Regular Folks, Shooting/Changing History

"The rapid rise of digital technology... is changing the way the world witnesses history... Events that once were recorded only by human memory may now endure in full, pixelated detail, available in seconds around the globe.

The trend is driven by the proliferation of camera-equipped cellphones, introduced in Japan in 2000. Worldwide sales topped 460 million this year and will reach 1 billion by 2010, according to industry analysts."

-- excerpted from:

"Regular Folks, Shooting History
Digital Technology Makes 'Citizen Journalists' Out of Eyewitnesses Eager to Click and Post," By Kevin Sullivan, Washington Post Foreign Service, Monday, December 18, 2006; A01

GLASGOW, Scotland -- At 2:42 p.m. on Oct. 11, Dean Collins heard a thunderous explosion as he worked at his computer in his 30th-floor apartment in Manhattan.

Collins looked out his window and saw a small plane crashing into a building right in front of him -- the accident that killed New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor. Instinctively, he recalled, he pulled his Fuji digital camera from a drawer and started shooting, thinking to himself, "This is going to be on the news."

Collins, a consultant for a software company, said he remembered reading about Scoopt, a year-old agency in Scotland that brokers photos for "citizen journalists." Within minutes, he had e-mailed his digital shots to Scoopt. Hours later, his picture of a smoking Manhattan high-rise was in three British newspapers, including a front-page splash in the Times of London. He earned $650 for his work.

The rapid rise of digital technology, which enables ordinary people almost anywhere to record images and post them quickly on the Internet, is changing the way the world witnesses history, not to mention the dependable misbehavior of celebrities. Events that once were recorded only by human memory may now endure in full, pixelated detail, available in seconds around the globe.

The trend is driven by the proliferation of camera-equipped cellphones, introduced in Japan in 2000. Worldwide sales topped 460 million this year and will reach 1 billion by 2010, according to industry analysts.

With the proliferation of images, prosecutors are increasingly relying on photos as evidence in cases against accused muggers, terrorists and other criminals. Insurance companies balance cellphone photos against recollection as they assess auto accidents.

And the presence of cellphone cameras in handbags and coat pockets means that for the famous, private space is shrinking fast. Scoopt has also sold cellphone photos of Michelle Rodriguez, star of the television show "Lost," drinking and partying wildly in a bar in New York, and shots of Paris Hilton dancing on a table in Las Vegas.

Celebrities everywhere have been stung by stealthy camera phones. Grainy photos of supermodel Kate Moss snorting what appeared to be cocaine, apparently shot with a camera phone, appeared in newspapers worldwide last year. Britain's Prince Harry was forced to apologize last year when a fellow reveler at a costume party used a camera phone to snap the prince wearing a Nazi uniform -- then sold the photos to tabloids for thousands of dollars.

Forty-three years ago, a single person with a home movie camera captured the only detailed images of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. If today's technology had existed then, dozens or even hundreds of people with cellphones and pocket-size digital cameras probably would have recorded the shooting from every possible angle.

"We might actually know if there was somebody on the grassy knoll," said Dan Gillmor, a California-based journalist and author who has written extensively about what he calls "grass-roots journalism."

Governments have always controlled information, from the Nazis to South American dictators hiding evidence of their "disappeared" enemies, said David Friend, an editor at Vanity Fair. "But now the photograph has suddenly changed the equation -- the power is in the hands of the average citizen," said Friend, whose 2006 book, "Watching the World Change," explores the rising power of images. "Whatever you do now, you will be held accountable. You will be seen."

Friend noted that camera-equipped cellphones were not common in the United States at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The historical record of events would have been richer if people in the twin towers or on the hijacked planes had been able to send out photos and video of their ordeal.

"We now have as close to an objective truth about an event as we've ever had in history," he said.

Newspapers and television networks actively urge readers and viewers to send in their pictures of newsworthy events to supplement the work of professional photographers. And Internet sites help distribute them widely -- sites such as YouTube and Flickr, where anyone can post their photos and video for public consumption, are wildly popular. After Michael Richards, a former star of the TV comedy show "Seinfeld," was recorded with a cellphone camera last month at a Los Angeles club insulting black hecklers with a tirade of racial slurs, more than 1.3 million people viewed the video on YouTube.

NowPublic, a year-old venture that calls itself a "participatory news network," posts news and images from its "citizen journalists" on its Web site; the site claims 31,000 reporters in 130 countries, tapping into what it calls "the wisdom of crowds." The Reuters news agency and Yahoo recently joined forces to start You Witness News, which showcases amateur photos and video on the Yahoo news Web site.
'So Much Better'

Kyle MacRae, who runs Scoopt out of a converted bedroom in his small Glasgow home, was giving his two young sons a bath when his phone rang minutes after the Manhattan crash. It was Collins calling from New York. There was a plane down. He had photos. MacRae told him to e-mail them immediately.

MacRae said reports out of New York were confusing. Was it another 9/11 unfolding, or just an accident?

Whatever it was, MacRae looked at the e-mailed images arriving on his computer and knew that Collins had photos he could sell.

MacRae, 43, a former journalist and author of a dozen books on technology, started Scoopt with his wife, Jill, after the July 2005 transit system bombings in London. Many of the most memorable images from the subway tunnels were made by commuters with camera phones.

In 15 months, Scoopt has registered almost 12,000 people in 97 countries. U.S.-based Cell Journalist and Spy Media and several other agencies that deal exclusively in celebrity photos are providing similar services.

Verifying photos' authenticity is always a concern. MacRae said he quizzes photographers about their shots to make sure they are what they seem to be. MacRae said he caught one faker who said he got a shot of Mary-Kate Olsen while hiding behind thick hedges -- on a busy Manhattan street. Pressed by MacRae, the person admitted he had lifted the photo from the Internet and tried to pass it off as his own.

Many news agencies are leery of unsolicited photos that could have been altered or staged. Gillmor said one famous hoax purported to show a tourist posing at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, with a jetliner in the background about to smash into the tower. He said he recently rejected a photo that purported to show Cuban leader Fidel Castro dead in a coffin.

When Collins's photos arrived in Glasgow, MacRae called him back. Collins said that he could see photographers scrambling across rooftops and on the ground trying to get a good angle but that none had his vantage point. Within minutes, MacRae put the photos out on Internet-based distribution services monitored by photo editors at all major British newspapers. Almost immediately, the Sun newspaper in London and the Herald in Glasgow called to buy a photo.

In their London newsroom, editors at the Times had just chosen an image from the Associated Press for the early editions of the paper when the Scoopt photo appeared on their computer screens.

"The images from the AP were good, but this one was just so much better," said Paul Sanders, picture editor at the Times.
Privacy Concerns

Sitting in the Scoopt office, surrounded by books and spare computer modems and cables, MacRae welcomed his boys home from grade school one recent afternoon while neighbors bantered loudly on the rainy street below. Snoop Dogg, the American rapper, stared back at MacRae from his computer screen.

At Heathrow Airport last April, members of Snoop Dogg's 30-member entourage got into a brawl with police, apparently triggered when British Airways barred from its first-class lounge some members of the rapper's party who were flying economy class.

Within a couple of hours of the dust-up, MacRae had received five cellphone photos of Snoop Dogg browsing through the duty-free shop just before fists started flying. Because police quickly sealed off the area where the brawl happened, they were the only photos of him from the scene. Ten minutes after the pictures came in, MacRae sent them out to his list of publications interested in celebrity news.

"The phones started ringing right away," he said, and the next day the images appeared in Newsday and the New York Daily News, and later in Rolling Stone and magazines and newspapers in Britain.

With so many camera phones making celebrity photos so easy to come by, MacRae said, he is trying to get the balance right between newsworthiness and privacy.

