tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81851351059123660192024-03-13T02:29:04.069-02:00Open Education Network BlogPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.comBlogger104125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-66383195581460637312008-01-05T11:26:00.000-02:002008-01-05T11:42:39.299-02:00Mac Pages to GIFDear Folks,<br />Although I may be re-inventing the wheel here, a few of you may be interested in how to convert your well-designed table from the Mac word-processor (Pages) into a gif for publication. Publishers may use Windows based Word, rather than Mac. Constructing a table inside Pages or a figure inside Keynote slide-maker is extremely accurate and a joy to use, with pixel by pixel accuracy, in contrast to the neanderthal eye you need for positioning stuff in word or powerpoint. <br /><br />However, you will find (table select) copy and paste is ineffective to transfer a table into Powerpoint (even Powerpoint for Mac), and export to Word or to Powerpoint distorts the artwork too much. Previously I have resorted to re-drawing from scratch. But help is at hand.<br /><br />If you put the table into a single Page by itself, then select custom size on Page Setup, you can choose for example 15cm wide and 10cm high page size, and then centre your table within this. Choose print and Save-As pdf to obtain a custom sized pdf, and then simply Save-As gif (or png, jpg, tiff depending on your graphics). Also at this point I selected 1500 pixels per cm resolution - just for fun, and obtained an excellent high-resolution gif. <br /><br />This can be stored for re-use back inside Pages, or inside a Powerpoint, Keynote, or Word file.<br />Mac is really intuitive ! You just need to sit back and think through how to proceed, and the results are great.<br /><br />All Best Wishes<br />PaulPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-39903423991317333082007-12-27T04:09:00.000-02:002007-12-27T04:21:14.128-02:00A Busy Year, for allDear Folks,<br /><br />It has been a very busy year for everyone.<br />Thanks must go to colleagues studying at West Georgia together with me - my overall conclusion is that in distance education particularly - it is the students that make the learning happen. So much work has followed on from those studies. Especially my reports to the Asian Association of Open Universities, and presentation to Beijing Normal University. I thank all concerned.<br /><br />All Best Wishes to you for the New Year !<br /><br />For those of you interested, next year will be the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a special issue of six journals worldwide will commemorate this anniversary with papers published on Article 26 the Right to Education. For details go to the homepage of the Asian Journal of Distance Education <a href="http://www.AsianJDE.org"><font color="0000ff"> here at http://www.AsianJDE.org </font></a> and click on the Special Issue button on the left column menu.<br /><br />If anyone wants more information please email to me.<br />Talk to you, next year -<br />Paul<br /><br /><br />.Paul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-83724905326020975392007-12-09T20:55:00.000-02:002007-12-09T21:10:09.272-02:00rss feeds might timeoutDear Folks, <br />While I have been sojourning in the garden, it seems that some of you who regularly follow this blog through receiving the rss feed may have had transmission interrupted. I guess your rss feed has timed out. This blog is still active, though I have been busy updating my website to incorporate it there (you might need this URL for later access ;- <a href="http://www.open-ed.net"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.open-ed.net </font></a>. The blog is on a top left button marked 'blog' beneath the title banner.<br /><br />Well I hope rss feeds do time out ... since this will prevent my hard disk crashing from overload if I ever click accidently on my 'blogbridge' alligator. I am sure it works fine, but who has three or four hours each day to keep up. I do - of course, but not during the hibernation season.<br /><br />By the way, while I wrote yonks ago about there are more blogs in Japan than in any one country, this was picked up by the newspaper media and in the daily paper yesterday -- I guess electronic media is faster !!<br /><br />All Best Wishes<br />Paul<br /><br />PS I hope this short utterance reactivates your rss feeds ...Paul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-35277471559993737232007-07-24T04:13:00.000-02:002007-08-06T23:41:17.073-02:00Impatica Presentation on e-LearningHi Folks,<br /><br />You might be interested in viewing my latest Impatica work. This presentation introduces e-learning starting from the basics and is interactive : users should pause to answer the questions and puzzles. I have made this for new online students and those new to online course designing. This a simple no-voice-over slide presentation with forward, pause, back controls for use in class or by students at home. The presentation is fairly standalone, although I do offer pdf handouts as additional notes to you and your students. <br />Please download the four-page easy-going pdf from here <a href="http://www.open-ed.net/e4/eLearning1.pdf"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.open-ed.net/e4/eLearning1.pdf </font></a> and here <a href="http://www.open-ed.net/e4/eLearning2.pdf"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.open-ed.net/e4/eLearning2.pdf </font></a><br />and then view the presentation here <a href="http://www.open-ed.net/e4/eLearning.html"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.open-ed.net/e4/eLearning.html </font></a><br />or if you wish you may access, adapt and use the original powerpoint from here <br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/e4/eLearning.ppt"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.open-ed.net/e4/eLearning.ppt </font></a><br />Enjoy !<br />All Best Wishes<br />Paul<br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/e4/TransD.jpg"><img width="400" src="http://www.open-ed.net/e4/TransD.jpg"></a>Paul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-27587924968868540302007-07-24T03:08:00.000-02:002007-07-24T05:07:01.951-02:00Skype revisitedDear Folks,<br /><br />Since the end of last year, several new tools have been developed for recording multiple persons in conference calls through Skype. One of these is HotRecorder that comes free forever, but records only two minutes, and comes with a file converter to mp3, or wav, or OGG for podcasting. I have HotRecorder installed. The full version costs about $15, providing a recording duration up to two hours (I think - I must check again) and removes the adverts that might distract you. Some difficulties have been noticed, but the free version worked perfectly for me - in Windows on my Mac - giving me the two-minute mp3. A quick scan of the hits on a Google search found one comment that HotRecorder was difficult to unload from your system - though I doubt this would be too difficult. HotRecorder works not only for Skype but for all VoIP including Google Chat and Yahoo. There is another tool for Mac users called Call Recorder which works for Skype and iChat and records any length of audio-video conferences. A great way to build up your family album, but also for synchronous tutorials ... recorded for student assessment and course evaluation ...<br /><br />The best available of these tools is <a href="http://www.pamela-systems.com/download/"><font color="ff0000"> Pamela </font></a> - especially the top-end version Pamela Professional. The basic version of Pamela is free with up to 15-minute call-duration recordings possible, and the top-end version is only $24.95 for ever, with unlimited hours and hours and hours of recording potential. Pamela seems to be for only Skype. Nonetheless its features make this a great add-on to Skype, since Pamela can answer any Skype calls you receive with your pre-recorded message as auto-reply. Pamela also always notifies the other persons connected that you have Pamela recording the session. And for you on the go, Pamela will forward your auto-answered and recorded voice mails to you wherever you are by email. Amazing !<br /><br />Perhaps you may wish to add Pamela to your Skype. Why didn't we use this last month ? Well these recording tools only arrived this year. Perhaps WestGa may need to re-write and update some modules more regularly. The reason I took this course was to update my knowledge in advanced technologies. These new tools show us that we cannot take too long an interval rest nowadays. Google search on any of the above for all other details.<br /><br />Skypecasting has arrived !<br />More later.<br />All Best Wishes<br />PaulPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-23327175923267127832007-07-23T04:08:00.000-02:002007-07-23T05:01:07.940-02:00On Blogs and FacebookDear Folks,<br />I have spent a few good hours fruitfully reading other blogs - going back to older posts to catch those parts that didn't get enough attention first time round. I have commented on Del.icio.us and the reviews by Pam and Diane, and was also interested to read more about Wikis by Sue (thanks Sue). I was perplexed by the review comments by Ginger - on SnagIt or Sputtr to deploy all search engines simultaneously in your search. My own view (posted to Ginger) is that I believe search engines are becoming more specialised, and we discover specific ones most suited to our search topic and the effectiveness that derive from the returned results on improving our learning or teaching ;-) I am not sure I can handle Google-plus-Yahoo-plus-plus results. On another blog, I teach deaf students and blind students, so Mary Jane's discovery and review on www.TagDeaf.com is very useful for me, and for my colleagues. I will add more later after visiting that site.