EDUCAUSE 2006 - Pioneering New Territory and Technologies
October 11, 2006
Malcolm Brown, Director of Academic Computing at Dartmouth, Salid Ganjalizadeh, Assistant Director for Instructional Technology at Catholic University, Leslie Hitch, Director, Academic Technology Services at Northeastern University, Christine McMahon, Manager, Advanced Technology at Saint Louis University, Pablo Molina, CIO Information Systems at Georgetown University, John Moses, Director, Technology Planning, Biological Sciences at the University of Chicago, and Art St. George, Manager, Advanced Communications Technologies presented. The session was dedicated to the memory of Howard Strauss - his friends and family were in the first row.
Pablo began the session. He was the chair of the Evolving Technologies Committee. The five other presenters all wrote white papers to participate in today’s session. The point was to identify and investigate emerging technologies, and to make us thirsty not only for happy hour but to learn more about technologies presented today.
Pablo mentioned an article in the EDUCAUSE Review that we all received for the conference, “Pioneering New Territory and New Technologies“.
Art St. George from the University of New Mexico spoke next. He began with a quote from Stuart Brand, “Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.â€Â Wireless is a steamroller - it is being adopted quickly everywhere. Drexel, Wake Forest and Notre Dame are leading the way. Wireless is not a fad, and while it’s not a complete substitute for researchers on the wired network, it is embraced quickly as the network.
Saiid presented next on course management tools. They have become enterprise applications over the last few years. edu-tools has a comparison of the different CMS applications - they are largely the same.
Open source systems lack documentation and formal support. Saiid recommends having multiple CMS systems on campus until the open source applications are more mature, integrated and accepted by the faculty.
Leslie presented next about cell phones and mobile phones. MyFoodService.com will take your photograph of your food for $10/month and send you a caloric evaluation (I couldn’t find the site - perhaps that was a joke?).
Challenges to cell phone use include aging eyesight, adoption, and authentication. But can the cell phone replace some applications? Should we partner with vendors over cell services and form function, and can we use students to make our case?
Malcolm Brown talked about the rapid pace that has come with Web 2.0 applications. They are a broad range of applications that are expanding so rapidly it is being likened to the .com boom. Example categories of Web 2.0 functionality include Office alternatives, web desktop (UOS, IOS), social hangout, shared content depositories, VoIP, E-mail and Mapping.
Office players include: Jotsopt, iRows, DabbleDB, Thinkfree, NumSum and Thumbstacks. Google also has many competitors. Tagging and collaboration are finding their way into these applications.
These applications are gaining in relevance, and the OpenDocument Foundation is working towards an XML-based document standard that may bring an end to Microsoft’s dominance.
Christine presented on Vortals - vertical portals that can be used for research services and more. How do you build tools that reach the researchers desktop that helps them comply with compliance rules? The model is an onion, with the research community on the outside, with investigators next, followed by research administrators and collaborative information. Information from Banner is downloaded to the portal so they can build routing tables that allow researchers to push proposals through the appropriate areas on campus.
Question: how are some of these devices adding to or helping close the digital divide? Cell phone ownership worldwide has increased exponentially. Cell phones are perhaps the most ubiquitous device today.
Technorati Tags: EDUCAUSE2006, Web 2.0, technology
EDUCAUSE 2006 - Information Fluency in the Digital Age
October 11, 2006
I attended the Gartner session earlier, but it was unremarkable.
For this session, Susan Curzon, Dean, University Library at California State University, Chuck Dziuban, Director, Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness, and Martha Marinara, Director, Information Fluency Quality Enhancement Program at the University of Center Florida presented.
Chuck started by introducing a photo from their web site promoting Information LIteracy, Technology, Critical Thinking mediated by effective communication.
Story number 1. At the beginning of their initiative, they had trouble getting students to go to their web site. The student president suggested they advertise in the campus newspaper and in Facebook. One week later they had 27.000 hits to their web site.
Chuck profiled the generations: Matures, Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials.
Matures (prior to 1946)
- Dedicated to a job they take on
- Respectful of authority
- Place duty before pleasure
Baby Boomers (1946-1964)
- Live to wrok
- Generally optimistic
- Inflience on poilcy & products
Generation X (1965-1980)
- Work to live
- Clear & consistent expectations
- Value contributing to the whole
Millennials (1981-1994)
- Live in the moment
- Expect immediacy of technology
- Earn money for immediate consumption
Millennials are least satisfied with online learning; they are least able to integrate and are not able to change their approach to learning.Â
Millennial learning styles are twitch speed, parallel processing, graphics first, connected, active learning, learn by play, learn by fantasy, technology friendly; Lifestyles are special, sheltered, confident, team oriented, achieving, pressured and conventional.
CHallenges include in learning styles: surface functioning, difficult to teach, research by “surf”, weak critical thinking skills, naive beliefs regarding intellectual property, technology preferences have little institutional context. Lifestyle is sefl focused, artificial self esteem, anything is possible orientation, cynical, life by lottery and a “yeah right” attitude.
