Living at the Crossroads of IT & ID

Obligatory First Blog

2005-06-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

This Blogger site is intended for use during my sessions at the EDUCAUSE Instructional Technology Leadership Program 2005 which launches July 10-14 at penn State University.

I am the hired gun charged with the topic of "Instructional Technology Innovations", a daunting task indeed. My session will hopefully be participatory,not dull, and hopefully relevant. Rotten tomatoes may be launched at any time (they may be supplied in your participant packet).

Seriously, my goal is to provide some experiences and perspective that will help participants find that sweet spot of balance between roles of Instructional technology (the cool, neat stuff) and Instructional Design (meaning how content and materials is structured to achieve its goals). Today's practitioners ought to be living happily at those crossroads.

That has been my location since 1992 at the Maricopa Center for Learning & Instruction (MCLI) a faculty development center serving the 10 Maricopa Comunity Colleges in metropolitan Phoenix. My title is "Instructional Technologist" and I lean towards the technology developer end of the spectrum but embrace and put to use the Instructional Design principles I have learned both formally and informally.

As a discliamer, I have no official credentials in any of these fields, and having learned everything I know now on the job.

So these sessions are not about technology per se, but more so aspects of them that fit into our roles.

The Presentation

2005-06-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Presentation for my session is available at:

http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/show/itl05/

And this is not your grandma's PowerPoint... this presentation is created with the S⁵ (A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System) template created by Eric Meyers.

The Blogger Experience

2005-06-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

This is the first hands-on activity of my segment here, and will be done rather early as I loathe blabbing when learning is in the doing. This entry is being written ahead of time and saved as a draft, and I will publish it after the participants have completed the activity.

Purpose(s): One outcome is that each team at the institute will create a weblog that they will continue to use for the rest of the institute. This is to demonstrate the notion of documenting projects in a public space, multi-authored weblog sites. The second layer is to explore the experience of using the Blogger site.

Setup: I will be asking the most technical experience person in each group to stand up. Their job is to watch, coach, and refrain from grabbing the mouse and keyboard. Next, I will ask for the person least experienced in blogs and/or technology to volunteer to be the person in the driver seat. Each group will be provided a basic set of instructions for creating a blogger account and site.

The Twist: I have created three sets of instructions (available as MS Word downloads):

[blogger-setup-full.doc] Fully illustrated and lavishly explained steps, about 3 pages printed.
[blogger-setup-med.doc] A text only series of explicit instructions
[blogger-setup-lite.doc] A minimal set of instructions that basically reads, "go to Blogger.com" and click on "Create a Blog"

The hope is to have each group create their shared project blogs, and then to post one entry as an introduction for their group. The discussion will be about both the impact or not of fully iluustrated instructions, and the relevance since it is drop dead easy to create a Blogger site with minimal or no instructions. Is the time and effort spent creating full instructions critically necessary?

The Aggregation: Once created, each group will let me know the URL for their team. I will quickly add this to a web aggregator I created at:
http://realgar.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/itl05/

as well as a Bloglines public collection:
http://bloglines.com/public/jademade/

The Reflection: Each group is than to pst a second blog entry, a reflection, including their ideas on:

Which set of directions did you use? How important was the level of detail in being able to use the Blogger site?
How easy was the site to use? What elements of the experience influence this opinion?
How would you compare the interface here to the one for say your course management system, your internal web based administrative systems?
How does this compare to other tools for creating web pages (learning HTML, using Dreamweaver/FrontPage)?
How much were you able to customize the blog? What would you like to be able to do?
Did you try the “Next Blog” button? What happened? What does this mean for use of this site?
What advantages / disadvantages does this present as a tool for use by teachers?
If you have never written in a blog before, how did it feel to see your work published?
What are some educational contexts this technology might be useful?

Flickr Experience

2005-06-20T10:15:00.000-07:00

In this second activity, we will again explore a free, public website that is built around collections of digital images. Flickr is a site for building and sharing digital images. Beyond what it can do for photos (build slideshows, create hotspot interactive images, share via folksonomy tags, publish to other sites), its interface and user experience is designed to be easy to use, as well as displaying a personality, if you will.

The Purpose: This is another study in user experience with what we might call a Web 2.0 application and to examine the value in the way the site works. Groups will be be charged with collecting a set of intial images to a flickr site they create, and learn how to display a dynamic feed of images from their flickr collection to their group weblogs.

