The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs has been experimenting with using podcasts in their nursing courses, though it was four years ago so things might have changed.  They discovered several things along the way:

Students needed to be educated that they could listen to podcasts on any MP3 player or on their computer (and did not need an iPod).  Most listened to them on their computer.  How did they use the podcasts?  Did they use them to review, or as a substitute for attending class?  86% used them as a review, and only 14% used them instead of going to class.  These are consistent with other studies.  Most (79%) used them at home, as opposed to at the gym or on their commute.  So, they’re not using them as “mobile learning” per se, they’re sitting at their computer to listen to them, for the most part.  Also, they downloaded the podcasts as soon as they were available (51%) as opposed to right before the exam (12%).  Other studies, she said, have found that only 40% download immediately, and 60% later or before the exam.  Some preferred the audio podcast because it was easier, but a few students said they preferred having the powerpoint slides along with the audio.  These survey results are at www.uccs.edu/bethel.

It may be that recording the student lecture isn’t the best use of student time, to re-listen to the whole lecture.  However, most people are podcasting the entire lecture.  Some students specifically seek out courses where podcasts are being used.

Podcasts can be helpful in the following ways, found some studies:

• clarifying difficult concepts
• reviewing concepts
• repetition of material
• helping with note taking
• preparing for exams
• catching up on missed classes
• ESL students who need to repeat words

Lessons learned

• Check disk space and batteries before class
• Repeat student questions
• Start each ’segment’ of the lecture with a title
• Create multiple short files (15-20 minutes) as opposed to entire lectures
• Archive previously recorded lectures in case the current one has technical difficulties
• Ownership issues can be sticky.  Careful of using images from textbooks because you’re then distributing copyrighted content.
• One idea is to record the lecture in advance (though some faculty complain that this feels stilted without an audience) and require students to listen to it in advance.  Then use classtime for discussion.  Some instructors have found this to be a great alternative to the traditional class lecture.

I’ve been trying to figure out for myself what I think of podcasted lectures.  I could see it being helpful when you’ve spaced out for a moment, to go back and review what the instructor said.  It’s an alternative reference, like the textbook.  But it also seems that it requires a relatively sophisticated student to use such a resource to enhance their learning.  Learning doesn’t happen by transmission, and a freshman might think she’s studying by just listening to the lecture again.  They need to be going to the content with a purpose, to try to understand the material or answer a specific question or fill in their notes, I think.  I could imagine the podcasts being even more helpful with some sort of guiding questions to direct students’ engagement with the podcasts.

How did they do it?

• Used portable digital recorders (Olympus; $~70) which can record up to 6 hours and are easy to use.  However, the file then needed to be compressed to MP3 using Audacity ($free).
• They eventually started using the Zoom H2 recorder ($199), which records directly to MP3 and has omnidirectional recording (allowing students to hear their questions during class, not just the instructor).  They’re very pleased with this recorder.
• It’s been difficult to get instructors to break up their lectures into different segments.  Recordings of 15-20 minutes would be ideal.
• In the course website gave students instructions on how to download the podcasts from iTunes
• They then upgraded to Leopard and, with quite a bit of difficulty, got Podcast Producer configured.  Apparently the new Podcast Producer II will avoid many of the difficulties that they experienced, especially regarding workflows.
• They are also now going to iTunes U, but for now have just been using a “subscribe in iTunes” link on the course website (which is a wiki/blog site).  Each entry in the blog is a new audio file, but there is also a subscription link.

I would be interested to hear about iTunes U from people who have been using it.  I don’t quite understand what it is other than a central depot for university/education related podcasts?

I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.

Blogging from the Colorado Teaching and Learning with Technology (COLTT) conference.  This session, from Joni Dunlap, how to promote discussion in online courses.

How can we get learners to talk in online discussions, and how can we get the chatty students to shut up?  The results have been pretty disappointing so far.  Most instructors set up a discussion forum, and ask students to post an original post and to comment on two other posts.  But instructors complain that students are doing the minimum and the discussions aren’t exciting.  But what are they assessing?  They’re just counting how many posts each student gives.  The discussions, hence, are seen as tedious busywork.

So, there are three things to do to get good online discussion:

1. Relevance (what’s the point? Why are we doing this?)
2. Expectations (what are the rules?  How are we assessed?)
3. Preparation (what is an online discussion?  How do we talk online?)

Getting started.

First, she says, you have to create online community.  She asks them to share something special about themselves (eg., “I was held up at gunpoint”) or “what are your superhero powers?” or “share two songs that represent your present, past, and future”)  She uses Voicethread (an online tool for discussing images and ideas, which can be integrated with Moodle) and students can either add their comment as text (which appears under their picture) or as a small video.  These help get their collective feet wet in a playful way where they’re not being judged.

