Techist: A Blog about Technology, History and Teaching

The Assignment for Recreating the historical MWC Classroom

2012-01-17T13:33:00.000-05:00

As I discussed in this post, my US Women's History since 1870 class will be working on a project in which the ultimate goal is to be able to recreate a class session or two from the middle of the 20th Century.

Here is the assignment that I developed for the course, in three stages. Note the use of individual and group work, online and IRL activities, and deep research in the archives of the school.

As always, I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions. [The full course syllabus is here.]

MARY WASHINGTON CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE RESEARCH PROJECT

This project will be based around researching Mary Washington College classes in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, & 1960s (including course topics, pedagogical approaches, majors, gender stereotypes, technology, and clothing). As our class lectures and readings look at the experiences of women in the United States in the late 19th and 20th Centuries, our parallel goal will be to understand what college meant to women who came to Mary Washington in the four decades in the middle of the 20th Century.

Each group of 6-7 of you will have a decade to research, using a variety of online and archival sources, as well as interviews with alums from these decades. Rather than writing a traditional individual research paper, you’ll keep a research blog and work with your group to create a research site collecting together the information that you’ve found.

Primary source resources (many available in UMW Special Collections)

The Bullet
Course Catalogs
Academic Department and Faculty Files
Student Handbooks
Photographs (Centennial Collection online plus those digitized, but not online yet)
Alumni/Faculty Interviews (talk to me about interview waivers)
Resources from Historic Preservation (?)
Scrapbooks/Aubade/Alumni Magazine/President’s files

Secondary Sources

Crawley, William B. University of Mary Washington: A Centennial History, 1908-2008. Fredericksburg, VA: University of Mary Washington, 2008.
Key UMW faculty and staff (Parsons, McClusky, Thaden, Snyder)

Decade-based Research Groups

I will assign each of you to a group of 5-7 each with a different decade at MWC to research, using a variety of online and archival sources, as well as interviews with alums from these decades. Each person will keep their own research log/blog and work with their group to create a research site collecting together the information that you’ve found.

Part I — Individual Research Logs

Each student will take a particular set of primary sources (or will interview alumni) and research classroom experiences for their group’s decade. Each student will share her/his work in progress in the form of four individual research log-style blog posts posted before class starts on four consecutive Tuesdays (1/31, 2/7, 2/14, 2/21).

Part II — Group Research Project

Building on the research done by each of the group members, each group will construct a site for their decade in UMWBlogs. The design, format, and presentation of these sites will be determined by the group, with a broad audience in mind. These sites are due by 11:59 PM on Monday, March 12.

Grading for Parts I and II – 30% overall, with an individual grade for research logs and group grade for the research project.

Part III – Class re-creation

Based on those group research sites, we will collectively decide (with the help of some alums), which decade we will then use for the final project, a re-creation of a course session or two from that decade. The form these class sessions will take is still yet to be determined (depending in part on the decade picked), but they will involve everyone in some way in preparation and presentation. Specific tasks will be determined after the decade is chosen. This recreation will take place during the week of April 17.

Grading for Part III – 10%, with individual grades defined by student’s participation in the re-creation process.

PLEASE NOTE: Throughout these projects, all ideas, phrases, and quotes must be cited using footnote-style citations and bibliographies done using the Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition) or Turabian’s newest Guide (7th Edition).

Re-Creating the College Classroom of the Past

2011-12-19T15:13:00.000-05:00

I just sent the following email to one of my classes for the Spring.

Hello all,

Thanks for signing up for History 328: US Women’s Historysince 1870. I wanted to give you a little preview of my plans for ourclass next semester because the research projects in the class are going to bea little different than that of other history classes (even for those of youwho took HIST 327 this fall).

First of all, in many ways, the general structure of theclass is going to be fairly standard. We’ll have lectures on Tuesdays andpart of Thursdays, and discuss readings on Thursdays. There will be amid-term and a final based on those lectures, discussions, andreadings.

What’s different is that the rest of your grade, roughly40%, will be based on a series of projects we’ll be working on in groups and asa class. These projects will be based around researching Mary WashingtonCollege classes in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, & 1960s (including coursetopics, pedagogical approaches, majors, gender stereotypes, technology, andclothing). As the class lectures and readings look at the experiences ofwomen in the United States in the late 19^th and 20^thCenturies, our parallel goal will be to understand what college meant to womenwho came to Mary Washington in the four decades in the middle of the 20^thCentury.

Each group of 6-7 of you will have a decade to research,using a variety of online and archival sources, as well as interviews withalums from these decades. Rather than writing a traditional individualresearch paper, you’ll keep a research blog and work with your group tocreate a research site collecting together the information that you’ve found.

Based on those sites, we will collectively decide (perhapswith the help of some alums), which decade we will then use for the finalproject, a re-creation of a course session or two from that decade.

Now, if this project is not the kind of thing you’ll beinterested in working on, you may want to look for another class. But Ihope you’ll each at least be intrigued by the idea and perhaps even excited bydoing something that is original, fun, and creative, while tying in to thethemes we’ll be discussing more broadly for US women in the class.

Have a terrific break and I’ll see you in January.

Dr. McClurken

I'm very excited about this project, so any suggestions you have for the process, the approach, the research sites, or anything else will be greatly appreciated.

Fall 2011 -- A new building, a new classroom, a new course

2011-12-06T16:54:00.000-05:00

[Picture created using the iPhone app from Microsoft, Photosynth]

The class was the History of the Information Age, the building was Monroe Hall, and the classroom is our new flexible space classroom. Look for a post on the latter coming in the next couple weeks.

Info Age #4 -- The Documentaries

2011-11-29T20:09:00.000-05:00

[Be sure to check out the earlier installments of my discussion of my History of the Information Age senior seminar as well: here, here, and here, as well as the class timeline and the list of the first set of projects to be placed in that timeline.]

Assignment #4 in this course was the group documentaries on some aspect of the Information Age. I didn't give the students a great deal of direction, other than to say that they needed to show change over time, that they should be between 5 and 10 minutes, and that they needed to upload them somewhere where they could be seen (they all chose YouTube). They had about three weeks to come up with a topic (related to the class discussions of the digital age), research, film, and edit the video.

Each group had a basic video camera, and they had access to the editing stations in our Digital Media Lab (with iMovie and Premiere). Ultimately, only one group used Premiere, one used iMovie, and two used Windows Movie Maker. Although they had been given a brief intro to video editing at the start of the semester by DTLT, most of them were going to be doing video capture and editing for the first time. I recommended that they test out their cameras, video files, and basic editing before they got too far into the process so that they could figure out problems in advance.

They presented the documentaries to the class and they were a great deal of fun. Certainly, the videos aren't as polished as they would have been if I had spent more time in training them how to use editing software, or if they'd had more time in the semester to work on them (both points the students make in their after-project posts, linked below), but I'm quite impressed with the work they produced and their willingness to throw themselves into the projects.

Group 1 – How the rise of modern forms of transmitting information have affected the U.S. Postal Service

Student reports -- 1, 2, 3, 4

Group 2 – Tutorials Through Time

Student reports -- 1, 2, 3, 4

Group 3 – Shift from card catalogs to digital catalogs in libraries, with a focus on its effect on librarians

Student reports, 1, 2, 3, 4

Group 4 – Documentary on the history of the internet and its effect on Higher Education, using the University of Mary Washington as a contextual lens

Student reports -- 1, 2, 3, 4

What's your take? What suggestions do you have for future iterations of the assignment?

Info Age Assignment # 3 -- The advertisements

2011-10-25T22:13:00.002-04:00

[Though I still need to go back and blog about the first two assignments in my History of the Information Age senior seminar (the creation of our class timeline and the first set of projects to be placed in that timeline), I decided to go ahead and post about this assignment anyway.]

For this assignment, the class split into four groups, each to work on their own fictional advertisement. The goal of this assignment was to have students explore what went into advertisements in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and/or 1960s. We read several pieces on the history of advertising as part of our weekly class reading on the history of communication and information, and students did further research before they actually created their projects. [Some of the ads juxtapose topics that are chronologically out of the time period of the ad style, but I think that actually helped, in that it forced students to do more than just copy previous advertisements.]

Students threw themselves into researching the way that advertising was done in terms of themes, colors, wording, images, stories, tone, even font. And at the end I think that they learned quite a bit about the difficulty and possibility of communicating in ways that go beyond text itself.

Check them out and let us know what you think.

Tupperware Print Ad -- http://infoage.umwblogs.org/2011/10/24/post-war-woman-and-the-spread-of-information/
Weight-gain Print Ad -- http://infoage.umwblogs.org/2011/10/24/gain-flesh-gain-the-girl/

Further explanation of the group's research and approach, some technical discussion, and photo issues.

Wurlitzer Jukebox meets the Hipster Print Ad -- http://infoage.umwblogs.org/2011/10/23/advertisement-project-the-wurlitzer-jukebox/

Discussion of advertising research

Gutenberg Press Radio Ad -- http://infoage.umwblogs.org/2011/10/23/radio-advertisement/

Sources used
Further explanation of the group's research and approach.

History of the Information Age Syllabus 2.0

2011-09-10T13:44:00.000-04:00

So, over the last two weeks, the students in this senior seminar on the History of the Information Age have worked with me to fill in the broad outlines of the syllabus. This syllabus, version 2.0, has the discussion topics and the assignments set, though I still need to sit down with the weekly discussion leaders to decide on the readings for the week.

The assignments include a variety of ways that, as groups and as individuals, students will contribute to the class timeline set up using the Simile Timline plugin for WordPress. First they'll work in groups to create the events that go into the timeline (a process we discussed as a class last Thursday), their other assignments (again, suggested and/or modified by the students) are as follows:

Part one & two – Select one of the following by September 15.
Actually use an early system of communication to convey information (demonstrated to the class)
OR describe the process and complications of using such an early system to convey information. (300-500 words, plus sources, posted to your blog)
OR research and discuss the significance of an information technology in the life of a specific individual before 1950. (300-500 words, plus sources, posted to your blog)
OR create an infographic with information about an early system of communication from Parts I or II (with sources, posted to your blog)
Individual project – Value is 10% of course grade
To avoid overlap, each topic must be submitted for approval by September 15.
Project due September 29

Part three – Create your own advertisement/commercial/print ad related to the history of information to be shared. – Group – 10%
Due Thursday, October 13
Part four – Make a documentary (5-10 minutes) on topic from this period – Group – 15%
Due Thursday, November 10
Part five – 5% – Help improve the timeline – Aspect must be preapproved before work starts on it.
A) Work on the overall structure/format/presentation of the timeline.
B) Pick any point on the timeline to expand on (with research) – Can take form of video, brief, essay, infographic, oral history, etc.
Individual, unless a case can be made for group work here.
Due the last day of class, December 8.

As always, questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome. I'm excited to see what projects the students come up with as they begin to explore the concepts of historically located information and communication through a variety of tools.

Collaborative Course Construction

2011-08-31T23:02:00.000-04:00

I'm teaching a new course this semester, a senior seminar on the History of the Information Age. I've got a great group of students who are interested in the topic, but also in breaking out of the normal senior readings seminar. I've challenged that format in another senior seminar, Adventures in Digital History (2008/2010 iterations), but this class is a bit different. ADH is primarily a project based class, where the process of creating the projects is the entire focus of the course.

For this seminar on the Information Age, I wanted to try something different. I wanted to combine digital history projects with a genuine engagement with scholarly readings and discussions of themes. But I also wanted to engage the students in creating the course itself.

So, in late July/early August I created a rough syllabus (version 0.9) here. It has a rough semester calendar with four broad eras of the "Information Age" -- Print (and its predecessors), Early Networked Communication, Broadcasting, and Information in the Digital Age. It includes three books I had the bookstore order and will have the students read over the course of the semester. It includes what I see as the non-negotiable parts of the course:

"Students are expected to attend all classes, read all assigned texts, post regularly to the individual blogs, participate in class, and help lead two weeks of class discussions. Students are also expected to contribute to the creation of a public, digital timeline of developments, events, people in the information age and add materials to it all semester."

Participation will be worth 40% and blog posts will be worth at least 10%.

Here's what I don't know and what I want to figure out with the class over the next 10 days or so.

I don't know quite what that timeline will look like yet. I don't know what will make it on the timeline, how exactly we'll construct it, what we will add to it and how.
I don't know what the other 50% of the graded portion of the course will consist of.

I imagine some of it will be material that enriches the digital timeline, but I don't know what that will be yet.
Some preliminary discussion of ideas on the syllabus comments suggests a student interest in group projects, perhaps video recorded oral histories of aspects of the Information Age.
Others have discussed the value of infographics for displaying particularly perspective on trends/ideas/concepts.
It's also possible that they will include formal or informal presentations of their work as part of the graded portion of the course.

I don't know which topics the class will want to focus on and for how long.

On a related note, I don't know which readings/texts/images/videos we'll be using beyond the three core texts to explore the topics the class wants.

I don't know if this will work. But I've got a group of students who genuinely seem excited by the chance to try, and so I'm excited too.

More to follow.

Interview on With Good Reason

2011-08-19T23:28:00.000-04:00

My interview on the public radio show With Good Reason is up. Host Sarah McConnell and Associate Producer Kelley Libby did a great job helping me to talk about my book and the experiences of Confederate veterans after the Civil War.

Be sure to check out the Companion Feature at the bottom as well.

A Professor's Legacy

2011-06-27T09:40:00.002-04:00

This weekend I attended a memorial service for one of my Mary Washington college professors, and later colleague, Dr. Richard "Doc" Warner. Dick had died suddenly a couple of weeks ago while in New York to talk to an editor about the historical novels he'd been writing since he retired.

Dick Warner spent 36 years at Mary Washington, teaching classes in Russian, French, and maritime history. When I first came to the school as a prospective student he was the one who spent nearly 90 minutes talking to me about the school and the history major. This was in stark contrast to the other schools I had visited at which I was lucky to get even five minutes with any faculty members; I don't know if he ever realized it, but he was a big reason that I came to (then) Mary Washington College. [Over a decade later, when I applied after graduate school for a tenure-track teaching position in the department, Dick told me that he would only support hiring me if I agreed to become chair someday.... Something tells me he's still got a smile and a twinkle in his eye about that one.]

Although a dedicated teacher, his real passion was men's rugby. He was instrumental in starting the club sport at MWC in the 1980s and was, as one of the participants this weekend noted, the "Godfather of Mary Washington Rugby". He advocated for resources with the administration and raised money from a wide variety of sources. He recruited constantly, boldly poaching athletes from more mainstream sports at the school. He attended almost every match for decades and continued to come to many games, even after his retirement and move out of state in 2004.

I knew most of this before this weekend. Frankly, you couldn't be Dick's colleague (or student) without getting a major rugby update at least once a week. But this weekend's memorial service was a powerful sign of Dick Warner's impact, of a remarkable legacy. At the service, on the rugby pitch that really should be named Doc Warner Field, nearly 100 people remembered his life and his impact on them. As we went around the large circle, we heard from alumni from the classes of the 1980s to 2011, from people who had traveled thousands of miles or just a few blocks, from teary middle-age men to proud recent graduates, all to pay tribute to Dick.

But the tales that were told of Doc Warner this weekend went beyond that of solely a sport. Of course there were stories of recruiting phone calls and of conversations about various aspects of a student's rugby game, of the enduring passion and love Dick had for the sport and its players. But even more powerful were those stories of Dick mentoring students about their classes, working out structured schedules with young men who were having trouble adjusting to the rigorous demands of Mary Washington's courses, introducing them not only to the library, but to the specific cubicle in which they would henceforth be studying. Several alums spoke to the fact that, rather than being easier on rugby players in his own classes, that he expected more of them. And that attention to their success as students and as men didn't stop with their graduation. We heard of countless recommendation letters written, or phone calls to potential employers; we heard of the community of people (students, alumni, parents, friends) bound together ostensibly by rugby, but really by Doc Warner's unrelenting energy and interest; we heard about Dick recognizing former students on the street decades later and remembering key details about their lives. We heard from Dick's own family about the importance of "his second family" to Dick, of his pride in them and in their successes. We heard about his generosity, his quiet support of students in financial straits, and his wry sense of humor.

I was talking with other faculty members at the end of the memorial, wondering at the powerful impact Dick had had on these student-athletes. Few faculty have the kind of impact, inspire the kind of devotion, leave the kind of legacy that he did. Many of us who teach would be thrilled to have a memorial service to which so many of those we advised and taught came, where there was as much joy and laughter as there were tears and sadness, a sense of a life well and fully lived for both family and work. It was a fitting tribute to Richard Warner's career and life.

Thinking about Public History Projects: A DIY history toolkit

2010-07-07T13:30:00.001-04:00

My good friend, Leslie, begins a new tenure-track job this fall in Idaho. She recently asked for input on her next big project. If you haven't read the post yet, you should. The gist is as follows:

Whereas public historians traditionally have done history for the public--e.g. in museum exhibits or in documentary films--there's a small but growing group of public historians who want to foster and study history done by the public, by passionate amateurs and average folks instead of created for them. I'm one of those historians, and as I transition to life on the tenure track (I'll have 4-5 years to prove I deserve to be employed for the next 30-35 years), I'm searching for a project or two in which I can make significant progress in 3-4 years.

I'm hoping you can help me by telling me a bit about how you use history in your life, either everyday or on special occasions. I want to find a project that not only interests me, but that really gets people excited about engaging with the history of their family, neighborhood, house, community, hobby, or whatever else they're passionate about.

My response in her comments included two ideas, which, you'll notice, don't really answer her question. They do, however, raise a couple of ideas about ways to approach her rethinking of public history's goals:

1) Create a centralized set of resources on a topic. I'm thinking of collecting links to web-based resources, but they might just be lists of various sources/works for the topic. Gathering those together in and of themselves could prove valuable to a group that has not done that yet for its own history and would allow you to bring the experiences of a public historian to help as well.

2) Create a resource that would provide access to tools, methodologies, approaches that would help people engage in their own group/family history. This would be a kind of DIY family/group history kit. You might include advice on how to do interviews; how to scan images and documents for historical purposes; discuss using WP or other blogging software (or software like Omeka) to create exhibits; how to use wikis to create crowdsourced projects like the Davis Wiki; examples of other sites (and ones that inspire a sense of possibility, not major, grant-funded institutional projects); how to fact check family/group stories (or why those stories are valuable regardless of their validity), etc.

Here I'm thinking of initially virtual tools. But with an outside grant or support from your institution, you and your new department might become known for lending the equipment (cameras, audio recorders, scanners, etc.) and expertise needed to empower people in your area to do their own individual or group history projects.

The more I think about it, the more I really like the second notion, the DIY history toolkit. Think about the value of such a guide/checklist/resource. What would you include in a DIT history toolkit?

Good luck to Leslie with her move, her new job, and her new projects. Head on over and help her out.

Banner Lecture for VHS

2010-06-16T21:35:00.006-04:00

I was truly honored when the Virginia Historical Society, a wonderful museum and archive, asked me to give one of the famous Banner Lectures on my book. Oddly enough, though I've presented various parts at a number of conferences, I've never done a formal presentation of the whole project. So, I had a good time putting this talk together and it turned out pretty well. I got some great questions from the audience.

Click to play

Thanks again to Nelson Lankford, Frances Pollard, and the rest of the VHS staff for all the work that they do to contribute to the history of Virginia.

Lecture: Teaching and Learning with New Media

2010-04-06T19:14:00.004-04:00

I've not posted on this blog in a while (see ProfHacker.com and http://mcclurken.org/ for other goings on).

However, I was honored to be asked to give one of the inaugural lectures in the Teaching Excellence series begun this year by UMW's Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning.

What follows is the video and a list of the links mentioned in the talk.

Thanks to all for the opportunity and the questions. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions.

Overview

What is New Media?

My Goals in using New Media tools

Examples of Classroom Use

Assessing the Impact

What Can You Do?

