What follows is the text of a document I prepared to start and shape discussion about the future of the university website at my former place of work. The PDF version is what I actually presented, though in both instances I’ve redacted three types of information: the name of the institution (many already know, but […] » about 1500 words
A comment in the University of Lincoln’s Audio Production course blog demonstrates the value of public blogging in academia:
I am looking forward to beginning this course in September and have been finding these blogs very useful in providing a guide as to what sort of things to expect during my first year. Keep up the good work!
Thanks to Joss Winn for the tip.
How Today’s College Students Use Wikipedia For Course-Related Research: Overall, college students use Wikipedia. But, they do so knowing its limitation. They use Wikipedia just as most of us do — because it is a quick way to get started and it has some, but not deep, credibility. 52% of respondents use Wikipedia frequently or […] » about 200 words
Well, not the entire university, I guess, but a number of online publications use it. The newspaper is featured above, their CIO has a blog, and they’ve started a pilot with WPMU to offer blogging to everybody in the University. » about 100 words
Michael Stephens is now using WordPress MU to host his classes online, and that opening page is really sweet. It’s hardly the first time somebody’s used a blog to host course content, but I like where he’s going with it. We’re significantly expanding our use of WordPress at Plymouth, and using it to replace WebCT/Blackboard […] » about 300 words
It should be no surprise that journalists are talking about citizen journalism, but what of the disintermediation of other industries? Man-on-the-street Mark Georgiev told Marketplace: I didn’t want a certificate, I didn’t want any kind of accreditation, I really just wanted the knowledge. And I also wanted to work at my own pace. Georgiev, the […] » about 300 words
Back in August Educated Nation offered the following top ten list of web tools for college students:
Not to be outdone, an anonymous-but-first-person story at Nextstudent identifies their top ten:
This sign on a computer in the Paul A. Elsner Library at Mesa Community College caught Beth‘s eye and garnered a number of comments, including one from theangelremiel that seems to mark one of the most elusive aspects of Library 2.0. they know that none of their classes require gaming Excerpting the above as a […] » about 200 words
Watch this video a few times. It’s funny. It’s catchy. It’s kitsch. Now watch it a few times more. The ad, for a Lada VAZ 2109, appeared sometime in the 90s. It reflects the influence of MTV and other cultural imports from the West, but the details betray it’s command economy provenance. The snow appears […] » about 400 words
Rebecca Nesson, speaking via Skype and appearing before us as her avatar in Second Life, offered her experiences as a co-instructor of Harvard Law School‘s CyberOne, a course being held jointly in a meatspace classroom and in Second Life, and open to students via Harvard Law, the Harvard Extension School, and to the public that shows up in Second Life.
Nesson has an interesting blog post about how it all works, but she also answered questions from the audience about why it works:
As a distance learning environment it’s head and shoulders above anything else because of levels and types of interactions possible versus any previous tool.
It’s a poor format for lectures, but a great format for discussions, so it really encourages conversation and discourse.
It’s a community that exists independent of the class meeting. In here we have much more of those liminal times when people are just hanging out. …We have more opportunities for interaction.
They don’t want to engage in chat with their professors in the classroom space, they want to chat with other students in their own space.
— from Eric Gordon’s presentation this morning.
Hey, isn’t that the lesson that smart folks have been offering for a while now: “Nobody cares about you or your site. Really.” How could learning environments not be subject to the same cluetrain forces affecting the rest of the world?
Students love IM. They love Google. They love FaceBook. What does your courseware matter to them?
| <a href="http://dcfischer.blogs.plymouth.edu/">Our CIO</a> is asking whether or not <a href="http://www.plymouth.edu/">Plymouth</a> should get <a href="http://blogs.plymouth.edu/">involved with blogs</a>. Not to be overly academic, but I think we should define our terms. Despite all the talk, “blogs” are a content agnostic technology being used to support all manner of online activities. <a href="http://dcfischer.blogs.plymouth.edu/2006/09/20/should-psu-host-blogs/">What you're really asking is instead</a>: what kind of content do we want to put online, and who do we want to let do it? » about 700 words
I meant to post about this weeks ago, but HigherEd BlogCon has now come and gone. It had sections on teaching, libraries, CRM, and web development. (Aside: why must we call it “admissions, alumni relations, and communications & marketing” instead of the easier to swallow “CRM”?) The “events” are over, but everything is online, and […] » about 200 words
Lichen pointed me to this Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette post about new technologies: Keep up to date with new technologies that you can co-opt for library use. So what if no one will ever listen to the pod casts of your bibliographic instruction lectures, subscribe to the RSS feeds from your library’s blog, send your […] » about 400 words
As part of a larger message to faculty returning from winter break, our CIO offered this summary of how he sees advancing internet use affecting higher education: Are you familiar with blogs and podcasts? Google them, or look them up in Wikipedia. Some of you may already be using these new tools. Others may think […] » about 400 words
Way back in April 1997, Jakob Nielsen tried to educate us on Zipf Distributions and the power law, and their relationship to the web. This is where discussions of the Chris Anderson’s Long Tail start, but the emphasis is on the whole picture, not just the many economic opportunities at the end of the tail. […] » about 400 words