<br /><br />Well, what did catch my attention was <a href="http://www.facebook.com"><font color="0000ff"> Facebook </font></a>, reviewed by Bessie, as Social Apps. I do appreciate clear English. And Bessie is a model for us all especially for native-speakers too. The <a href="http://www.ncat.edu/~nkonge/facebook/facebook.html"><font color="0000ff"> Camtasia powerpoint presentation </font></a> was professional. I couldn't find words to write notes and describe my impression, so I went over to Facebook to sign up immediately ; entered my real name, real age, and said I was a first-year student at college (thanks WestGa) trying to avoid the FBI as far as posssible. And visited various pages there. It is a social chat area similar to MySpace though it would tend toward being for students in higher education. That said, their English is a foreign language to me. I can read most of the phonics and decode most of the lol junk, but in a free writing space, surely this died out with pocket-bell SMS twenty years ago. Do they think they are inventing something new ? I read through pages and pages - like a dating service it seemed to me - Are students really that lonely they need this ?? And do they really have so much free time to do this ?? That 19 million students are members must give us a wake up call. Most of the conversational chat was in English, with a few percent in regional languages depending on the region-specific area you choose. Nonetheless those in the Japan area were 99% in the States, talking mostly about Okinawa - which is part of the States already or was it returned ?? Must avoid politics. My main concern here is how Facebook can be used in distance education. I need to study more, and will post up my findings later.<br /><br />It seems a lovely face picture is de rigueur on Facebook - hence I guess its name ...<br /><br />Thanks everyone for great articles and reviews.<br />All Best Wishes<br />Paul<br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/FacebookJoin.jpg"><img width="300" src="http://www.open-ed.net/FacebookJoin.jpg"></a>Paul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-31298962445696187912007-07-21T20:41:00.000-02:002007-07-23T03:07:58.090-02:00Video on Wikis in Distance EducationHi Folks,<br />I thought I might express my views on why and how to use wikis in distance education more clearly through a video of comparative technological methods. The technological difficulties in adding screen grabs as jpg to iMovie for exporting at mpg are in my next book ;-) Powerpoint have extremely limited animation and limited pixel-by-pixel design capabilities. So I stayed here with my old Mac, avoided screen grabs and iMovie and other applications. The resulting movie is by Keynote exported directly to Quicktime (you can download the latest Quicktime version from the left side margin on this blog). Inserted media notably mpg can be shortened by limiting the time for the slide-play duration, since - as I described in an earlier post - Sony mpg cannot be edited by Mac or Realplayer, except optimistically if I study another week or two...<br />Well, folks, here is the <a href="http://www.open-ed-podcasting.net/rlo53-wikis.mov"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.open-ed-podcasting.net/rlo53-wikis.mov </font></a> (.mov , 82.9MB -- it is worth the short download time, really ! (It comes through best on a high resolution Mac 24" screen - find a colleague who has gone out for a few seconds and left her/his Mac in the room.)It will open as a full-screen movie, and if you click on the screen it will reduce automatically to one-quarter screen for you, as you like), and for those on the move using a mobile telephone or iPod to watch this, here it is in compressed format at <a href="http://www.open-ed-podcasting.net/rlo53-wikisA.mov"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.open-ed-podcasting.net/rlo53-wikisA.mov </font></a> (.mov , 4.MB), both at seven minutes. It is a satirical look at wikis - with the laborious time-consuming old technology presented first, followed quickly by the efficient wiki method.<br /><br />I still do not see the need for voice, though I am in the video. I would like to add background Jupiter music to this and voice, but this might detract from the visual humour involved ....<br />- enjoy !<br />All Best Wishes<br />Paul<br /><br />or just click on the picture screen-grab below <br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed-podcasting.net/rlo53-wikis.mov"><img width="350" src="http://www.open-ed-podcasting.net/ScreenWiki.jpg"></a>Paul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-53704938664508042582007-07-20T06:04:00.000-02:002007-07-20T07:56:07.590-02:00Commentary on Del.icio.usDear Folks,<br /><br />The Social Apps Del.icio.us has been reviewed by Pam and Diane. <br />A Google search on Del.icio.us finds millions of hits. I mention this since Del.icio.us is suitable to an edited list or selected list of a few hits only. Selected by who ? - well you, or him ( who ? ) or her ( who ? ) depending on which network of friends of friends of friends you link to and what they ( who ? ) like best. <br /><br />I have watched the excellent video by Pam at <a href="http://www.compmat.wcape.school.za/PHS/examples/delicious/delicious.swf"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.compmat.wcape.school.za/PHS/examples/delicious/delicious.swf </font></a> and the excellent powerpoint by Diane at <a href="http://www.westga.edu/~dfulkers/Del.icio.us/Del.icio.us.htmlf"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.westga.edu/~dfulkers/Del.icio.us/Del.icio.us.html </font></a>, and am enthralled not only by the technological achievement but also by the clarity in presentation. <br /><br />As a brief introduction here, Del.icio.us is a web-based Social Software Application for use on any browser online. It is essentially a subject-grouped list of URLs. Whereas before you telephoned to directory enquiries or used a local yellow-pages, now you can post your favourite website URLs to Del.icio.us and add tags to each one (don't forget this !!) to cross-link them among various subject-groups. They do not yet allow personalised annotations. For this functionality please use your offline wordprocessor or notebook and pencil like I do.<br /><br />I would use and plan to use Del.icio.us for my own use with no importing of lists from others from others from others : very much just an online store of my subject-indexing as part of my online library ; for mainly myself as well as for others to use. I would not like my blog open to adverts or any other uninvited intruders, not my Del.icio.us, not my wiki, and not my kitchen. I agree with Pam and Diane that Del.icio.us can be useful, and we should use tools each for their own advantages. When I first set up my own online library (including definitions I like and quotations) it was to satisfy a need. It did, it does, and it will for the foreseeable future. But I think we do require the 'need' to be tangible - not to use Del.ico.us just in case we might ... or just for fun. Of course personal websites, personal blogs, MySpace and so on are widely popular, but I don't subscribe to such time-consuming pastimes. I am too busy learning and teaching.<br /><br />Actually if I need help academically, I usually email to a colleague friend in my network and they help me out, as I do them. They personalise their search to my purposes. So there is no need for me to import their bookmarks. I think we need to maintain some human-human contact in teaching and learning. This position does not conflict with my stand on objectivity and no-posting of beautiful faces, blond hair and blue eyes. Indeed I maintain that the human-human contact should be objective - I ask my colleague friend for specific academic help - not to download his bookmarks of his local tailor and candlestick maker. Do I have time to download your bookmarks then go through them deleting the irreverent and irrelevant, and re-tagging them to my own purposes ? No, not yet. Del.icio.us is mass mailing your private contacts. I will however upload my own bookmarks for synchronised portability between home and office, but I would nevertheless still want them downloadable for use offline - together with my annotations and comments for my use and re-use - as DVD-backup or on A4-paper.<br /><br />More later,<br />All Best Wishes<br />PaulPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-10777548191249175122007-07-20T03:46:00.000-02:002007-07-20T04:03:27.965-02:00Critique of the Literature on WikisDear Folks, <br />Here I would like to offer a critique of the literature on using wikis in education – noting that there is not much available yet. This is attributable to wikis being first-generation tools not yet fully suited to the purpose of education, since they were designed initially for personal non-academic use as social applications. I have delayed this critique for some days now with some anguish over whether or not I have become too decrepit and cynical during the past 120 days. Don’t answer that : this is a blog ! not a wiki ;-)<br /><br />A wiki is a certain kind of blog. While a blog has serial entries according to date much like a diary, a wiki can be built up both horizontally in breadth and vertically in depth, while being fairly time independent. Since pages can be added for increasing breadth, and more hypertext links and details can be added to any pre-existing page for increasing the depth, wikis are therefore considered to be synchronous collaborative tools, and potentially effective as such in education. Wikis are considered to be synchronous collaborative tools since they are continually being updated by users. For more details on their educational potential, see <a href="http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/163/692"><font color="0000ff"> Schwartz, Clark, Cossarin, & Rudolph, (2004) </font></a> and <a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6920-6-41.pdf"><font color="0000ff"> Boulos, Maramba, & Wheeler (2006). </font></a>.