded to emails, I found myself employing a minimalist approach to my text. As much as I'm sure that some colleagues found this refreshing, I didn't feel I was putting my best foot forward in my communications and thoughts back to them. As the week wore on, I found myself trying the hunt-and-peck style of typing. It was clear to me that the iPad definitely rewards that style of typing compared to doing it via home row.

For me, the impaired ability to type is the major impediment for it becoming my computer of choice for my workflow.

I Like to See Lots of Stuff

For better or worse, I have lots of stuff (I won't use the word "windows") open when I'm doing my work. I know I should use the tab feature in my browser more but I'm just not there yet. Being on the iPad does not allow me to jump around as easily as I'm accustomed to. It may seem trivial and, yes, I'm aware that I can get used to other ways of working, but it just feels too slow and methodical to navigate between things. As I tried to do more work tasks and navigate, I became more annoyed at the lack of speed. Perhaps because I do so much in Google Docs. Speaking of, editing in Google Docs is possible, yes, but it's not even close to the same experience as my laptop. Again, it's slow and clunky.

Copy/Paste Fail?

I need to mention that I also brought my iPod touch. But I bring that everywhere now so I don't count it as part of my workflow (but perhaps I should). Upon an urge to vent and blog something during the drive down to OBX (luckily, I was not doing the driving at the time), I figured I had a nicely built-in workflow to do so:

I opened Evernote on my iPod and began typing away.
When we got to OBX, I opened my post in Evernote on the iPad to copy/paste it into Blogs at Penn State, edit it up and post it.

This would be a brilliant use of hardware, apps and cloud computing...except I couldn't paste text from my note into my entry in Blogs at PSU. I tried everything. Sure, I could re-type it on the iPad if I so chose but that would defeat the purpose. I tried tweeting for help and got it. Except that the tips didn't work either. When it was all said and done, I've decided the blame resides with Blogs at PSU and not the iOS.

Good Things I Got Out of the Experience

SO much easier to travel with it. I think it's taken for granted by now but the sheer smallness of the iPad was a big difference for me. I didn't have to find a place for my laptop bag in the already-stuffed cargo area of our car. I simply put the iPad in our beach bag along with our beach towels. Easy peasy!
I love reading things on the iPad. When it came to simply reading articles or posts, it just looks so much better on an iPad than on a laptop screen. It made me want to try out an ebook for the first time (yeah, that's so 2009 but I told you I'm not an early-adopter).
I gained a deeper appreciation of Twitter. I probably used this app the most on vacation. I was thriving on the back and forth 'fun' stuff as well as the interesting links provided by the twitterdom. Since I've returned, I've made more of an effort to continue using Twitter.
I've become much more attuned to the potential of work apps. I'm on the lookout now for more apps in this space that can provide a powerful boost to what I can do in my work.
I was able to make my own entertainment space. This vacation house was huge but so was the number of people there: 22. In the evening, with 2 TV's watching the latest phony 'actor wannabe's picking a spouse' show and others with some HGTV show on, the iPad allowed me to pick my own show anywhere I wanted. Along with my wife's cousin's husband, we were able to chill on the deck outside and watch some shows on Netflix. Gotta say, that was pretty awesome.

While I don't see me being able to use the iPad as my main work machine, I do see opportunities for getting it more into my workflows. For example, I am much more comfortable bringing just the iPad to meetings now. And I'm also going to try working on it via docking station and keypad in my office, just to see. I'm glad I did it, however, even with the frustrations. It's hard to explain but I believe it did help me to think a bit differently. Oh no, did I really just do that? I think I just channeled the marketing folks at Apple!

"It's all about winning"? Don't Get Me Started

By MATTHEW N MEYER on August 3, 2011 2:13 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

[Note: I wrote this post while on vacation last week. I meant to post it shortly thereafter but a technical 'glitch' prevented me from doing so. It was part of my experiment of going 'iPad only' which I will post on later.]

Well, it finally happened. I'm typing this post from my iPod Touch (a first for me, by the way) mere moments after my six year old son reported that one of his coaches at his basketball camp uttered the phrase I'd been dreading my boys would hear all-too-soon in their childhood sports experience. As our family truckster heads down 64 East for Norfolk and eventually the Outer Banks, Harrison suddenly remembered to report what one of the coaches said to the young campers, "it's all about winning". Dear reader, prepare for rant...

