Framed Conversation: National Challenges from PSOL 2009

Enjoyed my first time attending and presenting at a Minnesota State College Student Association (MSCSA) Conference on Friday, October 22, 2010.   What an energetic audience! The students were active, engaged, and provided Minnesota Online with theirthoughts on challenges identified by online learners in state and national surveys.

In the conference session I used graphic facilitation to frame a student conversation on challenges connected to online learning. The image on the right is a collage of the images used in the student conversation, the image below is the graphic record of what students had to say.

The MSCSA student conference has an emphasis on building student leadership skills as well as promoting knowledge of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system.  The MSCSA "is an association of the Minnesota public two-year college students, which works to ensure accessible, quality, and affordable public higher education while providing students with representation, leadership development, and communication across the state. Students in this organization are representatives on many of our system standing committees.  They take on the job of representing students admirably as the work to on important issues in higher education.

Individuals interested in student leadership may also want to check out the Generation Yes Blog.  This blogs focus is on empowering students with technology and in a recent post provided some information on the topic of ,Student Leadership - Building Authentic 21st Century Skills.



Blog Slacker, but not a total slacker

Have been busy since March.  Not writing or blogging, but have been working on improving my graphic faciliation skills and using them in focused presentations. Two topics over the past few weeks have kept me busy.  One a conversation on perceptions of and pursuing quality in institutions of higher education (in September) and the other on priorities of online students at a student association conference in Bloomington, MN(October, 2010). 

In each conversation issues of quality are key.  Have also been continuing my reads about women's leadership and qualities of our leadership as this topic continues to intrigue me.  Lots of good articles out there, but for tonight share the following thoughts from a  Caliper Study:

About Women's Leadership Qualities


1. Women leaders are more persuasive than their male counterparts.

2. When feeling the sting of rejection, women leaders learn from adversity and carry on with an "I'll show you" attitude.

3. Women leaders demonstrate an inclusive, team-building leadership style of problem solving and decision making.

4. Women leaders are more likely to ignore rules and take risks.

Overcoming the Stall

It's been a while between posts, but current research on gender, marriage, and a recent report titled The White House Project: Benchmarking Women's Leadership jump started my thinking about all this again and inspired me to submit a presentation proposal to The Chair Academy in Minneapolis, MN March 15-18, 2009.

If you read the The White House Project research and PEW research you will find:

1.Women's leadership research indicating a stall for women leaders in all sectors of the workforce (The White House Project, 2009),
2. Research that indicating women are surpassing men in earnings (PEW, 2010),
3. Gender and leadership research indicating that both men and women make good leaders (PEW 2009).

So, voila paradox. The good thing about paradox is that it gets the brain all fired up and energized (at least it does my brain) and so while the blog stalled for awhile (13 months) I am back at it and through the required paper that is a part of the conference I sort of met a goal posted in 2008.

Any writing that helps the thinking process is good and maybe with the push the conference proceedings and the recent research provides I will get back on track with the paper and webinar thing. Maybe the blog thing too.

George Siemens Needs Help

This is an interesting way to pose research questions and to gather answers. In a blog post in elearnspace Siemens wrote, "I often hear educators talking about “education needs to change” and then he asked people to respond to some questions. I admire George's writing and had the privilege of hearing him speak at the ODCE 2007 . So, I decided to respond to his request and provide my answers to his questions.



1. Does education need to change?

Yes, education needs to change and improve.


2. Why or why not?

Education should not change for changes sake, but should take a look at its history, practice, and all of the educational research that is catalogued and make needed changes. Education is research based, but does not seem to reflect on and use information to improve its monolithic self.

3. If it should change, what should it become? How should education (k-12, higher, or corporate) look like in the future?

Improvement, rather than just change, would mean that education (all) would take on a serious look at practices, policies, and methods and begin the hard work of reinventing itself. Much of what we do in education is based on what has been done in the past and does not appear to be connected to the here and now or to looking at the future.