What is New Media? – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media

UMWBlogs

Blogging – Teresa Coffman (EDUC) and Steve Greenlaw (ECON)

Blog as course management tool — Sue Fernsebner’s Freshman Seminar: Toys as History

As site for collecting hard-to-find research sources for students –Steve Harris’s Hist 485: Researching Russian and Soviet Resources

UMWers & New Media

Skype
Digital Storytelling – Jim Groom’s course
Audio from the past– Marie McCallister’s 18th-Century Audio Blog
Digital Games – Zach Whalen’s site with links to courses
TEDTalks – For a class based on TEDTalks, see this FSEM I co-taught with Tim O’Donnell
How-To Videos
- See UMW library ShowMe videos
- See Academic Services videos
Zotero – See History & American Studies Department Zotero group library
YouTube

Low Levels of Technology Use

Wiki for discussions in all my courses

Blogs as Individual/Group Reflections

Veterans FSEM – http ://rwelker.umwblogs.org/2008/10/
TEDTalks FSEM – http://ted2009.umwblogs.org/

Blogs as Research Logs (Historical Methods/Digital History)

Topic Discussion — http://eweaver.umwblogs.org/2007/09/06/my-topic/
Research Problems — http://amandashumaker.umwblogs.org/2007/10/22/frustration/
Lessons Learned and Shared — http://megamcdh2010.umwblogs.org/2010/03/16/week-9 /

More Intensive Uses of New Media Tools

Examples of Individual digital projects — US History in Film

Class Museum of history of technology projects (http://historyoftech.umwblogs.org/)

See also Krystyn Moon’s 19^th-Century Museum – http://amst312.umwblogs.org/

Adventures in Digital history course

Digital Toolkit

UMWBlogs, Omeka.org, Simile Timeline, Delicious.com, YouTube, GoogleDocs, Flickr

2008 Class & Projects – http://digitalhistory.umwblogs.org

– Historical Markers Project (HMP) — [6]
– James Farmer Project (JFP) — [7]
– James Monroe Papers Project (JMPP) — [8] and [9]
– Alumni Project (AP) — [10]

Adventures in Digital History 2010 — http://dh2010.umwblogs.org

UMW Images Project
Life and Legacy of Mary Ball Washington
James Monroe’s Letters as Minister to France
City of Hospitals: Fredericksburg in the Civil War

Student Impact Survey — From November 2009 — Contact me directly for details

ProfHacker.com

A new blog, but with people who actually post

2009-08-19T10:09:00.003-04:00

This week I was flattered to join the cast of bloggers at Prof. Hacker, a site that focuses on productivity, technology, and teaching. My first post was on Deploying Students as Tech Mentors. I hope I can keep up with the productive group of people assembled there....

I've started another blog

2009-07-12T23:32:00.003-04:00

New blog and new blog post on me "building" stuff. You've been warned.

[The new blog will not be posted to often (due to time constraints on the projects, not on the blogging). Blogging will resume in this space in the near future.]

Archiving Social Media Conversations of Significant Events

2009-06-23T15:35:00.003-04:00

This is a rough proposal for another session at 2009 THATCamp that grew out of conversations with a number of people in my network about the role of social media in the recent events in Iran.

I propose that we have a session where THATCampers discuss the issues related to preserving (and/or analyzing) the blogs, tweets, images, Facebook postings, SMS(?) of the events in Iran with an eye toward a process for how future such events might be archived and analyzed as well. How will future historians/political scientists/geographers/humanists write the history of these events without some kind of system of preservation of these digital materials? What should be kept? How realistic is it to collect and preserve such items from so many different sources? Who should preserve these digital artifacts (Twitter/Google/Flickr/Facebook; LOC; Internet Archive; professional disciplinary organizations like the AHA)?

On the analysis side, how might we depict the events (or at least the social media response to them) through a variety of timelines/charts/graphs/word-clouds/maps? What value might we get from following/charting the spread of particular pieces of information? Of false information? How might we determine reliable/unreliable sources in the massive scope of contributions?

[I know there are many potential issues here, including language differences, privacy of individual communications, protection of individual identities, various technical limitations, and many others.]

Maybe I’m overestimating (or underthinking) here, but I’d hope that a particularly productive session might even come up with the foundations of: a plan, a grant proposal, a set of archival standards, a wish-list of tools, even an appeal to larger companies/organizations/governmental bodies to preserve the materials for this particular set of events and a process for archiving future ones.

What do people think? Is this idea worth pursuing?

THATCamp 2009 -- A Proposal

2009-06-10T15:08:00.003-04:00

For those of you that don't know, THATCamp is an unconference on The Humanities And Technology.

This is what I posted to the THATCamp 2009 site as my proposal for a session. Join in the discussion before and after the conference!

How to get money, money, money for wild and crazy times!!

Okay, not really. But I do think this topic is particularly important right now.

This was my original proposal:

I’d like to talk about the role of faculty, IT, and administrators in collaborating to shape institutional strategic plans and planning in general for academic computing and the digital humanities. I’ve spent nearly 18 months now involved in various strategic and practical planning committees at UMW regarding digital resources and goals for the humanities and social sciences. Making sure that resources are allocated to the digital humanities requires broad commitments within administrative and strategic planning. [Not as sexy or fun as WPMU or Omeka plug-ins, but sadly, just as important....] I’d like to share my own experiences in the area and hear from others about theirs.

And today I would simply add that as UMW is closing in on a first draft of its strategic plan, I’m even more convinced that the college/university-wide planning process is something with which digital humanists need to be engaged. In this time of dwindling economic resources, however, we also need to be, pardon the pun, strategic about it. I think we need to figure out when we need to explain concepts, tools, the very notion of what digital humanities is and its place in the curriculum (something even THATCampers seem to be debating), when we need to do full-on DH evangelizing, and when we need to back off from our evangelizing in order to ease fears and/or recognize budgetary realities. In any case, who else has had to make the case for Digital Humanities or academic technology as part of these processes?

UPDATE: Of course, let's also include planning for libraries, archives, and museums in this discussion as well. (Thanks for the reminder epistemographer)

Day One of Faculty Academy--Got Inspiration?

2009-05-13T22:23:00.006-04:00

As always, I'm inspired by UMW's annual Faculty Academy, in its 14th year. I've been presenting here every year since I started full time at Mary Washington in 2001, yet I always seem to get more out of the sessions than I ever give in the presentations.

Others have done recaps, but I'll do a brief overview of my takeaways from today.

The day began with brief introductions and a welcome recognition of the talents of our DTLT staff by acting provost Nina Mikhalevsky.

We quickly moved into the first set of concurrent sessions. I attended Digital Resources and Global Studies: Working Projects, with Susan Fernsebner, Joseph Calpin, Alexandra deGraffenreid, Steven Harris. These faculty and students from my departent of History and American Studies showed how much has changed since I was the only history faculty member to attend Faculty Academy just four or five years. Sue and Steve talked about their projects to collect digital resources (or offline sources catalogued in digital form) related to their particular areas of interest, specifically the history of China and Russia/Soviet Union. Especially intriguing to me was the role that the two students played in shaping the structure of the resource sites, the categories that were used, and the general involvement in the creation of what we might describe as the information architecture of the sites and the resources. Excellent work all!

The keynote address by James Boyle of Duke Law School, "Cultural Agoraphobia: What Universities Need to Know About Our Bias Against Openness" was a delightful romp through the history of computer technology and the internet (making me think that there is a class to be taught in the "history of the 'future'") as well as an argument that our default position should not be closed/proprietary/walled, but open/shared/commons. His point that academia, a group invested in the sharing of information, has been the most closed, most inaccessible group in sharing that information hit home with me. Much to think on there.

Lunch was enlivened by a mock debate on "Is the CMS Dead?" that went nothing like any of us had expected. Jim Groom of EDUPUNK fame attacked CMSs in his usual passionate way as restrictive of innovation and old. John St. Clair both brought down the house with his laugh-inducing descriptions of Jim and other individuals, and made the argument that there are various teaching styles, some which lend themselves well to Blackboard, and some which don't, but that we should respect both.

PSU's Cole Camplese presented a new version of a talk I heard him give at the Chronicle's technology forum a few weeks ago, now entitled, "If this is scholarship, then we're all doomed" (an allusion to a quote from a Chronicle forum audience member who was resisting Cole's multi-modal argument about social networking (YouTube and/or Twitter) as both creation and conversation).

Finally I sat on a panel about grappling with one's own digital identity via purchasing individual domain names and (potentially) mapping onto current UMW resources. I think it was a fascinating conversation with the audience and between the panelists. Very cool.

After a leisurly evening disecting Jim's next move, most of us retired for the evening. Tomorrow is another day.

Strategic Planning for Academic Technologies and Libraries

2009-05-06T20:34:00.002-04:00

So I posted almost two months ago about the strategic planning process going on at my institution and the subcommittee (now called a "discussion group") I was working with on Academic Technologies and Libraries. I wanted to post a link to what we came up with to recommend to the larger Strategic Planning Steering Committee. I'd appreciate any feedback that people had on what we came up with, especially since I'm on the Steering Committee and we'll be taking this report (and 14 others) into account as we write the school's strategic plan to present to our Board of Visitors in July.

Here's the report, in MS Word form.

AAHC--Teaching with Digital Tools

2009-04-03T22:30:00.000-04:00

I'm pleased to be part of a roundtable on "Teaching with Digital Tools" at the American Association of History and Computing conference at George Mason on April 4.

The panel (with the classy Clioweb (Jeremy Boggs) and UCLA's Joshua Sternfeld), we've decided to avoid formal presentations and to organize our discussions around six key questions about the subject. We'll each give our answers and look to the audience for comments and further questions.

What are your goals in terms of using digital tools in teaching?
What evaluation standards do you employ in evaluating your students' digital work?
How do you balance teaching historical content and teaching tech skills?
How have you integrated historiography into your teaching methods?
Tell us a particular assignment involving digital tools that was very successful (or very unsuccessful). What was it, and why do you think it was successful/unsuccessful?
What do you see as the future of teaching and technology?

I know we're missing some things here, but these seem like a good start. What would you ask?

A Photo Walk a Day

2009-03-29T15:13:00.003-04:00

I've started a new habit where I take a few minutes when I get to school to photograph the amazing campus setting in which I'm lucky enough to work. This is the Flickr photostream from the first of these expeditions.

Ada Lovelace Day Post--Women in the History of American Technology

2009-03-24T00:13:00.000-04:00

I've had trouble deciding who I was going to write about for my promised post on Ada Lovelace day. [Don't know who she is? Look her up here and be sure to check out the references as well.] I'm glad to see that I'm far from alone in writing today. The task for Ada Lovelace Day is to blog about a woman in technology, but I'm going to write about my own impressions here on the subject of the history of women in American Technology before I get to discussing three specific women. This is not a scholarly exercise (hence no footnotes) or a complete history by any stretch (so don't use this to study for a test, or crib from this post), but simply a few musings that come after teaching a particular history class (History of American Technology and Culture) in a particular way for a number of years.

As an historian of American technology (and other areas including the 19th Century US, as well as women and gender), I've often been frustrated (though perhaps not surprised) by the relative paucity of the presence of women as individuals in this sub-field's historical literature. Of course, from before the arrival of Europeans American women have worked in agricultural fields, often beside men, and using various implements of technology while doing so. Women also appear prominently in accounts of Lowell's textile mills, and in the form of laborers in a number of industries employing technology, especially at times of war (the women in Civil War munitions factories and so famously represented by Rosie the Riveter in WWII are merely the most well known).

Yet, since my class is organized around the inventions (and reinventions) of twenty or so key artifacts of American technology, I've all too often talked about women's roles in technology as secondary or reactive, especially before 1900. The number of prominent inventions women had direct roles in creating before the 20th century is harder to highlight given the roles that women were expected to play, and the restrictions often placed on their educations and their actions.

Still, there are three women of the "long 19th Century" that I want to mention, women who were involved in some of the most significant acts of technological creation of their day and place.

Catherine Green was a widow and Georgia plantation owner who certainly encouraged Eli Whitney to work on the problem of removing seeds from cotton. What's less clear historically speaking is how much of a role she played in helping Whitney discover what may have been the key aspect of that the cotton gin, the wire teeth that pulled the cotton fibers from those pesky seeds. [1793]
Emily Warren Roebling was the spouse of Brooklyn Bridge head engineer Washington Roebling. When he was struck down and crippled by "caissons disease" after spending too much time in the pressurized diggings below the surface of the East River it was Emily Roebling who took over as the main contact between Washington and the bridge effort. For years while Washington apparently watched from the window of a nearby building, Emily was his eyes and ears, learning a great deal of engineering on what was the largest bridge in the world at the time. When it was completed, it was Emily Roebling who made the first official crossing of the bridge in 1883. [1869-1883]
Finally, Amanda Jones is the least well known of the three, though I'd argue fairly important. Though women were often chiefly responsible for preserving food in their households in the 19th Century, most of the innovations in commercial preservation came from men like Gail Borden, H. J. Heinz, and John Torrence (of Campbell's Soup). In 1872, however, Amanda Jones was the inventor of a vacuum-based process for canning foods that made them last longer and taste better.

As I close this post, it occurs to me that it might be time to think about teaching a new course focusing on the history of women, technology, and culture in the US. Reactions, suggestions, reading lists? They're all appreciated.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Contemplating Online Academic Publishing

2009-03-20T16:41:00.003-04:00

This post began as a comment on Laura Blankenship's Emerging Technologies Consulting blog. Laura noted that the topic of online academic publishing and how it relates to tenure and other institutional academic concerns was going to be part of her formal role as a speaker/leader at this year's Faculty Academy. My response was as follows:

I can't wait to hear what you have to say in May. This is a particularly tough issue and one that has gotten a great deal of resistance when broached (at UMW and elsewhere) in formal or informal ways in a variety of conversations I've been a part of lately.

On one hand the change to a new system is always complicated (and frankly, even in the old system, the disciplinary differences are enough to make university-wide review committees shudder--e.g., how many psychology articles equal a book in history? I have my own argument, but all would agree that my perspective on this is fairly biased). So, that resistance isn't that surprising.

Yet, on the surface, online publishing should make a lot of things easier, not harder, to assess for tenure and/or merit pay:

1) Financial limitations that restrict #/size/scope of published works exist on a completely different scale in the online world, especially once a system for peer-reviewed academic e-publishing is built.

1a) It seems almost a no-brainer that scholarly journals should move on-line completely (or at least in part) given the large percentage of costs that publishing those journals entails.

2) Measuring impact -- There must be some way of measuring the number of readers/links/hits/formal citations in other peer-reviewed articles or books/presence in syllabi. Now, obviously these things could be gamed (i.e., hits and uniques) or narrowed by restrictive access to some of the examples (BB course syllabi aren't accessible, for example, nor are many online, but peer-reviewed articles in collections like JSTOR).

I'm sure there are many things I'm forgetting/overlooking here, but I'm really looking forward to Laura's exploration of the topic in May. Every institution needs to have that conversation.

Writing a Strategic Plan for Academic Technologies & Libraries

2009-03-10T22:50:00.001-04:00

Our institution is going through a major process of strategic planning, and one on a fairly accelerated timetable. We need to have a complete draft by May and after feedback from the Board and the rest of the academic community, have a plan in place by November. I'm a member of the strategic planning steering committee, the group responsible for directing the process and for writing the final report, as well as being part of some of the discussions of the pieces of the report.

Now, strategic plans are funny things. Done right, they can set aspirational and practical goals for an institution that can drive fund-raising, shape organizational decisions, and determine the investment of key resources. Done wrong, they can create needless animosity, fear, confusion, and leave an institution in worse shape than before the process. But even when done well, the best strategic plan is useless unless the administration and the academic community as a whole relies on it, turns to it, uses it. So, the first question might be, why bother? Why invest time in an enterprise that has such a potential for failure? The answer is that I believe that this effort is a real opportunity for change, a true chance to articulate a vision for the direction of this institution, a remarkable moment in the life of the institution. I, and many of my colleagues, choose to see this as a time to think boldly about the future of the liberal arts university we care so much about.

One area in which I believe bold, visionary thought is both required and possible is in the area of academic technologies and libraries. I see the three key reasons why this area of discussion is particularly important for Mary Washington right now.

Virtually everyone who talks about the future of institutions of higher education sees academic technologies and libraries as critical vehicles (paths, jump-starters, incubators, facilitators -- choose your metaphor as you wish) for the growth of colleges and universities.
Academic technologies offer a chance for smaller institutions to compete with much larger schools with much more sizable resource budgets. Also, assuming a basic computing infrastructure is in place, digital tools and technologies also allow for a quick ramp-up time for projects, easier piloting of new ideas, access to significantly larger (and better organized) library and archival collections, and widespread changes to existing systems or practices.
Finally, UMW already has a number of critical resources in place with which we can build, create, and innovate boldly. [UMWblogs is perhaps the best known digital tool, and Faculty Academy may be the best-known event; but by "resources" I really mean a dedicated group of librarians, instructional technology artists, staff, and faculty. It is these genuinely creative, caring, thoughtful, reflective, and revolutionary people who must lead and effect the bold changes for which I'm hoping.]

In the next month, the strategic planning d iscussion group on Academic Technologies and Libraries needs to come up with 2-3 big goals in this area for the institution with several smaller objectives and a number of specific measurable benchmarks that would reflect progress toward those goals and objectives.

So, help me and UMW to think boldly about these critical components of a successful institution. What would be on your top list of goals for a small (~4,000 undergraduates, ~1,000 graduate and professional students) institution of higher learning? What are the necessary digital and/or library components of an liberal arts university of the 21st century? What could we do to be a leader among our peers in the fields of academic technology, library services and information resources?

The Responsibility of a Tech Evangelist: Or, should I help people use a technology I don't?

2009-03-07T12:22:00.008-05:00

Intellagirl's recent comment on the EDUPUNK discussion highlights an issue I've been struggling with lately. Her comment raised a concern about the notion of "non-cooperation" with more standardized forms of closed/proprietary educational technologies, specifically exploring the issues with non-cooperation as they relate to helping faculty who aren't interested in ed tech (and/or are not tech-savvy). This gets right at a question I'm interested in hearing from others about.

I stopped using our out-of-the-box CMS system nearly three semesters ago, but many of my colleagues in the department and the institution still do. It meets their basic needs for course management (dealing with distributing readings, syllabi, assignments, grade posting, limited discussions, digital drop-off, etc.) However, as one of the people seen as an informal departmental (and building) ed tech resource I get lots of questions about how aspects of the CMS works. People want help on the grade book, on arrangements for discussions, on how to best set up online assignments in the CMS, or just basic troubleshooting.

Some of these questions I can answer, but since it's been 18 months since I used it last, and since the school has upgraded to a new version of the CMS since then, there are a number of questions I can't answer.

This raises the following questions:

Should I spend some valuable time diving back into the campus's proprietary CMS in order to better help them do what they need to do in it?
Should I just send them off to campus tech support, knowing that in doing so, at least some of them will stop looking to me for advice on tech issues?
Should I use these moments as opportunities to make a hard sell for going outside the CMS for options, knowing that for some of these faculty, even going to the CMS was more change than they were interested in, and knowing that for others, the issues of lack of stability/uniformity/secure access, etc. would make their outside-the-CMS experience at a minimum frustrating, and potentially a deal-breaker? [I'm aware that's a ridiculously long question, but I see this as a fairly complex issue.]

How do we help faculty who are at least nominally interested in engaging with educational technology, when we don't always see that particular tech as being the best way to approach these questions? And how do we approach a technology resource that others use but we don't? Should we just dismiss it, or should we continue to facilitate its usage?

Any feedback on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Past and Upcoming Presentations

2009-03-05T09:50:00.005-05:00

I've been fortunate enough to do a number of presentations this academic year, on a variety of topics.

I had a great time presenting on teaching with WordPress blogs at WordCampEd DC last November (along with Jeremy Boggs, Automattic's Jane Wells, and CNDLES's Rob Pongsajapan). The morning finished with Jim Groom's call to arms (blogging/EDUPUNK--actually those don't do it justice--it was an inspired call to innovation). I just needed to warm up the crowd, and I think I did my job well. [Seriously, I got lots of good questions about methods used, strategies to get students to actually blog, and problems with "controlling" what students say in these blogs. It was a warm, welcoming crowd and I was humbled to be in conversations with the participants and my fellow presenters. Thanks especially to CHNM's Dave Lester for setting the whole event up.]
Then in January, Jeremy Boggs and I presented as part of a large panel of scholar teachers at the American Historical Association national meeting in New York. Our topic was Teaching History in the Digital Age. [My links for the presentation are here and the session was nicely reviewed by history-ing.] Although the conference organizers had placed us in a tiny room (~30 seats), we filled the room and had people sitting on sideboards, the floor, and standing in the hallway. Hmmm, perhaps historians do want to know more about this digital thing. In any case, my presenters were fun, their presentations fascinating, the audience was engaged, and we had a terrific Q&A afterwards. About all you could hope for in an AHA presentation....