<br /><br />It is noteworthy that wikis are not yet part and parcel of university learning management systems such as Blackboard and WebCT. Rather, they are standalone applications to build an open knowledge database accessed through any browser on the internet. Wikis are interlinked with each other so that the MIT wiki has pages by Cornell University as well as links to password-protected copyrighted library sites. A good up-to-date academic paper on the topic of Social Applications for e-learning is by <a href="http://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2006/Christian_Dalsgaard.htm"><font color="0000ff"> Dalsgaard (2006). </font></a> In this paper he presents a host of different social applications including wikis. None are gone into to any great depth, but this is a good overview paper, and provides the interested reader with a good list of relevant literature references. Dalsgaard argues that learning management systems (LMSs) are not designed for student-student(s) group learning tasks. When LMSs are for example used for student-student interactions through text-messaging chat-rooms, they are slow and cumbersome. As a result, I believe LMS do not achieve the potential of providing virtual spaces for learning (chat rooms are 99% unused), Such LMS virtual spaces can help with certain discussions for deciding a schedule or negotiating a syllabus. Indeed at WestGa, the virtual classroom on WebCT was used successfully by a group of students synchronously and collaboratively – and this was to arrange a shared schedule and proposing with counter-proposing preferred ways forward and methods for the [our] group learning task.<br /><br />Dalsgaard does pose a very good question when he asks whether LMSs will incorporate social software tools such as wikis in the near future for such purposes as arranging a schedule and learning methods. However, I disagree with Dalsgaard when he writes that students should solve their problems individually or at least direct their own learning and problem solving activities. This is what tutors are for. Although he cites Vygosky and social constructivism here, there are limits to Vygotsky’s theory in that some tasks are so complex that group members cannot verbalize and communicate their individual context to others fully, so that distributed knowledge is always far greater than the knowledge communicated (see my Posting on Navigation Negotiation on 10 April 2007, for details here). Wikis can only represent those fractions of the context that have been contributed. <br /><br />Moreover, since a key feature of wikis is the anonymity and the sharedness of the content presented, then the resulting text is so blended as to disallow any kind of individual social presence to be portrayed through the wiki. Their use is therefore limited in online education.<br /><br />Another general paper on social applications is by <a href="http://www.unisa.edu.au/odlaaconference/PPDF2s/13%20odlaa%20-%20Anderson.pdf"><font color="0000ff"> Anderson (2005), </font></a> and he focuses on educational social applications. He presents in particular his vision for using social apps to enable self-paced continuous-enrolment open-access online courses. This is moving way beyond MIT putting their course syllabuses online, and adopts the concept of re-usable learning objects applied to whole courses. Anderson gives a confusing picture of social presence citing some seminal work on tutor presence online, but then talks of his own model and vision in which a student can click an icon to indicate they are online or not available, much like WebCT Virtual Classroom and like Google Talk, Skype and other popular chat Social Apps. Personally, I don’t relate clicking an icon to show my hand is raised as constructing and projecting online social presence. My own concept of social presence was formulated from the frequency, personal rapport and deep enthusiasm of Fred Lockwood as an online tutor, a few years ago. From that experience, I do not rate a ‘hand-raising’ icon as social presence. Anderson mis-cites Paulsen 1993/2003. Paulsen proposed new definitions for ‘cooperative’ learning activities as non-compulsory and of short duration, while ‘collaborative’ learning activities were compulsory and of long duration. I am surprised Anderson bothers to use ink on that. Paulsen could easily buy a dictionary to find out the meanings of ‘cooperative’ and ‘collaborative’, and Paulsen’s proposals have long ago been superseded by correct definitions, and he should stick with words like ‘compulsory’ and ‘duration’ to give his views. Here a wiki would be ideally suitable !!<br /><br />Anderson in his next paragraph writes, ‘Humans and other social animals tend to flock to activities in which others are engaged’. This would imply he is referring to a voluntary activity. Education at the primary and secondary level is compulsory. So I think he is suggesting that if we can make students’ learning more visible to others then we can draw in more students to the course. Most universities now do this on their home websites with student voices or student opinions about their learning experiences. Wikis do not ideally show student learning narratives. <br /><br />The issue of whether wikis can be used for collaborative learning balances on the point of what level of learning is being done. During construction, contributors offer their own ideas cooperatively, although the finished product is unknown by anyone and so the overall process can be considered collaborative construction through cooperative sharing. Children in school can learn from wikis as a resource of reasonably-reliable current knowledge, in a one-way cooperative delivery mechanism ; wikis rarely offer conflicting or contrasting opinions within a same page – any incoming knowledge usually displaces the ‘weaker’ earlier contributions, sadly, and to our loss. University students might also access wikis for up-to-date knowledge – especially since hard-back textbooks are so expensive nowadays. As for students in higher education and at the postgraduate level, wikis offer no space for collaborative progress unless users understand they must tolerate differing opinions on the page and structure their page to accommodate these. This level of maturity is essential if wikis are to be effective collaborative learning spaces. This would move us on to the concept of learner autonomy.<br /><br />Anderson (p3) writes “Recent interest in so called blended learning ( Bersin, 2004 ; Garrison & Kanuka, 2004 ) shows that it is very possible to combine different formats and media of delivery. However, the challenge is to select … those forms of education that offer the greatest degrees of freedom …” [= autonomy]. These sentences are interesting for several reasons. One that Bersin writes magazine articles without any literature references, two that Garrison does not anyway understand the Theory of Transactional Distance, and three student learning autonomy should not be maximized. I have previously discussed Bersin. Garrison (2000) has described that in “Moore’s theory, the most distant program has low dialogue and low structure while the least distant has high dialogue and high structure”. He is wrong. The least distant has high dialogue and low structure (Kawachi, 2004 ; Moore, 1991 & 1993 ). According to Moore (1993, p. 27) the institution here should “take measures to reduce transactional distance by increasing the dialogue through use of teleconferencing”. According to Kawachi (2005), students will lose some Autonomy (A-) in going to synchronous mode since they must become more empathic with others, but they will gain in Dialogue (D+) and also gain in responsiveness to their own wants and needs, and own context (with S- decrease in institutional Structure) leading to more learning and deeper quality learning. Moreover, even though adults in open distance education may want increased autonomy, they /we must compromise on autonomy in order to achieve pre-set learning tasks. <br /><br />This point is surely illustrated in our current experience with WestGa. We may want more autonomy and self-pacing, but we must compromise on our desire for more autonomy if we are to complete the pre-set coursework duly and on time. <br /><br />All Best Wishes<br />Paul<br /><br /><br />Anderson, T. (2005). Distance learning – Social software’s killer ap? Proceedings of the ODLAA Annual Conference. Retrieved June 11, 2007, from http://www.unisa.edu.au/odlaaconference/PPDF2s/13%20odlaa%20-%20Anderson.pdf<br /><br />Boulos, M.N.K., Maramba, I., & Wheeler, S. (2006). Wikis, blogs and podcasts : A new generation of web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education. BMC Medical Journal, 6 (41). Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6920-6-41.pdf<br /><br />Dalsgaard, C. (2006). Social software : e-Learning beyond learning management systems. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2006/Christian_Dalsgaard.htm<br /><br />Garrison, R. (2000) Theoretical challenges for distance education in the 21 st Century : A shift from structural to transactional issues’, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 1 (1), 1-17. Retrieved 10 July, 2007, from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2/22<br /><br />Kawachi, P. (2004). Course design & choice of media by applying the Theory of Transactional Distance. Open Education Research, 2, 16-19.<br /><br />Kawachi, P. (2005). Empirical validation of a multimedia construct for learning. In S. Mishra, & R. Sharma (Eds.), Interactive Multimedia in Education and Training (pp. 158-183). Hershey, PA : IDEA Group<br /><br />Moore, M.G. (1991). Editorial: Distance education theory. American Journal of Distance Education, 5 (3), 1-6.<br /><br />Moore, M.G. (1993). Theory of transactional distance. In D. Keegan (Ed.), Theoretical Principles of Distance Education (pp. 22-38). London : Routledge.<br /><br />Schwartz, L., Clark, S., Cossarin, M., & Rudolph, J. (2004). Educational wikis : Features and selection criteria. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 5 (1). Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/163/692Paul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-33940956370350017572007-07-18T01:28:00.000-02:002007-07-18T01:48:28.704-02:00Compressed PresentationHi Folks,<br />There may be a need for compressed powerpoint slides to use while speaking at a conference. I have summarised my review of using wikis in distance education, and compressed these using Impatica here - being careful to upload the WikisODE.imp and ImPlayer300.jar files into the same folder as the WikisODE.html file. This time round, I avoided using full screen jpg picture as background since this delays streaming, and used a standard Arial font - previously Arial-rounded and Lucida Calligraphy (my preferred fonts) did not go through Impatica. Naturally my voice will be live as standard in conferences. I am not sure if they would accept a voice-over-powerpoint to count as a conference presentation - not at those I have been to - although I have heard some conferences have video sections where the author and speaker are absent. Voice-over anyway has been done earlier. Here I set out to see the what minimum size could be achieved for a practical conference presentation and the result is 7 minutes speaking and 30.8KB file size. <a href="http://www.open-ed.net/WikisODE/WikisODE.html"><font color="0000ff"> Click here for http://www.open-ed.net/WikisODE/WikisODE.html </font></a>, or click on the slide below for immediate instantaneous streaming playback.