WSU Teaching & Learning Blog

Educause Learning Initiative highlighted a technique called Google Jockeying (http://moourl.com/qjj0m). A student is assigned the role of the class “googler”. The information is then presented simultaneously on a separate screen and would supplement the lecture presentation. It is suggested that this might be a way to positively harness the need for consulting additional information. The role could be assigned to a different person during each lecture. If separate screens are not available, the lecturer might pause and let the google jockey give a synopsis of information searches and let participants add any new searches that might help them in understanding or clarifying the presentation. Incorporating this role is a good way to quickly assess understanding and it is an opportunity to coach the students on using the internet and on evaluating internet resources.

Brendan Barrett of the UN University reports that the Parlimentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has gone on record supporting open educational resources and open source tools like Moodle. Here’s more from Brendan:

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has just endorsed a recommendation to promote e-learning. This recommendation draws on the discussions that took place at preparatory e-conference on 1 October 2007, in which the UNU Media Studio participated via video conference (see blog post - http://www.mediastudio.unu.edu/en/2007/10/16/unu-recommendations-to-the-council-of-europe-2/).

The really good news is that the recommendation contains specific reference to the importance of promoting open source software and open educational resources, as proposed by the United Nations University. Here is the direct quotation:

“E-learning can be a powerful means of creating open educational resources accessible to everybody thus counteracting a divided knowledge society. In this regard, the Assembly calls on member parliaments to support the so-called “open source” movement in software development and initiatives for open educational resources - freely accessible on the Internet, and to adopt measures to combat the digital divide in order to close the gap between those who have access to ICT and the acquisition of ICT skills and those who do not, thus ensuring digital literacy for all.”

They later go on to make specific reference to the adoption of open source LMSs such as Moodle.

This is a truly important development for Europe (and for the entire world I hope!). Full recommendation attached. See the following conference website for papers and presentations 

- http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Conferences/conferences_e.htm

This is a document that contains a table of best practices, tools and uses for building critical thinking skills while teaching online. It is based on a document called: Designing Online Instruction that Develops Critical and Creative Thinking Skills, Paula Jones, ABD, MaryAnn Kolloff, Ed D Fred Kolloff, Ph D; With additions and suggestions from: Office for Teaching and Learning, WSU

Best Practices Compilation

I recently worked with an instructor from the Languages Department to add recorded voice messages and instructions to a Blackboard course. We used a tool called Audacity, open source software for recording and editing. It was easy to use, has an intuitive interface, and met all the needs of her course. It’s free and works on both a PC and a Mac. You can download it at http://sourceforge.net/

Adding voice to your course can make it more engaging, assist in accessibility, and provide a natural and compatible alternative to textual and visual information. I have put my own voice here. My message on adding voice

While you or may not be library staff, you might still appreciate an opportunity to participate in a self-paced exploration of some of the cool features of Web 2.0. It could be the perfect summer learning task. The tutorial, developed by the California School Library Association, provides 23 Things for you to do. Each Thing will show you one more web tool. There are many places for you to explore, experiment with, and think about creative ways to use this in your own work. If you are interested, visit http://schoollibrarylearning2.blogspot.com/ and get started exploring.

The Annenberg Foundation is a major sponsor of Learner.org, a site providing video-on-demand learning resources for teachers. Wayne State University is one of the mirror sites for the service, providing streaming bandwidth to users in our area.  One nice example of the kind of content available is the course on News Writing that was developed in conjunction with KHSL-TV/Chico, CA.  In order to watch the videos, you need to create an account on the site, but the process is fast and relatively painless. Here’s the abstract on the 15-session course:

This series teaches the writing, reporting, editing, and communicating of information in the public interest. More than 100 journalists working in print, radio, and television reveal the secrets of their trade. Among those offering insights are Bob Woodward, Helen Thomas, Dave Barry, and Linda Ellerbee. Coverage of policy issues sheds light on journalism history, law, and ethics. A natural choice for students pursuing journalism or communications, News Writing is also an excellent resource for improving general writing skills, producing a school or university paper, continuing education for working journalists, or teacher professional development.    

This year’s workshop on Harnessing the Interactive Web held during Xtreme week was fun. Attached are the slides (2.9 MB pdf) from the session. Thanks to all who participated. 

Yesterday I presented a campus workshop entitled “Empowering Educational Resources: Moving from a Culture of Control and Containment to One of Sharing and Reuse”  The description I cooked up is as follows:”This multi-media session will provide a review of an growing shift by academic and civic organizations toward promoting open-access, reusable learning materials. We’ll look at the activity of several large foundations committed to promoting open educational resources and take a tour of a collection of fascinating new tools designed to help users create, locate, annotate, collate, rate, repurpose and exhibit digital resources for learning. And the good news is that the bulk of these tools are free and open-source…”      The slides from the session (all 75+ of them!) have been posted online at slideshare.net

Here’s a useful reference work on challenges educators face with respect to copyright and the use of digital resources for teaching. From the Executive Summary: 

This foundational white paper reports on a year-long study by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, examining the relationship between copyright law and education. In particular, we wanted to explore whether innovative educational uses of digital technology were hampered by the restrictions of copyright. We found that provisions of copyright law concerning the educational use of copyrighted material, as well as the business and institutional structures shaped by that law, are among the most important obstacles to realizing the potential of digital technology in education.

The paper builds on four detailed case studies of initiatives that have encountered such obstacles. Each of these initiatives is moving forward, but only by fighting against a copyright-related system that instead should be helping educators accomplish their goals. The four case studies are: 

• A plan to use social networking software to help new social studies teachers interact and share classroom resources, which confronts copyright problems when teachers incorporate third-party content into their materials;
• The need of film studies professors to bypass encryption on DVDs – likely in violation of federal law – in order to show selected film clips to their students;
• An effort to make a digital database of hard-to-find but important American music available on college campuses, which encountered massive obstacles in the rights clearance process;
• The shortcomings of special statutory provisions intended to benefit public broadcasters, but limited to over-the-air broadcast so that they have become nearly irrelevant as the need to distribute content on multiple digital platforms increases.

The free online service known as TouchGraph lets you take an idea or web address and visually explore the universe of related websites or concepts using a java-based graphical browser.  Three tools are now available, one that draws on content provided by Google, one that shows relationships within Amazon’s catalog of books, music and videos, and the newest browser which lets you explore connections within Facebook. I did a quick TouchGraph using the Google Browser and the Inside Higher Ed website URL. Below is a clip from the results. You can filter or expand results and change the display type to focus your graph. Definitely an interesting tool that gets better with each revision.