The Setup:
Instructions are available as a MS Word document [flickr-experience.doc]

1. Create an account for your team at flickr http://flickr.com/
2. Use a digital camera (one that has the cables, etc to transfer images to a computer) to collect the following photos for you team:

A group photo in an "nteresting" location or pose (remember this is going online, so be tasteful ;-) [example]
An "action" photo of one of your team members (in motion, doing something, etc, but nothing dangerous) [example]
Find an everyday object in the vicinity and take a closeup photo of it that will challenge the rest of the group to identify it. [example]
Take a photo of an object that can be a visual metaphor for a strength or characteristic of your team. [example 1] [example 2]

3. Use the flickr tools to Upload your Photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/upload/ Be sure to apply the descriptive "tag" of ITL05 to all of your images. Give each picture a meaningful (or fun) title and caption.

If all works well, there will be a collection of flickr photos from all groups at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/itl05/

If you have time, explore some of the other flickr features:

Set up flickr to create your own public URL http://www.flickr.com/profile_url.gne
Set up to load images by email or camera phone http://www.flickr.com/profile_mailconf.gne
Create a “badge” to display the latest images of your photos. Copy this into the template or an new entry on your team blog http://www.flickr.com/badge_new.gne
Set up flickr to be able to post to your blog http://www.flickr.com/blogs.gne

The Reflection:
As a team, add to your blog an entry describing and reflecting on your experience in flickr, considering these some/any of these points:

How easy was the site to use?
Does the site seem to have a “personality”? How would you describe it (did you look closely at the wording on the agreement statement when the account was created?)
How does flickr enable connection with other tools, people, content?
Is this a technology that instills excitement or trepidation?
What did you discover that was a surprise or something you might be able to use in other contexts?
What ways can flickr be used in a learning situation?

The Interaction Experience

2005-06-19T10:55:00.000-07:00

For our third activity, we will explore some web sites that are more than text or click and read types of content. This activity is set up as a "Chinese Menu" in that like some Chinese restaurants, we want each particpant or group to sample at least one site from Column A, Column B, and Column C (see below).

The Purpose: Like the previous activities, this one is geared to look at what are mostly "non educationa" web sites to explore the experience and design of these sites. As you explore (do not get too distracted), thing about what is similar or different (structure, navigation, purpose, engagement) to what we might be more familiar with in educational content.

Column A: Digital / Net Narratives
These sites provide rather non-linear modes of presenting stories and some are almost game-like in format. Please sample at least one story from this menu:

Found Floppy- a multimedia story buried inside files found on a floppy disk http://www.dreamingmethods.com/floppy/
I Love Bees - a story of intrigue told via clues in a "hacked" web site http://ilovebees.com/
The LiveJournal of Zachary Marsh - story told via weblog format http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/stories/the_livejournal_of_zachary_marsh.php
Roommate From Hell - another one told in weblog form http://roommatefromhell.com/
The Simulator - a day in the life, a branching story of text and pictures http://conceptlab.com/simulator/index.html
99 Rooms - another non-linear game like storyspace http://www.99rooms.com/
Book of Waste - a game like multimedia exploration story http://www.dreamingmethods.com/waste/
The Blue Chamber - an explorative puzzle http://www.fasco-csc.com/works/bluechamber/
Brambletown - an animated story http://www.brambletown.com/
Implementation - stories told via a sequence as public posted stickers
http://nickm.com/implementation/location.html

Column B: Web Sites Where You Create Things
We are not all artists but these sites offer easy to use tools for creating content. Please try and create one unique piece of media from an site in this menu (and see if you can save the URL to post in your blog):

Imagination Cubed - create grahpics http://www.imaginationcubed.com/
The Excellent Intranet Cost Analyzer - cacluate how much money is epxended by confusing web sites http://www.dack.com/web/cost_analyzer.html
Mr Picassohead - create a Picasso image using a Mr Potatoe Head tool http://www.mrpicassohead.com/
gnomz - create your own comic strip http://www.gnomz.com/

DFilm Movie Maker - make your own animated cartoon movie http://www.dfilm.com/index_moviemaker.html

Carol maker - create music http://www.zefrank.com/xmas/
Timeline creator http://timeline.cer.jhu.edu/ or http://www.learningtools.arts.ubc.ca/timeline.htm
Spell With Flickr - create a logo based on words using images from Flickr http://www.metaatem.net/words/
Create a Text Logo http://cooltext.com/
Convert a word to a Scrabble Score http://www.solfire.com/scrabble/
TV Misguidance - Generate a fake list of TV shows http://thesurrealist.co.uk/misguide
Create ASCII ART - from the old text only days of computing http://www.network-science.de/ascii/
Flash Ascii- create animated ASCII art http://www.flashcii.com/flashcii_main/index.htm
Thinking Machine 4 - a chess game that creates graphic patterns http://turbulence.org/spotlight/thinking/