Harrison at his first football clinic

Fortunately, my son apparently has listened to some of my preaching on this subject because he reported this coach's statement with the same tone he has when ratting on his brother for saying a bad word. To verify that he gets my message, I asked him what is really the the most important thing. "Trying your best" was his response, which, for his level of understanding, is good enough for now. It's what I hope to teach him about the true effort required to do your best in anything that I hope to convey to him in the years I have left to mentor him. And suddenly, I've become very aware of how precious few years I have left to ensure he comprehends this principle. Before another short-sighted coach has a chance to further erode it.

Obviously, I am not happy to hear about a coach telling my 7 and 6 year old boys this wrong-headed sports cliche. It's just one of those parental hot buttons for me. It comes from my own upbringing and experiences in playing and later coaching sports. Actually, it's mostly from my experience in coaching that is not even all that extensive. But it clarified things for me. And since having kids of my own who are now entering their still-too-early organized sports experience, I'm on the lookout for these bad messages from coaches. Well, it's that and my control-freak nature I suppose.

Much of my thinking in this area revolves around the manner in which John Wooden was able to articulate it throughout his career in coaching and then his published works in his retirement. I've posted previously around these philosophies. OK, yes, I'm ranting about what many may see as a trivial thing but it's important to me. Perhaps it's a reminder to me to do a better job of mentoring my sons and even do a better job of living it. One thing is certain: my sons are officially at the age where they will be exposed to bad messages. Not only do I need to make sure I guide them better to prepare for this eventuality, I need to make sure the bad messages they are getting are not coming from me.

Learning Design Summer Camp 2011

By MATTHEW N MEYER on July 22, 2011 4:58 PM | 6 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

For me, the Learning Design Summer camp at Penn State is the highlight of the year as far as the organized events thrown by TLT. The appeal is that it is an intimate, informal gathering of Learning (instructional) Designers throughout the Penn State community. It's a wonderful event not only for the topics covered and discussed but a great opportunity to meet face-to-face with so many of our Learning Design colleagues and connect on a personal and professional level.

This year's camp had three main themes to it:

Digital Research
Globalization
Classroom of the Future

Digital Research

This was a different angle that I was expecting. Basically, the presentations centered around issues for archiving our digital work and then a one hour comparison of Citation Tools (presented, by the way in an awesomely-produced 'Dating Game' format). As informative as this was, this session seemed to be geared specifically toward faculty conducting current research. The connection to the impact on what Learning Designers do was a bit lost on me. Perhaps it's because I am not doing this type of research but none of the other LD's I spoke with afterwards were able to see a direct relevancy to learning design per se.

Dating Game was fun!

While the dating game format was VERY cool, on reflection, I personally feel the LD community would have gotten more out of the dating game format around the current CMS' under consideration in Penn State's pilot. I just believe that the CMS' will have more impact on the general LD audience than will Citation tools.

Chris Long's presentation in which he explained and demonstrated the use of social media and tools to conduct research (along with his research assistant Lisa Lotito) was the most relevant portion of this theme for me. The reason for that is I was able to frame the workflow he instituted and I was thinking of ways that can impact workflow in different areas such as e-learning content development and student group projects.

Chris Long presents with Lisa Lotito

Globalization

The globalization sessions centered around assignments presented by faculty in which they connected their (US) students from particular cultural backgrounds with other students (abroad) to engage in conversations in topics that were pretty meaty. The emphasis was on continuing dialogue and seeking to understand other viewpoints, not necessarily agree with those viewpoints. Personally, I feel this is a critical skill set that seems to be eroding in the current US political landscape and was glad to see faculty such as Michael Elavsky and Laura Mulvey detail how they helped students frame these discussions as well as feel genuine impact. Quite the emotional impact in some cases.

Again, however, I didn't feel we did enough as a community to discuss these presentations from the Learning Design perspective. Clearly there was a design model and pedagogy here but there was no opportunity for a discussion around what exactly it was and how it could be scaled, ported, extended or delivered in other settings. The topic was ripe for it and it would have been nice to discuss more of the design itself as well as the discovered outcomes.