I'm also hoping to present on 1) digital history and 2) strategic planning for digital resources and technologies at the AAHC in April and THATCamp II in June, though I'm still waiting to hear about the proposals for those conferences.

Also in April I'll be presenting at HASTAC III at the University of Illinois on "'Uncomfortable, but Not Paralyzed': Challenging Traditional Classroom Boundaries with Undergraduates and Digital History.” Having never done a lightening talk (and being famous for running over) I'd appreciate any strategies readers of this blog have for doing lightening talks (~5-7 minutes).

And in late May, I'll be presenting to Mary Washington alums on Digital History projects as part of Alumni College associated with UMW's Reunion events.

It's a busy fall and spring, but I've been having a great time doing these presentations.

Why Blog Spam is a Good Thing

2009-03-05T09:19:00.002-05:00

I woke up this morning to find 18 of my blog posts had been comment spammed with what looks like Chinese characters and links. [No comments about the need to move to WP please; I've seen WP anti-spam plug-ins fail much more often than Google's software.]

So, why is this a good thing? As I went back to each post that had spam on it I was reminded of a number of posts that I've written over the last few years. Now, I've been meaning to go back and read over my ideas anyway, to get a sense for how my thinking has changed ("evolved" seems too strong :-) over time.

That review reminded me of a number of posts that I've wanted to write, others that I wanted to follow up on, and a sense of the comments and community that I've been missing out by not blogging lately. [Some of that interaction has been replaced by Twitter, which has been very useful, but also does not encourage me to write as much, or as thoughtfully.]

So, I'm hoping to push out a blog post or two in the next few days; and I'm going to think about how I'm going to use both Twitter and the blog to explore and engage further with the larger community I've come to depend on.

The Promise and Peril of using Commercial Sites for Historical Materials

2008-12-22T12:37:00.003-05:00

Tom at FoundHistory recently posted on the layoff of one of the architects of Flickr Commons, that incredibly useful source for materials from a number of major archives and museums. Tom sees this as a moment to discuss some of his own concerns about the promise and peril of using commercial sites like Yahoo, Flickr, Second Life, and others for publishing cultural and academic resources online.

This debate is one that I've had both internally with myself and externally with my colleagues for several years now. No one wants to think that the time, energy, money, and resources invested in placing something valuable online is just going to go away, but the benefits of a ready-made location and user base are also clear.

It seems to me this is about balancing the ability to reach more people, often with a more polished and supported interface, with the need to protect against the risks of commercial failure and potential loss of access to data. [Although we also need to remember that just because something is hosted on the servers of an educational or cultural institution doesn't mean it is always going to be there. "Forever" is a long time in the era of government budget cuts and rapid software change.]

Still, in the end for me it comes down to a question of whether or not an institution can get data placed in repositories like Flickr Commons back out with some relative ease (both technically and in terms of copyright).

Digital History and Undergraduate Digital Literacy

2008-12-06T10:48:00.012-05:00

As so many of my posts, this began as a comment on someone else's blog that grew unwieldy as a comment.... In this case, I was joining a discussion about teaching undergraduates digital history begun by the wise Mills Kelly at edwired and continued in the comments by Sterling Fluharty of PhD in History and others. Mills expresses concern about the lack of attention to the question of undergraduate teaching in a recently published panel discussion in the Journal of American History about "The Promise of Digital History" . [As Mills points out, it's quite a useful panel other than this glaring omission of teaching undergraduates.]

So, my comment (and now this post) is an attempt to explain from my perspective why digital history is important to teach to undergraduates.

My goal in teaching undergraduates digital history is to offer students new ways of approaching their own research and thinking and writing. Our department has agreed that "digital literacy" is core to our expectations for our undergraduates (along with critical thinking and reading, the creation of original ideas, the deployment of evidence to support one's arguments, and the ability to present those arguments in sophisticated written and oral forms).

Now, I know the notion of "digital literacy" has been overused and has multiple definitions, but I actually like the phrase for people's familiarity with it and for that very richness of meanings. So, I've viewed the goals of my undergraduate digital history course through some of those definitions.

One goal of my digital history course is to teach the most conventional form of digital literacy: How does one find and evaluate online materials for scholarly (and non-scholarly) uses? How does one begin to sift through the massive content that is available in an systematic and/or creative way? What are the pitfalls and perils, the promises and potentialities of the online information experience?
Another facet of digital literacy is the notion of digital identity: This is a class that, through individual and group online presence (often blogs and wikis, but many other tools are available as well), explicitly engages students in discussions of their digital identity. How should we present ourselves to the online world (personally, professionally, and intellectually, but also individually and in groups)? [In future iterations it might even encourage them to create their own centralized online presence that wouldn't necessarily be housed by the university (or restricted by a single course). We've been engaged recently at UMW in a number of discussions related to this notion of enabling students to take control of their digital identity. See Jim's post and comments for one take.]
Increasingly I have become convinced that a key, but often overlooked, aspect of digital literacy is a willingness to experiment with a variety of online tools, and then to think critically and strategically about a project and to identify those tools that would be most useful to that project. [Note that I'm NOT talking about training in a specific tool or even a set of tools. This is not an MS Word or Blackboard skills class. This digital history class offers students a "digital toolkit" from which to choose. There certainly needs to be some basic exposure and technical support, but part of the goal is to get students to figure out how to figure out how a new tool (system, software, historical process) works on their own.]
Broadening the previous point, one of my desires for students is for them to be comfortable with being uncomfortable as they try new things. Figuring how to deal with constantly changing technology is something we all are dealing with, yet in higher education we often put students in new situations only when they first begin. Before long, they've got the process and procedures down and can churn out 8-10 page papers in their sleep. Yet what kind of preparation is that for the larger world? I know, I know. There are much larger philosophical and practical and even political issues at work here. But my point is simply that it's good for college classes to shake students (and faculty) out of their comfort zone. Real learning happens when you're trying to figure out the controls, not when you're on autopilot.
Finally, I think digital literacy for undergraduates in history should encompass at least some exposure to the complex new approaches to research in the discipline offered by recent advancements in computing, including text-mining or GIS (if only because that those methods are influencing a new generation of scholarship that students will need to understand to assess). As they become more accessible and widely used, there will be more opportunities for students to also engage in the application of these tools in their own work.

Now, one of the issues raised by Sterling on Mills's blog post was whether the goal of an undergraduate history class was to train students for particular jobs. My response to that is both practical and pedagogical. No, I don't see this course as preparing them for particular jobs. However, I do see the class as preparing students to be adaptable citizens and workers, with a sound grounding in who they are (on- and off-line) and a willingness to try new things, to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Having said that, I've had several alums of my first digital history class get jobs that were direct results of the skills (and portfolio of projects) gained in the class. In some cases it was because of a specific tool that they'd worked with; in others it was because of the package they were able to present to their potential employers. Certainly those students felt like the class had been worth it for them.

Finally, although I've been talking specifically about one class, aspects of these ideas have made their way into most of my classes, as well as those of several of my departmental colleagues, including that of our methods class for majors. Still, I suspect there will be a need for (at least) one class in my department that is explicitly focused on Digital History for a long time to come.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

WordCamp Ed DC 2008

2008-11-03T15:11:00.003-05:00

So, I've gratefully accepted an invitation to speak at WordCamp Ed DC 2008 on "Teaching Undergraduates with Blogs" at GMU's Center for History and New Media on Saturday, November 22. If you're in the area, come check it out. [Heck, it's free!]

I'm planning on talking about my uses of WordPress (MU) blogs in various classes. So, WordPress as: CMS-alternative, research log, reading reaction journal, individual project site, "permanent" group project site, and potential e-portfolio. Then I'll discuss how students have responded to the process, maybe show a few good examples of students taking it to the next level.

Any suggestions for my talk? Issues to raise? Points to ponder?

Speaking of Honor

2008-08-23T23:47:00.004-04:00

I was honored to be asked to present the faculty perspective on our school's Honor Code at our annual Honor Convocation, a moment when all new students at the school are introduced to the Honor System and sign an Honor Pledge, committing themselves to that system.

I only had a week to prepare, so I turned to a number of colleagues and some fellow alums for ideas. Tim O'Donnell and Claudia Emerson were particularly helpful in shaping the direction of the speech.

Thanks to Anand Rao for recording and posting the video. If anyone's interested, I could post the text of the talk as well.

In any case, I think it went well. It was a real honor to stand up on that stage and start off the academic year in that way and represent the faculty perspective to the entering students.

A Radical Idea for the Teaching Center

2008-06-14T16:20:00.005-04:00

As is so often the case for me, this post began as a comment on someone else's blog post (Steve at Pedablogy) and grew to a silly size, so here's my expanded version:

I've been having this radical idea lately (and it's one that may make no practical sense, given our institution's resources and structure), but here it is. In the conversation that the UMW University Committee on Digital Initiatives had with the CIO of Rhodes College, we learned that they had combined the IT and Library departments into one group. One advantage of this for students and faculty was that if you had any questions/ideas/interest about a research/informational topic/project/idea you went to a single place, where you would be referred to the person or people who could best help you (reference librarian, programmer, ITS, or some combo). From a user perspective it helps avoid the paralyzing question about where you go and it avoids some of the "siloization" that seems to be such a problem for academia.

What if the UMW teaching center worked in a similar way? [Here I'm thinking of combining, DTLT, the Speaking and Writing Centers, maybe even academic tutoring.] What if you had any kind of question about teaching or learning and you just had a single source to go to? E.g., I want to brainstorm new assignments to engage my students more fully in a text. Go to the single entry point and you have access to a number of options, a number of experts in various aspects of teaching and learning. Maybe you can talk with someone from the speaking center and someone else from DTLT to create a project.

Imagine what it would be like to be able to have all of those resources in one place, easily accessible to faculty and students. Imagine what collaborations might emerge. Another benefit of having all those groups under one institutional roof would be that they would be able to talk to each other and bridge some of those silos of effort and innovation. [I'm not so naive to think the silos would disappear.] Another potential benefit might be streamlining of spaces and resources and administration.

Obvious Cons: It would take a special group of leaders to make this work. It would require combining some radically different departmental cultures. It might result in fewer people working to support faculty and students in these areas (the dark side of "streamlining"). It risks restricting the nimble, creative nature of at least one of those departments. With the wrong leader, it risks overemphasizing one method or approach over others. Perhaps it should just focus on pedagogy and leave student services where it is.

What am I missing here? [I'm sure a great deal.] And, if the plan itself is impractical, how could we take some of best aspects of it and implement them now, in 2 years, in 5 years?

Faculty Academy 2008

2008-05-14T10:52:00.003-04:00

I just finished my third session at Faculty Academy. All three went well and we got good feedback from the audiences. I continue to be jazzed and energized by this conference and it's good to see so many people from UMW and from other places here and talking about these issues.

I'll have more detailed posts on these sessions when I get through my other two presentations this week (on my First-Year Seminar class and to a group of local elementary school teachers).

It's all over but the grading....

2008-05-01T23:47:00.002-04:00

...and as soon as that's done, I'll have a long post about the digital history class (if only because I have three presentations at three different venues lined up about it in the next 7 months and I need to start figuring out what I'm going to say...).

A Semester of Digital History -- Formal Presentations

2008-04-21T09:29:00.002-04:00

The formal presentation of my seminar's Digital History projects will be part of the History Department's end-of-the-semester symposium. All four groups will present on Friday, April 25, at 3 PM in Monroe Hall 202.

Those of you in the area, please come see them present. We don't just want to present these projects to the class, but to the department, the university, and the alumni community.

[Over the weekend, I showed the projects to the Alumni Association Board of Directors and they were well received.]

The conference is finished

2008-04-18T11:26:00.002-04:00

We had nearly 200 people come to the 3rd Virginia Forum last Friday and Saturday. It was a ton of work, but it seems to have come off without any significant problems. Now I can focus on my grading, teaching, presentations, and cutting the lawn. Ahhh, the free time....

Quick update on Digital History

2008-03-30T21:59:00.002-04:00

The semester and several of my larger responsibilities are coming to a head at the same time, but I wanted to pass on a quick update on the Digital History Seminar. My sense with 4 weeks left in the semester is that although some of the project groups are beginning to reach a stopping place, that most of the groups are beginning to comprehend how much they still have left to do. This realization is causing some tensions in the groups, especially as some people look around and think that they are further along in their work than other members of their group. There is also the issue for some groups of trying to coordinate the various efforts and approaches of 4-5 different people. And I suspect there are some groups still trying to hammer out their vision for their project.

All of this is okay, all of this is expected, and only part of it has to do with the technological aspects of the class. I think these groups, though some may have some stressful moments ahead, will build on the significant work already accomplished to finish some impressive projects.

Responding to a Post about Teaching and Technology

2008-03-07T20:46:00.006-05:00

One of our students, Joe McMahon, has posted a blog entry about the problems related to the (mis)use of technology by professors. [It's amusingly titled, "You Can’t Make Me Drink the Kool-Aid: Part One."]

I wrote one of the longest comments I've ever written and decided I spent enough time on it to repost it with slight modifications here.

I asked others for their opinions on this piece and now Gardner's called me out on this as well, so here goes.

I would say that blogging (or wiki-ing, or any assignment, technology-based or otherwise) needs to be created with a purpose. I suspect that all of my colleagues have a goal (or often multiple goals) in mind when they create an assignment. What do I hope to accomplish? What form should it take? What sources do I expect students to engage with? How creative/analytical/exploratory/argumentative do I want students to be? How much freedom should they have to shape their own assignments? The list goes on and on.

For me the question about the use of technology is integral to every assignment I create. [Of course writing your papers on lined note pads is using technology. But Joe is raising the point that for some of these assignments the technology is transparent and well known, allowing students to focus on the content (their argument, their research, their style) without having to spend time figuring out to create a new page, while for others the time spent (in and out of class) figuring the tech out distracts from the focus on content.] I get that. As a result, it's a conscious choice (one of many that I make when creating an assignment and a class) when I ask students to learn a new technology in order to complete my course. [And frankly I try to always make my thinking on the goals of assignments transparent to students (regardless of the tech involved), although not always at the beginning of the class -- sometimes having them struggle a bit on their own is part of the intended process.]

Where I think I really have an issue with the post's argument is with the notion that students are losing out on content by spending time learning a new technology. First of all, every course I create leaves out much, much, much more "content" than I can possibly cover in a single semester. So, each class is a series of choices I have to make about what gets left out. Are students disadvantaged by the material I leave out of my US History Survey on the battles of Revolution so that I can focus on the popular culture of the time? Maybe, but since I can't cover everything then I have to focus on the areas that I think are most important in creating a general student experience of learning about the past.

I'll give you another example with even more of a parallel: I could probably cover those Revolutionary battles if I didn't spend a third of class time engaged in class discussions of primary sources about the Revolution (and other topics), but instead lectured every class period. Lecturing is an incredibly efficient way to dispense content, though fairly problematic in terms of learning content and even worse if you want to build more skills than just passive note-taking and oral processing. I choose to leave out historical content in order to encourage a set of academic skills that I think are useful beyond the classroom (reading primary documents, understanding context, placing yourself in the past, contributing orally to an ongoing discussion, connecting the words of people in the past to the modern perspectives).

For me the use of (newer) technology fits this category as well. Yes, I'm asking students to do something new, or to push themselves, or to think about doing something in a different way, and yes, that potentially takes away from their time to read (or learn) about those darn battles, but that's a choice I've made as the creator of the course. That choice is based in my desire to balance the skills and content portions of my class (that's an over-stated dichotomy here) to provide the best possible experience for the students going forward, not just in that course, but hopefully in others as well.

[I haven't discussed engaging students directly here. I would simply echo Gardner's perspective on this in his comments on the post, adding only that by being as transparent as possible about my thinking with my students that I'd like to think I've been fairly successful as engaging a sizable percentage of them over the years.]

Joe has followed up his first post with a series of suggestions for professors thinking about using technology in the classroom, many of which I agree with. He's also suggested a Faculty Academy session with students and faculty brainstorming about ways to increase student engagement related to technology. Sounds like a good idea.

What is Learning (and What Are We Teaching)?

2008-03-05T08:05:00.007-05:00

This question comes from Shannon over at Loaded Learning. Her recent blog post asks "What Is A Student’s Job?" Steve at Pedablogy has decided to ask his first-year advising students to respond to Shannon's post. I'll be very interested to see if they take him up on it and what they have to say.

Shannon's question about the "students' job" rightly raises questions of students' responsibility for their own education. I was struck, however, by the implications for college professors (heck, for the mission of higher ed itself) in the challenges raised by Shannon's post.

What is college preparing student’s for? Is it to be academics? Skilled people for the work force? Contributing members of society?
For the most part it feels like college is training us to be academics, but I don’t think the college is really aiming for that, or should be aiming for that. Of course some people will go on to be educators and work in a highly specialized area of their major, but most likely the vast majority won’t. I will also say that besides content there are goals and themes that carry through college, being able to critical think, speak well, write well, etc. But at times college can really seem like k-12 redux where the content is just more in depth and the papers about the content are longer.

These issues are not new, but they resonate for me at this particular time. I've been working on making students' work more transparent to others (in and out of the academy) and more (explicitly) relevant to them post-college.* And a new longitudinal study suggests that so-called "career-oriented majors" find their post-college footing more quickly than so-called "academic majors". Now, I'm sensitive to the notion that this focus on post-college work can easily get away from much of what is great about learning and teaching in higher education. But there are real pressures facing the academy in clarifying our relevance (and justifying our high expense) to the larger world. At a minimum, I think it's worth reexamining our goals for particular classes and for the larger collegiate experience.

I'd be interested in hearing people comment on the issue of what you see your classes and our college education as doing, here or on their own blogs. [I don't want to interfere with student comments on Shannon's blog post, because I think that part of the conversation is even more important to get going.]

* [Full Disclosure: Shannon's post says nice things about one of those efforts, my Digital History Seminar.]

UPDATE: Might as well add this post from Inside Higher Ed for one take on what's wrong with Liberal Arts Colleges and we need to do to change to the conversation. (I should say that the post has some intriguing ideas, though I add it only as further additions to the larger discussion.)

Omeka and the Digital History Class

2008-02-27T21:41:00.003-05:00

This began as a comment at an NITLE blog, but I realized that it contained information that I'd been meaning to blog about anyway. So, here it is:

I'm teaching an undergraduate seminar in digital history this semester at the University of Mary Washington. The students in the seminar were shown an array of digital tools during the first 4 weeks of the semester. Of those, they chose a series of tools for their projects, and three of the four student groups in the course decided to use Omeka to create archives for their projects. [These projects, descriptions of which can be seen at the course blog noted above, include a site on civil rights leader James Farmer, a project using alumni interviews to tell the history of UMW, and a site exploring James Monroe's time as Minister to France.]

I should note that although I (via UMW's excellent Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies experts) presented Omeka to the students as one of many options, they all seemed to quickly get its possible uses as an archive and presentation tool.

We began with a test Omeka installation for the entire class with which all the students played around. Now, each group will have its own Omeka installation to begin this week to populate with photographs, scanned documents, and videos.

I'd be interested in hearing about how others are using Omeka in their own classes.

Brief Update -- End of Week 5

2008-02-17T20:28:00.004-05:00

I've been kept from blogging here lately by managing various class details and two searches, among other things. Still, I wanted to post a brief update of what's going on in the Digital History Seminar.

All four groups have submitted proposals ("contracts") with their plans for the projects and how they will complete the project. [They did this via GoogleDocs that each group had used to write the contract.] These contracts included a description of the project, an annotated list of the digital tools they were planning on using, and a timetable for the completion of the major components of the project.