Column C: Web Interfaces
We are not all artists but these sites offer easy to use tools for creating content. Please try and create one unique piece of media from an site in this menu (and see if you can save the URL to post in your blog):

Guess the Google - play a game against the information that lies in Google http://grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google/
Just Letters - a multiuser game http://web.okaygo.co.uk/apps/letters/flashcom/index.htm
The Phone - explore a mystery http://www.aooa.co.uk/
The ESP Game - play against another person or computer to "tag" images http://www.espgame.org/
M is for Nottingham - a multiplayer myster drama game http://califia.hispeed.com/Incubation2/
Don't Click It - a whole new type if web interface http://www.dontclick.it
10x10 the news in images http://tenbyten.org/
WebNote - a shared space for virtual post it notes http://www.aypwip.org/webnote/ (example: Will Richardson's WebNote)
iSketch - online Pictionary (requires Shockwave) http://www.isketch.net/
Turning The Pages - virtual books http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/digitisation.html
Visual Thesaurus - a 3d visualization of words and their relations http://www.visualthesaurus.com/
Google Maps http://maps.google.com (example- find Penn State University!)
Content Management Stress Level Test http://www.stressfree.stellent.com/
History Bot - ask it a historical question http://chnm.gmu.edu/tools/h-bot/
Baby Name Wizard - explore the history of names http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/

25 Ways To Beef up your ID

2005-06-18T11:03:00.000-07:00

Listen up techies, get your head out of the code! Here are 25 things you can do to move down the Instructional Design path to the desired crossroads:

Quick Resource on Instructional Design
- http://www.outreach.psu.edu/users/atb/cdev.htm
- Instructional Strategies Online http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/instr/index.html
- Virgina tech's Design Shop http://www.edtech.vt.edu/edtech/id/index.html
Teach A Class! Teaching issues
- Teaching Large classes http://www.cte.umd.edu/library/lcn/
- A Berkeley Compendium of Suggestions for Teaching with Excellence http://teaching.berkeley.edu/compendium/index.html
- Classroom Management http://www.4faculty.org/includes/108r2.jsp
- Learning student names http://www.unl.edu/gradstudies/gsapd/instructional/names.shtml
- Grade Infiation http://people.uleth.ca/~runte/inflation/index.html
- Humor in education http://www.lovedungeon.net/humor/college/index.html
- Improving Lecturing Skills: Some Insights From Speech Communication http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eteaching/lectskills.html
- Teaching College Students with Disabilities http://cte.udel.edu/disabilities.htm
- First generation Students http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/InterestGroups/C31/
- Civility in the Classroom? http://www.csupomona.edu/%7Efaculty_computing/core/civility.html
- Ten Tips for New Trainers/Teachers http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/07/ten_tips_for_ne.html
Join ITForum- an online discussion group for Instructional Designers and Instructional technologists
http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/

Instructional Objectives
- Instructional Objectives Writing Assistant http://epitome.ce.gatech.edu/iowa/
- http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~bobannon/objectives.html
- How Do You Write Instructional Objectives? http://pt3.nau.edu/resources/toolbox/how-objectives.htm

ID Theory
- Explorations in Learning & Instruction: The Theory Into Practice Database TIP is a tool intended to make learning and instructional theory more accessible to educators. The database contains brief summaries of 50 major theories of learning and instruction. These theories can also be accessed by learning domains and concepts. http://tip.psychology.org/
- "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School" http://www.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/
- Blooms taxonomy http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/bloom.html
- Constructivism http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/archive/cl1/CL/doingcl/DCL1.asp

Learning Styles
- http://www.chaminade.org/inspire/learnstl.htm
- Kolb's Learning styles http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-explrn.htm#learning%20style
- VARK is a questionnaire that provides users with a profile of their learning preferences http://www.vark-learn.com/english/index.asp
- http://www.ncsu.edu/effective_teaching/Learning_Styles.html
- http://www.learningstyles.net/
Outcomes / Assessment
- Internet Resources for Higher Education Outcomes Assessment http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/UPA/assmt/resource.htm
- Student Outcomes Assessment: Opportunities and Strategies http://www.calpress.com/outcome.html
- How To Write tests http://www.uleth.ca/edu/runte/tests/
Icebreaker Activities
- http://www.teach-nology.com/ideas/ice_breakers/
- http://www.eslcafe.com/ideas/sefer.cgi?Ice:Breakers
- http://adulted.about.com/od/icebreakers/
Team Building
- http://www.accel-team.com/
- Team-Based Learning http://atlas.services.ou.edu/idp/teamlearning/index.htm
Active Learning
- The Web: Design for Active Learning http://www.atl.ualberta.ca/documents/articles/activeLearning001.htm
- Active Learning on the Web - Bernie Dodge, Department of Educational Technology San Diego State University http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/bdodge/Active/ActiveLearning.html
- http://www.active-learning-site.com/
Learning Communities
- http://learningcommons.evergreen.edu/
- Learning Communities: Getting Started http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ilc/monograph/
Rubrics
- Creating A Rubric for a Given Task http://projects.edtech.sandi.net/staffdev/tpss99/rubrics/rubrics.html
- Create rubrics http://rubistar.4teachers.org
- http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/rubrics/
- http://www.rubrics4teachers.com/
Service Learning
- http://www.servicelearning.org/
- THE BIG DUMMY'S GUIDE TO SERVICE-LEARNING: 27 Simple Answers to Good Questions on: Faculty, Programmatic, Student, Administrative, & Non-Profit Issues http://www.fiu.edu/~time4chg/Library/bigdummy.html
- http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/sl/resources.html

