W12 Mobile and Virtual

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):
Mobile and virtual learning will continuously grow expanding the horizon of promises, innovations, revolutions, and challenges. Distinction between mobile and virtual learning can be subtle, and video/online games and virtual worlds also make clear understanding difficult. Despite challenges, adoption and use of web connected mobile phones and devices will grow, and their daily use for everything including web access and collaboration will expand. Mobile and virtual learning try to leverage location based learning, ubiquitous learning, and authentic simulations.

1. Mobile Learning Environments by David J. Gagnon
2. Educause's 7 Things You Should Know About Mobile App
3. Educause's 7 Things You Should Know About Android
4. The Official Google Blog: The Future of Mobile by Steve Kolowich
5. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Virtual Worlds 
6. Video Games and the Future of Learning by Kurt Squire
7. Sharing: The Moral Imperative by Dean Shareski (26 minute video)
8. Questioning the Future of the Open Student by Vicki Davis

Further Resources - These are for those who want to explore further...

1. Free as in Freedom: The Power of Pull – John Seely Brown by Sumeet Moghe
2. The Mobile Campus (#2 and 3 illustrates the current practices, challenges, and needs of proper research)
3. Educause: From Distraction to Engagement: Wireless Devices in the Classroom
4. From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning a blog by Liz Kolb. Please explore her site. It includes a lot of videos about innovative uses of cell phones and web tools.
5. Educating the Net Generation, Chapter 12, Learning Spaces
6. Educating the Net Generation, Chapter 15, Planning for Neomillennial Learning Styles: Implications for Investments in Technology and Faculty (You can choose either the pdf or html version (with diigo highlights) of Chapter 15)
7. “Living Epic”: What the title means and what it implies by Roger Travis. Be sure to read parts 1-3 (the links appear at the end of posts 1 and 2)
8. My Personal Learning Network in Action by Karl Fisch
9. Cell Phones in the (Language) Classroom: Recasting the Debate by Peyton Jobe
10. Social Media in Africa, Part 1
11. Social Media in Africa, Part 2: Mobile Innovations
12. Social Media in Africa, Part 3: Democracy. Want to know more about the impact of mobiles in the developing world? Check out this 38 minute presentation by Nathan Eagle of MIT (not required), “Crowd-Sourcing on Mobile Phones in the Developing World“

Popular Tools - Course Google Site at https://sites.google.com/site/idt351class/

1. PhoneGap - Open source mobile framework for developing/downloading apps
2. Portable Applications (Many applications are search-able by topics and categories)
3. Second Life, OpenSim
4. Scratch - Easy to use remixing tool from MIT (video 1 min)
5. Game development: Unity, GameSalad, Sharendipity, Alice (3D programming)
6. National Library of Virtual Manipulatives
7. Siri - Virtual assistant
8. Foursquare - Others can check where you are and where they have been, info around you
9. ClassSpot and TeamSpot from TideBreak.Inc

You can comment on any of the following:

• Which tool was your favorite? How did the tool compare to others introduced in this week? If you plan to adopt the tool, for what purposes will you use it and how often? If you don't plan to use, why not?
• Do you think a school or workplace must actively use tools introduced in this week? Anything to consider in adoption or implementation at school or work?
• Or your reflection on anything related to the course (material, assignment, clarity, usefulness, suggestion, reaction to others, etc.)

W11 Social and personal network

For Class Discussion:

We are all familiar with social networks, such as Facebook. It is big and here to stay, and who knows, the next big thing can be something other than Facebook. Compared to all those tools covered so far, applying a social or personal network for teaching and learning may be more informal and less structured (but most IDT professionals agree, designing learning environments or leveraging communities is becoming more important). For adopting social network for education or development, you should have clear purposes and plans (especially for how to co-evolve the space with and by users), and also, if considered at the organization level, strong leadership is a must. Think about two different organizations, one bans using Facebook during work/school, and the other encouraging Facebook for social learning. Regardless of your opinion or preference, our students and learners use these tools very actively, so you must know what they are and what benefits and pitfalls they have to guide proper use.

1. Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom an Alan November video (13 minutes) - The concept of a student, learner, and contributor
2. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Personal Learning Environments
3. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Facebook
4. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Facebook II
5. I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You by Clive Thompson, NYTimes
6. Comparing Social Networking to Online Communities by Lee and Sachi Lever
7. Spectacle at Web2.0 Expo… from my perspective by Danah Boyd

Popular Tools - Course Google Site at https://sites.google.com/site/idt351class/

1. Facebook (can sign in with yahoo account)
2. LinkedIn
3. Wiggio 
4. Ning
5. Google Plus  
6. Of course, if IDT majors, Adobe Communities

Further Resources - These are for those who want to explore further...

