Courtesy of mashable.com, here's an amazing collection of tools related to online video. They're organized into the following categories:
Live video communications
Online video how-to
Online video editors
Online video converters
Video sharing
Video hosting
Video organization and management
Vidcasts and vlogging
Video mashups
Mobile video apps
Online video search
Online video downloading services
Miscellaneous tools
Online TV
The mashable.com site has too much advertising and is geared towards the myspace/facebook crowd, but you'd be hard pressed to find a more exhaustive list of online video tools.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
2007 First Year Conference
Today I attended UW-Madison's 9th annual conference on first-year students.
I came away impressed by the variety of people committed to making students' first year a good one and the depth to which many have thought and worked in this area.
I took three themes away from the event:
1. It is critical that students be exposed to the big picture, big questions, big problems of a given field in order to draw them in and provide useful context for studying the details of a problem/course/discipline. Many instructors are redesigning their courses (and in one case, creating a new textbook) around this concept.
2. Institutional learning outcomes, such as those described by LEAP, must permeate down to the course level and not just left to the end of a career.
3. Portfolios. Academic Technology could be a significant part of the discussion on the practical side of students showing they have met the outcomes.
e-Portfolios allow:
Here is my full collection of notes from the conference.
I came away impressed by the variety of people committed to making students' first year a good one and the depth to which many have thought and worked in this area.
I took three themes away from the event:
1. It is critical that students be exposed to the big picture, big questions, big problems of a given field in order to draw them in and provide useful context for studying the details of a problem/course/discipline. Many instructors are redesigning their courses (and in one case, creating a new textbook) around this concept.
2. Institutional learning outcomes, such as those described by LEAP, must permeate down to the course level and not just left to the end of a career.
3. Portfolios. Academic Technology could be a significant part of the discussion on the practical side of students showing they have met the outcomes.
e-Portfolios allow:
- students to make connections across multiple experiences
- students to reflect upon their experiences
- students to share their collections/reflections with others (including advisors, job interviewers, family)
- faculty, advisors, administrators to provide evidence of achieving LEAP outcomes
- graduates to provide evidence to future employers
- graduates to track their own learning over time
Here is my full collection of notes from the conference.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
"Community Hubs" at Penn State
I just heard Cole Camplese from Penn State discuss PSU's use of Community Hubs to support new major learning technology initiatives. Peers support peers, and he said that the help desk is reporting a drop in support calls.
One example is a community hub for their course management system, Angel. The Angel Community Hub has lots of faculty and staff participation, Cole mentioned.
I'm wondering what platform supports these community hubs.
One example is a community hub for their course management system, Angel. The Angel Community Hub has lots of faculty and staff participation, Cole mentioned.
I'm wondering what platform supports these community hubs.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Faculty Peer Community to meet Instructional Technology Support Crunch
Over lunch today, I was pondering faculty development as I read an article from Educause Review, "Faculty 2.0"
It starts out with the tired stuff about how faculty are under a change crunch (though it's enlightening to see all the change issues listed). It also points out that as we approach the time when faculty adoption reaches the voluminous majority on Rogers' curve, our support resources will be highly taxed--scaling up support under our current models will be a problem. Many are already calling it an instructional technology support crisis.
To some extent on my campus, we are seeing this with our course management system right now. Early adopters have long been using the system and innovating with it, and now the middle majority is propelling usage to all-time highs.
Most interestingly, the article ends with a call for campus support units to not just throw more people and money at the challenge, but to design systems that scale for enterprise-wide delivery. Our excellent campus help desk knowledge base is one of those where we are seeing significant ROI.
The article's best nugget:
Basically, peer support is the way to meet this growing need. (And faculty most prefer this method of IT learning as Carl Berger, Cheryl Diermyer and I shared last year.)
In "Social Networking Technologies: A Poke for Campus Services", Christoph, Berg and Berquam stated the need for campus IT staff to engage with their campus and work to enhance services by learning from social networking technologies.
If we mash-up the problems and solution presented in the "Faculty 2.0" article with the methodology recommended in the "Poke" article, we can envision a system for faculty peer support focused on best teaching practices.
Call it Facebook meets the campus Teaching and Learning Center.