My observations, in brief, after reading these contracts:

In most cases, the proposed projects are more ambitious than those I would have assigned had I been very precise about what I wanted. [I was intentionally broad in my initial descriptions of the projects.] Although one or two of the groups may have to ultimately scale back their goals a little bit, thinking creatively and ambitiously about these projects is exactly what I hoped for these students. They have done that.
The tools they've chosen to use are mostly those that DTLT and I presented to them as part of their digital toolkit. [Omeka, GoogleDocs, SIMILE/Timeline, WordPress (via UMW Blogs WPMU), WindowsMovieMaker, scanning, etc. There are a few exceptions that were outside that list (e.g., Adobe Contribute for a site that'll be part of the school's official site), but that's okay. The groups at least had a chance to think about which tools made the most sense, given what they wanted to do.
The schedules were often very ambitious, and that was the most common comment I made to the groups. Still, in almost every case the group members wanted to forge ahead with their ambitious set of deadlines, hoping that it would keep them on track throughout the semester.

Each group received my comments and has until tonight to revise their contract for my approval. [They can still make changes, but they'll need to have a good reason to do so after this point.] Next week we'll continue our weekly discussions of a topic related to digital history (this week's topics are Copyright and Wikipedia) and we'll see the first groups present status reports to the class as a whole. Not only will these weekly reports force students to articulate where they are and what they've been doing, they will also provide a forum for students to share their problems and successes with their classmates.

Honestly, I can't wait to see the products these groups produce. If anything, I'm more excited now that I've seen their proposed contracts. I was talking to a group of alums this weekend about the project and many of them expressed the wish that they were back in school again. [This kind of project is infectious. Be warned!]

The one thing that I'm slightly let down by has been the relatively light blogging of the process by many of the students. [Some have been quite good.] But, since that blogging is a major part of the way I can assess their work (and ultimately leads to part of their grades), I'm a little surprised. Still, that is a minor issue (and one that I'm working on) that I think does little to detract from projects that have the potential of being some of the best student work I've ever been a part of. [I don't think I'm being overly hyperbolic here, but I'm not exactly unbiased either. Besides, I said this would be a brief post, and look at it now.... :-]

Week 2 -- Still Chaotic

2008-01-24T14:50:00.000-05:00

This week the digital history seminar addressed information architecture and web site design, the open-source presentation software Omeka, and looked at other examples of digital history projects. [With the help of DTLT's programming, semantic web touting, open-source and server guru, Patrick, of course.] Finally they split into their groups to continue brainstorming about their projects.

I suspect the notion of information architecture is still a bit overwhelming as they are just beginning to narrow down the possible choices for their projects. Figuring out how to lay out their data in a structured way is difficult to comprehend if what that data might be is still not clear. I think they really liked Omeka, though they've been running into some problems figuring out how to use it. [I've mostly told them to just play with it on their own in the test install Patrick set up, something they've had mixed success with.]

For two groups (the James Farmer project and the James Monroe Papers project) the process of deciding on the scope, nature, and form of their project is both enriched and complicated as they are working directly with interested faculty members who have expertise in their area. These two faculty members came to meet with those groups on Thursday and began the process of working with them. Getting to know each other, getting a sense for what each can bring to the process, and getting a feel for various expectations were all part of the process of that meeting.

I'm still very excited about the class and I continue to enjoy going in each day. I'm a little concerned that content is still secondary in the students' minds as they struggle with the various tools and skills they're being shown. I'm going to need to continue to remind them (and me) that the digital tools and skills are just different ways of presenting what they want to say.

"Uncomfortable, but not paralyzed"

2008-01-22T09:52:00.000-05:00

I gave my digital history class a "pep talk" at the end of last week to address the concerns some of them had about feeling overwhelmed and uncertain about exactly what I wanted them to do this semester.

I explained that I wanted them to be uncertain, that I wanted them to be shaken out of their normal writing and researching experience, that it was in those conditions that they were most likely to learn. However, I explained that I wanted them to not be so overwhelmed that they felt like they couldn't do anything. I told them I wanted them to be "uncomfortable, but not paralyzed." It sounded funny after I said it (no faculty quote t-shirts, please) but it's a good summary of the environment I hope to create in this class. [Though comfortable is the ultimate goal.]

It came up again today in class as the students looked blankly when they were asked if they had any questions. So I asked, "uncomfortable or paralyzed?" They laughed and we moved forward.

I'm still concerned that some people are closer to paralyzed than uncomfortable, but I think they're willing to ask questions when they're stuck.

Starting a New Semester and a New Class: Risk and Fear in 2008

2008-01-14T21:35:00.001-05:00

This has been a busy school year for me (hence the long absence of this blog) and this semester is no different. Still, I wanted to talk about this semester a bit as it begins, if only to remind myself later what I hope to accomplish. [Maybe I'll find time a little later for a recap of what worked and what didn't in the blogging I used with two of my classes last semester.]

Major projects this semester:

Host a conference (the Virginia Forum in April).
Be part of a campus discussion about the role of digitization and digital initiatives.
Integrate wiki-based weekly pre-discussions into my US History Survey and Women's history as I've done in previous semesters.
Teach a new digital history seminar.
Other work items include a couple of faculty searches, covering some classes for a colleague, serving on four other committees, writing a conference paper and trying to get my book through the later hoops of publishing.

The wiki-based discussions worked really well last fall and last spring and I look forward to using those again. [I introduced the concept of posting comments about the primary sources readings to a group wiki to my survey class which started today and one student asked, with some measure of disbelief, "Has that actually worked before?" When I told him that this was the third semester and the fourth class I'd used this technique with (and that the previous ones had been very successful), he seemed surprised.] Still, at least some in the class were intrigued (and a couple had already posted just a few hours later).

The digital history class is my biggest new project and the point that I'm most interested in laying out here. A little background first: I have wanted to teach a history and new media class since I started adjuncting in 1999. For a variety of reasons (tenure not the least of them) I haven't managed to get to it. I decided last year that I would teach the class this semester, as a 400-level history department seminar. I began talking to our excellent colleagues in DTLT almost a year ago and we began meetings last fall that started to lay the groundwork for this class. The class as I imagine it won't easily happen without their help.

So what is the class and what are my goals for it? Well, here's the course description:

This seminar will focus on the process of creating digital history. The course readings, workshops, and discussions expose students to the philosophy and practice of the emerging field of History and New Media. The course will be centered on the creation of four digital history projects, all of which are related to making local resources available online. These projects include the creation of an online presence for the James Monroe Papers, the construction of a site expanding on the state historical markers in the Fredericksburg area, the expansion of digital work previously done on James Farmer's presence on campus, and the building of a digital exhibit for UMW's Centennial.

The roster is made up of mostly seniors, but also juniors and a sophomore or two. I've already surveyed their digital interests, comfort level, and self-reported digital skills (maybe more on that later). We've already chosen which projects each student will work on over the course of the semester. Almost every student has already created a blog on UMWBlogs and a del.icio.us account of their own. And we haven't met yet.

Check out the syllabus and the course site for more on the schedule and the rough outlines I've laid out for each group project here. [I should say that I've been inspired in the formation of this class by the work and graduate teaching of digital historians Dan Cohen and Bill Turkel, neither of whom I've met, but whose work I've been able to follow in a particularly New Media way. Equally important has been the work and encouragement of someone I have met (at Faculty Academy last year), namely Barbara Ganley, whose words, blogging, and teaching continue to influence the pedagogical choices I make.]

I'm incredibly excited to teach a class I've wanted to teach in some form for my entire professional teaching career. But I'm also nervous. Nervous because I want the students to be able to choose some of the path the course takes. Nervous because I don't know quite where that means we'll end up. Nervous to ask many different people (from DTLT, from other faculty departments, from other parts of the institution) to work with me and these students on something that might not look very polished in the end. Nervous because I'm asking a lot of people to trust me that this will be worth it. None of that anxiety is stopping me from doing this class. Excitement overwhelms anxiety this evening before the first class. I hope that it will continue to do so throughout the semester.

I hope that the students in this class will read this (I know one of them will soon, but hopefully the others will find it too). I know some of them are nervous as well. Good. I know that some of them don't feel like they know what they're doing. Good. I know that the class as a whole, and as groups, and as individuals, will struggle at times this semester to figure out what it is that their projects and this class is about. Good. I don't mean that I want them to flounder without purpose. I will be there (with the support of some of the best educators I know) to support them and help them find their own way.

But that's just it. I want them to find their own way. I could (and have) assigned digital projects where everything that students did was scripted for them. [And many of them have turned out really well.]

But I don't want that this time. Or, I should say, I want more than that this time. I have given the students broad outlines of digital projects as starting places with some basic structures, and what I see as key components, but I'm not going to dictate what they should do. I've arranged with Martha, Jerry, Andy, Patrick, and Jim to provide students with a digital toolkit, an array of possible tools with which to approach those projects, but I'm not going to tell them which tools they have to use. I've arranged to have expert faculty come and talk to a few of the groups about their projects, but those faculty aren't going to determine the students' projects either.

Those people who still follow this blog after its long absence, I hope you'll check out the course blog, the syllabus, the students' blogs narrating their work, and the projects as they begin to emerge. I, and the students, will benefit from your comments and suggestions.

Mary Washington Alum and the Holocaust Museum

2007-09-19T20:54:00.000-04:00

In today's New York Times, there's an article about a collection of photographs from a Nazi concentration camp. What makes these pictures unusual is that they're of the camp's SS officers relaxing in various ways which seemingly ignore the atrocities of which they're a significant part. The contrast is chilling and alludes directly to what Hannah Arendt described as the "banality of evil." The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has an online exhibit dedicated to the images here.

I bring this up on this blog because I wanted to share these striking images, but also because the first name mentioned in the story is a former star student from MW, Rebecca Erbelding, a History and American Studies double major who did her senior thesis with me several years ago. [It was a fascinating exploration of the role that an American, Varian Fry, played in getting people out of Nazi Germany.] She interned with the Holocaust Museum, which turned into a full-time job there. She's now an archivist at that incredible institution. I suppose one of the positive counters to getting older is that you have more chances to see your students succeed. That's pretty cool indeed.

Rebecca narrates a slideshow of the images here.

UPDATE: She can also be heard on NPR's Talk of the Nation here.

I Enter the WPMU Blogging Fray....

2007-09-02T13:48:00.001-04:00

This post is a quick summary of my digital pedagogy plans for this semester.

In one class, I'm repeating the wiki-as-discussion starter experiment from last spring. In this class, the first half of an upper-level course on US Women's History, the wiki has already been the site of a great discussion of the theory, history, and current implications of the history of women.

In my new First-Year Seminar on the history of the experiences of returning American veterans and my significantly revised Historical Methods class (required for all history majors), I've taken advantage of the new WPMU (WordPress Multi-User) installation begun at umwblogs.org. Each class has a course blog (what Barbara Ganley calls the "Motherblog"), and then each student has their own blog, listed in the blogroll. Using RSS, eventually I want to feed their posts into the course blog itself. In both classes students are required to blog at least once a week and post comments on two of their classmates' blogs a week.

In the First-Year Seminar, the blogging is more structured, as their posts will be twice weekly 1-2 paragraph responses to the primary and secondary source reading. [They'll have a chance to rewrite two of the best of those posts near the end of the semester for a separate grade.]

In the Historical Methods class, although they sometimes will have specific blogging topics, at other times, I want them to write freely about their research process, to explore their writing, to discuss their own interests in aspects of history, and to respond to the ideas of others.

So far, everyone in the classes has set up their blogs and made one post introducing themselves. Here we go....

What do I hope to accomplish with this use of blogs? Oh, lots and lots....

As I told the students in the Methods course:

This online space will be used in a variety of ways--a research log, an assignment location, a place to discuss your project and the projects of others--but the ultimate goal is to allow you to create a shared space where you can display your work and begin to reflect on your learning, an electronic portfolio of your time in this class, and hopefully in connections to other courses as well.

I don't want much, do I?

Suggestions for improving this system or encouraging student blogging? Please let me know.

Web Filtering and the Schools

2007-08-31T06:31:00.000-04:00

Fair warning: This is a rant about the inability to access certain social tools in certain K-12 school systems. [For another rant on a similar subject see this rejection of over-the-top web-related fears in education.]

I've presented and talked with a number of different K-12 teachers from a number of different school districts in my roles as a history professor and as a relative of numerous such teachers.

I've increasingly been annoyed by the trend among many school districts to block access from their networks to more and more websites. Now, let's be clear. I understand that there is a great deal of material out there that we'd rather our students did not look at. But the process of filtering and blocking is done is such an awkward, blunt manner that the process of teaching is being impacted. [This is not to mention my problem with the notion that blocking access makes these things go away; we should instead be teaching students to engage the Internet in responsible ways.]

Let me give you some examples.

del.icio.us and ma.gnolia.com -- social bookmarking sites -- I tried to demonstrate del.icio.us to a group of teachers recently, only to find that it was blocked, for reasons no one could explain. -- How exactly are these a threat to individuals? Seriously, can somebody explain this one to me?

Basic Searches -- I was on a K-12 school network and trying to find a citation for a friend to a scholarly article on Civil War prisons. I remembered the title, "Houses of Horror," but was stymied by the keyword filter placed by the school system on the Google Search I ran. Now, I was able to find a workaround to locate the citation, but finding things online are difficult enough without such restrictions.

YouTube -- YouTube is blocked by many school systems, and perhaps I can understand why. However, there are many useful videos on there for history (and other) teachers. Why can't teachers access such materials, even if students can't? Why block an incredibly useful resource for teachers? [I know there are walled garden version of these: TeacherTube, unitedstreaming, etc. But none of these are YouTube, the largest and most important of the video sites.]

The two biggest problems I have with the filtering are:

1) It ignores the reality that most students will figure out a way around such filtering. Or even if not, they'll find this stuff outside of school, and likely outside of the guidance of the people who are trained to teach students how to process information in a responsible way. At the least, guided time online outside of walled Internet gardens better prepares students to be better Net citizens. How are students to learn information literacy if they get only a filtered version in the place where they are supposed to be learning critical thinking, source evaluation and knowledge creation?

2 ) It shows a remarkable lack of trust for teachers themselves. Blocking teachers' access suggests that although they are trusted with teaching 20-40 students at any given time, they are not capable of figuring out which sites are appropriate and which are not. The filtering systems used are too often blunt objects which make it harder for teachers to do their jobs well. [I've talked to teachers who've never been on YouTube, never heard of del.icio.us, never tried any one of a number of tools central to Web 2.0, and the main reason is that they don't have access to them in the classrooms and schools where they spend so many hours each day.]

I acknowledge that K-12 school systems face real problems in protecting children and young adults from the worst that is online. I understand much of the effort that they've made in this area, and comprehend that there are very real financial and technical constraints. However, in order for school districts to prepare their students for the digital world in which so often live, filtering systems have to become more targeted, and until they are, teachers need to be able to bypass those systems to gain access to some sites that are wrongly blocked.

Am I off the mark here? Am I missing something? Are there other obvious sites/tools being blocked I haven't listed here? Let me know.

Twitter: Why all the fuss?

2007-08-18T06:24:00.000-04:00

I've been using Twitter for several months now. [I have ~25 people I follow and about the same number follow me. I post at least once a day and I've used it to learn more about people I already knew from work, and gotten to know people with whom I've spent less than 48 hours in person. I don't have it on my cell phone, but I do check it fairly regularly when I'm online.]

Although I have no idea what the company's business plan is (probably to be bought by Google or Yahoo), it's interesting to me that so many people are asking themselves how to use it (or dismissing it as overwhelming and/or naval-gazing). If we see it as a slightly different method of keeping in touch with other people, with people we're interested in for a variety of intellectual or personal reasons, then good. Why the hand-wringing or defensiveness about it I see from so many bloggers (many of whom I really respect)? [For example] Is it that it's really hard to explain to people who aren't on it?

The Revolution in Technology -- Links toward a Presentation

2007-08-04T15:36:00.000-04:00

Here's the list of links from the TAH August 2007 Presentation I did on "The Revolution in (Information) Technology" -- These are also at http://del.icio.us/tag/tah2007

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank: Collecting and Preserving the Stories of Katrina and Rita
YouTube - How to Use the Dial Phone (1927)
2007 Horizon Report | nmc
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
Google Reader
Bloglines
Alexander Spotswood's Journey -- as seen in Flickr and Google Maps
YouTube - The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)
My Digital Double: Watch the World(s).
Very cool representation in SL of Van Gogh's Starry Night
shifthappens » Various Versions of the Presentation
copies of "Did you know?" presentation
Netvibes
Internet Archive
A great idea, even without the Wayback Machine. With Wayback, it's invaluable.
YouTube - Introducing the book
Medieval Helpdesk

Preparing for teaching in the Fall, Or the Manuscript that Ate My Summer

2007-07-28T18:08:00.000-04:00

This is a post that I wrote in late July, but never had the chance to finish. As I have a spare moment now that the manuscript is in, but the class papers haven't yet arrived, I'll post it and a series of other thoughts I've been meaning to get out....

I've been feeling overwhelmed lately as I contemplate the time remaining this summer and the things I'd planned to do during the so-called summer break. The manuscript due to my editor in early September is taking longer than I thought and so many of the other goals this summer have fallen to secondary or tertiary status. This includes delving in as much detail as I'd like into responding to recent posts by Shannon, Steve, Mike, and Gardner. Most depressing to me is that I'd love to spend lots more time on my fall classes this summer, especially my new First-Year Seminar. Then came Barbara's beautiful post (Midsummer Preparations for Fall) on what she does in the summer to create new fall classes to make feel even more behind....

Don't get me wrong. I've already spent a lot of time on the fall classes, including the new one, and I'll have it ready on time. [I think the students are really going to like it.] But I'd like to have been able to spend a good month really getting them just right (or at least closer to where I'd like them to be). But balancing my scholarship, my instructional technology interests, and my teaching has been difficult, especially as I attempt to keep all that in balance with the time spent with my wonderful family....

Why I Love Working (& Teaching & Learning) Here

2007-07-26T22:50:00.001-04:00

As I've been working on my big summer project (the revised book manuscript), I've been eagerly following Gardner's summer course entitled From Memex to YouTube: An Introduction to New Media Studies. Then this afternoon (just a few hours before class started), Shannon twittered that she wished she could see the class's final presentations. I echoed her with a plea for Gardner to setup a webcam and soon suggestions for places to host it came in from our local twittersphere. By the time class started a ustream account had been set up and the event was being streamed, live. It spent most of the evening on ustream's front page. Anyone could drop in and see the projects of the people in the class.

I wasn't able to get to the stream until it was more than half over, but when I did I remembered why I like working where I am so much. Why?

The students were amazing. They had great projects and they were incredibly enthusiastic about the class and their own work (and, dare I say, their learning). [See an Alaskan summary of a few of them here and the full video stream from here.] These kind of students are why MW is such a great place to work.
Not a small part of this excitement, interest, skill, and creativity was due to the class environment set by Gardner. Play, interdisciplinarity, technology-enabled creativity, intellectual rigor (the good kind), and real engagement all were at work here, in a Real School class. Cool colleagues are why MW is such a great place to work.
While I watched the students present, I was engaged in a chat with people from all over the continent (Alaska, Arizona, Texas, Canada) many of whom had heard about it from the invite Gardner and Martha put on their Twitter networks. As I chatted with DTLT friends (Jim, Jerry, Andy (on vacation!), and Martha), faculty colleagues (Sue, Gardner), people I'd met at conferences (CogDog) or people I knew largely from the blogosphere (D'Arcy, Chris, Vidya), and students in (and out of) the classroom, I thought to myself: "These are really bright, really engaged, really interesting people, and I can't believe how much fun this is...."
As I was watching the student presentations, I also found myself engaged in three or four chat conversation threads at once. It was chaotic, it was crazy, and it was probably not for everyone. That kind of multi-threaded conversation drives some people mad, but in this environment it just worked for me. Discussions of projects, of software, of Doug Engelbart, of Carl Jung, of the impact of the process of authorship on the author's view of other work, of films and film theory, of numerous bad jokes, inside jokes, sarcastic jokes, and ROTFL jokes, of the wonder and awe of the final presentation of the night--an amazing movie by Serena that brought many of us watching online to the brink of tears.
I want to take this class; and if that isn't possible, then I want to team-teach it with Gardner; and if that isn't possible, then look for the history version, coming soon to a seminar room near you. [Adventures in Digital History!] I love that I teach at a school where there is room in the curriculum and the minds of the people I work with for these kinds of explorations.

