Executive Summit

Attending, Speaking

Ron Danielson, CIO of Santa Clara University, will be giving a panel discussion on “Impactful Technologies” for the College Campus” at the Campus Technology Executive Summit in Boston on Monday, July 19.

Despite our different backgrounds (Ron, in learning space design, and mine in using software tools and technologies in the classroom), we identified several common themes and concerns from our varied experiences that we will share:

  • new possibilities emerge in collaborative software and spaces
  • student generated content, and its impact
  • students create their own physical or virtual learning spaces 
  • given all this, what happens to authority? role of instructors change from teacher to coach

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Two Screens and an Ocean

Publications

My colleague Diana Andone and I published a journal article about a collaborative project that our students worked on together. The paper, “Two Screens and an Ocean: Collaborating Across Continents and Cultures with Web-based Tools”  appears in the Information Systems Education Journal (July 2010).  The abstract follows.

This paper describes the implementation and results of a cross-cultural pairing between college students in the United States and Romania who worked together over the period of one month to create a multimedia presentation that shared their learning about topics of multimedia and culture. Students could use any web-based collaboration tools of their choice, including email, instant messaging, voice and video conferencing to complete the project, and documented their results on a collaborative wiki. The project gave students an opportunity to use Web based collaboration tools to create tangible work products with international partners. This paper presents an analysis of the technologies they used and how they used them to complete the project, and examines their learning based a survey and their own qualitative remarks. Results show that students gained proficiency at selecting and using appropriate web based collaboration tools. They also overcame issues related to language, time zones and technology.

(A preliminary version appears in The Proceedings of ISECON 2009: §3162. ISSN: 1542-7382.)

Web 2.0 and Multifaceted Learning

Attending, Speaking,

Trent Batson, Evan Leek, Ben Aslinger, and I are presenting on Web 2.0 and Multifaceted Learning at NERCOMP on Thursday.  Slides after the jump. Or search for #nercw2 on Twitter.

Web 2.0 creates a culture for both creating and consuming knowledge, both of which promote learning. Web 2.0 literacy, in one respect, is about learning to use collaborative tools to solve complex problems; in another, it is about managing and interpreting a broader, authentic, set of student work. The presenters will share their experiences and current thinking regarding the much larger chain of evidence, and about technologies that can assist students and faculty to technically manage the evidence. This includes creating activities using Web 2.0 tools that engage college students and promote learning in a variety of styles and capturing learning evidence through the use of e-portfolio systems. We will share samples of student work, lessons learned, and technologies used. Participants will discuss the effect of media and multimedia on learning, as well as how to use a variety of web 2.0 tools in an academic context.

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Two Legs of the Elephant

Attending, Teaching, ,

At the Web 2.0 Expo conference, there was a lot of talk this week about sensors, data, and the Internet of Things, and very little about “Web 3.0” or the Semantic Web. I asked Tim O’Reilly about the relationship between Internet of Things and the Semantic Web as  we walked from the Moscone Center to the Marriott. This was one of the questions on my CS 299 final exam, so it was good to hear Tim’s perspective.

Web 2.0 Expo

Attending


Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2010
I’m going to San Francisco next week for the Web 2.0 Expo conference.  This is the schedule of sessions I hope to be attending. There are several that meet at the same time, so I’ll decide at the time.   The session whose title intrigued me the most was The ABCs of APIs: Why Not Having an API in 2010 is Like Not Having a Website in 2001. Real World Case Studies of API Success   because the title hinted at the change in how people use the Web over the the past ten years, from a tool for personal comunication to one where businesses can communciate and share data and processes with each other.

From Computer Literacy to Web 2.0 Literacy

Publications, Teaching, Uncategorized

Last year Larry Press  of California State University and I wrote a paper entitled “From Computer Literacy to Web 2.0 Literacy:  Teaching and Learning Information Technology Concepts Using Web 2.0 Tools”.  I presented it at ISECON 2009 and it is now published in the Information Systems Education Journal.

Abstract: Computer literacy has evolved from writing simple BASIC programs to using desktop productivity applications. The shift from mainframe to personal computer brought about the need to rethink computer literacy courses to introduce basic skills and familiarity using desktop productivity applications. While these skills remain important, the recent shift of applications and data from the desktop to the Web has brought about another stage in the evolution of computer literacy education to the extent that today’s students not only need to be “computer literate” but also “Web literate” or “Web 2.0 literate.” Computer literacy courses retained the old concepts, but had less time to cover them because of the need to introduce new concepts. This paper examines approaches to teaching first year college introductory technology courses and suggests practical exercises and skills required for today’s students to be Web 2.0 literate.