Creativity
- http://www.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/creativ/
- http://www.creativityatwork.com/
- http://tip.psychology.org/create.html

Critical Thinking
- http://www.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/creativ/
- http://www.austhink.org/critical/
- http://www.criticalthinking.org/
Classroom Assessment Techniques
- http://www.siue.edu/%7Ededer/assess/catmain.html
- Teaching Goals Inventory Online http://www.uiowa.edu/~centeach/tgi/
Intelligences
- Emotional Intelligence http://www.eiconsortium.org/
- Walter McKenzie's Multiple Intelligence Pages http://www.surfaquarium.com/MI/
- Howard Gardner http://www.howardgardner.com/MI/mi.html
Diversity
- http://www.diversityweb.org/
- Teaching for Inclusion http://ctl.unc.edu/tfitoc.html
- Teaching Tolerance http://www.tolerance.org/teach/index.jsp
Student Engagment:
- Motivating Students http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eteaching/lectskills.html
- National Survey of Student Engagement http://www.indiana.edu/~nsse/
Study Skills
- http://www.uic.edu/depts/counselctr/ace/practic1.htm
- http://www.howtostudy.org/
- http://www.how-to-study.com/
- http://www.studygs.net/
Writing Across the Curriculum
- http://mendota.english.wisc.edu/~WAC/
- WAC Clearinghouse http://wac.colostate.edu/
- Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing in the Disciplines http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/wac/
English as a Second Language (ESL)
- Dave's ESL Cafe http://www.eslcafe.com/
- Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab http://www.esl-lab.com/
- http://www.eiconsortium.org/
- http://a4esl.org/

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)
- Carnegie Foundation for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/CASTL/
- Journal of SoTL http://titans.iusb.edu/josotl/resources_on_sotl.htm
- Mountain Rise http://mountainrise.wcu.edu/
- inventio http://www.doit.gmu.edu/inventio/
Integrity / Ethics
- The Center for Academic Integrity provides a forum to identify, affirm, and promote the values of academic integrity among students, faculty, teachers and administrators http://www.academicintegrity.org/
- Ethics in Education http://www.uvsc.edu/ethics/curriculum/education/
Student Retention
- Center for the Study of College Student Retention (CSCSR) http://www.cscsr.org/
- Troubled Students http://www.campusblues.com/
- Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice http://www.cscsr.org/retention_journal.htm
- Increasing Student retention http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ovae/pi/cclo/reten.html

Note: This is just a starting list- participants can add/edit on a copy of this stored on a "PeanutButter Wiki" at:
http://cogdogblog.pbwiki.com/index.php?wiki=BeefUpid

You will need the password to enter this wiki!

25 Ways To Beef up your IT

2005-06-16T11:04:00.000-07:00

For those that are a bit down the road of instructional design, here are 25 ways you can become a bit more techie and impress all the computer geeks down in the server room:

Build an online Bookmark collection
- del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/
- Furl http://furl.net/
- Jots http://jots.com/

Translate Languages with web tools (be careful as it is far from perfect!)
- http://www.freetranslation.com/
- http://world.altavista.com/
- http://translation.langenberg.com/

Find a famous Quote
- http://www.wisdomquotes.com/
- http://www.quotationspage.com/
- http://www.brainyquote.com/
- http://www.quoteland.com/
- http://www.wikiquote.org/

Learn how to be a Google Expert
- New Google Tricks http://www.usrbingeek.com/a/000488.php
- Google Guide http://www.googleguide.com/
- Useful Google Search Tips and Tricks (or "Teach a Man to Fish") http://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20041031.asp
- Google to the Max http://www.geekgirls.com/net_google.htm
- Googleism will find out what Google.com thinks of you, your friends or anything! http://www.googlism.com/