Now, admittedly, this post has a little of the fanboy aspect to it. The reality check is that not every day feels like this in this job. There are days when I would love to have 1/10 of the energy I felt tonight. There are conversations with colleagues or students that leave me drained, not inspired. There are days I plod along, rather than lead and innovate. I know that.
In fact, in the middle of this amazing few hours, I found myself in a brief chat with a colleague where we both acknowledged how special this extended moment was and how we wished it could always be like this. So, where do we go from here? Well, we need to hold on to (and brag about) these moments until they are more common. [Hence this post.] I want to harness this energy, bottle it up somehow and feed it to everyone I see: students, faculty, administrators, learners all. This is what learning can be. This is what Real School is all about.

How can you measure or quantify the feeling of excitement, engagement and learning that took place tonight? [Yes, I use those terms deliberately.] We need to figure out how to replicate these moments, not in a cold, cloning kind of way, but in setting the stage for creativity, learning and innovation in and out of classrooms, and then taking advantage of those moments of opportunity to share them.

But for tonight, I'm just going to keep smiling.

Data, Information Overload, and Selling the University (in a good way)

2007-07-26T09:10:00.001-04:00

Martha's written another wide open exploration about the soul of academia in the form of a discussion of what data collection means. I responded in her comments, but I wanted to develop it a little more here.

I wonder if this focus on data and rankings isn't just another of a series of poor attempts made to deal with the information overload that all of us have been facing? Both faculty/administrators and prospective/current students/parents have to figure out some way of addressing the role of the increasingly expensive collegiate experience. Colleges have to justify their prohibitive expense and parents (and increasingly students) want that justification spelled out for them (and want a measurable return on their investment). The vast amount of data available today about schools and the college experience means that parents and students are easily overwhelmed in their choices. A ranking system allows those parents and students to cope with that overwhelming set of data, providing a set of “concrete” justifications to hang their decisions on. Rankings systems (based on that data) also allow colleges to address (at least in appearance) questions of fiscal accountability (without really exploring substantive external or internal questions about the links between “value” and “education”). It’s not a perfect system, but the structure that data built does allow a kind of compromise method for all these actors to discuss higher education in a manageable way.

But ultimately this system is far from perfect and reveals a substantive failure of academia to properly identify and explain its role. The argument we should be loudly and broadly and proudly making is that the educational experience Martha and Gardner and Steve and so many others are writing about (learning focused; interdisciplinary in all the best ways; playful; collaborative and individualized; potentially, though not necessarily, technology-enabled) is worth the money spent because it does make graduates better enabled to succeed in the work force, as well as making them better citizens, better friends, better voters, better people....

The data-driven approach to education (epitomized by the US News and World Report Rankings, but perpetuated by many others) appeals to people (and always will--it's easier and it’s minimally satisfying). Of course, if we consider quantitative literacy as important as written, aural, and visual literacy--and what good liberal arts program wouldn't?--then we could teach students (and their parents) as well as our fellow academicians how to look behind those stats to see the assumptions behind them. And let’s turn all that data (and the tools for presenting it) in our favor. Admittedly, many of the benefits we’re talking about are not easily quantifiable. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t quantify them or present them in new ways. That’s why it’s so important that we develop ways to make individual and community educational experiences visible to ourselves and to others.

And so we're back to umwronco in at least a couple of its forms. Our work is cut out for us; Martha's right that this is a pivotal moment in education. I recognize the potential "dark underbelly" she refers to, but I continue to be excited by the sheer possibilities inherent in higher education and the potential of academia to lead the caravan through the 21st century.

A New Name for umwronco

2007-06-15T13:13:00.000-04:00

In the interests of creating a new, non-trademarked name for what we've been talking about here, let me start by making an ungainly suggestion, one so clunky that others will be inspired to come up with something better. Borrowing from Gardner and Martha, I hereby dub it the "Caravan of Learning Suite for Inspired Learners" or COLSIM for short. [Be warned, if someone else doesn't come up with something better, I will keep using this one....]

Slicing and Dicing for Education: My Thoughts on a Real School Tool

2007-06-15T10:10:00.000-04:00

[Let me start by apologizing for the title. I'm working to finish a book manuscript and I'm tending to see everything in history book title form at the moment.....]

Martha has called out those of us who have been participating in some really exciting conversations about the future connections between education and technology. So, this is my response to Martha's vision and an attempt to begin to explain my own. [I'm writing this assuming you've read hers....]

One of the early complicating issues in those initial, wide-ranging conversations, as I remember it, was between those who saw the need for a specific tool for capturing one's own digital trail and those who seemed more interested in the ability to manipulate and view information through a variety of filters (hence the "slice-and-dice" metaphor). Here's Martha's summary:

Originally, I was focussed on one specific tool that I felt would meet a particular need — a Zotero-like device (Firefox plugin?) that a user could use to “capture” any kind of online resource and generate a sort of RSS/XML-feed on steroids. Sick of wondering how to get all the various Web authoring tools and social networking spaces to play nicely together, I wondered what would happen if we just scrapped that approach altogether and built some intelligent, lightweight, browser-based “appliance” that would allow me to cobble together a feed from any spot along my digital trail. (Others have asked if this isn’t del.icio.us. I still don’t *think* so, but I can’t really explain it. At least, not right now, I can’t.)

I have to start by noting that I've never seen the set of tools as needing to be a single Zotero-like record of intellectual online travels, in part because of a larger concern with the ability of such a tool to capture off-line material too and in part because I haven't wrapped my head around the best ways to use Zotero itself. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to have such a tool, especially as Martha describes it, but I'm not sure it's the end goal. [It could be one of a set of tools, but I may be one of those who thinks that del.icio.us with its rss feeds is good enough, at least for now.]

I also think that Martha did a great job of summarizing a great deal of what I hope this set of tools will be. Still, she asked for our vision of what umwronco could be, and here's mine:

1) A snapshot of our intellectual life -- I've used this phrase a number of times to suggest a key use for umwronco to me. The life and mission of a university is ostensibly public, yet much of its interactions, discussions, and ideas remain bottled up in silos that range from the individual, to between teacher-student, to within the classroom, to the campus itself. Why stop there, especially at a public institution?

Example 1 -- I can imagine talking to a group of potential students and their parents at an admissions function with a screen behind me showing a tag cloud of categories being discussed on campus in the last 24 hours or an intellectual map with student-created connections between and amongst various classes and extra-class sources and ideas. I'm geeked by how powerful it would be for me to tell those parents and potential students, "This is the intellectual life of this institution right now. Don't you want to join us?"
Example 2 -- Such a snapshot could (and should) be taken with a broader lens. e.g., what are Virginia college students talking/writing/thinking about right now?
Example 3 -- Using such a snapshot, teachers and students, learners all, could see the larger intellectual world of the campus and build off that. [Admittedly the snapshot might be scary -- does anyone want to see that the intellectual life of the campus includes a certain hotel heiress's latest problems? But in that case maybe students and faculty could work to change the intellectual life and soon.]
Example 4 -- Using such a snapshot, administrators, including student life personnel, could respond more precisely to student needs and interests, those prosaic (laundry complaints) and profound (responses to tragedies). In other words, it might be a way to measure the pulse of the student body.

I would add that I want to be able to take various snapshots over time (a stop-motion movie of the intellectual life of the institution would be very cool) and to be able to change the scope of the snapshot (capturing the intellectual life of a class, of a department, of a single student, of a dorm--let's not forget that even in the online world that physical, off-line space still matters a great deal). Do you see where the "slicing and dicing" comes in?

2) A way for students to make connections between their various sources of learning and create a self-aware, reflective course of study -- And no, I'm not so self-important to think that this only includes connections between their classes or a reflection on the courses required for their major. It is widely acknowledged that students learn a great deal outside of the classroom and their course assignments and this suite needs to allow students to make such connections. Still, I see this suite of tools as making it possible for students to more explicitly engage in the connections (and perhaps as importantly in the conflicts) between their various classes, even when those courses were created in isolation from each other. [This view is heavily inspired by a recent conversation with Gardner and Steve Greenlaw.]

Example 1 -- A student learns overlapping material in my 19th Century American Families class and an English class on Women Writers. What current incentive does that student have to make such connections explicit? [I encourage students to bring up materials learned in other classes and I have some colleagues that do as well. But that process could be expanded and encouraged, allowing self-reflection for students and a view of that connections for others.]
Example 1.5 -- A student looking for a class to take for next semester reviews those reflections/connections posted by students who have taken similar classes. Amazon's site has a feature that is effectively: "readers who liked this book also liked this one". Why couldn't that work for students and classes as well?
Example 2 -- E-portfolios -- 'nuff said.

3) A way to begin to dip into and process the larger flow (torrent?) of information online. [In other words, learning to deal with information overload.] -- Recently there have been a number of discussions of the disconnect between students' lives online and their abilities to navigate that online world in an academically sophisticated (or perhaps just critical) way. I'd want this suite of tools to train students in the art of information consumption and production.

Example -- Digital literacy, as I see it, is fundamentally about the ability to navigate the online world in a reliable, thoughtful, critical way. [My lengthier versions of that definition.... ] So, a student might come to see the umwronco set of tools as a way to help them look at the online world in a new way, especially if it involved tagging/categorization, annotation, and a unified place to keep one's own learning centered.

4) A conscious, explicit reinforcement of the need to keep citation, authority and reliability at the forefront of sliced and diced material and an awareness of the role of bias and perspective. -- Obviously related to the last point, I'm still close enough to my disciplinary origins to insist that any sliced/diced/created/preserved information be linked in a prominent way to its origins. To do otherwise risks exacerbating a sentiment I've noticed among students, namely that the web seems a seamless information source to them, not a series of collections of information with different authors (and therefore different authority and different levels of reliability). I expect that umwronco would help students (and faculty) to be more aware of their own assumptions and biases (in what information they can get, in what filters are being used, and therefore what material is left out) and those of others.

Example -- Students could create an extensive, cross-course annotated bibliography through both linking and formal citations that could ground part or all of their online work.

5) These tools will be perpetual betas, yet available in various "packages" depending on the expertise and interest of the user. -- The phrase "perpetual beta", which I picked up from Gardner and Jeremy Boggs at Clioweb, took me a while to embrace, but embrace it I have. Faculty and students will need to come to terms with a fast-changing, always-in-revision world of tools. [We need to remember that academia is constantly in revision; it's just typically been on a (much) longer cycle.] Still, we need to be conscious of the need to attract people to the umwronco and I think a series of ronco-packages might be one way to go (even if never formally expressed this way).

Level 1 -- alpha testers -- they'll try anything, as long as it has the potential to improve student and teacher learning.
Level 2 -- beta testers -- rough edges are fine, they revise their classes almost every semester anyway.
Level 3 -- gamma testers -- Fewer rough edges, numerous examples/models for implementation.
Level 4 -- Everybody else -- Sneak in a tool or two when they're not looking....

I'm aware that I haven't been especially specific or practical about implementation at this point. I don't think wedding ourselves to one technology or software or tool is the right approach here, especially given the rapid rate of change. I also am aware that I don't know the specifics of how all these technologies work or even more important, the difficulties of implementation. With those two caveats, my view of the suite of tools would include some combination of the following: blogs, multi-user blogs, wikis, electronic forums, RSS feeds, del.icio.us, maybe Zotero, tag clouds, e-portfolios, GIS software, Bluehost, Fantastico, PhpSurveyor, YouTube, Drupal, IM, Twitter and BackTwitter, even (gasp) email. [Just to be clear, I don't see myself using all of these, but the idea of a suite of tools is the point here.]

Let me finish by reminding the reader (congratulations on making it this far!) that this post is part of a much larger conversation about this topic and many others that I have been privileged to be a part of over the last couple of years. Two points about that: First, many of these idea are not my own, or at least not in their original form. Most of them came from the other people in these conversations and so they should get that credit (in addition to those mentioned already: Jerry, Angela, Patrick, Jim, Andy, Chip, Cathy, Charlotte, Sue, and most recently, Laura, Alan, and Barbara). Second, I've been able to be incredibly honest with the people that have been part of that conversation and this post may reflect that directness at times. None of that directness or contrariness should be taken as anything more than respectful disagreement about parts of our shared mission. I mention this not for the core people involved in that conversation, because I know they understand that, but in awareness of the potentially larger audience. If you don't have such a group of people you can be honest and frank and inspired with, well, join ours!

Facebook and Faculty: A Small Tale of Utility

2007-06-08T21:34:00.000-04:00

A podcast by CHNM's Digital Campus team and posts by Jerry Slezak and Jim Groom, stimulating an active conversation about the merits and weaknesses of Facebook in academic settings have prompted me to write about my own recent experiment with the social networking site. I've had a Facebook account and a growing number of mostly student friends (~65) for a couple of years now. I've used it mostly to keep in touch with recent grads, though current students have used it to look up my AIM account or converse with me about particular projects or their on-campus activities.

Recently, however, I set up a Facebook group for my History Department Alumni Book club and invited those of my Facebook friends who were alums. Thirty joined in 24 hours, and other alums joined as well (I left the group open) bringing the total close to 40. I've already organized the next meeting and book choice via the event system and people have already RSVPed (and explained to the group why they're not coming, if they can't make it). Not sure why I resisted tapping into that existing community before now, but I'm glad I have.

It doesn't reach everyone; not everyone's on Facebook, and not all of those who are on the site are my friends. [Though, as I noted, a number of unofficial friends have joined on their own .]* I have about 90 people on the email list for the book club and I still use that to contact most people. Facebook also won't be the prime way we meet and discuss the books. [Face-to-face meetings are supplemented by a blog and comments at umwhistory.blogspot.com.] Still, Facebook allows an easy RSVP system and a convenient place to coordinate meetings and book choices and it will advertise the book club in a way that most alums wouldn't have stumbled on before. [Not to mention the fact that current students can see it in my Groups and those of their friends who recently graduated, furthering the likelihood that they'll join when they become alums.]

I'm not particularly interested in using it for classroom teaching at this point (though I'm open to the possibility if it made sense); rather I see Facebook as a way to engage students in larger (broader than one course) discussions and as a way of interacting with students and former students through a group channel that persists beyond their time in a particular class or in their collegiate career. I'll post about Facebook's relation to the book club in future posts.

UPDATE: A former student contacted me via Facebook after I created the book club group. He had wanted to be in the book club when he graduated two years ago, but had forgotten to contact me to sign up. He'd seen the book club group on Facebook and he's excited to be able to join it now.

* "Unofficial" is an awkward, though brief, way to describe people who I know, but are not Facebook friends with; however, "non-friends" (an alternative I considered) makes it sound like I don't like them....

Anatomy of a Blogger

2007-06-01T09:24:00.000-04:00

Martha has asked over at the Fish Wrapper, what kind of bloggers we are, with the goal of complicating the notion of any one style or method or purpose of blogging. [She's right, I do tend to think of blogging as more or less the same. This is another case of us confusing the technology with the conversation.] I'll answer Martha's questions for myself below.

Generally, are you an impetuous blogger? Or do you mull over an idea or post for hours, days, weeks before hand? Do you draft a post and then let it sit until you’ve had a chance to revise it multiple times, perfecting your language and point?

No, I'm a muller. I will let posts sit for months at a time. But, oddly, now that I think about it, not generally because I want to revise them more. I'm an impetuous drafter, writing blog posts as inspired, but I tend not to hit "Publish" on them very quickly. [Faculty Academy this year being an exception.] That has more to do with a deliberate (self)consciousness of my online presence than the care with which Barbara Ganley calls for in "slow blogging".

Do you “collect” the references in your posts before you write them (if so, describe your system)? Or do you blog with 15 windows open, copying and pasting quotes and URLs, as needed?

15 tabs in Firefox (7 right now....)

Do you blog in the admin panel of your blog? Or do you use some third-party tool? If you use a tool, what features does it have that hooked you?

The admin panel. It's worked pretty well for me.

Do you automatically consider placing images in your posts? Or does this not even occur to you, usually?

I don't usually even think of it. I'm generally blogging about concepts, but I see Barbara and others do the same, but with pictures. I'll have to think about this idea more.

Do you write posts and then delete them before clicking “Publish?” Or, by extension, do you have draft posts that have languished for days, weeks, months waiting for you to pull the trigger?

Yes, see above....

Do you feel compelled to blog on a schedule? Do you feel guilty when you don’t?

No, but I feel left out when I see lots of other people posting and I haven't had time (or something to say).

Do you “craft” the experience of your blog, adding sidebar widgets and custom graphics to lure readers into your space?

I've added some sidebar stuff, but I've not thought about it as drawing readers in. After all, I tend to read other people's stuff in Google Reader (and generally visit their blogs only to comment), so I tend not to worry as much about the reader's Techist blog experience. [Maybe I'd have more readers if I did.... :-]

Martha and Laura's posts about this view of blogging and technology suggest we really need to work harder to clarify that these tools are just that, tools, and ways of furthering conversations, creating interactions, and reading, processing, and adding to, that torrent of information to which we all have access, and with which we all have to deal.

Wikis, Wikis, Everywhere: Or, the Wiki as Discussion Starter, Assignment Environment, and Class Project Binder

2007-05-21T10:37:00.000-04:00

Faculty Academy 2007 Presentation -- [This includes updated material from an earlier post.]

Note--Relevant links are posted on the Faculty Academy wiki page for this session and note that only the registered users in the class wikis can edit them or see all the functions.

This semester I used wikis (an installation of MediaWiki to be precise) in two of my classes, though in different ways. I did so at Jerry Slezak’s suggestion, despite my greatest previous interaction with wikis being arguing with students about why they can't use Wikipedia as the scholarly source for their research papers. I'll describe the two classes, the way the wiki was used in each class, and my evaluation of the experiment.

In one course, my 15-person senior seminar (426), the wiki was used as an improved forum to prepare students for class discussion. In the other, a 25-person upper-level lecture class (325), the wiki became not only an improved tool for focusing class discussion, but much of the online presence of the course, including the location of students’ wiki-based research projects.

First, the use of the wiki as a discussion starter
All of my classes involve reading discussions, often of primary source materials. In previous semesters, I used to have students email me comments and questions about the reading for a particular day a couple of hours before class starts. I would then take those comments and questions and create a document that categorized those comments along certain common themes. This document, displayed in front of the class, would then shape the class discussion for the day, based on the particular areas of need or interest expressed by the students.

This semester, however, the students in both these classes posted their comments and questions to a wiki page at least two hours before each discussion class. I set up one page for each day's discussion for the semester.I would then go in, just before class started, and bold the questions/comments I saw as most interesting, most relevant, or most commonly expressed. [Bolding became a source of great pride to some students….]

Of course, a large change under this new system is that they now see each others' postings. [I've resisted this before, fearing repetitiveness, copying, and an unfair burden on those who posted first to carry the class.]

I've found that I was completely wrong.

The quality of the questions and comments went up from previous semesters. What's more, they began to respond to each others' questions, answering the factual queries and starting to engage the open-ended ones. In other words, the discussion began before class did.

Of course, I could have just used a forum on Blackboard or some other open-source software (and I've used such forums with varying degrees of success in other classes with other assignments). They'd still be able to see what the other students had written and respond to those comments. The advantage of the wiki is that students can more easily edit and/or comment on each others' work than in a forum, which is either hierarchical or linear (or both). The wiki is neither.

Using the “history” version function of the wiki I can actually trace the evolution of the conversation as students add material to the ongoing discussion, often inserting themselves in between other people's comments.

They haven't taken to truly editing each others' work, a common issue from what I've heard from those who have used wikis in teaching. [There was a comment deleted by someone else, but that was an accident, for which there was much apologizing.] And actually, I don't see this lack of editing each others' work as a problem since I never explicitly asked them to do that and it’s not what I’m looking for them to do.