<br />All Best Wishes<br />Paul<br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/WikisODE/WikisODE.html"><img width="400" src="http://www.open-ed.net/WikisODE/WikisODE.jpg"></a>Paul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-55419584779027558822007-07-17T20:59:00.000-02:002007-07-17T21:27:17.013-02:00On Chopsticks and WikisHi Folks,<br />Not sure if this is wholly on topic, but it may be of related interest. <br />The term 'wiki' as you may know derives from the Hawaiian word for 'quick' and the Hawaiian Honolulu Airport bus called the 'wiki wiki' bus. However this is hardly a novel use of 'quick' as those of you in the States of Chinese descent will know. After the railroads were constructed and the gold dug, the early Chinese worked as cooks. You could imagine them not knowing English and the cowboys not knowing Chinese - so when the food was ready, the Chinese would call out "chop chop" and the folks would hear that the food was ready ; "food food" they thought. And those two sticks used by the Chinese to cook with - rather than call them 'food-sticks' - became the misnomer 'chopsticks'. I still remember my working days when the factory foreman would yell at us "chop chop" meaning "hurry up" or "quick quick !"<br /><br />This is unrelated to the 'chopshop' where I bought my car ...<br />It is early morning here, so bear with me ;-)<br />All Best Wishes<br />PaulPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-37266226194880461402007-07-17T12:58:00.000-02:002007-07-24T07:52:37.304-02:00Podcast Update : additional accessDear Folks, <br /><br />I have received notice that low-bandwidth connection might prevent your access to my Series 5 Podcasts on Using Wikis in Distance Education through the Studio.Odeo website (thanks Pam). I too have found some recent difficulties with Odeo. The series however are also available on iTunes, as indicated in the screen grab a few days ago of the iTunes Application available on Mac/Linux/PC - and also through the rss feed to my podcasts in my left column margin here. Additionally you may like to access them directly from my podcasting website at<br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed-podcasting.net/5.1wiki.mp3"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.open-ed-podcasting.net/5.1wiki.mp3 </font></a><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed-podcasting.net/5.2wiki.mp3"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.open-ed-podcasting.net/5.2wiki.mp3 </font></a><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed-podcasting.net/5.3wiki.mp3"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.open-ed-podcasting.net/5.3wiki.mp3 </font></a><br /><br />I can of course email them directly - or snail-mail them on CD-ROM ;-)<br />All Best Wishes<br />Paul<br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/InterviewPlay.jpg"><img width="450" src="http://www.open-ed.net/InterviewPlay.jpg"></a>Paul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-73681616579517545292007-07-16T23:13:00.000-02:002007-07-24T07:54:19.151-02:00Wikis for Course EvaluationsHi Folks,<br />I have been looking at wikis, developing my opinion that they are likely very effective synchronous collaborative tools in distance education for students to add comments and build either (1) a negotiated syllabus, or (2) a course evaluation. Such course evaluation as I have alluded to earlier may be mid-course formative evaluation to inform the tutor and institution of matters arising, or end-of-course summative evaluation. It would seem prudent to keep these wiki projects separated for different courses. Accordingly I have set up three wikis as follows<br /><a href="http://www.Open-Ed-A.wikispaces.com"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.Open-Ed-A.wikispaces.com </font></a><br /><a href="http://www.Open-Ed-B.wikispaces.com"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.Open-Ed-B.wikispaces.com </font></a><br /><a href="http://www.Open-Ed-C.wikispaces.com"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.Open-Ed-C.wikispaces.com </font></a><br />The reasons underlying my decision to have three are that the host site 'wikispaces' is in the plural (if it were 'wikispace' then I would tend towards having only one), this host offers free hosting so any number are available and they are disposable, and students should generally not have access to evaluations by others about my courses if they are to remain on-topic and up-to-date ->-> my courses do change year on year ;-)<br />I might prefer to have only one wiki, for professional collaboration and free of distracting advertisements, and which would therefore be not free and with more editorial control. Therefore I set up another wiki at<br /><br /><a href="http://Open.EditMe.com"><font color="ff0000"> http://www.Open.EditMe.com </font></a><br /><br />This wiki has a valuable full-feature toolbar only when using the Mozilla Firefox browser. With Safari, most of the font styles and so on were not functioning. It also has an excellent html editor so my email address is now there given in hypertext. Here are two screen grabs - first of the editor and toolbar in Firefox, and second the resulting homepage<br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/WikiUseFirefox.jpg"><img width="450" src="http://www.open-ed.net/WikiUseFirefox.jpg"></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/WikiOpenView.jpg"><img width="450" src="http://www.open-ed.net/WikiOpenView.jpg"></a><br /><br />Both wikispaces and EditMe have WYSIWYG 'What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get' text input function, that may help visitors, while it is easy for me to look at the site mark-up language and learn the idiosyncratic codes. There is no standard mark-up language for wikis ; some use punctuation like ":;hello;:" and =others= or '"StrangerStyles"'. I will use the wikispaces A, B and C sites for my course evaluations by students next week. Thhe other is closed by invitation only, like an intranet website ; if you would like access - that is why my email address is there :-)<br />All Best Wishes<br />PaulPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-70460402531500463822007-07-16T04:09:00.000-02:002007-07-24T07:56:07.790-02:00Podcasting UpdateDear Folks,<br /><br />I would like to share with you my update of my podcasting,<br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/PodcastImage.jpg"><img width="400" src="http://www.open-ed.net/PodcastImage.jpg"></a><br /><br />I have produced three podcasts on wikis according to my criteria and conventional style with fade-in / fade-out Jupiter music at the beginning and end, involving an introduction, then methods, and then assessment, of new ideas and techniques for use in education. Series 5 is on the Social Apps wikis in distance education. You should receive these if you are subscribed taking into consideration my new podcasting website and its rss, as follows ;-<br /><br /><a href="http://studio.odeo.com/audio/14882643"><font color="ff0000"> 5.1 Introducing Wikis in Education </font></a> (mp3, 8.3MB, 9m06s) and here at <a href="http://studio.odeo.com/audio/14882643"><font color="0000ff"> http://studio.odeo.com/audio/14882643 </font></a><br /><a href="http://studio.odeo.com/audio/14882673"><font color="ff0000"> 5.2 Using Wikis in Education </font></a> (mp3, 11.8MB, 12m19s) and here at <a href="http://studio.odeo.com/audio/14882673"><font color="0000ff"> http://studio.odeo.com/audio/14882673 </font></a><br /><a href="http://studio.odeo.com/audio/14882683"><font color="ff0000"> 5.3 Assessing Wikis in Education </font></a> (mp3, 6.9MB, 7m29s) and here at <a href="http://studio.odeo.com/audio/14882683"><font color="0000ff"> http://studio.odeo.com/audio/14882683 </font></a><br /><br />In the interests of ISO 9004 /2000 and Section 508, the pdf are available here - except that the interviewee's commentary is abbreviated in 5.2 ;-<br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/Podcast5.1wikis.pdf"><font color="0000ff"> 5.1 Introducing Wikis in Education pdf </font></a><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/Podcast5.2wikis.pdf"><font color="0000ff"> 5.2 Using Wikis in Education pdf </font></a><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/Podcast5.3wikis.pdf"><font color="0000ff"> 5.3 Assessing Wikis in Education pdf </font></a><br /><br />The second of these includes my interview discussed in my previous post.<br />They are all available through i-Tunes freely worldwide.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/WikisOdeo.jpg"><img width="400" src="http://www.open-ed.net/WikisOdeo.jpg"></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/WikisiTunes.jpg"><img width="450" src="http://www.open-ed.net/WikisiTunes.jpg"></a><br /><br />The first series was 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 Audio Files in Education, <br />the second series 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 Video Files in Education, <br />the third series 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 Powerpoint Files in Education, <br />the fourth series 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 Blogs in Education, <br />and the fifth series here 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 Wikis in Education<br /><br />Lots to do still yet. <br />All Best Wishes<br />PaulPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-84054205279796348362007-07-16T03:46:00.000-02:002007-07-24T07:57:33.490-02:00Producing a Podcast InterviewDear Folks,<br /><br />I can well appreciate (more so today than yesterday) that having two persons in one room sharing one microphone into an mp3 recorder has 'technological' advantages.