Create color schemes
- Color Selection: Learn to use colors from nature to select a design color set: http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/natural_selections_colors_found_in_nature_and_interface_design.php
- Color Scheme Selector: http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html
- EasyRGB: http://www.easyrgb.com/
- Color Fields Colr Pickr (uses flickr images)

Use Google See The USA
- Find your House on Google Maps http://maps.google.com/
- Go Google SightSeeing http://www.googlesightseeing.com/

Bibliographic Research:
- RedLightGreen helps you locate the most important books and other research materials in your area of interest, and find out whether what you need is available at your favorite library. Sign in, and you can format and send citations any way you want: MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, Turabian. http://www.redlightgreen.com/
- Connotea helps you store your reference list online, which means that it's readily accessible, it's linked directly into the literature and it's easily shared with your colleagues. Opening your references to other researchers enables you to discover new leads by connecting to the collections of those with similar interests to you. http://www.connotea.org/
- CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. http://www.citeulike.org/

Find online Calculators for almost anything
- http://www.martindalecenter.com/Calculators.html

Online Groups
- ITForum - an online discussion group of instructional technologists and instructional designers http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/

Keep up on Gadgets
- http://www.engadget.com/
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/default.stm
- http://www.extremetech.com/
- http://www.technologylog.com/
- http://www.techreview.com/

Create Your own Graphic Art
- Gnomz- create a comix http://www.gnomz.com/
- Mr. Picassohead - Now anyone can create Picasso-like artwork with this fun web drawing tool. Use this Flash interface to select differnt parts, resize them, color them, rotate tham, and than sign your art work! Results can be sent by email and/or added to the Mr. Picassohead gallery. http://www.mrpicassohead.com/
- Spell With Flickr http://www.metaatem.net/words/
- Create a Text Logo http://cooltext.com/

Learn a new Language
- Learn Brit-speak http://london.ba.com/index.asp?word=know
- Speak in text messaging language: Transl8tit.com http://www.transl8it.com/
- Infinite Teen Slang Dictionary http://thesurrealist.co.uk/slang

Find a classic computer game that is no longer published
- Home of the Underdogs http://www.the-underdogs.org/
- http://www.freeoldies.com/

Analyze your web sites
- Dr Watson http://watson.addy.com/
- WebXAXCT http://webxact.watchfire.com/
- Doctor HTML http://www2.imagiware.com/RxHTML/
- WDG HTML validator http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/

Travel the Atlas of Cyberspacehttp://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/atlas.html

Learn Unix in 10 minuteshttp://freeengineer.org/learnUNIXin10minutes.html

Find the Lies and Generated Nonsense
- Try and find a true fact in the Uncyclopedia http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
- Create an Acronym Lie http://thesurrealist.co.uk/acro
- Generate Educational Jargon http://www.sciencegeek.net/lingo.html

Descipher Acronyms
- Acronym Generator http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/paracomp/anym/
- Look up Acronyms http://www.acronymfinder.com/
- http://www.irs.aber.ac.uk/acronyms/
Turn a long URL into a short one
- http://notlong.com/
- http://www.shorturl.com/
- http://tinyurl.com/
- http://snipurl.com/

Find Free Copyright Free Images
- http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
- http://openphoto.net/
- http://commoncontent.org/

Find Free Copyright Free Audio
- http://magnatune.com/
- http://www.opsound.org/
- http://www.soundclick.com/
- http://www.pdinfo.com/

Analyze Text
- Welcome to the online text analysis tool, the detailed statistics of your text, perfect for translators (quoting), for webmasters (ranking) or for normal users, to know the subject of a text. http://textalyser.net/

Write "Hello World" in any programming language http://www2.latech.edu/~acm/HelloWorld.shtml

Create a wiki site
- http://www.tiddlywiki.com/
- http://www.seedwiki.org/
- http://pbwiki.com/
- http://webcollaborator.com/

Send friends to the weird places on the web
- PR Bop is an attempt to catalog those weird and wonderful things that are sent over the PR wires http://www.prbop.com/
- The Bureau of Missing Socks is the first organization solely devoted to solving the question of what happens to missing single socks. It explores all aspects of the phenomena including the occult, conspiracy theories, and extraterrestrial. http://www.funbureau.com/
- Cockroach Hall of Fame http://www.pestshop.com/cockroac.html
- Cheese Net http://65.61.15.248/cheesenet/
- Ghost Pictures http://www.ghost-pictures.org/
- Urinal Dot Net Photos of urinals, worldwide. http://www.urinal.net/

20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have by By Laura Turner, THE Journal