EDUCAUSE | Wiki

E07 Podcast: Social Software in Higher Education: Isolated Accidents or the Start of Something Big?

gbayne — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:58:31 -0500

This forty-minute podcast of the panel discussion, "Social Software in Higher Education: Isolated Accidents or the Start of Something Big?", was recorded at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference. There is also a PowerPoint available for this session.

Blogs, wikis, and networking tools appear to be gaining widespread acceptance. How are higher education professionals using social software tools in their practice? Is there any convergence with what students using them bring to the institution? This podcast features a panel exploring these questions and trying to determine if there are international differentiators.

The discussion participants include:

Bas Cordewener, Manager International Collaboration, SURFfoundation
Eja Kliphuis, Educational Consultant, INHOLLAND University of Professional Education
Julie K. Little, Interim Director, ELI, EDUCAUSE
Cyprien P. Lomas, Director, Learning Centre, The University of British Columbia

Exciting to be back!

smirnova — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:12:38 -0500

I am excited to be back to EducauseConnect. I regisered a couple of years ago and wasn't active as I should have been! I have a blog in Blogger - Teaching to the Future and I also have a Pedagogy 21 pbwiki, and I am constantly teaching and exploring new technologies and tools. I found interesting postings on Educause and enjoy learning more new things! I am back!

ELI Annual Video: What Wikipedia Can Teach Us About the New Media Literacies

gbayne — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:21:24 -0600

Video fand slides for this presentation can be found here. The speech is by Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, and is entitled, "What Wikipedia Can Teach Us About the New Media Literacies".

Emblematic of the new participatory cultures and the emerging practices of collective intelligence, Wikipedia has drawn fire from academic institutions and traditional gatekeepers. Using segments from a forthcoming documentary about the Wikipedia movement produced by MIT's Project NML, this session will discuss how educators might use Wikipedia to introduce students to the ways that new forms of cultural production and knowledge sharing are reshaping the research process.

E07 Podcast: Wiki and Project Management

kellywalker — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 12:56:25 -0600

This 41-minute podcast recorded during the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference features Geoffrey Corb, Senior Director, Student Information Systems, The Johns Hopkins University and Stephen Hellen, Project Manager, The Johns Hopkins University speaking on Wiki and Project Management.

The session abstract:

This session will introduce wiki concepts and explore their use in project management and in supporting IT systems in higher education. JHU's implementation of a new student information system extensively uses an enterprise wiki, which will be highlighted, along with use cases, examples, and lessons learned.

A few Selected Educause Web2.0 Articles and Resources

jrboyd — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:36:44 -0500

Community Resources

http://connect.educause.edu/term_view/Web%2B2.0

Articles:

Imagining Tomorrow's Future Today
Art St. George and the 2007 EDUCAUSE Evolving Technologies Committee
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 42, no. 6 (November/December 2007): 107–127
http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm07/erm0765.asp

Wikis and Podcasts and Blogs! Oh, My! What Is a Faculty Member Supposed to Do?
Patricia McGee and Veronica Diaz
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 42, no. 5 (September/October 2007): 28–41
http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm07/erm0751.asp

Dr. Mashup; or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix
Brian Lamb
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 42, no. 4 (July/August 2007): 12–25
http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm07/erm0740.asp

Confessions of a Podcast Junkie
Carie Windham
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 42, no. 3 (May/June 2007): 50–65
http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm07/erm0732.asp

Social Networking Technologies: A "Poke" for Campus Services
Joanne Berg, Lori Berquam, and Kathy Christoph
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 42, no. 2 (March/April 2007): 32–44
http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm07/erm0721.asp

A Wider World: Youth, Privacy, and Social Networking Technologies
Tracy Mitrano
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 6 (November/December 2006): 16–29
http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm06/erm0660.asp

Pioneering New Territory and Technologies
Pablo G. Molina and the 2006 EDUCAUSE
Evolving Technologies Committee
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 5 (September/October 2006): 112–35
http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm06/erm0659.asp

