iPhones are for the birds!

In 2006, I blogged about iPods as training aids in sports. Since 2006 there has been many examples about iPods being used as a just-in-time performance support aid for various training and educational contexts. I was recently at the Eastern Ontario Symposium for Educational Technology in Ottawa and a presenter from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology showed how the nursing school was using a PDA to help nursing students. These students on the floor had access to just-in-time resources on the PDA (textbook, drug guide, etc.). In addition, these students were able to log their training competencies as they complete them, instead of logging them once they arrive home for the evening. A lovely example of how a portable device can enhance a learning environment by both being a resources for information and by storing data for later use.

So by now you’re probably asking yourself, what does this story about nursing students have to do with the title of this posting? (i.e. having anything to do with and iPhone or with birds). Well, I’m sorry to report that it really has very little to do with it. However, I thought it was a nice little introductory story to what I want to describe next: BirdJam! Yuppers. No typo here - definitely BirdJam.

13May06-RoseBreastedGrosbeak-Pair, - photo by Eric Tremblay.

Bird watching is a popular hobby and many companies make resources for the avid birdwatcher. A myriad number of field guides and a long list of bird song CDs are available. I recently came across an application that uses an iPod, or an iPhone, as a performance support for birdwatchers. Paper-based field guides with photos have routinely been used at the time of a bird sighting for identification purposes; however, operating a series of birdsong CDs is much harder to manage when you are out in the field. That’s where BirdJam comes in. With what I consider to be a very elegant solution, BirdJam will transform your iPhone, or iPod, into a virtual field guide which integrates together both photos and the accompanying bird songs. BirdJam is a piece of software that converts data from the popular Stokes Field Guides for Birdsongs into a format that leverages the unique features of the iPhone and iPod (such as cover flow, and fast title searching, etc.). The result is a portable encyclopedia of photos and songs that is fast and easy to use. The technophilic bird watcher will salivate at the first sigh of BirdJam! If you don’t already have your own iPod or iPhone don’t worry. They will sell you a pre-loaded iPod ready for the field right out of the box. Several different add-ons are available, so not only can you obtain photos and audio of bird songs from eastern and western regions of North America, but you can also obtain data packs for birds native to Mexico and Costa Rica. I would bet that in coming months that BirdJam, and it’s partners, will continue to expand its available selection.

Much of our education and learning takes place outside the classroom. BirdJam is one example of a tool that creates a just-in-time performance supports for birdwatchers. Just another example of how people are thinking outside the box to make learning a lot easier for us all.

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Flickr images for YOU!

Flickr allows its users to grant Creative Commons licenses to their photos and as a result many of these images can be available for YOUR use! There are different types of Creative Commons licenses and Flickr breaks them down for you and categorizes its database of photos accordingly. One example of a licence type is “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivitives License”. What this means is that you can use any image tagged with this license if you meet 3 conditions:

• Attribution: you must give credit to the photographer


• NonCommercial: you must not use the image for commercial purposes


• No Derivitives: you may not modify the image in any way

It turns out that at the time I am writing this posting there are over 23 million photos on Flickr that you can search and use with this license. WOW! It is a veritable Gold Mine for educators putting together course materials.

Check it out Flickr's Creative Commons page here.

Take care

    -Eric

PS: The image above was found on Flickr with a Creative Commons license. Credit to Kevin Day. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanagerphotography/556740737/]

PSS: I've posted on this blog before about free image databases, add Flickr to the list now.

