Natalie's Blog

Natalie's Blog http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/ Natalie Harp's professional blog, dedicated to teaching and learning topics and thoughts on related technologies. Opinions are entirely my own and do not reflect any official position of the Pennsylvania State University. en-us Copyright 2009 Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:12:11 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification Trainers Summer Social

the University needs to seriously look at ways to reduce costs. One way to do this is to really look at our training needs and training efforts and see where we're duplication efforts and can share.
Also in light of pandemic and seasonal flu, as well as travel costs, we need to look at alternative ways of conducting meetings and training, such as using Adobe Connect
increased productivity, increased employee satisfaction

]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/08/trainers-summer-social.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/08/trainers-summer-social.html conferences training elluminate_live training wcld web2.0 Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:12:11 -0500 Learning Design Summer Camp 2009 Also I find by my own participation via social media in this conference I actually stay more engaged. Hard to stay focused on just ppl talking but when I force myself to react and create content I remain engaged.

NCLB has generated students who are good passive, rote learners but have the inability to generate content and be active participants in their learning - important we address this. Very important to spell out the processes and expectations in the classroom to make this transition easier. World Campus does well in current economic environment because it pushes out this easily replicated rote content that does not involve much input from the instructor. This needs to change! Students are paying big bucks and tuition is going up!

Assessment is an issue!

Cole: administrators are not the problem. A lot of the best new tech adopters are the administrators so they are not the usually the ones standing in the way. Is it status quo?

]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/07/learning-design-summer-camp-20.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/07/learning-design-summer-camp-20.html conferences ldsc09 wcld Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:45:12 -0500 Vacation dispatch

I'm reading A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink, and it's got me thinking about a lot of things. A lot of today's hot business/work life books encourage us to step outside of our comfort zones (Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Work Week comes to mind). A Whole New Mind takes a unique approach in making the case that right-brained aptitudes and abilities are going to be among the attributes that will help workers achieve success in the workplace of the future. I have always thought of myself as foremost a left-brained thinker but I have also become aware that I am a much happier person when I pay attention to right-brained thinking. I also believe it makes me a better contributer to work and personal relationships. Right-brained thinking, as Pink defines it, is all about patterns, style, empathy, synthesis and holistic thinking, as opposed to logic, detail and language which are attributed to the left brain.

Yesterday I mowed my lawn. Not a terribly exciting chore normally, but I had a bit of a revelation this time round. Perhaps I had Pink's book for inspiration, but for some reason I decided to mow a different pattern than the one I had always used. I simply mowed diagonally rather than the usual straight up and down:

What's so exciting about this? Well not much on the surface. I don't think it saved me much time or effort. But it did make the activity a little more joyful than usual and it didn't feel like it took as much effort. And I enjoyed the artistic effect; enough that I was inspired to snap this picture with my iPhone.

What I've taken from this is that it's really important to change things up from time to time and approach things from a different angle. The next time I find myself in the doldrums at work without much inspiration, I will challenge myself to do things differently; to break out of my comfort zone. The worst that could happen is I fail, learn from my mistakes, and move on. But there's also a pretty decent chance I'll end up inspired and motivated to see things and act on things in a different way. And that'll take me closer to where I want to be - a more content person with more to contribute to the world and the people around me.

]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/07/vacation-dispatch.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/07/vacation-dispatch.html musings iPhone lawn vacation Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:29:13 -0500 Livescribe Pulse pen

Some excellent possible uses for the pen include writing out and demonstrating math equations, formulas, and graphs, and also possible pen and ink drawing. Any of these uses would be useful for providing the "chalkboard" type experience to distant learners.

There are some drawbacks, however, of course. The output is a proprietary format that is hosted on the Livescribe site - not good if you're thinking of doing in-house enhancements to the pencasts (like adding captioning for accessibility purposes). Also, though students can use the pen to demonstrate and submit their work, it does not produce a file that can then be marked up and returned by the professor.

All in all, a nice way of demonstrating problem-solving techniques, but not a great way of providing a true two-way or social experience.

]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/07/livescribe-pulse-pen.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/07/livescribe-pulse-pen.html new technologies wcld Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:27:10 -0500 The project management puzzle

Our Quickbase use has fizzled a bit (or a lot).