Provoking discussion.

A lot of the unsucessful ways that people start discussions are to ask, for example, give three comments on the reading on page 5.  How boring!  Discussion needs to be sparked with something provocative.  For example, “give three reasons why the author is dead wrong” or “students just aren’t as motivated as they used to be.  Comment.”  Don’t just ask students if they agree with the author where they can answer yes or no.  Ask them why they think the author wrote what he wrote and what their own viewpoint is.  Ask real discussion questions!

Guidelines

The guidelines for how to create online discussions are important to set up in advance. Setting up roles and responsibilities with a protocol can be helpful in making it clear what you expect of students, and makes treatment of students equitable and make the participation meaningful.

1. Group size. She suggests 10-15.  Though, I know that in small group work in class, the ideal size is 4-5, so I wonder if this holds online?
2. Assigned roles (eg., assigned reader, see below).
3. Limit number and length. This can keep a student to posting a certain number of words so that one student doesn’t come in an post an overwhelming amount of information, turning off other students from discussion.  She suggests 350 words per posted quotes and 250 word responses.  The originator can react to the comments ith up to 250 words.  This can be assessed by the instructor by eye rather than by actually counting words.  This helps students learn to share an idea in a short amount of text, as well.  Most students don’t have trouble writing enough words, but rather keeping it short enough!
4. Wait to step in. This can be a challenge!  The discussion can get truncated if the instructor steps in with their point of view.  She tells the students that the discussion starts Monday, she’ll monitor it, but won’t contribute until Thursday.  Then she can respond to themes that have been established (which is also a timesaver.)  Earlier, she can ask questions to promote discussion.
5. Allow learners to select topics. Not everything is interesting to every student.  Allowing students to choose which questions to respond to gives them some control.
6. Asking extension questions
7. Acknowledging contributions
8. Designated reader. Each learner takes on the role of the designated reader who does not contribute to the discussion (but can ask clarifying questions), but is responsible for summarizing the online discussion.
9. Rotating groups. You can also set up discussion forums with different issues to be discussed in each forum.  In groups of 4-5, students rotate to new forums each day.  Each group records their ideas about the issue, and students can then revisit the forums to see what other groups discussed.
10. Point systems. 0 points for idea that is not original or clear.  1 point for succinct, interesting, original argument or idea, and 2 points for a contribution that is creative and original, compelllingly argues a clear point, supported with evidence.  She has fellow students assign these points to each other, not anonymously.

Their slides are available on www.slideshare.net/plowenthal/

They also have an online handbook coming out from Lulu Press.  Not out yet, but it’s called the “CU Online Handbook” by the University of Colorado at Denver.  ID 7466014

I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.

I’m blogging today from another conference — the Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology (COLTT) conference. The keynote speaker is Richard Katz, the VP of Educause.

It’s an old story by now that digital technology has completely changed how we access media — nobody under 30 reads newspapers, and newspapers haven’t responded with a new business model to allow them to generate revenue from online sources.  The advent of Craig’s List is the canonical example of this — the newspapers lost their classifieds revenue by not taking Craig’s List seriously.  They thought their corner of the market was secure.  As Colbert said, “Knock knock.”  “Who’s there?”  “The death of newspapers.”

Is that fair?  Will we see the death of newspapers in our lifetime?  It seems likely. News reporting as an enterprise won’t die, of course, but newspapers as an institution (not just an industry) seem to be going the way of the dodo.

We also have more computing power and functionality than ever before.  Consider the iPhone — it’s breathtaking when juxtaposed with the mainframes of decades before.  And digital technology has certainly changed how science communicates.  Think about how scientists communicated in the age of Einstein.  Ideas were communicated via handwritten letter, sent through traditional post. Nowadays we can get 10 colleagues’ comments on a paper, within a day, with tracked changes.  This has been very liberating for the exchange of scientific ideas.  We can advance faster, perhaps, today, with the ease of communication.  (On the other hand, it takes so much time to keep up with all the communication, much of which is watered-down in content because it’s too darned easy, so does it come out in the wash?).

