Twitter in the classroom

When (If) many people think about Twitter, they often think that it is primarily used to let others know what you ate for breakfast or what you're doing at any given time. But Twitter is much more than that.

Faculty at many universities use Twitter to:

• Have their students answer questions via Twitter rather than raising their hands.
• Send questions and input to Twitter during class time as a way to determine what students are having difficulty understanding
• Continue class discussions after the class has ended

You can see many other interesting ways that faculty are using Twitter here and here.

How else might faculty use Twitter in their courses?

Is Cursive Writing Becoming Obsolete?

I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion in technology and education circles about cursive writing and whether it’s becoming obsolete. It’s not being taught in some elementary schools, where there is a belief that time is better spent learning other skills. According to CNN, "forty out of 50 states in the United States have adopted the Common Core curriculum, which phases out cursive writing in the classroom, for their public schools. According to its mission statement, Common Core seeks to teach skills that are 'robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers.' In Common Core, the time formerly devoted to teaching cursive is spent on learning to type and other digital skills." What do you think?

Essays on teaching with technology

Essays on Teaching with Technology is a new collection of peer-reviewed essays by individuals who have integrated technology into university courses. The writing is practically oriented, focusing on ways in which technology has helped students learn, and the content spans many technologies and disciplines.

The first essay, by Brian Levey of Notre Dame, is about using an online student response system for in-class polling. A new title will be posted on the site each week as a free PDF download, and a print-on-demand compilation - Teaching with Technology Volume 2: The Stories Continue - is expected to be available this summer.

Class participation self-evaluation

I just tripped over this self-evaluation for students that I think offers some interesting ideas about class participation and engagement. Does it make sense to you?

• Did I thoughtfully respond at least once to a question during class this week?
  (Yes-2 points, Somewhat-1 point, No-0 points)
  
  
• Did I provide at least two meaningful and constructive responses to other students' comments either in class or online?
  (Yes-2 points, Somewhat-1 point, No-0 points)
  
  
• Did I read/pay attention to face to face or online discussions/lectures?
  (Yes-2 points, Somewhat-1 point, No-0 points)

If your score is lower than 4, the author believes that perhaps you need to re-think whether you're taking full advantage of the learning opportunities available in your courses.

Adapted from Patti Shank, The Online Learning Book.

Gadgetry

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has released its latest report, “Generations and Gadgets.” And not surprisingly, millennial students own more gadgets than other generations.

The study found that:

• 85% of adults own cellphones
• 63% of people ages 18-45 own gaming consoles
• 5% of all adults own an e-book reader
• 4% of adults 65+ own tablet computers like the iPad (the largest %age of all age groups)
• 9% of adults do not own any of the above-mentioned technologies; 43% of people 75+ are in this category
• 74% of millenials own an mp3 player; 56% of people ages 35-46 own an mp3 player
• 57% of millenials own a desktop computer; 70% own a laptop
• 69% of people ages 35-46 own a desktop computer; 61% own a laptop

With all of this technology around us, how can we make better use of it in teaching and learning?

Are college students learning enough?

A controversial new book, "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," written by Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia, suggests that colleges and universities are not doing enough to help students learn the skills needed for the 21st century.

The research study included more than 2,300 undergraduates from 24 colleges and universities. It found that:

• 45% of students showed no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.
• 36% showed no significant improvement by the end of their senior years.
• 50% of students did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester.
• 33% of students did not take any courses requiring 40 pages or more of reading per week.
• 35% of students studied five hours per week or less.
• 17% of students didn't meet with a faculty member outside of class during the first year of college.
• 9% of students never talked to a professor outside of class.

The authors based their conclusions on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), an essay-only test designed to measure higher-level thinking and expression.

Some scholars have a fundamental problem with the CLA. They say that critical-thinking skills are deeply entwined with discipline-specific knowledge, so it makes no sense to use the same test to measure the writing and reasoning abilities of students in different majors. Arum and Roksa disagree: "[T]he students who had the strong­est CLA-score gains during college in the Academically Adrift study were actually those who majored in science and mathematics, departments where they are not necessarily required to write many essays."

Their major concern is: "not just the levels of student performance but that students are reporting that they make such meager investments in studying, and that they have such meager demands placed on them in their courses in terms of reading and writing."

The Rotten Weird

Yeah, I no that the tittle of this log post has misspelled woods in it. But it past thru spelt cheek with know prob. Sew it most bee OL. Hears a store about witting.

Once upon a time we wrote papers by hand and, when we were certain that they were ready, we typed them on a typewriter. We spent a lot of time honing our ideas and writing drafts. We didn’t want to retype pages if we could avoid it. We looked carefully at our spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and made sure that we wrote full sentences and clear paragraphs. We understood the importance of citing other people’s ideas. We read the papers before we handed them in, and we took pride in what we had written.

Many students today will never know this feeling. Technology is interfering with the writing process. In general, I like the advantages provided by technology—it’s much easier to edit my writing, to make changes as my thoughts more fully develop, and to create beautifully formatted documents. But I also think that technology is interfering with the thought processes necessary for good writing. It’s too easy to substitute spell check and grammar check for proofreading. And it’s too convenient to do otherwise.

I’m seeing an increase in the number of courses in which students are being taught how to communicate through videos and other multimedia. I think that this is a good thing. But not at the expense of written communication. I think that every Rutgers graduate, regardless of country of origin, should be able to write coherently. And I’m not sure that we’re doing what is best for out students when we increase multimedia communication and reduce written communication.
What do you think?

Fill in the blank (for students and faculty members)

Students: I learn best when I ________.
Students: I learn best when my professor ______.

Faculty: My students learn best when I ______.
Faculty: My students learn best when they ______.

ratemyprofessors.com, SIRS, and skipclasscalculator.com

I'm sure that you've heard of ratemyprofessors.com, the website that lets students praise or disrespect their professors (mostly disrespect). Since I learned about it, I've often wondered if it has any impact on course selection by students or course improvement by faculty. It's certainly an interesting read . . .

I took a look at my "profile" last week -- a few days after I read the results of my SIRS. It was interesting to compare the results from the SIRS (during semester) and ratemyprofessor.com (after final grades were posted). In my case, there wasn't much of a difference. I'm not quite sure what that means.

But if my students had used skipclasscalculator.com, I wonder whether there would be any correlation with the type of comments I read? Would there be a relationship between how students rate professors and the results of skipclasscalculator.com over the course of a semester? Any thoughts?

End of the semester-something to think about

Sir Ken Robinson provides some interesting food for thought about education in a YouTube video, available by searching for zDZFcDGpL4U on YouTube.

Have a wonderful winter break and a Happy and (hopefully) Prosperous New Year.

IT stereotyping is alive and well

In my Intro to ITI course, I have one class session during which I ask students to draw pictures of IT people. The students represent potential majors in ITI, Communication, and Journalism and Media Studies. Every year that I have done this, regardless of the course or audience, I have seen the same thing--a lot of white men with glasses, pocket protectors, messy hair, scraggly beards, and some kind of technology in their hands; 1 or 2 white women who wear glasses, have no figures, and are not really attractive; and 1 brown person.

After we review the drawings, we talk about the impact of stereotypes on people considering IT careers, people seeking help with IT issues, hiring, and a bunch of similar topics. This year, I also showed the students a few YouTube videos and websites that illustrate ageism, racism, and sexism.

When I conducted this activity last year, I almost had a riot in the classroom. One white guy in the class said that he didn't think that it was important to look at these types of issues since most women and black people didn't want to go into IT anyway. The class went crazy--shouting, fist shaking, and tremendous emotion around his comment.

