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A little biographical information.

Blended Learning Web Resource from Simmons College

With support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Simmons College has launched the website Blended Learning at Simmons College:

In addition to serving as a resource for Simmons faculty and students, the site is designed to help schools around the country make a successful transition to blended learning. The site includes information and resources for use in planning, implementing, and assessing the effectiveness of blended programs. In particular, we encourage you to check out five case studies that include video interviews with Simmons faculty, course simulations, and blended course planning exercises. In coming months, additional online case studies and resources will be added to the site.

In addition to the resources they’ve created and provided, which are very good (explore the site to see), I’ve included their external resources list below, as there is some great content on these sites definitely also worth exploring:

Teaching and Learning Centers
Course Quality Checklists
  • Quality Matters
    An inter-institutional quality assurance process for online and blended courses.

Using Copyrighted Materials in Education: Fair Use Guidelines for Educators

I’ve written about Fair Use before, but thought I’d bring up the topic again since the summer online courses are about to get under way.  Often, faculty wonder whether their use of copyrighted materials in the classroom constitutes Fair Use or not. Making a Fair Use argument is not always easy, especially when so many draconian interpretations of copyright law exist.  But Fair Use is part of copyright law, even though it is little understood (and poorly spelled out).  I hate to see faculty forgo valuable lesson plans for fear of using copyrighted material that’s essential to the curriculum.  But often they do, or they are “quiet” about the uses they make (particularly audio and video) for fear that they may be doing something wrong, when quite often they are not.

Three and a half years ago, the Association for Independent Film Makers got together and defined their own industry guidelines for Fair Use.  In the absence of case law regarding Fair Use, judges often look to common industry practices to determine whether a use of copyrighted work falls under the Fair Use doctrine or not (and such information is not always available or easy to find).  Having a written set of documented principles and guidelines is useful for both practitioners and courts in determining whether a use is fair or not.  

Finally, this past November, after a year of study and collaboration, educators released their own “Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Media Literacy Education“. (Download the Code of Best Practices here.)

Below is a clip they’ve put together on the topic:

 
Here’s a short video on The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy from a talk given at American University’s Center for Social Media:

 

Following are the Five Principles in the code above, with Descriptions and Limitations:

ONE: EMPLOYING COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL IN MEDIA LITERACY LESSONS

DESCRIPTION: Educators use television news, advertising, movies, still images, newspaper and magazine Continue reading “Using Copyrighted Materials in Education: Fair Use Guidelines for Educators”

Quality Online Video Sites for Education

In light of YouTube’s recently launch of “YouTube Edu“, I figured I’d compile a list of the best sites for educational use. (I’ve seriously thought about aggregating our own on wpmu with a premium WordPress template like On Demand, which looks like a Hulu or WordPress tv. and can aggregate content from many user-based video services). At any rate, I’d love to grow the list with some feedback as to what else is out there. So far, the list is short, though the content in all is vast:

YouTube Edu
YouTube’s videos and channels from college and university partners

Fora.tv
Videos on the people, issues, and ideas changing the planet

Big Think
Interviews and insight from the world’s leading experts in business, entertainment, education, religion, and politics

Academic Earth
Thousands of lectures from the world’s top scholars

iTunes U
Free lectures, language lessons , audiobooks, and more

11 Software Applications for Podcasting

A list of software resources for audio and video capture, creation, and production.  Of course, you still need to host your podcast somewhere, but we’ll explain more about that later…

Windows

picture-56.pngAudacity
Record, edit and produce audio podcasts
Price: Free

picturecam.pngCamtasia Studio
Screencasting – Record anything on your screen as a movie
Price: $299 (retail)

picture-63.pngSnapkast
Record and podcast your Powerpoint presentations
Price: $79

icon_mpeg4.gifQuickTime Pro
Record, import, edit and compress audio and video
Price: $29

Continue reading “11 Software Applications for Podcasting”

2 New Online Tools For Love of the Remix

If you a fan of the remix culture like I am, you’ll love these two new sites which give you (and students!) the ability to create, mix, remix (audi0, video, powerpoint slides, music, narration, text, etc.) and share, download end embed, all online!

