July 2009 Archives

I've recently re-fallen in love with The New York Times online. I think they are very close to getting the idea of an online newspaper right. The look is clean, something that many online versions of newspapers struggle with mightily. The images are crisp. And they're incorporating multimedia such as slide shows and movies. I love how it still looks like the Times. It feels like the Times I know and love. I don't even mind the advertising. In fact, I like the way they embed it into the format instead of using annoying popups or flyovers. Just like the printed version the advertisements are there for me to read if I want to read them. Perfect.

I'd change a few things, like moving some of the media up the page or, better yet, embedding it into the story, but on the whole reading the Times online is an enjoyable experience. I've been tinkering around with the TimesPeople application, a banner at the top of the page that lets you share items of interest with other people in your Times network and, I think it has real potential.


Front page of The New York Times Online

But, I think what I like most of all is they are keeping the sense of who they are while moving into a new medium. They've managed to incorporate the comfort of the familiar and key elements of what made them a great newspaper into a new medium. And they seem to be trying to capitalize on the affordances the new medium offers.
   
So, it begs the question, can the Times be the newspaper that gets going online right? There are many other issues at play in determining if and what newspapers will survive with a drastically different economic model being front and center. But I'm rooting for them.

You think the craziest thoughts while stoned in a bus station, the middle of the night when it's raining and you've nowhere to go. He thought of his old man. How everything he'd become was a play off him. He didn't blame him it was just the way life worked.

In preparation for the third season of Mad Men, AMC create this application called MadMenYourself that allows you to create your own Mad Men persona. You select through a variety of options from the shape of your face to the background you want to be standing in front of. It's pretty cool.

So I'm reading Seth Godin's latest, Tribes, which is all about the new breed of leader, a heretic, someone who is willing to take a stand and dare to be different. I purchased Godin's book at BbWorld09, Blackboard's annual user conference. In fact I got it autographed by the author himself at a stand located on the vendor showroom floor.

According to Godin, a heretic is an innovator. A leader. One who dares to challenge the status quo. Almost by definition, a heretic is one who challenges a large organization, be it a company, a university, a non-profit, whatever. A heretic is one that sees the folly of "managing to keep things the same" and instead seeks out the next big thing, bringing along with him or her a loyal band of followers, a tribe. In other words, a heretic fights for everything a company such as Blackboard tries to prevent. To quote from the book:

"Many big organizations are getting bigger as a way of fighting off the power of tribes. They buy other companies, hoping that the formal nature of their bigness will somehow successfully fight off the flexible, fast, and sometimes free power of the tribe." pg. 112

See the irony? Acquisition and litigation appear to be the cornerstone of Blackboard's business model. In May they purchased their chief competitor, ANGEL Learning, and at the conference they announced the purchase of Terriblyclever Design, a company run by two Stanford students that builds iPhone applications for colleges. (Read the Chronicle article). Oh, and they also announced the phasing out of legacy versions of WebCT, another chief rival that Blackboard acquired several years back.

Just this week Blackboard announced that it will continue pursuing legal action against Desire 2 Learn despite an appellate court once again overturning Blackboard's patent claims. To date Blackboard is now 0-38 in their claims of patent infringement against Desire 2 Learn. (Read the Campus Technology article). In other words, Blackboard is acting very much like an organization Godin was challenging us to rise up against during his keynote address. (Watch Godin's TED Talk on Tribes). 

My sophomore year English teacher in high school gave the best definition of irony I ever heard. "Irony," big Lou said, "was watching a firehouse burn down."   Might we be witnessing it at the moment?

It's exciting times for those used to living in the backwater of educational topics. I'm speaking of those experts on subjects such as copyright, accessibility, web security and development. Topics everyone generally acknowledges are important but nobody really pays any attention to. Or, at best, gives tacit attention to, enough of a wink-and-a-nod to say we do with a good conscience. But the growing interest in personal publishing has changed all that.

Personal publishing is the ability for an individual to create and distribute content on a mass level for little cost. If you have a blog, or any other type of public web presence for that matter, congratulations, consider yourself in the personal publishing business. This means that issues that never really mattered to the average Joe and Jane out there now matter, a lot.  Copyright, accessibility, and security are relevant because they now hit us where we live. It's no longer just the techies problem; we all have to be concerned.  

But how do you, the expert in the field, reach this new-found audience (of which I count myself a member)? My recommendation is to demystify the topic, whichever one it happens to be. To often a presentation on the subject begins and ends in the arcane. My advice is to treat these discussions as lifestyle discussions instead of a treatise on procedural issues. I want to know about copyright, for example, because of how it impacts me as a publisher. Why is it important? How does it make me feel? What does compliance with copyright say about me to the rest of the world? Notice that I'm beginning the discussion in the affective domain. That's critical. It has to mean something to me for me to want to pursue it further.

Think of yourself as a marketer or a salesperson. You have a product, like bottled water, that people want. Are you selling hydration? The "you need water to stay alive" approach. Or are you selling a lifestyle choice? "I drink this particular water because..." I would argue it's the latter.

Congratulations, you now have a product that's in demand. How are you going to sell them on yours?

