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.