Technology & Instruction for UNEX

Christine Borgman's presentation from this week's EduCause conference is available online as a combination video and presentation recorded with Mediasite. The quality is impressive -- I can get just as much out of the presentation at my desk as I would have sitting in the auditorium. The title is the Future of Cyberlearning and it is based on the recent NSF report with the same name. Professor Borgman was the chair of the committee which produced the report. They present an exciting future for technology and learning, but I have two sons who are students in a school district that bans all electronic devices, so as enthusiastic as I am about the power of technology to enhance all aspects of learning, I'm a little skeptical about the impact it might make in schools. The same story has been told too many times already and despite lots of examples of success, there are too many examples of non-use. 

I was listening to the BBC's Digital Planet podcast this morning and they had an interesting segment about how a university in Brazil was making use of the resources from the OpenLearn project at the Open University in England. The project is similar to the Open CourseWare effort at MIT and elsewhere. In both cases, university courses are made available online and many include audio and video segments as well as the syllabus, assignments and so on. The big challenge is how to make use of these excellent materials. A persistent student might make their way through a cours e as a self-study, but I think they are more suited for modification by instructors who are teaching something similar. Maybe only a particular unit would fit into someone's course, but since these materials are offered under a Creative Commons  license, they can be modified and re-used as you like. The big step (in my mind) with the OpenLearn materials is that many of them are available as Moodle courses.

I really like the books in the Jossey-Bass series on Online Teaching and Learning . There are two books coming out this fall/winter -- Using Wikis for Online Collaboration: The Power of the Read-Write Web by James A. West and Margaret L. West, and Assessing the Online Learner: Resources and Strategies for Faculty by Rena M. Palloff and Keith Pratt. Both sound good to me and you can download a sample chapter from each at the website .

I always recommend using shorter lectures for online classes, and that seems to be the trend. The Chronicle of Higher Education says that many online instructors who record their lectures have found that 20 minute segments work well. It's a different situation in the face to face classroom, but even so, I know that I am not usually spellbound by long presentations unless the speaker is well-organized and has prepared their presentation well. With podcasts, the ones I listen to most frequently are around 30 minutes long, or if they are longer, I listen to them in two sessions. 

If you are looking for a different way to add a presentation to your blog or online class, SketchCast might be worth a look. It is a browser-based tool which allows you to record your drawings or text and record audio along with what you are putting in SketchCast window. The videos are hosted on the SketchCast site, so you can easily embed them into your site. Here's the demo:

We have had a large number of calls recently from UCR Extension students related to login problems at ilearn.ucr.edu . Almost all students and instructors should be using the CAS login button and not the iLearn Community Users login (which was used in the past). Some accounts (like mine) will continue to work with the iLearn Community Users button, but this is a temporary situation. Eventually, everyone will login using the CAS Login button. So, if you have unexpected problems logging in, make sure you are using the CAS Login button. If you have already tried to login using the iLearn Community Users button, you may need to switch browsers or clear your browser cache in order for the CAS Login to work.

Issuu is similar to iPaper in functionality and ease of use, at least for creating documents. Here's what it looks like. You only get to see the small version here. To read the full size document you have to go to the Issuu site. I'm not sure I like that:

iPaper looks like a nice way to add documents to your site. Here is an example using the document I wrote up on Blogging with Blackboard. The quality is similar to PDF and the reader doesn't have to download anything. The viewing options are pretty nice, with a page view and fullscreen mode. The slowest part is converting your documents since that is happening on their server. I'd like a local application to do the conversion to speed things up: Read this doc on Scribd: Using Blogs

The PBS resources made available through iTunesU this week look pretty good. You can find them through iTunes > iTunesU > PBS and then browse through the various areas. KQED has some nice materials, including a digital storytelling toolkit.

I have not been keeping up with much posting on this blog, but here is a nice resource I found this week. Alltop is an aggregator-type site which shows the last 5 items on a variety of websites and blogs in various subject areas. Education is one area, although there isn't a subcategory for educational or instructional technology. You can find the Alltop Education page here . You may find other pages which interest you and I'm sure they will expand as the site grows. I find it easier to use than checking my RSS feeds in Google Reader, but of course you aren't allowed to customize the site, so it is limited to what they like at Alltop.

The UCR Extension Blackboard tutorials have a new home on the UCR Extension server. You can find them here: Student tutorial: http://www.extension.ucr.edu/online/tutorials/student_blackboard/ Instructor tutorial: http://www.extension.ucr.edu/online/tutorials/instructor_blackboard/

I've posted version 1 of the Blackboard tutorials for instructors. It covers most of the key points of Blackboard using short screencasts. It also includes links to PDF handouts that I've created for UCR Extension instructors as well as to the Blackboard 2 page handouts for instructors. There are a few missing pieces, but I hope to have those filled in by the end of this week. You can find the tutorials here: breilly.net/tutorials/instructor_blackboard The student version is here: breilly.net/tutorials/Student_Blackboard

Teaching online often involves creating good questions for online discussions. Questionating , by Corinne Miller, might be helpful. She explains the "art and science of Questionating" as a way to create a Question Bank. It might be useful for spurring some online discussion. If not, the Change This site is a great source of other ideas you might find helpful.

Our Digital Storytelling course only had 3 students signed up, so it was cancelled. Too bad. I was really looking forward to the course and had high hopes for it. Maybe we can try to offer it again, but this was the second try, so it may not happen. Alternatives (Our course was a bargain at $125!): Visual Storytelling with Audio, taught by Bob Sacha, at the Santa Fe Workshops , July 6-12. It sounds like a great course. A little more expensive than our Extension course, but it's also an entire week, so you'll probably have a great experience. $1045 The Center for Digital Storytelling has a 3 day weekend workshop in Pasadena from March 28-30th. Learn from the people who started the Digital Storytelling phenomenon. $495

Our Digital Storytelling class has 5 students enrolled. We need a couple more in order for the class to be held. Here is a digital story one of my sons created for a school project to give prospective students an idea of the kind of project you could work on.

If we have enough students, our Digital Storytelling class will begin next Tuesday.  Here's the course description from the UNEX catalog: In this class, students combine digital photographs with music and narration to produce a three- to five-minute digital story using Photo Story 3, a free application from Microsoft. Participants write a short script, arrange the photos, add narration and music, and save the final product onto a DVD. Students should bring 20 to 30 images to class along with an idea or story that ties them together. The class has 4 meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays starting February 26th. If you'd like to see some examples of digital stories, check out this page on the Center for Digital Storytelling's website .

I am running the Blackboard tutorial for UNEX students from a server that's not operated by UCR, something I hope will change soon. The Blackboard tutorial is now located here . I will relocate the handouts listed on this blog later this week.