This year, I got no reaction at all to the class material. In fact, the students thought that I was making too big of a deal about bias and stereotyping. After seeing the pictures, websites, and YouTube videos, and interviewing family members during Thanksgiving break to get their input into this topic, the students seemed apathetic.

So here's why I'm posting this--I want to know if I AM putting too much emphasis on this topic or whether other people think that ageist, racist, and sexist views of IT people ARE damaging in some way.

Please let me know what you think.

Pasting from Word

If you’ve been having trouble pasting Word documents into Sakai, here’s a hint: There’s a small Word icon in the editing bar above text boxes. Click this and paste your text into the resulting box.

Summary of last year’s blog posts

Last year was our first full year of blogging. The feedback we’ve received is wonderful and is helping us identify topics that we think might be interesting to you, our readers. In case you missed last year’s posts, here are some of the highlights:

• Cell phones for brainstorming in the classroom
• Word clouds with Wordle
• Adobe Connect for desktop videoconferencing
• RefWorks for building bibliographies
• Minimizing physical stress caused by extensive computer use
• Doodling for meetings instead of at them

If there are topics that you'd like to see covered in the blog, please leave a comment on the blog.

Free software available for Rutgers students

On the Rutgers software portal site, students can find lots of useful and FREE software, including the Rutgers University screensaver, the Rutgers antivirus delivery system, Spybot search and destroy, Refworks, ChermBioDraw, an Adblock. Discounted pricing is available for Adobe Acrobat Professional, iLife, iWork, Quicktime Pro, SAS and Stata.

There’s lots of free and low cost software for faculty, too. Visit the software portal to learn more.

Coming to class naked (Part 2)

The idea behind last year’s “Coming to class naked” blog post was to stimulate discussion of about what to do when students come to class unprepared. And boy, was I unprepared for the intensity of the responses. We heard from both faculty and students. Many people agreed with the idea of giving quizzes to encourage students to prepare, and many did not, citing that quizzes don’t help students become interested in the course content.

I’ve included a few of my "favorite" comments here, in hopes of re-stimulating the discussion.

“Students coming into the class who have just had another class or work will not be capable of using their brain to its full potential, because they have used up their “brain power” elsewhere already. This is why class time should be reserved strictly for listening, taking notes, and light participation, and not for squeezing the brain.”

“Whether or not I would prefer to learn your material over writing a graded paper for another class, the grade on my transcript is what follows me for the rest of my life. If you want to increase participation and learning in college, eliminate the entire concept of grades . . .”

“Everybody knows that college is a place to have fun in between mind numbing classes that are exercises in indoctrination rather than processes of growth. Those who do not share this sad and cynical view upon entry to school quickly discover the error of their ways.”

Minimally invasive learning

I just listened to a talk that challenges some very basic assumptions about teaching and learning. Sugata Mitra, a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), conducted experiments which led him to suggest that "an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge," a process he calls "minimally invasive learning." His talk was part of TED, a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.

If you don't know about TED, you should take a look. TED describes itself as follows: "We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other."

Recent TED topics have focused on global issues, design, technology, culture, science, and the performing arts.

Use Sakai on your smartphone

We are currently testing an interface to Sakai intended for cell phones and other hand-held devices. To try it, go to this URL on your phone. Currently, users of iPhones and other devices that have a full-function browser should be able to use Sakai for Mobile. If you have questions about Sakai for Mobile, send email tosakai.rutgers.edu. Please include information about the make and model of your phone.

If you have a Rutgers NetID, you can create a Sakai site

Most students don’t know this—but anyone with a Rutgers NetID can create a Sakai site. Many students I know create and use Sakai sites for collecting information, chatting, and working on group projects. A Sakai site makes it really easy to create a joint bibliography, create drafts of papers, have group chats, and share resources.

You can find instructions for site creation in Sakai Help. Or you can attend one of our Student Site Creation training sessions on September 14, beginning at 9:30pm, in Scott 123 on the College Avenue campus or September 16, beginning at 9:30pm, in ARC 103 on the Busch campus.

At this session, we'll be happy to answer any questions that you have about Sakai.

What’s new in Sakai this year?

I’m very excited about the new tools that we put into Sakai during the summer. Now I can have my students use the (much-improved) Blog tool to comment on articles and on each others’ comments. I can download a list of site participants to add to a Google Doc so my students, in groups, can write collaboratively. There are so many more improvements that I’m still looking at. You, too, can see them here.Coming later this semester: Desktop videoconferencing through Sakai and Lesson Builder, a tool that allows you to structure and selectively release content.

Students: Is there a Sakai site for your course?

If you don’t see a tab for a course you think is in Sakai, check the Course Membership tool at the bottom of My Workspace after logging in. It will let you know if a site exists, and whether your professor has made it available yet to students. Contact your professor directly if the site exists and you don’t have an active tab for it.

Need help getting started in Sakai? Or want to try something new?

Site creation training for faculty and staff is available on August 31 and September 2, 3, 7, 8, 13. You can register here for courses in New Brunswick. Contact the Office of Instructional Design and Technology in Camden for Sakai assistance.

For those who want to try something new, a “How do I . . .” section is being added to the Sakai Homepage. Click on the item in the left bar to access.

Pasting from Word

If you’ve been having trouble pasting Word documents into Sakai, here’s a hint: There’s a small Word icon in the editing bar above text boxes. Click this and paste your text into the resulting box.

Coming to class naked

Students are not likely to come to class naked—they seem to know that they need to be clothed to avoid the embarrassment of being unprepared. So why don’t they feel the same way about coming to class without reading and studying the assigned course material?

I like to encourage discussion in my classes, and often face the situation in which students come to class unprepared, causing problems with my carefully created plans to discuss, debate, or otherwise use the material in class activities. In such situations, I’ve thought about lecturing (which seems to encourage unpreparedness), cancelling class (which benefits no one), or kicking out those students who are unprepared (which should encourage them to prepare, but often doesn’t seem to).

I was discussing this situation with my brother, an experienced faculty member at York University in Canada. He suggested that I give the students a graded quiz either during class or the night before, asking questions about the material from the last class and the readings that are due.

So here are my questions:

- For those who teach—have you tried something like this? What were the results?
- For students—what do you think about this strategy?

What you say and do online DOES matter

Recruiters and HR professionals are checking online sources to learn about potential candidates. 85% say that positive online reputation influences their hiring decisions. 70% have rejected candidates based on information they found online. See the full story for types of sites used to research applicants and types of online reputational information that influenced decisions.

Types of sites used to research applicants:

• Search engines, video and photo sharing sites, professional and networking sites (>50%)
• Personal websites, blogs, twitter, online forums and communities, virtual world sites, online gaming sites (>25%)

Types of online reputational information that influenced decisions to reject a candidate:

• Concerns about the candidate's lifestyle, inappropriate comments and text written by the candidate, unsuitable photos, videos, and information (>50%)
• Inappropriate comments or text written by friends or relatives, comments criticizing former employers, co-workers, or clients, membership in certain groups or networks, poor communication skills displayed online (>25%)

The full report, commissioned by Microsoft, can be found here.

Doodling for meetings instead of at them

You know the drill--send email to Mary, Cindy, Frank, Darcy, and Bob to schedule a meeting, go back and forth a few times, then settle for a time when everyone can be there. The frustration of trying to get a bunch of people together for a meeting or phone conference can make even the sanest person crazy.

Doodle can help. This online application lets you create a calendar with meeting dates that can be accessed by anyone you wish. Everyone can indicate free days and times making the work of the meeting coordinator more efficient.

