Enter the Laboratory . . .

Google – the search engine that is both a noun and a verb, was started in 1998 by 2 college students working on the Stanford Digital Library Project. This grassroots effort has grown in the past 13 years making Google the number one search engine used in the United States.

What’s so great about Google? Well, for one thing, it is not JUST a search engine. It has many facets available to the user, such as images, shopping, videos, news, maps, mail, and my absolute favorite, Google Labs.

Google Labs, in their words, “… is a playground where our more adventurous users can play around with prototypes of some of our wild and crazy ideas and offer feedback directly to the engineers who developed them.” Some really great ideas have been cultivated from Google Labs, which they refer to as their “Alumi”. You may even be using some of these in your online world, such as Google Alerts or Google Scholar (a personal favorite of mine when I’m working on papers for my classes).

I really enjoy perusing the Labs and trying different “experiments” for both the computer and android phone. Go to Google Labs yourself and see how much fun you’ll have!

Making Education Green

The latest and greatest technology is making it easier for students and instructors to access information electronically which means the need to print is dwindling. With web enhanced and online courses more readily available now than ever before, how can we continue to learn, advise, and communicate information effectively without printing.

First, pause before clicking Print. Think about why you need to print a document and if it can be retrieved electronically by others. Consider forwarding the information using email. This will save on time and costs associated with making copies.

Next, take into account the amount of materials available to instructors and students online. For example, a syllabus, assignments, lectures, and PowerPoint slides can be reviewed and retrieved easily through an online course as needed. Students can submit assignments electronically and instructors can have the ability to preview submissions on screen as well.

Lastly, utilize editing tools such as Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes”. This would allow members of a group working on a project to preview edits made in different font colors or an instructor can offer feedback to students using this editing tool to add comments. Another option for editing documents would be to use Google Docs (http://docs.google.com). Google Docs allows students to work together at the same time to make changes to a document and a history of the edits is kept along with the document. Also, instructors can collaborate with other colleagues on updating materials using Google Docs.

Taking into account the choices we have to make education green can offer opportunities to allow for more time to discuss information and revisions with others, lower printing and copying costs, and reducing our carbon footprint.

Instructional Who?

It seems that too many people are eager to “abandon ship” when it comes to the use of technology in education. An article that I read in the Chronicle of Higher Education this past week featured a St. John University professor who gave a “return to the days of old” criticism on the limitations of online learning technologies.

Assistant Professor Sharon Marshall claims that online education increases the workload of faculty and students and creates an impersonal learning environment. I think that Dr. Marshall did a very good job of reiterating well-established research on online education. This information has been known for at least a decade.

Dr. Marshall’s complaint is based on her experience with the asynchronous features of a course management system in a blended course. This learning format does have its limitations, and Dr. Marshall is correct to some extent; however, one important question cannot be ignored: Was the course design appropriate for the type of course being taught? While Dr. Marshall makes some good points in the article, it is possible that her technology criticisms reflect her lack of understanding of course design and the uses of technology in education.

It seems that technology is always a likely culprit for faculty who struggle with course design. Many postsecondary instructors would rather attribute their technological woes to the mischief of some “digital antichrist” as opposed to seeking the informed support of experts in instructional design.

Seeking the help of these pedagogical experts, who are typically and incorrectly regarded by faculty as “techies,” would likely have a profound influence on faculty attitudes toward the use of technology in education and the design of instruction.

Instructional designers (to be politically correct) can provide postsecondary instructors like Dr. Marshall the personal help needed in course design to create a quality course. These individuals are not content experts in every academic discipline but have a profound understanding of how instruction is created and assessed.

Thus, postsecondary faculty must work closely with instructional designers to ensure that students receive a quality experience.

The Best Free Software of 2010

There's no lack of free software to be found online. Some of it is as powerful, if not more so, than the name-brand packages found on shelves at Best Buy for big bucks. By free, we mean you don't pay a dime except for what it costs to download and install the software. There are even times when you don't have to install anything, since there are a lot of great Web-based applications available these days. More ->

Everybody's a filmmaker, these days. You've got flipcams, handycams, cellphone cameras, cameras mounted on document-display devices, cameras on the end of pens. Cameras, cameras, everywhere. And the image quality, no matter what the size of the device, has become absolutely amazing. I have captured images from a palm-sized high definition camcorder which rival the quality of traditional photography. Take for instance the statue of Mary located at St. Patrick's Church in Joliet.
This is a JPG captured from a video clip recorded onto a high-definition Flip Camera, one of several that are now available for loan at the circulation desk of the USF Library.

