This video from TED 2006 features Hans Rosling talking about changes in birth rates in the developing and developed world. He uses data visualization tools to really bring the data to life and in the process shows how these tools can make statistical data engaging for the rest of us.
Tidbits…
Vijay Kumar has recently co-edited a book called Opening Up Education which discusses the need for shifting from a teacher centered methodology to a active learning, student centered one. This is not a new argument but Kumar incorporates the impact of Web 2.0 and how these technologies make a compelling argument for changing education now to utilize these ubiquitous technologies. Trent Bateson from MIT who wrote a chapter in this book that talks about evidence based learning argues for this shift now.
A central component of the technology that can drive this shift are ePortfolios. There are several options in this space. A few worth mentioning are Open Source Portfolio, Digication, Ning, and Elgg. Tuft’s University has licensed VUE which is a visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information. Tuft’s University has also devloped SPARK which is an amalgamation of tools such as wikis, blogs, podcast publisher, forums, maps, and a media annotator.
Mark Frydenberg teaches IT concepts at Bentley College. He uses mashups in his Web 2.0 class focusing on three areas: technology, strategy, and community. His students concentrate on six actions: appreciate, participate, investigate, communicate, colaborate, create as they delve into Web 2.0 technologies. Mark uses Microsft Popfly to teach his students IT programming concepts.
An interview with Stephan Mader, wiki evangelist, provides a good summary for using wikis in higher education. Stephan’s blog is a rich resource for exploring the use of wikis in depth.
I am attending an afternoon session/meeting of the New England EdTech Group at Boston College. Today’s topic, moderated by Peter Hess from MIT, is collaboration software or more specifically software that enables screen sharing, slide annotation, white boarding, VOIP, polling, chat, file sharing, session recoding, and shared controls amongst participants. Meeting notes are kept at: http://collablab.wordpress.com/
The session is off to somewhat of a rocky start. The Yugma application that was to lead of the demonstration is preventing us from launching a session. Although disappointing this illustrates an important aspect to using this type of technology. It is not always reliable and stable so test, test, test before you use it for real.
We’re now looking at ooVoo and its slick interface for video conferencing. This application can support up to three participants at no cost. ooVoo represents each participant in small window and offers additonal features for managing contacts. Jay Collier from MIT is joining us from across the river at MIT and is describing a joint project he’s working on to develop a more robust online presence, the IKE Project, Internet Knowledge Exploration.
We’re now looking at Vidyo, conferencing with Jeff Dill in New Jersey. The video throughput is very nice although we currently don’t have audio. Disappointing but I think par for the course.
All of these services look intriguing but I am not sure they are ready for prime time. Some of the schools represented in the room are sharing their experiences with some of the different applications that are out there. My very informal synopsis is that these tools have yet to secure a major role although they have small toeholds in several schools across several disciplines.
Phil Knutell from Bentley is discussing his school’s collaborative spaces recently added to the Bentley Library as a part of a $24 million renovation. They built 24 collaborative study rooms outfitted with large LCDs, PCs, and DVD players. Room availability is visible to students as they enter the library and allows students to self-manage room scheduling through PeopleCube.
Phil brought Centra to Bentley from University of Michigan in 1999. They started using Centra with faculty teaching to their laptop but then branched to a hybrid classroom model. Bentley currently has 13 hybrid classrooms which are used for synchronous teaching and communication.
Phil uses Google docs to teach his course in some very creative ways. He uses it for presentations, polling, syllabus and as a central tool for student projects. On the classroom management side he manages class logistics, TA assignments and duties, and version control when creating syllabi and class assignments.
Live blogging from CALI 2008: Len Davidson from the DuFour Law Library at Catholic University of America has created several widgets for students to access library resources. DuFour has not made it’s widgets publicly available yet so it’s impossible to provide usage statistics but stats from UPenn’s library say .4% of UPenn students use their widgets (from widget box) to access their library resources. The take away here is widgets are easy to build but it’s difficult to get target audience to use them. Business Week has published a couple of articles on widgets and their effectiveness. There are many resources out there that talk about widgets or widget tools. Magtoo is a cool widget that stitches pictures together into a one panorama picture. Len has a nice review on his blog.
Live blogging from CALI 2008: Thomas Ryan and Timothy Divito from Rutgers School of Law – Camden are discussing laptop encryption. They recommend all deans, department chairs, faculty, clinical staff, admin staff, and clerical staff have encrypted drives. They posit that most laptop thefts are not for the purposes of identity theft but rather for the system itself and that the majority of thefts are inside jobs. Regardless of the impetus, rules and regulations require disclosure of the theft to all who may be affected. This is obviously an undesirable situation.
They reviewed many different products but are highlighting two today: Free CompuSec and Truecrypt. CompuSec’s nicest feature is GlobalAdmin which is a central management system. CompuSec supports Windows (2000, XP, Vista) and Linux and has additional sw packages such as single sign on, encryption of CDs, Floppies and other removable storge, single file encryption, SafeLan (for network storage) and VOIP encryption. Time for encryption: 40GB drive, 3-4 hours, 80GB, 6-7 hours.
Truecrypt now offers full disk encryption. It is an open source product. It differs from CompuSec in that its original purpose was to encrypt individual files. Accordingly, it’s install is very quick-only two files. TrueCrypt forces you to burn a rescue disk with the key while CompuSec stores this key in a file which you can store anywhere-USB key, network share, CD, etc. TrueCrypt is recommended for single laptop encryption for advanced users while CompuSec is recommended for multiple systems because you can use the same key for each system.
It seems easier to deal with full time employees of an institution if the hardware is owned by the school. What is less clear is how schools deal with students who often use their personal machines when working on client files particularly in clinics. What policies and procedures should be in place to protect client data on student machines? Should schools ban the use of student personal machines when working on client cases? Should schools provide students with encryption tools? Or should schools mandate students have encryption software much like they would mandate the use of an administrators password? There are no easy answers here but it’s clear schools need to do something to address the risk of confidential information becoming exposed due to theft or loss.
Live blogging from CALI 2008: Joel Garreau is a student of culture, values, and change. Most recently he is the author of Radical Evolution Joel is a reporter and editor at The Washington Post and principal of The Garreau Group, the network of his best sources committed to understanding who we are, how we got that way, and where we’re headed, worldwide. He has served as a senior fellow at the University of California at Berkeley and George Mason University, and is an affiliate of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at Oxford.
OK. Let’s see where this goes. Joel is describing a scenario of super humans, enhanced human beings, silent messaging…this is interesting. He’s arguing that Moore’s Law is leading us to a place where this kind of ability will be possible. Look around, he suggests, Barry Bonds, Dolly the sheep, brain implants, these technologies are here and are advancing fast.
I think I’ll read his book.
Live blogging from CALI 2008: Larry Farmer is a true proponent of deliberate practice. His work on using deliberate practice is compelling. While deliberate practice is not for every type of law class there are subjects where it is applicable. MediaNotes supports this type of practice. He developed this software to support deliberate practice in his teaching of interviewing and counseling skills. Students capture their work using MediaNotes and a web camera. Student reviews their video and makes comments on salient moments in the video. Adjunct faculty member reviews video and provides additional feedback. One interesting note…students are told if they excel in the class they will be entered into a pool to participate as adjunct faculty the following year. Each class, four to five students really buckle down on the work because they want to teach.