Are there other Toffler fans out there? In a recent Edutopia article he said, "Shut it down." The idea of starting over is frightening in terms of human capital and the amount of time and money it would take to rebuild, but the fundamentals proposed in Toffler's School of Tomorrow do sound better suited to how we live today.

Here they are copy and paste from Edutopia.org and Alvin.

Toffler's vision for education in the twenty-first century:

• Open twenty-four hours a day
• Customized educational experience
• Kids arrive at different times
• Students begin their formalized schooling at different ages
• Curriculum is integrated across disciplines
• Nonteachers work with teachers
• Teachers alternate working in schools and in business world
• Local businesses have offices in the schools
• Increased number of charter schools

P.S. Edutopia posted a poll asking readers whether education would be better off in four years.

YouTube Video on Innovation

Sharing a video that illustrates innovation and accretion at work.This is a lovely piece of work created by a student at Lewis Clark College on innovation. Information Heyadan provides is that he “specializes in animation, especially the type of explaining concepts quickly with pictures and animated graphics / graphs to convey points.” I'll say.

Innovation and Preparation

While completing a recent writing assignment for work I ran across a New York Times article by Janet Rae-Dupree (February 2008) titled, Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work. Durpree's article is a readable reminder that the work of innovation is not always that innovative. In the article, Durpree provided a Scott Berkun quote that sums up innovation. According to Berkun, “Everything results from accretion" and he goes on to say, "I didn’t invent the English language. I have to use a language that someone else created in order to talk to you. So the process by which something is created is always incremental. It always involves using stuff that other people have made.”

So learning from others and building on the "stuff" of others is the way we all innovate. Dupre also quoted Louis Pasteur who wrote, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” I am always hoping to have a Eureka! moment. I also love to read authors who use the word balderdash to open a sentence. Janet Rae-Dupree writes about science and emerging technology in Silicon Valley for the New York Times after reading this article on innovation I found many other of her articles. I'll be reading her column regularly now.

The Clipboard and Leadership

This short old-timey looking video reminds me of how any technology can be used with the intent to make one's self look cooler and more savvy than others. I saw Dr. Darcy Hardy use this video in a keynote at the MIC08 and found it on YouTube this evening.

Enjoy.

Collaboration Tools: Google Docs

I have not played around much with Google Docs, but am hearing more and more people talk about using them. Wanted to point to information presented by Tom Barrett (a noted Google Docs expert) presented on the Official Google Docs Blog: New and Notes from the Google Docs Team.
Barrett has a presentation titled, Eleven Interesting Ways to Use Google Docs in the Classroom, and is asking people to email him with their tips, tricks, techniques, and uses of Google Docs.

Do you Wordle?

It is fun to play around with Wordle. This wordle was created using a copy and paste of text from my blog. Feinberg described Wordle as a "toy" that can create word clouds. Wordle is simple use and the "randomize" feature provides Wordles of text in various fonts and colors.

It would be visually interesting to view political speeches as Wordle. What about a novel or a history book? Hmmm.

More on EdTech Talk and "Amplyfing Possibilities"

Special thanks to EdTechTalk for promoting the October 2008, K12 Online conference on “Amplifying Possibilities”. This conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 13, 2008 and by October 27-31, forty presentations will be posted online to download and view. This online conference will have “Fireside Chats” and “When Night Falls” events for people interested in the use of technology to improve teaching and learning at all levels of education throughout the world.

According to EdTechTalk, they are "a community of people interested in the use of technology to improve teaching and learning at all levels of education throughout the world. EdTech Talk has several live events each week and an information packed newsletter. As a Worldbridges community, it embraces the values of collaboration and inclusiveness.

Confessions of a Blogging Slacker

I have not blogged since the 2008 eLearning Summit in May. While I thought about this blog and had the desire to post, work and life got in the way. I admit to being a blogging slacker. To get back to my blog work, I googled “blogging slacker” and Google returned 412,000 results on this phrase. So it seems that slacking happens. The hiatus (slacking) from the blog is due to work and family priorities and not lack of things to blog about. My work and family commitments will allow a few quick posts over the next few days about work, work related conferences, keynotes, and presentations I attended since May.

