Lecture capture

 

(www.encodedmedia.com)

        I've always thought that lecture capture was a cool idea, because students could go back and review any part of a lecture as and when they please. When we started discussing in class about the reasons that all professors would not allow their lectures to be captured, I started thinking more about the whole concept. One of the main reasons that came up in the discussion was that, a lecture capture would take away a component that makes a professor inevitable to the system.
       I never thought about lecture capture as a one time endeavor, which would eliminate the role of a professor once done. May  be in introductory courses, this may be of more relevance, because there is not going to be much change in the basic stuff that needs to be introduced to the students. Even in such a situation, I think professors should tailor lectures with currently relevant examples and theories (if any). Lecture capture to me is just a supplementary tool that would reinforce student learning if they really wanted it to. Talking about who really owned the material (the lecture video) brought a whole different dimension to this issue though- "The work for hire theory". I guess, it would be more assuring if professors were allowed to own what they produced, but in theory, the University owning the video makes sense.
       I would agree though that lecture capture would make professors a little wary about the way they conduct themselves in the class or the examples and material they share there. Just having somebody overseeing you while you do something could make it uncomfortable.
     However, I'm convinced that lecture captures would be an effective tool to help students learn better, and professors should embrace this as much  as possible. What do you all have to say?

9th period...

 

 (Screen shot of my desktop)

             Every once in a while, we get to see/hear about research about how much time students, employees and everybody else spends on social networking sites. Most of them talk about the time being wasted- unproductive time. For those of you not familiar..... Facebook (among others like my space, twitter) is the most popular social networking site in the United States. A similar portal owned by Google is whats popular among some South American countries and India- Orkut. I think I would be right in thinking that there was a period of reluctance to get into these social networking sites. When I finally broke that inertia to enter the social networking realm (which was just 4 years ago) what fascinated me most was the social connectivity. I got to meet (at least virtually) my friends from school and college after a very long time. That was a biggie to me. It was not until later that the negative sides of these social networking sites came to the fore. The issue of privacy and "who gets to see what" of your profile were  issues that were debated about and lot of energy and resources spent. With all the latest lock down possibilities of ur profile, are we feeling a bit more secure in putting ourselves out there???
          It took a while, but yea, people did seize the opportunity and started to use these portals for professional networking also. Its probably here that 9th period would need mention. Professionals get to network- What do students get to do "productively "(apart from productively socializing)? 9th Period it seems is trying to transform social networking into academic networking so that students can study, and still socialize. Its still in its infancy, and probably will need a lot of tweaking before we see this as a great academic networking portal out there. UGA is one among 50 large universities that are currently testing 9th period. Even though I can see the potential advantage of connecting all students that have taken a class to help each other out, what worries me is how much of myself am I going to put out into vast numbers of students that I barely know. There are quite a few questions that need answer before we embrace this wholeheartedly.
        I have tried playing around the site for sometime (with no great advancement), so I am interested to hear what others who have tested this have to say...Do I have to add all my facebook friends? Do I have to add all the classes that I have taken in my life? How are they going to connect all the people who have taken a class?
How much of an intrusion will this be to me, If I do add a class on 9th period.
  Would it be worth the pain? you tell me :)

Whats the "Buzz" at the end of the Weekend

                      ( image from  www.futureofthebook.org) 