The Myth about Putting Information Online - No One Cares What You Say Online.
Diana G. Oblinger and Brian L. Hawkins
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 5 (September/October 2006): 14–15.
http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm06/erm06513.asp

Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning?
Bryan Alexander
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 2 (March/April 2006): 32–44.
http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm06/erm0621.asp

Father Google and Mother IM: Confessions of a Net Gen Learner
Carie Windham
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 40, no. 5 (September-October 2005): 42–59.
http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm05/erm0552.asp

Educational Blogging
Stephen Downes
EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 5 (September/October 2004): 14–26.
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0450.asp?bhcp=1

Helpful Resources for Web2.0 tools in Education I: General Resources

jrboyd — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 17:53:29 -0500

The following are but a few of the many resources available to educators looking for ideas about how to use Web2.0 tools for their own productivity and for innovative educational applications:

Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County’s 23 things:
23 Learning 2.0 Things
Includes a truckload of examples, tutorials, exercises
http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com/

Academic Commons Wiki:

Examples of Web 2 0 in use (in education)

Another superb laundry list of examples

http://wiki.academiccommons.org/wiki/Examples_of_Web_2_0_in_use

TLT Group Exploration Guide:

Educational Uses of Blogs, Wikis, RSS Feeds, etc.

http://www.tltgroup.org/resources/blogs.htm

Quentin D’Souza’s Teaching Hacks Wiki:

http://www.teachinghacks.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Helpful Resources for Web2.0 tools in Education II: Tutorials and Examples

jrboyd — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:02:03 -0500

More resources for noodling around. Some of the links lead to information and resources, some lead to specific applications. All are worth a peak.
In alphabetical order:

Blogs (the list is endless…)

EduBlogs – Hosting for educators
http://edublogs.org/
Education (English 111 blog and podcast):
http://www.bgsuideal.com/amsguir/
Online Research Blog
http://researchblog.ecornell.com/higher_ed/
Educational Bloggers Network
http://www.ebn.weblogger.com/
Science Blog
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/index.php

Del.icio.us

“Using del.icio.us In Education”

http://www.scribd.com/doc/212002/Using-delicious-In-Education

Google Apps

TLT Group: “Educational Uses of Google Docs and Spreadsheets” http://www.tltgroup.org/FridayLive/20070309GoogleDocsEdUsesResources.htm

Google Earth

Back to School - Educational Uses with Google Earth
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/08/back_to_school.html

FaceBook

From OEDb (Online Education Database):
Top Ten Facebook Apps for Librarians

http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2007/top-ten-facebook-apps-for-librarians-part-one/

Flickr

“What Can We Do With Flickr?”

http://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/265279980/

“Telling a story in 5 frames – Visual storytelling”

http://flickr.com/groups/visualstory/

Mashups

Google Maps: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2006/12/50-things-to-do-with-google-maps.html
            Google Earth: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gisuser/sets/1075031/
            http://cabspotting.org/

http://gecensus.stanford.edu/gcensus/index.html

http://mashupawards.com/

RSS Feeds
            RSS and Education
            http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-and-education.htm
            Easily find educational feeds:

http://www.educational-feeds.com/

Wikis

Using wiki in education – Tools and Examples

http://www.scienceofspectroscopy.info/edit/index.php?title=Using_wiki_in_education

Flat Classroom Project

http://flatclassroomproject.wikispaces.com

Personality Pedagogy Course

http://personalitypedagogy.arcadia.edu/pmwiki/pmwiki.php

EDUCAUSE Western Regional: On the Cutting Edge with Social Software in the Learning Process

llarsen — Wed, 16 May 2007 21:42:53 -0500

Summary:

On the Cutting Edge with Social Software in the Learning Process

Panelist(s)

Peter Beyersdorf, Assistant Professor, San Jose State University

BJ Fogg, Director, Persuasive Technology Lab, Stanford University

Nancy Mackin, Adjunct Professor, The University of British Columbia

Sandra Rotenberg, Access Services Librarian, Solano Community College

Session moderator: John C. Ittelson, Professor, Director, California State University, Monterey Bay.