Click here to participate in a test of Doodle for meeting scheduling.

Mobile Learning 2.0

The EDUCAUSE organization is hosting a 2 day webinar, "Mobile Learning: The Next Phase of Innovation in Mobility, on March 3-4, 2010, from noon-5pm. If there's enough interest, we'll play host. To be part of this interactive learning experience, please send email to oirt@rutgers.edu.

More Snow Days???

The weather people are talking about more snow. Several people (including my students) have asked me what I’m going to do about my class if the campus cancels classes again (highly unlikely, but . . .). Missing two weeks in a row --how will I ever catch up?

Here's one of the things I plan to do if classes are canceled. And it’s also good when using a hybrid approach.

I’ve broken the process into 3ish steps.

1. Add audio to a Powerpoint presentation and upload into Sakai Resources (or the equivalent in Blackboard and Rutgers Online). It’s actually really easy to do. Open your Powerpoint slides. In Powerpoint for Windows or Powerpoint for Mac, there’s a “Record narration” function under “Slide Show.” After clicking it, simply begin speaking into an attached microphone or the microphone built into your computer. (You might want to figure out how to do this in advance—check the website for your specific computer for help.)

2. If you want to create a single lecture, continue until you’re done. Then, hit the “Esc” key and click the button that asks if you want to save the narration timings. If you want to create short lecture segments, do the same thing but separate the presentation into multiple files.

Save your Powerpoint as a movie by clicking Save as Movie in the File menu. Then, upload the file or files into Sakai Resources. If you don’t know how to upload, click here for step by step instructions.

3a. If you want to have a synchronous discussion, use Sakai’s “Chat” tool. Ask your students to review each segment one at a time, and then facilitate a discussion about the material. (Hint: If you type in all caps, your students will be able to quickly differentiate what you’ve added from what other students have added.)

3b. To have an asynchronous discussion, set up multiple Chat rooms, and facilitate discussion during the week for each section of your lecture. My experience is that if you ask your students to post at least one original idea and respond to two of their colleagues’ ideas, they have some understanding of how much you expect them to participate.

If you’re teaching material that’s ripe for a quiz, use Sakai’s “Tests and Quizzes” tool to have your students demonstrate their knowledge of the course material. You could also create an Assignment using the “Assignments” tool.

So that’s it. Give it a try and let me know how it goes. And feel free to call the Sakai Help Desk (732.445.8721) during operating hours for additional assistance.

It's February, and it's cold

So I decided to curl up with my laptop in front of the fire and catch up on my RSS feeds. And then I realized that I had this amazing resource at my fingertips and that a lot of the people I know don't know what an RSS feed is or does. So I thought I'd share.

Here goes. I like to stay current with ideas in a lot of areas. And, like most people, I don't have time to weed through vast amounts of information trying to figure out what's going on. So I rely on RSS feeds. Let me give you some examples: I subscribe to the New York Times Technology feed. Every time I go to the feed I can see titles and links to NYT articles about technology. I also subscribe to a few blogs in which experts in instructional technology summarize the latest and greatest new tools and techniques. I don't have to look for this information, it gets sent to me every day.

Don't get me wrong--I don't look at my RSS feeds every day. If I did, I'd never get anything else done. But today, before I started writing this, I learned that the Internet is being nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize; that instead of merely recycling office paper, I can buy a machine that will turn it into toilet paper; and that a new Coventry University study has found that text messaging actually helped children develop "phonological awareness," important in helping children learn how to spell.

If you want to learn more about RSS feeds, how to find them, how to subscribe to them, and how to use them for yourself or for a course, please send email to OIRT and we'll get you started.

Sakai Help hours over winter recess

Over winter recess, the Sakai Help Desk will have adjusted hours. They are as follows (times are all for Monday-Friday unless otherwise noted):

• until Dec 24: 9am - 6pm full coverage (phone and email)
• Dec 26 - Jan 3: limited coverage (email only)
• Jan 4 - Jan 15: 9am - 6pm full coverage (phone and email)
• Jan 16 - Jan 18 (MLK Weekend): limited phone and email coverage throughout the day
• Jan 19 on: 9am - 8pm full coverage (phone and email)

Minimizing physical stress caused by extensive computer use

As we get closer to the end of the semester, many students and faculty will be spending more and more time sitting in front of computers. To minimize the physical stress that could be caused by extensive computer use, follow these guidelines provided by University Health Services:

• Take at least a 5-minute break every 30 minutes, or at the end of each page.
• Gently move your neck, shoulders and hands through their range of motion every 10-15 minutes.
• Strike the keys lightly and hold the mouse lightly.
• Focus on a distant object periodically to relax your eyes. Blink often.
• Keep hands and wrists warm to reduce injury and increase circulation.
• Break up computer work with other work - proof-reading a hard copy or writing.

Please comment on our blog

Blogs are conversations. Please join ours by adding a comment when something we write strikes you -- for whatever reason. To comment, click on Full Story, scroll to the bottom of the blog post, and click Comments.

And if you'd like us to start a conversation about something specific, leave a comment on this post.

RefWorks for building bibliographies

Rutgers has a site license for RefWorks, a web-based research management tool that allows you to:

• Import references from many electronic databases and catalogs
• Include citations in your paper
• Build a bibliography using a variety of citation styles including APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian
• Create a bibliography in a choice of formats

Rutgers student, faculty, and staff are eligible to use RefWorks. To get started, go to the Rutgers Refworks Account Creation page and enter your NetID and password.

NOVEMBER is: National Novel Writing Month

National Writing Month's goal is to collect 175 page (~50,000 word) novels by midnight, November 30. Click here to get started.

Invitation to present your special use of technology in academia

Every year, OIRT's Technology Showcase brings together faculty and staff from around the university to share novel uses of technology in academia.

Do you use technology to organize your research in a novel way? Do your students grasp your material better because of the way you present it using a specific technology? We'd love to hear about it and have you share your experiences with other faculty and staff at the university.

In past years, we've had faculty talk about their use of a variety of technologies including, but certainly not limited to:

- Google Earth for showing GIS data
- Second Life for language acquisition
- Sakai for coursework, student organization, and research projects
- Podcasting for complex course content that bears repeating
- Voicethread as a rich feedback mechanism for student assignment submissions

This year's Technology Showcase is on December 18th from 11am-5pm. OIRT is looking for faculty and staff to present their own special uses of technology in academia. Note that if you are selected, we'd ask you to be available at the event for at least half of the day.

Send us an e-mail at oirt@rutgers.edu if you have something to contribute to our ongoing conversation about how we can all better use technology in academia! Please include your name, department, a brief description of the technology you'd like to present, and your availability on the day of the event.

Faculty researchers: be a YouTube star!

Back in early 2008, OIRT started a web video series called The OIRT Faculty Research Spotlight. Its goal is to highlight the contributions our faculty make to the academic community through their research. If you'd like to get interviewed about your research, please read on to see how you can get involved!

Since the inception of the series, we've interviewed 50 faculty members in 36 departments across the university. We've published about 30 of these interviews so far, with more to come every few weeks.

You can see the videos on the Rutgers YouTube channel. I've embedded an example below for your convenience: Dr. Lee Clarke (Sociology) discussing disaster and the human response.



We do have a sizable log of footage left to edit, but we'd like more! If you're a faculty researcher here at the university and you'd like to showcase your work, send an e-mail to podcasting@rutgers.edu and we'll schedule a meeting with you to discuss your involvement in the project.