"We're stuck in the middle trying to find a sensible approach," he said. "But I do know that you can't turn this off. Sooner or later, every news story will be captured first by a citizen journalist."

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iCampus - FridayLive! Dec 15, 2006 2pm Eastern

"Developing and Spreading Educational Uses of Technolgy - A Study of iCampus - the MIT-Microsoft Alliance" on FridayLive!
December 15, 2006; 2pm Eastern U.S. Time Zone
Interview with Featured Guest: Steve Ehrmann, Dir., The Flashlight Program, The TLT Group

In 1999-2006, the $25 million iCampus Program funded dozens of faculty- and student-led software development projects at MIT. Some of that software began having significant use and influence at MIT and at other institutions. In Dec. 2005, The TLT Group was asked to identify factors affecting the wider adoption of such software, and to make recommendations that would led to the wider use of such academic software.

We were asked to focus on five projects. They were, as you'll see, quite content-specific:

1. iLabs – students can use web browsers to design experiments and collect data from distant laboratory equipment; several such labs were developed, along with a shared software architecture to make it easier to share such labs across institutions;
2. iMOAT – the web is used to manage the process of large-scale assessment of student writing;
3. TEAL – two terms of introductory physics have been redesigned around inquiry, discussion, experimentation, and visualization;
4. XMAS – students can ‘quote’ video legally in their online discussions, presentations, and projects about films in courses such as Shakespeare
5. xTutor is to be a tool kit for creating online courses; its strength is checking computer programming homework and providing feedback. Currently two free xTutor courses are available from MIT

We can answer questions about these projects, but what we'd most likely to discuss are our findings about factors affecting wide adoption of such innovations, and our recommendations for how to speed the spread of technology-enabled educational improvements.

We want to hear from you about how our findings and recommendations fit your institution and experience.

Question - please post your responses here!
"Most faculty in my institution continually search the world for ways to improve each of their courses."

• True now?
• If not, what changes inside or outside your institution might help that statement become true?

For a summary of our findings and recommendations, see the executive summary of our report: "Factors Affecting the Adoption of Faculty-Developed Academic Software: A Study of Five iCampus Projects"

For more on iCampus itself and other projects it funded at MIT 1999-2006, see http://icampus.mit.edu/

Laptop use + survival to middle age = Back pain? Movement cure?

Problem: Back pain is almost inevitable for people who work like you and me.

Desired partial solution: Software/hardware that will let me set an interval (e.g., 20 minutes) after which my computer screen will go blank or display a reminder that I need to move around at least a little. I want the software to prevent me from using my computer for at least a minute!

[Above cartoon is from: "More Than 450 Diet, Fitness,Health and Medical Cartoons - A professional cartoon service" by Randy Glasbergen. See: http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/
psychtoons/glasbergen/ergonomics.gif ]

In the last 3 months of 2006 I had both a computer crash and lower back pain bad enough to send me to a doctor and a physical therapist. I'm learning more about ergonomics than I ever wanted to know, but I wish that I had learned it several years ago. I really like the portability and power of laptop computers, but I now realize that they are not well-designed for most of us who must use them many hours per day. As far as I know there is no ergonomically advisable way a healthy adult human being can use a laptop computer daily for more than an hour per use. Of course, I'm not claiming any real expertise beyond what anyone might learn when highly motivated by frequent pain. Here are my conclusions:

1. If you work in anything resembling an office environment, either you die young or you are VERY likely to have lower back trouble.
2. It is a VERY good idea to separate the keyboard from the monitor/display, so that each can be positioned best for your body.
3. BUT, there is no combination of furniture and posture that can prevent cumulative damage from frequent periods of intense concentration while being physically inactive for more than an hour.

So, move around. Learn some stretches or other exercises that work well for your body in between periods of intense computer use. But most important, get up and move at least a little at least twice every hour!

Oops. That's all I have time for now. My alarm clock is buzzing and I have to get up to turn it off ... and then walk around a little.

Web 2.0 - Identify Important Characteristics & Share Examples?

Help clarify and expand our table of factors and examples of Web 2.0!
What are your favorite educational applications of Web 2.0? What are their educational implications? Please answer briefly as a comment to this posting. For a more general intro to our work on Web 2.0, see http://www.tltgroup.org/oli/fridaylive/120806.htm Also, see our Table of "Factors and Examples" which provides brief explanations of key factors and hot links to related examples. Complete table available within a Google Document at: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ajbkwcmd3bt8_20crwj6p

HERE'S A LIST OF IMPORTANT WEB 2.0 FACTORS FROM THE LEFT-MOST COLUMN OF THAT TABLE.

ACCELERATION
Variety of tools, resources available - growing accelerating, impermanent!; TMI/TMO [Too Much Info; Too Many Options]

ACCESSIBILITY
Accessibility/Mobility/Ubiquity - access from many different locations, devices

FLUIDITY
Dynamic Content -Easy, frequent, changing of Web sites, info,

CHANGING MODALITIES
Multimedia - Combining sound, video, ...

SHARING
Sharing info, resources, categories; Social/Group Collaborative Creation/Editing/Responding;

PUBLIC/PRIVATE?
Public/Private Blurring - [voyeurism?]

DIFFUSION OF AUTHORITY
Non-hierarchical authority: authenticating, cataloging, editing, publishing, modifying (software)

DIFFUSION OF CATEGORIES
Folksonomy? vs. Authority controlled cataloging; Attaching and sharing labels to objects (Meta-tagging)

DIFFUSION OF PUBLISHING
RSS and other "Feeds" enable new roles that blur the boundaries between "author," "publisher," and "reader."

CHANGING ECONOMICS
Fluid Business Models; Changing role of advertisement?

CHANGING DIMENSIONS
Virtual Reality/Avatars; SecondLife...

NEW CHANGE?
New kinds of change? New ways of changing?

BEYOND?
What else? What have we missed?

Thanks for your help in expanding and clarifying this list - and completing the related table.

"Boudreaux's Dogs" - Training & Change? [Almost 2 minutes audio]

How do we know when to stop trying to teach someone something?

"Boudreaux's Dogs" another Boudreaux story is available.
[Almost 2 minutes Audio - Cajun Academic Humor]

For more Boudreaux stories - Cajun Academic Humor - go to:
http://www.tltgroup.org/listserv/tlt-swg.html
I hope you enjoy them!

If you have not subscribed to TLT-SWG as a podcast yet, you may still hear this recording by clicking on the title of this posting - above. To subscribe to the podcast - and receive notices of new postings and copies of audio files automatically - click here:

Steve Gilbert
NOTE: David E. Boudreaux, native and resident of Thibodaux, La., is Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Nicholls State University. We appreciate the warmth, good nature, and underlying care for humanity that often emerge from his unique "Cajun Academic Humor." Boudreaux's stories provide welcome breaks in our ever-busier, ever more fragmented lives, and help us regain a broader, healthier perspective.

7 Principles & 3 Acronyms: POD, NISOD, NCSPOD

What do these 3 organizations have in common? How do they differ?
They all advocate and provide resources to support the improvement of teaching and learning through various combinations of faculty, leadership, organizational, and professional development. Each serves a different PRIMARY constituency. Each helps faculty and others implement the Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.

See:
POD Network
The Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education is " ... developing and supporting practitioners and leaders in higher education dedicated to enhancing learning and teaching... a network of nearly 1,600 members - faculty and teaching assistant developers, faculty, administrators, consultants, and others who perform roles that value teaching and learning in higher education."

NISOD
" ... National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) is dedicated to serving, engaging, and inspiring teachers, reachers, and leaders.... the outreach vehicle and service arm to the Community College Leadership Program (CCLP) and the College of Education at The University of Texas Austin. "

NCSPOD
"...National Council for Staff, Program and Organizational Development is an affiliate council of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and provides services ... to increase institutional vitality by providing professional growth opportunities for [institutional] members, enabling them to establish, enhance, and/or revitalize staff, program, and organizational development in their organizations.

Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education
"... the best known summary of what decades of educational research indicates are the kinds of teaching/learning activities most likely to improve learning [and teaching]..."

Add Favorite LTA HERE!

Help with our growing collections of LTAs (Low-Threshold Applications/Activities). Add a comment to this posting in which you give a brief title, URL, and the minimum # of words adequate to describe your favorite LTA. Don't hesitate to offer something REALLY simple and easy that you use a lot (unless you are quite sure that everyone you know is already doing that same thing - often they are not!).
For a more general intro to LTAs, see www.tltgroup.org/ltas.htm

See our collection of 50 LTAs-of-the-Week developed by 31 different authors:
Current site - as of 11-29-2006, but certain to change early in 2007:
http://zircon.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/lta/

See other LTAs Mapped onto the Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education:
http://www.tltgroup.org/Seven/Library_TOC.htm

Latest “Quick LTA: Share a PowerPoint collection with students or colleagues via web service "SlideShare": http://slideshare.net/
You can see a sample slideshow developed and displayed via SlideShare by Charles Ansorge as part of planning for our 12/1/2006 FridayLive session at: http://slideshare.net/cansorge/lta-planning-112206/

"Palavatar" - More than intelligent answering machine

How well do you WANT an avatar to represent you? To fool others into believing they are interacting with you? Easier or harder to succeed with an audio-only avatar?

This is science fiction... playing with ideas about artificial intelligence, avatars, social networking, etc...
"The Jenna Set" by Daniel Kaysen
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2005/20050314/kaysen-f.shtml

Student & Faculty Views of Tech. - Final 2 Questions - [Almost 3 minutes audio]

For student: What would you like faculty members to know about students' use of and attitudes about information technology?
For faculty/admin: What would you like students to know about faculty members' use of and attitudes about information technology?

Recording of Final 2 Questions/Answers from interview with Olinda Ricard, President of the Student Government Association, and David Boudreaux, VP for Institutional Advancement, of Nicholls State University on November 13, 2006

For a list of all questions discussed and recording of the full hour interview, go to previous posting on this blog:
http://tlt-swg.blogspot.com/2006/11/
student-leaders-views-on-technology.html
and for more about this interview, see Google Docs Document:
http://docs.google.com/View?
docid=ajbkv7nhdrt8_35d8792t

Student Leader's Views on Technology, Options, ...[About 1 hour audio]

Attached audio file (podcast) is a recording of an interview of Olinda Ricard, student leader and David Boudreaux, VP, of Nicholls State University. 11/13/2006

Questions for a Student Leader - Role of Technology, Constructive Options?

For additional notes, comments, etc., see Google Docs Document:
http://docs.google.com/View?
docid=ajbkv7nhdrt8_35d8792t

Impact of Technology on your life/role as student (& student leader)

1. Are you especially pleased with any particular educational uses of technology?
2. Are you especially disappointed with any particular educational uses of technology?
3. Any fears and hopes about the impact of technology on higher education in the near future?
4. How do you see new available technology helping/hindering constructive, humane problem-solving?

Constructive Student Roles - With/without technology

1. What are some examples of student activities in recent years that best exemplify the kind of active, constructive, engagement you admire and hope to foster?
2. What are some of the most important ways you know of for students to participate constructively in the life of their college or university?
3. How do you see technology helping to provide or obstructing opportunities for students to take more active, constructive, engaged roles?


Students ahead/behind Faculty vis-a-vis Technology?

1. How much/little undergraduates are ahead of faculty and administration with respect to use of new information technology tools and resources?
2. Any comments about emerging role of cell phones? instant messaging? “texting”? blogs? FaceBook?....
3. Does your own experience suggest some categories of students who are being left behind the faculty and administrative staff in their access to and use of information technology?


Disaster: Implications for Online vs. Face-to-Face

1. What if you could download a copy of a lecture (like a video-recording)? IN WHAT SENSES COULD/COULDN’T A “LECTURE” ACTUALLY BE COPIED AND REPRODUCED ELECTRONICALLY?
2. How is the experience and threat of natural or man made disasters changing teaching and learning? Changing the role of information technology? Do some disaster plans include shifting - at least temporarily - more classes to purely online?
3. As it becomes easier and more important to offer some parts of some courses online instead of face-to-face, what kind of important differences between those two situations emerge as most significant? What kinds of differences emerge as least significant?
4. What would we be losing temporarily? What would be most important to make up for?
5. What would be most important to prepare for in advance?

Efficiency vs. Personal Connections (Hallowell's “Connectedness”?)

1. What are the changing trade-offs between “efficiency and personal connections in student work? Face-to-face vs. online?
2. What is being lost or gained?

Recovering Anupholsteraphobics Join Here!

A new kind of AA: "Anupholsteraphobics Anonymous?"

Anupholsteraphobia:

"... Like most of the teachers I ever encounter, I suffered from a common malady--what Stan Brimberg at the Bank Street School calls "Anupholsteraphobia": "the fear of not covering the material."
Anupholsteraphobia cannot be cured, but it can be controlled."
- From "Discipline and Publish: Faculty Work, Technology, and Accountability," Randy Bass, Georgetown University, Plenary address delivered at the AAHE Forum on Faculty Roles and Rewards, San Diego CA, January 22, 1999.
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/disc&pub.html


Where shall we hold the first meeting of Anupholsteraphobics Anonymous? Who has time to set the agenda? Decide what we will cover together?

Steve Gilbert

Ubiquitous/Wireless Computing on Campus

Fears & Hopes about Laptop Use
Jan 24, 31, and Feb 7, 2007 at 1pm EST

Workshop Planning/Resources - Google Docs Doc

Cell Phones Friends or Foes?

In the next 6-24 months, won’t most students have hand-held devices that combine the capabilities of current cell phones, digital cameras, audio/video recorders, PDAs, GPSs, Web-browsers, email readers, ….?

<Insert/imagine picture of a few students each using only-slightly-different gizmos to do some of the things listed above.>
If you can’t beat ‘em, use ‘em

• Student (mother of 3; part-time worker; full-time student; student govt president): “I’ve only known one other undergraduate in the last 3 years who didn’t have a cell phone.” But I almost never see a faculty member using a cell phone.


• Faculty member – who does instant messaging, blogging, etc. herself: “I can’t get some of the students in my class to listen to me instead of their iPods, phones, etc…. They’re always doing text messaging in my class. I don’t know how to stop them.”


• <Insert/imagine picture of a classroom with a bedraggled, frustrated teacher at the front and many students obviously doing things with their VARIED kinds of cell phones or iPods while not exactly paying attention to the teacher and not exactly ignoring him either.>

One to many?

• How can someone send the same text or voice recording to several cell phones at the same time? From a cell phone? From a computer?


• <Insert/imagine picture of a teacher sending a preparatory message the day before a class to all the enrolled students via cell phone or similar devices. Show the students receiving the message in a variety of situations all at the same time. Show some of them quite intrigued with the message, some irritated, some not really paying attention to it.>

Tree-Like Distribution?

• How can someone send the same text or voice recording to a few cell phones at the same time? With confidence that each recipient will in turn send the same message to a pre-determined few cell phones?


• From a cell phone? From a computer?


• <Insert/imagine picture of a teacher sending a preparatory message the day before a class to all the enrolled students via a “telephone tree”-like arrangement. Show the students receiving the message in a variety of situations all at almost the same time. Show some of them quite intrigued with the message, some irritated, some not really paying attention to it.>

Daisy Chain?