One reason for this is likely due to the interface: It's very database-y:

Our workplace consists of instructional designers and assistants who may not be accustomed to a database interface, and honestly are not expected to be power database users as part of their skill set.

My charge, along with the team joining me in this journey, is to find what might actually work to achieve our ends. We know that the software is very good at managing data, tables and relationships. We also know that our users are drawing a blank when attempting to use it. So the question is: how do we build an interface that our users instinctively know how to use and serves the purpose of keeping team members honest and on track? There is yet another layer of complication here. The team interacts on a nearly daily basis with various data housing systems outside of Quickbase - systems that store more detailed course information, manage time tracking, store course multimedia, etc. Here in fact is a snapshot of the whiteboard from our last meeting where we were discussing all these systems:

You can see how tangled this problem is. Many of the systems are out of our control and will probably still have to be interfaced with manually, but for the in-house solutions, there is great potential for integration, saving time and duplication of effort for everyone who uses them.

Luckily, we have Jeanette Condo on our team, a programmer with database and API experience. (yay for us!) With her help, we may come up with a win-win solution that puts Quickbase in the background while fully taking advantage of its powerful database capabilities.

Our next team meeting is next Monday. We are still in the discussion and exploration stage and have not begun any nitty-gritty development or testing yet, so the question I think I want to ask is, if we were to design a system for managing our work from the ground up, without consideration for existing systems, what would it look like?

]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/06/the-project-management-puzzle.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/06/the-project-management-puzzle.html project management productivity quickbase wcld Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:52:28 -0500 Web 2009 Conference Wayfinding the Semantic Web

AD-54 Penn State policy will not be updated any time soon to require semantic metadata

instant history of the Web

web 1.0 - series of linked documents
web 2.0 - communications
web 3.0 - semantic web

purpose of semantic web - add meaning to Web documents

burners-lee - semantic web makes it possible for people and machines to understand web content

We all come into contact w/the semantic Web every day - Google is a good example when it comes up w/intelligent search results.

An Argument For Semantics

words can have different meanings in different contexts and depending on the bias of the observer - machines don't have bias and can't read context well

Question: can we pull non-sensitive enterprise data from a central source?

Semantics: meaning of words or symbols, become really useful when shared betw. individuals and w/in community

Keys - in the absence of meaningful identifiers, we invent a (usually numeric) key to unique data

Demonstration - Firefox add-on Operator. find and save events. Will have to work with it to see how it really works or is useful.

Code demonstration - possible implementations:

microformats - class attributes in CSS that are standard, can be parsed out, eg. class="time"
metadata
xhtml attributes -
RDF - THE language for presenting semantic info on the Web - it is essentially embedded in the html. WILL NOT VALIDATE. Creative Commons licensing is an example.
RDFa - embedded as attributes
Content management systems do a good job of handling semantic web aspects. They make it easy for developers but don't "make" you do it. Recommend a person w/the role "final release editor", someone w/a librarian mind.

Brian Panulla - get rid of the words semantic web! Moving from metadata to linked data

tagging is NOT the semantic web - too loose and open. can lead to good results w/enough tagging, but not good enough.

higher ed = walled gardens. leads to redundant data. relational databases are about structure and not data. convention may allow us to integrate data across systems, e.g. usps state code, campus 2-letter code. problem - ad hoc identifiers and multiple copies of same data in existence, e.g. college/campus name changes

New W3C language - OWL: Web Ontology Language

Semantic Web means essentially:

further the separation of content, presentation, behavior, logic
breaking down data silos

______________

Augmented reality

Current AR technology - GE smart grid

Mini automotive ad

topps 3d baseball cards

bmw augmented reality - example on youtube shows AR assisted car repair!!