Your involvement in this project consists of about 20 minutes during the initial meeting (we'll come to your office for this) and about 40 minutes for the actual interview (which will also take place at your office, if you so desire).

OCTOBER is: National Cyber Security Awareness Month

Click here to learn more, see a fabulous commercial parody starring an engineering student and an ITI student, and play Safepardy, a game developed by a communications alum.

Adobe Connect for desktop videoconferencing

The Division of Continuous Education and Outreach and OIRT are pleased to offer faculty the opportunity to integrate Adobe Connect into Sakai and eCollege or to use it in a standalone mode.

Adobe Connect provides desktop videoconferencing, shared whiteboards, shared websites, and chat capabilities for use in courses and projects. It is particularly useful for fully online courses and in instances where faculty need to conduct classes from off-site locations.

To add Adobe Connect to your eCollege course shell or Sakai site, or for standalone access, visit http://connect.rutgers.edu/

RU undergrad researchers: be a YouTube star!

Last year, OIRT and The Aresty Research Center started a video series called The Undergraduate Research Spotlight. The goal of the series is to recognize the contributions of the undergraduate students who are at the heart of this university's strong research tradition.

So far, we've interviewed over 50 undergraduate students and we want to interview more! Read ahead to learn how students can participate and how faculty can get their students involved.

We've uploaded about 35 of the interviews onto the Rutgers YouTube channel. To date, this series has over 7,000 views from YouTube viewers from all around the world!

I've embedded an example of our work below, starring Amy Torres from the Anthropology department.



We'll take self-nominations or nominations from faculty members. Nominees should be current or former Rutgers University undergraduate researchers. Nominees should also be comfortable (and excited to be) talking about their research in front of a camera!

If you'd like to nominate someone, please send an e-mail to podcasting@rutgers.edu with the nominee's name, e-mail address, and a bit about the nature of the nominee's research.

Word clouds with Wordle

Wordle is a free tool that turns a block of text, or simply a list of words, into a cloud pattern. Words that are used most frequently are displayed most prominently. You can play with layout, font, and colors to change the appearance or highlight certain vocabulary. Wordle is useful for analyzing text, comparing newspaper coverage of a specific issue, and summarizing the content of student papers or presentations.

Here's a Wordle of President McCormick's Annual Address. I've limited the number of words to 50, to make it easier to read.

It's really easy to create a Wordle. You simply copy some text into a box on the Wordle website and click "Create."

Google Docs now has equation editor

On September 28, Google announced the addition to Google Docs of some useful new features for academic use. Google Docs has added a new equation editor for mathematics teachers and students. There is a new subscript and superscript tool that can be used in writing chemical compounds and mathematics equations.

Cell phones for brainstorming in the classroom

I’ve started using the free versions of Poll Everywhere and Wiffiti in class and my students really seem to like both applications. They’re both easy to use – students text message answers to a question and the answers get posted live, stimulating more participation and, I think, understanding.

I had the students work in pairs or small groups so that students who do not have unlimited text messaging plans with their cell phones could participate.

During one class, I asked the students to comment on the relationship between technology and the doctor-patient relationship. I created the Wiffiti screen in about 30 seconds (I already had an account). You can see the responses here. I then gave the students an impromptu assignment based on the brainstorming. Since one of the course’s goals is for the students to learn how to conduct scholarly research, I asked them to find a scholarly article related to the doctor-patient relationship and technology and write a summary and an APA-formatted reference.

If you want me to show you more about how I'm using Wiffiti or Poll Everywhere, please don't hesitate to contact me.

And I’ll write more about Poll Everywhere shortly—it’s time for my class.

Extended Sakai Help Hours

I am pleased to announce that we are expanding the amount of Sakai support we are able to offer, beginning this fall semester. During these hours, we will provide first and second level support via email and phone.

Sakai support contact info:

sakai@rutgers.edu
732.445.8721

Sakai support hours:

Normal Fall Schedule (Aug 31 - Dec 11, excluding Labor Day weekend)

• Mon-Thurs 8:30AM-10:00PM
• Fri 8:30AM-6:00PM
• Sun 4:00PM-8:00PM

The week before the semester (Aug 24-28) we will have partially extended hours:

• Mon-Thurs 9:00AM-8:30PM
• Fri 9:00AM-5:00PM

And we will also have extra weekend hours for the two weekends surrounding the start of the semester with 11-3 phone coverage and email coverage throughout the day:

• Sat, 8/29
• Sun, 8/30
• Sat, 9/5
• Sun, 9/6
• Mon, 9/7 (Labor Day)

The weeks of Thanksgiving and Finals will also have adjusted hours, which will be announced in November and December.

With these new hours and added phone support, we hope to better provide the assistance you need, when you need it. And, as always, we welcome your feedback and comments.

Sakai Downtimes

You may have noticed that Sakai has been unavailable about once a week for two hours early in the morning during the last month. These maintainance “downtimes,” which will continue until classes begin, are giving us a chance to upgrade Sakai in anticipation of an increase in activity during the upcoming school year.

For those interested in more details, we're in the middle of three general projects which are requiring downtimes:

Sakai Updates - At the beginning of the summer, we upgraded to Sakai 2.6. This upgrade included significant changes across many different Sakai tools. In addition, we have also added a few extra features, at the request of faculty and staff at Rutgers. Every time we want to implement some updates, we need to take Sakai down for an hour or so. We do this early in the morning so as to inconvenience the fewest number of people.

Hardware Updates - Sakai is run on many different machines. These machines require upgrades and regular maintenance. This summer, we are upgrading our databases and installing some new hardware that will improve Sakai's performance.

ePortfolio Development - We've been working with a few groups at Rutgers to develop ePortfolios for student reflection and assessment. These systems need to be tested by the organizations that will be using them, and changes implemented immediately to allow further testing.

Right now, our anticipated downtimes until Sept 1 are as follows:

Tues, Aug 11
Sat, Aug 15
Sat, Aug 22
Tues, Aug 25 (this may be moved up to Tues, Aug 18 if possible)

Once the semester begins, we anticipate monthly downtimes that will last about an hour. We will take Sakai down as few times during the semester as possible, and will work hard to minimize the impact on the faculty, students, and staff who rely upon the system.

Our end goal is to make Sakai as reliable and useful as possible. We anticipate having almost 20,000 unique users log into Sakai every day come Fall semester, and so this is important to us now more than ever.

If you have any questions or comments on any of this, please either comment here or send us an email at sakai@rutgers.edu. As always, we thank you for your understanding.

ISTE part 2

More on my desktop videoconferenced class. During the class, I showed them You Tube videos and a Microsoft Word document, just as I would have done in a face-to-face class. They responded to a question by typing on the online whiteboard, providing me with a way to summarize their ideas in one place. I didn’t use powerpoint slides, but I’m not using powerpoint in this class. If I was, I could have shown the slides and talked through them just as I would during a face-to-face class.

Most of the students agreed that the discussions were richer and that they felt more comfortable participating without feeling that they were being judged in some way. They also felt that it was ok to provide shorter answers than they would have felt comfortable providing in a face-to-face class section. In general, they felt that there was a lot of benefit to synchronous, online learning. They were less certain about asynchronous learning—although these students have a technology bent, most felt that having live interaction was important for their learning.

As the instructor, I found that I needed to “call on” the students more often than I would have during class, since I didn’t have the visual confirmation of when they looked like they wanted to say something (the students didn’t use audio or video, except for the student who presented using audio.) I often felt like I was babbling, since I couldn’t see head nodding. When the students typed things like, “ok” or “I agree” or “uh huh” while I was talking, I felt like I was getting feedback--I need to remember to suggest this when I teach again this way.