<br /><br />As for me, I live in the mountains, and I decided to test out interviewing at a distance using the Google Chat feature of Google Talk, on my Mac(s). The interviewee was 1000 km away. I sent an email with my invitation, schedule proposal and a couple of documents about wikis, as pre-interview reading material. The analogue voice output from my interviewee through Mac speakers was however much quieter than my voice into the microphone here. How to edit an mp3 file to adjust alternate voice loudness volumes ?<br /><br />GarageBand music application can not open up mp3 to adjust the loudness of only one segment, but iMovie can using the recording head to make a break in the timeline. <br /><br />Therefore I transferred the GarageBand mp3 to iMovie, adjusted the loudnesses, reverted back to Garageband deleting the unused video-track and then shared the mp3 to iTunes, from where I could click and drag the soundtrack as .aif file to Switch (a sound file converter application) and get an mp3 with correctly adjusted volume levels now. <br /><br />For some reason StudioOdeo does not accept recording new audio into an old Podcast channel, so I uploaded the mp3 to my website Open-Ed-Podcasting.net and then linked StudioOdeo to the file there, for publishing as a podcast, and accessing via iTunes. The technological schema is given here <br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/SchemaWiki.jpg"><img width="450" src="http://www.open-ed.net/SchemaWiki.jpg"></a><br /><br />I will detail the actual podcasts in the following Post.<br />All Best Wishes<br />PaulPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-27909548386179315112007-07-16T03:40:00.000-02:002007-07-18T02:18:39.139-02:00Review of Wikis in Distance EducationHi Folks,<br /><br />Of the various Social Apps, I would like to review the use of wikis in distance education.<br /><br />Since 1992, several software programmes have been written to enable individual to and from other individuals to communicate through the internet. These add a social aspect to distance education which has been been dominated by heavy learning management systems that control the enrolment, dictate the syllabus and archive the student’s work for assessment. Learning management systems (typically Blackboard and WebCT) have allowed open and distance mega-universities to keep track of their millions of students – with some courses having several thousand students simultaneously on the one course. An army of tutors and their comments, grading and feedback are also managed by such university-wide systems. These systems however do not facilitate the social aspects of learning. They tend to offer FAQs and moderating of student text contributions to threaded discussion sites, but almost nothing in the form of live voice chat. Indeed the telephone continues to be used by some mega-universities with tutor ‘office hours’ for student-tutor one-on-one consultation – usually remedial in nature. Social software applications – Social Apps for short – have recently been developed to allow mid-course student-student interaction in real time synchronously. These were initially text-based instant messaging - like Yahoo Messenger, but later adopted voice over the internet VoIP - like Skype. Both of these are basically free. While initially also text-based, Google Talk now offers live voice VoIP Google Chat. It should be noted that VoIP is not recorded and not archived, and so encourages free conversation among students – though usually only between two students at a time. Skype now offers multiple users to chat in conferencing mode. Audio-visual conferencing has been available on learning managements systems for the past ten years, but used only at pre-set times for specific tasks academically. <br /><br />Search engine capabilities have developed separately alongside web-based management systems and the use of email lists for group text-based asynchronous discussions. These search capabilities were initially developed by commercial for-profit companies providing an individual subscriber with matches to his or her personal data enquiry for dating purposes. Later on, these search capabilities have enabled individuals to find like-minded other individuals then to form special interest groups – usually hobbyists and not academic. Now students at universities can use these tools to form their own social groups. These social applications are especially effective for students studying at a distance. <br /><br />Recent research still finds that middle-aged adult students in open and distance education do not avail themselves of the Social Apps or of the tutor ‘Office Hours’ conferencing. Younger students between 20 and 30 years old do so for both social reasons and academic (to get their money’s worth in terms of tutor attention and help), and older students above 55 years old do so for social reasons (to make new friends with other old students and with the tutor often of similar mature age, through their enrolling in study). There are now more than four hundred Social Apps for student-to-student use in distance education. Most however are not free and so not so widely adopted by students. They are also generally only for the Windows operating system, and not for Mac or Linux ; so even if most students use these Social Apps, a few will be left out in the cold because of their computer being incompatible. <br /><br />Social Apps include Friendster, MySpace, YouTube as well as blogs and wikis. For educational purposes the leading Social Apps are blogs. From a literature search and from my interview in my recent podcast 5.2, it is clear that wikis are not used much in education. Both blogs and wikis may be termed first-generation social software applications. <br /><br />Wikis are a special type of blog. Whereas blogs generally have short entries about work by others and mainly giving reference to work by others, wikis have entries produced by individuals together. The individuals may be separated by distance but they are considered to be synchronous tools since the individuals work on the entry collaboratively : one person may be writing one new sub-page while another is adding details to a previous page. Wikis are works-in-progress and are never finished. Despite being considered synchronous, a group may take up work produced years earlier and update it adding new pages and recent knowledge through more hypertext links. Such links are constructed automatically by the software (rather than requiring the author having to write using html) and links are made to other wikis. If the new pages are inside someone else’s wiki and are fairly self-contained not connected to other wikis, it is considered squatting – perhaps since the owner of the wiki in most cases pays for the wiki site hosting. Only a very few hosted sites are free, and open-source code is unusually difficult to put onto your own website.<br /><br />Wikis are not used much by education administration, or by teachers and students. Several reasons might underlie this reluctance by those in education to use wikis. A wiki is a kind of blog in which multiple anonymous users can access and change the text on the wiki site. While the opportunity to destructive attack exists, surprisingly wikis have been very successful in building up a shared knowledge base open to everyone with any internet access. <br /><br />Blogs are very visual and of all countries, Japan has more personal blogs that any other country. This is attributable to the manga comic genre and the visual range of writing available in Japan. Wikis on the other hand are hardly used. University administrators have paper-based regulation-format methods in use and firstly see no reason to change, and secondly see the novelty of wikis as untested and potentially unreliable. <br /><br />Wikis are indeed open to misuse and hacking by ill-intentioned anonymous persons. However companies are adopting wikis instead of in-house intranet and close their wikis to prevent non-company access. Universities administrators, teachers and students too could set up closed net wikis for collaborative work-in-progress. Changes to a wiki can be tracked and the change author can be identified. This may in turn lead to competition between student users – which goes against the spirit of wikis as a shared work with contributions of various qualities and quantities from users. <br /><br />As first-generation tools, wikis are best used for specific tasks such as deciding on a schedule for the students – those with something worthwhile adding can do so, and those with little to add are free to observe and acquiesce. This would appeal to the Japanese group-oriented culture. Additionally, wikis could be used in the same vein for summative anonymous course evaluation. They could also be used in mid-course to collate feedback on issues such as pacing, workload, and problems encountered – anonymously and formatively. <br /><br />It is unlikely that they will be used as collaborative group learning tools, since a strong participant may be discouraged by no credit and by others freeloading. <br /><br />Therefore wikis should be used for their strengths – to formulate group opinions, rather than for course work itself. Perhaps second-generation wikis will have sufficient recording functionaliity to allow for assessing each individual student, but not yet. Blogs remain more suitable for such applications.<br /><br />Wikis and blogs are leaders in first-generation educational social software. Of these, we can expect refinements and further developments in wikis in the next few months and years.<br /><br />Coming up soon, I plan to review a few small Social Apps including the full-screen whiteboard described a few days ago here, and also VoIP recording as mp3 for podcasting. <br /><br />Also I plan to post here soon a critique of the available literature on wikis.<br />All Best Wishes<br />PaulPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-9547858125311022662007-07-13T02:35:00.000-02:002007-07-24T07:59:30.817-02:00Educational Social SoftwareHi Folks,<br />I would like to give here a brief overview of educational social software - what it is and how useful - and then in a future Posting review one of them in more detail.