Group items tagged

"Dr Ebbinghaus' experiment revealed we suffer an exponential 'forgetting curve' and that about 50% of context-free information is lost in the first hour after acquisition if there is no opportunity to reinforce it with practice."

"What Google has done with the Wave protocol is essentially create a new kind of social media format that is distinctively different from blogs, wikis, activity streams, RSS, or most familiar online communication models except possibly IM. Both blogs and wikis were created in the era of page-oriented Web applications and haven't changed much since. In contrast, Google Wave is designed for real-time participation and editing of shared conversations and documents and is more akin to the simultaneous multiuser experience of Google Docs than with traditional blogs and wiki editing. Though Google is sometimes criticized for missing the social aspect of the Web, that is patently not the case with waves, which are fundamentally social in nature. Participants can be added in real-time, new conversations forked off (via private replies), social media sharing is assumed to be the norm, and connection with a user's contextual server-side data is also a core feature including location, search, and more. The result is stored in a persistent document known as a wave, access to which can be embedded anywhere that HTML can be embedded, whether that's a Web page or an enterprise portal. Users can then discover and interact with the wave, joining the conversation, adding more information, etc. Google has also leveraged its investments in Google Gadgets and OpenSocial, two key technologies for spreading online services beyond the original boundaries of the sites they came from. All in all, Google Wave is a smart and well-constructed bundle of collaborative capabilities with many of the modern sensibilities we've come to expect in the Web 2.0 era including an acutely social nature, rapid interaction, and community-based technology."

The very forms of reason and enquiry employed in the classroom must change. Instead of seeking facts and underlying principles, students need to be able to recognize patterns and use things in novel ways. Instead of systematic methodical enquiry, such as might be characterized by Hempel's Deductive-Nomological method, students need to learn active and participative forms of enquiry. instead of deference to authority, students need to embrace diversity and recognize (and live with) multiple perspectives and points of view. I think that there is a new type of knowledge, that we recognize it - and are forced to recognize it - only because new technologies have enabled many perspectives, many points of view, to be expressed, to interact, to forge new realities, and that this form of knowledge is emerged from our cooperative interactions with each other, and not found in the doctrines or dictates of any one of us.

Introduction to the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education's "Spaces for Interaction" program. AACE runs conferences, and they are asking how technology can improve the posibilities for interaction at and around conferences.

"Over the past two decades, the way we learn has changed dramatically. We have new sources of information and new ways to exchange and to interact with information. But our schools and the way we teach have remained largely the same for years, even centuries. What happens to traditional educational institutions when learning also takes place on a vast range of Internet sites, from Pokemon Web pages to Wikipedia? This report investigates how traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. The authors propose an alternative definition of "institution" as a "mobilizing network"-emphasizing its flexibility, the permeability of its boundaries, its interactive productivity, and its potential as a catalyst for change-and explore the implications for higher education."

A new book by Cathy Davidson.

"Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun. We tried to step back and design an interaction model that accommodates the complexity and scale of information rather than the traditional structure of the Web."

In surveys, students have shown much greater satisfaction reading e-books on their computers than they did on the Sony Reader. Interactivity - the ability to annotate and take notes - were the main factors cited by students, rather than the size of the devices.

and at sub-group significance compared to interaction. She concludes: 'Readers should have a particularly high index of suspicion for controlled studies that fail to report between-group comparisons, because these likely represent attempts to "spin" null results."

To make sense of it all, we have compiled key information, definitions, and links related to the launch of Google Wave. This in-depth guide provides an overview of Google Wave, discusses the terminology associated with it, details information on Google Wave applications

You can define a robots behavior in the google wave chat... From Mashable: "Robots are the other type of Google Wave extension. Robots are like having another person within a Google Wave conversation, except that they're automated. They're a lot like the old IM bots of the past, although far more robust. Robots can modify information in waves, interact with users, communicate with others waves, and pull information from outside sources. Because it acts like a user, you can define its behavior based on what happens in the chat. You could build one as simple as "change the word dog to the word cat" or one as complex as a fully-functional debugger. We'll probably start seeming some very advanced robots in the near future."

You can define a robots behavior in the google wave chat... hmmm... From Mashable: "Robots are the other type of Google Wave extension. Robots are like having another person within a Google Wave conversation, except that they're automated. They're a lot like the old IM bots of the past, although far more robust. Robots can modify information in waves, interact with users, communicate with others waves, and pull information from outside sources. Because it acts like a user, you can define its behavior based on what happens in the chat. You could build one as simple as "change the word dog to the word cat" or one as complex as a fully-functional debugger. We'll probably start seeming some very advanced robots in the near future."

