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It's the middle of fall and that means we're preparing to possibly upgrade to ANGEL 7.4 at the end of the spring semester. Over the next few months I'll be posting short video previews of some of the major new features we may see if we move from ANGEL 7.3 to ANGEL 7.4 including:

• A new quiz tool called Assessments
• A Rubric tool attached to drop boxes
• A Course Syndication (RSS) folder
• A new Survey tool
• A Custom Content tool
• An easier way to embed images and video using the HTML editor
• A new Gradebook interface

Let's begin by looking at the Rubric Tool:



Let me know if you are interested in previewing ANGEL 7.4 during the spring semester by filing out this form: Coming Soon

Note: This preview is on a plain version of ANGEL and does not contain any Penn State customizations. Not everything shown may be implemented when we upgrade. This video is for informational purposes only.

There was a lot of talk at the CIC conference on leveraging social media. In particular, how IT organizations can leverage social media to communicate with their constituents. I know I struggle with this when I'm representing my organization as opposed to myself in these venues and others are as well. Well, I had a moment of gestalt at the end of the conference that I think crystallized it for me.

It was during the final panel discussion featuring several CIOs from the CIC who were discussing shared leadership as a means to transform IT organizations. Toward the end the discussion migrated to social media and how IT organizations can use it. And as one panel member correctly pointed out, social media is really not about the tools used; it's about the connections that are made.

She even quoted Clay Shirkey which reminded me of another Shirky quote about Twitter. To paraphrase, Twitter is powerful not because of the mostly mundane content we put there; Twitter is powerful because we care about the people posting it. It's not the message but the messenger that matters in this instance. And it begs the questions, why should someone care about IT?

Traditionally, IT organizations are seen as utilities. We don't notice them until something goes wrong and the power goes out. This perception is true within IT organizations as well. That's how many working in IT view themselves. To quote one of the panel members when I asked the question, "How do you get people to care about IT?" He replied, "Turn it off."

That's the same attitude my power company has and I certainly do not feel a connection with them. I would block them if they followed me on Twitter and I certainly would not follow them. Especially if they took the approach that many of my IT colleagues are taking. They want to use social media to push information out or to direct you to their website. I was at a presentation where an IT group turned off the comments feature of their blog because they were worried about what comments others, read outsiders, would leave. In my opinion, that is not a recipe for success.

Personally, I do not care about my power company. I do not feel a connection to them. In fact, the only time I think about them is when I pay my bill each month and when the power goes out, and it will. Why would I connect with them via Twitter? Especially if they were only using it to point out they emailed the newsletter I never read.

Social media is all about discourse. And it's an all-in proposition. This means taking the good with the bad. Yes, it is a risk. And, if after the analysis you feel the risk it to great then I recommend not doing it. I'd be more apt to engage with my power company, or an IT department, in this medium if we were having a conversation. If I could ask questions. If they took the risk and let me in on some of what they were thinking and were interested in hearing what I was thinking.

If you want to be a utility, be a utility. At your own peril. Utilities being necessary evils breed discontent. People don't particularly care to deal with them more than what is necessary. Get them angry enough and they will find a way to work around them or even topple them. The same goes for wanting people to connect with you. Engage them through social media at your own peril. Be prepared for some unpleasantness. However, you may find it turns into an opportunity to connect with your constituents, helps you improve, and *gasp* they may even come to care about you.

The great over-arching challenge facing IT groups across the CIC is the culture gap that exists between those of us on the frontier of new educational technology and a great part of the community we try to serve. This was certainly apparent in the ways the conference theme of collaboration manifested itself in the presentations and talks given over the two days. Take how each IT group approaches the use of social media for example.

I was able to sit in on several sessions where IT groups (from Northwestern, Wisconsin, and Indiana) talked about using social media tools to reach their audience, particularly Twitter and Facebook. The challenge they faced was twofold: first they needed to identify the audience using these tools and second they had to come up with an appropriate way to communicate through them. The first part was easy. A majority of students and a great number of faculty use either or both Facebook and Twitter frequently.The second part is a bit trickier.

By nature Twitter and Facebook are informal and open. That is they are very stream of conscious oriented, contain a great bit of the mundane, and occasionally become something greater, e.g. the use of Twitter to capture the election discord in Iran. As Clay Shirky point out, most times it has nothing to do with the actual content. It's because we care about and are interested in the people posting it that we follow.

So the question becomes, why should our audience care to follow us? And how do we stay connected with them through these medium? Do we make informal chit-chat or do we simply post official announcements? It's not a simple question to answer.