Katz’ bottom line:  technology is reducing the amount of busy-work in the scientific enterprise by making things easier.  I’m sure that’s true, though there are some new kinds of busy-work that it creates.  I know that my brain often feels fragmented, it’s harder to focus with the huge streams of information flow — listservs, blogs, emails, and papers. I believe (and I’ve seen some research to suggest it) that technology is changing the way my brain works (and not for the better) resulting in reduced attention span and all that.  Katz cautions that now there is so much information, too, that we’re exposed to a lot of disinformation.  We use truthiness to intuitively sift among all the different stories out there.  It’s impossible to apply logical analysis to the entire internet firehose, so we have to resort to heuristics to decide what to believe.  We also resort to the wisdom of the crowd to decide what to believe (eg., ratemyprofessor.com).

Katz also says that we’re workig harder now, as academics, than ever before.  Academics are burning out at high rates, and we’re becoming less civil as a result.

What about our students?  I’ve posted before on the impact of the digital age on our classrooms.  Students aren’t coming to class as much, he says, and so we need to use new media to its best effect to help promote this declining engagement. Why haven’t we figured out how to use digital technology to do decentralized education, he asks?  Even in the Open University, (an entirely online university) students aren’t showing up in the organized chat rooms.  This is something we need to figure out how to do well.

The take-home message isn’t too surprising — digital technology is always getting better, and it’s allowing us to do profoundly big things.  However, the scholarship enterprise needs to adapt to the new technology, and the modern university will likely change to reflect these new technologies.  Universities are likely to be less about “place,” and more situated in virtual environments.

I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.

As y’all know, I’m a big fan of the blogosphere.  I recently ran across a couple blogs that I thought others might be interested in.

The Teaching Professor, by a retired professor of teaching and learning at Penn State (MaryEllen Weimer).  Very good posts, on topics that we often discuss, such as self-assessment, and whether test anxiety hinders performance).

How We Learn – research and news on how we learn, by an associate professor of learning sciences at U. Washington.  This is more geared to providing resources or links to news reports (Pew results, funding news, and links to new educational programs).

The Active Learning Carnivale – only posts once a month, and gathers some of the best stuff on the blogosphere relate to active learning.  Written by a teacher, I’m unclear on her expertise, but her posts do highlight interesting articles elsewhere.

Cognitive Daily - Not always relevant to teaching, but always interesting.  Tidbits from cognitive science, written by a professor of psychology.

Also of interest

Derek Bruff’s blog on clickers (he’s the author of that new book on personal response systems — Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments) posts articles and discussions on clicker use.  Very nicely done.

The PERticles blog posts abstracts and links to recent articles in the PER literature.  Invaluable.

This is how I do a lot of my professional development and see what people are talking about outside the university.

Lastly, my own blog has now been duplicated at the National Science Digital Library’s Expert Voices network. Don’t leave and go there — that blog just contains a subset of what I post here, relevant to educators.

I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.

A recent query on a writers’ listserv pleaded:

Can someone, anyone, please explain the advantages to me of being on
Twitter? I certainly understand the “concept” of repeated exposure, and
that it takes less time and words than blogging, but in all honesty,
even though this is called “social” networking, it leaves me a bit cold
without a real person to talk to. I guess what I’m wondering is how much
does it really work?

This post attempts to answer that question, mostly by reference to a bunch of great articles and blogs.

First, for a great beginner’s guide to Twitter, read this article in the NY TImes.  He explains:

I’ll admit that, for the longest time, I was exasperated by the Twitter hype. Like the world needs ANOTHER ego-massaging, social-networking time drain? Between e-mail and blogs and Web sites and Facebook and chat and text messages, who on earth has the bandwidth to keep interrupting the day to visit a Web site and type in, “I’m now having lunch”? And to read the same stuff being broadcast by a hundred other people?

Then my eyes were opened. A few months ago, I was one of 12 judges for a MacArthur grant program in Chicago. As we looked over one particular application, someone asked, “Hasn’t this project been tried before?”

Everyone looked blankly at each other.

Then the guy sitting next to me typed into the Twitter box. He posed the question to his followers. Within 30 seconds, two people replied, via Twitter, that it had been done before. And they provided links.

As one of the other members of the listserv explained:

Twitter has some search-engine-like properties that make it especially interesting. It’s hard to grasp the potential and fun-ness of it ’til you play with it for a while….The 140 character limit is
interesting from a literary point of view. Lastly, those of you not interested, no worries! It’s not a cult. Not a must-do.

And someone else said:

I think Twitter is getting more useful all the time. Fewer and fewer people are posting things like “I’m eating a ham sandwich” and are now posting tweets with more substance.

I’ve found that the best way to build my network on Twitter is to use the SEARCH feature (located at the very bottom of your home page or www.search.twitter.com). I plug in keywords that are important to me (e.g., “corporate training” “mentoring” “health care”), then follow anyone whose posts look interesting.

