No one can deny that the iPad (and other such devices) offer an enormous amount of potential for facilitating teaching and learning. I think, however, that it's potential is stunted when people think of it primarily as a convenience item. The argument that it's a good instructional technology because it makes many things more convenient or accessible isn't as compelling to me as the argument that it provides a lot of room for innovation. When instructional technologies make things more convenient it's nice, but it's not the same as fostering a deeper understanding of the subject matter. The challenge for faculty (and me) is to imagine what could be done by combining the capabilities of an iPad (vivid screen, accelerometer, light sensor, microphone, internet access, GPS etc.) applied to your discipline. If the applications are developed with the "hard-core issues of teaching and learning" in mind than we needn't worry about the novelty wearing off and being left with nothing.
“There is very little evidence that kids learn more, faster or better by using these machines,” said Larry Cuban, a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, who believes that the money would be better spent to recruit, train and retain teachers. “IPads are marvelous tools to engage kids, but then the novelty wears off and you get into hard-core issues of teaching and learning.” |
These exemptions are good news for faculty who would like to use film clips in their classes. If you wish to take advantage of these exemptions please consult with a CTS or Librarian to begin the process of identifying and/or acquiring the materials, capturing the short portions to use, and using the material in a way that meets applicable regulations. The Librarian of Congress has announced the classes of works subject to the exemption from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. Persons making noninfringing uses of the following six classes of works will not be subject to the prohibition against circumventing access controls (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)) until the conclusion of the next rulemaking. |
(1) Motion pictures on DVDs that are lawfully made and
acquired and that are protected by the Content Scrambling System when circumvention is accomplished solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for the purpose of criticism or comment, and where the person engaging in circumvention believes and has reasonable grounds for believing that circumvention is necessary to fulfill the purpose of the use in the following instances: |
(i) Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students;
(ii) Documentary filmmaking;
(iii) Noncommercial videos.
Read more at www.copyright.gov |
Anyone wanting to keep an eye on what the future holds for technology in teaching and learning should read the 2010 Horizon Report. The report discusses six technologies that are expected to grow over the next five years. These are Mobile Computing, Open Content, Electronic Books, Simple Augmented Reality, Guesture-based Computing, and Visual Data Analysis. From my vantage point I see mobile computing and visual data analysis as the most pertinent technologies for Grinnell College. Please take a moment to browse the report and let me know if there's anything that piques your interest.
A Google labs project that would be a fantastic language learning tool if expanded to include a wide variety of materials. Imagine being able to search YouTube for a word or phrase and see an index of videos marked with the occurrences. Data-driven learning galore!
What is Google Audio Indexing?
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Google Audio Indexing (Gaudi) is a new technology from Google that allows users to
better search and watch videos from various YouTube channels. It uses speech technology
to find spoken words inside videos and lets the user jump to the right portion of the
video where these words are spoken.
Read more at labs.google.com |
A startling development at UCLA - this practice is so widespread among many institutions that this could have huge repercussions. Hopefully, the effect will be modified copyright law, rather than severely restricted instructional practices.
Here are a few things I noticed in the article:
1 - They're contending that it doesn't fall under TEACH because the virtual space is not a face-to-face classroom, but Section 110 (2) exempts materials delivered over the network for instructor mediated activities. Section 110 (2) was put in place to allow distance learning, but the reality is that almost all classes with a physical space ALSO have a virtual space.
2 - The article mentions the video coming from DVDs, so is this mainly a DMCA issue or a TEACH issue?
3 - The article recognizes that film and video are used widely across the curriculum, with a large share of the use coming from foreign language faculty. This is something the DMCA exemptions so far have failed to recognize.
Interesting to see what will happen.
mike In the latest clash of copyright law and instructional technology, the University of California at Los Angeles has stopping allowing faculty members to post copyrighted videos on their course Web sites after coming under fire from an educational media trade group. Read more at www.insidehighered.com |
I found this article through the Liberal Education Today blog. A short but interesting post on 6 of the reasons why some people may not be using the technologies I'm peddling. Often, the reason given by non-users is lack of time, but there's something behind the decision that adopting this technology isn't worth the time available. My goal is certainly not to push technology use where it isn't helpful, but keeping these reasons in mind will help me to identify the root of someone's reservations and possibly to overcome the reservations by suggesting an alternative route. From the perspective of system developers, a utilitarian morality governs technology use. The good user is one who adopts the systems we design and uses them as we envisioned (Redmiles et al., 2005). Similarly, the bad or problematic user is the one who does not embrace the system or device.
(…)
what we have tried to show here is that non-use is not an absence or a gap; it is not negative space. Non-use is, often, active, meaningful, motivated, considered, structured, specific, nuanced, directed, and productive.Read more at liftlab.com |
Google announced a new Translator Toolkit that will allow translators to speed up the translation process by first running the text through Google's translation engine, then cleaning up the translation themselves. Obviously this data will be used in turn to improve Google's translation engine. For those, like myself, who use Google's Language API, this is good news. Eventually Google will collect enough human translated material to make their machine translations much more accurate and natural. For instructors who have encountered student use of machine translation in papers, this underscores the importance of educating students about helpful and harmful uses of machine translation (or any translation for that matter) in language learning. | Best of all, our automatic translation system "learns" from her corrections, creating a virtuous cycle that can help translate content into 47 languages, or over 98% of the world's Internet population. |
It's great to see another project featuring multimedia corpora intended for language learning. This project features video interviews of teens in English, French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, and Romanian. Unfortunately, you'll need to use RealPlayer.
The corpora are based on structured video interviews with pupils
between 13 and 18 years of age. The interviews have been
annotated and enriched for language learning purposes. Feel free to
explore them on your own! Access to the corpora and the videos is
free of charge. To watch the videos, please install RealPlayer.
Read more at sacodeyl.inf.um.es |
| New media environments can make visible the intermediate thinking processes intrinsic to the development of expert-like abilities and dispositions in novice learners, and nurture abilities associated with adaptive expertise that allow practitioners (and learners) to make flexible use of knowledge in self-regulated ways. |
| Extended projects in digital environments--such as digital storytelling, documentary video production, multimedia authoring--often left faculty with the paradox that the richest evidence of student learning cannot be found in the final summative product (e.g. the five-minute multimedia narrative itself). Where is the learning in a process-driven authoring activity? |
| In many ways it is spread across a series of actions taken along the way and left on the cutting room floor, in the hundred decisions a student makes to include or exclude materials or effects, in all those reflective judgments made in the process of construction and (in some cases) the give and take of collaborative production. For many VKP faculty, this required rethinking “final projects” as compilations of a final assignment along with traces of the process, most commonly a reflection or series of reflections. Read more at www.academiccommons.org |
I'm just now discovering the Visible Knowledge Project a large scale investigation into the impact of technology on teaching and learning. There appears to be a lot of very useful information to digest; I'm looking forward to reading more, especially the case studies. The three dimensions of the learning process mentioned below are helpful when thinking about how technology is affecting the learning process. More to come... | These three ways of looking at pedagogies--as adaptive, embodied, and socially situated--together help constitute a composite portrait of new learning. Each helps us focus on a different dimension of complex learning processes: adaptive pedagogies emphasizing the developmental stages linking learning to disciplines; embodied pedagogies focusing on how the whole person as learner engages in learning; and socially situated learning focusing on the role of context and audience. In this sense, the dimensions are overlapping and reinforcing in any particular set of practices.Read more at www.academiccommons.org |
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iPads as learning tool