Billy was new-baptized on a humid night, late July '77. Sitting on the step a cold beer at his feet keys in pocket he was already gone. Until through the window, he heard her laugh at something on the television. Her laugh always broke him. He knew at that point he wasn't going anywhere.

I've been following the Kindle saga with interest. In case you haven't heard, Amazon surreptitiously deleted George Orwell's, 1984, from the Kindle store when it found out the edition was not authorized. For the uninitiated, of which I counted myself, deleting a book from the Kindle store meant the copy was also deleted from the Kindle's themselves, meaning that anyone who had purchased the book for their Kindle found the book deleted and their money refunded without their consent.

My response, like a great many others, was one of righteous indignation. How dare Amazon do that. Didn't purchasing the book constitute ownership? It does in the terrestrial world where Amazon would have removed the unauthorized copies from their brick and mortar store but written off the copies previously sold. In other words, those that went out the door were gone.

Well it turns out ownership in this situation is not that clear. It may be that what you're purchasing in this instance is the right to read the book but, the Kindle store actually retains possession. I was relieved to hear Jeff Bezos say Amazon would not take the same course of action when this scenario happens again. And it will.

So I was feeling better about the situation until I read this quote in the Times from Randal Picker, a law professor at the University of Chicago. Pinker felt Amazon acted properly in deleting the books from people's Kindles. From the article:

"Because copyright infringement was poor and lax in the offline world, it should also be that way in the online world? I don't understand that logic," Mr. Picker said. "The whole point of moving online is that it creates new opportunities.

(Here's a link to the NYTimes  article)

What struck me about the quote is that Professor Picker is basically making the same argument  Lawrence Lessig, a law professor himself and proponent of free culture, makes when he argues that copyright law, as currently written makes no sense in the web-based world. And if I agree with Lessig than don't I have to agree with Picker? Isn't it about getting it right in cyberspace regardless of if we like the outcome? If we grant greater access to content for folks to take and do what they want with in the name of the creative process than don't we also have to enforce the rights of the content owner when they are clearly established?

Amazon does a lot of other things with the Kindle, for example limiting right of first sale by the purchaser of the book, that make me leery about purchasing one. But the greater issue remains. In a world where content, that you believe is yours, is stored someplace else, what does constitute ownership? And if we are going to grant greater access to the work of others then don't we also have to protect their interests when a violation is clear?

He learned early life was lived in the abstract and everything, everything, was a leap of faith. Each moment was a bargain with Fate. You had to be willing to trade time, which was a piece of yourself, for something else. Each deal ultimately being a trade-off on your mortality.

Craig Street was an island. An enclosed world where the sun rose and set between Rhawn  and Decatur. It was the womb sending parents toward their end and children toward their future. Helpless to protect either. All it could do, all one could expect, was for it to prepare them.

Last week was our second annual Learning Design Summer Camp, an informal get together of designers, technologists, librarians, teachers, etc. We're supposed to be a representation of the thinkers who live out on the horizon of educational technology. The ones who explore the most recent innovations to ascertain their potential for teaching, learning, and research. And in a very real sense we are who we say we are. That's what makes the get together so interesting. But I did have to chuckle at how quickly we conformed to our own set of norms.

For example, the two day event featured four 90-minute panel discussions. Each panel session featured two ways to capture the back channel conversation. First, we used twitter to capture general comments and observations. (If you want to get a snapshot of what took place go to twitter and search the hashtag #ldsc09). And we also used the live question tool courtesy of Harvard Law. The Live Question tool enables anyone with the URL to post questions for the panel and to vote on the most pertinent questions with the ones receiving the most votes bubbling up to the top.

What was funny was how quickly these tools became our primary means of communication. Without being told we could not speak, or verbally ask questions or make comments, we chose collectively and without communication not to speak and instead relied solely on these electronic mediums. It was Jung's theory of the collective unconscious in action.

This was true even if it meant our question did not get addressed. I know I second guessed myself several times when the community did not vote up my question, wondering if I was completely off base with my thought or just plain daft. It was not until we were halfway through the final session when one of the exasperated among us stood up to ask a question. Though she did preface it by stating she knew she was going against practice by speaking instead of posting.  An admission that drew relieved laughter from the rest of us because we were all feeling the same thing.

As an instructional designer it got me to thinking about how critical it is for us to keep this example in mind when choosing tools for teaching and learning. From a marketing perspective, and we are all marketers in some way, shape, or form, it is a classic example of how the medium does shape the message. We unconsciously chose to communicate this way because it is a large part of what our group is (technology explorers) and because the tools were presented to us as an option (we, as a group, decided it would be the option).

As designers we need to think about the audience (students) that will be using the tools we present and what the tool is unconsciously telling them to do.

This week's run was much better. I was able to maintain a 7:13 mile pace for over 16 miles. I'm on the cusp of a 3-hour marathon if I can maintain it. Two factors contributed to such a strong run. First, I was home this week, which meant I was able to get my routine back on track, especially diet and fitness. Second, I purchased two new pair of runners. I ended up with the Wave Inspire 5, which is a switch from the Wave Rider's I had been wearing. I was never really comfortable with the Wave Rider 12. The killed the balls of my feet. I learned that was a common complaint with the model. Turns out Mizuno thinned the front of the shoe to make it lighter. The Inspire model is similar in feel to the earlier Rider models.