<br />While ten years ago the internet was basically a read-only resource, it has evolved now into a write-and-read media in which user-generated content is a massive driving force that has revolutionalized the internet, to such an extent that people talk of Internet 2.0 . Social Software, sometimes referred to as Social Apps or applications, is now dominating the internet. There are more than 400 applications available with at least one new significant application being added each week. Common applications include Friendster, MySpace, del.icio.us, Flikr, Facebook. YouTube, SecondLife, and thousands of blogs and wikis.<br />Friendster was started in March 2002, has more than 45 million users, and is the largest of these. It also holds the global copyright patent on social networking applications granted to them on 27th June 2006, but not yet applied to my knowledge in the courts against the others. They hold now the patent on the "system, method, and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks". They refused a buyout offer from Google in 2003, and since 2004 have been in decline. MySpace now has the most hits and interactions per day. Here is a screen grab of <a href="www.friendster.com"><font color="0000ff"> the Friendster site </font></a> <br /><br /><a href="http://www.Open-Ed.net/Friendsterhome.jpg"><img width="450" src="http://www.open-ed.net/FriendsterHome.jpg"></a><br /><br />Social Apps are increasingly being used in education, though these are mainly limited to blogs. Podcasting and wikis are rarely used in education. I have for instance designed and deployed a blog for educational use worldwide linking students on four continents inside the same shared blog at the same time (with same log-in name and password) in America, India, S Africa, Malaysia, Germany and Japan. And I will use educational blogs in all my courses starting in October. Here is a photograph from the teacher's desk showing this student blog live in action, where the teacher or any peer can synchronously moderate and help others -<br /><br /><a href="http://www.Open-Ed.net/SsBlog2.jpg"><img width="300" src="http://www.open-ed.net/SsBlog2.jpg"></a><br /><br />Most Social Apps are not free. However I have noticed in WebCT that users have remarked about the small whiteboard size available, so you might be interested in this huge whiteboard full-screen across 24 inches here ; smaller if you are using a laptop or iPod ;-) free from General Electric at <a href="http://www.imaginationcubed.com"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.imaginationcubed.com </font></a> shown here <br /><br /><a href="http://www.Open-Ed.net/imaginationcubed.jpg"><img width="450" src="http://www.open-ed.net/imaginationcubed.jpg"></a><br /><br />and this may be of immediate utility to you if you want a larger whiteboard for sharing with two friends. There doesn't appear to be an eraser, but it is free and you can start over easily, email the result to others and print out the result too - more than was possible in the WebCT Virtual Classroom Whiteboard Area.<br />As I wrote, there are hundreds of Social Apps, although very little academic literature on them as yet. Nevertheless, I will review what there is of the literature very soon.<br />All Best Wishes<br />PaulPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-33065276178591207452007-07-08T09:48:00.001-02:002007-07-08T10:12:09.313-02:00Raptivity - second lookHi Folks,<br /><br />On a second look (well, so so many actually) at my Raptivity files I noticed the Publish folder in Raptivity, in which there is another folder SFO_Publish within which is the paul3.swf file of my interactivity. I have therefore uploaded at length a top-level /raptivity folder with four components ;- the /paul3.dat, Activities folder (with components /paul3.dat, /paul3.xml, and /Role based.swf), Pics folder (with components /background.jpg, Next.jpg, Role based-0.jpg, and Role based-1.jpg), and Publish folder (with SFO_Publish folder and inside this the /paul3.swf). Giving the full set at 638KB. Surely this should now work. I tested it out with the Raptivity first example about five astonomers on flash-cards to make sure it worked. You may notice here I saved my new experiment as paul3 and used fewer pictures to save on memory !<br />The resulting html link would then become http://www.open-ed.net/raptivity/paul3/Publish/SFO_Publish/paul3.swf and this link does indeed work , try it here ; (in red just to highlight the length and number of levels involved <a href="http://www.open-ed.net/raptivity/paul3/Publish/SFO_Publish/paul3.swf"><font color="ff0000"> http://www.open-ed.net/raptivity/paul3/Publish/SFO_Publish/paul3.swf </font></a><br /><br />Anyway after doing all this and returning to this my old Mac to post to my blog, I thought I'd give one last try to the plain and simple <a href="http://www.open-ed.net/paul2.swf"><font color="ff0000"> http://www.open-ed.net/paul2.swf </font></a> that I posted earlier below -- and that simple link works ! Well, I was surprised - a bit annoyed at having spent several more hours mastering Raptivity. Though I won't waste this learning and will make some more interactivities tomorrow for you all to enjoy !<br />All Best Wishes<br />PaulPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-81732566185566238232007-07-08T07:19:00.000-02:002007-07-08T07:31:43.591-02:00Infacta PollDaddy easy toolHi Folks,<br /><br />It really does take only two minutes to create this simple instant poll using the tool by Infacta at <a href="www.PollDaddy.com"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.PollDaddy.com </font></a>. The content here was not my primary concern in investigating this tool, which rather was to see how easy it would be to create an instant poll. I chose the White Plastic Standard style to match my Mac. They offer a wide range of templates or you can design your own. <br />The only difficulty ( took me a few seconds ) was that after choosing 'Custom Style' then it moves to 'Preview Style' and stops. There is no way on the main page to move on. However the tool bar gives 'Custom Styles' followed to the right by 'Widgets' and though I don't want widgets just my html code, I clicked the banner tool bar and it moved on to my widget html, copied and pasted that here within two minutes.<br />Enjoy.<br />Now back to Raptivity for further study . . .<br />All Best Wishes<br />Paul<br /><br /><script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://www.polldaddy.com/w/6027.js"> </script> <noscript><a href ="http://www.polldaddy.com">Free Polls</a> - <a href="http://www.polldaddy.com/w.asp?w=6027" >Take Our Poll</a></noscript>Paul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-37672055767858940762007-07-08T06:17:00.000-02:002007-07-24T08:42:00.770-02:00Raptivity : Trial and TribulationDear Folks,<br />I have managed to get Raptivity to run on my Mac, though some difficulties remain.<br />My project is to build one or more self-standing modules to help students reflect on how best to use the virtual classroom for synchronous collaborative group learning.<br />I selected my template 'Role-based Individualized Simulations' from the Raptivity Booster Pack 1, since it most closely matches my needs for setting the text-based scenarios for the student to reflect on. I chose six scenarios, and asked the student-user if he or she thought this use would be appropriate for the vrtual classroom. Then the feedback box (which on loading sometimes was invisible - not sure why, but it eventually does appear - please be patient) gives aspects to reflect on.<br />Here are screen grabs showing the module-in-action. Notice the Mac Icons along the bottom !!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/Rapt3.jpg"><img width="450" src="http://www.open-ed.net/Rapt3.jpg"></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.open-ed.net/Rapt2.jpg"><img width="450" src="http://www.open-ed.net/Rapt2.jpg"></a><br /><br />Several problems occurred, as you might imagine. The most serious is the ability to play back on my Mac the resulting flash file (255KB) which is uploaded and given here as <a href="http://www.open-ed.net/paul2.swf"><font color="0000ff"> http://www.open-ed.net/paul2.swf </font></a>. Very minor design issues pervade Raptivity. For example, the scenarios must all contain the same design settings which include the title and unfortunately the instructions - I wanted the last sixth scenario to say 'Thank you', but there was no choice but to keep the unhelpful and useless Click 'Next'. Another serious problem or inadequacy in Raptivity is that it does not offer a print out record - only the flash file. If you cannot open this flash file using Adobe Flash Reader 9.0 then it certainly opens beautifully in Raptivity. So I think the cross-platform use of Raptivity does cause some portability problem. I am still working on this. My next step will therefore be to choose the most simple jigsaw puzzle and publish as a single flash file - hopefully smoothly opening in Adobe, Realplayer or Quicktime. <br />More later.<br />All Best Wishes<br />PaulPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-46481999888014871512007-07-07T00:11:00.000-02:002007-07-07T00:25:04.269-02:00On using ‘Raptivity’ for packaging e-learningHi Folks,<br /><br />Previously below I have reported that <a href="http://www.learning circuits.org/2005/jan2005/archibald.htm"><font color="0000ff"> Archibald (2005) </font></a> wrote that conventional e-learning design involves the subject content expert, then instructional designer, followed next by a developer who makes the interaction solution, and the e-learning programme is then tested out. However in practice, e-learning design often entails far more steps and more people. <br /><br />Especially, I should like to add that any educative transaction involves a minimum of four interactions – the first of these is the stimulus of need conveyed to the teacher or content expert. This important initiating step was overlooked by Archibald. If there is no want or need then the programme is ab initio redundant - although like popular edutainment, a market could be created through addiction, and this is likely what consortia have in mind : they want to provide the stimulus to employees to learn through offering fun-type gaming modules. Companies however do have real learning needs and wants to be satisfied, so this first step to listen to them is perhaps wise. Timely response to a need is key to the success of such rapid packaging of e-learning. Another point of note here is that once done, the training module can be re-used ad libitum as and when required. This is one of the well-known principles underlying re-usable learning objects in education (well known in academia for the past ten years if not thousands of years). <br /><br />Several tools for rapidly packaging e-learning are on the market including Raptivity and these will be reviewed here soon. Notwithstanding that Raptivity is not intended for use on Mac computers, I think I have got it to work now (after several days and nights) on my Mac.