Flexknowlogy – Jared Stein's ARCHIVED blog – update to jaredstein.org

This week I ventured to explore a number of OER projects and conduct a preliminary assessment of the reusability and remixability of the OER hosted in each. Based on earlier (albeit shallow) familiarity with some of these OER initiatives I am able to presume that the structure and technology of a selected sample OER from each is generally representative of all or most OER in the given project (more…)

In David Wiley’s Intro to Open Education course students were asked to randomly choose and then examine 5 MIT OpenCourseWare (MIT OCW) courses, and 5 Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative (OLI) courses. I’ve done random examinations of OCW/OER in the past, so I changed this up a bit to fit my own inclinations: first, I made my choices semi-randomly (more…)

Our Chief Information Office, Ray Walker sent me an article in The Chronicle: Blackboard Customers Consider Alternatives. It’s a great read to gauge the current state of the corporate LMS leviathan.

One passage in particular percolated my sense of irony. In addressing the idea that institutions may have more flexibility to innovate with open source solutions, Michael Chasen… (more…)

The office bought ASUS EeePC 900s for Marc Hugentobler, John Krutsch, and me, and this tidy little tool deserves a review.

My review will be a little different from John and Ben Krutsch’s review, as I almost immediately set about wiping the Xandros Linux operating system (OS) and installed Ubuntu Linux, which I am using on several other computers.

Specs of EeePC 900

Review

The ASUS EeePC 900 is a compact, fairly light, surprisingly powerful notebook that will suit the needs of nearly any mobile dekstop computing user, providing they have good manual dexterity and eyesight.

Strengths:

• Small width and depth
• Good resolution for the size (1024 x 600)
• Sufficient USB ports (3) & SD card slot
• VGA video out
• Fairly lightweight
• Fast boot up (< 1min) and application starts
• No moving hard drive to farm
• Bright screen in normal, indoor lighting

Weaknesses:

• Average height
• Small screen requires good vision (disclaimer: my colleague John Krutsch has a visual impairment but did not complain about the readability of the screen size)
• Keyboard is a little awkward and uncomfortable for my hands
• Not as lightweight as I’d expected
• Limited storage space (I’ve set aside the 16gb 2nd memory for my storage space.
• Achromatic chassis may be boring to some
• No Bluetooth or WAN

It’s fair to say I have high expectations for laptops/notebooks. I’ve owned half-a-dozen different brands of laptops (Panasonic, Dell, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Lenovo, Texas Instruments/Acer), and so far my favorites have been Lenovo, Fujitsu, and Dell, in that order. In fact, I now own two Lenovos which I use 90% of the time—a Thinkpad T60 for my “desktop replacement” with a docking station, and a Thinkpad x60s as my writing notebook.

Because the EeePC was predicted to replace my Thinkpad x60s in my workflow I reviewed the EeePC in comparison. It’s important to keep in mind that the EeePC costs three times less than the Thinkpad x60s, and ASUS certainly didn’t intend for it to be a competitor of these higher-end laptops. I run Ubuntu 8.4 on my Thinkpad, and for the basic word processing and Web/Internet apps I used there is very little noticeable advantage to the Thinkpad in terms of speed, which is a strong mark for the EeePC.

The battery life of my charged EeePC was labeled at approximately 6 hours, though I will update this information tonight after I let it run down.

Obviously the Thinkpad has a larger screen and a full-size keyboard, and so it wins there hands down—by comparison, typing on the EeePC was painful, though the more I type with it the easier it becomes.. What really startled me upon comparison was how insignificant the weight difference was between the EeePC 900 and the Thinkpad x60s—the Thinkpad was a mere 6 oz heavier—not enough to really notice.

So while the EeePC is a compact tool of considerable computing power at an unbeatable price, it’s small size can be weighed as a disadvantage in terms of screen and keyboard usability. For my purposes, it’s not significantly lighter or more convenient than my Thinkpad x60s, and so to facilitate my writing work I will probably stick with the latter. I expect the EeePC to be very convenient, however, to keep in my office as a highly portable, on-demand notebook for toting around campus to meetings and appointments.

Applications for E-Learning

The most prominent application for learning with EeePCs comes from their low pricetag. At ~$400 USD I could imagine these being standard equipment for jr. high or high school students. If my son’s school had an established plan for integrating use of notebook computers into the daily curriculum, I would have no problem shelling out the money for one of these. Presuming that these could be used for at least 2 years, probably 3-4 if any memory expansions become available, the bang-for-the-buck potential is high.

The Xandros and the Ubuntu distributions come with Firefox for the Web, OpenOffice for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, and Ubuntu comes with GIMP for image editing–this open source suite alone provides users with significant opportunities to learn and create right out of the box.

Collaboration or other connected learning opportunities are less apparent, but I think it’s worth considering further, even to the point that ed tech bloggers come up with a “best practices” list of ways to support engaged learning through these and other laptops (something the OLPC focuses on with Sugar).

Continuing from yesterday’s post, 31 Out of 95 E-Learning Ideas Ain’t Bad, here’s the second half of my pick of the strongest e-learning ideas found in Patti Shank’s useful book, The Online Learning Idea Book: 95 Ways to Enhance Technology-Based and Blended Learning.