My long run on Sunday

Try as he may, he could never shake the little fat kid. The one everyone else teased and pushed around, owned him from the inside out. The tormented was his tormentor. Immortal and omnipresent he ruled with an iron fist, without compassion. There is no way out. They are one.

The next three to five years are going to be interesting ones as we figure out the future of our course management system. If we look at it as a continuum from closed to open, with a traditional course management system on one end and a "cloud-based" system on the other, our challenge lies in striking the right balance between the two. This doesn't necessarily mean splitting it down the middle. It means building something that has the right amount of flexibility to accommodate what we need from both.

The world is demanding a more open type of university. Within an institution this means the ability to move between colleges in a way that students can customize their degree program. But, it also means the ability for separate institutions to interact. If the forecast holds, soon it will be common practice for an engineering student at Penn State, for example, to take several courses from other universities anywhere in the world as a part of their core degree program. And, it also means, more flexibility and portability of content. For students, instructors, and institutions the need to move, mashup, and re-purpose information is critical. It is not uncommon for a student artifiact to be used for a single class, as part of their blog or portfolio, and as an example of accreditation. How are we going to make this process as easy as possible for all parties involved? It also means accommodating students coming into the university with a portfolio already in place. How do we adapt our processes to this? And, how do we help them leave with everything intact and without the need to start over someplace else?

We need to balance this need against other, more traditional needs, such as assessment, quizzing, grading, and other matters of a proprietary and confidential nature. How do we prepare our students for the world waiting for them? How do we help them understand and grow into a world where multiple facets of yourself are always visible in some sense? It used to be you could separate your personal and private selves but not so much anymore. I don't know if this is good or bad but, I do know that is reality and part of our job is to prepare students to thrive in this reality as well as shape and change it.

So, we have a tremendous responsibility at our feet. The amalgamation of tools and processes we put together are going to have a tremendous impact on the quality and kind of education we provide. We have to build something for a world that doesn't exist yet but we know for sure will be waiting for us a few years down the road. 

This is a series of four short videos shot the second morning in the general area of Kern. Participating were Matt, from Brandywine, me, I'm at University Park, Amy, from Berks, and Kristin, from Harrisburg. We each answered three questions:

1. What was our favorite part of the fist day of camp?
2. What one thing from the first day stands out?
3. What did it say on our silly name tag.

 

Taken with my flip camera

One of the most common complaints you hear about Twitter is that it's full of information people don't care about or care to know. For every Tweet of value there's probably a thousand you could do without. Do we really need to know someone burned dinner? Probably not. Can I live without knowing someone's dog just messed on the rug? Most definitely.

Most of Twitter is about the mundane. And, I would argue, that's where the base of its power lies. Clay Shirky point out that it's not the Tweet we care about so much but the person behind it. If we care about the person we may want to know they burned dinner, or at least not mind, that they took the time to inform us. It fulfills some hard-wired need most of us have to feel connected to those around us. I end up un-following those I do not care all that much about (it's nothing personal there's only so much of the stuff to go around) and I know folks have un-followed me for the same reason. And that's okay. In fact it's appropriate. New applications such as TweetDeck make it possible for you to filter our folks without the hurting feelings that may come from dropping them. But it does bring up the whole notion of passive agreesive behavior.

Defenders of Twitter are quick to point to out it's shining moments, such as the Iranian protests, as examples of why Twitter matters. I agree with them. Social and mobile technologies have greatly empowered people all over the world and, at least for now, in ways that the powers-that-be are powerless to stop for the most part. But, this is probably less than one percent of why Twitter is so necessary for many of us. It's the everyday updates that sustain Twitter and mean it's available in times of crisis.

It seems to me that Blackboard wants to be the utility company for education. Think your local electric company. Kind of a necessary evil. Sure, you may have one other limited option but, when push comes to shove most people are going to go with the major supplier in their area for any number of reasons. Well, it seems to me that this is how Blackboard is positioning itself in the education technology market. There will be the Sakai and Moodle customers for sure but, they will be the outliers. Blackboard will surely dominate the market share. And I'm not sure how I feel about that. Here's why.

From what I can see Blackboard has not gotten to where it is primarily through being innovators. They've cornered the marketplace through buying (WebCT and ANGEL) and litigating (Desire2Learn) it's competitors. As companies continue to grow it becomes inherently more difficult to innovate simply because of all the resources you need to allocate just to manage what you have. So this could be a real challenge for a company where innovation was not a strength to begin with.

Blackboard is attempting to counter this through partnering with other service providers such as Wimba, SoftChalk, Pearson, etc. and this makes sense. But these come with a cost. And eventually the cost of adding applications on top of the cost of your base CMS will become prohibitive for a lot of schools. Then what do you do?