Glogster

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Make and remix posters, with animations, music, or video (or not) and share and embed them online. Check out a recent example from University of Mary Washington student who created a science poster for his psycholinguistics class. (Say good-bye to Death by Powerpoint!)

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Take images, video, and royalty-free music and create your own video shorts with lots of pizazz! Files can be shared and downloaded. Check out Animoto’s education section with education case studies and student work.

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New Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education

The Center for Social Media has just released a document that helps educators who use media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright

picture-42.pngdoctrine of fair use. The document was created during 10 meetings with more than 150 members of leading educational associations across the United States, and follows in the footsteps of the Documentary Filmmakers Association who created guiding practices for their industry 3 years ago.

In the murky waters of what legally constitutes a fair use and what doesn’t, courts of law generally look to common industry practices. In the absence of such guiding documents, the courts must look to other other industries’ interpretations of fair use, or prior case law, which often themselves aren’t relevant or comparable. Interestingly, The Center for Social Media reports that they “don’t know of any lawsuit brought by an American media company against an educator over the use of media in the educational process”.

The Center defines Media Literacy in Education:

Media literacy is the capacity to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms. This expanded conceptualization of literacy responds to the demands of cultural participation in the twenty-first century. Like literacy in general, media literacy includes both receptive and productive dimensions, encompassing critical analysis and communication skills, particularly in relationship to mass media, popular culture, and digital media. Like literacy in general, media literacy is applied in a wide variety of contexts—when watching television or reading newspapers, for example, or when posting commentary to a blog. Indeed, media literacy is implicated everywhere one encounters information and entertainment content. And like literacy in general, media literacy can be taught and learned.

Head on over to their website and to read more and download the code.

Excellent Examples of Course Blogs in Higher Ed

picture-58.pngThe University of Mary Washington is certainly leading the way with UMW Blogs in showcasing what is possible in education with a blog publishing platform such as WordPress MU. Other pioneers include Penn State, Harvard, and UMass Amherst, (and of course, The College Blogs at Suffolk University!)

For those who may not have realized the relevance and power of blogs as self-service publishing platforms in higher ed, some good places to start are to explore the Wordcamp conferences (included the just-passed Northeast one) and (UMW) Jim Groom’s blog bavatuesdays, or (Penn State) Cole Camplese’s Learning and Innovation.

Below are some great examples of course blogs from UMW and UMass Amherst. Poke around for admiration and inspiration!

University of Mary Washington Course Blogs:
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Art & Art History

Biology

Chemistry

Classics, Philosophy, & Religion

Economics

English, Linguistics, & Communication

History & American Studies

Modern Foreign Languages

Sociology

University of Massachusetts Amherst Course Blogs:

Wow!  Inspiring stuff!

Top Ten University YouTube Sites

While assessing the recent state of the trend in the educational industry toward making video content more available to a wider audience, I stumbled on some pretty interesting sites on YouTube. These institutions have partnered with YouTube and have their own custom channels. Here are my top 10 in terms of content and design, in no particular order:

Carnegie Mellon University

http://www.youtube.com/user/carnegiemellonu

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

http://www.youtube.com/user/MIT

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Stanford University

http://www.youtube.com/user/stanforduniversity

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University of Southern California

http://www.youtube.com/user/USCCollege

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University of California at Berkeley

http://www.youtube.com/user/ucberkeley

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Dartmouth

http://www.youtube.com/user/Dartmouth

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Northwestern University

http://www.youtube.com/user/NorthwesternU

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Oxford University Said Business School

http://www.youtube.com/user/OxfordSBS

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Harvard Kennedy School of Government

http://www.youtube.com/user/HarvardKennedySchool

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Northeastern University

http://www.youtube.com/user/Northeastern

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Confessions of a Podcast Junkie: A Student Perspective

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(The following was cross-posed in the podcasting blog, Podcasting Your Class)

What are some student perspectives on podcasting? Carie Windham, former undergraduate student, North Carolina State University, and current graduate student, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland presents her own views and experiences with podcasting as well as views from several students she interviewed in the paper: Confessions of a Podcast Junkie: A Student Perspective.