AR island on Second Life - may be fun to explore

______________

]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/06/web-2009-conference.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/06/web-2009-conference.html conferences psuweb09 Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:57:43 -0500 TLT Symposium 2009 Blogging - I largely focused on the Penn State Blogs in this year's Symposium. I am looking at them in the context of their potential application in the iMBA program, and I see enormous potential for the platform, with many potential strengths and applications, including:

enabling reflections - blogging is a great way to allow in-depth reflection on a topic, increasing student retention and engagement.
enabling conversations - blogs can be easily aggregated into a single source, essentially allowing conversations to occur around a single topic or course.
student ownership of content - ANGEL supports discussion forums, chat and other forms of communication that can work in certain situations but ultimately do not give students ownership of their content. That carefully composed discussion forum posting or drop box submission that took a lot of thought and effort to create is essentially lost when the semester/term is over unless the student takes special effort to retain it.
portfolio - related to ownership of content, the concept of blog as portfolio has powerful implications. The Penn State Blog platform can be used to support so much more than just blogging; essentially a student can easily set up a whole Web site with a collection of artifacts (pictures, stories, etc.) related to him or herself. The portfolio can represent not only the students' learning in the program but can include any learning or experiences that take place outside of the formal learning environment. Such an e-portfolio is a strong indicator to a potential employer of the depth of a person's strengths and experiences.

The two sessions I went to related to blogging were entitled: Engaging Students with Program Learning Outcomes and ENGL 202C on the Blogs at Penn State Platform. I learned of real-life examples that support my thinking above. The Engaging Students session had students that were using their blogs in the context of a program experience and not just for isolated classwork. They were doing all the things I mentioned above for portfolio, but were also using them for reflections and conversations. The ENGL 202C students were able to share their writing with the class in a much more meaningful and engaging way.

I also attended a session on the future of textbooks in the digital age and a hands-on session on Adobe Connect. The textbook session gave a lot of food for thought about what's in store for textbooks and what copyright means in the digital world. The Adobe Connect session gave me more hands-on practice with Connect and informed me of the detailed help page PSU has in place for the product - I intend to use this as a reference and source of ideas as I revise our own (World Campus) instructions for Elluminate Live.

Finally, the two keynotes with David Wiley and danah boyd were fantastic. All in all a tiring day but very well worth my time and as usual, gave me plenty of takeaways and food for thought.

]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/04/tlt-symposium-2009.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/04/tlt-symposium-2009.html conferences blogging blogs CMS e-portfolio LMS portfolio wcld Sat, 18 Apr 2009 09:45:01 -0500 Sharing my class work

I've been rather quiet in the blogosphere of late. This is in no small part thanks to the class I've been taking, ADTED 532: Research in Distance Education. Yesterday was my last day of class, and I handed in my final paper entitled Becoming a Network Organization: An Extended Research Proposal. This paper is available on this blog, listed under Writings on the left-hand side of this page. I've also put up all the other writing I did for the class. I invite your perusal and comments. My intention is to eventually go back through ANGEL and retrieve all my class assignments for posting here. I want to share my work; I work really hard at it. And while the feedback and discussion I get from my classmates within the confines of ANGEL is absolutely invaluable, I'm interested in seeing what others might think. (I also feel more like I'm taking ownership of my work by collecting it here.)

By the way, ADTED 532 is the last graduate class I needed to earn the 18 credit Distance Education certificate. Hooray! Next I will be applying for formal admission into the Adult Education master's degree program. Wish me luck.
]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/04/sharing-my-class-work.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/04/sharing-my-class-work.html Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:23:08 -0500 2009 NMC Symposium on New Media and Learning
The conference actually begins tonight with a reception and poster session at the NMC conference center in Second Life. I like poster sessions - it provides a nice informal opportunity to interact with the poster creators. The theme of the conference is New Media and Learning so I will be paying particular attention to education professionals like myself that are using Web 2.0, learning management systems, Second Life, etc. in innovative ways to support learning. The poster creators will be there to chat with.

The full conference begins tomorrow and there are several sessions I will be paying attention to. I'll name a few, describe them briefly and give my reasons for being "all ears", defining my objectives in italics.