The other concern is support. Blackboard consistently states that one of the reasons for acquiring ANGEL Learning is to take advantage of their support model. And with good reason. Right or wrong, Blackboard has a notorious reputation when it comes to customer support while ANGEL Learning made it the cornerstone of how they went about things. However, it remains to be seen if Blackboard can adopt and integrate this model into its business practice. Two reasons make me skeptical. First off, why should they? From a strictly business perspective, they've been successful doing what they do so, at least for now, there probably is not an immediate impetus for change from within the company. Blackboard hired Ray Henderson in part to make this happen but, how will his initiatives be received?

The second reason is scale. Part of why ANGEL Learning was able to support their customers they way they did was the size of their customer base in relation to their staff. How will this support model be adapted to a company so large? Can it be adapted or will it prove to be cost prohibitive?

The next three to five years will be interesting. As Blackboard moves toward product NG (Next Generation, a combination of Blackboard, WebCT, and ANGEL) will they look to innovate and be service oriented or will they act like your local utility, a necessary evil counting on the cost in dollars and aggravation being to much to drive most people to change?

This was a tough week that culminated in a short and difficult Sunday run. It was my second consecutive week traveling to conferences, which means long days and longer nights. I was able to get my workouts in but as the second week moved in I saw diminishing returns. I find it hard to stick with my routine, both with exercise and diet, when I'm on the road. A shortcoming I must correct. I actually did not run at all Thursday (traveling), Friday, and Saturday. I needed the time to let my body catch up.

I didn't run Sunday until late in the afternoon. I spent most of the day getting other things done I'd neglected the past two weeks. I knew it was going to be a tough run. Laborious and hot, it was more a run of penance march than a training run. Afterward, I took the hottest soak I could stand and followed that with a stinging cold rinse in the shower trying to cleanse myself of the toxins I'd acquired.

I read an article in this morning's Chronicle, the gist of which centered around a study which found that students gave low marks to the use of technology in the classroom (British Educational Research Journal, April 2009).  The negative reaction was mainly be attributed to two factors: 1) The students overwhelming dislike for the poor use of PowerPoint. Instructors tend to be overbearing with slides, and, 2) the fact that other technologies forced them to be more active in class, contradicting their expectations of just sitting and listening. It seems a bit contradictory but, it makes sense when you work through it.

The overuse of PowerPoint is the classic example of the wrong way to implement a new technology. All to often, the first thing we think about when we see something new is how can it replicate something we're already doing. With PowerPoint we took our overhead slides and lecture notes and threw them into a new toy and thought we were being innovative. "See, I don't use overheads anymore. My kids love it." I can't tell you how many classes I've attended where the use of PowerPoint was downright overbearing.

The second factor seems a bit paradoxical. We're told that this generation more than any other loves the latest technology and likes to be constantly engaged. They don't liked to be talked at. They see themselves as co-creators of their reality. So why the dissatisfaction with professors who use technology to teach?

The answer lies in how we're using technology. Asking whether or not we're using technology is asking the wrong question. And it's the same wrong question we keep asking. It's the PowerPoint Paradox. In a rush to be innovative we take something new and immediately screw it into what we're already doing quite well. Instead, we should be asking, where does this new technology add value? How does it allow me to engage my students in a way I could not before?

The study found that after their initial resistance students actually did like being engaged during class when they saw that the engagement added value to their experience. According to the article, this was true whether the engagement was technology related, e.g. Twitter, or not, e.g. group work.

We need to learn that it's not about the technology and all about what we do with it. To often we ask, what does it do to make life easier for me and my students? And, if it makes our life easier we tend to go with it.

"It's easy to quit in the morning," he said, "When there's an ice pick in your brain and fresh vomit on your shirt. But, it's hard not to start again in the evening when your demons are dressed for the night and the boys are calling. It's hard. So hard."

I am at the apex of how long I may rightfully expect to live and I have to tell you it's liberating. I no longer feel the need to fight to stay young; I feel free to grow. It's curious but, reaching the halfway mark of my journey means I'm free to be me. There are no rules anymore. The foolish path would be to try to stay young by going back to the womb of birth. I think the secret to being young is to embrace getting older.

Listen, by embracing my mortality I no longer live in the reckless invincibility of youth but now am free to take calculated risks that can change my life. I think it's the wisdom gained from experience that sets you free.

So, if you want to stay young embrace everything growing older gives you. I may not run as fast but, I'm a lot more nimble. I may not be as strong but, I'm a helluva lot more resilient.

It used to be getting old was a crime but not any longer. Those rules no longer apply. Keep a curious mind and a young heart and you'll be vital. You don't have to be young to be an innovator.

Should we put an e-portfolio component inside a course management system? After attending three conferences over the last two months (AUC, Sakai, and BbWorld), I'm not sure. Here's why.

The original idea behind having an electronic portfolio was for students to have a virtual place to showcase themselves and their work to perspective employers, much in the way they would do with tactile things for a job interview. In the beginning these were static web pages made of of artifacts of achievement and resume like components. Then the technology changed becoming more flexible. The notion of blogging took off and soon we were exploring their potential for learning, particularly reflective learning. It wasn't long after that we started incorporating a reflective learning blog into the portfolio itself. And that's when the waters began to muddy.