     Its about time I gathered myself and got ready for the week ahead. I think it was ok to laze around this weekend because it was snowy, and felt really great to be under the blankets... or play in the snow..... hmmmm may be both. But anyways.... technologically I haven't had much happening around me except for buzz...
      I remember my early days  getting acquainted with the internet and all the incredible technology it had in store. This was a decade and few years ago.... Yahoo was my first email client, and in a couple years time I had 4-5 email IDs with different providers. Still Gmail was not one of them. Few years down the lane, I think in 2005-2006 was when I heard about Gmail when my friends were making accounts with a provider which until then was just a search engine. The interesting part was that the space they provided was increasing every second. After attempts to stay away from making yet another email account, I had to give in and there began my submission to Google :)
        After the recent raucous with google in China, It was interesting to see this documentary about Google (which I am watching simultaneously while writing this post), which stated their vision about organizing all the world's information and making it available/useful online. Their expected achievement time ..300 years... wow...I was already contemplating about the possible evil of having all your information in google, from emails, photos, blogs and what not....and now I understand that that exactly is their vision, and google for sure is marching to that goal at lightning speed.... I would not be surprised if they took considerably less time to achieve this goal :). For all of us out there, if this would be solace, the motto of Google says "Don't be evil".
      You name it and google has it, I can but wonder about where google is heading. Apple is a company that kept tech lovers on the edge of seats (may be until the released the Ipad :P), but to me google is much more intriguing. More often than not, I think about what next to expect from the "G"world. Google wave, google chrome, google phone, google this, google that.....
     At the risk of being termed a lesser researcher, I may agree that without Google scholar, my literature searches would have been very much different. Let me get back to the documentary leaving you all with couple questions- In the next 20 years, how much dependent would our educational/ professional lives be on cloud computing or Google?? Will the motto "Don't be Evil" be able to stand the test of time and power??

Ramblings on a Icy/snowy day in Athens...

                        (Copyright for picture- Vijay Veeraghattam)


       Now that our TTT is over, I am looking forward to learn what other teams bring to the table. Learning more about Wikis is going to be interesting next week. After having used it in the class, I thought about how I could use this in my lab. I am yet to find a definitive answer to that. I'll have to find time to work on that...:)
      Is it the snow, or just the lazy me..... seems like my head is under the blankets :)

May be I'll come back later and write something

Kokusai Teki ...... and etc...

 

(http://www.ukznpress.co.za/portal/ukznph_db1/UserFiles/SysDocs/bb_ukzn_books/346/Global%20Village_lo%20res.jpg)

             During our second meeting of EDHI 9040, we were assigned to teams of 3-4 that would remain for rest of the semester. The main task for this group was the Team Tech Talks (TTT). One would be an hour long and the other a shorter one of half an hour. Well, every team needs a name, all would agreed on that :). After deliberating for a few minutes we did decide the name. That was "KOKUSAI TEKI". 
            and how?
             We were from four different departments- that did'nt help much....We tried the first letters of our departments, our names  and what not.... and then it clicked... we were from four different countries- Global village huh!! So we were the only truly Global team in the class. Global team was a give away and maybe an ok name, but we went Japanese !! cos we had a team member who actually taught japanese. No prizes for guessing his country :p, anyways we were happy with the punch our name had...
             So the Kokusai Tekians are getting ready for the first TTT which is on this Tuesday and the topic is Virtual Demonstrations. It'll be interesting to hear what everybody feels about Virtuals demos and their role as a pedagogical tool. I can see that it could be very useful in the life sciences, but would it be relevant across all disciplines? I'm interested to hear opinions on that.
              Going back to last weeks class, it was interesting to hear about Sakai as a Learning Management System (LMS) apart from few tips on our very own Blackboard - e Learning Commons. What made it interesting to me was firstly the amount of resources that went into an open resource to suit the requirements of the customer. Often, it could be misunderstood that open resources are free, but not here. What I heard here was new information with respect to the technology and everything non technological that was associated with its use. In a few years when we are on the job market, it just would help to know that there are different systems in use and just to be able to ask the right questions would be a great feeling.
                In another class, I overheard couple friends talking about the overwhelming speed in which knowledge is being produced and how we as students/scienctists/teachers need to keep up with that. Technology is one field that keeps updating itself at an alarming rate, and to keep up ... Good luck with that. But we ought to try :)

Catching up- few tech tips

(http://www.usfst.com/media/focus-area-images/FSTUS/issues-9-1/Technology_management_LG_FOC.png)