17. Use electronic flash cards (p 184). (Coincidentally, @KenWoodward and I are working on providing an extremely reusable flash cards app for both desktop Web browsers and handheld devices.)
18. Drag-and-drop activities for self-assessment within a lesson (p 194).
19. Use pre- and post-assessments to demonstrate the value of the e-learning (p 205).
20. Provide flowchart(s) to illustrate processes (p 216). (I’ve found these are easy to create in most spreadsheet programs.)
21. As part of prototyping and design, write a learner scenario to describe possible interactions with e-learning (p 221).
22. Tap into learners’ “emotional brain” with personalized learning models (Concrete experience; Reflective observation; Abstract hypothesis; Active testing) (p 226). (This model is similar to Stevick’s Observe – Span – Do, which I’ve found to be effective in language learning.)
23. Use content templates to rapidly turn out lesson pages with a consistent look and feel (p 228; p 232).
24. Use concept maps and causal loops for navigation as an alternative to linear navigation for complex concepts (p 240). (I do recall some early studies of hypertextual learning suggested that non-linear navigation is risky at best.)
25. Embed hyperlinks to glossary entries within the lesson content (p 249).
26. Provide a printable summary of lesson content as a study aid (p 265).
27. Develop a virtual campus to help wholly distance learners orient themselves and feel connected (p 287).
28. Use visuals to show relationships between course concepts (p 291).
29. Slow down or speed up motion to demonstrate complex physical skills (p 301).
30. Create an interactive, multidimensional timeline for subjects such as history that weave events in places and times (p 308).
31. Use still and interactive graphics for complex or obscure physical concepts (e.g. atoms, cells, galaxies, tidal pools) (p 312; 315; 318; 321; 324).

These 31 ideas are the choicest out of Shank’s 95+ picks. Note that I’ve written 95+; Shank explains at the end that there are more than 95 ideas in this book, despite the title. She suggests that the element of surprise can help learning along, yet at the same time she notes that she herself wouldn’t have noticed, and the book doesn’t even number the ideas so that you could know there were more than 95. Really, who’s going to be keeping count in their head?

Length and those minor complaints aside, I recommend this book to instructional designers or technology-minded teachers, if only to see the screen-shots illustrating the most useful and innovative ideas.

Patti Shank has put together The Online Learning Idea Book: 95 Ways to Enhance Technology-Based and Blended Learning, an annotated collection of 95+ examples of e-learning tools, scenarios, or applications. Her book delivers best-practices in e-learning in a format that is both accessible and well-illustrated. And while I am glad she put this book together as it will be especially useful to those just getting into the field of e-learning, my general reaction to the book was that it is too long, being packed with a number of examples that are either redundant or simply common sense.

I might correct myself on that last point to include “common sense” ideas that are of significant value; yet even so, I think I could edit Shank’s book down to simply 31 useful and noteworthy ideas for technology-enhanced teaching. My version would include just the following.

1. Provide a detailed, weekly study schedule (p 16).
2. Embed performance tips to direct study and discipline toward learner success (p 20).
3. Anonymous weekly surveys to collect formative feedback (p 31).
4. Have contingency plans in place for learning in the case of technology failure (p 39).
5. Explain discussion message protocols to keep students focused and comfortable in forums (p 78).
6. Let learners evaluate their own contributions to the course through online quizzes or surveys (p 82).
7. Use tables as graphical organizers to illustrate relationships between information or concepts (p 94).
8. Ask students to enter their answer and compare it to an expert’s response (p 101).
9. You mouse rollovers to show ancillary info, allowing students to learn more about topics or passages (p 105), or use collapsible layers for text or illustrations (p 244).
10. Share bookmarks to web sites online (p 112). (Surprisingly, del.icio.us or other online tools were not mentioned.)
11. Show an expert’s view of a question or issue surrounding a topic (p 118).
12. Use a table, or Word’s track changes for easy peer editing (p 132).
13. Moderate student chat rooms (p 142). (They recommend a “knowledgeable assistant”, but I say that’s the teacher’s job!)
14. Use word games, such as 5 summative words that start with the same vowel to reinforce concepts (p 161). (I like acrostics, such as are found in the Nintendo DS game, Brain Age 2.)
15. In synchronous lectures, let learners determine the order in which topics are presented (Gordon MacKenzie-style) (p 163).
16. Use games and puzzles to review (e.g. crosswords, fill-in-the-blank (p 180). (I recommend our GameGarten, aka The Play Station hosted by John Krutsch.)

I’ll stop at number 16 to give you the information in two manageable chunks. Chunking is one idea that I think is pretty useful in e-learning, though it is overlooked in The Online Learning Book. I’ll post the last 15 strong ideas on this blog tomorrow.

Roger Johansson posted up a good, general review of the new O’Reilly book, “Designing Web Navigation”. The first question Johansson asks is a good one, i.e. “We need a whole book on designing Web navigation?” If you’ve ever struggled with navigation of a Web site, or know anything about the idea of the “scent of information” I think you’ll agree that the answer is, “Yes.”