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Wikis in the Classroom - iGlobe

I attended the Eastern Ontario Symposium on Educational Technology (EOSET) hosted by the University of Ottawa last Thursday (May 29th). The format this year was different than in the past. It consisted of a series of short 10 minute presentations. One talk that I found interesting was by Mark Salter in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. He described his large introductory class in "Politics of Globalization" which he branded as ‘iGlobe’ to attract student attention on the materials and to convey that this course was different than other politics courses. It sure was. Mark mixed aspects of problem-based learning (PBL), wikis and pod-casting into the materials of his course. His course has two assignments (in which students had choice as to what deliverables they had to submit) and two exams. Mark reported that often in undergraduate politics courses, professors give feedback to students on their papers and students do not get the opportunity to integrate that feedback into future assignments. He felt that by using the wiki in the course that students could take advantage of professor (and peer) feedback to improve their work by incorporating feedback. I have written on the topic of using wikis as class assignments before, so it is clear to the readers of this blog that I am very pro-wikis. Mark mentioned a good point that I took away from this presentation: he felt that students need a significant amount of training on how to use a wiki in the context of education. In his experience, the concept of a wiki was new to some of his students and so basic training on how to operate it was necessary.


In addition, he felt it was important to emphasize to the students that the goal of using a wiki in this course is not to create as many pages as you can, but rather to create a few pages and edit them extensively and repeatedly. The cycle of ‘research-write-feedback-edit-repeat’ was the preferred activity here. Not simply a linear ‘write as much as you can’ scenario. It is this feedback integrating cycle that is the key in an educational context! The entire course is still a work in progress and you can check out the iGlobe wiki here.

If you use wikis in your undergraduate courses, let us know how they are working in your context by leaving a comment below.

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Audio Feedback on Student Assignments in Online Courses

I attended the inaugural Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) annual conference earlier this month in Banff, Alberta (this was formerly the Canadian Association of Distance Education conference). It was both a spectacular location and a spectacular conference. One talk that I thought would be interesting to the readers of this blog was by Dr. Phil Ice (formerly of University of North Carolina Charlotte now of American Public University System).

Phil and his colleagues investigated the use of the audio commenting tool in Adobe Acrobat Pro to provide audio feedback on student assignments in an online course.

The experimental design and analysis was rigorous with aspects such as alternating between text-based and audio-based feedback types between assignments throughout the term, a question on the final course survey asking for student preference for audio versus text-based feedback, and 27 post-course interviews with students, etc.

The project started off on the right foot when 40% of students spontaneously emailed the instructor about the first occurrence of audio commenting with all of those emails expressing satisfaction with the technique.

On the end-of course survey, the results remained impressive. 26 students preferred audio to text, 4 students indicated no preference and one answer N/A (due to a defective sound card).

The transcript analysis of the 27 post-course interviews with students revealed four themes:

1. Ability to understand nuances in feedback (70% of students). Humor, tone, encouragements and emphasis were much easier to interpret using the audio feedback.


2. Feelings of increase involvement (56% of students). The connection between instructor and student seemed to be increased and consequently students were engaged in their online course.


3. Content retention (44% of students). Students reported that they retained the content of the audio feedback better that text-based feedback.


4. Instructor caring (30% of students). Students reported that audio feedback was more personal than text and they perceived the instructor as caring more when he left an audio message.

Phil and his colleagues actually did more analysis than I am describing here, but you get the idea. If you would like to see his PowerPoint presentation from Banff you will find it hosted at SlideShare and if you would like to see a recent article on this subject then this is a good one:

Ice, P., Curtis, R., Phillips, P. and Wells, J. (2007). Using Asynchronous Audio Feedback to Enhance Teaching Presence and Students’ Sense of Community. J. of Asynchronous Learning Networks. 11(2).

If you have any similar experiences with using audio feedback in online courses, please let us know by leaving a comment below.

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20,000 visits!

A big thank you to everyone who has ever visited e-Learning Acupuncture. Today the website reached 20,000 visits! Wow! Thank you, thank, you thank you!

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Invest 45 minutes in PowerPoint!

In the same vein as my ‘Life by Powerpoint’ blog post from last year, I have stumbled across another excellent demonstration of useful ways to make PowerPoint presentations less boring for students. Alvin Trusty, Director of Educational Technology at The University of Findlay in Ohio has provided his recorded presentation from the eTechOhio conference of 2008. It’s 45 minutes long. But wait… I know exactly what you’re going to say here.

Eric… I can’t waste 45 minutes watching a PowerPoint presentation on the web. BORING!