Where Are the Women? An Action Research Project

The presentation Where Are The Women? An Action Research Project was created in Powerpoint and uploaded to VoiceThread as an experiment. In 2007 I made a post that listed a series of personal goals connected to this blog. Number 5 had three parts, connect blogging to at least 3 professional development activities over the course of the next 12 months to include:

a. Conference presentation

b. Submit a paper to a journal

c. Host a webinar

This conference presentation took place at the eLearning Summit on May 22, 2008. I am working on the journal article, and am wondering if this VoiceThread will count as the webinar? "A VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone they wish. They can even be exported to an Archival Movie for offline use on a DVD or video-enabled MP3 player. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world".

VoiceThread has free and pro options and can be used commercially, in higher education, and in K-12. I am trying out the free option, but am considering the pro option. I am not quite sure how to use all of the options this tool provides. According to the print information, one can doodle or video doodle, comment in text, or record a comment to a VoiceThread.

According to VoiceThread, here are some of the limitations on my Free account:

* Archival Movie exports, $2.99
* the presence of advertising
* single file size limit of 25 MB
* no downloads
* send 50 invitations per day

* create 3 VoiceThreads
* 75 MB of storage
* 3 phone commenting minutes
* no uploading MP3 comments
* 30 min webcam commenting

Enhancing Visual Effects in PowerPoint Presentations

Another example of the good work located on Slideshare.

"How to" : Visual Effects in PowerPoint 2003

From: mjamesno, 1 year ago

| View | Upload your own

Brief Guide to some viusal effects for Presentations using PowerPoint 2003


SlideShare Link

Death by Powerpoint (and how to fight it)

Good stuff can be found on Slideshare!

Death by PowerPoint

From: thecroaker, 9 months ago

| View | Upload your own

Fighting death by PowerPoint... How to make a presentation and not to bore your audience to death.


SlideShare Link

May, Spring, Rainy, Cold, and too much work

May is a cruel month this year. Spring is late and cold, it is a rainy fishing opener, and I have too much work to do. The only good thing about the cold and rainy weather is that it keeps me in the house and so I am getting work done. Being able to sit at home and search the Internet is great and although it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the information that is out there I am always astonished by the caliber of work people are sharing in the cyberworld.

Just joined a local social networking site(Mooseworks) created by Ken Graetz a Minnesota State Colleges and Universities colleague and just do not have time to socialize! I got a Mooseworks badge with my membership and will share it here. Once May winds down a bit I will come back here to learn more about what some of my favorite Minnesota eLeaders are up to.


Will need to catch up with the fast runners in Mooseworks, but in May I just plan to visit and read about what others are up to. I am working on a presentation about this blog for the eLearning Summit at Normandale "held every 2 years" this conference is an event we look forward to in Minnesota. I am looking forward to hearing Dr. Wesch as keynote.


View my page on MooseWorks


Powerpoint is everywhere and though people poke fun at its use and point out its misuse, I find that a visit to Slideshare every now and again allows me to look at some really fine examples of its use.

Two presentations that I admired this week included:

1. Death by Powerpoint (and how to avoid it)

2. Enhancing visual effects in Powerpoint presentations

Learned a new word this week, Ning.

Earth Day 2008, EdTechTalk, Women of Web 2.0

Got an email yesterday. I read it today and so just found out about a 24 hour long conversation on the health of our planet that EdTechTalk is hosting. It started at 12AM today, but there are still hours left in the day to attend. EdTechTalk is looking for people from around the world to join the discussion at Global times as they moderate the "students, teachers, local leaders, environmental advocates, scientists/engineers, politicians, grassroots leaders, etc., that participate. EdTechTalk encourages lurkers as well as participants.