1. Social Networks for Educators (looking for sharing as members of educational network(s) worldwide? This is it!)
2. Sharing: The Moral Imperative by Dean Shareski (26 minute video)
3. My Personal Learning Network in Action by Karl Fisch
4. Questioning the Future of the Open Student by Vicki Davis
5. Kiva.org - Microloans for less fortunate
6. TakingItGlobal.org - connects you to social issues that affect us all
7. Mashable - latest news and trends on social media

You can comment on any of the following:

• Which social or personal network did you focus for what purpose (e.g., personal development, informal learning, civic engagement, etc.)? What is your thought about social or personal network? If you are asked to design one, or facilitate/promote participation, how will you do it? Do you think a school or workplace must actively use tools introduced in this week? Why or why not? If you are the designer or teacher, what should you consider in adoption or implementation?

W10 Content presentation and curation

For Class Discussion:

Lecture without much interaction, good structure/sequence, and/or interactive media can be boring, and we all have bad experiences from (long and tedious) PowerPoint presentation. If any tool from this week is selected and used well, it will make presenting contents much more interesting. There are many tools and media hypes about podcasting, screen capturing, online video, and virtual conferencing, but it's all about presenting and sharing more rich contents -  easier, faster, and involving the audience. Tools selected for this week exactly address that - some focus more on audio, others are more on video or visuals:

1. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Next-Generation Presentation Tools
2. Challenging the Presentation Paradigm (in 6 minutes, 40 seconds): Pecha Kucha by Jason B. Jones
3. Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Tips in particular, the three sections, ‘Organization & Preparation Tips’, ‘Delivery Tips’ and ‘Slide Tips’.
4. Seth’s Blog: Really Bad Powerpoint

Popular Tools - Course Google Site at https://sites.google.com/site/idt351class/

1. iTune
2. Audacity (For PC and Mac (Garage Band is also popular on Mac)
3. Skype
4. Wordle
5. Slideshare
6. Zoho Presentation (part of collaboration/project mgmt suite)
7. Prezi (3 lessons)
8. Jing
9. Ustream
10. Elluminate (virtual conferencing, now called BB Collaborate, free version supports up to 3 people)

Further Resources or Tools worth checking:

1. PechaKucha 20×20 (can find great examples of PechaKucha presentations)
   
2. Screencast-0-Matic (another easy to use and free screen casting tools for PC and Mac)
3. CamStudio (free alternative to Camtasia, from Techsmith, now PC & Mac)
4. Talkshoe (community call voice chat)
5. Flickr Slideshow (Search Google for Flickr Slideshow. Changes were made and multiple options exist)
6. Spresent (Window flash animation)
7. Glogster (graphic blog community) (what it is)
8. Livestream
9. TodaysMeet (free live stream space)
10. Poll Everywhere (well, we all know popular texting poll)
11. Podcasting with Windows Media Player by Jake Ludington
12. Create a Podcast with Blogger (YouTube Video, 2:26 min, worth checking. Can publish to iTune)
13. JuiceReceiver - a media aggregator which automatically downloads podcasts and media files to your computer or portable device
14. Educating the Net Generation: Chapter 7, Convenience, Communications, and Control: How Students Use Technology (for more comprehensive info on tech/web/mobile use, see the Pew research link on the left)

Supplementary Sources, if interested in extending YouTube:

1. YouTube Annotations (how to tutorial)
2. YouTube Launches Auto-Captioning for Videos by Ben Parr (short video about captioning for hearing impaired is worth checking)
3. If #2 above looks good, please check a counter perspective on YouTube’s auto-captioning feature: Sorry, Google, YouTube Captions Aren’t for the Deaf. They’re for Your Robots by Xander Becket
4. Viddler (commenting and tagging video contents to improve search and share)

Last but not least, as Web contents have become huge, content curation has become a Very Important trend and direction:

1. Combine instead of creating one (15 top notch tools and another great list and 10 free tools for education)  
2. Four promising tools  (Storify 2 min video)(another example)
3. Content curation (how to mix/curate stories, blogs, news, social media, etc).
4. Video curation (what it is and tips) - Tools: Yokto, Magnify, Shortform, and expect more to come.