I know I struggle with representing myself and my unit in these areas. When I joined Twitter and Facebook I joined as myself (Twitter: jeffswain; Facebook: Jeff Swain). Quickly I encountered the problem of separating my personal stuff from my work stuff. It all bleeds together in the either where everyone can connect. Now I also am the persona for our symposium and e-portfolio initiative. Well, how do I represent them? Is it strictly business or is it personal?

It seems from the presentation that Northwestern prefers to keep it all business. They use these medium to direct their followers to announcements, emails, etc. They prefer to use these as one-way channels to push information out. I do that to but I also post other items as well, such as asking attendees to participate in building things, letting them in on where we are, etc., sort of the behind the scenes look, if you will. By no means have I found a comfort level (Am I speaking as Jeff or am I speaking as the symposium?) but, I do try to make the communication as open as possible.

The results are mixed and I think it's because of two factors. One, I have not yet found "the voice" for these entities and, two, the audience is not yet sure how they feel about entities acting like people in these informal spaces. For example, I believe that if I ask for help with something on Twitter I will get a greater response than if I used the symposium persona to ask the same question.  But there will come a day when I am not the voice of the event so am I doing a long-term disservice to the symposium if I speak for it as Jeff and not the event?

I do not have the answer and would welcome advice from others using social media in this manner to communicate with students and faculty.  

I've been part of the e-portfolio initiative since the summer and for the last month I've been doing a lot of work with students, particularly freshmen, helping them to get up and running with their academic portfolio. Here are some of my initial observations.

Generally speaking, students are not familiar with blogs or portfolios. I'm speaking both about the technology, I'd say 95% of them have never created either a blog or portfolio, and the concept, a lot of students did not know many of the sites they frequently visit are indeed blogs. I suspect this trend will change somewhat in the coming years as more high schools and grade schools incorporate e-portfolios into the curriculum. But for the next incoming class or two we do need approach the topic at the entry level.

However, students are taking to the initiative with ease. I'm happy to say they find the platform easy to use. Even better, they like all they can do with it.  The big selling point is talking about how e-portfolios are much greater than a class assignment. Students like the idea of having a space to capture their entire academic career, including the extracurricular stuff.

The other aspect the like is the social piece. The students like that they can incorporate their e-portfolio along other applications such as Facebook and YouTube. They really like the idea of using multimedia as part of their e-portfolio for conversation as well as demonstrations of learning.

Switching to the other side of the equation, faculty are very surprised when I talk to them about why e-portfolios are relevant for them and their career. At the moment, they see portfolios as something good for the students and are unaware of their potential for themselves. To raise awareness we've been doing more faculty outreach on the benefits of e-portfolios and later this fall we'll be piloting a workshop designed to help faculty and staff begin using e-portfolios.

In an earlier post, My MadMen Moment, I referenced something I call good openness: succinctly, good openness is a kind of openness that fosters conversation amongst your tribe, helps to forward knowledge in your field, and helps to establish your reputation as a lead thinker in your area. It's about knowing what to share and how to share it.

For example, as an academic interested in the diffusion and adoption of technology I spend a lot of time working with faculty and students plus a lot of additional time thinking about it. I also write about it and post it on my blog. And over time, I've learned how to write about it. Good openness is about letting people in on the conversation and it is a conversation so treat it like one. In this form, I try to write as if I'm talking directly to you. I think I have something interesting to say and I'm hoping you'll explore the topic with me.

It's also about brevity. Shakespeare said brevity is the soul of wit. I also think brevity is the key to good discourse in this format. This requires pausing a moment to think about just what exactly it is you want to put out there. Then paring away the rest. This material can always be used for another post or in follow-up comments. If not, then perhaps the cutting room floor is the best place for it.

I try not to write as if I'm presenting a white paper or a report. In this medium I find it much more interesting to talk about the process of discovery and the moments of gestalt that arise from it. Formal artifacts, such as documents and presentations, can reside somewhere else, I tend to place mine on a separate tab within my portfolio.

Part of good openness is the willingness to think out loud. I don't claim to be any sort of expert in my field but I'm doing my best at trying to answer the questions before me. One of the interesting and pleasant outcomes of going through this process in the open has been the advice, input, and encouragement by colleagues from all over. I've been able to tap in and benefit from people I could not necessarily reach using another medium. A result is I've been able to grow in ways I could not just on my own while also establishing myself as someone in the field. What's better validation than peers and experts taking the time to read and comment on your work?