Imagination Engine: Rapid Media Visualization and Storyboard Creation Process. Joe Tojek (or his avatar) from Capella University will be demonstrating the process and tools his intructional design team uses to brainstorm and plan new media projects and tools in support of learning. I'll be looking for cues and ideas for how our IT and media shop can work better with the instructional designers to provide input and support as we move to using new technologies in our courses.
Digital Media Tools for Replacing Traditional Methods of Instruction. This session will look at Web 2.0 tools used in the support of collaborative learning, and will show how these tools enable us to go beyond traditional instruction. I'm assuming by "traditional instruction" the presenter intends to compare Web 2.0 - enhanced learning with both f2f and older distance learning models. I'll be focusing particularly on how we can better support and provide scaffolding for learning in new environments such as wikis and blogs, and what new learning outcomes we can expect.
Going GaGa for Google: Using Google in Virtual Worlds. This session will show how Google tools such as Google Docs, Google Maps and YouTube can be "mashed up" with the virtual world experience to provide a highly textured learning experience (my words). My objective here is primarily for fun - there is an interactive component to this session and we'll actually be building something! I will be paying attention to the possibilities for learning, too, of course. :-)
Dramatically Different: Strategies for Socially-Engaged Learning in Virtual
Worlds. This session will describe the use of virtual worlds for role-playing and active learning in support of learning in the drama/theatre arts area. This session will support a meta-objective for attending this conference; since the conference is taking place entirely in Second Life, I will be experiencing first hand its power in supporting learning.

There are many other sessions too numerous to mention that have caught my interest. I'm sure I'll be refining my objectives and coming up with new ones as I meet new people and make new discoveries at the conference. I'll be blogging my discoveries so stay tuned.
]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/03/discipline-and-focus.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2009/03/discipline-and-focus.html conferences wcld Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:11:23 -0500 Declaring e-mail bankruptcy
The idea of declaring pre-emptive e-mail bankruptcy is not an original one of mine. It's been discussed around the blogosphere as one way of managing stress and information overload. Two of the blogs I follow - Tim Ferriss' and Danah Boyd's, advocate for different forms of e-mail bankruptcy. Declaring e-mail bankruptcy pre-emptively seems to me a way of handling things honestly and responsibly. Better to declare ahead of time that communications might be lost than to find oneself in the situation of coming back from a long absence, being overwhelmed with a bloated inbox, and accidentally deleting communications that might be important.

We'll see how this experiment goes. I hope no one gets upset with me. The real test will come, I suppose, when I try this experiment during vacation time. Folks might understand my doing this over the holidays, or will likely not even be aware of it, but on a personal vacation where others are actually working, there might be a possibility of stepping on some toes. In that case, it might be wise to inform stakeholders well ahead of time and make very clear what my intentions are. I'll still want to consider it, though, for the sake of my own sanity and productivity.

Best wishes for the holidays, everyone. Stay safe and I'll see you in the new year!
]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2008/12/declaring-e-mail-bankruptcy.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2008/12/declaring-e-mail-bankruptcy.html productivity e-mail bankruptcy holiday Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:26:06 -0500 Nose to the grindstone
I've also been continuing with my classwork. Working on a team paper right now which is no easy task. Luckily, I was able to introduce Google Docs to my teammates and they've taken to it quite well. Working on a shared document online has significantly reduced the time and stress of passing a document around for edits. I've shared this information with the course instructional designer, and she plans to introduce it (Google Docs) program-wide next semester as part of the "tool kit" for students to consider. I also have an individual final paper due in less than two weeks!
]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2008/11/nose-to-the-grindstone.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2008/11/nose-to-the-grindstone.html grindstone workload professionaldevelopment projects Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:25:04 -0500 Blogging in the classroom
A bit of background - the class, as designed, is presented as a series of readings accompanied by a course syllabus. Grading is based on class participation as well as a series of essays which provide an opportunity to reflect on our own real-life teaching experience. What the class lacks is content - a guided, well designed path that describes our learning goals and weekly activities in depth. Essentially the hand of the instructional designer has been tied. The instructor's hand has been tied as well, in the sense that she is teaching a class that has been "designed" by another faculty member.

The class instructional designer mentioned in our conversation that she had been trying to convince the new instructor to start a blog as a way of supplementing the course materials. I thought it was a fantastic idea when I heard it, and the more I think about it, the more I think it is a great idea, not just in this class, but for any teacher who wishes to provide a more motivating and enriching class experience. It gives a venue for class communications that provides a twofold purpose:

It keeps the class "alive" as it were, providing a tempo and a personality as well as learning enrichment, important considerations especially when teaching learners at a distance.
Blogging's inherent informality takes some of the pressure off both the faculty and the students. Our blogging platform at Penn State is separate from the LMS, and this is a good thing. Faculty can be expressive and engaging without, say, having to post a formal announcement in the course LMS, where meanings and intentions might be examined more closely and are more likely to cause anxiety in the learners.