<br /><br />A virtual classroom or chat conferencing can be an ideal medium for synchronous cooperative sharing of knowledge ; however, for collaborative learning, the participants need clear structure to bridge differences and co-construct together new shared knowledge. Therefore I have set about using the Raptivity tool to fulfil this need, drawing from my July 05 posting below 'On Synchronous Collaboration', and taking my definition of 'rapid e-learning' to be 'just-in-time training delivered electronically'. The aim is for the resulting training module to be used to teach the desirable skills just-in-time prior to entering the synchronous collaborative forum. <br /><br />All Best Wishes<br />Paul<br /><br />Archibald, D. (2005). Rapid e-learning : A growing trend. Learning Circuits, 1, 1-3. http://www.learning circuits.org/2005/jan2005/archibald.htmPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-8751173819111262792007-07-06T23:47:00.000-02:002007-07-07T00:16:19.240-02:00Nigerian Shrink-Wrapping :Nigerian Shrink-Wrapping : was going to be entitled, On Defining Rapid e-Learning : Part 2<br />Hi Folks,<br /><br />The term ‘rapid e-learning’ was coined about three years ago by consortia consisting of corporate business and education providers, as was e-learning about twelve years ago. A simple definition of ‘rapid e-learning’ is just-in-time training delivered electronically. However, REL is not e-learning and is nothing to do with learning. It is best thought of as packaging. I use the acronym REL here not to lend approval or permanence to the term but to distance it from implying any actual learning. I define it as timely chunked-content packaging that is fast and cheap to produce. The term ‘Nigerian shrink-wrapping’ would suggest more about the commercial vested interests involved.<br /><br />How does REL relate to conventional e-learning design ? According to <a href="http://www.learning circuits.org/2005/jan2005/archibald.htm"><font color="0000ff"> Archibald (2005) </font></a> conventional e-learning design involves the subject content expert, then instructional designer, followed next by a developer who makes the interaction solution, and the e-learning programme is then tested out. However in practice, e-learning design often entails far more steps and more people. In some cases (as in the British Open University), actual students are used to test out the not-yet-piloted programme, to save time, energy and costs. The main point to bear in mind here is that there are people involved, and often many people. Rapid e-learning involves in contrast far fewer people – sometimes only one. In such case, a single person who is a content expert can deploy re-usable software templates onto which content can easily be pasted to produce a finished programme within minutes or hours – rather than months or years. Moreover if the content expert uses pre-made master-board powerpoint or other templates, then end-user or stakeholder preferences and feedback can be put into the programme by the writer in the very early stages of development. Archibald (2005) has accordingly defined REL as “e-learning that can be developed quickly and inexpensively”. <a href="http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_article.asp?articleid=1008&zoneid=62"><font color="0000ff"> Bersin (2005) </font></a> adds to this by saying that the cost-savings are due in large part by reducing the number of people involved in the production of REL “defined as web-based training that can be created in weeks and is typically authored by subject-matter experts” - a particularly weak and useless definition ; given that all e-learning is created in weeks and authored by subject matter experts – as Bersin clearly states on his next page in Table 1 where he with some originality divides e-learning into three ‘categories’ of REL packaging, conventional e-learning, and infrastructure. Terming the infrastructure as ‘strategic e-learning’ is a red-herring distractor, as is his right-most column % of Projects. An REL ‘Project’ might be a ten-minute typing exercise, while traditional e-learning generally takes months, and infrastructure to switch a traditional university to adopt e-learning may take years. To assert that 36% of all ‘projects’ are REL is excessive freedom-of-expression to try to claim some authority by comparing REL shrink-wrapping to building an open university. His left-centre column is missing a + sign in front of the second 3. I am curious about his choice of phrasing “Most [REL] create tests to measure knowledge absorption” (page 2, paragraph 5). Did I miss something in Education 101 ? or is there something called ‘absorption’ ? Is this osmotic immersion or mechanical by rote memorisation ? Anyway, Bersin does correctly identify REL as multiple-choice quiz in Table 2. (He calls his tables ‘Figures’ but his typing is misinformed.) When he writes of putting “learning professionals into coaching and facilitating roles”, you should read this word ‘professionals’ to mean business persons not teachers. I would hope all teachers are professional and already in coaching and facilitating roles. They are in my world, at least.<br /><br />This Posting was hoping to review the definitions of an exciting new form of e-learning, but has been side-tracked and sunk by pre-set Readings about shrink-wrapping.<br /><br />I will review the other literature later.<br />All Best Wishes<br />Paul<br /><br /><br />Archibald, D. (2005). Rapid e-learning : A growing trend. Learning Circuits, 1, 1-3. http://www.learning circuits.org/2005/jan2005/archibald.htm<br /><br />Bersin, J. (2005). Making rapid e-learning work. Chief Learning Officer – online magazine. http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_article.asp?articleid=1008&zoneid=62<br /><br />.Paul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-59800480107485738362007-07-06T02:08:00.000-02:002007-07-06T02:09:46.840-02:00On Defining e-Learning and ‘Rapid’ e-Learning : Part 1Hi Folks,<br /><br />In order to understand a definition of so-called ‘rapid’ e-learning, we need to be clear on what we understand by conventional e-learning. <br /><br />E-learning is a relatively new term, and derives from the development of alliances and consortia consisting of corporate businesses and education providers emerging at around 1995 (Jegede, 2001, p.75). Hirumi (2002, p.19) has defined e-learning as learning that is stimulated primarily through the use of telecommunication technologies, such as electronic mail, bulletin board systems, electronic whiteboards, internet-relay chat, desktop video conferencing and the world-wide-web. And a simple working definition has been given by Jung as the internet-based delivery of information, communication, education, and training (Jung, 2002, p. 63). A full treatment of terminologies and definition of e-learning are given in Kawachi (2005), where conventional e-learning is defined as learning that utilizes electronic means of information and knowledge management in a wide sense, and social constructivist learning through computer-mediated communications in a virtual space in a narrow sense. <br /><br />All Best Wishes<br />Paul<br /><br />Kawachi, P. (2005). Computers, multimedia and e-learning.<br />In U.V. Reddi & S. Mishra (Eds.), Educational media in Asia, (pp. 97-122). Vancouver : Commonwealth of Learning. <br /><br />Hirumi, A. (2002). The design and sequencing of e-learning interactions : A grounded approach. International Journal on E-Learning 1(1): 19-27. http://www.aace.org/dl/index.cfm/fuseaction/ViewPaper/id/6526/<br /><br />Jegede, O. (2001). Hong Kong. In O. Jegede, & G. Shive (Eds.), Open and distance education in the Asia Pacific region (pp. 44-79). Hong Kong : Open University of Hong Kong Press.<br /><br />Jung, I. (2002). Promises and challenges of e-learning in a globalized society. Plenary Session II, Proceedings of the 16 th Annual Conference of the Asian Association of Open Universities, 5-7 November, Seoul, Korea. http://www.aaou.or.krPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-24098525114332271702007-07-05T05:35:00.000-02:002007-07-05T06:08:56.124-02:00On Synchronous CollaborationDear Folks,<br /><br />I think there is some need here to discuss if and how collaborative group learning can be achieved using synchronous media. <br /><br />As I have mentioned before, the distinction between cooperative learning and collaborative learning must always be kept in mind, and moreover cooperative synchronous media are useful in the initial stage of brainstorming or framing a problem, while collaborative asynchronous media are better for the vertical thinking next followed by the horizontal dialectic thinking. And synchronous cooperative learning suits the final stage of personal meaning making, experiential learning and accreditation including publishing. The middle stages involve hypotheses testing and problem solving. I have previously held that the important central stages must be collaborative and asynchronous. Here however it is worthwhile to consider if and how these processes could be achieved synchronously – with specific reference to using a virtual classroom.<br />I have briefly reviewed the relevant literature, and found two possible scaffolding structures, and these are worthwhile elucidating here. If anyone has any other structure, then please let me know.