I think, good openness is also about presenting a well-rounded interpretation of yourself. Sharing particular aspects of your life other may enjoy or find interesting. For instance, on my portfolio space I also share some about my other interests in fitness, design, and writing. It's enabled me to better connect with people in my field and it's also helped me to establish other relationships as well.

Of course, good openness extends into other areas as well, such a Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook. But, that's for another post.  

Yesterday I got to experience the thrill of the creative process conceptualizing a marketing plan for the symposium with two members of our marketing team. The goal of the meeting was to flesh out the meaning behind this year's theme, "Digital Scholarship and the Culture of Teaching and Learning." In the end we want three to five words or phrases that hit on what we're talking about to use in our promotions.

The exercise proved to be invigorating and cathartic. Invigorating because I could see the beginnings of a theme emerging; cathartic because the exercise forced me to articulate my thoughts on the subject. It's one thing to know something in one's mind and another to explain it to somebody else in a way that makes sense.

We started by defining a scholar as learned person. An individual who by intensive study has gained mastery in one or more disciplines. It's pretty much the boilerplate definition. The twist lay in the descriptive adjective preceding  it. What does it mean to be a digital scholar? How is that different from being labeled a garden variety scholar?

I was able to talk around the subject for awhile with the help of some great questions and observations from the marketing folks until the moment of epiphany. A digital scholar is a global scholar. It is a person comfortable being a teacher, learner, researcher in the open and in real time.

For all it's talk of openness and the marketplace of ideas, traditionally the academy is really a very private place where folks work on their ideas in a veil of secrecy until they could be unveiled to the world. Eventually, the great majority of us become local experts in our particular area. Very few achieve national or international prominence.

Well, the ubiquitous nature of the Web changed all that. Conversations that used to take place around the water cooler now take place in blogs. Your tribe, or close circle of confidants, while still relatively small is now comprised of people primarily based on similar interest and not geography.

This raises a key differentiator and an issue that gives many scholars pause: the fact that the web is permanent. In other words, a conversation is words in the air left only to each person's memory, whereas a posting on the Web is there. Your words mark the either, they reside for others even those not in your tribe, to see.

This led us to a conversation about openness. A digital scholar works toward the idea of good openness. That is openness that fosters conversation amongst your tribe, helps to forward knowledge in your field, and helps to establish your reputation as a lead thinker in your area.

This is where being a digital scholar is advantageous. Thinking and conversing iteratively and in the open helps you establish professional relationships that traditionally did not happen until you arrived-that is published your prestigious paper, achieved a degree or some other mark of recognition. 

The Shepherdess is a painting done by Johann Hofner in 1866. I noticed a copy hanging in my room at the Gables Bed & Breakfast in the morning when I was getting ready for my session at the University of the Sciences. I did not notice it the first time I stayed there, Victorian art is more up my mom's alley. But this time it gave me pause.



I think it was the powder blue and red dressing on the girl. They match the colors of my high school, Father Judge. These are royal colors. The colors of the Virgin. Then I noticed she was holding a lamb. A reference to the Lamb of God? The Lord is my shepherd? Could the shepherdess be a descendant of Jesus?

Notice how comfortable the lamb looks in the girls arms. As if it's the best place it could be, even better than at her mother's side. A reference to the afterlife being better than life on earth? Finally, check out the eye contact between the mother sheep and the girl. It's as if there's an understanding that the lamb belongs with the shepherdess. 

The painting reminded me of when I was making my confirmation. Father Beatty came over to the house to make sure I was prepared. Part of the process required my to affirm my faith. I almost did not make it because at one point I was required to say that I loved God above all, including my father who was sitting there by my side. I was in fifth grade. I resisted. I fought. I cried. Finally, when it came to the priest leaving, I caved. But only when my old man nodded to me (As if it were our secret to get the damn thing over with). I still regret that decision. And to this day I do not belive that God could possibly love me more than my old man. But that's religion for you. 

Riddle me this Batman, "When is a CMS not a CMS? "Perhaps when it it 'free-floating?'" The idea of a course management system (CMS) that is not within a box is not as far out as it seems nor as bad as my opening pun. Here's why I think this:

The Personal Domain. More and more kids are going to college with an established online identity and space. They, along with the rest of the world, are used to content that is accessible and portable. Asking them to create things that end up being temporary and locked down may become a non-starter for them when selecting a college. Add to that many high schools, such as Narragansett in New Hampshire, have implemented e-portfolios into the curriculum and states like Pennsylvania have made e-portfolio space available for residents makes the idea of having additional separate space seem cumbersome.

The Demand for Open Content. This is quickly becoming a need more than a demand. The idea of sharing resources, whether they be content items, methodology, and infrastructure has moved from an idealistic perspective to something that makes economic sense for universities looking to cut costs while improving the quality of research and education.