Post your comment, please try to answer all questions concisely and to the point:

• Which tool(s) did you focus for the purpose of better and more effective content presentation? What is your thought about content curation and which tool looked most useful and promising? For effective use, what do you need to do in terms of instructional design, management, and use of media/tools? Do you think a school or workplace must actively use tools introduced in this week? Why or why not? If you are the designer or teacher, what should you consider in adoption or implementation?

W9 Storytelling and Mapping

For Class Discussion:
Many say that storytelling is the best and natural way people learn. Using digital storytelling, drawing, or mapping tools, people can create artifacts, learn visually, practice with safety, simulate the model, and most importantly, have fun and learn actively. These tools may look different in terms of purposes and usage, but they have one essential commonality: creativity.

1. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling
2. Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a New Genre by Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine
• Open Discussion on Web 2.0 Storytelling by Bryan Alexander and Alan Levin
• 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story Wiki by Alan Levine
3. Google for Educators – Maps
4. Digital Storytelling Part V – Google Maps by Silvia Tolisano (a great example for how students can create a virtual tour or field trip diary and share with others)
5. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Google Earth 

Popular Tools - Course Google Site at https://sites.google.com/site/idt351class/

1. Voicethread - The Voicethread 4 education wiki is a great pedagogical resource.
2. Toondoo - Create your own comics! Book Maker. Make a character or ToonBook!
3. Animoto. Using Animoto to Promote Speaking in the Foreign Language details how José Picardo used it with his Spanish language students
4. Gliffy - Online diagram software, can create and share flowcharts, network diagrams, floorplans, user interface designs, etc.
5. Concept/story mapping: Mindomo and Spicynodes 
6. Flick'r - The most popular online photo management and sharing tool
7. Picasa - Fast and easy photo sharing from Google
1. Free Picasa Flash and HTML template

Further Resources - These are for those who want to explore further...

• Mapping Our Worlds: Creating Interdisciplinary Lessons Using Online Mapping Tools by Barbara Lindsey

Post your comment. Try to answer each and every question clearly and concisely using contents/insights gained from this week:

• Which tool did you focus for the purpose of digital storytelling? What are benefits and challenges of utilizing digital storytelling for learning or training? For effective use, what do you need to do in terms of instructional design, management, and use of media/tools? Do you think a school or workplace must actively use tools introduced in this week? Why or why not? If you are the designer or teacher, what should you consider in adoption or implementation?

W8 Social Web: Twitter and Social Bookmarking

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):
Two tool categories for this week: 1 Microblogging (Twitter) and 2 Social Bookmarking tools (Delicious and Diigo). Twitter is more for what are you doing now or sharing resources very briefly and quickly, while social bookmarking: Delicious focuses on sharing and managing resources using tags, and Diigo does similar things with more features for annotating and highlighting (and also sharing them).

• Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking
• Educause: Calibrated Peer Review: A Writing and Critical Thinking Instructional Tool

Popular Tools - Course Google Site at https://sites.google.com/site/idt351class/

• Twitter (How to use Twitter video - 4 min, Twitter basics from Twitter)
• Delicious - About Delicious (5 min)
• Delicious Video Tutorial (9 min)   As of Mar 01, couldn't find any tutorial on YouTube that matches the current version of Delicious, but from these two, should get ideas about main features and how to utilize them without much difficulty.
• Diggo (What Diggo is and does, and the company site has many useful tutorials)
• Of course, social bookmarking has many promises, thus more tools/services came up such as Evernote, Pocket, and Pinboard. Comparison summary can be found here.

Further Resources - These are for those who want to explore further...
For Twitter

• Search within Twitter
• Instacurate - Turn your Twitter timeline into a personalised news site, in an instant.
• Tweetdeck - A tool for real-time tracking, organizing, and publishing Tweet messages. 
• Hootsuite - A social media dashboard. 
• Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Twitter
• Collaboration examples using Twitter 
• Twitter in Academia  
• Why I Still Love Twitter by Isabelle Jones  
• How I use Twitter, search, Diigo Delicious, DEVONthink, Scrivener to find, refine, organize information –>knowledge by Howard Rheingold
• Edmodo - something like Twitter, more for education

For Social Bookmarking

• Using del.icio.us to create an easy, always updated online portfolio by Michele Martin

• Learning in the Social Workplace (by Jane Hart) - (blog about how and why social tools help employees learn better)

You can comment on any of the following (in your answer, specify which one you are answering between #1 and #2:

• Both RSS and Social Bookmarking tools are to improve "collective" information management and sharing. What similarities or differences, or strengths or challenges did you find between social bookmarking  vs. RSS?

• Which of these tools: twitter, delicious, and diigo, or any other will you adopt and use actively? For those who resist, what's your strategy? What should you consider for organizational/class wide adoption/use?