Martha presented next. Millennials want control over their education. It should be quick and convenient. Information LIteracy, Technology Literacy and Critical Thinking are a continuum and communication is a mediating force that transforms all three into Information Fluency. While UCF has funding ($5 million) and time (5 years), it will take longer to complete the transformation. Resources from across the campus were included in the effort: Library, Faculty Center, Career Resources, Faculty, etc. were all involved).
They have four pilot projects at present, and larger projects are in discussion now. They’ve launched a web site to promote Information Fluency.
Susan began by providing an overview of the CSU system. The libraries launched a program years ago to promote information literacy. Eventually every campus in the system became involved in the program.
Questions we should all consider:
- Is the definition of information literacy known? People often confuse this with computer literacy.
- Why are we engaging with information literacy? Why is it important? IL gives students a strategic advantage as workers and citizens.
- Have clear goals been developed for the information literacy program?
- Is information literacy part of the educational strategy of the University? It can’t be a focus of the LIbrary alone. Everyone must contribute to the educational strategy.
- Is there a plan for collaboration across the university?
- Does one size fit all?
- Is there administrative support?Â
- Is there a collective will for a long-term sustained effort?
- Is there a willingness to market the program?
- What about an assessment program? How will we know when are students are information literate? This has been very challenging for CSU.
- What else is going on at the University at this time? Is this the right time for this initiative to be launched?
- What about accreditation?Â
These questions (along with several I missed) should all be considered in approaching an information literacy program.
Technorati Tags: EDUCAUSE2006, information literacy, information fluency
EDUCAUSE 2006 - The Acceleration of Technology in the 21st Century: The Impact on Education and Society
October 11, 2006
Brian Hawkins started by announcing the awards for this year. The new Catalyst award went to Course Management Systems. I thought this was especially interesting considering the controversy around Blackboard and their patent suit. I wonder how much EDUCAUSE had to rework their video script, which said that CMS was something that sprang forth from the academy.
Dennis Trinkle won the EDUCAUSE Quarterly Contribution of the Year award for his article, “The 361 Degree Model for Transforming Teaching and Learning with Technology.” The Leadership Awards went to the late Howard Strauss and Daniel Updegrove.
Ray Kurzweil provided the day’s keynote. His most recent book, The Singularity is Near, is a provoking best-seller.
He’s an alum of MIT, and now serves on their board. He started by talking about how technology is transforming fields like biology. The power of information technologies doubles every year. Specific people and projects are difficult to predict, but trends are easier to predict. Being a successful inventor means being able to predict. Timing is often the reason new technologies fail.
Kurzweil finds that many of the predictions that he made in The Age of Intelligent Machines have come true. He came with several examples of technology today.
Reading machine technology - today’s units are many times smaller. Today the devices are portable, while only years ago they were desk-bound. The National Federation of the Blind asked him in 2002 when the device would be available. He said May 2006. It would take about as long to develop due to the “vagaries of real-world print”. The device was introduced in July. He gave us a demonstration. In less than a minute, the machine had processed a picture of the page and was reading the page to us.
Nice quote: “If you understand something in only one way, then you don’t understand it at all.”
The Paradigm Shift Rate - the rate of technological progress - is now doubling every decade. Progress is not linear. The tools of knowledge creation are being democratized. The amount of knowledge is also doubling every year.
When one method reaches its limits, another way is found to continue the exponential growth of computing. Three dimensional, molecular processors will replace the ones of today.
The biotechnology revolution is the union of biology with information technology. We can turn off genes, add genes (he’s backing a company that’s created one to treat pulmonary hypertension), and so on. Drugs can now be designed via technology before testing, reducing side effects and speeding up the time-to-market for many drugs.
We are approaching a deeply interconnected world. Universities are putting courseware and webcasts of classes for free online. Hundreds of thousands of students are taking advantage of this.
We’re going to move in general from aggregating people in convention centers to new ways of meeting where we can do the same thing virtually. Education will move increasingly to virtual environments for the sharing of knowledge.
Technology grows logarithmically but we experience it linearly. Blood-cell sized medical devices are already developed. These devices inside the human body will be more and more powerful. You could sit at the bottom of the pool for hours.
Steroids are bad for you, but these newer medical devices wouldn’t be bad for your health.
Examining human intelligence - reverse engineering the brain - is another frontier. We have successfully modeled different parts of the brain. We hallucinate the world based on seven weak visual signals that are fed from the eye to the brain.
We will understand our brains, and this will help us understand ourselves.
Self-organizing systems: The bulk of human intelligence is based on patter recognition: the quintessential example of self-organization. Translating telephones exist (though people do misunderstand each other even when they speak the same language).
2010: Computers disappear.
- Images written directly to our retinas,
- Ubiquitous high bandwidth connection to the internet at all times,
- Electronics so tine it’s embedded in the environment, our clothing, our eyeglasses
- Full immersion visual auditory virtual reality
- Augmented real reality
- Interaction with visual personalities as a primary interface
- Effective language technologies
2029: An intimate merger
- $1,000 of computation = 1,000 times the human brain
- Reverse engineering of the human brain completed
- Computers pass the Turing test
- more…
Nanobots will be augmenting our capabilities. They are non-invasive, surgery free and can be distributed to millions or billions of points in the brain. Full immersion virtual reality will incorporate all of the senses.