Cameras such as these make the process of video capturing and finishing a pleasure that takes only moments to complete, depending on the size and speed of your computer processor. The Flip Cameras do require a computer that has a bit of heft to it, and the video clips may play with only jerky stop-motion quality if the computer is not up to the task. But, with the Flip Camera's built-in software you can edit some interesting videos, and load them up to YouTube with hardly any effort. I produced this video following a trip downstate recently:



And, look Ma, there's no tape. Videotape has become virtually obsolete with the advent of small portable video cameras. Instead, video is recorded onto postage-stamp sized "SD" disks, or similar types of storage, or onto built-in Flash memory, the same as you have on your jump drive. The departure or absence of video tape is welcome to many; it removes the last major impediment to immediate gratification, the real-time digitization of video from tape into your computer. But it does gobble up memory on your hard drive, faster than you might like. Weeding out old videos is a necessity that must be maintained constantly.

Technology has changed at so rapid a pace it's almost impossible to keep up. It is impossible. Just 20 years ago I hefted around a shoulder-mounted video camera, attached by an umbilical cable to a separate "VTR" (Video Tape Recorder) that used 3/4-inch tapes as big as Bibles, all of which weighing in at 60 pounds. Then came VHS (remember that?), and life was beautiful. Now come these HD palm-sized gidgets whose video quality is double that of the old three-quarter-inch, and which weigh a few ounces.

It's a good thing; it's a bad thing. It's a blessing and a curse. For those of us who have to deal with technology, it's also a fact of life.

The 90-Minute Plan for Personal Effectiveness

Finding an excuse to avoid hard work isn't hard to do. And many times this hard work is a task that is "important but not urgent," to use Steven Covey's language. These are precisely the activities we most often put off - in favor of those that are more urgent, and easier to accomplish, and provide more immediate gratification.  More ->

Facebook – Friend or Foe?

Have you been caught up in the social networking boom? It seems like everyone is; from my favorite chocolate company (Hershey!) to your school and mine – USF. Each has a Facebook account. This venue gives you the freedom to use it as you wish. Many consider social networking to be a great way to keep in touch with friends and relatives, both near and far. Should you decide to participate in an ongoing conversation with people that you have friended, that’s fine. If you don’t want to share what’s going on in your life– no problem. You can just be a voyeur and read what everyone else is posting about theirs. Maybe you’re there to view the pictures people post of their comings and goings. Some even join for the coupons that many companies make available to only their Facebook “friends”.

Whatever the reason, Facebook has over 500 MILLION users worldwide with 206.2 million in the U.S. alone. That equates to 71% of America’s internet users having a Facebook account. And you thought Facebook was only for teens….

Facebook, however, may not only be a positive way to keep in touch, but, more and more, is seen as a possible negative, depending upon how it’s used. For example, many potential employers look at a Facebook account prior to hiring or interviewing – so watching what one posts is a truly prudent idea. What is perceived in a picture as a good time to you might have a negative connotation to others looking at it out of context.

An educator at a high school was recently fired for sounding off about her students on her Facebook account. She didn’t realize that her privacy settings were off and the world – or more specifically the parents of the children she was bashing – could read every word. And so did the superintendant of schools. Who does she blame for being out of a job? Why, Facebook, of course. We must remember that only we are responsible for what we post – and the internet is not a private domain.

Which brings up another point – as an educator, or boss, do you allow your students or employees to be your Facebook “friends”. Do you really want them to know what is going on in your private life? Or perhaps should these people have two accounts, one for professional use and one for personal use? Perhaps it can be used as a teaching tool...

So before we laud the wonders of social networking, let’s remember that there are two sides to everything, and with the good, comes responsibility to make sure there is no bad.

For some interesting FB statistics, check out this article on Facebook.