I didn’t do one thing that I wish now that I had done—I didn’t record the session. However, I’m not certain if the students would have participated in the same way had I done so.

I’d be happy to speak in more depth with anyone who would like to try doing this with their class. I think that this technology will work with any sized class—I’ll know more in the fall when I try it with my large intro course.

ISTE annual conference: an overwhelming experience

I’m currently at the International Society of Technology in Education’s (ISTE) annual conference in Washington, DC. There are about 18,000 K12 teachers, tech staff, and administrators, university faculty, and vendors attending this conference. We’re all here for a similar purpose: to find ways to improve learning through the use of contemporary technology. It’s an overwhelming experience that I’ll be writing about in many blog posts.

I’ll start with two of the three keynote speakers (the third hasn't spoken yet). Sunday night we heard from Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. He spoke about the importance of failure in education—and how we need to stop viewing failure as, by definition, a bad thing. He used Fleetwood Mac and sports as examples of successful entities that failed before they succeeded. You can listen to his talk beginning at 54:30, NECC 2009 keynote.

Today’s keynote is a panel debate: “Resolved: that bricks and mortar schools are detrimental to learning.” A pre-talk “clicker” survey indicated that the attendees were against the resolution 2 to 1. After listening to the arguments, the survey indicated that nearly 75% were against the resolution. A video of the debate, moderated by Robert Siegel from NPR, should be available shortly here.

I’m finding this debate fascinating, in part, because I conducted my undergraduate course, “Contemporary ideas in information technology,” via desktop videoconferencing last evening. There are 9 students in the class; most are working at least part time; and about half are non-traditional students. One of the students orally summarized a chapter in one of the books that we are reading for the class after which I led the remainder of the discussion. The rest of the class used the chat space as a back channel to discuss what he was talking about while listening. They also used the chat space to participate in the class. I asked them to discuss their experience at the end of class. More on this in my next blog post.

Homeless in The Sims 3

Can a video game show us what it would be like to live on the streets? Can it show how growing up in a dysfunctional family could influence a person later in life? Can it inspire others to donate to charity to help the homeless?

These questions are starting to be asked, ever since a social "experiment" began in The Sims 3, the new "real-life simulation" game by EA Games. Robin Burkinshaw, a game development student in the UK, decided to act out a homeless family in The Sims 3 and publish the family's development on a blog.



Enter Alice and Kev, a father and daughter who live in a park of a neighborhood in The Sims 3. Kev is a pretty bad father: neglectful, often angry, and accusing. Alice is a clumsy girl, very much alone but still kind-hearted. She takes solace in going to school every day, and puts off going home as long as she can.

They sleep on benches, or the occasional bed that they can find when they go over others' houses (much to the owner's displeasure). Alice eats at school, but is otherwise left to eat whatever she can find on the street...or in other people's refrigerators.

There are many interesting dynamics at play here. First is the relationship between Alice and Kev. The story starts with Alice as a child, and she later grows into a teenager, which brings a whole new dimension to her relationship with her father as well. Then there is the relationship Alice and Kev have with the rest of the neighborhood -- particularly the reactions that others have when Alice smells because she hasn't showered, or when they find her curling up for a nap on their couch. We also see how tough it is for Alice and Kev. When you have no money to buy food, what do you do? When you don't have a bed, and are miserable because you are tired and have not had a comfortable place to sleep in weeks, how does that affect the rest of your life and interactions?

Some of the interactions and events in this story are dictated by the creator, but Robin states on her site that "a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over."

The story is quite moving. Robin documents the family's exploits, complete with some rather realistic looking screen shots. At times amusing and at other times saddening, this story has gotten quite a following, as readers are anxious to see what might happen next and how Alice will grow up.

The comments on the blog posts are really interesting to read as well. There are some pretty varied reactions, but overall people seem to be saddened by the story and yet drawn to it, rooting for Alice and hoping for a happy ending. A couple of user comments in particular caught my attention:

Good god, I feel so sorry for Alice. I know she’s a fictional Sim and everything but everything that’s happening to her is truly miserable. It makes one think of the similarly difficult lives that many among us live out here in the real world.

(posted by "Sol Invictus" in Just trying to be alone)

This makes me wonder. What is Kev’s backstory? Was he an Alice at one point? On the streets with a horrible parent, struggling like Alice? Or was he placed here by his own actions and circumstances? Where is Alice’s Mother? Will Alice become a Kev? And have an Alice of her own?

(posted by "Eric" in Better than Teddy)

As part of the blog, Robin has also linked to various charities that give to support for homeless. I wonder if anyone has gotten involved in any of these because of this story. It seems to be generating awareness, at least.

Read the full blog here.

Google Labs Similar Images

I saw a tweet yesterday from Lisa Thumann at the Center for Mathematics, Science and Computer Education. She's got her finger on the pulse of the educational technology world and she mentioned a new technology from Google Labs called Similar Images.

In my short play-test, I found it to be extremely successful. Here is quick walkthrough of how it works:

1. Visit the site and search for an image of something, I chose fencing and got this screen full of images:



2. Click 'Similar Images' beneath an image for which you'd like to see others like it, I clicked the fifth image and got this:



While they're all sketches, they're not all fencing images.

I went back and clicked the first image in the list (a shot of American Jon Tiomkin versus Renal Ganeev of Russia in the Athens Olympics in 2004) and got this:



Which are all images of two Olympic or world cup fencers on a very dark background. Pretty nice work for a computer!

Honoring Our Fallen Soldiers Using a Google Earth Layer

During Memorial Day weekend, it is easy to get caught up in barbecues and summer rituals and forget the original purpose of the observance of this holiday. I happened across this blog post that I felt would be appropriate to share during this time of remembering those who lost their lives defending our country.

Sean Askay, an engineer for Google, unveiled on his blog a Google Earth layer he created to acknowledge those who died fighting in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Using information found from a number of sources, Askay mapped out the locations of the soldiers' hometowns and approximations of where they were killed, as well as other detailed information about each individual.



If you have Google Earth you can download the layer file here.

Not knowing anyone personally who has died in the recent wars abroad, it's easy to become numb to the news stories of continuous casualties. Using this tool put everything into a new perspective for me. Just the opening image of the U.S. map covered with seemingly endless symbols representing these men and women who died is shocking and humbling in itself. Taking a closer look at my neighborhood revealed an even more moving experience as I saw the faces and learned the names, ages, and hometowns of my own neighbors who gave their lives protecting mine. While I had never met these individuals, I am grateful to those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

data.gov is live!

For those of you interested in government datasets and an invitation to play and shape the future of publicly available government data, your day has arrived!

From the main page of data.gov:

The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data. Visit today with us, but come back often. With your help, Data.gov will continue to grow and change in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

This is huge! The fact that the data is machine readable is even better! I'm really excited to see the kinds of data visualizations that come out of this, as well as the new data sets that citizens request.

Looking ahead to the new Sakai... (Part 3)

Tomorrow's the big day! Here are the last of the changes we will be making:

Site Info

There have been some improvements to the "Import from Site" action in the Site Info tool. You can now choose whether the material you are importing should replace your current site material or be added to what is already there. You can also now import participants from another site, adding them to the participants already in your site (this only works with participants added individually, not with participants attached via roster).

Polls

You can now sort the poll results by their headers. This lets you display the poll options in order of most to least popular, for instance.

Discussion & Private Messages

You can now grade posts, either topic by topic or for an entire forum. With this enabled, an extra grading button will appear on your message board where you can enter numerical grades and textual comments for each student. You can also link these grades to the Gradebook tool.