• How can someone send a text or voice recording to a single cell phone with confidence that the recipient will in turn send the same message to the next pre-assigned cell phones? And that the 2nd recipient fill send the message along to the next designated person in the chain. And so on.


• From cell phone only to cell phones? Beginning with and then passing along the message to any of several kinds of devices – ranging from cell phones to computers?


• <Insert/imagine picture of a teacher sending a preparatory message the day before a class to one enrolled student – and that student forwarding the message to another, and so on, one-by-one. Show the students receiving the message in a variety of situations all at almost the same time. Show some of them quite intrigued with the message, some irritated, some not really paying attention to it.>

Voting via cell phones or PDAs or …?

• [Like “PRS” – Clickers – Personal Response Systems]


• How can someone send a multiple-choice or short answer question to many cell phones at the same time? With confidence that each recipient will in turn be able to respond by “voting” for one of the multiple choices? Or submitting a short answer? And that the results can be automatically compiled and displayed for all participants to see? With or without protecting the anonymity of each response?


• From a cell phone? From a computer?


• <Insert/imagine picture of a teacher sending a “problem” or “question” within a classroom. All students respond simultaneously via their cell phones or similar handheld devices. The results are being displayed via computer-driven projector. >

Why Google Docs & Spreadsheets?

[Join us for FridayLive! Demo/Discussion of Google Docs & Spreadsheets 2pm EST Friday, November 17, 2006. For free-but-required advance registration, click here.]
For more info, including some additional resources and guidelines for using Google Docs, click here.
Recommendation: Try Google Docs!!


Why bother? Easy to use. Reliable, accessible. Good for joint planning, collaborative work. Many potential educational uses - esp. well-suited for student collaborative projects.

The following lists of features are intended to help you decide how to use this free resource most effectively. Please suggest additional items for these lists of Advantages, Educational Uses, or Disadvantages by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" just below this posting.

Advantages: Free and relatively easy Web-based tool for creating and collaboratively editing documents online. Resulting documents are similar to wikis, blogs, but easier to edit and share, publish or hide. With Google Docs, previous versions of the document are always accessible and it is easy to see who made which changes. However, the most easily visible version is the aggregation of all previous changes, completely hiding the process by which it was developed. First time users can be assured that they do not need to worry about making mistakes - no matter what they do, the favorite contributions of each collaborator are always still accessible and can be retrieved and displayed elsewhere or re-integrated into the document. It is relatively painless to establish the online account required for active participation. There seems to be no inappropriate use of the info that must be given to obtain the account. Google's financial success makes it likely that documents created by using this service will not disappear and neither will the service.


Educational uses: Many. Especially nice for student teams in which someone is likely to worry that his/her contributions will not be matched by comparable work done by each team member. At any time, anyone who has permission, can easily view previous versions and see who has made which contributions.


Disadvantages: This tool keeps improving but some functions still work with unpredictable delays. The results of some kinds of attempts to change formatting can also be difficult to predict. Many people who begin working on a Google Docs document for the very first time find it a little more challenging than ideal to understand and follow the directions that are automatically sent as part of an invitation to become a "collaborator" on a Google Docs document. Establishing another online account - with user name and password - is required for active participation.


NOTE: MORE DETAIL THAN YOU PROBABLY WANT OR NEED ABOUT ADDING A COMMENT
To be sure we receive your comment, click on one of the options below the box in which you entered your comment. Then type in the letters that you see in the weird script in the most obvious place - the "word verification" box. THEN CLICK ON "LOG IN AND PUBLISH" - DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE "LOG-IN" PART. You do NOT need to have a Blogger account to leave a comment. If you wish to comment anonymously, click in the circle to the left of that option. If you want to avoid getting a Blogger account, but want to indicate who you are, add your name and contact info WITHIN your "comment" and then choose the "anonymous" option.

Gödel's Truth: Stalking Gödel?

I was a teenager when Kurt Gödel destroyed my love for mathematics.

But he also revealed a much richer world. He enabled me to accept and cherish other dimensions of truth and humanity. I’m still trying to learn how to live more fully and comfortably in this much richer and more complex world, to love without needing to fully understand or control.

And now, I still don’t understand how so few people who are considered well-educated recognize his name or have the slightest clue about his unique intellectual achievements.

I was a math nerd in high school, so one of the reasons I wanted to go to Princeton was that Kurt Gödel was there. I was the first person in my family to go to college and the day I departed for Princeton, New Jersey was the first time I traveled outside of California (except for some vacation trips to Mexico). I must have been one of the most naïve and socially unprepared freshmen ever to arrive on the Princeton campus.

Early in my first semester I asked Professor Raubitschek if I could invite Kurt Gödel to a freshman “keycept” – informal evening gathering of about a dozen freshmen with an upper-classman in an “eating club” or dormitory suite – the 1961 version of First-Year Experience Program. Raubitschek was slightly startled by my question, but he replied with kindness and restraint that he didn’t think such a thing was advisable. I had no idea that I was suggesting a social occasion of a kind that Gödel was locally famous for avoiding. Further, that even in a community that took great pride for treating an extraordinary concentration of world-famous intellectual leaders and scholars with common courtesy and without acknowledging their status, Gödel was regarded as sharing the pinnacle. He was treated as a peer only by Einstein.
[ANTONY E. RAUBITSCHEK, (1912 - 1999)
http://facultysenate.stanford.edu/archive/
1999_2000/reports/106339/106424.html

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/
1999/may12/raubitschek-512.html]

I can’t imagine I would have been able to concoct a sensible question or statement if I had met Gödel, but I still regret that I too timidly accepted Raubitschek’s conclusion. I could have at least learned where Gödel lived and what he looked like so that I could get a glimpse of him. I have a retroactive urge to be a paparazzi or stalker – the only time I have ever understood why some people want to get a celebrity’s autograph or a lock of his/her hair.

Possible book discussion:

* Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, by Rebecca Goldstein
* The Oxford Murders, by Guillermo Martinez, Sonia Soto (translator), 197 pages, MacAdam/Cage Publishing (October 16, 2005), ISBN: 1596921501
* Gödel’s Proof, by Ernest Nagel, James R. Newman, Douglas R. Hofstadter (Editor); 125 pages, New York University Press; Revised edition (October 1, 2001), ISBN: 0814758169


Want to participate in developing some conversation about the meaning of Gödel's proof?
Ask to be added as a collaborator to this Google Docs planning document:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=ajbkv7nhdrt8_29dw5hzr

Good at Running Meetings with 2 Factions? [Or more?]

Who is good at running meetings in which there are at least two factions that hold different frameworks?
- With the goal of maintaining civil discourse while reaching accommodation about some decision that is important to both factions...?
- With respect to improving teaching and learning (with technology)?

Please suggest additional examples - you can add them by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" just below this posting.

Consider these examples:
1. Scalability vs. Faculty Diversity
A. People who seek "scalable" improvements independent of differences among faculty - "teacher proof" curricula, syllabi, instructional resources, pedagogies, ...
B. People who believe that differences among faculty are as important as differences among students and that any significant improvements in education must accommodate (better yet, take advantage of) differences among faculty... and students.

2. Truth vs. Research
A. Believe in the value and truth of educational research - esp. done by school of education faculty
B. Believe in the value and truth of Scholarship of Teaching/Learning research
C. Believe in the value and truth of Classroom Assessment, "Action Research"
D. Believe that any teaching/learning innovation supported by citation of results of "Educational Research" is suspect and to be opposed or ignored.