In “Confessions…”, Windham recounts her own introduction to and involvement with podcasting (and how she became a “podcast junkie”) and cites student data and interviews from University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of British Columbia, Bentley College, Duke University, and DePaul University. Some of the conclusions are as follows:

All the students identified the same benefits to podcasting technology:
• The ability to access course content on a 24-hour basis
• The chance to take their learning mobile so that listening can be done on the bus, at the gym, or on a walk between classes
• The creativity factor when making podcasts: they can present the content in a way that they choose
• The ease of access: podcasts can be easily downloaded from the Internet for free

For teaching and learning, the students saw concrete benefits to podcasting projects, especially when compared with standard modes of testing, such as writing a paper or doing a class demonstration:
• They were able to get “intimate” with course material, either by re-listening to course lectures and supplements or by teaching the rest of the class.
• They could showcase their projects to the rest of the community, expanding the reach of
the classroom to their friends or members of the community.
• They had the opportunity to review course material during pertinent moments in the semester, such as before exams or during course projects.
• They learned new technical skills, whether they were downloading files or creating new ones.

Finally, all the students reported that they enjoyed their classes more because of the inclusion of podcasting, and all hoped that more faculty members would use podcasting in the future. Michael Martinez-Mann said it best when he said of podcasting: “The possibilities are absolutely limitless. If there’s an idea, there’s a way to do it.”

Some of the sections of the paper also include:

  • Podcasting in the Real World: Student Use (and Misuse) of Podcast Technology
  • Notes on the Go: Offering Lectures and Class Notes via Podcasting
  • In Their Hands: Students as Podcast Creators
  • A Microphone and an Idea: Nonacademic Podcasting on Campus
  • If I Were in Charge: Tips for Faculty

Windham’s paper is informative, well-written, and entertaining, and was published in EDUCAUSE Review, Vol. 42 (May/June 2007). It also appears on the web in the resource-rich ELI Discovery Tool: Guide to Podcasting in the section “What Do Students Think?”

While whitepapers, research, and case studies are certainly useful, it’s definitely refreshing to get student perspectives directly from students in their own voices.

Who’s Afraid of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and the Big Bad CMS.

Yet another great video, Institutional Fear, presented at the 2008 ELI Educause Conference in the Fear 2.0 digi-drama session “Who’s Afraid of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and the Big Bad CMS?” Session Abstract:

Web 2.0 tools have the power to transform education. Such a transformation requires that faculty, students, and institutions take risks. With those risks comes fear, which is often unarticulated. How do you tackle this fear and make real change? (Join us to face this fear together in a multimedia, interactive miniplay).

The four discussion-provoking videos in the session were created and presented by faculty and staff at the University of California, the University of Texas, the University of Mary Washington, Bryn Mawr College, Oberlin College, and Middlebury College.

For a look at pedagogy and practice, interested faculty might also want to read “Wikis and Podcasts and Blogs! Oh, My! What Is a Faculty Member to Do?” from last fall’s Connect.

In the meantime, enjoy “Institutional Fear”… Do You Fear It?

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A Vision of Students Today: By, Students.

If we begin to explore the issues and causes of stagnation in education, the students and the student experience are both central to the discussion. What is the student experience of the classical models of education that exist today? In what ways are today’s students unique, different from the past? Where can we get an insider look? How about a group of 200 Kansas State University students who made a YouTube video on the subject…
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Last fall, Professor of Cultural Anthropology Michael Wesh collaborated with 200 students who surveyed themselves and created this video summarizing “some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime”:

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What say you? Feel free to respond in the comments!

Web 2.0 or Fear 2.0: Are We Stagnating?

time_large.jpgTravel back two years in time, way back to 2006. The read/write web, or “Web 2.0” (also synonymous with “connection, collaboration, and individual expression”), had finally attracted enough mainstream attention for Time magazine to name “You” Person of the Year in their year-in-review January ’07 issue. While the explosion of the read/write web has grown quickly from its humble beginnings, this rising tide of innovation (and opportunity) isn’t slowing, isn’t going to go any slower, and certainly shows no signs of stopping.

Have we caught up with Fair Use, the DMCA, and copyright law? Do we understand these changes, or do we fear them? Do we leverage this new revolution? How about inside the “hallowed halls of our institutions of higher education and learning”? Are we adapting? Or are we stagnating? The following short video was presented at the 2008 ELI Educause conference and more poignantly calls attention to some of these issues:

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