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DOPA has been sent to committee – Good News?

So The Good News is that DOPA* is not going to be fast tracked through the Senate but instead the Commerce Committee is going to review/discuss/muck it up!

I mean, I am postive Senator Stevens committee chair and internet expert is sure to provide excellent leadership and level headedness to make sure an appropriate recommendation is made to the rest of the Senate.

I hope writing members of the commitee will help. If you are not sure what all the hubbub is about check out what people are writing about this.

* DOPA – Deleting Online Predators Act

Lessons learned from Duke Podcasting

Students excited about learning will trigger excitement in the faculty.

Get the technology in the hands of the faculty so they can experiment.

Finding technology with low threshold to adoption is the key.

Make sure the infrastructure and support are in place

Podcasting is good for reinforcing the in class content…

(idea – encourage professors talk about the interesting points, missed opportunities, and other reflections of just completed class sessions as a reinforcer of content)

iPods and microphones let students interview and create.

mp3theatre.com

These are the lessons I learned from the ELI focus sessions on mobile computing…

Building Services – RefIT Group

For several years the idea has been toyed with for building a collaborative service group to support faculty that consists of reference librarians and instructional technologists…
Long story short =
Recently the group has formed and now we are wondering how to get started.

We are trying to define our purpose and function as a group and after a few meetings we are working towards:

• a combined new faculty orientation to Instructional Technology and Faculty Services at the Library.
• some sort of handout/brochure on this topic or about the group for faculty
• a video conference with a similar group at Hamilton College (which is where the idea came from) to learn about their group’s process and collaborations.

But then what? We have a chance to do something impressive here with a lot of autonomy and support from all supervisors involved.

Questions to consider are:

• What are the common tasks of the group members that can form the basis of our work together?
• What are the professional skills that each member can contribute?
• How do we define ourselves as a group in a way that the faculty will understand the group’s function?
• How do we identify the work that needs to be done?
• Are there other such groups out there that we can learn from?

Thus, I ask your help. Any ideas of other such collaborations between Reference Librarians and Instructional Technologists would be welcome.

Static Sites are becoming Dinosaurs?

FeedYes.com gives rss feeds to sites without feeds

Is the birth of FeedYes.com, yet another predictor of the eminate death of static web pages?

Or is it just another way example of web information overload as it allows one to create feeds for sites without Syndication Feeds?

I really could go either way on this one.  But from personal experience in the past few months I have grown increasingly annoyed with sites that I cannot subscribe to and read through my bloglines.

Liberal Education Today – Web 2.0 writing service bought by Google

Liberal Education Today – Web 2.0 writing service bought by Google

Another Web 2.0 tool purchased by a web services giant. This time I am kind of happy it happened. It brought to my attention the possibility of a new collaborative writing tool. As things are getting migrated I have not had a chance to experiment yet but I will get an email when Google is ready to add members.

As I get drawn further down the rabbit hole that is social software, I can not help but think while the connectedness and the possibilities of the exploding number of useful web apps is wonderful but what happens that day that their server is down or the service is bought by a competitor and is eliminated.

What then?

• Will I be able to get my stuff back?
• Will someone use my stuff against me? (No I am not paranoid. If I were I would never have jumped into the rabbit hole!)

I wonder what the long term will hold for social software users, their data and their privacy?

2006_Horizon_Report.pdf (application/pdf Object)

2006_Horizon_Report.pdf (application/pdf Object)

The Horizon report identifies instructional technologies and the projected time to adoption. This document and previous years’ reports could serve as a spring board for an emerging technologies group within Computing Services.

Social Technologies, Mobile computing and technologies, and contextual technologies continue to be technologies on the brink of large scale adoption according to the report.

Pedablogy: Musings on the Art & Craft of Teaching » Blog Archive » Response to James

Pedablogy: Musings on the Art & Craft of Teaching » Blog Archive » Response to James

So to wrap up a conversation from last week two points came to the surface regarding changes to teaching…

First, change happens when one is open to it.

Whether the openness comes from

• success with an accident
• an inspirering conference
• nature tendancy to experiment
• intrinsic need for something more/different
• external push by colleages, students, adminstration, or fear of being left behind

Secondly, change might not happen because people might not think about it? (oversimplified counter point from Gardner Campbell Please read the post to draw your own conclusions)

So where does the conversation go from here?

Does change in teaching methods need to occur?

How can we be change agents?

Where should our energies be directed?

• To the usual suspects who are ready to experiment?
• To those with open ears but not the early adopters
• The incoming faculty as they are growing in their teaching styles and methods
• Or should energies not be targeted toward a specific group but instead on programs that allow those willing to begin experimenting and gaining experience with a variety of teaching techniques and tools?

Again, I return to the starting question what motivates one to change?

Or, if what Gardner writes is true, to begin thinking/talking about teaching and learning?

Pedablogy: Musings on the Art & Craft of Teaching » Blog Archive » University 2.0?

Pedablogy: Musings on the Art & Craft of Teaching » Blog Archive » University 2.0?

This concept of University 2.0 where it is about the process of how teachers teach and students learn, came to life in my office last week when working with a visiting professor who utilizes “new” teaching techniques which requires much more student participation in the presentation of the course content and a shift in the types of activities the professor invests time in from preparing lectures to guiding students as they develop presentations and projects.

While talking to a colleague about what was happening in her courses she received the That is Not How We Teach Here.

So what do we do with that leave it be and focus on the faculty interested in our assistance? Or is there an appropriate response that challenges the idea of having only one way to teach, research or learn?

University Business – The Magazine for College and University Administrators and Professors: Internet Technology

University Business – The Magazine for College and University Administrators and Professors: Internet Technology

This article gives examples of multiple uses of podcasting in highered which is a good resource for a workshop on podcasting but the last line (quoted below) is a good reminder that investigating and implementing emerging technology prepares a college for the future by building a structure for use when the use is not yet mission critical.

“By building a podcast repository now, we create a framework and method for further integrating these tools into tomorrow’s academic environment.”