2007 EDUCAUSE Western Regional Conference
Wednesday, May 09, 2007

San Francisco, CA

Abstract:

Social software has created exciting new dynamic possibilities for teaching and learning. What are the uses of wikis, blogs, podcasts, Facebook, and the like, and how is academia incorporating them into teaching? This faculty panel will address social software and pedagogy while sharing their experiences from the point of choosing a software, implementing it, and assessing its value to the learning process.

Session Notes:

John Ittelson began by saying that the future is coming faster now and it is harder to predict the future. He recommended that attendees review the NMC/ELI Horizon Report which can be downloaded from http://www.nmc.org/horizon.

Peter Beyersdorf

Peter is a physics professor who podcasts all of his classes and is responsible for helping other faculty use podcasts to enhance their courses. He is always trying to find ways to get content to students 24X7. Students do attend the classes and the podcasts are used to enrich the class. The podcasts are engaging and the students appreciate their ability to interact with the topics. The enhanced audio files have drawbacks such as still images and the fact that pointing to points on the slide can’t be done so he supplements with small videos on experiments and lab work. Peter has been using podcasts for the past year. A student survey indicates that they rate the podcast above the value of the textbook and just slightly below the face-to-face.

BJ Fogg

BJ is the director of the Persuasive technology lab at Stanford and is a psychologist

He is most interested in how computers can change what we can do and how people interact emotionally with the computers. BJ has invented “YackPack” that has a widget-like intercom on the webpage via a wiki page. The walkie-talkie channel has a push-to-talk feature. His students use the “YackPack” to communicate 24X7 rather than email. BJ believes in the power of voice in connecting people.

Nancy Mackin

Nancy teaches in the First Nations Studies program where she has a tremendous amount of information that is oral or visual based. She finds students are more and more interested in anything “not print” and so found that teaching with a 3D open source metaverse has been ideal is engaging her students. With her course content and interviews with tribal elders, the students create buildings in the metaverse. The students are more engaged and their work captures more content throughout the course which is shared via the metaverse development. Students had a wide range of technical capabilities but the “ancient spaces” software allows different expertise levels and supports the interdisciplinary aspects of the course. In addition, there is a strong inter-generational aspect with the tribal elders sharing with newer generations. (http://ancient.arts.ubc.ca/features2.html)

Sandra Rotenberg

Sandra is a community college librarian who has been teaching online for six years in an asynchronous environment. She and her students missed face-to-face interactive and so she added synchronous spaces such as chat space and conference meeting rooms. She described her experience with CyberOne, where Second life was used as a teaching tool. The whole class was online in Second Life. (It was aimed at law school students, extension students, and anyone else – Sandra was one of the “anyone elses”) Describing herself as a generation past ‘gaming,’ she was surprised by her experience in Second Life. It was intimate and seemed to work as a tool to replace the usual face-to-face interaction. Sandra began to do her “office hours” in Second Life and found that as many students came to office hours in Second Life as come in person – about 25%. Her surveys show that students are excited about the Second Life component and the ongoing interactivity via it.

Sandra did indicate that there are some negatives. There are students who don’t participate because they “don’t have time,” the learning curve is steep for many, and they need a good computer and good broadband and graphics card that they may not have. The college has a 60 seat commons where they can use an appropriate computer but many of the online students do not come to the campus.

John Ittelson

John talked about the wide–range of technology and the use of it in the classroom.

He felt that, as educators, what are we trying to do is to take the class outside the room and work towards life-long learning. Much may have started as entertainment but has been found quite useful for education.

Q&A

Question:

The way students can have an experience in a different time means that we’ve made geography less important. Is there a way that these tools can give students an experience that they can’t get otherwise?

Responses:

Nancy Mackin responded that the intergenerational aspect is supported in her situation is a way better than the traditional classroom.

