e-learning

Ouch.

Posted on by Jon K.

Not that anyone is particularly following me – couple of quick updates to shock people I guess.I know, I know, good blogging etiquette is to maintain contact, but when you have very little to say, is there a point to add to the chatter? I don’t suspect that it’s good to blog for blogging’s sake… yet that’s kind of what this post is. Conundrum wrapped in an enigma packaged in a problem, neh?

1. I hate that whatever edublogs did borked my ability to track information in Google Stats. It was a good way to discover what was going on, and make new contacts, read new insightful things… yeah. Bummer.

2. I’ve been slaving away at creating, compiling and documenting “stuff” on D2L, or Desire2Learn (for those who don’t follow LMS’s).

3. I did a presentation of “research” (and I use research in quotes only because there’s no real research going on, it’s pseudo-research where we plan our research but don’t execute it) using some Presentation Zen techniques and people were really blown away with it. Thank you Garr Reynolds. I tried to be conversational, or as conversational as the subject matter (student perceptions of multimedia instruction in an e-learning) would allow. I tried to get people involved with their experiences with my subject topic, which is a good engagement strategy regardless.

3a. On the same note, um and so are my enemy in public speaking. You’d think I’d have learned that after many years presenting and practicing presentations, I’d be able to consciously stop saying ummmm. Guess not. Maybe I’ll video capture myself and see how many times I do speak of mine enemies.

4. An interesting old concept popped up again. I was watching a newish documentary called “Punk’s Not Dead” which actually does a pretty convincing job of saying it’s underground (well, shocking). I’m waiting for the documentary that treats punk like Ken Burns did with jazz… there’s a depth there that can be mined for sure. Anyways, one of the arguments of the new school of punk, bands like Sum 41, My Chemical Romance and The Used is that they are quick to embrace corporate sponsorship which they feel can be co-opted and used to promote their message. This argument has been going since Bad Brains and Husker Du (and before them, Sex Pistols, The Clash, Sham 69) signed to major labels.

A nice parrallel to edupunk, some of whom reject the Blackboard LMS model and distribute the learning across several free, open resources (Moodle, Pageflakes, RSS feeds, blogs).With that said, I think there’s a value to having a centralized point of entry. Is there an answer to the criticism? Well, sometime you have to work in a system; education is certainly a system. The end result of the system is what’s important, not necessarily the means.

5. When Mohawk decided to go with Desire2Learn, the other competitors were Blackboard and Angel. Funny how in hindsight, there really was only two competitors.

6. Even though I’ve been thinking about transferring this blog, resurrecting my other blog and adding a third blog about Hamilton punk and putting them all under one umbrella/domain, I still haven’t been overwhelmingly motivated to do so. Maybe in the Fall.

2 Comments

A Gap In My Posting History

Posted on by Jon K.

Things here are busier than ever. I’ve actually taken time to keep up with Twitter (@dietsociety) which is easier and requires less context than I like to give with a thought out piece. I’ve been slugging away at an e-learning survey for the College and working on my two courses (Fireworks and Searching The Internet Effectively) that I’m teaching and working on two courses that I’m taking (Academic Research and Critical Reflection in Adult Education through Brock University and Sociology I).

I’m also involved in the work that goes into preparing for Connections ’09 which is our in-house e-learning development conference (primarily for faculty at the College). We’ve already announced our new partnership with Desire2Learn, so training for that will occur soon, then the real work begins… ah not a lonely moment. I suspect I’ll try to participate in CCK09, and I’ll be meeting George next week as he’s the keynote for Connections. I’m sure he loves the name of the conference!

Twitter Week 6

Posted on by Jon K.

Well, it’s not week 6 anymore, it is in fact week 7. I have to say I was skeptical coming in to using Twitter, not believing it to be very useful at all. In fact, I’ll have to conclude that it is useful – just not in a work sense for me. I don’t think I’ll get much out of Twitter for work – except a link here and there to new websites, maybe a few days before Ed Tech Weekly gets to them (which reminds me, need to listen to that soon). In connectivist terms I’m strengthening some connections as well as gaining a bit of depth behind the ideas that people have put forth.