If I were to add a new row to the matrix outlined in the "Poke" article, it might look something like:
Core Campus Activity:
- Faculty Development (Teaching w/ Technology)
Connecting on Ideas:
- Teaching profiles (discipline, area of expertise, course topics, course demographics-large/small/online/etc)
- Tags or categories that link to matches in other profiles
- Messaging
- Best practice repository
Making Connections:
- Academic Technology
- Teaching Center
- Faculty
- Portal services
- Deans' offices
I would love to see some type of a faculty/staff social network (not to mention a student learning network) wrapped around, or within, our course management system.
ELGG might be a way to make this a reality
Have you ever seen a social network for instructors? What types of instructors would even use such a system? What would motivate them?
It starts out with the tired stuff about how faculty are under a change crunch (though it's enlightening to see all the change issues listed). It also points out that as we approach the time when faculty adoption reaches the voluminous majority on Rogers' curve, our support resources will be highly taxed--scaling up support under our current models will be a problem. Many are already calling it an instructional technology support crisis.
To some extent on my campus, we are seeing this with our course management system right now. Early adopters have long been using the system and innovating with it, and now the middle majority is propelling usage to all-time highs.
Most interestingly, the article ends with a call for campus support units to not just throw more people and money at the challenge, but to design systems that scale for enterprise-wide delivery. Our excellent campus help desk knowledge base is one of those where we are seeing significant ROI.
The article's best nugget:
"Real-time professional development puts increasing pressure on faculty-development centers to be much less place-centric. The centers may evolve into clearinghouses where faculty members can share with each other on a peer-to-peer basis....Just as academic libraries are moving away from being the atomistic centers of their colleges or universities, faculty members need to become the critical component in a broader network of peer-to-peer professional development."
Basically, peer support is the way to meet this growing need. (And faculty most prefer this method of IT learning as Carl Berger, Cheryl Diermyer and I shared last year.)
In "Social Networking Technologies: A Poke for Campus Services", Christoph, Berg and Berquam stated the need for campus IT staff to engage with their campus and work to enhance services by learning from social networking technologies.
If we mash-up the problems and solution presented in the "Faculty 2.0" article with the methodology recommended in the "Poke" article, we can envision a system for faculty peer support focused on best teaching practices.
Call it Facebook meets the campus Teaching and Learning Center.
If I were to add a new row to the matrix outlined in the "Poke" article, it might look something like:
Core Campus Activity:
- Faculty Development (Teaching w/ Technology)
Connecting on Ideas:
- Teaching profiles (discipline, area of expertise, course topics, course demographics-large/small/online/etc)
- Tags or categories that link to matches in other profiles
- Messaging
- Best practice repository
Making Connections:
- Academic Technology
- Teaching Center
- Faculty
- Portal services
- Deans' offices
I would love to see some type of a faculty/staff social network (not to mention a student learning network) wrapped around, or within, our course management system.
ELGG might be a way to make this a reality
Have you ever seen a social network for instructors? What types of instructors would even use such a system? What would motivate them?
Friday, December 15, 2006
Univ of Manitoba Adopts Web 2.0 Approach to Learning
Right on.
This would be a great component to wrap around a course management system. I would love to see something like an ELGG network ("ELGG Spaces") that encompasses the CMS.
UPDATE:
The U of Manitoba's Virtual Learning Commons also contains:
This would be a great component to wrap around a course management system. I would love to see something like an ELGG network ("ELGG Spaces") that encompasses the CMS.
The University of Manitoba is trying out a new approach to education that borrows from popular social networking and information sites such as MySpace and Wikipedia.
The school's Virtual Learning Commons website lets staff and students create academic and personal profile pages they can use to share information or make new contacts.
The site, launched in September, was designed to take advantage of so-called Web 2.0 technologies commonly used to build online communities.
The approach is meant to foster learning through social collaboration and openness, Peter Tittenberger, the acting director of the university's learning technology centre said.
"The VLC allows students and staff an opportunity to connect, discuss, share and create content online as an entire university community — not at a course level," he said in a written statement. "It also allows students to define what they want to talk about, what's important to them and gives them a platform to discuss those concerns." Read Entire Article.....
UPDATE:
The U of Manitoba's Virtual Learning Commons also contains:
- an assignment manager (" The Assignment Manager will create a step-by-step schedule for you so you can successfully complete your assignments.")
- online writing center
- calendar ("The Calendar pulls together all items from the Assignment Manager and your To Do's.")
Friday, December 08, 2006
Google=Next Generation Course Management System
The course management system as we know it is at a crossroads in its short history as an enterprise-level web-based learning tool. Even before the acquisition of WebCT by Blackboard, "CMS 1.0" users were often lamenting its shortcomings.
