Hans Rosling & Motion Charts

If you have not seen a Hans Rosling presentation, I suggest you immediately go here (TED Talks) and watch one of his videos.

In his videos, he uses Gapminder to display data.  Gapminder software that Rosling wrote with two of his children.  Part of the software, TrendAnalyzer, was bought by Google in 2006.  You can make your own Gapminder display by using the Google Motion gadget.

I used the Google Motion gadget to create the chart below. Note: I had technical issues embedding the working chart, so I just inserted a screen shot instead. The chart actually moves, unfortunately my picture of it does not.

created from Dept. of Education data & Google Motion gadget

As a longtime fan of Tufte, the information presented using the software is presented in a way that, I imagine, Tufte would find awesome.  I encourage everyone to take a look and see if it can be used in the classroom to display large amounts of data that change over time (trends).  I can almost guarantee that students will be enthralled by the movement.  Seeing data in action is so much more powerful than just seeing a series of bar graphs.

TweetPsych

Staying in the same vein as the last post, I found another interesting site that makes Twitter a little bit more interesting.  TweetPsych is a site that allows an user to enter any twitterer’s username and get a brief psychological profile.  It’s fairly interesting to see the results.

Twicsy – Twitter picture search

I came across a really interesting site called Twicsy.  The site allows users to search images that people have linked to on twitter.

The site is interesting in that you can search for a topic (such as Iran) and get a page of results. When you hover over an image, it is englarged in a popout. When you click on the image you are directed to a page with a larger version of the image and tweets related to the image.  Very cool stuff.

Classroom Tools – Free

Even though school is out for the summer, I decided to do a post on classroom tools that are available free.  I’m not going to discuss GoogleDocs or Zoho or PBWiki here, these will be more visual tools – video and image tools.

photo by dcJohn

Editorializing Editorials

Today, thanks to twitter, I came across two editorials from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that are extremely pertinent to education.

Students lost in digital wasteland

and

If it’s not on the test, don’t expect me to know it

Both of these articles deal with the expectations of students vs. instructors vs.  system/standardized tests.

In the first editorial Eric Fox, an English professor, bemoans the shift to edutainment (not the word he uses) from education.  He blames the shift on “packaged minds fresh off the factory farm of iPod, “American Idol” and Facebook, a vast herd of electronic sheep stuffed with fast facts and establishment filler.”  It’s the establishment filler (I might have called it a filter) that Fox has the issue with.

The second editorial written by Laura Braziel a graduating senior at UGA, explains how students can “game” the system and become an honors graduate from a top five journalism school at a major university without actually learning much.  She blames standardized testing.

As someone who works in instructional technology, these editorials are disconcerting.  I have a passion for education and for learning.  I believe technology should not get in the way of learning, but should enhance and deepen the learning process.  I have mixed feelings about standarized tests and their impact on learning and curriculum.  What you think?

Can wikis be respected in higher education?

Ok, ok, maybe not Wikipedia since most faculty seem to turn away from Wikipedia like vampires turn away from the sun…

In this article, I want to discuss why faculty don’t like Wikipedia, if wikis have any value in higher education and if student created wikis have value.

Gaming & Higher Education

Last summer I read the book Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Changing Business Forever by John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade.

A few points from the book that I’d like to reiterate before getting into the post:

• The book gave statistics on how broad the access is to game systems versus computers, even in lower income (rural or urban areas) households.  I cannot find my notes from the book, but I think the number was 92% have at least one gaming system versus 60-70% have computer in the home.  I do not remember how many people had Internet access at home, and there’s no telling how fast the connection is.  (If my memory of the stats is wrong, let me know and I will update.)

• The skills that gaming teaches are important to learning and differ from how many institutions, from elementary up to higher education, teach. For example, in games you learn by failing.   I remember the first time I played Super Mario World on the original Nintendo.  I just started making Mario run and he ran right into the Gumba. Lesson learned- Gumbas kill and you need to jump over or on them.