Ghost Stories

The late afternoon session of "Ghost Stories" was my favorite part of this year's LDSC. Robin2Go did a fantastic job of facilitating this discussion. This session was truly an immersive discussion among learning designers and technologists. The topics were well selected and everyone was engaged in lively dialogue on these very-relevant topics. Honestly, I think the group in the room could have gone on for another hour with this session. Obviously I loved it and one more shout out to Robin2Go on this one.

Classroom of the Future

This session's feature event was the break off into 9 (I think) groups to discuss a select number of topics separately for about 45 minutes and then everyone came back to Foster Auditorium to give a 5 minute presentation on what their group had discussed. What stands out to me about this session is that these topics entail so many issues it's hard to separate classroom from pedagogy from technology. The group I was in focused on mobility. We could have talked for HOURS around this topic and been pretty focused at all times. We didn't really come up with 'the answer' but it was great to talk to others for experiences and thoughts around it. I kept thinking, as I looked around our group, how different the mobility conversation is than it was just 5 years ago. In our group discussion, we had 5 people on iPads, 1 on a laptop, 3 using paper to take notes and 2 people with nothing. In 3 years from now, I wonder what the mix will be? In any event, I really do enjoy thinking and talking about mobility impacts in education. I always have the feeling it is a key element in the future but it has a role. Just not sure of what it is yet.

My Recap

Learning Design Summer Camp 2011 was another success for the LD community. It has such a great buzz and feel to it. I know the organizers worked their asses off to make it happen and they did a great job. I know it's billed as a "crowd-sourced and coordinated" event but there is always a core team of folks to do the heavy lifting. I believe up to 140 people registered for this year's event and I believe Jeff Swain, the fearless coordinator, said at one point there were 134 people that actually made it. That's an incredible testament to how valuable the Learning Design community at Penn State sees this event.

I've mentioned a few times in this post that I wished we'd had some way of adding a context of Learning Design impacts on the main themes. At the same time, I do recognize the importance of going beyond my professional "comfort zone" in a way that extends my thinking on issues. I think a mechanism that may help reconcile these two realities would be to add a 15 minute block at the end of a theme that opens the floor to discussion around impacts of learning design. The discussion model could be what Robin2Go did for Ghost Stories. It believe that this would quickly broaden the relevance to this particular audience and by the time it is done, possibly lead to even more focused hallway discussions.

I already can't wait for LDSC 2012!

Using Google Docs Advanced Commenting Tools: Nice!

By MATTHEW N MEYER on April 11, 2011 11:51 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

Over the past few weeks here at Penn State, I've been working on setting up user testing of VoiceThread Universal, the beta of VoiceThread's accessible version of their powerful web application. We conducted the first round of testing on April 1 and I naturally documented the results in my favorite collaborative tool, Google Docs. As I've done with the folks with VoiceThread for the past two years now, I shared the document and scheduled a call to discuss.

First: Only Documented in Outline Form: Used a Screen Cast for the Rest

I did something a bit different this time, however. First, I realized that trying to write up and describe every nuance of what transpired was probably counter-productive. Instead, I wrote these items up in outline format and then I used Camtasia to record screens and narrate in more detail for my contact at VoiceThread. This gave him the 'moving visuals' along with my wonderful narration (yeah, right) to communicate the issues found during testing. I recorded the Camtasia's, did some quick editing and then uploaded the video to my free screencast.com account and got the link to him within the Google Doc.

Using the New Commenting Features: Clarity and Communication

I then asked my contact (Steve Muth for those keeping track) to provide feedback using the the updated comment feature in GoogleDocs. If you haven't messed with how the new commenting features and notifications work in Google Docs, I recommend giving it a try. It adds a powerful level of collaboration and timeliness to such projects. Not only are the comments much clearer to visualize their context, Google Docs handles notifying me when these comments are made as well as what they are. But instead of me telling you, let me show you.

See it in Action

I've created a short (1:42) screen cast that provides a quick demonstration of these enhanced comment features have elevated the collaborative element of Google Docs.