3. NIH vs. NIBM vs. Find Improvements Elsewhere
A. Believe important improvements in teaching/learning will be figured out first by colleagues within the same institution ("NIH" = Not Invented Here)
B. Believe important improvements in teaching/learning will be figured out first by the individual faculty member ("NIBM" = Not Invented By Me)
C. Believe important improvements in teaching/learning can (and are) being developed almost anywhere. A faculty member who identifies an instructional problem (esp. "Instructional Bottleneck") can and should first seek "solutions" already developed by colleagues elsewhere
D. Believe important improvements in teaching/learning are not worthy of adoption, adaptation, imitation, unless officially endorsed by the faculty members' professional disciplinary society

4. Transformative Change vs. Incremental Change
A. Believe that only transformative, large-scale, long-lasting change in programs that span several courses is worthwhile
B. Believe only incremental changes within individual courses - especially LTA-style changes (Low-Threshold Activity/Application) - are feasible, worth the effort to find and promulgate

NOTE: MORE DETAIL THAN YOU PROBABLY WANT OR NEED ABOUT ADDING A COMMENT
To be sure we receive your comment, click on one of the options below the box in which you entered your comment. Then type in the letters that you see in the weird script in the most obvious place - the "word verification" box. THEN CLICK ON "LOG IN AND PUBLISH" - DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE "LOG-IN" PART. You do NOT need to have a Blogger account to leave a comment. If you wish to comment anonymously, click in the circle to the left of that option. If you want to avoid getting a Blogger account, but want to indicate who you are, add your name and contact info WITHIN your "comment" and then choose the "anonymous" option.

Web 2.0 Meets SOTL - 3+ Big Questions

Recent and emerging Web-based tools (often referred to as "Web 2.0") extend the time and space for teaching and learning, as well as interaction and communication, in ways that both enhance and challenge these activities. Please consider some emerging questions about learning and teaching in emerging environments - classroom, online, hybrid - within the context of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL).

What are the most pressing questions, promising directions for scholarly research prompted by Web 2.0? How can (and should?) teachers use new tools to act more like researchers? What kinds of intra- and inter-institutional collaborations can build our knowledge about how to improve teaching and learning?

These 3 questions are expanded below, with some comments and references, after brief explanations of SOTL and Web 2.0.

"SOTL" "… fosters significant, long-lasting learning for all students; enhances the practice and profession of teaching, and; brings to faculty members' work as teachers the recognition and reward afforded to other forms of scholarly work. …"

From - CASTL Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at:

http://www.carnegiefoundation.org
/programs/index.asp?key=21

"Web 2.0" Very loosely defined term that includes blogs, wikis, MySpace, … for more than you need to know about this term, see: "What Is Web 2.0 - Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software" by Tim O'Reilly at:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/
news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

(1) Most Pressing Questions?
What are the most pressing questions about the educational uses of Web 2.0 tools that should shape areas for research for those interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning?

How can this research be guided to be especially helpful to those who decide which Web-based tools and resources are most promising and worthy of investment and support?

(2) Teachers Use New Tools to Act More Like Researchers?
In her plenary for the ISSOTL 2006 Conference, Diana Laurillard asks:

"A research-based approach to learning design is not sufficient. Innovative teachers need to be able to act like researchers as well. Could teaching innovation be more like research - exploratory, building on the work of others, experimenting, redesigning, sharing ideas, a community…?"

* In what ways might emerging, Web 2.0 technologies, help teachers "act more like researchers" especially by providing new ways to capture data and evidence of learning and learning processes?
* Do all "innovative teachers" need to "act like researchers" vis a vis their own teaching?
* Is "teaching innovation" a goal in itself? Can teaching and learning be improved in ways that Laurillard would NOT describe as innovative?
* Are all effective teachers innovative?
* Are all good teachers aware of all their own gifts? Do they need to be?

See: "Personalizing Pedagogy"
http://www.tltgroup.org/PersonalizingPedagogy/Home.htm

which begins:

" There are many kinds of good teaching and good teachers -- just as there are many kinds of learners and learning. New applications of technology have made it possible to respond to different learning needs more realistically and intentionally. Now it is also becoming possible to enable more faculty to improve teaching and learning in different ways. Information technology offers new options for matching diverse needs with diverse gifts. [Information technology can be the excuse and the means to ....]"

(3) Collaborate to Build Knowledge about How to Improve Teaching and Learning: Institutional and International?

What new kinds of collaborations around the investigation of teaching practice and student learning do new Web 2.0 technologies support that weren't possible before these tools were readily available?

Can you describe an instance in which faculty members, educational technologists, and other academic professionals collaborated on projects in which they used new technological tools to gather evidence of student learning and then used this evidence to support the improvement of teaching practice? To support the improvement of educational uses of technology?

What possibilities do you see for such collaborations?

Are there research or inquiry themes for which you are seeking collaborators?
What factors are likely to help make this collaboration effective? Already established patterns of communication within the institution?

What, if any, are the likely sources of misunderstanding, miscommunication? Lack of shared vocabulary? Lack of awareness and understanding of each other's conceptual frameworks? Priorities? Interests? Assumptions about how the world works?

Advice to Bloggers - Always Use Ping-o-Matic

ADVICE: use Ping-o-Matic whenever you think your blog might have gotten messed up in a way that interferes with the RSS or Atom feed available for it.
Ping-o-Matic (free) enables you to get a feed reader or news aggregator or directory to update info from/about a partciular feed immediately - instead of waiting for the next scheduled updating time for that reader/aggregator. E.g., you can get Bloglines to update the current info about the latest change in this blog! Very useful if you suspect that a recent change in your blog (or whatever you are running that produces a feed) has somehow damaged the feed or that something might have happened that will inconvenience your feed subscribers.


I just added "Ping-o-Matic" to my list of favorite tools.
[See: Favorite Online & Laptop Tools - SWG ]

Resolving No Trump Arguments?

Who is good at running meetings in which there are at least two factions that hold different "frameworks"? With the goal of maintaining civil discourse while reaching accommodation about some decision that is important to both factions... With respect to improving teaching and learning (with technology), consider these 2 situations:

1.
A. People who seek "scalable" improvements independent of differences among faculty - "teacher proof" curricula, syllabi, instructional resources, pedagogies, ...

B. People who believe that differences among faculty are as important as differences among students and that any significant improvements in education must accommodate (better yet, take advantage of) differences among faculty... and students

2.
A. Believe in the value and truth of educational research - esp. done by school of education faculty

B. Believe in the value and truth of scholarship of teaching research

C. Believe in the value and truth of Classroom Assessment, "action research"

D. Believe that any teaching/learning innovation supported by citation of "educational research" results is suspect and to be opposed or ignored

3.
A. Believe important improvements in teaching/learning will be figured out first by colleagues within the same institution ("NIH" = Not Invented Here)

B. Believe important improvements in teaching/learning will be figured out first by the individual faculty member ("NIBM" = Not Invented By Me)

C. Believe important improvements in teaching/learning can and are being developed almost anywhere. A faculty member who identifies an instructional problem (esp. "Instructional Bottleneck") can and should first seek "solutions" already developed by colleagues elsewhere

D. Believe important improvements in teaching/learning are not worthy of adoption, adaptation, imitation, unless officially endorsed by the faculty members' professional disciplinary society

4.
A. Believe only transformative, large-scale, long-lasting change in course programs is worthwhile

B. Believe only incremental changes within individual courses - especially LTA-style changes - are feasible, worth the effort to find and promulgate

Cell Phone as Sanctuary?

Never underestimate people's ability to find unintended uses for new technologies. Now, especially for small handheld internet-connected digital devices.

"We believe everyone lives very rushed, harried lives and like to think of the cell as your sanctuary on the go," said Martha Cotton, co-founder of the Christian media company Good News Holdings, whose customers get videos of Christian extreme athletes and talks from Christian motivational speakers on their phones. She calls the pieces "short-attention-span theater."