Email Archive

In addition to general performance improvements for sites with many archived messages, you can now specify what appears in the "Reply to" field of messages. Previously, replies would be sent to the original sender only. Now, you can instead choose to have replies go to the email archive itself, allowing everyone in the site to see replies.

Schedule

You can now manually select which sites you would like to be included in your My Workspace Schedule tool, instead of always seeing scheduled activities for all sites to which you belong. You can also now subscribe to iCal calendars within the Schedule tool.

Dropbox

Similar to Assignments, there is a new option in Dropbox to download all content of the tool. This will give you a .zip containing a folder for each student along with any files that have been uploaded.

Assignments

This is another tool with a lot of changes...

Improved Grading Navigation

When you are grading assignments, there is now a previous, next, and return button to make it easier to grade lots of assignments in one sitting.

Improved Drafts Sharing

You can share drafts of assignments between instructors and TAs, instead of them being private only to their creator.

Custom Fields

When setting up an assignment, you can create some custom fields for various purposes:

• model answer/solution - This will be displayed to students when they view the assignment. You can specify when you want students to see this (as they work on the assignment or after it is graded, for instance).
• private note - This will be displayed on the instructor side during grading. You can decide whether you want to share it with other instructors or keep it private to yourself.
• all purpose item - This is additional information that doesn't fit into the other two categories. You can choose who you want to see it (students, instructors, etc), and when you want them to see it.
  

Improved Integration with other tools

Assignments that are posted in the Schedule and Announcements tools now have links from the post in the tools back to the assignment.

Find Missing Submissions Feature

This was actually available before, but was not linked anywhere. Sometimes students attach a file to an assignment, but don't realize they have to complete the second step of actually submitting the assignment and so the instructor does not receive a submission. In Sakai, when students attach files to assignments, they are saved even if the assignment is not submitted. There is now a "Find Missing Submissions" button when you are grading assignments, allowing you to see all attached files, whether or not the student actually submitted it.


_____

That's everything! All of these changes will be available after we complete the upgrade, which should be sometime late tomorrow (Wed) night.

Top 10 Disappointing Technologies

Sometimes, technology isn't all it's cracked up to be. More often than we'd like, some new technology that is expected to change the face of IT simply....doesn't. PC Authority gives a review of some such technologies in the recent article, Top 10 Disappointing Technologies. Their ranking:

Honorable Mentions:

• Biometrics
• Ubuntu

Top 10:

10. Virtual Reality
9. Alternative Search Engines
8. Voice Recognition
7. Apple Lisa
6. 10GB Ethernet
5. FireWire
4. Bluetooth
3. Itanium
2. Zune
1. Windows Vista

Some of this surprises me a bit. As much as I hate to admit it, VR is ranked lower than I expected. I want VR to work, I really do, but sadly, it's simply not there yet. There's a lot of hype, but for the most part, it doesn't really follow through. On the other side, I was not expecting Bluetooth on that list, especially at number 4. Sure, my Bluetooth headset for my phone doesn't work as well as I'd like, but I've never had a problem with file transfers and, overall, I find it a handy tool to have.

What are your thoughts? Does any of this surprise you? Is there anything that you think should have made the list, but didn't?

(A draft of) the next step in search engines is here!

Wolfram|Alpha opened its doors to users this weekend. It is being touted as a step beyond conventional search engines. Its creator is Stephen Wolfram (of Mathematica fame), who calls it a computational knowledge engine. Briefly, this means that this engine can take specially prepared data sets and attempt to help you compute and create knowledge. The idea is that you can ask it questions like you would ask questions of a person, and it would be able to help you understand the answers. See this post from Gina at Lifehacker for a pretty good testing of Wolfram|Alpha, and to get some insight on how to use it.

For those who just want to play with a computational knowledge engine, click here to play with Wolfram|Alpha. Click the 'Examples by topic' link on the right menu to get situated. For those who want to better understand what they're about to play with, read on:

Google is a great way to find information and data on the web, there is no doubt about that. But how good is Google at helping us discover and analyze knowledge? First, some definitions to get things moving:

Information: facts provided or learned about something or someone

Knowledge: information or skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject

...so a very rudimentary definition of knowledge is information having been applied or analyzed.

So why are we still just searching on information instead of knowledge? The short answer is that computers can't very easily parse much of the information on the web and make meaning out of it. This is because most of the information is written in a way that is easy for humans to understand.

Could you imagine a world where we slept through the night as our computers chugged hard to create knowledge out of all of our data? This is part of the idea of a semantic web!

As much as Web 2.0 gave rise to a sharper focus on the use of semantic markup on the web, it never quite reached the goal of a fully semantic web. The rise of the semantic web is one piece of Web 3.0.

In my short (several hour) play-test of the engine, I found it to be helpful when I asked questions about the things that the engine was prepared to answer. I found comprehensive answers when using its suggested queries, but I was often left unhappy with the answers it gave to questions that were shot from the hip. For example, the suggested query of 'microsoft vs. apple' yielded considerable results, but the query 'mac vs. pc' yielded no results. This is acceptable to me because I understand that this is an emerging draft, and it can only call upon pre-selected silos of properly scrubbed data.

My thought is that projects like Wolfram|Alpha (and Google Squared, which is dropping later this month) are showcases as to how the semantic web may someday behave. I look forward to the evolution of this kind of software, and to the emergence of a semantic web.

Looking ahead to the new Sakai... (Part 2)

Here is the promised Part 2. I'm going to start listing 2.6 changes based on tools from this point on.

Announcements
You can provide an RSS feed for people to subscribe to your announcements in a site. Only the announcements set to "public" will appear in this feed. All other announcements will only be viewable by members of the site.

Chat Room
Multiple chat rooms were available in 2.5, but now you can link directly to the different chat rooms in the left tool menu. This saves people from having to manually move from the default chat room to the one they want. Simply add a second Chat Room tool (Site Info --> Edit Tools) and then set the second Chat Room tool to default to another specific room.

Gradebook
Similar to how you can upload multiple Resources in one shot, you can now add multiple Gradebook items at the same time. While you're adding Gradebook items, you can click "Add Another Gradebook Item" to bring up the option. How many can you add at once? I'm not actually sure. I got bored and quit when I reached adding 30 items at once.

Tests & Quizzes

This tool has received the most attention in the 2.6 upgrade. It is very complex, which gives it a lot of room to grow. There are a lot of new features here, so I'm giving it its own category.

Assessments can now be released to specific groups within a site
If you use the "Manage Groups" option in the Site Info tool to split your Sakai site up into smaller groups of students, you can release assessments in the Tests & Quizzes tool to only students within certain groups. If you have used this in the past with the Assignments tool (for example), this new feature works the same way.

Changes to question with multiple answers
Multiple choice questions can have more than one answer. There are now two ways to do this:

1. Single selection - A or B is correct, students choose one answer and receive full points if they choose either
2. Multiple selection - A and B are correct, students choose many answers and receive partial points for each correct selection while losing points for incorrect selections

Before, only option 2 was available.

Questions can be set to negative point values on an incorrect answer
If you want to dissuade guessing on a quiz, you can make students lose points if they answer a question incorrectly.

Question pools can be shared with other site members
In the past, question pools were user-specific. Now, you can share your question pools with someone else, allowing instructors to collaborate on quiz questions within a Sakai site.

