eLearning 2009: Presentation notes and edits

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

First, here are the resources

crystal_clear_app_musicstore1

Now some notes:

The audio for the presentation was recorded with a little sansa express recorder. Even with the limitations of the mic and the hum in the room, most of the recording is clear enough to understand. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to create a transcript for this one, but there is a recording from my session at the HighEdWeb conference that includes a transcript on the same topic.

Listening to the presentation audio now, I realize that there are several corrections that need to be made:

00:13:14 – “people who won’t use the keyboard”

Prefacing the need to include access keys, I started by saying “We also need to think about people who won’t use the keyboard”. That should have been “people who won’t use the mouse” – I corrected myself later, but just wanted to point out the mistake.

00:30:33 – H.264 Version and Adoption Rates

I stated wrong version number and adoption rates. The update that included H.264 was actually Flash Player 9 Update 3 (v 9.0.115.0) shipped on December 3, 2007. Check out this article on the adobe website for all the cool specs and reasons that H.264 rocks as a codac.

It is also importand to note that 98% is our user base for flash versions 9 & 10. I just took a closer look at the www.pcc.edu stats and found out the following:

For this month Feb 1st to 26th:

  • 744,300: total visitors with flash
  • 411,916: version 10 installed
  • 314,117: version 9 installed (so 98% have version 9+)
  • 242,782: version >= 9.0 r115 (so only 88% have the ability to view H246 online)

00:33:01 – DragonSpeak only 90% accurate with trained voice

So this is unconfirmed, but I found out that other schools have had much better success with the newest version. This came up during the impromptu accessibility session at eLearning. Supposedly, you can get 95% accuracy or more with the new versions and a clean recording. This may be worth looking into. I wonder how this recording would do.

Online Program Advising

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

index4_02Dr. Deborah Newton and Ryan Schrenk,
MSU – Great Falls College of Technology

Starts with a bunch of online tools to break the ice. None really have to do with the topic at hand, but interesting none-the-less.

Slides are on slideshare.

Now to the session at hand…

Huge growth in distance learning. I hear that.

Working on integrated system of support

  • Single point of contact for student.
  • Packaged evaluation with end of course assessment. However, only 700 responses for  2000 students.
  • How do you meet students “at the door” when at a distance. Created online advising course.

Challenges

  • Making early contact – they start by calling every student by telephone.

In advising room:

  • Portal for links to advising information on the website. (not recreating content)
  • Advising sheets per program.
  • Advising Dropbox – fill out and submit advising sheet each term.
  • Discussion board – student driven topics.

Brian Lamb, UBC

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

el2009brianlambBrian Lamb, Manger, Emerging Technologies and Digital Content,
Office of Learning Technology, The University of British Columbia
http://blogs.ubc.ca/brian/
http://blogs.ubc.ca/open/open-up/

“I don’t do PowerPoint” – the crowd erupts in applause.

Embrace the madness of the open web

Opens up talking about the amazing contribution of wikipedia. Displays great diagram showing the possible physical size of the document.

Great project example: “Instead of staying away from wikipedia, let’s make it better!”

Anonymous person on FA Team “my passion if reference formatting.”

Sense of authenticity – “feels like what I am doing makes a difference.”

“Web 2.0″ – oops, have to put a dollar in the swear jar.

… Sorry, laughing too hard (in a good way) at the obama/flickr example to take good notes.

“typically, when the course ends – the student looses access to the online materials” – this is something that I have experienced first hand. It sucks.

CC (creative commons not closed caption)

Tracking down copyright, just by shear amount of work, is a barrier to re-ues.

Assumes attributions.

  1. Do you want to allow commercial work
  2. can the work be altered?

/* Off Topic:
Every table in here seems to have *exactly* one laptop on it.
Stranger – exactly 50% seems to be netbooks – mostly acer. */

CC licenece is good, but does not necessarily help to let it be remixed. Think of how limited audio streams are. Open formats are needed.

“Sharing doesn’t cost much anymore”

Brian keeps suggesting other people that we should have had do the keynote instead :)
I disagree – listening to Brian is like a mashup of all those other individuals.