Using a phone for spiritual purposes raises unique questions: Is it rude to watch your phone in church -- if that's where you've downloaded your Bible? Can text-message blessings be spiritually enriching? Is there a sense of religious community on a cellular phone?

Cellphones actually might be well suited for spiritual communication. Carried everywhere by their owners, they are the most intimate piece of technology many people own. They are emblazoned with personalized "wallpaper," have ring tones meant to advertise their owners' very essence and are loaded with personal information.

These palm-size gadgets "can take on a mystical significance," said James Katz, who studies the cultural and social impact of cellphones at Rutgers University, where he is the director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies.

- Above from "In a Tech-Savvy World, the Word of God Goes Mobile," By Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, November 5, 2006; C01

For full text:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2006/11/04/AR2006110400738.html

Engaging Freshmen with Technology

Student Engagement Technology
http://www.tltgroup.org/tlt-swg/studentengagement.html

Planning Document (Google Docs)

UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING
"Ubiquitous Computing" ….provide a laptop to every student – students pay annual fee.

ENGAGING FRESHMEN STUDENTS
Tracy Gottlieb, Dean, in Acad. Affairs:
AHA! -- terrific... series of activities ENGAGING students with SHU from shortly after receiving laptop until they actually arrive as freshmen.

• KEY ISSUE - good collaboration: Works closely with IT and student affairs; "Are you working with people who are team players? Willing to try something new? Get something done?"
• Most important step: access to SHU computer system - with username, password - as soon as admitted (or registered) to enroll? - Engage new frosh EARLY - BEFORE moving onto campus - give laptops during orientation in spring year BEFORE beginning
• "Melt has shrunk" - loss of enrollees between June and Sept has DECREASED Some students still "shopping" even when they're going to freshman orientation!!!!!!
• Retention has gone UP in last few years!
• Some of these activities do NOT really require the full laptop "ubiquitous" commitment. Giving pre-enrollment students SHU email accts, etc. is useful even without laptops; but SHU gets students accustomed to using their own accts, Blackboard experience, access to portal ... for doing REAL projects.. e.g., "The Doubloon Project" - online scavenger hunt. Made college preparatory podcasts for frosh; plus podcast by English prof related to a summer reading assignment

• Try to create freshman "learning communities" - = a group of people who take the same set of courses; At SHU lots of discussion of "building community" - and intend to do so in MANY venues, in MANY ways; also communities of learners in the same field of study
• "High school students are very compliant" !!!!???? Not so once they are frosh; they are EAGER to become part of Seton Hall community.

BENEFITS, LOGISTICS
Paul Fisher, Dir., TLT Center
• Students gain access to tech resources as soon as they make their deposit
• Distributing 1200 laptops over a few days is NOT to be committed to lightly!
• "Online tech skills course" - hybrid over summer BEFORE arriving on campus... 1.5 hours F2F 3 "hours" online!
• Students' mastery of basics with new laptops has dramatically increased; better than expected; REDUCED FACULTY FRUSTRATION AND COST OF STUDENT TECH SUPPORT!
• Summer "reading" assignment was done as CD/download...
• There is a Freshman Studies Community created where all communications take place

STUDENT TECHNOLOGY ASSISTANT PROGRAM
STA began 10 years ago!!! 10 years later, computers still aren't used all that much IN THE CLASSROOM; but are used much more IN COURSES!

PEER ADVISORS: 40 undergrad student Peer Advisors begin communicating with the freshmen from the very beginning when pre-freshmen get their online accts; now train ALL frosh Peer Advisors with same basic training as for beginning STAs!
Are these students paid? Some Peer Advisors get paid via Fed. Work Study; others get paid otherwise; Sliding pay scale - with training, experience; STAs are paid depending on the job they are applying for, experience level and skill level

ADVICE
Tracy: Reach out to the incoming students as early as possible; giving them their tech accts early; being deliberate, MEANINGFUL in communication online with these students; good use of Blackboard in PRE- enrollment

Paul: First steps - get buy in from depts./offices/areas as will be necessary for supporting such a successful program.... "getting the players around the table"..... [Steve Gilbert modestly recommends TLT Roundtable guidelines!]

STANDARDIZATION.... not innovative BUT makes some things MUCH simpler, easier, less expensive... [We'll return some day to ask about how this STANDARDIZATION fits with new Web 2.0 options!]

COMMUTER CAMPUS?
What difference would it make if your campus is a commuter campus? Seton Hall U. is 50/50. Paul: I don't think it would make any difference

COMMUNITY & BUMPER STICKER
Steve Gilbert:
• Great bumper sticker: "Limit the Melt!"
• "Blackboard community" often means little more than a place on the Internet where a group of individuals all have access to some shared info and to exchanging info/messages with each other... but a "community" in other contexts can mean much more

Advice to Bloggers - Always Use Feed Validator

ADVICE: Run a feed validator often! Why? Because the latest update of the feed automatically created for your blog (or for your Webpage or for whatever is behind your feed) may have "broken" the feed! A good feed validator will show you exactly where the problem is, and then you might need to know a little bit of HTML to fix it - or go back to the original item that is causing the trouble and replace it with a version that has simpler formatting.

I just added "Feed Validator" <http://feedvalidator.org/> to my list of favorite tools.
[See: Favorite Online & Laptop Tools - SWG ]

From now on, I'm going to try to remember to use Feed Validator every time I add a new posting to this blog! It is too easy for me format a new item in a way that temporarily "breaks" the feeds that are automatically created by Blogger.

After a few weeks hiatus due to death of previous laptop, I just happened to click on one of the buttons that provides access to feed options for this TLT-SWG blog and instead of seeing what I expected, I found an error message. I tried several options, then, finally remembered how I was required to use a diagnostic "Feed Validator" in conjunction with Feed2JS. When I used this particular "Feed Validator" <http://feedvalidator.org/> this morning, it showed me exactly where the problem was and I easily made the repairs. And I suspect that anyone trying to subscribe to TLT-SWG feeds for the past few weeks has been frustrated because I didn't detect and fix this problem earlier.

Reading vs. Lectures vs. ....?

Are faculty members inept or irresponsible when they assign reading as part of a course?

Many people argue that lectures, especially lectures given to large audiences, are bad for learning - mostly because of the lack of opportunity for the learner to engage with the "material" actively and the lack of opportunity for interaction with the lecturer - for all but a few who may be able to take advantage of a brief question perior. Would these same people apply the same reasoning to reading?

“She had liked to read when she was a kid. But reading took so much time, all of it spent inside someone else’s head. Movies and TV, you could watch them with other people. That’s what it boiled down to: how much time you wanted to be all alone by yourself, with just a book for company.”

- Eileen Gunn, “Coming to Terms,” Nebula Awards Showcase 2006, p. 216, edited by Gardner Dozois, New American Library, 2006.

Cultural Diversity, Academic Engagement, and Technology?

Is it now possible to use teaching/learning strategies enabled by new educational technology options to respond to cultural differences - in face-to-face, online, and hybrid courses? To help modify undergraduate courses to increase student engagement by responding more effectively to cultural learning differences and workstyle differences?

PLS SUGGEST USEFUL RESOURCES, ISSUES, OR QUESTIONS! Click on "comments" at the bottom of this posting. I’ve quickly assembled some resources – as a starting place:
http://www.tltgroup.org/DangerousDiscussions
/diversityengagementtechnology.htm
NOTE: Unfortunately, I could find very few references to educational uses of technology in these resources, and I’ve probably omitted some “obvious” excellent resources. WHICH ONES HAVE I OMITTED? WEB PAGES, BOOKS, ARTICLES, PEOPLE....? ANYONE WILLING TO ADD TO, ANNOTATE, OR OTHERWISE IMPROVE THIS LIST?

