"Time is the only thing we have" Chickering on Balance, Intentionality [approx. 1 minute]

How Chickering tries to balance personal, family, professional commitments and self-nourishment by being very intentional about his own time. Response to one of opening questions on 1/30/2007.

MP3 File

Chickering is currently Special Assistant to the President, Goddard College. He recently co-authored Encouraging Authenticity and Spirituality in Higher Education, and was co-author of the widely respected and widely used Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education... and many other important publications.

Chickering on Wonderful Wife, Marriage - 1/30/2007 [3 Mins. MP3]

A wonderful personal, family, and professional relationship! Chickering's closing response to "New Year's Resolution" questions on 1/30/2007. Value of working hard together on a marriage of 50+ years!

MP3 File

Chickering is currently Special Assistant to the President, Goddard College. He recently co-authored Encouraging Authenticity and Spirituality in Higher Education, and was co-author of the widely respected and used Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education... and many other important publications.

Cherish Failure... Chickering Response [30 Secs. MP3]

Cherish failure, be wary of success, suggests Art Chickering in response to "New Year's Resolution" questions on 1/30/2007.

MP3:
http://archive.tltgroup.org/2007/NewYearsResolutions
/ChickeringCherishFailure20070130.mp3

Chickering is currently Special Assistant to the President, Goddard College. He recently co-authored Encouraging Authenticity and Spirituality in Higher Education, and was co-author of the widely respected and used Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education... and many other important publications.

Personal/Professional Perspective: Chickering Resists Dichotomy [Approx 1 minute MP3]

Art Chickering resists the dichotomy of personal & professional life. He also responds to "New Year's Resolution" questions on 1/30/2007 by citing Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time, last stanza:

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

Full text of poem (as of 1/30/2007) available at:
http://www.etymonline.com/poems/tramps.htm

Chickering is currently Special Assistant to the President, Goddard College. He recently co-authored Encouraging Authenticity and Spirituality in Higher Education, and was co-author of the widely respected and used Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education... and many other important publications.

A Cyst the Size of a Gerbil - Back Surgery Excuse & Web 2.0

Here is my "genuinely lame" excuse for falling behind on email and other activities during the past 6 months: almost-emergency back surgery.

I'm just beginning to catch up. If you have something that I should have done or responded to, please send a copy to Sally Gilbert (sallygilbert@tltgroup.org) before she leaves for some well-deserved vacation time in Peru in 2 weeks!

Sally and I are proud of our innovative use of Web 2.0 as described in the PPS below.

Thanks for your patience and support.
Sorry that I couldn't send individual messages to everyone I know!
Nice to be back.

Steve
1/31/2007

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-
A cyst the size of a small gerbil was removed from my spine on January 9.

For the past six months I had been like a frog who hasn't noticed that his pond is really a saucepan heating up very slowly.[1] The pains, twinges and tingles in my left leg continued to increase gradually and erratically in spite of improvements in the ergonomics of my work life, excellent physical therapy, and medical advice. Even though my pains kept me from participating fully in family activities on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I was missing more work time, I didn't imagine anything really serious was going on.

I had joined the large club of post-middle-age people who joke about their chronic back problems.

But on the morning of January 3 I had an MRI, and by lunch time the test results cancelled my membership. The next few days centered on medical tests, hospital visits, and appointments with doctors - culminating with two hours of almost-emergency surgery on the 9th.

I was able to go home on the 10th, and by the next day the pre-surgery pain and side effects had vanished almost completely. January 15 was the day of my real reprieve: positive post-op office exam and a voice mail message reporting that all pathology tests were negative. I'm still coping with the after-effects and side-effects of significant surgery - especially all the anesthetics and drugs, but even the incision pain is dramatically less than what I had been living with during November and December.[2]

For the past twenty years, I've had a typical variety of occasional borderline danger signals from routine medical exams. Each time the recommended follow-up tests revealed that I did NOT have the potential illness. I became complacent about minor symptoms and inconclusive test results. I wasn't prepared for real medical problems - for unavoidable evidence of my own mortality. Almost 2 weeks since the surgery, I'm just beginning to grasp - emotionally as well as intellectually - this new lesson: that all the best preventive efforts cannot avoid the cumulative effects of aging.

