At Tony Bates’ site, e-learning and distance education resources, he poses questions educational institutions should ask when attempting to determine how well they are integrating technology into their institution. At the end of 2010, a book co-authored by Tony Bates and Albert Sangra of the Open University of Catalonia will discuss each of these questions in more detail. Here are the questions:
Are there ‘champions’ with power and influence in the institution who recognize the importance of technology for conducting the business of the institution?
Does the institution have an advanced, comprehensive technology infrastructure that enables all staff, students and faculty to access computers, networks, software and services as required?
Has the institution digitalized its administrative services, and can staff, students and faculty access administrative information and services easily over the web?
Has the institution identified a clear, strategic rationale for the use of technology within the institution?
Has the institution identified additional financial resources or reallocated resources to support the integration of technology within the institution?
What proportion of staff, students and faculty are using technology and for what activities?
How innovative is the use of technology, particularly for teaching?
What level of support and training is given to instructors to ensure good quality teaching when using technology?
Are students learning better and getting better services as a result of technology integration?
There are a number of products that act as personal response systems (also known as student response systems or “clickers”) that work with the iPod Touch or iPhone. Here’s what I have discovered so far:
Turning Technologies ResponseWare is versatile but there is a subscription fee that each student must pay. Also, the system pings Turning Technologies server once each second so you have to make sure your network will be able to handle that amount of traffic.
The eClicker by Big Nerd Ranch is limited to 32 clients (students). The Host application (for the instructor) costs $24.99 but the client app is free. The system is WiFi-based so an Internet connection is not necessary since the teacher can set up a wireless network (easily) if he or she has a Mac. (I don’t know if it is easy to set up a wireless network with a Windows computer.)
The app that seems the best (from what I can see) is iResponse Classroom Responder System. The app for the clients costs 99 cents and the host for the instructor’s computer is free. There is a Mac and PC version and there is a basic and Pro version for both platforms. The iResponse system is also WiFi based. Instructions for how to set up a wireless network with a Mac as well as instructions for using the software are available.
The video below describes the concept of student-generated content. The basic idea is that one method of engaging the student is to have them generate content that illustrates the principles being learned in the class. Will students be enthusiastic about this? I don’t know but I suspect some students would not want to generate content but would rather just sit in class and be passive.
In the January 28, 2010 issue of Academic Impressions, the article “Considering Mobile Learning for Your Institution” discusses what institutions should consider when determining if they want to get involved in mobile learning. Judy Brown, founder and former director of the University of Wisconsin system’s Academic ADL Co-Lab, provides some insights when considering a mobile learning initiative.
The first question to ask is “will the learners be consumers of content, producers of content, or both?”
Mobile devices can be used not only for consuming information but can also be used for creating information as well. The keyboard of devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch allow limited keyboarding but the new iPad with its larger built-in keyboard and optional keyboard attachment should allow students to more easily create text.
The key thing to consider when considering uses of mobile devices is portability. While a laptop can do many of the things a mobile device can do, a portable device makes it much easier to accomplish these things. Here are a few examples of things that could be done with a mobile device:
Create a personal wiki with VoodooPad and export to your iPod Touch or iPhone (Mac only)
Getting Started Brown suggests that when you getting started considering implementing a mobile learning initiative, you should invite both “believers” and “non-believers” in order to provide an ongoing discussion about both opportunities as well as challenges. She also suggests that institutions begin with a pilot project or two. And institutions should provide as much support as possible to the faculty involved in the pilot project.
Decisions to Make
Define Your Objectives – Brown suggests you ask why you want a mobile learning initiative and how you will know if you have reached your goals?
Define Your Audience – Who are the learners who will be involved in the mobile learning initiative. How will they be supported? Who is responsible for oversight and day-to-day operations of the mobile learning initiative?
Faculty Development – Who is responsible for training and supporting faculty in the appropriate use of mobile devices in the educational process? Further Thoughts One of things that I’m afraid most college courses don’t do is develop a community of learners. Rather, students come to class, listen to a lecture and engage in some class discussion, and do homework. Although the class time provides an opportunity for discussion, this may be limited depending on the size of the class. And each class is typically only 50 minutes long. Will all students get their questions answered? Maybe or maybe not, depending on the complexity of the subject matter. If the class involves expressing opinions, will everyone have a chance to express their opinion? Maybe not if the class size is large and/or the topic has many facets to it. But if learning can be extended beyond the classroom, learning can become richer. Yes, learning occurs when a student reads his or her textbook and completes homework assignments but this activities are largely done individually. And a textbook doesn’t provide any interactivity (or at least not very much). And a textbook only provides a linear explanation of a topic while a mobile device could allow a learner to access a variety of sources that could be compiled and organized by each individual learner. Tools such as Evernote (which works with both browsers and mobile devices) would allow learners to easily collect and modify information from Web sources, and even add voice annotations.
Hitch is a device that allows you to quickly transfer files from one device (such as an iPod) to another device (such as another iPod) without using a computer. This device would be helpful in a classroom where each student had an iPod or iPad and the teacher wanted to transfer files from his or her device to the the students’ iPods or iPads.