At the same time enthusiasm about the viability of CMS 1.0 has waned (though use of it by instructors and students is still increasing), many advancements and changes have occurred with Internet tools and services. The proliferation of portals, feeds and Ajax techniques--combined with consumers' love for creating, sharing, and storing personalized media and text (often at no or low-cost)--have ushered in a new wave of user-friendly web applications dubbed Web 2.0.
When Arizona State University announced they partnered with Google to provide university email service through the "Google Apps for Education" program, it wasn't the fact that they essentially outsourced a key function of their institution's central IT unit (though that in itself should have registered on the Richter scale) that is significant. More profound is what they will be able to accomplish in the (very near?) future. ASU's Chief Technology Officer, Adrian Sannier, describes the new technical development track ASU has jumped upon:
This is precisely why I look to Google for producing what we have all been waiting for...CMS 2.0, aka The Next Generation CMS.
Take a look at the current slate of Google's tools and how they compare with current CMS 1.0 tools:
Google Groups -- Course sites
Google Calendar -- CMS calendar
Gmail -- campus mail or CMS message system
Google start page -- My Home or CMS portal page
Can you see the similarities? Can you imagine the improvements a Google-based CMS might offer?
Take the next step and look at some of Google's other tools:
Google Search Appliance (UW is already using this. Does our current CMS offer a search mechanism?)
Google Images, Google Video, Google Scholar (Global leader in search and storage capabilities. Institutional repository?)
Blogger, JotSpot, and Google Page Creator (Leading tools for anyone to publish and collaborate. Our collaboration tools? Paralyzed in committees.)
How hard would it be for Google's rather large team of developers to integrate these into a coherent system? Hmmm...
There's a lot more to come on this topic, but for now, please leave your comments.
At the same time enthusiasm about the viability of CMS 1.0 has waned (though use of it by instructors and students is still increasing), many advancements and changes have occurred with Internet tools and services. The proliferation of portals, feeds and Ajax techniques--combined with consumers' love for creating, sharing, and storing personalized media and text (often at no or low-cost)--have ushered in a new wave of user-friendly web applications dubbed Web 2.0.
When Arizona State University announced they partnered with Google to provide university email service through the "Google Apps for Education" program, it wasn't the fact that they essentially outsourced a key function of their institution's central IT unit (though that in itself should have registered on the Richter scale) that is significant. More profound is what they will be able to accomplish in the (very near?) future. ASU's Chief Technology Officer, Adrian Sannier, describes the new technical development track ASU has jumped upon:
"At ASU we have recognized that the accelerated pace of technological change is outstripping the development capacity of internal university IT organizations. The cottage industry phase of the information revolution is rapidly approaching its end.
ASU recognizes that if we are to realize the full potential of this rapidly evolving technology, our internal IT organizations must somehow leave behind the provisioning of individual services and climb the value chain to focus on the application and integration of rapidly emerging capabilities to continuously improve the university’s core activities.
Which is why we are so excited by our alliance with Google — because the Google alliance not only provides a vastly superior capability for our students on the day we unwrap the box it places ASU on Google’s exponential technology development trajectory."
This is precisely why I look to Google for producing what we have all been waiting for...CMS 2.0, aka The Next Generation CMS.
Take a look at the current slate of Google's tools and how they compare with current CMS 1.0 tools:
Google Groups -- Course sites
Google Calendar -- CMS calendar
Gmail -- campus mail or CMS message system
Google start page -- My Home or CMS portal page
Can you see the similarities? Can you imagine the improvements a Google-based CMS might offer?
Take the next step and look at some of Google's other tools:
Google Search Appliance (UW is already using this. Does our current CMS offer a search mechanism?)
Google Images, Google Video, Google Scholar (Global leader in search and storage capabilities. Institutional repository?)
Blogger, JotSpot, and Google Page Creator (Leading tools for anyone to publish and collaborate. Our collaboration tools? Paralyzed in committees.)
How hard would it be for Google's rather large team of developers to integrate these into a coherent system? Hmmm...
There's a lot more to come on this topic, but for now, please leave your comments.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Businesses are slow to adopt Web 2.0 concepts
"Web 2.0 technologies are penetrating companies at a very low rate because most business leaders have a meager understanding of the basic concepts."
From Wisconsin Technology Network newsletter....Good article with links to a few Madison examples of business-based blogs.
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