Life too will be extended. Overcoming aging will occur more with biotechnology. In 15 years we’ll be adding more than a year to each year of your life. If you can hang in there for 15 years, you may get to experience a remarkable century ahead.
UPDATE: I’ve added a recording of Kurzweil’s talk, which you can access here.
Technorati Tags: EDUCAUSE2006, technology
EDUCAUSE 2006 - Evaluating Web Conferencing Systems for Instructional Use
October 11, 2006
Andrea Eastman-Mullins from Alexander Street Press and Robert Hambrick from North Carolina State University presented. At the time of the study, Andrea was employed by NCSU.
The speakers were part of a task force to evaluate four web conferencing systems:
- Breeze 5
- Centra Symposium 7.5
- Elluminate 6.5
- Horizon Wimba Live Classroom 4.2
What is a Synchronous Learning Management System (SLMS)? It’s a virtual classroom system that brings together voice, video, data and graphics in a structured group-learning environment. Robert stressed that the products are all good, and that what they will present is the process of evaluation, which is more important than determining the one solution for everyone to use.
Bringing asynchronous and synchronous learning systems together allows you to reap the best elements of both. Robert reviewed the features that you’ll find in the different systems, including live audio and video conferencing, whiteboards, integrated text chat, polling and quizzing, application and file sharing, and more. Not all systems have all features, and part of the review process is identifying which features your institution needs.
The instructional benefits of these systems are:
- Student-Centered Learning
- Interactive Discussions
- Lifelong Learning Styles
- Media-rich Course Materials
- Immediate Student Feedback
- Flexibility
- Intimate Community of Learners
Video-conferencing works for the first five minutes to establish the presence of the instructor, but after that people are self-conscious and lots of bandwidth is consumed.
The UNC SLMS Task Force was asked by the TLTC Board to evaluate a system for system-wide use. The task force included 36 members representing 14 of 16 UNC campuses. The evaluation process developed an evaluation rubric, hosted group demos and small workgroups, and used a listserv and a Wiki to communicate and document the evaluation process.
Robert spent a good bit of time going over a web conferencing rubric (in an Excel spreadsheet) that was used in the evaluation of the tools.
Centra Symposium 7.5 strengths included threaded text chat, high quality VoIP, video, whiteboard and application sharing. It was a good content management system and had a very intuitive interface. Text chat is un-docked, so it must be launched to be accessed. Version 7.5 allowed the instructor to launch text chat on the student’s computers. There is a toolbar that allows you to print, save or reply to a student’s message. By selecting a topic first, you can keep the conversation threaded, something NCSU found to be powerful. Symposium also has auto-swtiching for video so that the application replicates a face-to-face environment as participants talk via video. You can display up to 6 concurrent videos at the same time. Audio features were also strong: you have a full range of control over the quality of the sound. From 2K per second to 13K per second.
Weaknesses of Symposium incliude that it was PC only at the time, and worked best only with Microsoft products, there was no integration with Blackboard. Symposium 7.6 has a recording studio that allows faculty to capture and edit audio and post it to Blackboard. There is also Surgient Virtual Lab Integration for lab control. The application will be integrated October 1 with Blackboard and Vista. There is also Mac Intel support, and closed captioning has been added to the application. If the instructor has Dragon, it will caption his discussion.
Elluminate 6.5 has high quality VoIP, video, whiteboard. It came out on top in terms of accessibility. Good integration with Blackboard and WebCT and it has nice participant management (you can see what the students are doing).
Drawbacks included single microphone use at one time, which was too structured (this has changed). Converting a PowerPoint slide into Elluminate is fuzzy, and there is no text wrapping in the whiteboard. There was no strong content management library, but there is now.
Horizon Wimba 4.2 strengths included LMS integration, and cross-platform support. Assessment tools were the most robust of the four they evaluated. Wimba voice tools were good and external user devices
Weaknesses feedback tools archive feature and the whiteboard. Stopping a session briefly generated an archive separate from the other parts of the event. The whiteboard is not object oriented, but they are working on that.
Macromedia Breeze 5’s strengths include a customizable interface, a hands-free microphone, a good content library and that it is a Flash-plug in. Since Breeze is based on Flash, there isn’t much download or setup involved.
Weaknesses that they observed include inconsistency in audio quality; participants do not have the ability to interact unless “promoted” to presenter; Fewer options for feedback; customization increases the learning curve.
Breeze is now called Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional. New features include improved VoIP capabilities, always on personal meeting rooms and other server-side enhancements.
The needs of the different campuses pushed UNC into purchasing several of the systems. NCSU has chosen Elluminate after first choosing a different product. There is a web site where you can learn more.
Technorati Tags: EDUCAUSE2006, web conferencing