With all that said, I like it, despite the almost constant barrage of marketing (which is like real life, I suppose), it’s a fun diversion from work, or to tap into some other level of work-related thought. So my conclusions? Well, useful informal tool – that could have some learning application (you could run a daily message from a Twitter account to broaden vocabulary, or to clarify jargon). I would be interested to see if students would feel that it was an infringement of their personal space, creepy treehouse syndrome if you will, seeing as Twitter can be a one-way subscription – the account broadcasting can be a generic non-receptive node.

No comments yet

Twitter Week 5

Posted on by Jon K.

Really interesting article in the Guardian (which I found out about through a twitter post by Guardian Tech) that shows several levels of usage – one that seems to be common is to promote a business or product. It’s interesting at some levels because business, marketing and advertising has been looking for the perfect 15 second soundbite to sell a product. The same sort of thing happens with RSS feeds, about 150 characters are scrolling by on my desktop widget….

Another side to using Twitter is that you can follow your favourite celebrity (although whether or not it’s actually them is another story). A few NBA stars, like Shaq and Chris Bosh, are using Twitter – of course both are fellas with a good sense of humor… so maybe that’s telling.

No comments yet

Twitter Week 3/4

Posted on by Jon K.

So, as the pattern of adoption settles in (rabid initial use, followed by less use as one tries to conceptualize how and why to use, which will lead into either disuse or adoption and continued use), I’ve maintained my ability to use twitter at least once a day. I don’t post everyday. As I’ve said before I’m more of a reflective learner/user, I need to be able to think about what the purpose of the tool is or the reason for using it. I’m still not sure why I’m using it, but I do get why other people are using it.

One of the uses that others use Twitter, is to share information – I do not tend to forward these on to my “followers” because most of them are connected already to the source. It’s interesting to see my RSS feeds drop a new tidbit of information, then my Twitter account update with a new tweet with that information as well. Seems that I’m following the same sort of sources as my friends on Twitter.

I suspect that at some point in the near future, the next big social app/web 3.0 thing will be the convergence of your multiple digital selves being able to be managed in one spot. Your Twitter feeds, RSS feeds, blog posts, real life friends, online friends, colleagues and maybe your learning environments all become one. They won’t necessarily interact, though. For instance, my e-learning circle could be separated from my punk rock record collecting circle, so that people from one circle aren’t able to browse my entire life, just the parts from which they came – unless I allow it. Facebook already does this (and Livejournal did this ages ago) by allowing people to be put into groups and based on which group you’re in dictates what access you have. I suppose that takes away from the voyeur aspect of social networking sites – the ability to get a sense of the person you’re looking at.

No comments yet

Looking Forward To..

Posted on by Jon K.

Hmm. I’ve been really hammering at my department to start thinking mobile. It’s kind of an uphill battle, but I think that overall it’s one worth fighting. For instance, we know that the developing world is mostly using mobile technology to access websites and connect. I know that Asian and European countries are way ahead of us in 3G phone usage and technology. If we are to market this institution as a place of education for the international student, it would make sense to hit them where they actually look.

I’ve been pushing to investigate ways to broadcast SMS video clips (initially I thought for second language learners, but anyone who needs vocabulary growth can benefit from it). Now, I know that you can do SMS text broadcasts (providing you know the numbers of the recipients). I know very, very little about SMS, cellphones (hell, I don’t even own one) and most of that technology. I do understand that for learning to be effective, you have to give people the options to take it whenever they can. If they’re on the bus, this gives them a twenty second clip to study. If they’re going somewhere, they could get a link to browse the clip later.

No comments yet

Twitter Week 2

Posted on by Jon K.

So my experiment continues. I try to log in to my twitter account once a day at least, which is not the optimal method of using twitter I’m sure, but it’s what I can do. Usually, I do it at work, I mean I do work in e-learning services right? It’s work yeah?

Some quick observations – brilliant way to spread a website virally. In fact I can see that niche being filled nicely. It was kinda cool to be able to respond to some people who I respect and get a response back. Sort of a quick phone call or instant message (coincidentally, two other things I don’t really like doing – talking on the phone or using IM software like ICQ or AIM). Twitter seems far more interactive. Alec Couros posts his student’s work to his twitter account, I go check some of them out, comment and leave a link here. Web connections happening quite organically. No wonder marketers have jumped on board quick.