Small Pieces Loosely Joined. Managing separate applications has become a lot easier with the ability to feed updates from one to another. I can send a message from my mobile to Twitter and have that automatically update my Facebook page. Can we do something like that in education? Can I write a blog post in my personal domain and have it populate my class assignment as well?

There are many issues that need to be addressed both technically and legally but, it's no longer an insurmountable either-or choice. BYU is working on a free-floating gradebook, not attached to a CMS, that can aggregate content from a myriad of places. (Check out their session description and watch the presentation at OpenEd09. 

In other words, the factors making a closed system necessary and desirable are quickly loosing their luster. Will the CMS as we know it totally go away? Will it morph into something else? Nobody knows for sure right now. But with increasing economic stressors, people getting more comfortable working in the open, and with technology making it easier to aggregate outcomes from separate applications it seems that something has to give. 

Copyright, like politics, is local. Or at least that's how we've been approaching it. When we talk about designing content we generally apply the law of copyright as understood in our own backyard. This, of course makes sense. Designers, instructors, and institutions need to make sure they are compliant with the rules of the land in which they reside. Well, it used to make sense anyway. But institutions, at least the ones that want to survive deep into this century, are really not local entities anymore. They are more like world-wide organizations with branch offices, in the form of campuses and individual students, dotting the planet. So do we need to change how we approach the matter of copyright and fair use?

I've been thinking a lot about this question since sitting in on two sessions the first day of the Open Education Conference and I've starting to get an inkling that we may be tackling this issue at the wrong level. For example, say I'm designing content for an art class that will be taken by students here in the states as well as by students living in South Africa, I need to make certain that the materials I use meet the copyright guidelines of each country. Now we add a student from Holland so there are three sets of laws to comply with. And what if parts of the laws are incompatible or contradictory? Now think about this when talking about educational resources that are freely available world-wide. How can we as individuals reasonably be expected to ensure all standards are met? Would it be easier if we kicked the issue up a few levels?

I'm thinking something along the lines of what was done over in Europe to standardize the degree process. The Bologna Process was a decade long initiative where colleges across Europe came together and worked out what it took for a degree to be awarded. Well can we do the same thing with regards to copyright and fair use? Is it possible for universities from across the globe could come together and produce something along the lines of a manifesto that says, "This is the access to content we need if we are to successfully educate our students." Couldn't we then present it to UNESCO and see what happens?

I don't know. Reading what I just wrote seems a bit naive and simplistic. And I know more learned minds than mine have thought long and deep on the subject. But it does seem to me that if we are to truly create an open educational environment we need to raise the place where the discussion is taking place.

I've never thought much about education as a political weapon. Until yesterday when I attended an address delivered by Catherine Ngugi at the Open Education Conference in Vancouver.

As a practice I am fairly new to the concept of open education, the free sharing of both intellectual capital, such as knowledge and ideas, as well as tactical and tangible resources, such as pedagogical methodologies and infrastructure. But open education is an idea I certainly identify with philosophically. That everyone should have access to the best possible education they can get seems like a basic human right to me.

After writing that last paragraph I realize how naive my lead sentence is. I do think of education as a political weapon, it's just that I don't do it consciously. In other words, it pervades pretty much everything I do but it's something so ingrained that I don't need to think about it overtly. I just know it. And I don't think I'm the only one operating this way.

Catherine Ngugi is the Project Director for Open Education Resources in Africa, an organization dedicated to building a viable educational infrastructure across the continent and early on in her talk, and much to the ire of many in the audience, she invoked the C-word when laying out the current situation in Africa and how we got here. She was referring to colonialism, the practice of one people and culture, usually the outsider dominating another, usually the long-time residents. (Check out the twitter stream during her talk).

Many in the audience were uncomfortable, especially those of us from Western Europe and America.  We all know our past, in fact many of us in the audience are who we are as a result of our reaction to the past. We are the global thinking, like-minded, individuals who gathered together to rail against the current oppressive institution of education. We did not need a history lesson. We needed to get on with it. But, I think Catherine was talking about us there in the room.

She was referring to the unintended colonialist attitudes of the people on our side. Or rather, our collective unconscious colonialism, the idea that we want to help but in the way that we think is right. This attitude became manifest during the Q&A portion when one person asked, "What's in it for Michigan?"

So do those of us who count ourselves as one of the good guys or girls need to change for the open education movement to be successful? I think we might. Because if we don't, It may be the enemy within that ultimately defeats the revolution.