This wiki-as-discussion-starter worked in both an upper-level lecture class with once-a-week discussions and in a senior seminar that was all discussion, and required them to post comments/questions on a wiki page before every class period. In 325 – Class discussion started at a deeper level, and the wiki brought out broader discussions than we had time for in class. Plus they were engaged with each others’ ideas before class started. In 426 – Here too the discussions had already begun before class started. Plus it was easy for student discussion leaders to facilitate their own discussion of the readings using the wikis. (Bolding and editing the wiki for their own purposes became common and there was often humor involved, though never at my expense, of course….). :-)

So, overall, other than that, that use of the wikis was a success in both classes. However, in the lecture class, I used the wiki for more than just a discussion starter

HISTORY 325 WIKI Projects
The lecture class is a course about the History of American Technology & Culture. It's a class that's typically 2/3 lecture and 1/3 discussion. Perhaps more importantly, it's a course that in previous iterations has required students to create their own websites about the history of an artifact of American Technology.

Why not continue the old system?

1) Immense amount of work for Jerry and I, as well as for the students, to deal with HTML, page linking, software.
2) Although I began the web project years ago thinking that students should learn HTML or at least web coding as a life skill, it’s not clear that such as skill would actually be useful to these students at the level they’d be gaining.
3) Finally, students’ sites disappeared as they graduated.

The wiki in this class served three purposes:

1) A place for students to post questions and comments about the readings (as I discussed)

2) A site within which each student could create their own research proposal and then their own research project.

3) A class project binder, by which I mean a place where all of the class projects can be gathered together in the same place, a place where students can find the syllabus and all the assignments, and a place where their work has a long-term home, one that can be pointed to as part of portfolio of accomplishments at some point in the future. [One might describe this as a form of CMS or LMS.]

Process

Jerry came in for a workshop session where everyone in the class had a laptop and we did a crash course in the basics of wiki creation.
They had a couple of assignments early in the semester, culminating in a proposal site with a bibliography.
Then they had to build their site structure (laying out all the pages, but without any content).
Two weeks after that, the full site was due.
Then a week of peer reviews, using the Discussion tab (and my guidelines) to evaluate each other’s work. [See the guidelines students were given.]
Then a week of revision before the final project was due.

Advantages for me:

See student work in progress
See timing of their works in progress through the history function
Recent changes RSS feed allows me to watch from afar (through Google Reader or Bloglines).

Disadvantages for me:

See student work in progress
See timing of their works in progress through the history function
Recent changes RSS feed allows me to watch from afar (through Google Reader or Bloglines).

Why? Because I could see that many of the updates, edits, and wiki site building happened the night before, the morning of, the minutes before the assignments were due. [A longheld suspicion proven....]

Presentations
At the end of the semester, I asked each of the students to present their projects in five minutes.

They could discuss the content they covered;
they could discuss cool things they had done or discovered;
they could discuss the process they used;
they could analyze the evolution of their site using the previous version (history) function;
or they could talk about what they wish they had known.

Their presentations varied, though most said they wished they had started earlier. I even set up a page on the wiki for them to post their suggestions. [Many of which revolved around wishing they'd looked at each others' projects for ideas earlier.]

But one of the most reflective student presentations included a PowerPoint slide entitled "What Impacted Me The Most" with the following points:

The Responsibility/Permanence

[Many of the students were extremely cognizant that this was something that would be around after they were finished school and felt that responsibility weigh on them.]

Everyone Viewing My Progress

As this student pointed out, it was not just me watching them create their sites, it was their classmates (or anyone else who happened to find the site).

Citations

I made them cite everything (as any research project in history would be) and that process took time and energy (both in getting the citations accurate and in dealing with the wiki formatting to get them to look right).

Connections Between Projects

This student and others noted how much they enjoyed being able to see how their projects overlapped with each others and with the course themes as a whole.

The Big Finish

One day, late in this semester, a fellow faculty member came to me and told me that one of my students had paid me the ultimate compliment in regards to my wiki site project. She told him, “I’ve never had a project that has been more frustrating, or one in which I’ve learned more.”

Exactly!

Let’s be clear, the goal of the assignment was not to frustrate students, but the process of working through new ways of presenting one’s ideas is not inherently easy.

If students are struggling with the process, but get it done, that means that they are finding ways of adapting to the new requirements, to the new format, to the new expectations. In that way, I hope that they will be better prepared to produce and present information in multiple ways when they graduate.

Despite the increasing use of wikis in business environments, my goal, in other words, was not for them to learn specific MediaWiki skills.

No, I’m much more ambitious.

I want them to be able to think broadly about the presentation of information, about the structure of ideas, about the multiplicity of ways to pass on their perspectives and researched content. I want them to be adaptable producers in a larger world that rarely will ask them to write a 7-10 page formal research paper, but will often ask them to learn new skills, new tools, and to work in new environments (digital and otherwise) and then to apply those new skills sets in reliable/productive ways. [I don’t want much, do I?]

Now, it wasn’t all serious; some of them began to call me Dr. Wiki, eventually to my face.... But, the reaction of the student who made that comment to my colleague suggests that in addition to the research and analytical skills being developed there was more going on for her and, given the student presentations and conversations I had with others in the class, I believe she wasn’t alone.

Thoughts? Reactions?

Ode to a Faculty Academy; Or, My Brain is Full

2007-05-17T22:49:00.000-04:00

The process of processing Faculty Academy is always difficult. Sifting through the inspiration and ideas of another amazing two days is going to take a while.

Highlights that stick out at this juncture:

-- Barbara Ganley's two presentations -- one an impassioned "call to arms" for the role of slow blogging (writing with reflection and purpose) in 21st-century learning, the other an inspiring yet practical workshop on the way to frame a technology-intensive course around both the content and the individual students in a given class. [The last deserves a blog post of its own, and probably from someone more articulate than me.]

-- Claudia Emerson's online technology coming-out party -- three presentations on three different projects, and each of them about a site/blog/work that I wish my students and I had created.

-- Alan Levine's reminder that play and experimentation with non-obviously educational technologies like Second Life and Twitter can provide us with new ways to address educational questions.

-- The Teaching and Learning Technology Fellows demonstrating that a little money (a course release), a fair amount of talking, and a lot of support can aid both technology evangelists and technophobes in creating thoughtful, creative projects from which our students will benefit. [And that not knowing at first exactly what you want to do can be a really good thing.]

-- Karen Stephenson's talk about networks of social interaction, of knowledge capital, and the resulting twittering and Twittering about who the hubs, mavericks and heretics of Mary Washington are (and whether or not we need to give them a hug). [Lots more to think about here....] [Thanks to Gardner for his role in bringing Barbara, Alan, and Karen to campus.]

-- The success of Martha Burtis and the DTLT ITSs (Jerry, Jim, Andy, and Patrick) in not only putting on a terrific conference (including several of their own sessions), but also providing the moral and technical support that enabled almost every one of the projects we saw presented.

[What? What do you mean you missed it?! Well, there's always next year. Or you can talk to your friendly neighborhood ITS today. They're happy to help you implement your ideas, or even to help you figure out what you might want to do. Don't have an ITS at your school? Ask for one. (But you can't have ours.) Their presence here is one of the best things about UMW.]

Jerry and the Clickers

2007-05-17T09:31:00.000-04:00

The session on clickers by Margaret Ray and Bob Rycroft revealed that students were happy whenever Jerry came into the class room. I think that many of us in Monroe have experienced that feeling before. All hail Jerry & the Clickers (wasn't that a 1950s group)?

Jim Groom & Claudia Emerson Redux

2007-05-17T08:45:00.000-04:00

Jim and Claudia presented (neither for the first time at Faculty Academy) on an online literary journal created by one of her classes. Calling Nonce impressive does not do it justice. Check it out for yourself.

[Nearly 40 people crammed into the room to hear them--Standing Room Only....]

One particular point raised by Claudia that intrigued me was the notion of applying to change that particular class from 3 credits to 4, allowing for a "lab" component (or perhaps recognizing the increased time that developing and implementing some of these skills may take). [I'm aware that there are some complications related to campus expectations for what constitutes a four-credit course. Let's set those aside for a second.] What do people think about the idea of a "digital lab" component for more credit?

"The Choir's Getting Larger"

2007-05-16T22:44:00.000-04:00

In a conversation today about the difficulty of convincing colleagues of the utility of technology-enabled teaching and a multiplicity of pedagogical approaches, and the concern that the people at Faculty Academy are often the people who have already bought into these notions, one person observed, "We may be preaching to the choir, but the choir's getting larger."

I was taken aback for a moment, but then I realized he was right. Just look at the program for the Academy and you can see an impressive array of departments, ideas, pedagogies, and interests, all who add their voices to the mix.

I would add to that (if I can take the metaphor a step further) that I suspect that the larger choir and its members have never been more in sync with the others in the choir, never more engaged with each other as teachers and scholars, never more ~~able~~ eager to see what others are working on, never been more ready to embrace teaching as a perpetual beta.

[Why now? I suspect it's a confluence of larger trends such as easier-to-use web tools, the rise of digital public learning spaces, and a willingness of students to engage in these online conversations/creations, as well as local strengths such as leadership, infrastructure and support, and the tech evangelism of a key group of people.]

Where do we go from here? Why, back for Day Two of Faculty Academy, of course!

Gardner, Steve, Jerry, and Jim Rock Room B122

2007-05-16T12:18:00.000-04:00

Jeff McClurken

I'm sitting here in the panel discussion on "Small Pieces Loosely Joined". I can't decide whether I'm more overwhelmed by the lost opportunity in not using the tools they talked about in my classes this semester, or by my excitement in being able to use them in my classes this fall....

Count me in as the newest fanboy of WordPress Multi-User....

Faculty Academy 2007 is Coming!

2007-05-14T21:51:00.000-04:00

Jeff McClurken

Wednesday and Thursday, May 16 & 17 at UMW’s College for Graduate and Professional Studies. See http://facultyacademy.org/blog07/ for more information.

My real blogging began about a year ago, soon after the last Faculty Academy. I'm presenting this year on my class-based wiki projects. Hope to see you all there.

The Checklist Phenomenon

2007-05-11T11:07:00.000-04:00

Shannon has been blogging about her first-year experiences over at Loaded Learning. In her most recent post she describes her frustration with some of her fellow students who seemed to just be in college to check off a bunch of boxes.*

The checklist phenomenon is one that has always bugged me, though I think I understand where it comes from. It's easier to go about one's daily life without having to question everything, without having to constantly reexamine one's direction, path, education. There is a reassuring certainty to having a checklist, to knowing exactly what one needs to do that is less draining than having to think too much constantly about one's future or present.

I say this not to rag on college students in particular; I see it in my own life and among my colleagues and our attitudes toward the curriculum. If we know that students will take X set of classes from Y set of categories, then we can be reasonably certain that they have been exposed to a set of ideas that we call "liberal arts" and a major with a particular set of skills and fluencies, and therefore we can rest easy about it.

I've been thinking about this assumption lately, however, as our institution reexamines its general education curriculum. I'm not resting as easy as I have been with our Gen Ed course structure. Why? Because what we don't know with as much certainty is what the students actually get out of these classes, or if checking all those boxes off truly makes them better students or better employees or better human beings. We also don't know if those students make any connections between the various checked boxes or their learning. [With a few exceptions, we don't encourage such connections in structural or specific ways.] I'm beginning to wonder if what we need is fewer requirements for specific content areas and more requirements for self and guided reflection by students on their work, their goals, on their education itself.

Of course, that might still create a checklist of courses and/or requirements that students (and faculty) could check off without the kind of buy-in that real learning and teaching would need. Still, it seems like it would be a start in the right direction, an acknowledgement that we as an institution valued the connections between their various classes, between their classes and their learning, between their learning and their lives, and between their education and their participation as members of larger physical and intellectual communities.

Thoughts? How might we implement such an approach beyond individual classrooms or particular instructors or interested students (because I think that kind of breadth is essential the kind of reflected learning)? [Given the audience for this blog, I suspect I'm preaching to the choir here, and, if so, help me figure out what the counter argument(s) is/are. Why wouldn't this work (and why are they wrong)? :-]

*I think many of us at MW would agree that Steve's Freshman Seminar should be seen as a success if its only contribution (which this is not) was to encourage this depth of reflective public writing by students.

A Surreal History Mashup Moment

2007-04-16T22:29:00.000-04:00

So, I'm just wondering how good Google's directions to the Lost Colony are. I guess their search engines really can find anything....

[This comes from an interesting attempt to build historical maps using the My Maps function on Google.]

Confessions of a del.icio.us Addict

2007-04-03T20:34:00.000-04:00

In recent weeks, I've become increasingly enamored of the social network and bookmarking service known as del.icio.us. I set an account up nearly 2 years ago now, but largely used it as online bookmark storage. Gradually, through several friends (online and off) I became aware of its other features. Caleb McDaniel (formerly of Mode for Caleb) demonstrated the numerous tagging capabilities through a couple of emails and conversations. [Looking at my own del.icio.us account (del.icio.us/kurastan90) you can see that my earliest del.icio.us links are not tagged, or if they are, the tags were added later.] Yet, even with the new tagging making my bookmarks more accessible to me, I was still using it as an amped-up version of my own bookmarks in IE or Firefox. It was Martha who alerted me to the use of a network and "for:" tags in del.icio.us in this post. [For the uninitiated, del.icio.us allows users to add other users to their network, allowing you to see the sites they're tagging. The "for:" tag allows you to send particular users in your network particular sites in which you think they may be interested.] I began to add various people to my network (first DTLT members, then people from CHNM, and soon others) and realized how many cool sites I had been missing. As I pored over their various sites, I began to mark particular sites for them, and slowly they began to tag them for me as well.

I have managed to convert other colleagues to del.icio.us, and they too have become addicted to the ease, the social bookmarking, the tagging, and the sharing of good sites. At this point, if I run across a link I that I think someone might want, and that person is not in my network, I'm actually a little annoyed. I think about how much easier it would be if I could just add the "for:" tag and they would be able to see it.

I realized recently that I have created a network of people I know (to varying degrees) who scour the internet for me (and I for them). Although we have overlapping interests and therefore look at some of the same sites, we're different enough that they run across resources I don't and vice versa. In this chaotic, information-saturated online world, having a few (or 14) expert researchers sharing the best (or maybe just fun) resources can prove an incredible boon.

Now, to figure out how to add this to my goals for digital literacy and to my classes this fall. More to come....

Students, grades, and creativity--A Thought from Student Academy

2007-03-31T12:55:00.000-04:00

I'm at UMW's Student Academy, an annual presentation of information technologies created by students in and out of their courses, and I wanted to comment on a statement a student presenter just made:*

"I don't want to experiment too much if it's for a grade...."

What are the implications of this statement for teaching and learning? The student was referring to the differences between his approach to class digital projects, versus his own digital projects that he's done outside of the classroom. Is this a problem for us as teachers? Is the need for grading something inherently squelching of creativity? I don't think so, but I'll be more conscious of the need to create at least some assignments that balance requirements with the flexibility to exercise creativity.

*[I hope to blog on some of the specific presentations later. Check out Ben's Astounding Essays, or Amanda's great blog about Sylvia Plath, for places to start.]

One More Stab at Digital Fluencies

2007-03-12T20:27:00.000-04:00

In a previous post I responded to failingbetter's query about my definitions of "digital fluencies" as it related to students. I was rereading the first of his/her questions and it occurs to me that the query has another layer I missed at first glance.

I would like to hear a little more about what fluency means and what it entails that is different from skills. Is it just the combination of one's writing skills with one's technical knowledge of how to construct/write a blog? Or does it also entail knowledge of the norms of blogging? Is there another category of things that differentiate skills from fluency?

I've been articulating a notion of digital fluency that incorporates technical skills and the ability to deploy those skills as part of a skillful consumption and production of information that I think is critical to students and faculty alike. But failingbetter suggests that there are also rules to online social tools (and the societies they create) that students might need to know. Might digital fluency also include an awareness of the norms of online culture(s)? I'm going to have to think about this some. Any thoughts?

Wikis, Wikis, Everywhere--Part I

2007-02-12T19:39:00.000-05:00

This semester I'm using wikis (MediaWiki to be precise) in two of my classes, though in different ways. I'm doing so at Jerry's suggestion, despite my greatest previous interaction with wikis being arguing with students about why they can't use Wikipedia as the scholarly source for their research papers. In two separate posts, I'll describe the two classes, the plans for the wiki use in each class, and the progress so far.

In my senior readings seminar, I used to have students email me comments and questions about the reading for a particular day a couple of hours before class starts. I would then take those comments and questions and shape the class discussion for the day based on the particular areas of need or interest expressed by the students. This semester, the students post their comments and questions to a wiki page. [I set up one page for each day's discussion for the semester.] Of course, a large change under this new system is that they now see each others' postings. [I've resisted this before, fearing repetitiveness, copying, and an unfair burden on those who posted first to carry the class.] I've found that so far, I was completely wrong. The quality of the questions and comments have gone up from previous semesters. What's more, they've begun to respond to each others' questions, answering the factual queries and starting to engage the open-ended ones. In other words, the discussion begins before class does.

Of course, I could have just used a forum on Blackboard or some other open-source software (and I've used such forums with varying degrees of success in other classes with other assignments). They'd still be able to see what the other students had written and respond to those comments. The advantage of the wiki is that students can more easily edit and/or comment on each others' work than in a forum, which is either hierarchical or linear (or both). Using the past version function of the wiki I can actually trace the evolution of the conversation as students add material to the ongoing discussion, sometimes inserting themselves in between other people's comments, sometimes using bold to emphasize particular points that others have made. They haven't taken to truly editing each others' work, a common issue from what I've heard from those who have used wikis in teaching. [There was a comment deleted by someone else, but that was an accident, for which there was much apologizing. :-) ] And I don't see this lack of editing each others' work as a problem since I haven't explicitly asked them to do that.

I hope the quality of posting and interaction remains at the level that it's at for the rest of the semester. If so, I'll see it as a great success.

Next time, I'll discuss the wiki as used in an upper-level lecture & discussion class.

Digital Fluencies--A Reponse

2007-02-12T14:09:00.000-05:00

I wanted to respond to failingbetter's comment on my post last fall on digital literacies, but this response (rant?) seemed to expand beyond comment size. So, a new post was born.

1. I would like to hear a little more about what fluency means and what it entails that is different from skills. Is it just the combination of one's writing skills with one's technical knowledge of how to construct/write a blog? Or does it also entail knowledge of the norms of blogging? Is there another category of things that differentiate skills from fluency?

I would crudely define "digital fluency" as the ability to deploy basic technical skills (changing margins or using track changes in Word, participating in online forums, and for some, more complex skills such as website building) in the consumption and production of online materials in a variety of formats. Blogs are just one online format (though perhaps the easiest to engage in--after all, passive consumption is also participation). There are a number of ways that students could demonstrate digital fluency, including appropriate creation of documents, presentations, wikis, websites, forum postings. These things require a wide variety of technical skills, but more than just knowing how to change margins, use email or set up a blog, doing them well requires adaptability, critical thinking, and making clear arguments. [Sound familiar? It should, because digital fluency should be seen as an extension of the core concepts of the liberal arts.]

2. I don't know that incorporating DL into classes--if they are to be tech across the curriculum--would work. Most faculty only know the skills that they need to survive (no members of my dept. write a blog or know how). I suspect that faculty ignorance would be a significant barrier to making this work (as I understand it).

First, digital fluencies don't have to be integrated into every class. Still, they do need to be discussed by every department. The advantage of a plan that argues for departmental definitions of digital literacy is that it allows faculty to meet the requirement where they are in terms of their abilities and desires. But here's the thing: even though no one in failingbetter's department writes a blog, I'm willing to bet every department member has some goals for students with regard to digital literacy. For example, I suspect his/her department members would agree that students need to be able to differentiate between reliable and unreliable websites. So would it be overly onerous to add to his/her department's set of goals an ability to consume online information in a skeptical and critical manner? That might be the limit of what a department decides it wants to do on this issue.