If you are a frequent user of PowerPoint in the classroom, then this will be the BEST 45 minutes you will ever spend watching a PowerPoint presentation. Alvin gives tons of tips and tricks and interweaves the topic of best practices in PowerPoint with some very useful concepts in Copyright Law (tailored to the US audience but useful in general to others.) He shares his personal blog and a bunch of links stored in del.icio.us. So instead of ‘wasting’ 45 minutes, I say ‘invest’ 45 minutes and watch this presentation from start to finish. Then leave me a comment below. In your opinion, did you just waste that 45 minutes or not? I want to know!

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Wikis as Assignments

I attended a very useful online presentation last week by Mike Orey of the University of Georgia (via the Wimba Distinguished Lecture Series). In one of his graduate courses in education, as an assessment activity, he asks students to contribute to a wiki-book that he and his colleagues have developed: Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching and technology. The reason I am making this posting is two-fold.

1. The concept of asking students to contribute to a wiki that will remain for future users is very interesting to me. Clearly an assignment of this nature fits into the highest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and could even serve as a capstone assignment in some types of courses. In Mike's example, he created a privately owned wiki for this purpose; however, Wikipedia could be used as well.



2. Mike's eBook is excellent from a practitioner’s point of view! Have a look it. It has some interesting sections on topics such as Motivation, Adult Learning, Problem-based Instruction and Learning Communities as an Instructional Model. Chock full of case studies and well referenced with supporting literature. If applicable, Mike encourages you to adopt all or part of this eBook as a textbook in your course. He's so nice (*smile*).

Kudos to Mike & friends on more than one level!

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Project Management using Google Sites

My office has been playing around with the Google Sites wiki for the last few weeks (I’ve written about Google Sites before.) We’ve been using it to collaboratively author mini-reports as well as staff meeting agendas.

I would like to try to use a wiki site to track an online course development project. It would be a place where the project team could define goals, publish milestones, post files and monitor progress on project activities. I think Google Sites would be perfect for this and it is an easy to use and free online application. I am definately going to use it when I start my next project.

Today I came across someone else who has built a nice Google Sites template for project management activity. Check out the link and let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.

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Nursing Simulation in Second Life

If you want to be a nurse then you need to go to school. Many schools and registered nurse programs are using technological tools to delivery nursing education; especially in the area of nursing simulations. I came across one particularly interesting example of this just today. John Miller, a Nursing Professor, at Tacoma Community College in Washington is spearheading a nursing simulation hosted within Second Life. He’s also working in collaboration with the nursing school at nearby Centralia Community College. The simulator allows students to react to a situation, to choose what medications to administer, to chart their actions, to monitor the consequences, and to adjust their treatments accordingly. Scenarios can be simulated which reproduce life-threatening conditions in a safe ‘virtual’ environment. I've written about Second Life before and it seems to me with the work of simulation pioneers like John Miller, the potential of Second Life as a simulator are being slowly unveiled.

I contacted John Miller in Second Life (his avatar's name is JS Vavoom) and he let me view the simulator. Here's a screen shot of my avatar lying down on the operating table. Yikes!

Important Update: As of late 2008, John has removed his original 5 part series of YouTube videos (listed below) demonstrating his nursing simulation. He now has new videos. I will write about them in this blog here.

Do you want to check out John Miller's nursing simulator but you don't have a Second Life account? No worries! John has made a video tour of the simulator and posted the tour in a 5 part video series on YouTube (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5). What do you think about it? Leave a comment below.

PS: Take the time to check out John Miller's blog too.

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Who are your students?

Do you really know who your students are and the challenges they face with education? If you answered 'yes' to this question then you are most likely in the minority. Check out this excellent video made by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University. Very thought provoking!



(Click here for the native YouTube page for this video.)

PS: Do you recognize the name 'Micheal Wesch'? Check out this posting I made a year ago on another of his videos.

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Poducate Me!