Instructors began using "portfolios" as part of their course assignments. In reality, most were not portfolios but class projects, most of which already included a reflective essay component. It was a case of doing the same thing but applying the newer, trendier name. This trend really took off when instructors shifted from using drop boxes to a blogging platform for these submissions and slapping "portfolio" somewhere in the title of the assignment. But, this raised the issue of grading. Most course management systems contain some type of gradebook that interacted with the content page keeping everything in one place. This made it easier to manage things. Soon, colleges began wondering how they could also collect these artifacts to use for accreditation. This, combined with outcomes from the No Child Left Behind Act made the idea for having a portfolio platform integrated into the course management system appealing to educators, administrators, and the providers (ANGEL, Blackboard, and Sakai). Now when I go to these conferences I hear less talk about how portfolios can benefit the student and more about what we need to do to make it easier for instructors and departments to collect data. I think we're wrong here.

While the ability to grade and collect data are worthy goals they should not be the primary driving factor behind a portfolio. First, and foremost, we should be helping the students develop their academic-professional selves. This means giving them the tools and the guidance to develop a portfolio that incorporates a blogging component and letting them do it in the open.

Placing a portfolio inside and course management system changes the dynamic. Having it inside a single class removes much of its meaning. Course management systems, for all the right reasons, lock content and students in. However, that is the exact opposite of what a portfolio is supposed to do. A portfolio should be your professional space in the world. A place to showcase your work and interact with your audience. This is why the blogging component is important. It keeps the portfolio vibrant. It gives others a reason to come back. It shows your thinking and growing and it provides other a chance to help you along the way through commenting. Without this real world interaction, it's not a portfolio but a class assignment.

The one valid argument I've heard as to why we should lock portfolios inside a course management system is the safety of the students. This is more critical in the K-12 environment than higher education but it is a concern. My response is that it is our job to prepare these students for the world and by locking them in we're actually thwarting their development.

In higher education, and perhaps even by high school, we should begin helping them navigate this world. Open portfolios provide us with a tremendous educational opportunities around internet safety, copyright, fair use, etiquette, thinking in the open, and developing a professional presence to go along with your personal presence. Potential employers will Google your name and they expect to come across your Facebook page and they are okay with that. But, they also want to come across your professional face as well. If it is our responsibility to prepare students for the world waiting for them I say, don't fence them in. Instead, teach them to ride by riding alongside them while we have the chance.  

I came across two examples of good poster design walking around Exhibition Hall during the break. More often than not posters fall into two categories: printed out Powerpoint slides or a hodgepodge of materials slapped together in incomprehensible ways. I think it's because we miss the point of a poster: It is to draw the eye, to be attractive and interesting enough to make the passerby want to stop and talk with you. In short, a good poster should be an advertisement for you. Think magazine or billboard advertisements. The passerby should be able to get the gist of your message instantaneously.

(I recorded these vignettes with a Flip. Please excuse the ambient noise and my mediocre camera work. I'm new to the Flip)


Poster Exemplar One: Excellent example of balance

>
Poster Exemplar Two: Eye-catching banner

In Seth Godin's keynote this morning he talked a lot about tribes--people who come together connected around an idea. It got me to thinking about a lot of recent discussions I've had with others in the field on what exactly does it mean to be an instructional designer. I have to confess, I ended up being really surprised at how different my take was than most. I think that's okay. This is a big field with plenty of room. But it's precisely because of this that I feel the need to find my tribe. That small group  in the ID field who feel and think about things the way I do. I'm thinking along the lines of having a similar vision of the field. So here it goes, my tribe:

My instructional designer tribe is interested in innovation. We like to look at disparate parts and bring them together. We are curious and like exploring We see something new or different and wonder how it can be applied to teaching and learning.

We are interested in pushing boundaries in regards to content and participation. We could care less about the content versus design debate. We are neither techno-phobic nor techno-enamored. We are interested in finding out what will work.

Nor are we interested in just assembling parts together to make a course. We refuse to be defined by tasks. It is our vision that brings us together. My tribe of instructional designers is more interested in re-defining what education will look like.

A six-year-old boy. A nightmare on a rainy night. His old man teaches him the Lord's Prayer. His favorite part is the part about the daily bread. He imagines the bakers, wearing white, on Marshall St. loading their trucks at dawn. He likes that notion of God as the baker. 

"Man will be good," Jehavoh said to Lucifer. "In theory, yes. Lord. But they will not be capable of free thought. That is the realm of us angels." They walked in silence around the garden arriving as the tree. "You'll see," Lucifer said pulling an apple from the tree.

My run this week was tough. My legs were tired and my feet were sore. Most likely the result of running for a week on the treadmill in old sneakers. I did the same route through Bellefonte I did last weekend only a little later in the morning so there was a bit more heat but nothing unmanageable.

I was in Boston last week for a conference and I'm leaving for D.C. tomorrow. I'm hoping the weather will be more cooperative and I can run outside. If not. I'll need to use the treadmill again.

On the positive side my pace was off but not by much. I averaged 7:35 per mile last week and 7:39 per mile this week. My goal for today was 12 miles so I fell a little bit short but nothing to worry about. 