       Web 2.0 vs Web 1.0, Mashups, Social bookmarking etc. were some of the lingo that welcomed us this time

     ....Until this class, I never knew about its existence.... Several times did I send bookmarks from my own computer into my email, just because I would need to access them from another computer. Now I find, there was somebody who thought to make this tool available online also... Delicious  .com huh !! I could instantly relate to the use of this technology, having gone personally the longer way quite a few times. After the class was over, I played around with this a little and actually went online with my bookmarks. Am glad I will not have to go that annoying route again... having to send emails to yourself with just a link or two.
       Time to move on... and now I hear about "When is good" wow. There seems to be an online solution for almost every convenience issue humans face (may be except a few..:P). This tool helps schedule meetings after knowing convenient timings of all those involved (given the fact that everybody is super busy when we really need more than 2 people to be there at a place for a meeting). We then write down possible options (dates or times), and find at least one person for whom each of these time slots are inconvenient.  I am going to wait for my first committee meeting to test ride this online tool. So I'll be back to share how that went. :)
      Then we went to something more familiar (at least in hearsay), creating a website using google sites. Again, the neophyte in me had worked on Googlepages, but never knew about Googlesites until couple weeks before. After going through some of the initial steps, it seems that I should be able to navigate through this technology fairly easily. So I will have to resurrect my shelved project- my own website, courtesy Google :P
    We are gearing for the team tech talks which our group will be doing on Feb 9th. More than being excited about what we are going to be presenting, I am looking forward to what other teams would be bringing to the table. With team based learning being a mainstay of this course, I guess all of this becomes more interesting.

                     Next time I'll tell about "Kokusai Teki".

through the lens of Teaching Perspectives

(Image from http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs35/i/2008/238/2/a/Looking_through_a_lens_by_Svision.jpg)

       The Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) exercise kept me wondering for a while right after I got my results :). I did understand that there was no right and wrong perspective of teaching. I've had teachers that were exemplary in what they did, and fell in all of these categories.... so what do I really believe in...?? That was the million dollar question (... may be not a million :P ) of the hour.
         Transmission - I pictured my best teacher giving a well prepared lecture, drawing on the knowledge and experience she had over the many years. That was full of interesting and informative knowledge which kept me inquisitive all the while, and made me want to hear more.... She was a great teacher.. and that was her perspective....I also had teachers with , developmental, apprenticeship, and nurturing perspectives..... So yea I could see few faces with each of these perspectives and few with a mixture of these... :) but I did not have any that stand out with the social perspective. That could be because I was in the sciences and not something that had a social impact. That made sense too. Anyways, coming back to THE question... what did I believe in?, what was my perspective?
       I was a disappointed at first seeing that transmission was not my strong perspective (given the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed my teachers "transmission" lectures loaded with knowledge while I was an undergrad"), but I was totally ok, because with time, I've evolved from that and my perspective has changed. So yea, after all the information that was read and discussed, I was happy with the couple dominant perspectives and the recessive perspective of mine. However, I did entertain a debate within my gray cells about the thin line separating two teachers with nurturing perspective, one with enough nurture in nature that would benefit the student and the other that just wanted  to be "liked" by the student. Former to the later, that's a line I do NOT want to cross.
      Breaking of from the TPI, we got into our groups, and yea we were a MIX of a kind....(I'll keep that news/discussion for later :)). The discussions that happened then was just enough to increase curiosity about the technologies we were going to confront in class now, and life later. Just knowing that you don't know what you are unaware of until you get there; or not knowing enough to know what you want to know is knowledge in its self (If that makes sense :P). I'm sure I'll have interesting things to pen down as we get into more stuff.
    As for today's last words, I should try and find some research on the technology for the team tech talks. With the weekend getting over faster than we always anticipate, I'm sure that's gonna be just FUN.

                             Till I catch u next, do stay warm and dry :)