Micah Ovadia, a digital designer at the University of Cincinnati, provides this excellent and free guide to everything you wanted to know about Podcasting. It is a must-bookmark site. http://poducateme.com/guide/

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Free Wiki Hosting by Google

Google finally gets into the Wiki game by re-launching the product they acquired last year (JotSpot) under a a new name: Google Sites. See this description of the product via TechCrunch blog. I'll be trying it!

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12 Screencasting Tools

Keep this link handy. Sean P. Aune, from Kirksville, Missouri, summarizes 12 Screencasting Tools that are currently available. Half of them are FREE of cost. I have never tried any of the free tools on this list. If anyone has any experience on how well they perform, please leave a comment below.

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Is Second Life 100% experimental?

If you were running a business and your clientele rose from 3 million to 11 million in just one year, then people would be buzzing about you too. That’s what has occurred on Second Life (SL) in the 2007 calendar year.

Maybe there’s been some buzz about Second Life (SL) in distance education circles for awhile now but the massive increase in users is fueling some new excitement.

If anyone is clueless about SL, a quick read of the wikipedia article on the subject would be useful before continuing on with this blog post.

I have been a casual SL user for the last couple of years. Recently a colleague of mine (Thanks Louise!) has had her first experience with SL and in discussions she brought to the forefront some of the most common concerns that distance educators might share about SL:

1. SL is very heavy on the ‘social scene.’ It appears that a great many people in SL are here to meet other people with intentions or striking up more than just a casual friendship. This type of environment could be a distraction to educational pursuits.

2. SL has a very steep learning curve. New users start off at Orientation Island. It can take almost 20 hours to complete the island tasks in order to be reasonably proficient with the SL interface. Being a long time gamer, when I joined SL, I skipped the entire Orientation Island experience and chose to figure out the interface by trial and error. However, I fully understand that non-gamer type people would probably find it very frustrating to proceed in this manner. Orientation Island therefore is a must! However, what distance course can afford to have 20 hours allocated to it on the front end for students to learn a software tool? OUCH!

If I were teaching a graduate-level distance course that required synchronous student-to-student interaction and was on the topic of technology in education, then I would be tempted to run it on SL. The up-front investment of the steep learning curve might be worth it in this special case (i.e. a requirement for synchronous interaction on the topic of education technology). I can see that a dozen students having voice discussions in an immersive world using their custom built avatars could really be fun and could really stimulate some interest in synchronous simulation technologies. However, if I were teaching a graduate-level chemistry course that required synchronous student-to-student interaction, I would not invest the time required for every student to climb the steep SL learning curve. I would choose something like Elluminate Live for my synchronous activities. Elluminate's learning curve is a much more gentle slope. (Not to mention the fact that the potentially distracting 'social scene' is avoided.)

Despite this conclusion, I can’t help but feel that SL has enormous potential to develop into something more useful for education purposes as time progresses. I'm just not sure how much 'time' will be required. Two more years? Ten more years? Who knows. For now, I view it as 100% experimental - it is simply an intriguing social simulation environment.

Are you in SL? What do you think about reality, or the potential, of SL from a distance education perspective? Please leave a comment below.

Also, if you want to look me up in SL, my avatar’s name is EricT Nastula. See you there!

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Putting the microscope on Flickr

Last semester I taught an Introductory Microscopy laboratory course. The course was basically divided into 3 parts:

1. Microscope operation
2. Basic histology
3. Specimen preparation

There was no required textbook for the course and a lab manual containing protocols and theory was provided. In past offerings of this course, students had great difficulty with the 3-week long basic histology section because they had very little resources they could study with at home. The laboratory manual was not detailed enough to compete with commercially available textbooks in histology. So students had difficulty studying away from the lab. A histology textbook was not added to the required readings list because it was difficult to justify the additional cost if this textbook was only to serve a 3-week period in the course. (Histology textbooks are expensive!) In the absence of any significant material to study from at home, it proved difficult for students to assimilate the material with the mandatory laboratory time alone. Some were creative and used Google to surf some online histology sites at other institutions.