Vampires with wet hair
and over sized sunglasses
crawl in the shadows to the safety of the Elks.

The hipsters in their madras shorts
hanging at the coffee shop
with their Sunday paper and dogs.

The workers with bleeding eyes and leather skin
driving beaters to the job site
working their third smoke of the morning.

The old folks
sit on their front porch
keeping an eye on the day.

The ones in the cemetery
wave to me and I wave back.
We wish each other good luck along our way.

I've attended multiple sessions on e-Portfolios during the Sakai conference including the the first semi-official gathering of the members of the Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL). AAEEBL is a professional organization for people who work in the world of e-portfolios. Since this was our first time together it was natural that the discussion turn toward defining what it is we mean when we say e-portfolio.

I've come to think of an e-portfolio as a multifaceted entity that, in the current environment, reflects your personal and professional growth of a given period of time. Eventually, I'd like to see an e-portfolio be something you carry with you throughout your life. The parts of the portfolio I envision consist of:

• A professional presence- this can be many things such as a CV, resume, artifacts of accomplishment, etc.
  
• A reflective learning space- this most likely will in blog format and would be the place where you think about and work through things such as assignments, ideas, etc.

The reflective learning space is the anchor for the portfolio and the professional presence is the manifestation of the work. The portfolio would be with you throughout your academic and professional career, and who knows maybe even longer, and is a place for you to grow in the open and with the interaction and support of your particular community (those in your field, discipline, interest, and so on). It would be something you could use to get into college or land a job. But there are also other possibilities if we think of a portfolio as a life-long tool.

With some work, we can integrate into the assessment process. I saw a great presentation from folks at a high school in Narragansett, RI where the portfolio is used as places for students to reflect on homework and even negotiate assignments with their teachers. School advisers also use the portfolio as a basis for conversing with students. Students begin the portfolio as freshmen and keep it for their entire HS career.

It was really interesting, and damn exciting, to hear the two students that were part of the panel talk about the portfolio and discovering how the way they learned through reflection and discussion, changed them and their approach to academics and life. They panel also presented examples of how the teachers also grew as professionals as a direct result of their interaction with the students in this manner.

Somewhere up in the heavens I imagine John Dewey was looking down and smiling.

Sitting in a bar. Downtown Boston. It's late. The ghost of Steve McQueen, circa 1963, comes in and asks me to buy him a beer. I do. Leaving, he turns to me and says, "Man you got the spark." "Thanks," I say. "Don't thank me. You're gonna need it."

The subject of Open Educational Resources (OERs) has gained a lot of momentum lately. It's been in my consciousness leading up to last year's Symposium and David Wiley's keynote address. It's also been on the mind of the Vijay Kumar, a professor at MIT and the keynote speaker at this year's Sakai conference.He made three points during his address that really struck me.

First off was a quote he used from Charles M. Vest, President Emeritus of MIT, talking about the potential of OERs to globally raise the standard of education:

"My view is that in the open-access movement, we are seeing the early emergence of a meta-university--a transcendent, accessible, empowering, dynamic, communally constructed framework of open materials and platforms on which much of higher education worldwide can be constructed or enhanced."
(Go to Educause Review to read the full article).

Vest believes that we have the potential to bring universities from around the world together and in the spirit of cooperation create something greater than ourselves that benefits all human kind. It's a vision of the future I can support.

Kumar also touched on how the economic model of education is shifting from one of scarcity to a model of abundance. He was referring to the growing amount of quality content that's out there--for free. Up to this point in history, universities are what they are based in large part because they were the keepers of the content. But this monopoly is quickly being eroded. The challenge facing Penn State, and all universities, is figuring out where it adds value in addition to the content. As David Wiley pointed out, the most obvious is the awarding of diplomas. There is still a lot to be said in having the blessing of the academy.

But there are a lot of universities, so what are we going to do to differentiate ourselves? What will make a diploma from PSU a desirable option in the future? This in large part will be dependent upon the design and delivery of the content. As instructional designers, what can we do to add value? Is it in aggregating in better content that exists outside PSU? Helping instructors transition to a different, more nebulous, and collaborative mode of teaching? Modifying our delivery and assessment processes based on new literacies? I'm sure it's all that and a lot more but it a call to arms we must respond to if we are to have a place in the future of education.

The final aspect of Kumar's talk concerned the value proposition inherent in the educational version of the "Iron Triangle." Traditionally this proposition dictates that the higher the quality of the education the greater that education will cost and, as a result, the number of people who have access to this education is greatly limited. Can OERs have an impact on this dynamic? Can making quality content readily available improve everyone's lot in life? Can putting MIT content in the hands of a student from an underdeveloped country change the world? It just might.

Walking around Harvard square the other night we came across the Harvard Bookstore, a great shop where the entire basement is devoted to used books and remainders. It was in the remainder section where I found this great photo book on Steve McQueen by the Hollywood photographer William Claxton. It contains great shots of McQueen at work and at play accompanied with brief explanations of what was happening at the time.


Photo by William Claxton. No enhancements needed.

What Cary Grant did for elegance Steve McQueen did for cool. McQueen was the archetype for the modern American man. Street-wise sophisticated. Experiential. Optimism tempered with a health dose of reality. A seeker. The beatification of what began post WWII with the Beat Generation.