“a guy in Malasia, a guy in England and a guy in Canada” – sounds like the start of a baad joke. Nope it’s http://freelearning.bccampus.ca/

Video Tutorials – Don’t be blinded by the flash

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

Crap – My blog just crashed for no apparent reason. Had to kick the DB a few time to get it back up. So, I may have missed the first few minutes of this presentation – sorry.

steveaStephen T. Anderson Sr., USC Mathematics and Computer Science
http://www.uscsumter.edu/bio/stevea.shtml

Jing

  • Free and super simple

Camtasia

  • Shows a cool example capturing PPT with voice. Admits that it may still be “death by PowerPoint”, but with voice!
  • Does a live demo. Very brave.
  • Plays the demo – sounds great, must be a good headset. Also helps that he has a very soothing voice!


Cool Idea, but does incorperating 2.0…

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

00144679Gill Creel, Minneapolis CC
http://home.minneapolis.edu/~creelgi/

Shows an example of wehat he used to use for a course web page. Realized that textbook prices are going up, up, up and everything is online anyway.

  • no more static webpages
  • no more textbooks

Audacity

  • Uses it to respond to papers!
  • “Talk faster then I can write. And since I have 40 papers to respond to…”
  • Can even make them small enough to email.

Blogger and RSS

  • Pulls blogger into LMS with google gadget.
  • Or, use an iframe.

mctc_2c_logoOff Topic:

Does anyone else think that the Minneapolis Community and Technical College logo looks like the Burning Man logo?

OK – maybe it is just me.

Now back to regularly scheduled program.

Social Bookmarking

  • Used digo, but does not seem to be able to recommend it. Looks like it has a lot of promised features, but they don’t always work.

Trailfire

  • To create trails across webpages.
  • Seems like a good idea, but would not load during presentation :(

Flikr

  • Creative commons – best place for free photos.

Google Calendar

  • Use agenda tab!
  • can be embed in LMS.

PBWiki

  • Simple wiki – works well
  • Get them to use plain english!

WebX

  • Online meeting software – synchronous chat (voice!)
  • Seems to work well.
  • Chat can be recorded!
  • Oh wait, it costs three dollar signs ($$$)!

ZoHo Creator

  • Form creator

Bryan Alexander, NITLE

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

el2009bryanalexanderBryan Alexander, NITLE
Web:
infocult.typepad.com/

@bryanalexander

No internet at an eLearning conference???? Having to type this locally to upload later – that is so 2002. Seeing me rant/type about this a fellow attendee leans over to share a passcode. Thanks !

Before he can even start his computer BSOD’s. However, he humorously works through it.

  • Web2.0 everyone hates the term, but still uses it.
  • Linkedin – one of the most unsexy, most highly used services.
  • Wiki is not a new tech, everyone knows it. What is surprising is the huge curve that we have seen – great example from ibm.
  • Tag Clouds – ” for the first time in human history, normal people care about metadata” :)
  • Digital storytelling: Don’t tell people that you are going to teach them text, tell them that you are going to teach a new way to tell a story. Shows some great image mashups.
  • Feedbacks loops.
  • Forced to skip through a bunch of slides. Wait. That. Looked. Cool

Web 3.0?

  • Web 3D via Second Life or Google Earth. Sexy but unexciting (to me).
  • Semantic Web – intelligent meta data. Unsexy, but awesome! (at least to me).
  • Mobile web. (nuff said).

Gaming

  • Easier to talk about porn or murder in academia.
  • Call it “simulation” to make people feel for people in education.
  • Average gamer is in their 30’s.
  • Laptops are now made for games – not just outlook.
  • There is a Kafka game (that is surreal and frustrating)?
  • Gaming takes/creates literacy of a type.
  • Simulation games are goog for comparison/criticizing actual events. Reminds me of this on BoingBoing where parents ask their child to honor the Geneva Conventions while playing Call of Duty.

ITC Conference: eLearning 2009

Friday, February 20th, 2009

itc09The Accessible Video Interface

Notes and resources for presentation at the 2009 eLearning  in Portland, OR.

The age of video on the Web is here! Both content creators and users have high expectations and you may become caught in the middle. Learn how to create an accessible media interface that will allow your institution to deliver high quality Flash video with closed captioning, convey a consistent design across your Web presence, and remain easy to maintain even after your “small” project is unexpectedly scaled to include hundreds of videos.

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