vidya's blog

I'm blogging my India trip on my LJ account.

Brian Lamb has some exciting news about "...creating and sharing a framework for social software applications for BC's higher education institutions." It's a wonderful opportunity for schools in BC and hopefully, the rest of us will get to taste and share as well. That said, what can/will fuel adoption among faculty and educators of these technologies?

The administrative toolsets are important, yes: Email distribution in addition to RSS feeds, automatic account creation, and so on. However, the key to my mind is the mindset. It does not matter how feature-rich we make these tools and how grandiose a marketing blitz we implement; if educators do not beleive that there is true pedagogical value to adopting these technologies they will not come aboard. It's a cultural change that needs to come about and I believe we all have a part to play. Those of us building these tools and setting up the framework for faculty adoption, and those of us, who over a cup of tea or coffee, or in the course of an informal chat in a corridor, "sell" the power of blogging to a resistant, sceptical educator.

 

An interesting article, The essence of blogging, that appeared in the Sunday edition of The Hindu, a national daily in India. Author of the piece Kiran Jonnalagadda believes with blogs and wikis we are realising the potential of the web. His insights are an interesting look at how the Web is impacting the nature of the writing that we encounter these days, but also hold value for those of us shaping those same skills in our students.

This is an excerpt from the Blackboard Users Conference blog, the conference recently concluded at Baltimore:

Basically, the RSS Building Block defines RSS as a content type in the Blackboard Learning System. The instructor can now grab an RSS or Atom feed, insert it into the course content, decide whether students will view headlines or the full item, and set caching on the feed. When the student views the course, it will automatically go out and grab the RSS feed (depending on the caching parameters) and display the updated content inside the course. Great way for instructors to include weblog content, news feeds, etc. in their course.

Wonderful news, as long as one is on the higher-end license that permits this type of functionality. For those institutions who cannot afford the mega-bucks required for a higher-end license version, this is just a pipe dream as we explore other ways to integrate these emerging technologies into our pedagogy.

What frustrates me is the fact that clearly Blackboard recognizes the fact that educational institutions, K-12 as well as higher-ed are rapidly leveraging these technologies and incorporating them into their curriculums. Then why are they reserved for the elite few who can afford an Academic or Learning Management license with Blackboard. Does Blackboard think Basic users are any less enthusiastic in their desire to incorporate such technologies? Or do they think those of us whose responsibility it is to increase faculty adoption across campus, to motivate, exhort, and encourage them that this is a good thing, have an easier job of it because of the limited functionality available to us?

Granted Blackboard needs to consider it's bottomline, but surely a viable tradeoff can be found between making technology tools that directly impact pedagogy be it RSS, blogs, or searching MERLOT. Speaking from an instructional technology support perspective, features that directly impact learning and pedagogy should be available in all licenses of Blackboard. Putting a price on it just isn't fair!

Ok, that might be a stretch, but this post is a follow-up of sorts to my previous post. I had a moment of epiphany today that brought to light in no uncertain terms just what I was missing with regard to the power of wikis. A colleague asked for information on digital audio formats and without thinking twice, I went to wikipedia, looked for the appropriate information, found it, emailed the link to her, and promptly went to back to my previous task. And then it hit me: I hadn't Googled first; something that's as natural to me as breathing and I hadn't done it. I went to wikipedia first!

Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, I had unconsciously made a distinction between a random search for any information that may be available on a topic via Google, and a cogent, cohesive, silo of information available in one place. And that perhaps, is the true power of wikis. Ease of use and community-building notwithstanding, the power of a wiki lies in it's ability to facilitate information growth and it's availability at a single, vantage point.

The title could just as easily be a comment on the fact that the weekend's almost here, but it's also about me blogging on a regular basis. This is an experiment to see if the last hour of a working week provides motivation to reflect on the week gone by - make that flown by. I am still grappling with the structure for my one day workshop on social software. To be more precise, with activities that will relay the benefits of using a wiki in the classroom environment. There seems to be a wealth of information available on the direct learning outcomes resulting from blogging, and Will Richardson's wonderful document on RSS is both an inspiration and aspiration. Relaying the pedagogical benefits of incorporating these two tools into their teaching techniques should be easy. Note the use of "should" ;-).

Wikis, now there I seem to run into a stumbling block, partly due to the fact that my personal experience with it has been in the context of project management, or idea collection and collation. So yes, a wikipedia-like resource for the course is an outcome. What other ways can faculty use this tools and what kind of learning outcomes can they establish with it? Points to ponder over the weekend. Of course, I'm also going to be avidly checking for any comments from my fellow bloggers out there.

The iTalk finally arrived and I'm excited about finally getting to play with podcasting. There's some wonderful resources out there for those of us green behind the ears, and I'm also hoping to tap into the "experts" at NLII to help me with this. Excited about demonstrating it at my workshop, as well as it applications for my faculty. More points to ponder!

To wrap it up, it appears the WYSIWYG editor does not incorporate a spellchecker - or am I missing something?

My first taste of NLII was at this past Spring 2005 Focus Session. Not having attended any of their sessions before, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Certainly not the presession homework or the intensity of the breakout sessions. It was a refreshing change from the "conference format" and I for one, certainly relished the opportunity to engage and interact with peers and colleagues from the length and breadth of the country and beyond. As to the presession homework, while I'm not sure what the original intent of it was, I appreciated the fact that it enabled me to acquaint myself with some of the participants. It was certainly a lot easier to track down a group green member than to scan the room for a friendly smile or face. I look forward to building these new relationships further, to future NLII sessions, and work products of this session.

The only discord I felt was that the technology seemed to exist apart from the conference proceedings. As Nick Noakes comments in his blog, active interaction between onsite and offsite participants would give these sessions greater depth and value, as also the opportunity to interact with a wider group, perhaps even a global one! So perhaps there could be some offtime next time during which we could blog (I was completely unable to blog and listen to a presentation simultaneously), chat with offsite participants, or even listen to the podcasts during the session itself!

In a similar vein, I for one, would love the opportunity to test drive some of the new technologies that we got a sneak peek at. How about computers pre-loaded with Croquet so we could get a feel for it, and then a breakout session to discuss its pedagogical opportunities? Or one to discuss the learning outcomes that could be derived from podcasting?

All in all, I'm looking forward to the next set of focus session, though I might just be one of those offsite participants listening to the podcasts ;-)

I am gearing up to co-teach a first year seminar class in Fall 2005, on social software. While I am familiar and comfortable with blogging, my primary interest has been in finding a blog engine that runs on the Windows/ASP platform. I found .Text a few weeks ago, and then along comes the Educause blog. So I'm hoping this will turn into both an opportunity to work with this platform, at least as a user, and also, blog on a more regular basis.

I do have one major rant: Having to add each Educause topic, individually, wasted precious minutes on it. I wish they could have a check box next to each topic and the Add button at the bottom, so one can just add all the desired topics in one fell sweep.