An interesting discussion, exploring basic questions CTLT folks are familiar with, grappling with the question of how to use survey data and how to identify and address limitations. 10 years after launch of National Survey of Student Engagement, many worry that colleges have been speedier to embrace giving the questionnaire than using its results. And some experts want changes in what the survey measures. I note these limitations, near the end of the article: Adrianna Kezar, associate professor of higher education at the University of Southern California, noted that NSSE's questions were drafted based on the model of students attending a single residential college. Indeed many of the questions concern out-of-class experiences (both academic and otherwise) that suggest someone is living in a college community. Kezar noted that this is no longer a valid assumption for many undergraduates. Nor is the assumption that they have time to interact with peers and professors out of class when many are holding down jobs. Nor is the assumption -- when students are "swirling" from college to college, or taking courses at multiple colleges at the same time -- that any single institution is responsible for their engagement. Further, Kezar noted that there is an implicit assumption in NSSE of faculty being part of a stable college community. Questions about seeing faculty members outside of class, she said, don't necessarily work when adjunct faculty members may lack offices or the ability to interact with students from one semester to the next. Kezar said that she thinks full-time adjunct faculty members may actually encourage more engagement than tenured professors because the adjuncts are focused on teaching and generally not on research. And she emphasized that concerns about the impact of part-time adjuncts on student engagement arise not out of criticism of those individuals, but of the system that assigns them teaching duties without much support. S

Repeat of highlighted resource, but merits revisiting.

A largely sensible strategic look at LMS in general. "The LMS, because of its integration with other major institutional technology systems, has itself become an enterprise-wide system. As such, higher education leaders must closely 7 monitor the possible tendency for LMSs to contribute only to maintaining the educational status quo.40 The most radical suggestion for future LMS use would dissolve the commercially enforced "course-based" model of LMS use entirely, allowing for the creation of either larger (departmental) or smaller (study groups) units of LMS access, as the case may require. This ability to cater to context awareness is perhaps the feature most lacking in most LMS products. As noted in a study in which mobile or handheld devices were used to assemble ad hoc study groups,41 this sort of implementation is entirely possible in ways that don't necessarily require interaction through an LMS interface." Requires EDUCAUSE login (free to WSU)

The EDUCAUSE paper suggests "dissolv[ing] the commercially enforced 'course-based' model of LMS". How about dissolving the "course-based" model of higher education on which the commercial LMS is based?

Create interactive data-rich web pages like these ones below without ever touching a database or a web server, or doing any programming:

This demo -- from Pattie Maes' lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry -- was the buzz of TED. It's a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine "Minority Report" and then some.

Freedom of speech and the right to assemble are limited in Egypt, which since 1981 has been ruled by Mubarak's National Democratic Party under a permanent state-of-emergency law. An estimated 18,000 Egyptians are imprisoned under the law, which allows the police to arrest people without charges, allows the government to ban political organizations and makes it illegal for more than five people to gather without a license from the government. Newspapers are monitored by the Ministry of Information and generally refrain from directly criticizing Mubarak. And so for young people in Egypt, Facebook, which allows users to speak freely to one another and encourages them to form groups, is irresistible as a platform not only for social interaction but also for dissent.

"The University Iuav of Venice is a small university with 3 faculties, 14 undergraduate and graduate degree programmes, 15 master degree programmes, 7 PhD programmes and a limited number of students. Although small in size, the Iuav's specificity, that of being a theme-based university, makes it unique among other Italian universities. At the core of its educational instruction and research lies project design and planning in all its many aspects. The idea behind project design and planning encompasses the crucial themes concerning our daily lives: the system of buildings and objects with which we are in constant contact, the homes in which we live, cities and states of transformation, the landscape and territory with which we interact, and the governing of environmental processes. The programmes of the Faculty of Architecture and the Faculty of Urban & Regional Planning prepare individuals to intelligently and skilfully confront the questions of architecture, construction, and sustainable territory management; individuals capable of developing opportunities and policies which bring to the foreground safeguarding the territory and landscape, city requalification, the conscious use of resources, and the right to fair and suitable housing."

Creating an Interactive Portfolio with Google Sites Process of Creating an Electronic Portfolio - Using examples from my Google Sites portfolio developed by Helen C. Barrett, Ph.D.

This is directed to K-12, but of interest - he discusses his rubric for social media interaction (note the link to a rubric for blogging in the first paragraph as well).

"In the industrial model of student mass production, the teacher is the broadcaster. A broadcast is by definition the transmission of information from transmitter to receiver in a one-way, linear fashion. The teacher is the transmitter and student is a receptor in the learning process. The formula goes like this: "I'm a professor and I have knowledge. You're a student, you're an empty vessel and you don't. Get ready, here it comes. Your goal is to take this data into your short-term memory and through practice and repetition build deeper cognitive structures so you can recall it to me when I test you."... The definition of a lecture has become the process in which the notes of the teacher go to the notes of the student without going through the brains of either. "

How would we integrate information about this effort as a resource in alt.wetpaint?

"The basic idea is to bring all four of these classes together in this one space," Mr. Gold said in an interview. Each class will have its own turf on the Web site, and each will concentrate on a different era of the poet's life. Students at NYU and City Tech will focus on Whitman in mid-19th-century New York, those at Mary Washington will examine his Civil War-era experience, and the Rutgers contingent will turn its attention to his sage-of-Camden period. Each group will work with and annotate the relevant edition or editions of Leaves of Grass. Each will have access to the others' work. So will the general public - at least that's the plan. "We really don't know what these interactions will be like," Mr. Gold said. "It's one of the risks of the project but also one of the exciting things about it."