Note: The screen cast is only clear enough to 'get the idea'; you won't be able to read the actual text in the document.

Google Docs New Commenting Feature in Action

TLT Symposium 2011: High Energy

By MATTHEW N MEYER on March 28, 2011 3:53 PM | 4 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

I participated in my 3rd TLT Symposium at Penn State this past Saturday. Just saying that seems odd because it still feels like I just started here to PSU. While there are a number of highlights from this year's event, the overarching takeaway for me this year was the tremendous amount of energy that this year's event seemed to emit. I don't think it was any one thing in particular about this year's event but rather an outcome of 'the collective'. That collective was the sum of the parts (Shirkey's keynote, sessions, demos, panels) all bound together by binding agent that produces the most energy: personal interaction.

"If We Could Just Bottle it Up..."

I admit that part of my observation is because I've now been here at Penn State for just over two years and in that time I've gotten to become more intimately familiar with the ongoing projects and initiatives within TLT. More importantly, however, is that I now know so many more people and there in lies what I see as the generator for this energy. The TLT 'extended community' has taken on an inertia of it's own and I can see and feel it for myself now that I've been here for a little bit. Just seeing so many familiar faces after months of varying degrees of digitally tracking these people via social media, blogs, web updates, email etc. is worth looking forward to. There really is nothing like getting to see these people in person to ratchet up the conversations that have been slowly nurtured on 'the internets'. Symposium just seemed to buzz with these conversations as I bounced from one familiar (and some not as familiar but just as welcomed) person to the next. Definitely a feeling of camaraderie based upon so many different initiatives that all have the same purpose.

Best Part for Me: The Last Part

Without question, my favorite part of the day was the end-of-day panel that Cole moderated. Having a panel with students and faculty to engage in a true dialog about technology experiences and expectations was a great idea. I've written earlier this year how valuable this format is for someone like me after attending a similar discussion hosted by World Campus. What I liked most about the one at Symposium was the 'uncomfortable' factor it had. Why? Because this is a conversation that's not supposed to be comfortable. It's supposed to yield unexpected viewpoints and experiences- that's why we have it in the first place; to get this conversation out of the #angelsucks twitter backchannel and into a true conversational realm.

Discomfort is Good!

I was amused to watch some of the dynamic start to unfold, in particular around the ANGEL discussions. When the student panelists were flat out asked by Cole about their thoughts on it, the true 'tell' (poker term) was the body language that followed immediately. They seemed to look at each other hoping one would be the first to reply. They could sense the faculty and staff eyes peering in on them. It looked like they were processing how to respond appropriately, balancing between 'telling you that your baby is ugly' and that 'there are some issues we've experienced with it'. That's got to be a lot of pressure on those students but they handled it well. By the way, for any Caddyshack fans, it reminded me of the moment when Judge Smails is awaiting Danny's decision to go along with Ty's doubling of the bet on Danny's putt: "WEELLLLLL? We're WAITING?".

Sure, there was some squirming and steely eyed stares going on but this forum offered the opportunity for complaints to turn into conversation and that is a good start. As I've mentioned before, I really see a lot of value in continued formats in which students step up into these conversations. It's not so much what they want or like that is valuable but the fact that they are in on the conversation. Talking through these things helps identify true pieces of valuable information. This is information you don't get from a survey.

It seemed that all the energy of the day funneled into this panel. At previous events, this energy sort of dissipated by the end of the day. Not this year. It seemed so many people stayed. All. Day. Long. That in itself is a testament to the this year's Symposium. Now if we could just bottle that energy up.

VoiceThread + NBC Learn: A Nice Fit?

By MATTHEW N MEYER on March 11, 2011 11:52 AM | 1 Comment | 0 TrackBacks

On my weekly call with Steve Muth from VoiceThread last week, a thought occurred to me:

"NBC Learn's content would be a fantastic fit with VoiceThread. They should form some type of partnership."

Since Penn State has deployed VoiceThread at Penn State as a university-wide service and is now piloting NBC Learn at Penn State through 2011, I thought we might be in a pretty good position to make a case for this partnership. Consider...