One downfall is the lack of context. Unless one posts several tweets one after the other in quick succession, then there’s not much context to draw from an individual posting. I always love the why and how, maybe that’s why I’ve always thought about the career choices I’ve made and will make. So I can see the allure of a quick posting that may not need much elaboration – sort of the thing that my RSS feed gives one is a good tweets.

I’m actually enjoying the interaction so far. We’ll see if I continue to enjoy it, or will it become cumbersome?

1 Comment

Twitter Week 1

Posted on by Jon K.

OK, I decided to give twitter another go, now that I know some people that use it (and use it regularly). You can follow me @dietsociety. I did sign up for it a year or so ago – I’m not sure the initial reason why – maybe to investigate the usefulness of it (or even what it was).

I’ve found that lots of edutech people use twitter – I’m getting the sense that it’s as a microblog type deal. It’s also being used by a lot of businesses that I frequent for records or Japanese ephemera or marketing that seems to update their brand, I mean, product lists with new products. I’ll keep it up for a month or two – tweeting about what I’m doing at work mostly, and see how I feel about it. It certainly seems to be a little more useful than a year ago where I logged in and couldn’t find anyone interesting to follow (that doesn’t mean that they weren’t there, I didn’t necessarily know about them yet).

No comments yet

The New-New Literacy

Posted on by Jon K.

Happy New Year! I’m not going to do a top ten or predict (ala Karnak or Kreskin) the future. Instead if that ripe old adage is true, I’m going to look back to look ahead.

We’ve all heard about digital literacy, and how it’s going to be important going forward from here on out. George Siemens has published a couple of blog posts that I wanted to comment on, and I think that it might be a bit more coherent to do so here. George wrote a little bit about the Pirate Hoax and it’s implications for what digital literacy means. I think his commentary is dead on, in that people must adopt a very skeptical approach to what they read (even here!). A problem with a skeptical approach is that it can lead to a very silo’d way of thinking, where anything that is outside your particular view can easily be dismissed by finding minor problems with the data or information, or holding information to such a high standard to meet that it never climbs the mountain, so to speak. Skepticism must be tempered with an openness, a willing to suspend belief for a period of time to accept an alternative point of view.

George then writes about the New York Times Visualization Lab, and their adoption of more visualizations. While this isn’t new, (all the news that’s fit to visualize?) we’ve been hearing about declining text literacy for years, the contextual arguments about visualizations certainly exist. Is there a difference in a pie chart versus a bar chart? How far apart are the variables spaced? Colors of pie pieces influence funding? Most people don’t consider how these factors influence or can influence decisions. The new new literacy has to include this sort of thinking, and understanding of how we can be manipulated by visuals.

Two of my favourite sites Flowing Data and Infosthetics deal with this sort of visual literacy, in addition to highlighting the creative, artistic sides to data. If you haven’t visited either site, please take a gander at them, they are really spectacular.

No comments yet

New Job, Old Tasks

Posted on by Jon K.

Ah, yes, the post-semester lull – everyone is busy marking (including me) and I’ve had a ton of rewrites to complete my work for the facilitation course I’ve been taking. Finally, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I also was in the process of changing jobs, which officially occurs next Monday. I’ll be still working within e-learning, just no longer limited to second language learners and language in general. It’s a step up in my opinion. I’ve talked to them about revamping their blog, and working on some e-learning evangelical stuff. Also I’m hoping we can make some Wii Remote Interactive Screens.

I also want to create a Wii Theremin originally seen through Boing Boing, if I can at home.

Of course, there’s going to be some roadblocks. IT may be reluctant to put the software behind this on their image. The handling of creating many of these infrared/UV pens will be unknown (who’s responsible for this?). There’s going to be some issues I’m sure. And then there’s always application of such a technology. I can think of using it as an illustration tool to highlight an idea on a powerpoint, or in demonstration of an AutoCAD function. Beyond that, it’s still a cool cool toy.

So if this blog becomes a little less frequently updated, I apologize. I didn’t intend to continue to post here post CCK08. Now that I am though, it’s maybe a nice little way to stay in touch with some of those folks (which is part of the reason I took the course).

No comments yet