W7 RSS and Information Mgmt

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):
RSS tools have experienced radical changes over the years. The most dominant player, Google Reader is gone (many people were dismayed and unhappy, but it is what it is), and other Web tools and social media have added RSS features within its own. Of course, some other RSS tools and services have come up to take place Google Reader's roles. There are other tools also that are not exactly RSS, but have gained niche places to help people better organize a large amount of information. RSS and these tools are to manage information (that is rapidly changing and growing) more effectively and efficiently.

1. RSS in Plain English by Lee and Sachi Lefever (3.5 minutes)

Popular Tools - Course Google Site at https://sites.google.com/site/idt351class/

Google has posted an announcement about their decision to no longer support Google Reader and suggested several alternative tools here. Google is not the only one who suggested alternatives. More can be found here.

* Disclaimer as of Mar 02, 2015 - It is amazing and surprising to see how changes are fast in the arena of RSS tools. The second popular tool, Blogline after Google Reader is now gone for about a month and half. Implications or conclusion? Well, RSS tools are very powerful and useful, but the learning curve is a tiny bit higher and many tools are merging/adding RSS features onto their own. Once you learn more about RSS tool, you will see that it has a heavy emphasis on learning and information, which might be another reason for slow adoption compared to entertainment or pleasure/fun oriented tools.

RSS tools are similar in terms of core features. (1) They provide search feature. You should see that web sites/services where content updates are frequent, they are a good candidate for having RSS features (e.g., news, journals, library search results, discussion threads, etc. - you can enter the name of the web site/journal name directly to the tool's search field, or from any website you visit and see the orange "rss" button, if you click it, popular RSS subscription tools should pop up. (2) They allow you to organize your subscriptions by folders or categories. (3) They allow you to export/import subscriptions across similar services - most popular tools also allow you to share your subscription(s) with others. In the lab, we will visit popular news sites, journals, and library search results, and each time, will see how the page can be incorporated into your RSS subscription.

• Feedly
• Feedspot
• And more RSS tools or feeders - Some are for desktop and platform specific
• RSS Mix (web service) - If students work on research or web search, their search URLs can be combined and created into a RSS feed
• If you know HTML code and DreamWeaver, this service automatically converts any RSS feed into a JavaScript code, which you can insert within a <div> </div> tag. This way, from 250, you learned how to create events/news on the site, and allow people to subscribe to your web page (RSS to Javascript)
• Netvibes, Flipboard, vs. MyYahoo - Each tool  allows you to add many panels/flakes to a single web page. The first two allow you to organize panels by different RSS feeds (if the web site provides RSS feeds). As of 2/16/2014, Pageflakes' DNS registration has expired (and this is strange, people expect that to come back soon). Google also used to have a feature called iGoogle that is similar to MyYahoo, then discontinued its service recently. Case in point? Invest in big pictures, major functionalities - things will change, and you can catch up quickly!

Further Resources

1. Blog search from Google or Technorati's watchlist - same action as above can be done
2. Social search (social media search)

You can comment on any of the following:

• How have you managed a lot of resources or information you have found on the Web? Have you used RSS or any tools introduced here before, or any other similar tool to better track or organize your subscriptions?
• Which features or functions did you find as very useful from which tool? How will you use  the tool/service more in the future?
• For more active and better use of the RSS or information organization tool in class or training, what would you suggest?

W6 Collaborative Writing/Editing

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):

1. Wikis in Plain English by Lee and Sachi Lefever (under 4 minutes)
2. The Power of Wikis in Higher Ed by Linda L. Briggs

Popular Tools - Course Google Site at https://sites.google.com/site/idt351class/

• Google Drive (used to be Google Doc) - Check out Tom Barrett’s Interesting Ways Series using Google Docs.
• Google Sites
• Wikispaces
• PBWorks
• And more tools (some can be downloaded and installed onto a server) 

Further Resources

1. See Who’s Editing Wikipedia by John Borland
2. Wikipedia and the New Curriculum by David Parry  
3. Wikibooks (increase in textbook cost is crazy, and you can see people try to write books on various subjects together)
4. Google Drive - Short video link to Google Drive features
5. Google Sites - Video tutorial detailing how to use Google Sites 
6. PBWorks - Video tutorial demonstrating some of PBworks functions 

You can comment on any of the following:

• Any difference, strengths or weaknesses compared to blogging tool(s)?
• What are unique or major strengths about wiki tool?
• Important things to consider in adoption or implementation (e.g., user management)