This year we tried something different. We (*Thanks Nancy!*) photographed all the histology specimens used in the lab and we posted them all to the Flickr photo sharing website. Additionally, we annotated the photos to give students a guide to the hallmark features of the specimens. With this resource available to students anywhere they could find a computer, all of a sudden studying away from the lab became much more effective. The results were such that the grades went up when compared to last year! Students reportedly loved the online Flickr resource. They found it a major advantage to their studying and they placed great value in being able to visualize on the web the exact slide that they used in class.

From an instructor perspective Flickr was a joy to use. No special technical knowledge was required to use it. No significant photo editing, no HTML coding, very easy to annotate photos, organization of photos was simple and the best part was that it was free. Flickr is completely free if you use less than 250 images. So the effort to create this student resource was very manageable.

So clearly this was a win:win for both students and instructors.

Want to see it? It’s publicly available here.

What do you think? Would this work for you? Post your comment below.

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Technology, Colleges and Community Online Conference

I live in Canada and these days everywhere I look, I see snow. There is about 3 feet of snow outside and I have been shoveling dutifully for several days. You might ask, what do I think about when I'm shoveling? Well, this morning, I was thinking about Hawaii. Wouldn't it be great to go to Hawaii? Where there's no snow! Well, it's a bit out of my budget for the moment; however, I'm going to Hawaii in another sense this spring. The Technology, Colleges and Community (TCC) Conference is hosted by Kapi'olani Community College, in Honolulu, Hawaii. I've heard some good things about this very unique conference. It's a completely virtual conference. All the presenters and attendees stay in their current locations yet everyone joins together in synchronous and asynchronous activities for three days (April 15-17, 2008). Personally I think this is a really great idea!

If you are a college teacher with no budget for conference travels, only $69 USD gets you full access to everything, including the archive of everything presented and recorded for 6 months! Talk about bang for your conference buck! Check out the 2008 Theme:

"TCC will feature papers and general sessions on the continuing evolution of distance learning, online communities and collaboration, social networking, and best practices of instructional technology. [including]:

* Online, hybrid, blended or other modes of technology enhanced learning
* Emerging Internet tools for teaching and learning (blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc)
* Technology applications that facilitate communication and collaboration
* Building and sustaining learning communities
* Instructional models for learning in virtual environments (Second Life, etc)
* Distance learning including mobile learning
* Ubiquitous and life-long learning
* Open content and open source
* E-portfolios and other assessment tools
* Student success and assessment strategies in online learning
* Student orientation and preparation
* Student services online (tutoring, advising, mentoring, career planning, etc)
* Online learning resources (library, learning centers, etc)
* Professional development for faculty and staff
* Accessibility for persons with disabilities
* Gender equity, digital divide, intercultural understanding, and open access
* Managing information technology and change in educational institutions
* Institutional planning and pedagogy catalyzed by technology advances
* Global learning and international education
* Educational technology use around the world"

So, I would like to give special thanks to Mother Nature for making me think of Hawaii this morning. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! See you all next April. (*smile*)

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Carnegie-Mellon Shares Its Stuff!

I’ve written before on this blog about science-based educational material available on the web that I have found useful. A colleague of mine (merci Louise!) just brought another website to my attention. It’s part of a long-term initiative by Carnegie-Melon University. The Department of Biological Sciences has published a website chock-full of online resources for Biology.

1. Interactive Animations. Flash-based animations show a variety of biochemistry and modern biology phenomenon from how cell membranes work to how DNA replication occurs.


2. Simulation Labs. These interactive simulations begin to show how some conventional biology labs take place in real life. They could effectively used as ‘pre-labs’ to prepare students for a real life lab.


3. Supplements. Currently there are two available: a glossary and some ICE structures.


4. An online modern biology course that is under construction. It’s an Open Learning Initiative, which is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Definitely worth a look!

The best part about the Carnegie-Melon project is that it is publicly available on the Internet. So if you like any one of these items, you can use it with your students in class or as homework. Direct them to the links you find useful and supplement you lecture and textbook material with more interactive content. Enjoy!