Assessments display a "last modified by" date
From the instructor's side, if an assessment is modified, the date, time, and modifier will appear next the assessment name. For students, if an assessment is modified after they have already submitted it, a warning note will appear: "This assessment has been modified since you submitted it. Please consult your instructor if you find any discrepancies."

"Quick create" feature for creating assessments
When creating a new assessment, you have the option to use "quick create". This will allow you to do a mass input of questions in a specific format, instead of entering questions individually using the normal Sakai interface. The format is pretty standard to what quizzes look like if they are formatted in, say, Word (questions listed, then answers, with an asterisk in front of the correct answer).

Once you add the questions, you can continue on to create the assessment. Sakai will take what you entered, create questions out of it, and give you the option to make any changes necessary. Then all that is left is to go through your settings (delivery dates, feedback options, etc), and you're ready to publish.

Assessments will be submitted at deadline
As of last semester, timed assessments would auto-submit when the time limit was reached. Now, regular assessments will also auto-submit when the deadline for the assessment is reached. If students begin an assessment, save for later, and don't come back to submit it (or simply forget to hit the final "Submit" button), the assessment will automatically go through at the due date.


There are also a few smaller improvements/changes to Tests & Quizzes which may not be noticed by the casual observer. Those are all the major ones, though!

_____

I still have some more updates to go over. Part 3 will come out early next week with the rest of the changes in Sakai 2.6.

Looking ahead to the new Sakai... (Part 1)

As you probably know, Sakai will be down on commencement day, May 20. This is to perform some major upgrades to Sakai as we update from Sakai 2.5 (the current version) to Sakai 2.6.

We at OIRT have been hard at work the last few weeks, doing final testing on our test servers. We are catching bugs, getting acquainted with the new system and any quirks it has, and customizing the "generic" Sakai system to look and feel like the Rutgers Sakai you have all grown accustomed to. The result, we hope, will be a smooth transition to Sakai 2.6, with few glitches, informed Sakai support staff ready to answer questions, and as little noticeable change in basic functions from the user perspective as possible.

So, what's happening? In my next few blog posts, I'll be writing about some of the changes and new features you can expect to see once Sakai 2.6 goes live. If you have any questions about any changes, feel free to leave them in the comments of the posts and I'll check back to answer.

General Changes

There are a number of changes happening behind the scenes, which users should not really notice (or in many cases even care about). I will instead focus my posts on interface changes, new features, etc. One thing I would like to mention though is that we are upgrading to the latest version of java. This should result in a faster Sakai. Some of the issues we encountered lately with Sakai being slow or unresponsive should be fixed with this upgrade.

Overall, the look of Sakai should not change too much. One difference is the button you press to get back to the home page of a tool.


Right now, this appears as a house icon:



In Sakai 2.6, we've changed this image to look more like the "refresh" button in your browser:



A big feature that has been added is the ability to view a site as a student/access user. This lets instructors see things exactly how a student in the class would see the site. No more worrying about whether or not the Announcement actually got posted, or what parts of the Gradebook and site participant list students can see! Also, for those of you who used to add yourselves to your sites as students, this should take away some of the need for that.

Another excellent feature is the ability to specify how many tabs you see across the top of your screen. If you're anything like me, over half of your screen may be wasted white space instead of convenient tabs. No longer! You can add and remove tabs just as easily as you can change the order in which they appear.

A handy feature (though rather a nuisance to test...) is a timeout warning before Sakai logs you off due to inactivity. Users will normally be logged off after 2 hours, but now Sakai will pop up a warning 5 minutes prior to logging you off, giving you the ability to remain active.

These features alone make me excited to see Sakai 2.6 go live. But that's far from all we're implementing. Improvements have been made to many tools, including Assignments, Chat, and Tests & Quizzes, to name a few.

But I'll save those for future posts.

Exam questions that address cheating: primer or ethics reminder

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University and visiting professor at MIT's Media Laboratory. I found an interesting and timely post that he wrote on his blog the other day, which is short enough to share in full:

Here are the first two question of the exam I just gave:

1) My parents and grandparents would be most proud of me if:
a. I did not cheat on this exam and got the score I deserve
b. I cheated on this exam and got a score higher than the score I deserve

2) While taking this exam, I intend to:
a. cheat (e.g., by looking at other people’s answers, or showing my answers to others)
b. not cheat


I think it was effective...

Do you think this is a primer for students to cheat, or a gentle reminder to do the ethical thing? I'm inclined to believe that for most students, it is the latter (at least I hope so).

What are your thoughts?

Online Communities the Death of Qualitative Research?

Virtual worlds and online communities can be great tools for conducting experiments. It's not uncommon for an experiment that would be costly, unethical, or simply hard to manage in "real life" to find an easy transition into the digital world. In fact, sometimes even virtual mistakes and oversights can unintentionally cause situations of interest to the research world (I'm thinking particularly of the World of Warcraft epidemic of 2005, though there are other examples).

So what does this mean for the research community? A recent post to Terra Nova, a community blog about virtual worlds, recaps a discussion that took place in Second Life about the future of qualitative research. In short, the availability of virtual worlds and online communities for experimentation (with their increased ability to provide statistical and quantitative data), paired with the misconception that quantitative research will always trump qualitative research, could create a decrease in funding and interest in qualitative research. If a question can be answered both qualitatively and quantitatively, should the quantitative answer hold more merit? If a question can only be answered qualitatively, is it even worth asking?

The full transcript of the panel discussion is available in the article.

ACTA Fool

A proposed treaty, The Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement, between various nations of the world raises several concerns in consumer privacy, the free flow of information on the Internet, and legitimate e-commerce, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

EFF argues that despite the agreement's obvious cracking-down on counterfeited physical goods, its scope has been broadened to include Internet distribution and information technologies. A few measures include the requirement of Internet Service Providers to monitor their customers' communications online and divulge- to local and federal government- the identities of alleged copyright infringers without warrant, disruption of fair use, and holding pharmaceutical manufacturers of active pharmaceutical ingredients liable if those ingredients are used to make counterfeits.

I can see the benefit in a system that punishes illegal copyright infringement and rampant counterfeiting for profit, but is that fine line between protection of intellectual property and the warrant-less searching of the government being blurred?

What are your thoughts? Do you see an agreement like this stifling creativity under fear or would it bolster it with enhanced regulatory measures?

Google's Distributed Artificial Intelligence System Now Online

According to Google, the Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE) was switched on at midnight and is now preforming initial functions. While Google cautions that there is a long and difficult road ahead, they were pleased to see CADIE deduce design principles, after a quick scan of the visual segment of the social web, from which CADIE produced its own home page

The Rutgers research community is planning for this next generation of computing resources, however it thought than until the price of such systems drop below the cost of maintaining an average graduate student that these systems will not be common place. Even so, OIRT is organizing a bake sale for Rutgers' Day on April 25th as well as possibility of using work-study students' donation of plasma, blood or little used organs to help meet this funding gap.

Shift Happens

I stumbled upon the latest version of the provocative Did You Know? video this weekend. This presentation was first created a few years ago, but went through a nice revamp in late 2008. Watch the most recent version below and leave your thoughts in the comments section.

My main question for you:
What skills does the university need to provide to our students so that they will be able to thrive in this new era?



...and here are some of the more interesting figures they withheld from the current version:

2006 College Graduates:

• United States: 1.3 million


• India: 3.1 million


• China: 3.3 million

Other figures:

• 100% of 2006 college grads in India speak English


• More than 50% of 21-year-olds in the United States have created content on the web.


• More that 70% of 4-year-olds in the United States have used a computer

Tricky puzzle or learning tool?