One final point of honesty from me on this: I hope that such conversations in each department about what digital literacy means for their students would push some faculty to look more closely at the skills (and fluencies) they themselves have (or might decide they need). [Let's be clear about something else: "faculty ignorance" should never, ever, be a reason not to do something.]

But I would also hope that such an examination would occur within the context of significant institutional support. One of the things that I've made clear in every conversation I've had with the various committees involved in these conversations is the absolute need for substantive investment in a variety of support resources and personnel to make this change. These resources would need to be in the form of software/hardware technology support (personal computers and projectors and software licenses must work nearly all the time, or a reasonable substitute made available within 24 hours at most), instructional technology support (people who can take ideas about teaching and show faculty how to implement them), training workshops and summer sessions that people want to go to (even are paid to attend), summer and school-year financial support (or course releases) for those working on such projects, and recognition from the merit and tenure process for efforts made to advance digital fluencies in course and department arenas.

[I want a lot, don't I? What about what I've put forward here is unrealistic? Which of the various portions could be implemented most easily? Are they mutually dependent? Critique away....]

Innovation, Open-Source, and CMSs

2007-02-10T13:48:00.000-05:00

Over at Running with Scissors, Jerry Slezak has begun a great discussion about innovation. This post began as a comment there that expanded beyond the original point Jerry was making. Building on Jerry's notion of the UI$ as a new unit measuring "Unit of Innovation per Dollar" and Jim's point in the comments about the advantage of a close working relationship between tech innovators and the classroom, it seems to me that targeted investment (small grants and/or new faculty/ITS positions) in implementing various open-source (or nearly free) solutions can result in a high UI$ (if I understand Jerry's new term correctly). Targeted financial and technical support for specific implementations with open-source or freely available tools in a few courses (or even a department) has a much better chance of a good UI$ than adding a massive CMS that everyone has to learn and that not everyone wants to be a part of.

The Counter Argument

One important counter, however, is the argument that standardization (and massive integration of other campus systems) offered by the major CMSs are good things:

1) Because a standardized CMS/LMS is, well, standard. Everyone can use the same interface. Students and faculty don't have to learn (or relearn) new materials; tech support has one set of training and support materials to create.

2) Because using open-source and free software means using code that is not always ready for prime time. Techno-geeks (of which I am one) are more forgiving of such issues, in part because they can find workarounds for such problems (or accept it as a feature of cutting-edge code).

3) Because of the breadth of offerings. You can hear the sales pitch by the voice-over guy on late-night television: "It doesn't just manage your courses, it allows you to pay bills, do your laundry and walk your electronic pets!!!!" In all seriousness, the appeal of meeting many institutional needs at once is clear, especially if the package also comes with support from the manufacturer (something less obviously available from the open-source community).*

Conclusion?

I understand these reasons are powerful forces in shaping decisions for campus technology. But Jerry's post is really about innovation, and he is right to recognize that tech investment dollars are limited and need to be spent (invested?) as wisely as possible. Should we be worried that what seems to drive resource decisions at many institutions of higher learning is the notion that "Innovation is good, but stability and uniformity is better"?

UPDATE: I listened to the podcast of Jerry and Jim Groom's ELI Presentation that was the basis for the post discussed above. In it Jerry and Jim address many of the concerns that I brought up, including noting that enterprise CMSs like Blackboard aren't going away soon since their stability and breadth still addresses the needs of many people on campuses (albeit not always the students or faculty). Of course, the on-target point of the post and the presentation was that enterprise CMSs/LMSs simply don't seem to be as responsive to the innovative possibilities for teaching and learning that the vibrant, passionate open-source community members have embraced. The other significant gain for me is the cost of innovation terminology of Jerry's, UI$. I'll be using that in the future....

* I suspect that there are many members of the open-source community who are incredibly responsive on support issues, but I'm referring to a formalized, contract-driven support that looks more stable from what we might describe as a business perspective.

Historians Moving on Up

2007-02-09T12:49:00.000-05:00

So news reports indicate that the new president of Harvard is going to be Drew Gilpin Faust, a prominent historian whose specialties include the Civil War, US Women's History and Social History. This news comes just a few weeks after Ed Ayers, eminent Southern historian and academic technology pioneer, was announced as the new president of the University of Richmond. [Full Disclosure: I worked on the Valley of the Shadow Project with Ed Ayers for a couple of years before heading off to graduate school.]

At my very first academic conference, the 1997 Southern Historical Association conference in Atlanta, I attended a panel on which both of these eminent historians presented. I remember being impressed at their presence, poise, and good-natured interactions. Who knew that these two would become University presidents within a few months of each other 10 years later?

I'm happy for both of them, because I like and respect them, but also because it suggests that, despite the reputation of historians as out of touch with today's world, that these two have found ways to make themselves (and more importantly, their ideas) relevant to much larger audiences.

Both Ayers and Faust, despite a number of years as Deans (Ayers at UVA, Faust at Harvard's Ratcliffe Institute for Advanced Study) remain active, productive scholars in their fields. I can only imagine how difficult that is given the many drains on their time. As a fellow scholar in their fields of interest, I can only hope that their presidencies will not prevent them from continuing to contribute their significant gifts to the discipline. As an academic, I believe that continuing to do so will also make them better administrators of faculty. As Dean, Ayers also managed to continue teaching a class or two a year, something else I hope he's able to hold on to in his new position. [UPDATE: The front-page February 10 Washington Post article on Faust's appointment suggests she's also continued teaching as Dean.] Such activities remind presidents of where their faculties and student bodies are focused.

I know that this perspective is not shared by all academics, many of whom feel that the president's job is first and foremost to raise money. As important as that is, I have a great deal of respect for those university presidents who continue to teach and research. Leading by example applies to the administrative side of academia as much as it does the classroom.

Is the Internet disparate or unified, sourced or sourceless? It may be a question of NetGenerations

2006-12-14T08:12:00.000-05:00

The other day I was discussing the future of history with a number of students in my historical methods class (a regular end of the semester activity in this class). I was asking them how they think the Internet is transforming the practice of history. I expected a discussion of the importance of online primary sources, the broadening of research possibilities for undergraduate students, and the topics that could be found and explored through search engines. To be sure, that was the gist of some students' comments.

What I found particularly interesting, however, was that several students discussed how distracting online research was for them. When I pressed them on what they meant, they noted that while online primary sources were great, that during those times that they were researching online they constantly found themselves involved in other online activities (IM, Facebook, entertainment sites, etc.). When I suggested they turn IM off while doing research, they indicated they knew that they should, but that they never did. [A couple students pointed out that even if IM was off, online research required being online and therefore the temptation to click elsewhere was always there.]

What occurred to me as I listened was that there was a gap between the students' understanding of the Internet and my own. [This post title suggests one explanation for that gap, though I acknowledge the small sample size and my own particular biased perspective.] I see the Internet as a collection of various repositories of information (albeit linked together in what is hardly a seamless way); I am constantly conscious of their origins (a fact especially true
when I discuss online collections of primary sources and historical information). For my students, the Internet is a more-or-less seamless information source, and one for which they have trouble tuning out particular parts. In fact one student said that she much prefers offline research (in books of all things) because of the lack of distractions.

If that's true (and I acknowledge that I may be overstating the dichotomous perspective) then what are the potential effects on our teaching? I now believe that it is even more important than I realized before to get students to identify the sources of particular information in order to better ascertain bias and veracity of online materials. Overcoming the seamless (sourceless?) nature of the web may be a bigger problem than I thought. Or should we of a slightly older NetGeneration just accept the view that the Internet is increasingly seamless and come to terms with a new more-or-less unified way of presenting information?

Digital Literacies and Technology Proficiencies -- What do our students need to know?

2006-11-06T22:09:00.000-05:00

Over the last couple weeks, I've been engaged in conversations with a number of my colleagues about the question of what digital skills and fluencies students need to know to be successful in college and beyond. [The longest and most fruitful conversation was with our terrific director of Teaching and Learning Technologies, Martha Burtis.] What follows is a jumbled beginning discussion of what I feel are priorities as we look toward getting students prepared for success in classes and creating adaptable, responsible, information-literate, global citizens.

First, we need to begin with basic informational and technological competencies and we need to start by defining in a broad sense what we mean by “competencies,” a word that has been gaining a great deal of traction lately without a great deal of explanation. I think (though I'm hardly the first to articulate this) that digital competencies are made up of both technical skills (ranging from changing margins in Word and more advanced MS Office functions to a familiarity with online tools including email, search engines, IM, blogs, wikis, and so on) and digital fluencies (requiring a higher-order deployment of those skills in producing and consuming information in an adaptable, creative, responsible way). [It's also important to note that this definition of "competencies" goes beyond the notion of bare adequacy.]

If we accept this notion of skills versus fluencies, I would argue the emphasis of our digital proficiency goals should be aimed at achieving fluency, not skill mastery. Can we not expect students to come to college with a basic familiarity with the skills of digital life? Can’t basic skills (word processing, email, spreadsheets) be expected? But Jeff, aren't there plenty of entering college students who are familiar with aspects of the digital world, but don't know how to do all of these things? Why, yes, I'm glad you asked. Certainly a focus on fluency over skills would require institutional support in the form of a Technology Center, online guides, brief workshops (no more than an hour or two), and perhaps student tech tutors, so that students not capable of certain skills could find the answers to questions about margin changing or Powerpoint presentations or what ever they needed for a particular class.

There is, I think, an important parallel here with the way we address writing in college. A small percentage of our students have poor grammar skills. [Most are quite good at grammar.] There are resources on campus to deal with those issues, but we don’t send them to a separate class on grammar (nor do we advocate all students take a test on grammar). The school does have a writing intensive requirement, however, that necessitates students demonstrate a number of their writing skills, which of necessity requires familiarity and facility with grammar.

So, can’t we tell new students, “these are the basic computing skills every incoming student should have” and then offer them resources to address the gaps they have? The vast majority of our students do have a broad familiarity with basic computing skills. [We might even have an (optional) placement assessment like we do with foreign languages that would allow them to measure their technical computing skills.]

We can then focus the technology proficiency requirement on fluencies, on an adaptable ability to think, create, and operate within the digital world. And we need to make these fluencies the centerpiece of the requirement (not digital skills or even the classes/fulfillment requirements).

The advantages of focusing on digital fluencies over digital skills are numerous:

Testing students on basic skill sets makes most of them feel like they are wasting their time on things they already know, or on things they think they'll never use.
Focusing on digital fluencies allows us to expect more technological sophistication from students. [This is as opposed to a kind of low-level investment in a skill-test system that encourages only completion (and that only barely) and not engagement, creativity, or adaptability.]

Broadly stated, what do I see as the key competencies of digital literacy?

Researching, finding and evaluating primary and secondary sources
Presenting one’s ideas in a variety of formats (written, oral, formal/informal--online)

The next question to ask is how these digital fluencies will be delivered. I think the material should be incorporated into one or a set of class(es), not a separate course on "technology". Integrating digital fluencies into classes (general education and departmental requirements) has a couple of key results. First, it indicates the importance the institution and faculty have invested in those fluencies. Second, it provides students with content-linked opportunities to demonstrate their ability to maneuver and participate in the digital world (locally and globally)

The most recent discussions of our technology proficiency have revolved around a two-tier system, with a foundational level (a course or courses) intended to address those fundamental competencies incoming students need for their college experience in general, and a discipline-specific requirement. The latter would allow departments to integrate those discipline-specific digital skills and fluencies into their curriculum and support plans. [So a psychology department might incorporate SPSS into their methods classes, while Math could include work with Mathmatica or Dynamic Solver.]

In determining the success of the digital fluency approach (and more generally of the technology proficiency program), we need to make sure that the assessments are not multiple-choice, specific skills tests, but rather allow students to demonstrate competencies within a framework of actual activity and usage.

What do you think? Is this an approach that makes sense? Is it an approach that can garner support among faculty, students, and administrators?

E-Portfolios--Part II--A New Hope?

2006-11-06T21:35:00.000-05:00

I started to write this post in the comments section of my last post, but realized it was getting prohibitively long to fit in the comments.

I don't disagree with either of the comments raised by Steve and Jerry. Various parts of what I described as e-portfolios could be started without a full-blown university-wide e-portfolio system. [And some of my colleagues at CGPS have already begun to do so.] All that is good. Students could demonstrate competencies in technological proficiency and/or digital literacy (they're different things, a subject for a future post), they could maintain online archives of sorts of their written work using blogs or wikis or some other medium, and even reflect on that work.

But would students do that on their own? Probably not. Will they do so when it's assigned? Likely, and they might even get something out of it. But without other professors doing the same thing they're not likely to connect it to a larger educational experience or broader world.

I guess the real appeal to me of the e-portfolio (beyond the practical function as an accessible place to collect work) is on the grand scale. One place to assemble the work of a college career, one place to reflect on four years' worth of research, writing, even presentations (digitally recorded), one place to make connections between courses and concepts, between science and literature, between language and society. Steve's right in his comment that this reflection could be going on all the time. Heck, it should be going on all the time. But what appeals to me (and what I see as its biggest problem) is the notion of some kind of complete integration of the e-portfolios, a notion that would require grass-roots and top-down support from administration, faculty and students. Since I have trouble envisioning that broad institutional buy-in, I'm having trouble buying into doing this piece meal.

I suppose my pragmatism is blocking my vision in this case.

Maybe this is the kind of thing that might best be tried out at the departmental level. [If any of my departmental colleagues are reading this, rest easy. This is a thought piece, not next meeting's new business agenda item.] A department could decide that it wanted its majors to collect their writings, speeches, and everything else related to the major in one place; that it wanted its majors to be consciously reflective about their courses and the material/concepts/skills learned in them; and that it wanted them to explore the value of that content and those competencies for their own goals in and after college.

A department would be larger than a single professor's desire and therefore would reflect a larger commitment to the concept on the part of a group of faculty within a discipline on campus. On the other hand the issues of scale and practicality I raised in my earlier post would be less problematic with 5-15 professors and 50-250 students than they would be with an entire campus. [Plus, getting buy-in from a single department is more feasible than convincing an entire campus.]

Thoughts?

E-Portfolios -- What's the Point?

2006-10-18T22:26:00.000-04:00

It's not very original of me to keep playing off of someone else's blog, but Will Richardson's post, No Child Left Without a Portfolio, inspired me to write on something that I've been thinking about quite a bit over the last couple years.

I recently took part in a technology roundtable discussion with members of my institution's faculty and staff (and a couple of students) about the future of our technology proficiency requirement for our undergraduate students. A couple of colleagues from our graduate campus noted that they were beginning to use electronic portfolios to assess computing proficiency, as well as present pedagogical skills. I commented that I thought most undergraduate students already had a default portfolio of projects (papers, PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, and other electronic materials), but it was sitting on their computers, unorganized and unused since the assignments for which they were created. Certainly those materials might be collectively used to demonstrate the array of technological proficiencies that our students learn.

Still, that use of electronic portfolios seems rather limited. What is the point of electronic portfolios, why would we want to use them, and why has there been such resistance to the idea of them on many campuses? I think the answers to these questions are connected.

Reasons for an electronic portfolio (in no particular order)

Demonstrate competence in some skills

This gets at what my colleagues from CGPS and I were discussing before.
Many teaching programs require paper or e-versions of these now.

Gather and reflect on one's work

This might be one way of encouraging a kind of self-reflective (or self-repairing) learning. "Here's all of the papers you've written for your classes in the history department. Reflect on what worked, what didn't, what you learned about yourself, your researching, and your writing."
In the ideal form, such e-portfolios might even come to serve as a central theme to the liberal arts experiences, a kind of connective tissue between individual classes and between courses and the larger collegiate experience. "Why am I taking all these classes? What's the point of this array of courses, within my major and outside it and how do they relate to each other?"

Serve as long-term online storage for student work (and faculty comments?) that could be used by both the student (for reference, as part of a job or graduate school application) and the school (evidence of student learning, data source for assessing outcomes, examples of projects for future students)

Due to privacy the latter uses would depend on selective approvals by students.

Broadly speaking, I think the variety of uses of e-portfolios actually hinders their acceptance. They mean too many different things to too many different people (and/or disciplines). Some see them as demonstrations of competencies (often of very specific skills or ideas); others see them as reflective tools to discuss progress and learning (a reflection which some people see as not relevant to their discipline).

Then there are the practical issues about online portfolios. What responsibility does the school have for keeping these portfolios? How long is long-term? Ten years? Twenty? Permanently? Sure, hard disk space is cheap, but servers and personnel to maintain them aren't. Given the numerous problems with privacy and data thefts lately, how much responsibility would schools have in safeguarding access to this material?

None of this is to reject the idea of e-portfolios--I'm especially attracted to the notion of reflective/self-correcting consumers of information and I think they can serve practical goals in demonstrating competencies--only to note that if a school is to take on such a project it would need an extremely clear set of goals (and a long-term plan) to deal with the practical issues.

Digital Literacy in Higher Education

2006-10-11T07:02:00.000-04:00

As part of the ongoing reexamination of our curriculum and approaches, my department has been working on the goals for our major, on what we hope students will have learned by the time they graduate.

We discussed writing and speaking skills, knowledge acquisition and critical thinking, familiarity with a diverse set of methodologies, times, and places, and a perspective on the place of the self in the larger society. Although not always expressed in such ways before by us, these are fairly common sentiments in history departments. What was unusual was the addition of a section on what we're calling "digital literacy." Here's what we came up with:

As the amount of information available online increases at near-exponential levels, the need for students’ digital literacy grows as well.

The ability to find reliable, scholarly, information on a topic

Within gated, subscription databases and in the larger, disorganized online world

Finding and searching the collections of online archives, museums and institutions of higher education

The ability to assess and evaluate the reliability of online sources

This is a new facet of the approach historians and history students have long employed, that of judicious skepticism.

The ability to produce creative, yet scholarly materials for the digital world

These require the same level of rigor applied to traditional papers and presentations.

What have we left out? Probably something about encouraging active participation in an online world (hat-tip to Jerry on this), though I'm still working on ways to write that section. Other suggestions?

We decided the following was what we wanted for our students:

Students who become fluent in all these areas will be adaptable, reflective consumers and producers of information, critical thinkers able to take on any number of occupations, aware of the diversity of thought and opinion in the study of the past, and ready to move forward into the larger world as responsible, productive citizens of local and global communities.

None of this is finished yet (and we still are in the midst of curricular discussions), but I can't help but be excited about the direction the department and the institution is taking. We are looking to the future in useful ways, for us as teachers/mentors/learners and for our students as learners/mentees/teachers.

The implications of an on-demand future

2006-10-10T20:33:00.000-04:00

Almost every morning when I get into the car to take my 3-year old daughter to day care she asks me to play "Puff the Magic Dragon" for her on my MP3 player. [I do have thousands of other songs, but she never seems to want to hear Son Volt or U2.]

This repetitious request by children for the same song over and over is the bane of many a parent's existence (and perhaps the jackhammer between sanity and insanity). That is, the repetition of children's songs is not a new experience.

However, it's begun a thought that's been rattling in my brain (along with the chorus to Puff) about the delivery of media today and its effect on society, children in particular.

My daughter also always has children's shows to watch because my wife and I have Tivo'ed a number of them and can play them on demand (well, not literally, since we try to limit her TV watching time, but you get my point).

Sure, other parents have played Puff on CD or cassette tape (or probably 8-track), and they've got VHS or DVD versions of their kids' favorite shows and movies, but it seems to me there is
a fundamental psychological difference to children between getting a tape or cassette or DVD out to put in and play, and just using a couple of button presses on a screen or click-wheel to start exactly what she wants. Will this raise her expectations? Will she demand information and entertainment to just appear with a few clicks? Yes, of course she will.

And so will our students.

"Quit, Complain, or Innovate"?

2006-10-10T20:20:00.000-04:00

This title come from a post on the reliable Will Richardson's Weblogg-ed. Though most of the post is positive and forward-looking, the title clearly reflects a sense among many people about the choices surrounding the implications and impact of new technology in education.

Yet as my institution grapples with the implications of a new president who has asked the faculty to be forward-thinking, creative, and innovative, I wonder if this same sentiment is an appropriate description of our curricular and institutional choices (and I think some of my colleagues fear it's our future).