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Learning objects that work!

It's no secret: I don't know everything! (*smile*) In conjunction with the provincial general election, there is an referendum in Ontario on October 10th on electoral reform. I've been hearing about it on TV and on the radio. We have two choices in the referendum. We can vote to keep the current 'Past-the-Post' method or we can choose to adopt a new method: 'Mixed member proportional'. So despite living in Ontario my entire life, I had never heard the expression 'Past-the-Post' and of course, I have no clue what 'Mixed member proportional' even means. Clearly I had some learning to do before October 10th so I can make an informed decision.

There are a couple of ways I can go about to find the answers to my question. I could try to Google those two methods and read about them. However, instead I chose to see what the Elections Ontario was producing to educate citizens on the subject. I'm glad to say I was pleasantly surprised!

In addition to an informative website they created a Flash object that did an excellent job in educating me. It has a few features that I think are best practices in Flash object design:

• The navigation is excellent. The learner quickly understands that there are 7 chapters. It's easy to pause and move around from chapter to chapter at anytime.


• The learner chooses the order in which the chapters are viewed depending on which topics they are seeking information on. This non-linear progression through the learning object is excellent for customizing a learner's learning.


• The people showcased in the learning object also act as the learner's guide. They give the learner tips on how to navigate and they participate in the transition between chapters by clicking, along with the learner, on the buttons on the screen. It really gives you a sense of being 'supported emotionally' in the learning by these people in the learning object.


• Closed-captioning can be toggled to allow the learner to read what is being said in the learning object.


• The learner can even download a printable version of the video in PDF format.


• It is also available in two languages. Here is the French language version.

So after examining this very excellent learning object I can now say I know how I'm going to vote on Oct 10th. Can you see any other excellent features in this learning object? Do you see any weaknesses? If so, please post your feedback as a comment.

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Engaging Interactions!

B.J. Schone, the author of the eLearningWeekly.com blog, has finally released his free eBook called Engaging Interactions For eLearning (downloadable here). BJ sought my opinion on the content of his eBook when it was in an earlier draft and I really liked it from the first read. For instructional designers, professors and instructors working in the field of web-enabled learning this eBook does a good job at highlighting ways to make learning experiences interesting and engaging at the level of student-to-content. It's a challenge we're always faced with as most of us know that when we create a course, we want to avoiding creating a really boring 'page-turner'. BJ has assembled 25 student-to-content interactions suitable for the eLearning context that can improve the learning experience by engaging learners to the content instead of simply having them read mountains and mountains of material. By using some of these examples and also by including a component of student-to-student interaction in your online course, then you'll start to observe the synergy between these two aspects: it's the real 'sweet spot' in student satisfaction and in online learning. You'll build engaging and motivating courses which include a positive and useful sense of community; it's a perfect foundation to learn at a distance. So have a look at this free resource. It's worth a read. Enjoy.

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Definitions: Web-courses

John Gedeon, an Educational Technologist from the University of the West Indies (Trinidad and Tobago), recently contacted me with a question about my opinion regarding the definitions for courses that have different degrees of web-involvement.

As he has discovered there is a great deal of overlap and confusion in the lexicon describing distance learning courses especially when technology is involved. In my mind, there are only 3 types of 'web courses':

1. Web-enhanced F2F. I define this as a face-to-face (F2F) classroom course with a web technology as a resources for it (typically a web-page or LMS). This web-page houses content and resources that support the F2F onsite course.

2. Web-based Online. I define this as an exclusively non-classroom course where some web technology (typically a website, email distribution system or LMS, etc.) fully supports all the infrastructure required for students to complete their work. Students never meet each other, or the instructor, F2F.

3. Hybrid F2F:Online. A mixture of both Web-enhanced F2F and Web-based Online such that at some point during the length of the term students must meet in class AND at some point during the the length of the term students must conduct their work online using some web technology.

What do you think about my three types? Can you think of a 4th type? Did I miss anything here? If so, please leave a comment by clicking 'comment' below.

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