And, what does it mean to Tweet? Here’s a short ABC Nightline video about Twitter -- quite interesting!  The Twitter developers are on there too.  A couple of geeky well-meaning guys!  Look like people I know.  You can follow news correspondent Terry Moran (from “Nightline”),  on Twitter, too.

If you want to know more about Twitter, the company, and the guys behind it, here’s a really interesting article on the NY Times about them, and how they’re the last company living the dot-com dream.  Except, they’re not.  They’re more progressive, more San Francisco (whatever that means).

Stone speaks of Twitter’s potentially being a new form of human communication, “like a flock of birds choreographed in flight.” That’s an extremely ambitious statement, particularly because it doesn’t seem to describe what Twitter does at all.

“It’s another step toward the democratization of information,” Williams says. “I’ve come to really believe that if you make it easier for people to share information, more good things happen.” Williams would know. He’s in his second incarnation of reinventing publishing. In a former life, he was the creator of the Blogger platform — he’s the guy credited with inventing the term blogger.

Stone and Williams run Twitter but it’s clear, in conversations with both of them, that Stone’s more of the dreamy visionary. Where Stone will say things like, “We’re here to impact people’s lives; we own up to our leadership position here,” Williams admits that he has trouble getting his mom to figure out his service

If you’re a blogger, here is a post with 9 benefits of Twitter for bloggers.  On the list are:

• Research tool
• Enforce your brand
• Increase your audience
• Widen your audience
• Networking
• Storygathering

If you’re a writer, here’s some information on how one writer uses Twitter. For example, he says:

Networking. Twitter is a decent way to connect with people without being creepy, a sort of pre-e-mail contact method… something between a chat room, a status updater and a room full of people. Let’s say I visit Joe Bob astronomer’s blog and his Twitter username is clearly displayed there. He’s a great blogger, so I follow him. If I don’t have his e-mail, I can can use an @joebobastronomer in my tweets to flag his attention or if he beings to follow me, I can send him a direct message.

Another writer explains:

Twitter is very good for getting on-the-spot accounts of conferences or newsworthy events like plane crashes. I’ve been following the Ticketmaster/ Live Nation hearings in Congress and when I can’t get the live video, I look at the Twitter updates to see what is being said. So it has its place as a form of reporting.

But Twitter may be a hard sell for journalists, who are trained to find facts, not ideas:

I have the feeling Twitter is interesting for the ideas which are shared. For instance, I have been tweeting a blogpost by Fred Wilson on “hacking education”. A lot of ideas there about how our educational system was developed in the industrial age, while the educational needs in an information tech society are different. The problem: journalists are very focused on fact finding and hard news, less so on new ideas, seeing big trends, and finding facts in function of the trends. This I think is a very fundamental reason why Twitter, as an idea-generating machine, is a hard sell when confronted with traditional journalists.

If you’re a journalist and want some social media training, here’s a site for you.

And if you want every possible trick or tool that Twitter has to offer for professionals, check out this constantly-updated blog with all the different memes and tricks that those in the know, know.

• Display number of Twitter followers on a website
• Create cloudmap of current Twitter topics
• Plot the latest trends and statistics in Twitter
• Tools for managing your Twitter communication
• And much much more…

And of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without a plug that yes, you can follow me on Twitter! I mostly use it to feed out my blog posts and De.li.ci.ous bookmarks, and I check it every few days to see if there are some interesting posts from the people I’m following.  I haven’t yet gotten deeply into searching, etc.  I’m just too darned busy!  But I did find the power of Twitter when a popular Twitterer tweeted about a blog post I wrote about voicing at NPR.  My blog posts tripled in that one day!  He wouldn’t have found that blog post if they weren’t being fed to Twitter, so I guess I’m a convert!

I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.

Session: Eugenia Etkina - Pedagogical Content Knowledge

On a totally random note, I had my first sciencegeekgirl hallway recognition moment, from a faithful reader, Danielle, who writes Urban Science Adventures — a really beautiful blog helping young people explore ecology and environmental science from their backyard.  We tend to think there’s no naturalism to be done in urban environments — not true!  Anyway.  It’s geeky fun to have someone refer to you as “hey, science geek girl!”  Thanks Danielle.

For those geeksters out there, watch for my t-shirt tomorrow.  It’s Valentine’s Day.  I’m a geek.  You may be able to figure it out.

If any bloggers at AAPT would like to meet up, let’s do lunch on Saturday!  Meet at 12:00 outside the Aculpulco Room, Gold Level, West Tower.  There is a newsroom message board where you can leave us a message.  (I know you’re not newspeople, most likely, but I am, so it counts!)