Pictaculous is a color palette generator whose purpose is to help you identify what colors go with a particular image. Like many good web apps. it is single purpose and easy to use. Simply upload a picture, select the "Get My Palette" button and viola, you get your ideal color palette for that image along with some alternative choices. You can download an Adobe color swatch, thought I could not get it to open in Photoshop CS4 or email the results.

Pictaculous can be a helpful tool for designing web pages. Personally, I'm thinking of using to help me (as well as faculty and students) design portfolio spaces that are pleasing to the eye and convey the right message. I'll use my space, five-4-six, to illustrate. Under my contact page I placed an image of me. This is a photo I tool of myself using my web cam inside my office one later afternoon toward the end of winter. I'm wearing autumn colors. A tan corduroy jacket, back sweater and a checked shirt. The sun is low through my window and the shades are drawn for effect. In post production I applied filter to bring out the mood.

The image from on my Contact page

I like the image and I like they way if fits on the page...almost. There always seemed to be just a little something off. I'm not sure if it's the orangeish hue of the picture next to the red links or the high contrast between the brightness of the image and the rest of the coloring of the site. It is not bad. It pretty good but, it's not perfect. When you land on the page the eye does not rest easy, for lack of a better way to put it.

So I ran the image through Pictaculous to see what color palette it recommended and this is what it came back with:


The right color palette for this photo according to Pictaculous

Click here to go to the playlist on iTunes

My goal for today's long run was 10 miles. I exceeded that but, more importantly, I was able to keep a good average time per mile of 7:35. It will be interesting to see if I can keep close to this pace as I increase distance.

My run today was around my neighborhood, Bellefonte, PA, which is full of hills. A particular climb is up Bishop St, starting from Spring, where the Dollar Store is located and carrying all the way up to McAllister, where the high school begins. I covered this loop four times today. I thought I was a little short on my mileage goal so on the leg I added a turnoff down High St. looping around to Howard St. where the cemetery ends. I'm not sure what that dip is at the 6 mile mark. Most likely it's when I was doing my third ascent up Bishop, that was the most difficult of the four.

The most critical question one has to answer before starting a blog or a portfolio is, who is my audience? To whom am I writing for? Answer this question to your satisfaction and your chances of success grow exponentially. But more often than not, we come up with the wrong answer. Why is that?

I think it's because we often confuse the platform with the audience. By default, most everything we put on the web is public. That means that, theoretically, anyone can see your words, pictures, or movies. If we desire a bit more privacy we need to ratchet down the permissions. But, this is the capability of the platform, not a reality in fact.

The mistake we make when posting something is we act on the assumption that everyone will see it. That is simply not true for 99.9% of the population. The people most likely to check out our stuff are the same people we most likely interact with on a regular basis-- family, friends, co-workers, and peers. In other words, just because it's there doesn't mean everyone is checking it out.

I'll use my experience as an example. Looking back at why my other blogs failed I'd have to say one of the main reasons was I wrote for the unrealistic audience of everybody. I assumed that just because the platform was public that the actual public would be tuned in. This fallacy only served to cause me much mental chaos. It did nothing for readership. After awhile I could no longer tell what I was trying to say. Was I writing about kittens running on a treadmill or an earthquake in China?

The only thing I gained from this experience was a case of writer's block. It was not until I understood who my "real" audience was and what I was trying to say to them that the words started to flow again (see my post, That One Thing).

In reality, my audience is comprised of people interested in teaching and learning or running and fitness. I have an undertow audience interested in storytelling as witnessed by the mini-saga storytelling exercise I picked up from Daniel Pink. Only on the perimeter am I thinking about a perspective audience, those who may be interesting in my consulting or speaking skills. Those opportunities are to few and far between to serve as the foundation for my writing at this time. Also, my intended audience is not my family. I'll send them an email with a link to the kittens video instead.

So, who is your audience?  That is the first question I'm going to ask participants when beginning a portfolio workshop.

Fitzgerald was wrong. There are second acts in America. And thirds. And even fourths. He was living proof. Once an honor student. A dropout. A junkie. Homeless. Now a husband, here quietly lacing up his sneakers at the crack of dawn, trying not to wake up his wife, a runner.

"Look mom, no hands!" I remember yelling that learning to ride my bike in the factory parking lot across the street from our first house. My chest swelled with the feeling of pride at having mastered a skill and a technology that seemed out of reach in the beginning. Now, I kind of get the same feeling when I think about portfolios.

We've had a portfolio initiative since 2002 and yet, despite out best efforts, adoption was slow. Why was that? I've come to believe it's a case of economics. We learn in Econ 101 that "economics" is comprised of three elements, all involving a cost expenditure. There is, of course, the monetary cost involved. But there is also a cost of time and effort. Even something free can have to high a cost if the time and effort involved exceed the perceived return on investment.

I believe this is why our portfolio initiative has been stagnant. We've been giving away "free" web space for years but hardly anybody takes advantage of it. Why? Because, up to now it's just been so damn hard to use for most people that it hasn't been worth the cost of time and effort involved. Ever try to figure out PASS space? Or create something in DreamWeaver or FrontPage?