Why It Makes Sense (To Me at Least)

VoiceThread, at it's core, is a place to aggregate media content. It's great value is in that you can then have audio, video or text conversations around that uploaded media.
NBC Learn is, at it's core, video media content. It's great value is that the video has high-end production value because it was created for delivery via network news.
VoiceThread is making great market penetration in both K-12 and higher education markets
NBC Learn would like to make great market penetration in both of those markets; that is what the offering is all about
NBC Learn content could piggyback into many, many educational customers of VoiceThread.

This list could go on but I think you get the picture from a usability and business standpoint. Going further on usability for a moment, consider what such a partnership would allow you to do was a VoiceThread creator.

If you could put an NBC Learn video into a VoiceThread:

It would provide one place for students to go absorb a video that faculty has selected for them. In our current mode, a student would have to go entirely into the NBC Learn website to get the video.
Faculty could surround the video with other, specifically related digital media aimed at their students.
Entire conversations about a video using VoiceThread's comment features, including video doodling

Current Reasons Why It Won't Happen

I'm sure VoiceThread would love to form a partnership with a content provider like NBC Learn. NBC Learn, on the other hand, may not be so eager. The main reason is that they are still very new on the market and I'm sure they want a chance to prove their product offering, including it's delivery mechanism, can make money. In other words, I'm betting NBC Learn doesn't think they need anyone else to succeed right now. I could be wrong but this is typically the business stance such new endeavors take on.

For example, NBC Learn has tight DRM mechanisms in place on their content. They put a lot of effort in this product to ensuring their videos couldn't be used in the 'mashup' culture of the internet. They clearly have not set the table to have their video content to be used by any one other than those that subscribe to NBC Learn.

But in time, I think NBC Learn will realize their core value is video content and be willing to partner. And let's not forget there's a chance that other big media companies will follow suit in this business (ABC, CBS, CNN etc.) who may jump on the partnership model much faster. If there is a proven market for this type of product, someone will have to do something differently in the business model because the content itself really won't be.

Penn State as Matchmaker?

I think it would be interesting to at least put VoiceThread and NBC Learn in touch. For all I know, they don't know much about each other. Who better than Penn State to do the introductions? After all, we've launched VoiceThread at PSU this year and we are currently piloting NBC Learn at Penn State through the fall of 2011. Perhaps if we demonstrate the desire for a more integrated solution, they might start talking. I'm just sayin'...

Let Me Revise That Post...

By MATTHEW N MEYER on March 10, 2011 5:29 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

A few weeks ago, I posted on the how the upcoming budget picture was looking "grim" and that those of us in educational technology should work harder to seize the moment by working even harder to create groundbreaking work in our chosen craft. However, after the proposed PA State budget was released this week, I felt it necessary to revise my opening paragraph in that post.

Time to Revise!

Editor's Note: Bold indicates added from previous post.

"The business of higher education is ~~taking some lumps right now~~ being attacked as no longer for the public good. Like most everything, it ~~has much to do~~ is all about ~~the economy~~ politics. While no longer on the brink of disaster, this economy is not experiencing the explosive growth necessary to lift government revenues quickly enough to support expected spending. To compound the problem, the proposed budget is not even attempting to do what other states do and get rightful tax revenue from gas drillers. And it won't for a number of years. As a result, many states in an attempt to find areas to cut, are assembling budgets that contain ~~significant~~ absolutely devastating cuts toward state-supported colleges and universities. Obviously, this trend is ~~not~~ new in that it not only wants to cut education funding, it points toward dismantling state support for education altogether. Just last year, Penn State had to make contingency plans in the all-too-possible scenario that it would not get it's assumed appropriations funding from Harrisburg. PSU eventually avoided the big hit that time but it's budget time again and it's looking ~~grim~~ like middle and lower class armageddon. Most likely, when this year's budget process is all said and done, Penn State, like so many universities, will be faced with the daunting reality of scale of ~~managing both cost cutting measures as well as revenue increases in the form of the dreaded tuition increase~~ forming a powerful coalition of support to fight the governor's full proposed budget cuts on higher education. Otherwise, PSU and these other PA higher education institutions will no longer be able server the commonwealth as has been intended for a century and a half."

The rest of that post can remain as is...for now.