THIS WEEK - CONNECTING CULTURAL DIVERSITY, ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT, AND TECHNOLOGY
I'm heading to Dallas tomorrow morning for the week - mostly for the Educause conference and to run a workshop on Cultural Diversity, Academic Engagement, and Technology for Eastfield College of Dallas Community College District on Friday (10-13-2006) in the morning. Fortunately, Naomi Story of Maricopa CC will be co-presenting via the Internet.

A few of us are also developing a panel and and an online workshop for January, 2006 about how it is finally becoming possible to develop realistic options for modifying undergraduate courses to respond to findings and goals that have been accumulating for decades about cultural learning differences and workstyles. We are especially interested in finding and sharing resources already available that can be easily adapted and used for these purposes – and in identifying related research questions. [MORE EXPLANATION BELOW.]

Thanks in advance for your help.
Steve Gilbert

Many colleges and universities are striving to find ways of building students’ academic engagement at the same time that they are trying to serve more diverse student bodies and improve educational uses of information technology. Few institutions have yet begun to integrate these important inter-dependent efforts. Fortunately, some recent educational uses of information technology make it feasible to respond to differences in students’ learning styles and needs within college-level courses with heterogeneous enrollments. However, most efforts do not yet focus on learning differences associated with students’ cultural backgrounds. It is finally becoming possible to develop realistic options for modifying undergraduate courses to respond to findings and goals that have been accumulating for decades about cultural learning differences and workstyles.

We are especially interested in finding and sharing resources already available that can be easily adapted and used for these purposes – educational uses of technology that enable teaching/learning strategies responsive to cultural differences – in face-to-face, online, and hybrid courses. We are also attempting to identify and articulate research questions that others could address to advance this goal.

Success in this effort depends on effective collaboration among those with expertise and experience in multiculturalism, educational uses of technology, and professional development, shaping the curriculum, and finding and organizing resources. We hope to engage faculty members, librarians, and other academic professionals who share our commitment to this integrative purpose. Please help!

Do I need my computer? Busy week!

Last week I wondered what we might do - educationally - with the newest hand-held devices that provide Internet access and a growing array of other functions. This week I'm wondering how close I am to getting along without my laptop. Because, for at least a few days, I don't have a choice. Since my laptop died last Friday, I've been both preparing to replace it and figuring out how to continue doing my work without it. Like writing this blog message right now!
See from last week: "My phone is now my wallet"
- Educational Implications Looming

BUSY WEEK
This wasn't a good time - if there ever is one to lose my laptop capability! Educause, Hybrid Tuesday, Cultural Diversity etc. FridayTHIS TUESDAY Thanks to our growing relationship with Educause, Steve Ehrmann & I will be hosting an informal gathering this Tuesday Oct 10, 12:30 - 2pm CDT, Meeting Room D160 & Wednesday Oct 11, 12:30 - 2pm CDT, Meeting Room A133/134... and I'll be participating in a truly hybrid event DURING the Tuesday "gathering" We'll be connected synchronously to an online live session about "Dangerous Discussion: Policy Issues for Blogs, Wikis, Newsfeeds & Aggregators" from 1-2 pm CDT.

Also, pls click here to read about this Friday event, ask questions, suggest resources for Cultural Diversity, Student Engagement, & Tech session.

PAINFUL SAGA - LAPTOP DIED FRIDAY
Upon landing in Dayton on Friday afternoon I discovered both that my luggage had gone to Rochester, NY and that my laptop computer was completely dead. I used my cell phone to get some help from the Gateway service people, which cost approx $3 per minute for first session because the warranty had expired and I was still naively hopeful. During those several conversations with the polite, competent Gateway staff I was constantly worrying about running out of power because the cell phone charger was in my luggage. By early Saturday morning my luggage had been found and delivered to me, and I was pretty certain my laptop was not going to revive easily.
HINT: When traveling, never leave your cell phone charger in your checked baggage.
OBSERVATION: There is some advantage to getting older. I didn't become totally stressed out, and I was even able to talk politely with the people who were trying to help.

LIFE WITHOUT LAPTOP
What I've been forced to recognize is how many parts of the work I always do on my laptop are not really dependent on it. Fortunately, I can monitor and work on my blogs, check and send email, use our new email service, .... I cannot access documents that I kept ONLY on my laptop (even though almost all of them are routinely backed up on a device in our office - which I don't have easy access to from the road.... or do I? So I'm starting to think seriously about what I could do if I jumped to a really souped up hand-held device, portable keyboard, .... and what else? The new HDTV set Sally & just bought last weekend has jacks for connecting a computer, and we have a couple extra old monitors in our office. Can I get along knowing that I can use other, public computers, connect to other monitors, and rely on my portable device as mostly a way to connect with other things, especially with those parts of the Web that store my info?

So, of course I'm going nuts with frustration and upset about the expense arriving before we were ready, but I'm intrigued with these ideas. I suspect it is NOT yet time to give up having a laptop, but it might be close. And, as a consequence of the decades passing by, I have various muscular problems more often, I would be happier not to have to carry the extra 5-10 pounds (I'm referring to my laptop as well as my belly).

Information Literacy Best Practices Workshop Oct. 2006

Welcome!
Please leave a comment introducing yourself and, if you like, add a question or suggestion for this workshop. Best of all, suggest some additional resources that your colleagues in this workshop might find interesting and useful.

Visit the home page for this workshop at:
http://planning.tltgroup.org/ILBPOct2006/workshop.htm
Visit the Writely planning document for this workshop at:
http://www.writely.com/View?docid=ah77rrpjptk2_1568p2pr


We look forward to communicating with you during the the 2+ weeks of activities for this workshop!
Steve Gilbert

"Class Size" - Sampling vs. Covering: Dangerous Discussion/Clothing the Emperor

"Class size" has long been a Dangerous Discussions Issue, but now more than ever. Pressures to increase class size, especially in online or hybrid/blended courses, are growing - just when many faculty members already feel overloaded. Many people are still only beginning to learn how new educational uses of technology can support different ways of teaching and learning and different class sizes. Opportunities to discuss the implications of these new options openly, civilly and constructively are all too rare.

For info about TLT Group's next Online Workshop about this topic - November 2, 9 and 16, 2006, see below and:
http://www.writely.com/View?
docid=ajcxc7jhbwxg_13dwhpds

Powerful principle: Sampling vs. Covering

Most effective learning and teaching happens somewhere between
"anywhere/anytime/anything/anyone"
and
"everywhere/everything/everytime/everyone"

Every teacher makes sampling decisions about almost every aspect of teaching and learning: selecting a group of topics, a group of students' responses, some portions of students' work, some individual students, etc. to deal with as a meaningful representative of the full collection of such items or people. For example, during a traditional classroom discussion, a teacher may invite only a few students to respond to a few questions about a reading assignment that was to be completed in preparation for the class.

Traditionally this has applied primarily to choices about topics to be covered in assigned readings, discussions, laboratory work, and classroom presentations within a course. However, educational conditions are changing so that teachers and learners have many more choices about what, how, and when to learn and to teach - and about what, how, and when to interact with each other. The sampling decisions have become more important and more dangerous to leave to old habits and assumptions that may no longer apply.

For more on this topic, this excerpt is from:
http://www.tltgroup.org/ProFacDev/
DangerousDiscussions/ClassSizeSampling.htm

Class Size Online Workshop
Thursdays, November 2, 9 and 16, 2006 3:00 - 4:00 pm EDT
Leaders: Cynthia Russell, University of Tennessee Health Sciences, and John Sener, Sener Learning Services

To see more about what we'll be discussing and our two guest leader/presenters, visit:

http://www.tltgroup.org/
clothingtheemperor/class-size.htm

TLT Roundtables - Retrospective/Prospective

15 years of the TLT Roundtable at IUPUI.