Now, to be honest, among faculty, quitting is rarely an option, at least in the form of leaving one's job, since the market is so tight right now, especially if one has roots of family and friends in a particularly geographic region. However, there's quitting and then there's quitting.

Complaining is always an option of faculty. [Some might say it's an area that we've claimed and reclaimed over and over.] Still, despite succumbing to this myself at times, it's hard for me to see this as the only option. [Does this have to be a single choice? Can't I do both? Well, why not!? -- See how easy it is for complaining to start? And how quickly it turns into whining, which is even worse.]

So that leaves us with innovate. To me this is exciting, exhausting, invigorating, and downright scary. What we do with this is left to us (though likely with significant leadership from our administration). We have to live with it. But we also have to live with ourselves, our students and our institution if we don't change things now, if we don't adapt, if we don't look towards the future of higher education and learning in general....

Podcasting Lectures--Some thoughts

2006-09-03T11:51:00.000-04:00

Steve and Jerry have both been writing about the idea of podcasting lectures.

I think part of what faculty members don't say when they flinch back from the idea of posting their lectures (as notes, full text, or podcasts) is that they are afraid that their lectures will be revealed to be less polished, less original, less important than their published scholarship.

However, we need to also be careful about dismissing the concerns about people not coming to class (and certainly there are ways to address that). But I've had a number of conversations with students who have told me (confidentially...) that if there were podcasts or lecture notes that they would come to class much less, or not at all, even if they took the hit for class participation. [I might add that some institutions of higher ed discourage or even prohibit professors from requring attendance.]

I would also add that if one runs a truly interactive lecture, then students are missing a great deal by not being there to participate in that process. Like it or not, posted materials suggests that active learning is less important than passive learning (even if the hope is that posting such materials would result in a more active engagement with the material).

I understand the appeal that broadening the podcasting or vidcasting of lecture series to all class lectures might have. But remember, most of those lectures in something like Great Lives required weeks of preparation by those scholars for one 75-minute presentation. The harsh reality is that most class lectures are composed in an hour or two and don't come close to the quality in content, presentation and delivery of a formal lecture.

None of this is to reject the premise of podcasting lectures, but merely to explain that such a process should be undertaken carefully, especially for junior faculty members who have their professional reputations (and future employment) to consider.

"Teachers as Learners"--An Initial Response

2006-08-30T22:52:00.000-04:00

http://weblogg-ed.com/2006/teachers-as-learners-part-27/

Will at weblogg-ed.com has an amazing post ("Teachers as Learners") that I'm still trying to figure out an appropriate response to that goes beyond, "Yes, that's it. That's what I've been trying to say...." Here's the most relevant paragraph.

In a world where knowledge is scarce (and I know I’m using that phrase an awful lot these days), I can see why we needed teachers to be, well, teachers. But here’s what I’m wondering: in a world where knowledge is abundant, is that still the case? In a world where, if we have access, we can find what we need to know, doesn’t a teacher’s role fundamentally change? Isn’t it more important that the adults we put into the rooms with our kids be learners first? Real, continual learners? Real models for the practice of learning? People who make learning transparent and really become a part of the community?

This notion of teachers constantly learning, of modeling for students a notion of the process of learning is incredibly appealing to me. It's part of why I've created 11 different courses in 5 years, and why I have several more waiting to pop out when I have time and opportunity to do them. Not because I want to impart wisdom to my students, but because I want to share with them the excitement I feel when creating a new vibrant course, when learning more about a topic and figuring out how to share that process with them. That excitement for learning is why I have several scholarly projects on the backburner, waiting for my last project to finish. It's why I find so many of the posts of my blogger colleagues Gardner and Steve so provocative and evocative of all I wish to do.

Okay, so I have plenty of passion, but to what end? Look for future posts for more thoughts on this....

Faculty Academy 2006

2006-05-16T10:48:00.000-04:00

I'm struck by how many people are here at the Faculty Academy this year. Several high-level adminstrators, and probably 80-90 people attending. That's great and I hope that it's a sign of a larger, broader committment on the part of the faculty and staff to the ideas (and openness) espoused here.

Blogging and Me

2006-05-16T10:42:00.000-04:00

So, I stood up and said in front of many people at Faculty Academy that I'm a reluctant blogger in part because of concern about tenure. It's something I've said to Steve and Gardner a number of times, but never in public (and in front of the Rector of the Board of Visitors, the Dean of Academic Affairs, and the Dean of CGPS, as well as at least one member of the tenure committee).

Faculty Academy 2006 -- Rachel Smith

2006-05-16T10:36:00.000-04:00

I'm once again blogging about the Faculty Academy.

Rachel Smith of the NMC is talking about gaming and education.

People actually research MMOs and their impact. [Seems useful for modern anthropologists or sociologists.] See The Daedalus Project

MSU program does research on games and gender -- aliengames.org

Research, books and lectures about games. -- gametheory.net

The Post That Was, Then Wasn't, Then Was Again

2006-03-01T01:07:00.000-05:00

This post was originally written in February, posted, and then I removed it, out of concerns about 1) how it would be perceived and 2) how it had been written in a moment (moments?) of frustration. I have been persuaded to repost it now, though my concerns remain.

Having done student web site projects (on the history and impact of a piece of American technology) three times now over the last four years, I suppose I should have realized that the specifics of the technological side of the approach (using Netscape Composer and a limited amount of hard coding to build research-based web projects) was getting long in the tooth. What I get is that HTML coding is no longer a relevant/marketable skill to our students.

I'm not planning on teaching the class in which I've done this assignment again until Spring of 2007--which both gives Jerry Slezak, my building's ITS, and I more time to figure this out, but also more time for things to change--yet I still have a number of concerns about completely ditching the old system that may add something to this conversation on Patrick Gosetti-Murrayjohn's blog (or it may just reveal my own biases).

1) Having to completely ditch something (assignments, guidelines, rubrics) Jerry and I spent an immense amount of time creating does not make me eager to adopt something else brand new (especially from a new company that may not be around the next time I teach the class). The reluctance some faculty have for embracing new technology may partly come from a sense that that technology is constantly something new (and therefore a sense that an instructor will be at square one every time they teach a new class).

[I am aware that I wouldn't be literally at square one, but it feels like it sometimes. That feeling can be paralyzing (or at least discouraging of new attempts).]

2) I'm not convinced a wiki or a content management system (especially not knowing what that CMS would look like) will meet all of my expectations for what I had hoped the web projects were doing before.

Just so we're clear on my (perhaps unreasonable) goals, they were (and are) based in the idea that I want to provide students with a chance:

--To learn a new way to present ideas, while adhering to the idea that all serious historical scholarship must be thoroughly cited with footnotes (or endnotes) and a bibliography.

--To learn the components of reliable online sources

--To produce original, available online works of scholarly research that would be intellectually accessible and interesting to other students and web surfers. Ideally these projects would improve—one web site at a time—the quality of information available on the web. I would emphasize that this focus on a scholarly approach is essential to my understanding of the value of this assignment. (And I would add that I think that wikis/blogs are seen by many members of my discipline as unscholarly, at least for now.)

--To create a process imitatible by other disciplines

--To provide history majors with a new skill set that they were not getting within our current curriculum. Ideally this skill set would make them more marketable when looking for jobs or applying to graduate schools. [Although HTML or Netscape Composer skills are less relevant than they were three years ago, certainly I think the ability to think about and present information in the digital realm remains important.]

--To think about what it would mean to write and create for a larger audience than just their instructor.

Now, obviously, some of these goals could be met through a wiki or a blog or a content management system. But, could I count on that medium to be (relatively) stable?

Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way and I should just be focusing on how to get students to think in new ways. Maybe the problem is with my desire to not have to completely rethink my approach every time I teach a class....

Bryan Alexander's Talk on Wireless

2005-05-11T10:45:00.000-04:00

"wireless and mobile computing"
Bryan Alexander
co-director, center for educational technology, middlebury college
The combination of wireless technology and mobile computing is resulting in escalating transformations of the educational world. The question is, how are the wireless, mobile technologies affecting the learning environment, pedagogy, and campus life? To answer this question, we must assess the current state of affairs, surveying cyberculture globally and historically. We must consider the United States only peripherally, since it lags behind other parts of the world in several key trends. And we must carefully examine the wireless, mobile learning experience as it rapidly develops, doing our best to grasp emergent trends.

Bryan's presentation is an interesting and fascinating approach to the wireless world. See his blogged presentation notes at http://infocult.typepad.com/presentations/.

Afternoon Faculty Presentations Session

2005-05-10T14:39:00.000-04:00

"iPods and Intercollegiate Debate: Coaching on the Go!"
Tim O'Donnell, Director of Debate, University of mary washington

Tim was

"looking for feedback on preliminary plans to rollout a systematic iPod program for intercollegiate debaters in Fall 2005. This is very much a work-in-progress. This presentation will sketch a preliminary vision for managing and coaching the debate program through the iPod."

Tim is comtemplating using iPods to:
1) organize briefing references in centralized location
2) convey information to the
3) Podcast Tim's coaching advice on particular teams and particular judges
4) Record all debates for the season
5) Students can record their own arguments to share with teammates

Issues
1) Security of podcasts
2) Microphone issues

Brian Lang's Been Digital So Long It Feels Like Print to Me

2005-05-10T13:29:00.000-04:00

"Been Digital so long it looks like print to me: text technologies, authorship, and orality"

Brian Lamb
Project Coordinator, Office of Learning Technology, University of British Columbia

Brian will raise questions about particular qualities of digital and paper-based text; redefined notions of authorship and authority online; how the different media direct attention and affect cognition; information overload; and impacts on higher education (teaching, institutional and epistemic authority). He'll then open the floor for plenty of discussion!

Material information at http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/wiki/brian/wiki?BeenDigital

Brian's approach endorses the massive movement to blogs and wikis. But he also acknowledges that the approach to personal publishing raises some difficult questions about authorship, ownership, filtering. Yet those difficult questions also represent opportunities for new work.

Brian points to this useful piece: Jill Walker, ["Weblogs: Learning to Write in the Network"] -- an interesting piece on the use of the blogs and teaching students network literacy.

Brian also points to the idea of a "remix" culture that is a major part of the digital world. [Texts, music, images]

He notes that at heart blogging is about the "power of positive narcissism."

Great talk!

Diana Oblinger at UMW Faculty Academy

2005-05-10T09:38:00.000-04:00

This is part of an ongoing series of summaries of, and reactions to, academic technology conferences.

The keynote speaker is Dr. Diana Oblinger, Vice-President of EDUCAUSE and Director of the EDUCAUSE National Learning Infrastructure Initiative.

She centers this talk on the students/learners and the implications of teaching and learning technologies. She uses idea of Net Generation students/learners (digital, connected, experiential, immediate, social).

Their learning preferences include:
Teams (not always group work, but they are social)
Peer-to-peer (learn from each other as readily, if not more readily, than from teachers)
Engagement and experience, visual and kinesthetic learners (much less experience with text, much more tuned into movement and visuals)
Things that matter (need to make material relevant to them)

Students want some technology, but not exclusively technologically focused (i.e., online).

Personal Response Units (clickers) allow concept inventories, engagement assessment, and student involvement in class.

Simulations, online laboratories, working with real world data allows engagement with experiential material, relevant material.

Some experiments look at the use of technology, space and learning. For example, Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment Undergraduate Programs (http://www.ncsu.edu/per/scaleup.html) includes small group work in physics classes.

This generation also has hypertext minds which is a problem at times: Short attention spans, failure to reflect, problems with text literacy, problems with assessing source quality.

Libraries vs. Google as world of information.
[Help to include library resources within CMS like Blackboard.]

What can we do?
--Make learning experiential and interactive
--Consider Peer-to-peer approaches
-- Acknowledge significant percentage of non-traditional/adult learners and their need for greater programatic flexibility

Young students were least satisfied with exclusively online courses than compared to Matures (most happy) and Boomers (2nd) and Gen Xs (3rd in happiest).

Next generations (current high schools):
--Cradle to grave e-portfolios
--Not expert users, laptops are tools
--Informal learners
--Prefer internet research to online learning

Teen's web use
--100% use the web for information
--IM key communication (email too)
--Want new & exciting information from the internet
--Use internet to learn more, communicate, community
--Multitasking is common (web, phone, TV, Radio)

This matters because of neuroplasticity -- the brain does reshuffle and rewire based on information and the ways that that information is received.
--Increasing use of visual communication means we need to access some of those approaches.

Remember that these patterns change every 3-4 years.
-- Don't assume that they come from the same environment
-- Don't assume that they understand technology just because they can use it.

Where do we go from here?
Start with: What has changed about our students? [Makeup? Learning preferences?]
What are the options? [New teaching/learning options?]
What should we do?
What is the right balance? [Action vs reflection, Visual vs text, Social vs individual, etc.]
What must we do to be successful? [Remember that this is a group effort -- Combine Vision/Leadership, Service Delivery (student, faculty, admin support), Infrastructure (technology and financial), Organization, Process]

"The goal is an organization that is constantly making its future rather than defending its past."

Final report on the ELI (or the organization formerly known as the NLII)

2005-01-26T20:23:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm back at home and work, I've had a chance to think about my time at the conference a little. My overall sense is that I'm glad I went. I had a great time getting to know some of my fellow MW colleagues better, seeing New Orleans, and getting a glimpse of new technology, much of it with usable applications for the classroom.

In numbered points, the valuable lessons I learned in those three days are:

1. Never take a flight that leaves from Terminal G. Any time the shuttle bus drives past the place where broken people movers go to die, you've gone too far.

2. Mary Washington has a proactive IT leadership that is actively and unusually engaged in supporting the integration of faculty, pedagogy, technology infrastructure, and informational technology experts.

Case in point: Sending to this conference an adminstrator of DoIT, 3 professors and an ITS. No other school there had that kind of diversity of background, and almost everyone I talked to from other places were impressed by the idea of having faculty (especially non-CS faculty) and IT people talking . [Actually several were amazed at the way we all got along. That indicates a kind of fundamental animosity between faculty and IT at many institutions that thankfully doesn't seem prevalent at our school.]

3. When I talked to people about the work that Jerry Slezak and I have done in teaching history students in my courses about how to build significant research-based web sites, people were intrigued by the idea, interested in the process, and jealous that we had the backing of a school that had committed resources to truly integrating technology and pedagogy in realistic ways.

In fact, several people indicated that they would love to see a presentation on the topic at next year's conference; hopefully Jerry and I can make that happen.

4. Before you go to your Terminal G flight, stop at a real restaurant (one you've heard of) to get breakfast, because all you'll get at Terminal G, is a slightly warmed, greasy, day-old pizza.

5. Watching others get inspired is nearly as much fun and as rewarding as being inspired yourself.

6. A rather large number of people recognized the name of our school and commented on how impressed they were with our IT leadership. Personal contacts matter, and they are the first step in building a much stronger national presence for the school itself.

7. The Horizon report issued by the NLII was the perfect close for the conference for me. Rapid five minute examples of the 6 key technologies that are coming in the next five years(which I blogged about before) only hammered home the possibilities of technology in (and out of) the classroom. [See the report at http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2005_Horizon_Report.pdf]

8. Finally, people at many of the sessions (especially faculty) argued about whether the arrival of new technologies in and out of the classroom was a good thing. For me, more important than judging those changes good or bad, was the assumption among all parties that those changes are coming. Perhaps they're wrong about the speed and/or direction of some or all those changes, but it seems better to prepare proactively rather than bemoan them.

For what it's worth, those are my thoughts.

NLII -- Part III -- ELI -- Part I

2005-01-25T13:23:00.000-05:00

So, I'm sitting in the last session of the NLII national conference. This session is about the transformative technology that is on the near Horizon. It looks at six technologies that will likely be transforming the educational experience in the near future (meaning the next five years).

This may be the most helpful session I've been to at this conference (if not the most inspirational). It provides a practical warning/heads-up that these technologies are coming, many of which our students are interested in, if not already using.

Extended Learning is coming in one year or less, although some professors have already begun. Working outside the classroom enabled by technology.

Ubiquitous wireless is coming in one year or less, if not already here in a variety of forms. After all, I'm writing this blog from my laptop in the midst of a session. No wires for power or for access. This has incredible potential for shaping the experiences of the classroom and even in breaking down the traditional classroom format.

Intelligent Searching is coming in 2 to 3 years. This is the idea that there needs to be significantly better ways to search the vast amount of information. "Old" methods of searching (Google, Yahoo, etc.) are becoming more intelligent, more focused (Lookout, Google Scholar) or changing methods of visualizing the web's information (Grokker, Web Brain, KartOO). Metadata tagging and graphical searching are also increasingly being made available.

Educational Gaming is coming in 2 to 3 years and provides a new way (although long promised) to use gaming technology and immersive environments in order to figure out ways of explorative learning. Using the Unreal environment or other map-building programs in games allows one to build immersive and/or historical online communities. Edutainment games are also ways of involving students of all ages from children through adults in fun, yet educational ways.

Context-Aware Computing and Augmented Reality are four to five years away -- CAC is using information from sensors about the environment to be better informed about that environment. Can be seen in distributed sensor networks that might track lightening, or "Tribbles," interactive machines that respond to touch and light. Augmented reality refers to overlays of information that overlay the world around the user. Might include SmartBoard type technology that one could draw on the board and create an environment that the computer transforms into a working environment.

Social Networks and Knowledge Webs are four to five years away. Not so much a technology, this is a phenomena. Neither of them are new; existed for a long time. What is new is that tools are beginning to emerge to facilitate the way that these two ideas operate. For example, Social networking programs like Tribe, friendster, flickr, del.icio.us, dodgeball (last is a cell phone program that notifies people when their friends are in the geographical area). Knowledge Webs like CAS, Sakai, NSDL, and Pachyderm are just beginning to bring knowledge together.

All of these are great ideas and I'm excited about the possibilities for my teaching. I just wish I had the time to implement all or some of them. Ah well, one last meal in New Orleans and we're off to the airport.

NLII -- Part II

2005-01-25T09:45:00.000-05:00

OK, so now the NLII is going to become the ELI -- EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. I like it in that it seems less initially confusing than the NLII title. But I also like it in that it focuses our attention on the students, which it is easy to forget in the midst of attempts to build up one's "tech infrastructure".

As important as the focus on students is however (and I do believe that's key), I guess I'm also interested in them addressing issues of barriers to faculty involvement. For example, untenured faculty members may be more concerned about making technological pedagogy more valued in the eyes of tenure committees.

NLII

2005-01-24T17:55:00.000-05:00

It seems appropriate that my first real post comes from a conference on the use of technology in higher education. NLII stands for the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative, and is a wing of EDUCAUSE, an organization dedicated to the integrating of higher education, pedagogy and technology.

This is the second day of the conference, although Steve G. and I got here after all of the sessions yesterday due to "mechanical difficulties" on our flight from DC.

New Orleans is great, but we've spent all day inside, so we haven't seen much. [This is the first conference I've been to that has food at every break. It's good food, but 1) you don't get out to the local eateries and 2) you eat WAY too much. ]

Anyway, on to the conference itself. It's been interesting, but also overwhelming. I've been familiar with most of the technology that's available to higher education (wikis, blogs, blackboard/WebCT, wireless and/or mobile communications/web surfing, etc.). What's overwhelming is partly the language of "technified" educational theory (which at times seems worse than Dilbert's worst business language), and partly the way that the discussions in these sessions, almost without fail, breaks down into a dichotomous response from the academics in the audience. First, there are those who are concerned that the addition of pervasive technology will ruin the classroom and the pedagogical experience (and weaken or completely remove their control over their classrooms, their curriculum and their students). The second group includes those who seem to think that technology is the answer to everything. They have a tendency to tell members of the first group that they need to suck it up since their world is going to change anyway and there is nothing to do but accept it.

Not surprisingly, I feel like there has to be some middle ground. [And that perhaps these two groups agree on a number of important things, e.g., the complete transformation of the higher educational experience, that we still have to wait and see.] As a historian of technology, I'm also very skeptical of any prediction of the future. [More later....]

Welcome!

2005-01-21T13:04:00.000-05:00

This is a new blog. I haven't decided yet how I plan on using this but you'll be the first to know when I do.