They follow up this 24 hour long conversation with a Spring Community Assembly, and the "Women of Web 2.0 will be on the air immediately following the Community Assembly to provide a roundup of the Earthcast 2008 experience".

Have a look at EdTechTalk they have an easy to get around in website with lots of good stuff to read and listen to!

How to use Second Life in Science Education & Blip.tv

Read about Blip.tv in a Lodestar Learning Web Journal article and then went to investigate and learn about another resource that lets people share videos. Snooped around the Blip.tv site and found an interesting video about Second Life from Colleen on how one might use different kinds of science resources available in Second Life in experiential learning environments.



The video was interesting because while things I find on Second Life are often fun to look at, they don't always provide practical resources and tips on how they might be used in education (this one does), but I digress.

So Back to Blip.tv, according to Digital Inspiration there are 10 Reasons Why Blip.tv is better than YouTube for Uploading and Sharing.

Here is a shortened version of the 10 reasons, but I encourage you to go to the detailed and easy to read article on Digital Inspiration for the comparison:

1. Blip.tv supports supports more video formats, including one called FLV files that uploads faster.
2. Blip does not have the time or file size limits of YouTube because of FLV.
3. People can watch videos in flash or original formats while YouTube offers only branded YouTube Player format.
4. Blip backups your videos to the Web Archives automatically.
5. Blip.tv allows custom thumbnails images to search that may increase the chance of your video being watched.
6. YouTube does not like it when people download their videos while Blip.tv makes downloading easy to do.
7. Blip.tv provides authors with more stats on how the video is being used rather than just the ratings, number of views, etc.
8. Blip.tv does not require registration for a visitor to leave a comment.
9. Blip.tv supports rich text formatting for video descriptions and YouTube does not.
10. Videos are not resized in Blip.tv

Technorati-Wondering if Pinging and Charting are Working

English posts that contain International Edubloggers per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

When I go to Technorati , I can find several pages of posts on International Edubloggers Directory, but the chart that tracks post does not reflect the buzz. Am also seeing conversation and questions to Technorati about pinging and having blog postings updated. Just wondering what is going on and will read and research a bit to see what is going on.

Growing Roster of Members on International Edubloggers Directory

Eureka! Supposedly, an exclamation used by Arichimedes as an interjection to celebrate a discovery. I am using the term to celebrate my discovery of a new bloggers directory. Although I did not realize it when I signed up, the International Edubloggers Directory is just the kind of resource I have been looking for to lead me other bloggers on education topics.

While sites such as Blogher, Technorati, and Blogs by Women were helpful, they did not have an education focus and I was not able to watch them develop in real time. Nor did they have they have the cool tools that make watching this directory site develop so much fun. The use of Scribd, Mofuse, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 tools to allow members to get introduced into the cyberworld and other bloggers is impressive. While not all of the members are women, there are enough of them (Gender Split Male - 58%Female - 42%) listed in this directory to have a look around. It seems I need to carve out some time to read author Patricia Donaghy, and to learn about the members who blog on education. The membership roster is growing all the time, but I look forward to the task.

See video on Archimedes from the Internet Archives:

International Edubloggers Directory

Thanks to this new blog directory I can see me now and perhaps others will too.

Just signed up for membership on the International Edubloggers Directory. The directory launched in January of 2008, will provide "an up to date directory of edubloggers from around the world", links to other edubloggers and to the topics they blog about. Members of this directory are posted on Twitter, Facebook, Mobile Versions, and Blog Widget. After I received a personal welcome as an Edublogger member in an email, I went back in to explore this sight and learned about Mofuse.


Mofuse creates mobile websites for bloggers and provides a fast and easy method to make blogs mobile compliant at no cost. The International Edubloggers Directory has a variety of tools and feeds to connect bloggers around the world. RSS feeds, a members calendar, and a chance to share the membership wiki and to connect with other education bloggers are appealing to me. I am pleased to be a member and look forward to reading the growing blog roll and seeing members information posted in real time.