I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.

I’ve been meaning to write a post forEVah about all the wonderful ways there are to download YouTube (and other) videos to watch offline. This is particularly helpful if you’re at a school with blocked internet access so you can’t show streaming video, but it’s also just useful if you want to archive a certain video (since the internets are notoriously flaky), or show something during a conference.  These are all FREE.

1. Download Helper. This is a Firefox add-on, so when you’re at YouTube watching a video, you just click a little button in your browser, and voila!  Looks easy, though I haven’t tried it.

2. KeepVid I’ve used this one and it works pretty well.  Just put in the URL on this website and get a .flv file (see below). Only drawback is that I needed VLC Player to play the .flv.

One teacher says:

Both of these download in Flash Video (.flv) format. Several video players will play these including GOM Player, my favorite. However, if you are, like me, not allowed to install software on your school computer, you will need VLC Player Portable. All you have to do is save it to your computer or a thumb drive, and drag the video file on to it. No installation needed so it will run even on fairly locked down computers.

3.  Get Miro This one reportedly automatically downloads and converts you tube and other videos for you, and you can even subscribe to podcasts and video casts.

A teacher says:

For instance, I had subscribed to Discovery’s “Amazing Human Body” video-cast and during my human body unit, I had a short 3 minute video to go whenever I wanted to fill some time or get the students’ attention.

4.  Vixy.net. You enter the YouTube (or other website) and this site converts it to MPEG4, AVI, etc.  Once it’s converted, the teacher can download the video to a disk or USB.

5.  Tube TV. This is a downloadable application that then lets you browse and save YouTube and other videos.

All of these have their pluses and minuses — do you want something that is an application on your computer, or a website you go to?  Do you care what format you get the video in?  After reading through these, I think that Vixy.net and Download Helper are the two that I’d try first.

I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.

I just read this lovely discussion of how a more open scientific culture (think open-access science) could improve the collective memory of science. This was on the Back Page of APS News (subscribers only) and here is the author Michael Nielsen’s blog post about the topic too, with some additional information. His basic premise is that we don’t exchange scientific information freely, in a sort of public scientific marketplace, because there’s a lack of trust like there is in the consumer marketplace. He writes:

In science, we’re so used to this situation that we take it for granted. But let’s compare to the apparently very different problem of buying shoes. Alice walks into a shoestore, with some money. Alice wants shoes more than she wants to keep her money, but Bob the shoestore owner wants the money more than he wants the shoes. As a result, Bob hands over the shoes, Alice hands over the money, and everyone walks away happier after just ten minutes. This rapid transaction takes place because there is a trust infrastructure of laws and enforcement in place that ensures that if either party cheats, they are likely to be caught and punished.

If shoestores operated like scientists trading ideas, first Alice and Bob would need to get to know one another, maybe go for a few beers in a nearby bar. Only then would Alice finally say “you know, I’m looking for some shoes”. After a pause, and a few more beers, Bob would say “You know what, I just happen to have some shoes I’m looking to sell”. Every working scientist recognizes this dance; I know scientists who worry less about selling their house than they do about exchanging scientific information.

I just loved this analogy. It’s absurd, yet understandable, how hard it is for scientists to collaborate. But there’s a ton of stuff being written now about open access and what it can do for science, on my blog and others.

I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.

Wow, I was just sent this information about a wonderful chance for teachers and students to connect (for FREE) with a really dynamic scientist, Michio Kaku.  You can see my previous post about a talk he gave on the Physics of the Impossible at AAPT last summer — he was an incredibly gifted speaker. Funny, interesting, and really tuned in to what teachers can use.

It’s next Wednesday, December 17, 2008 12:00 pm EST and hosted by Discovery Education.

Register for the event here.

Michio Kaku is a best selling author, host of two national weekly science radio programs, and frequent guest on television shows including Larry King, 60 Minutes, 20/20 and many more. He has hosted numerous programs for the Science Channel and is currently increasing people’s Science IQ every Sunday night in the series “SciQ”. If you’ve ever seen Michio speak before, you know that he has a brilliant ability to break down incredibly complex theories and explain them in ways that anybody can understand. On on December 17th, he’ll be sharing his ideas directly with you and your students! This is your chance to connect your students to one of the most dynamic scientists on the planet, and even have him address their questions directly!

Michio Kaku’s website

I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.

Richard Hake has updated his ongoing list of education blogs.  You can now find over 60 of them on this quite long post from a physics listserv — several of which were donated by yours truly through my article in The Physics Teacher.

Woo!  I feel so famous…

I am a science education and communications consultant -- view my website for my full range of services.