So, now I'm hoping to join - slowly - some of those other large clubs of post-middle-age people who share complaints of pains and maladies. And when I do, I hope my membership can be long and undistinguished. Of course, I've become a fanatic about posture, ergonomics, exercise, and other ways of avoiding back problems. And I'm more committed than ever to daily walking outdoors.[3]

Our family doctor keeps reminding me that these infirmities beat the alternative. All things considered, as he says, it's better to be on the right side of the grass.

I'm more grateful than ever for Sally. She is a wonderful health problem partner - as well as wife, mother, and professional. And I'm grateful for the support of many other friends, colleagues, and family members.

SteveG

PS: Scary News (no longer applicable):
If untreated, the continued growth/pressure of the facet cyst that was fully removed "might" have caused permanent nerve damage with serious consequences - within another few weeks.
"synovial facet cyst" http://www.neurosurgeon.com/conditions/synovial.html

PPS: Web 2.0 Innovation
Second day home from hospital, Sally inspected the incision on my back and tried to describe it to me. She asked to use my Treo 650 cell phone to take a photo so I could see.
I put the photo of the incision on a Web page along with a photo of me doing a Sudoku in the hospital bed. I emailed the photo and the URL to a helpful Surgical Coordinator.
Viewer discretion advised: http://www.tltgroup.org/gilbert/Back1-2007/NoonJan11.htm
I asked if the incision looked OK and a few other questions. She forwarded the photo and questions to the surgeon and quickly sent me an email reply. No hassles. During the first post-op office visit we learned from the surgeon that we were the first patients to use email and the Web to send a photo for these purposes. Seems like really useful idea.

FOOTNOTES:
1. ".. if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will never jump out."
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog 1/21/2007
2. On January 5 I had several hours of the worst pain of my life. The next day my first encounter with cortisone and vicodin eliminated the pain entirely and brought the best night's sleep in 6 months. I discovered vicodin was not good for me after the surgery when the pain was already so much less intense.
3. Not just on a treadmill. More later about the principle of "Anything that's different is not the same." A principle that applies to educational technology as well as to walking.

2007 Resolutions From/For Compassionate Pioneers - INVITATION

Please help develop and share some New Year's resolutions -
From and for Compassionate Pioneers.

A "compassionate pioneer" is someone who has demonstrated commitments to BOTH exploring new educational and technological options AND helping colleagues - at least some of the time.

On Friday, February 2nd, at 2pm Eastern (11am Pacific) the TLT Group’s weekly, interactive FridayLive! series will be devoted to discussing these three questions for 2007:
1. In what ways do you want your personal and professional life
more separated or more integrated?

2. What are you going to do for yourself?
To make your life better personally or professionally?

• NOTE: If you are inclined to consider this question too self-centered, remember why airplane the flight attendants always say:
• "In the event of an emergency an oxygen mask will drop down in front of you. If you are traveling with a child or someone who needs assistance place the oxygen mask on yourself first and then on your child." Most of us need to take care of ourselves first in order to help others effectively.

3. How are you going to help make the world better in some small way?

Please contribute via one or more of these options - at your convenience:

• Live participation in the Feb. 2 Webcast, either by phone or online, click here to register: http://www.tltgroup.org/Registration
  /Registration/Fridaylive.htm
  (free, but advanced registration is required).
  
  
• Written comments in advance by email to gilbert@tltgroup.org
• Written comments in advance within the registration form,
• Written comments in advance by adding a comment to this blog posting below.

For more information about this online session and related resources, see:
http://www.tltgroup.org/tlt-swg/NewYears/Resolutions2007.htm

FridayLive! is a free, interactive, Internet-accessible series moderated by Steven W. Gilbert, President, The TLT Group, from 2:00 to 3:00 pm EST each week. We cover a wide range of topics related to teaching, learning, and technology.

For more information about the FridayLive! series:
http://www.tltgroup.org/tlt-swg/Friday.html

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.


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