What's past? What's next?
FridayLive! Interview 10-13-2006: with Garland Elmore and Bill Plater.

Writely Planning Document for 10-13-2006 FridayLive! Session

Scalability [alone] doesn't work: Centralization vs. Decentralization

Scalability [alone] doesn't work: Centralization vs. Decentralization

EXCERPTS:
"This focus on systems is, by its nature, reflective of a top-down, command-and-control approach to management. It runs counter to another strain in modern management theory, which holds that the best-run companies push authority and responsibility further down in their organizations. A bottom-up approach aims to empower high-performance work teams in the factory, or on the sales floor or in the design department, tapping their experience, unlocking their creativity and giving the company the benefit of real-time customer feedback. The role of top executives isn't to tell them what to do and how to do it. It's to set ambitious business goals, giving workers the tools and incentives to accomplish them.

"Figuring out how to reconcile these two approaches has become the central challenge of modern business management."



EXCERPTS FROM:
"Top-Down, Bottom-Up, but What About the Middle?" By Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post, Wednesday, October 4, 2006; D01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/03/AR2006100301534.html

What trumps evidence? Engaging in Civil, Constructive Discussion

Mission of "Dangerous Discussions/Clothing the Emperor":
Enable stakeholders who seem committed to opposing views to engage in civil, constructive discussion.

Role of evidence, trust, partisanship, ..... from
Clothing the Emperor Mission and Methodology:
<< www.tltgroup.org/clothingtheemperor/method.htm >>

Anticipate how different kinds of arguments can be resolved. Identify the kinds of evidence that can be made accessible and useful to participants. What kinds of evidence will be respected? What other factors matter?
What "trumps" evidence?
E.g., what priorities might modify the influence of evidence on important decisions
about this issue?

"... there was a time when partisanship took second place to trust ..."
- From "When the House Could Clean Itself," By Joseph A. Califano Jr., Washington Post, Wednesday, October 4, 2006; A25

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content
/article/2006/10/03/AR2006100301109.html

PREPARATION

I. Ask "Why bother?" "Who cares?"

II. Describe the issue fairly

III. Identify desirable, feasible outcomes:
"Visions Worth Working Toward"

IV. Establish guidelines, priorities, evidence

ACTION

V. Plan, Assess, Adjust, Do

VI. Engage deeply

VII. Use technology appropriately

"My phone is now my wallet" - Educational Implications Looming

Coming faster than we can track to classrooms near you - and everywhere else: Handheld Internet-connected digital devices combining Cell phones, ATMs, iPods, digital cameras, GPS, voice recorders, PDAs, and WHAT ELSE? Way beyond "Ubiquitous Computing," "Mobile Computing," "Going Wireless."

Together, these little gizmos constitute one of 3 current technology floods with unpredictable, unavoidable - but not uncontrollable - educational implications.

The other two floods:

- Combination of Web 2.0 and Social Networking

- TMI/TMO = Too Much Info / Too Many Options; Can't keep up!

THE FOLLOWING EXCERPTS ARE FROM: "New Conductors Speed Global Flows of Money: Cellphones Make Transfers Faster, Cheaper," By Mary Jordan, Washington Post Foreign Service, Tuesday, October 3, 2006; A01

"'My phone is now my wallet,' ...

"In recent years, growing numbers of people in the Philippines, as well as in countries as diverse as Japan and Zambia, have begun using new features on their mobile phones to pay bills, buy goods and transfer cash to relatives in the same country.

But international money transfers by this method have been slower to flourish, in part because regulators are trying to assure this new channel won't be used to launder money. Tightening the monitoring of international cash flows has become a prime goal of U.S. authorities who are trying to prevent terrorist attacks."

"With cellphone use booming across the developing world, from the open deserts of Africa to Bandoy's densely populated neighborhood in sultry Manila, handsets that cost as little as $30 are enabling struggling nations to leapfrog past the need for land-line phones and ATMs."

For full text including the above excerpts, see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2006/10/02/AR2006100201462.html

Faculty seek/avoid "optimizing" their own learning?

Do faculty seek or avoid professional development programs that APPLY AND DEMONSTRATE "principles for optimizing learning? Why?
"Many approaches to teaching adults consistently violate principles for optimizing learning" ... including professional development programs! - EXCERPT from Chapter 2 "Key Findings," in How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice, By M. Suzanne Donovan, John D. Bransford, and James W. Pellegrino, Editors; Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice, National Research Council; ISBN: 0309065364; 1999

See: http://newton.nap.edu/html/howpeople2/ch2.html

And, read entire book online free: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/9457.html#toc

Longer excerpt:

APPLYING THE DESIGN FRAMEWORK TO ADULT LEARNING

The design framework above assumes that the learners are children, but the principles apply to adult learning as well. This point is particularly important because incorporating the principles in How People Learn into educational practice will require a good deal of adult learning. Many approaches to teaching adults consistently violate principles for optimizing learning. Professional development programs for teachers, for example, frequently:

- Are not learner centered. Rather than ask teachers where they need help, they are simply expected to attend prearranged workshops.

- Are not knowledge centered. Teachers may simply be introduced to a new technique (like cooperative learning) without being given the opportunity to understand why, when, where, and how it might be valuable to them. Especially important is the need to integrate the structure of activities with the content of the curriculum that is taught.

- Are not assessment centered. In order for teachers to change their practices, they need opportunities to try things out in their classrooms and then receive feedback. Most professional development opportunities do not provide such feedback. Moreover, they tend to focus on change in teaching practice as the goal, but they neglect to develop in teachers the capacity to judge successful transfer of the technique to the classroom or its effects on student achievement.

- Are not community centered. Many professional development opportunities are conducted in isolation. Opportunities for continued contact and support as teachers incorporate new ideas into their teaching are limited, yet the rapid spread of Internet access provides a ready means of maintaining such contact if appropriately designed tools and services are available.

The principles of learning and their implications for designing learning environments apply equally to child and adult learning. They provide a lens through which current practice can be viewed with respect to K-12 teaching and with respect to preparation of teachers in the research and development agenda. The principles are relevant as well when we consider other groups, such as policy makers and the public, whose learning is also required for educational practice to change.

Above EXCERPT is from: Chapter 2 "Key Findings," in How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice, By M. Suzanne Donovan, John D. Bransford, and James W. Pellegrino, Editors; Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice, National Research Council; ISBN: 0309065364; 1999

See: http://newton.nap.edu/html/howpeople2/ch2.html

And, read entire book online free: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/9457.html#toc

Little Red Hen Principle: Teamwork and Delegation?

PRINCIPLE
If one member of a group does most of the work on a team project, then that person should have the most influence on decisions about the results. If someone delegates most of the work on a project to others, then those who do most of the work should most influence decisions about the results.

LITTLE RED HEN FAIRY TALE SUMMARY
At each stage of her effort to grow wheat and bake bread, the Little Red Hen asks her barnyard colleagues for help. They refuse every request, so she does all the work herself. Until the last step…

“She did not know whether the bread would be fit to eat, but--joy of joys!--when the lovely brown loaves came out of the oven, they were done to perfection. ... Then, probably because she had acquired the habit, the Red Hen called: ‘Who will eat the Bread?’ …

“All the animals in the barnyard were watching hungrily and smacking their lips in anticipation, and the Pig said, I will,’ the Cat said, ‘I will,’ the Rat said, ‘I will.’

“But the Little Red Hen said, … ‘No, you won't. I will.’

“And she did.”

ABOVE EXCERPT FROM “The Little Red Hen” An Old English Folk Tale, written & illustrated by Florence White Williams; The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Red Hen, by Florence White Williams; http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/18735 ; Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

SUGGESTION BOX Blogs/Web2.0 Online Prof. Dev. Workshops TLT Group

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