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Grinnell Curricular Technology

What we're reading and what we have to say about it.

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This Clog is for sharing what we're reading on the web.

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Mike Conner

What we're reading about

Google Audio Indexing

Mike Conner says:

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!

Amplify’d from labs.google.com
What is Google Audio Indexing?
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
 
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Posted by Mike Conner  6 days ago

Hitting Pause on Class Videos

Mike Conner says:

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 v... read more

Amplify’d from www.insidehighered.com

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
 
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Posted by Mike Conner  14 days ago

6 Drivers of Technology Non-use

Mike Conner says:

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.

Amplify’d from liftlab.com
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
 
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Posted by Mike Conner  4 months ago

Google’s Translator Toolkit

Mike Conner says:

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.

Amplify’d from googleblog.blogspot.com
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.
See more at googleblog.blogspot.com
 
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Posted by Mike Conner  8 months ago

Video corpora for European languages

Mike Conner says:

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.

Amplify’d from sacodeyl.inf.um.es

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
 
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Posted by Mike Conner  8 months ago

Visible Knowledge Project, Part II

Amplify’d from www.academiccommons.org
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
 

Mike Conner says:

The approach to learning and assesment presented in this report of the Visible Knowledge Project resonates perfectly with Grinnell’s emphasis on inquiry-based learning, dealing with primary sources, and getting students to actually do the work of their discipline.  I’m excited to see such an in-depth report of how technology can be used to capture and assess the learning that occurs in such an environment.  I particularly like the emphasis on nurturing expert-like abilities.

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Posted by Mike Conner  9 months ago

Visible Knowledge Project

Mike Conner says:

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…

Amplify’d from www.academiccommons.org
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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Posted by Mike Conner  10 months ago