This article points out that although mobile learning is a topic of interest among educators, very few have implemented it on their campus. Judy Brown, the founder and former director of the University of Wisconsin system’s Academic ADL Co-Lab offers some suggestions and factors to consider if a college is considering mobile learning.
She suggests asking if you want students to be consumers of content, creators of content, or both.
Of course, three devices that can enhance the mobile learning experience are the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad. To get ideas of how to implement the iPod Touch (and the iPad) into education, here are a few sites:
As teachers, we always tell our students to spread out their studying and don’t cram for a test. Daniel Willington, the author of the book, Why Don’t Students Like School, has an article “Allocating Student Study Time” which provides evidence for this advice. The article also contains a section, “What Could This Look Like in the Classroom?”
This camcorder could be handy in an educational setting because of its small size but I wonder how it compares to something like the Flip Mino in terms of ease of use, importing of video, and video-editing software. The Flip MinoHD – 120 minute model cost @229.99 while the Sanyo camcorder will cost $299.
At the Web site Alltop (http://www.alltop.com) you can create a Web page that contains RSS feeds of your choosing. You can see the Alltop page I created related to various anatomy and physiology topics by going to http://my.alltop.com/jjohnsonwbc.
If you are like some software but would like something that has different features and/or is cheaper, check out Alternative To at http://alternativeto.net/
SharedCopy is a free Web-based service that allows you place annotations and various other markups (highlight, lines, box, arrow) to a Web page and then share it with others. Go to http://sharedcopy.com/
Suppose you want to provide your students with an article from the Web but you don’t want all the extra things on the Web page such as advertisements and other blocks of text. The Web site Readability (http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/) allows you to generate printable text and vary three things: the text style, text size, and margin width.
The Pulse SmartPen created by Livescribe may be *the* thing for students to consider, especially if they take a lot of notes or if they can’t write very fast (or at least can’t keep up with the teacher). I recently purchased one and will give students turns in using it during a course. With this pen, files which contain the corresponding audio can be uploaded and viewed by others at the Community site.
Some interesting scenarios in the form of videos, including the ability of the SmartPen to translate words to other languages can be seen on this page called Sneekpeek.
I learned today about a Web service called Drop Box (found at www.getdropbox.com), which has a number of features that will be beneficial to both individuals and groups. The Tour explains the features or you can watch the video.
For individuals who have more than one computer and they need to keep file synchronized, Drop Box allows you to easily keep the files in synch.
If you work with others, you can create a Shared folder, which will allow others to access the files. They can be shared with either Drop Box members or non-members. See this Web page for more details.
Free accounts come with 2MB of storage.
One of the things to think about is that if you put a file in the Drop Box that will be on your computer, you will have moved it from its original location so it would be best to put the original in the Drop Box and then put an alias in the folder where it was originally.
Evernote allows you to clip information from the Web and edit the Web pages. You can create your own notes, drag and drop content into Evernote. Also, there is software that you can download that allows enter information and sync it with the Web-based content.
By default, the information is kept private on the Web but you can make it public.
A number of video tutorials are available here. The Getting Started Guide can be found here.
With the free account you are allowed up to 40MB of uploaded files each month. With a Premium account, which costs $5/month or $45/year. the amount of uploaded files allowed is 500MB. There are other advantages of upgrading to the Premium account. Click on this link for more details – Premium account.
You can also embed widgets into your Web pages such as the one below.
An interesting comment from the Tony Bates in the article below is this:
“…technology has not yet transformed education:
- Student expectations about the educational experiences (e.g., connected, participatory, engaging) are not being realized
- Rather than introducing 21st century skills, technology is often being used to automate outdated education paradigms
In other words, technology is in the main just being added-on to the traditional classroom experience. Thus, while there are ‘pockets’ of innovation, technology is not being used for systematic change.”
Later, Bates states “Where are the ‘pockets’ of innovation? The area with the most potential is the use of Web 2.0 tools, such as blogs, wikis, virtual worlds, and mobile technologies such as phones, cameras, and iPods, that allow learners to collect, create, share and evaluate their own learning materials.”
I have assumed that DVDs would last a long time but this article by David Pogue points out the problem. It sounds like gold DVDs are the way to go (for the time being).
In another post, I mentioned the Optoma Pico Projector that David Pogue reviewed. In a later article, David discussed other pico projectors. This article is worth the read if you are interested in purchasing one of these projectors, especially if the source of the video is important to you. The Optoma Pico projector can’t hookup to a laptop but the 3M Micro Professional Projector can. To learn more about the 3M Micro Professional Projector, check out this article.
Want a video projector for short distances? The Pico Projector, reviewed by David Pogue, might be worth getting for small classes. Cables come with it that allow you to hook up a variety of devices, including an iPod (both video iPods and the iPod Touch). But you’ll need a speaker because the speaker in the projector is pretty small.
The folks at Inspiration, the popular software that allows you to create concept maps, have created My Webspiration, which is presently in beta. I’m very impressed. Not only can you create your own concept maps but you can also collaborate with others. Additionally, you can both import and export Inspiration 8 documents.
