Multilitteratus Incognitus

I was reading this article a week or so ago on the role that theory plays in instructional design. Even though the study was very limited (only 7 participants, and in several different industries), I've seen similar results when working with my classmates (I should point out that this post is not meant to criticize my classmates, but to point out observations in the instructional design field as a whole) The researchers in this study found ten themes: Participant desire to use theory and report that they often do. Participants expressed ambivalence toward theory (theories were “viewed as overly abstract, rigid, or complex with relatively little guidance regarding application.”) The range of theories chose are “likely limited to those that practitioners know about, understand how to apply, and find useful in their work.” The researchers then suggested that “practitioners may seldom identify theories that are actually useful in their specific setting, even if a helpful theory exis...

I was reading an article recently on the Washington Post , the title of which was A Virtual Revolution Is Brewing for Colleges. Quite honestly I've heard this before, and I've been hearing this for the last ten years. Still hasn't happened. Here's an interesting quote: the young students of tomorrow will be growing up in an on-demand, personalized world, in which the notion of a set-term, offline, prepackaged education will seem anachronistic. In my experience, there have been very few prepackaged classes. In all of my undergrad education we've had guidelines about what should be covered, however the classes were anything but prepackaged. We did get off syllabus, we did explore interesting tangents, and the students who were in the class did offer valuable insights. Another interesting quote: soon you'll see more Web sites that make it easy to take classes from a blend of different universities. While this would be interesting, there is a problem of accreditatio...

With the beginning of the semester behind us, and the opening festivities almost behind us as well, this puts an end to the free food on campus. I guess we're back to "normal" now, as indicated by this PhD comic strip

I saw this article on Inside Higher Ed recently. It's an interesting concept, but I don't really buy into it. Blackboard it toxic at the moment. Many people who use it absolutely despise it. Microsoft already has image problems, having one more image problem is not something that they need to fix their brand. If Microsoft were to buy Blackboard, they would probably buy them and end-of-life all current Blackboard products with the exception of Angel - that product seems to be loved by the people who use it, however this is unlikely. Many customers would probably prefer to see upgrades to BlackBoard Vista and CE to make them more intuitive rather than switch to another product altogether since there are course conversion costs (converting existing templates, training people, training faculty, troubleshooting, etc.), and if Microsoft were to kill off the troubled children of Blackboard this could compound on their existing image problems. If Microsoft were to enter the LMS/CMS ar...

It's been a while since I attended PodCamp Boston and met a lot of interesting people :-) One of those interesting people is Gina Minks ( @gminks on twitter) Gina informed me about #lrnchat, on twitter ( you can find transcripts here ) and I eagerly wanted to check things out. What is #lrnchat? #lrnchat is an online chat that happens every Thursday night 8:30-10pm EST / 5:30-7pm PST over the social messaging service Twitter. Participants are people interested in the topic of learning from one another and who want to discuss how to help other people learn. I haven't had a chance to participate in a #lrnchat session because when it's on I am generally tired. The morning following a #lrnchat session I feel as though my twitter stream has been spammed - and spammed badly. I only get one side of the conversation with some quotes that are just like "whaaaaaa?" and others that are awesome pearls of wisdom in an of themselves that can stand without context. Now I can ...

This months started off with a "show me the money" theme, both for pre-college and college level kids. First we had a story on NRP, asking whether paying for grades cheapens education , and then we had a story from Indiana University's Pressroom on their "incentive grants" for students who do well in school. I fall somewhere in between the two positions of to pay and not to pay. When I was in school I did not get money from my parents for bringing home a good report card, however I did get certain allowances, like being able to play computer games (on my 68040 Performa - no FPU!) and being in a better bargaining position when it came to buying new video games. When I was in college it was expected that I was an adult and I was responsible enough to value the education that I was paying for. Of course what it comes down to is this: Whether in K-12 or in College, we end up paying for education. Nothing is free. If you want to reward kids for doing well in K-12...

I was reading Inside Higher Ed earlier this week and there was an interesting list (similar to Educause's 7-things lists) about what define a learning technologists. Out of this list these three points are quite interesting to me, and quite possibly define my weltsanschauung with regard to educational technology and my likes at work. We learning technologists share a healthy skepticism towards the dominant commercial CMS, Blackboard. Put another way, our relationship with Blackboard is often ambivalent. Philosophically, I think many of us are drawn to open and community source platforms and business models. There is an important conversation going on in our profession about the advantages of sticking with Blackboard as our campus CMS (which there are many), versus moving in larger numbers to an open source alternative (with Moodle getting the most traction lately). This conversation will continue to dominate our profession. Personally it's not like I hate Blackboard, it's...

I was recently reading a wrap-up post on eLearningTech, which pointed me to an older post that Tony Karrer had written. In this post Tony writes about the key aspects of Learning 2.0 (briefly summarized here): Start Tactical and Bottom Up Avoid the Culture Question Avoid Highly Regulated Content (and Lawyers) Learning Professionals Must Lead Prepare Workers for Learning 2.0 Technology is Tactical not Strategic Avoid the CIO What's interesting about this is that this is the way that I've started building out the Instructional Design network of students and alumni (and other people involved with the Graduate Program at UMass Boston), first with Ning, then adding on a Wiki and other services that can help both students and alumni. What I find interesting is that all the members of the community are learning professionals, or want to be learning professionals anyway, but we are still experiencing the same types of issues that any organization faces: it's a real culture change ...

I was reading an article recently on the 5 Myths of Mobile Learning . While I somewhat agree with most of what is said, I take issue with the "Accessibility and Cost Myth" This was perhaps one of the stranger myths I encountered, that personal mobile computing devices are inaccessible because of the inherent cost barriers. Looking around me here in India at the amazing rate of adoption of mobile devices (see Mobile Learning in India) and the availability of mobile networks capable of data that now range contiguously across India (see Networks in Rural India), its obvious cost is hardly a factor in the mobile learning equation. Phones today cost far less than they ever did, do far more and are cheaper to use because network usage charges are dropping consistently. These factors contribute to increased technology availability and subsequent adoption. I think that it depends on what the meaning of Mobile is, and even then there are accessibility constraints. Not everyone carrie...

Aaaaah, First week back to classes after a summer of classes (and lots of rain ) and the beloved fire drills are back Of course I won't be participating in te firedrills because we don't have any in the library building. I remember that as an undergraduate I loved fire drills because it got me out of class. As an employee I hated them because there was always a chance that something would go missing, and now that I haven't had a firedrills on five years I strangely find myself missing them. Odd. Very odd indeed -- Post From My iPhone

Well the semester started and I invariably got my first "I'm sorry, I'm just no good at computers" comment from someone at work. This reminded me of a post that I saw on Dangerously Irrelevant a few weeks back. I first started hearing this a couple of years back and ever got it. This quote from Dangerously Irrelevant was really interesting: What does this say about us as educators? As employees of supposed learning organizations who purportedly are all about 'life-long learning?' Is saying "I'm not very good at computers" the modern counterpart to "I'm not good at math" (both typically accompanied by a chuckle and a c'est la vie hand wave as if it didn't matter)? Personally I've never heard of "I'm just no good at math". Granted I am not the best at math, but I still do try, and I do get a correct answer eventually. I've never had a c'est la vie attitude about not being able to do math, and I...

A little Friday humor for you all

Here's a nice little clip of Rheingold on Media Literacy A quick run down of his literacies: * Attention * Participation * Collaboration * Critical consumption (aka crap detection). OMG he said crap! Personally I would have called it Bullshit detector :-) (or is that a different category?) 21st century media literacies from JD Lasica on Vimeo .