<br /><br />The first is by Zimmer (1995) and I interpret his structure as three functional turn-taking steps ABA between two persons A and B which when repeated as BAB give both participants the opportunities each to give opinions and receive counter-opinions empathetically, as follows :-<br /><br />A) (Hello) Affirm + Elicitation<br />B) Opinion + Request understanding<br />A) Confirm + Counter-opinion<br />B) Affirm + Elicitation<br />A) Opinion + Request understanding<br />B) Confirm + Counter-opinion<br /><br />The second I have drawn from analysis of ideas given by Probst (1987) for collaborative learning in literature and art, in which transactions are not aimed at hypotheses-testing characterised by counter-opinion, but rather a new insight built on critical reflection that while shared may be personalised in each individual. In literature, learning is not cooperative : there is no ‘knower’, the tutor does not guide the student to some pre-set conclusion of the meaning of the text. In literature, the tutor or any student (A) elicits opinion to initiate the three functional turn-taking steps BAB (followed by ABA) , as follows ; -<br /><br />A) (Hello) Affirm + Elicitation<br /><br />B) Opinion / Analysis + Request understanding<br />A) Affirm + Elicitation of Evidence <br />B) Reflect + Elicit other opinions / Analyses<br /><br />A) Opinion / Analysis + Request understanding<br />B) Affirm + Elicitation of Evidence <br />A) Reflect + Elicit other opinions / Analyses<br /><br />This framework - basically of reflective analysis followed by articulation, bring in ideas from other own reading or elicited from other students, then repeat reflective analysis with accommodation to construct a new insight – involves the same cognitive processes that occur in individual learning. In the group, content comes from texts and other students, while in the individual learning, content comes only from texts, and in both cases it is the transactions between the student and the content that creates the new knowledge in the student.<br /><br />There are two additional aspects to consider. One is to implore the participants to be explicit in articulating their feelings since the illocutionary force is lost without video and cultural empathy. In other words use phrases such as “I am confused”, “I am sorry” or “I don’t understand” rather than silence or ambiguous phrases like “Why not this” or “I think I see what you are getting at”. And the other is to keep the virtual classroom uncluttered by moving massive discourse away to a virtual coffee shop or to a blog.<br /><br />In both the above frameworks, I suggest that any participant(s) may be behind either voice, so the framework could be effective for more than two persons at the same time. Bork (2001) has suggested the optimal number may be four in collaborative transactions, in an optimal online class-size of twenty students, while six has been reported by Laurillard (2002) and about ten by others. Wang (2002) has asserted that engaging as many participants as possible would maximise diversity and optimise collaborative learning. Zimmer (1995) has found that provided at least one participant is aware of the framework, then in practice collaborative learning succeeds.<br /><br />Concerning synchronous cooperative (in contrast to collaborative) group learning, the optimum number of active participants is different from that for asynchronous collaborative learning. An online survey of those on the DEOS-L listserv, who have had relevant experience in conducting synchronous ‘chat’ (Neubauer, 2003), found the optimum number was from 10 to 20 students : if students were new to the synchronous media then 5-7 was optimum, in groups of 10-15 mixed-experience students then 10 was optimum, while if students were experienced and the moderator (tutor) also was experienced then 15 was optimum. And 20 was suggested as the upper limit to keep the discussion at a sufficiently fast rate to maintain high interest levels. There seemed to be a marked difference between respondents who found 5-7 was optimum and those who found 20 was optimum, and this difference might be related to the task at hand : 5-7 new students would imply that they were at the early initial stage of forming a learning community with personal introductions and so on, while 20 students were likely at the final stage sharing course experiences. <br /><br />These two frameworks each indicate what content should optimally be included in an utterance, and specifies in what serial order to progress towards achieving discovery and co-construction of new understanding and new knowledge collaboratively using synchronous media such as the virtual classroom. <br />I could expound further but I am a bit busy actually. <br />All Best Wishes<br />Paul<br /><br /><br />Bork, A. (2001). What is needed for effective learning on the Internet. Educational Technology and Society. http://www.ics.uci.edu/~bork/effectivelearning.htm<br /><br />Laurillard, D. (2002). Rethinking university teaching : A conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies. London : RoutledgeFalmer.<br /><br />Neubauer, M. (2003). Number of online participants. Online posting January 22 to the Distance Education Online Symposium. http://lists.psu.edu/archives/deos-1.html<br /><br />Probst, R.E. (1987). Transactional theory in the teaching of literature. ERIC Digest ED 284 274. http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed284274.html<br /><br />Wang, H. (2002). The use of WebBoard in asynchronous learning. Learning Technology newsletter, 4 (2): 2-3. http://lttf.ieee.org/learn_tech/<br /><br />Zimmer, B. (1995). The empathy templates : A way to support collaborative learning. In F. Lockwood (Ed.), Open and Distance Learning Today (pp. 139-150). London : Routledge.Paul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8185135105912366019.post-33121839092073461152007-07-03T03:31:00.000-02:002007-07-03T08:55:02.168-02:00Synchronous Media in Education : SummaryHi Folks,<br />Synchrony Revisited -<br /><br />Not to waste such a valuable resource, I want to summarise my learning and my experience from the various group discussions that have occurred synchronously using WebCT Chat, Google Talk (including Google Chat and File Sharing), i-Chat, Skype, Yahoo Messenger, Gmail and other email so fast that they crossover in the post and must be considered synchronous, mobile-phone and landline telephone. Also live Webinar will be included – especially since it is my favourite tool for future adoption.<br /><br />Google Apps includes a range of applications generally free of cost to universities in the States built around a gmail hub, with G Calendar and G Talk. Some universities have added social software applications such as photo sharing and calendar sharing, and educational resource building software such as file uploading, storage, search and retrieval. If G Library and i-Library are not already out there somewhere, I predict they will be very soon. Can Blackboard and WebCt keep up with these fast innovative newcomers ? I predict WebCT will downsize to modular units to compete perhaps through offering a free basic version, and G Moodle will likely be launched before or after that.<br /><br />The irony of synchrony is that its key advantage of simultaneous voice-to-voice is also its key disadvantage. Participants must be online at the same time, with compatible hardware and software. Moreover, participants must be well-prepared ; for human-technological interaction, human-human interaction, and human-content interaction. The technological aspect is not easy and requires preparation and pre-testing. The human-human aspect needs social skills especially of a moderator or conversation leader (though I believe we have had successful interactions where this role was distributed and shared). The human-content aspect needs the participants to have exchanged and shared the agenda and text/visual content beforehand, have read these, assimilated these to their prior knowledge, experience and new studies, reflected upon and re-read these, and have their coherent contribution written out ready. In the next ten years I expect most synchronous tools will move over from one-dimensional (talk) and two-dimensional video and file-sharing to three-dimensional virtual learning spaces. I predict that every university will be offering virtual world education within a year. Evidence to support this prediction includes the fact that the leading universities are already out there virtually, and these all becoming four-dimensional (with lesson transcript retrieval and so on). Moreover leading game software edutainment is based on virtual reality – no doubt we may realize this tomorrow …<br /><br />Finally I would like to look at the potential for synchrony to help in achieving group assignments. I think this is looking in the wrong direction for adult education. Peer-to-peer and studying together are helpful in schools (and pre-school), but is not highly accredited in universities simply because participation and contribution rates vary. Synchronous group activities online may thrive in the distance education network such as that in New Zealand where children stay at home everyday and study online with regular visits by a school tutor. Cram schools or university preparatory schools such as those in Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Singapore will also benefit from adopting synchronous group study. In adult education which I believe now includes most tertiary education, synchronous media can only be used to complement asynchronous actual learning. Here, the synchronous media most likely to succeed will be the webinar with a skilled tutor participating, and the free student-to-student applications. Examples of group assignments that might benefit from using synchronous media (with the proviso that asynchronous learning is done) might include initial self-introductions to speak what you expect to get out of the course, and what dreams and apprehensions you have about the course. Brainstorming will be a leading learning exercise using synchronous, and the webinar will suit this, although other conferencing media such as Skype may work satisfactorily. Then the next stages of learning must be asynchronous. Only the final experiential stage may then benefit from synchronous media. The final stage could be interview teacher-to-student about the course, points covered, things learnt, reasons, and so on – in other words a viva voce. Accordingly synchronous media may become more widely adopted as a standard accreditation technique. <br /><br />I rest. I want to read some more and add to the above if need be later.<br />All Best Wishes<br />PaulPaul Kawachihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05781124575667025504noreply@blogger.com0