Social Networking Services

I ran across an article on the Journal of Educational Technology Systems called "Preparing for the Real Web Generation" (link may only work when you have access to JMU's databases) by Harry Pence (SUNY - Oneonta) that caught my attention. While this article mainly focuses on college students as a population of learners, it has import on what we might discuss further in our course.

Wikipedia uses the phrase Social Networking Service as the term that I was thinking of as I proposed this general topic for this week. Pence talks refers to globalization (one of our own speaks to this regularly) and agrees with Thomas Friedman that we need to be preparing our learners for a world that is "flat" in the sense that the potential access to information is much more level than in the past. Friedman's push for a USA audience is that we are "falling behind" and so we better look at our educational system with an attempt to update our schools to meet the needs of a changing world. (Don't get me going on the idea that fear is a good motivator...)

As I read these questions surfaced:

1. Knowledge - where is this housed, individually or socially? If communities are how we find knowledge, what does that say about how we view knowledge?
2. If every student in your class is on a social network, how should this phenomena be used (or not used) in the classroom?
3. Who are the most resistant (think afraid) to this new social networking world we live in? Why are they? (think gatekeepers, or one's in the middle from author to audience...)
   
4. Who are the "authors" in a collaborative endeavor?
5. What is trustworthy? - How do we build skills of our learners to distinguish between information of worth and those of less value?
6. What about the social networking user who believes this environment is safe to self-disclose personal or potentially embarrassing or damaging information?
7. Categorizing - Hence refers to a term folksonomy - one which was new to me, and suggests that tagging might be more user friendly in some circumstances rather than be limited by what others have created as correct tags.
8. How about wiki textbooks - students can create and update information in the text as they study in your classroom. Contribute to the field as 6th graders!?!
9. What is important in learning - product or process?

That is enough questions for one blog and one article! Looking forward to more discussions and your ideas!

Back to School (Bus 2.0)

There is a pilot program in (a) school bus in Arkansas where students are "given" video ipods or laptops on a bus that has a wireless router. Students can access podcasts and online instructional materials while riding the bus. It happens that there are students who ride up to 1.5 hours to and from school! The article goes on to talk more about other online resources that schools are using (think social networking), but I thought this "connected bus" was an example of a novel approach and opportunity for learning and discovery through technology.

At least the students are not driving the bus while downloading a UnitedStreaming video ! I wonder if the driver has online music streamed into the bus? (maybe satellite radio...) I can see students creating daily podcasts for the "ride home".

Web Design Guidelines

There are many sites that someone could point toward as examples and non-examples - Denise and Jeremy already pointed us toward some. Kevin speaks from current experience of building a site for his church.

One site that I found (actually I believe that some other site pointed me toward this - as is usually the case) is University of Texas at Austin's page on Web Guidelines. Much of this site is geared toward web publishing on UT-Austin servers, however it points toward many issues that seem important for web publishing. I particularly like the Site Architecture and Navigation page that points toward issues for every would-be designer.

Questions worth asking:

• Who is your audience? (might be the foundational question)
  
• What does your audience want to learn from your site?
• Can they get there from here?
• What kind of technology or capabilities does your audience possess (bandwidth, computing power, plug-ins, etc.)?
• Is the site consistent? (across pages, language, organization, page location, link actions)

Another thought that I have is about web Page Personality. Keeping it simple might appeal to certain designers or audience types, but maybe there is a web personality who likes as many links as possible on a page. Although information overload is certainly a term that many have associated with this point in time - maybe human cognitive abilities will evolve with increased abilities to process more information without becoming mired in a virtual quagmire.

Well, happy designing - or happy designing well - or happy well designing (now this is getting too deep)

Sharing tools and sites

OK - what are the most frequented Educational (technology) web sites that you find yourself going to? One of the listed intentions this semester is share our resources (along with ideas and experiences) regarding the discovery, design, development and implementation (evaluation is on-going) of educational technology in places of learning.

I already mentioned in class that I use netvibes as a place to aggregate RSS news feed sources. Some of the sites I read include:

• Edutopia
• eSchool News
• CNet News
• WIRED News
• TechLearning

All of these sites have RSS news feeds and so I can easily see current headlines using netvibes. What are some of the sites that you have found to be helpful?

Welcome to EDTC 611

I will be using this space for my reflections through this fall 2007 semester as it relates to EDTC 611. I will be posting a weekly summary of an article that I have read from various sources that focus on "educational technologies" (in the widest sense of this term!). Feel free to add any comments that you would like to something that you read here or anything related to our Thursday gatherings in Memorial Hall.

Looking forward to this semester... actually I don't really know what to expect but it should be good!

Phone that is a projector

Evidently Texas Instruments is developing a cell phone with the capability to be a DLP projector and display DVD quality video on a screen or a whiteboard. Ok, now schools may need to think about providing cell phones to all their teachers and forget about purchasing digital projectors for the classroom. I am guessing however that the students may have this technology before the teachers! Well all locations can now be a theatre... have video will travel (and project)

Read more here.

automobile rental wireless hotspot

Now Avis is going to have an option that you can have wireless access to the internet in your car. This service is going to cost $10+ a day but touts that 95% of the country will be covered - all urban centers. So driving down the road, passengers will be able to use their laptops, PDAs, or other surfing devices and stay connected. ubiquitous connectivity keeps progressing...

Read more at Wired:
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/01/wifi_kit_keeps_.html