These are my initial thoughts. Any others?
]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2008/09/blogging-in-the-classroom.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2008/09/blogging-in-the-classroom.html blogging LMS Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:03:09 -0500 Class reflections: Past, present and future
Last spring I took EDTEC 449: Video and Hypermedia in the Classroom through the World Campus. I learned a lot about video I never knew before, both technically and (dare I use the word) pedagogically. By that I mean I learned that video adds another dimension to the learning experience, appeals to different learning styles, and is often a very appropriate means of conveying complex concepts. I'm not a big fan of the "talking head" videos, and I don't know many that are. It's a bit of a snooze to have to engage the eyes in a medium that is flat, often poorly filmed and poorly planned, when the same information can be conveyed just as easily through text and/or an audio podcast. Great course and I am much the wiser for having taken it. :-)

Over the summer I've attended a few conferences and presented at two of them - the Hendrick Adult Learner conference and Web 2008. They were both worthwhile experiences, as was this year's Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) conference. I've also engaged in decidedly less formal learning opportunities, such as my ever-increasing breadth of rss feeds, twitter friends, and conversations with colleagues and teammates. Summer is always nice. I will miss it though I look forward to my favorite season, fall. And fall, gentle readers, means back to school.

Two learning opportunities with different degrees of formality will be in the picture for me this fall. One is another class I am taking for credit, ADTED 498A, Teaching Adults Responsibly. Sounds onerous but doable. Though I'm sure my thinking on that premise will be shaken up, down, and all around by the time the semester's through. The teacher of the course has already promised that we've "signed on for an adventure." I'm sure it will be challenging. The other course I'm taking informally (though it follows a decidedly formal structure and can be taken for credit) is called "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge" and is moderated (taught) by George Siemens and Stephen Downes: http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wiki/Connectivism. We'll see how well I do keeping up with that one. I hope to participate as much as possible, whether as the proverbial "fly on the wall" just observing the conversations or indeed as an active participant.

Wish me luck.
]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2008/08/class-reflections-past-present.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2008/08/class-reflections-past-present.html CCK08 Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:35:27 -0500 New Title
My thinking has evolved lately around just why I am intimidated by the prospect of having too ubiquitous of an online presence. For one thing, I am a bit of an introvert in the online environment (see my Twitter as Public Brainstorming post). I am not an advocate for "keeping all your eggs in one basket," so to speak, when it comes to online networking vs. private life. I do recognize that there's probably no looking back in today's global environment in terms of the necessity of maintaining an online presence and of nurturing healthy connections with others through this medium. But I am also an advocate for simplicity - ultimately, I believe that technology should not feel like technology, it should just be a natural part of our lives (and of course, in my field, a natural part of teaching and learning). Services like Twitter and Flickr truly fit this model - they have a singular purpose and a low barrier to entry. LinkedIn and Facebook, while more complex and revealing of personal information, are so ubiquitious that to not join them is to miss out on positive networking opportunities (not to mention both have privacy controls that are somewhat reassuring). So I guess the two questions I ask myself when I consider a new service and adding to my social networking list are:

Is it simple to use or will it require an investment of time and effort to get up and running in the new environment?
Does it fill some need of mine that is not being met very well by some other service or method I use to stay connected?

If something fails the simplicity test, then it better meet the needs test or I'll likely pass on the service for now. Not to say that I wouldn't reconsider in the future - I am flexible like that. But for now, the executive decision is a no-go.

That brings me to what I hope will be the last point I make in this post. A change that I have had to make in my own modus operandi in this uber-connected world is that I've had to learn to not be afraid to hurt other people's feelings. If you invite me to join you on some new social networking service, and I don't take you up right away, it's not you, it's me. I have a lot of respect for my colleagues and friends who are willing to be pioneers and try these new things. And I am honored to be thought of along the way.

Thoughts are welcomed and encouraged.
]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2008/07/new-title.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2008/07/new-title.html Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:27:35 -0500 University culture and innovation
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/505
]]> http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2008/06/university-culture-and-innovat.html http://www.personal.psu.edu/nfh102/blogs/natalies_blog/2008/06/university-culture-and-innovat.html Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:26:44 -0500