But two recent changes have altered the economic dynamics of having an electronic portfolio. First off, an e-portfolio has become an expectation in the broad marketplace. No longer limited to the technical and arts fields, employers expect potential hires to have some sort of electronic presence. Second, creating and maintaining an e-portfolio have become a hell of a lot easier.

The blogs@Penn State initiative has made creating a publishing on the web exponentially easier. No longer is an understanding of HTML a prerequisite for publishing to the web. For the most part, the Moveable Type platform we've adopted makes it easier to start publishing right away.

In fact, I'm designing the next generation of portfolio workshops around that premise. My goal is to have novices, both faculty and students, publishing to the web within the first ten minutes of the workshop. And by the end of the workshop I want them to leave comfortable with idea that they can publish to the web and create a presence that is vibrant, viable, and fulfilling. Those same feelings you get when you learn to ride a bike.

There are 23 21 weeks left before the Philadelphia Marathon, Sunday, November 22nd. My goal is to beat last year's time of 3:29:43. If I do that I qualify for Boston in the spring. If I do qualify I plan on running it. This means I need my average pace to be 8 minute miles. Generally, I run faster than that, according to my Nike Plus my average pace is 7:44 per mile. But my longest run this spring has been 16 miles so I need to build up my endurance without losing much speed. I generally run 5-6 miles a day during the week (say 4 out of five days) and do a longer run on the weekend, usually Sunday morning.

Based on that here are my weekly goals for Sunday's leading up to Philly:

Date          Distance
7/5                 10 mi.
7/12               12 mi.
7/19               10 mi.
7/26               14 mi.

8/2                 10 mi.
8/9                 16 mi.
8/16               10 mi.
8/23               18 mi.
8/30               10 mi.

9/6                 20 mi.
9/13                 8 mi. (recovery)
9/20               14 mi.
9/27               10 mi.

10/4               16 mi.
10/11             10 mi.
10/18             18 mi.
10/25             10 mi.

11/1                20 mi.
11/8                  8 mi. (taper)
11/15              10 mi. (taper)
11/22              26.2    Philly!

It was exciting to see the cacophony of interest about blogs and portfolios at yesterday's workshop in Harrisburg. It reminded me of the way Tom Waits feels about attending a symphony. He likes to get there early so he can listen to the players tune up. Waits finds the beauty of the orchestra in the energy of the creative process. For him, the concert, where the process is actualized, is anticlimactic.

I found this feeling analogous to the conversations going on around the room at the beginning of the workshop. All of the attendees had heard enough about blogs and portfolios to think they may be important. Most said they do not read blogs nor did they have a blog of their own. Some had made several false starts at starting a blog, most of which had been deleted or abandoned. But there was an unquestioned energy in the room. The kind of energy that exists when folks are anxious to create.

As the workshop carried on I realized that while we could talk around the topic we still did not know it well enough to create something of meaning--yet. And that's the critical piece. I think what we need to do is to design an environment that enables this nebulous energy to begin to form into something greater. I think there are several things we can do to spur this process on:

• Create an environment that not only allows them to fail but, where failure is encouraged. Unfortunately, most of us when we try something new, particularly something we do not feel comfortable with, or have an inkling we made be good at, raise our hands in surrender after the first attempt crashes and burns. We need to make it so folks understand that this is a process, a journey, of finding one's style and voice in a way and a medium that is unfamiliar terrain. Personally, this is my fifth attempt at a blog and I'm just now beginning to feel like I'm finding my voice.
• Provide plenty of examples and non-examples. A consistent theme I find is that people are unsure of the differences between blogs and portfolios. I've been part of several conversations where we failed to connect because we were using terms interchangeably. Sometimes when folks say portfolio they're really talking about their personal web space and when they say they have a blog they're really saying they signed into Moveable Type. Or, they say they have a portfolio when they really have a blog or vice-verse. We should provide some distinct examples of each. We should also be clear in our terminology and what we're talking about. This may require some over-explaining at first  but, that's okay.
  
• Get out of the basement and into the studio. I find that we loose way to many people when we immediately dive into the mechanics at these sessions. These folks are there because they want to create so let's get them creating right away. When we begin with the mechanics their eyes either glaze over with boredom with a subject they do not care to understand or the become white with fear because they feel they'll never be able to do this. It's like the editor of a newspaper taking a new reporter into the basement of the building on her first day and showing her how the plumbing works. Who cares?
  
• Help them develop new literacy skills. The medium is a bit different than what folks are used to and it calls for a different approach. The good news is that it's conceptual basis lies in the same realm where folks are used to being--creating compositions. So if we build on what they know and what they are good at--which is story telling--we can show them the affordances and the limitations of this medium so they can create.
  
• Build a community support system. Something that really works is the community model of support. There were several instances at the workshop where we were able to bring folks back from the abyss by utilizing the blogs@PSU space. Both the video tutorials and Help features provided nimble access to just the right information.

I plan on incorporating all of these points as I design web space and future workshops. I want to feel like Tom Waits at the symphony.