Peter Beyersdorf responded that they can recreate experiences they have in the real world

Question

Accessibility, in the use of YackPack and other technologies, how do you integrate a deaf student? Also, 40% of the adult population in the US is illiterate/semi-illiterate so one has to make anything/everything simple.

Responses:

Sorenson Media (translation tool) is helpful

A student with disabilities loved Second Life because he could do everything anyone else could do.

Peter mentioned that all of his videos had to have text and that it became very useful for others as well.

It was agreed that addressing access issues helps everyone.

Question:

Re: podcasting and augmented classes – why do the students still come to class?

Responses:

Classes are more engaging with these tools. How do you motivate students to come to class and, if they aren’t coming to class, how do you motivate them to use other resources?

Re: Second Life allows Sandra to have office hours 35 hours a week when she’s at her desk and there is a real sense of community among the students who meet with her there.

Question:

What kind of overhead do you have doing the podcasts?

Response:

Peter wrote scripts to ‘alarm’ 5 min before class so the software automatically launches. It does take time. The first semester he recorded but didn’t tell them he was doing so. If they missed a class he’d send them a link. That was the start – then he built up

Question

Most faculty think technology gets in the way. How do you communicate the power of social software technologies to faculty directly? How to help them experiment and use them?

Response:

Faculty should remember that teaching is about curiosity (life long learning), collaboration (let the students help build the systems), and critical thinking. Students put their work on the web and others critique it.

The overhead can be heavy as was the case in building the metaverse space. Both faculty and students need to acclimate to the technology. Faculty might meet the students in Second Life and walk into walls together with them in the beginning. Faculty should start small and build from there. It is important to expose both faculty and students to the new technologies and prepare them for the new and constantly changing world.

Question:

How do you way process what you are doing with the social networking technologies? Which part is the important part of the learning?

Response:

Critical thinking skills are the most important – over content.

Re-assess what you want students to get out of the class – and teach them how to learn. Show them the process for how to do it.

Content is really important – but at the same time the process is important and faculty should look to their IT partners for significant support.

Teaching life long learning and critical learning and IT fluency.

Question:

Regarding social spaces: learning is a very social thing. Where is the social aspect of technology going? web2? Free tools?

Response:

There is a lot more coming in the next 6 months.

There is excitement about seeing the newest technologies and cooperatively/collaboratively finding the best solutions for learning.

International collaboration and looking at bigger issues across the world and across time is more and more important.

Students will be able to choose materials to match their learning styles and needs and that will make them more successful which is our collective goal.

Unanticipated things will make a difference. We don’t know what will happen in the space so we are obligated to be working with our students in these spaces.

Resources are available at http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=WRC07012

The session was recorded for podcast as well.

Wiki Use in Libraries

rmcdonal — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 15:15:05 -0600

Want to know more about Wiki use in libraries? Check out week 3 of the Five Weeks to a Social Library course. Most of the content here is open access either as podcasts or screencasts.

http://www.sociallibraries.com/course/week3

ISO Project communication tools

smiltenb — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 21:01:29 -0600

For the past two weeks I've been trying to identify and assess web based applications that would meet several needs within the broad umbrella of project communication/management:

provide a quick overview of what's happening on a given project
have a component that could be used for documentation
be multi-layered (a public component available without login; a private component for authenticated users only)
provide distribution components (RSS...)
standards based
has a simple and easy-to-use interface
hosted externally or internally
provide multiple views of content (via tagging, grouping...)

I've been surprised at how hard it has been to find an application that meets many of these needs.

I've been playing with SharePoint for a few months but feel that the learning curve to make it an effective and organic tool is significant. Basecamp is a bit too simple. I entertained the idea (suggested by our brilliant Director of Administrative Systems, Ted Simpson) of using Educause Connect (but it lacks the overview and cohesive functions we're looking for).
A straight-up wiki application might be the closest thing I've found; yet something is missing (perhaps the calendar/overview features). I have the feeling that the solution is much simpler and more obvious than is apparent to me.

This is a request for your ideas and suggestions about good solutions for web based project tools.