Fantastic Contraption is part puzzle part learning experience. You are given a limited set of materials (Tinkertoy wheels and connectors) and the simple goal of move one block across the screen. By the end of the series of puzzles, the solver has developed an intuitive feel for torque and elasticity as well as invented many of the common structures known to engineering.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/inXile_Ent/fantastic-contraption

Even if you decide not to play, you may want to scan youtube to see the wide range of machines and solutions that other players used.

The History of the Internet

I came across this video which gives a brief (7 minute) history of the Internet. Visually appealing and entertaining, it's quite simple and straight forward. It's not comprehensive of course, but the video does a good job of getting at some of the big ideas. The complete accuracy is questionable in places, but even so I think it's a good overview, especially for those who know little on the topic.

Enjoy!



History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

NJ High Performance Computing Event

NJEdge is having its cyberinfrastructure and high performance computing conference today, Friday. The goal of this conference is to promote and facilitate an understanding of advanced computing technologies to share high performance computing successes from NJ institutions. Whether your interest lies in the physical sciences, life sciences, social sciences or the arts as an educator, researcher or simply have a professional development goal, HPC is likely to play an increasingly prominent role in academic life. Join us to learn more.


Cost: Free
When: Friday 3/20/2009

Agenda:
8:30 AM To 9:00 AM Registration
9:00 AM To 9:05 AM Introduction - Kevin Rego, Sun Microsystems
9:05 AM To 9:45 AM Keynote: HPC Cloud Computing - Glenn Brunette, Sun
9:45 AM To 10:05 AM Research Computing at NJIT - Kevin Walsh
10:05 AM To 10:25 AM Sun's HPC Success - Dave Teszler
10:25 AM To 10:35 AM Break
10:35 AM To 12:10 PM Sun's HPC Solutions and Future Direction - John Fragalla
12:10 PM To 12:30 PM Lunch
12:30 PM To 12:50 PM Demanding computational problems in life sciences - UMDNJ - Angelo R. Rossi
12:50 PM To 1:10 PM HPC at Rutgers University - Eric Marshall
1:10 PM To 1:30 PM The Value of HPC within Healthcare Delivery - Vincent Grasso
1:30 PM To 1:40 PM Q & A and Closing remarks - Matt McGrath

Where:
Sun Microsystems Somerset, NJ office, Sun Conference Room
400 Atrium Drive
Somerset, NJ 08873
Google Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=400+Atrium+Drive+Somerset,+NJ&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&split=0&gl=us&ei=hAHDSbDAMcT8nQfNhemdCQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&resnum=1&ct=title

Register Online: https://www.suneventreg.com/cgi-bin/register.pl?EventID=2672

Order in the Court: Hand Over Your Wireless Device

There is an increasing amount of attention being drawn to cases where jurors have used wireless devices in the courtroom. In recent events, court proceedings have suffered due to accessing information that otherwise would not be permitted (or have been thought of as permissible) by the judge into the case.

As the linked article explains, just last week a juror assigned to a Florida drug trial admitted to the judge that he had been researching the case on the Internet from his handheld device. This went against the presiding judge's instructions and against what we know to be appropriate conduct in the courtroom, careful to avoid introducing bias toward either direction. If it had stopped there, the judge could have just thrown him off the case. Eventually, it was found that eight others had done the same thing and so the judge was forced to declare a mistrial.

In a similar scenario in Arkansas, a defense lawyer is asking the judge to rule a mistrial due to a juror's tweets in the courtroom. The twitter(er?) says that the verdict was already spoken before he relayed any information through Twitter.

Has our technological landscape changed so much that we need need to accommodate other realms that are affected by it? Or should it be 'business as usual' regardless of what kind of advances take place? On one side it seems appropriate to bar the uses of these kinds of devices, but the opposing argument would be that they introduce information that could turnout as key evidence in the case. Where is the line drawn?

Laptops in the classroom: useful or a distraction?

On March 16, the Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article entitled, "Students stop surfing after being shown how in-class laptop use lowers test scores." In the article, an associate professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder found that the students surfing the Net during class scored 11% worse, on average, than their peers.

A June 13, 2008 article, found quite the opposite. A survey of 29,000 students at 85 law schools found that Web access can enrich classroom discussion.

I've found that when I set boundaries for laptop use, and channel the use toward topics relevant for a given class session, both the students with laptops and the students without laptops benefit from a richer class discussion.

What do you think? What have your experiences been?

The art of explanation and the credit crisis

"Explainers" are important these days. That statement alone needs a solid explanation (hence the hyperlink).

Unfortunately in our information age, people are left behind when it comes to understanding complex ideas. This is why it is important (as the article to which I've linked above explains) to sometimes shift your focus from information to explanation. This is part of my job everyday: to translate "geekinese" to English, and explain the complexities that inherently come packaged with most technologies.

Our current credit crisis is very difficult to understand if you're not big into financial lingo. I've seen many different videos that attempted to explain our current credit crisis, but often came away more confused as to how home owners, lenders, bankers, brokers, and investors all fit together into this complex puzzle.

I stumbled upon a video (below) that does an outstanding job of explaining it in plain English. The creator, Jonathan Jarvis, completed this visualization as part of his thesis work in the Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.



The video is a little over ten minutes long, but does an outstanding job of keeping the viewer engaged by scaffolding their understanding throughout.

OIRT is looking for a few outstanding undgergraduate researchers

Late last semester, OIRT and the Aresty Research Center started a video series called The Undergraduate Research Spotlight. The goal of the series is to recognize the contributions of those students who are at the heart of this university's strong research tradition. We asked faculty to nominate their outstanding undergraduate researchers, and we got an amazing response: 34 faculty nominated 87 students from 50 departments!

Check out some of the videos by clicking the links below (Quicktime required to view):
Aradia Herbst-Gervasoni - Pituitary cancer and its relationship to ethanol and estrogen
Preeti Khanolkar - Video gaming through the eyes of its practitioners

We're still buried in the editing process for all of these interviews, but we're looking for more undergraduate researchers to come in and talk to us about their research.

Nominees should be current or former undergraduate researchers here at the university. Nominees should also be comfortable (and excited to be) talking about their research in front of a camera!

If you'd like to nominate someone, please send an e-mail to podcasting@rutgers.edu with the student's name, e-mail address, and a bit about the nature of their research. You can even self-nominate, if you like!

The videos are being uploaded into the Rutgers iTunes U media repository as they are being completed. Check out the rest of the videos, and other great Rutgers content, by going to http://itunes.rutgers.edu and clicking the big red button (download iTunes).

Diagram in a gliffy

Don't have five hundred extra dollars to spare for diagramming software? I don't blame you. Gliffy is an online application that provides the tools necessary to create various types of diagrams, share and collaborate with others, and publish the finished product quickly and easily. It's like Google Docs meets Microsoft Visio.

The service boasts a comprehensive shape library with the ability to import your own images, revision control feature so all users are working on the same version, and enhanced multi-user management (for premium accounts).

Whether you are working on a SWOT analysis for your management class or drawing up technical layouts for engineering, this tool goes the distance. Watch the Demo here.

Mobile technologies-or How to get students to use their cell phones for learning

Mobile learning is one of the new buzzwords circulating among teachers these days. It involves using cell phones, iPods, and portable gaming platforms, devices that most students already have, to encourage anywhere, anytime learning.

The Sesame Workshop recently published a report about using mobile technologies in learning. I think that it contains some really interesting examples of what can be done with these technologies.

I hope to try using some cell phone apps later this semester and during the fall. One tool, gFlash, will let me create flash cards that my students can use on their cell phones. I hope that it works . . .