Evil Gumba

• The skills that gaming teaches are important in the careers and lives of adults – for example, performing under pressure, performing with limited resources (lives, weapons, etc), hand eye coordination, etc.

With that in mind, I was excited when I came across a Chronicle of Higher Education article by Steve Kolovich this week about a professor who has created a video game in the humanites that humanizes people affected by the current recession.  The article is about a professor at Dartmouth who along with the Values at Play research project created a game titled Layoff.

The game puts people who have been laid off from several industries in a pen and users can mouse over them to find out personal details.  The player has to group the laid off workers into groups of three of  a kind then move the workers to the unemployment line.  Fired workers are replaced with other workers who seem to get more and more white collar.

While this sounds neat, what does it accomplish??  Great- the laid off construction worker wanted to send his kid to college; that makes me sad.  So how do we help him?  Oh, group him two other construction workers and they will go get unemployment.  It doesn’t teach financial principles that contributed to the recession.  It doesn’t teach psychological issues that laid off workers are dealing with.  It seems to be nothing more than a novelty, but may be a good starting point for teaching those principles while vilifying bankers and executives.  It’s also as awkward as the worst Yahoo game I’ve ever played.  Fun times.

Issuu – You Publish

Issuu.com is a site that I came across a few days ago via a Twitter post by someone I follow (forgive me, but I can’t remember who).

It’s an interesting site that allows content creators to publish content.

Just a tiny bit of the content on Issuu.

To look at a magazine, click on the cover (or you can do a search and find content that isn’t in the featured area).  The magazine will open in a type of reader that allows the viewer to flip through the pages, zoom, and email the content.  There are also thumbnail images of different parts of the magazine that the viewer and click on and go immediately to that area.

Very interestingly, there is also a Portfolios area on the featured content section.  It appears that graphic designers, photographers, etc. have the abilty to create and upload a portfolio that others can browse through.  A very neat self-marketing idea.

Any ideas how to incorporate this into higher education?  Would faculty self-publishing content be valued by administration?   Would students self-publishing be valued by faculty and future employers?

Staff Seminar: Improving Customer Service through Process Improvement

At Berry College, the Staff Advisory Committee regularly schedules staff development sessions.  I attended one of these yesterday; the topic was improving customer service through process improvement and was given by Dr. John Grout.  I’m not going rehash the seminar here, but basically the point was that we (staff) should evaluate our current processes and see if we can eliminate ‘waste,’ thereby making the processes improved.

We were supposed to be thinking of ways that we could improve customer service of our department (in my case, the Center for Instructional Technology).   However, in my position I think one of my main functions can be defined as helping faculty improve processes and improve customer service (i.e. teaching).  I came to this conclusion by looking at the different types of waste (information, process, physical environment, and people (not that kind of waste hehe)) and realizing that many of the faculty I work with are trying to eliminate one or kinds of waste from their teaching.

Not too long ago I had a discussion with another instructional technologist who was very adamant that I should not use what she called ‘convenient factors’ when talking to faculty about emerging and useful technologies.  I disagree with her because I think that faculty can eliminate waste from their teaching and teaching preparation processes by using technology, hence giving them more time to focus on teaching and learning (and maybe some other technologies).

Waste that instructional technologists can help faculty eliminate:

• redundant input and output of data – create audio/video podcast to explain theories that cause students issues
• incompatible systems/converting formats – different systems in classrooms and office that cause headaches for faculty
• noise – maybe not physical noise, but interruptions and the like
• faulty office furniture/tripping hazards/use of chairs and tables as ladders/unbalanced or unsecured shelving and file cabinets – ok, maybe not a CIT issue here, but an issue nonetheless
• multitasking – help faculty speedup process, so they get finished quicker and there is less of a need for working on more than one task at once
• under utilization of talent – I think this applies to everyone
• lack of strategic focus – too much time spent on administrative tasks, and not on the broad/big picture

Dr. Grout referenced the book Flow in the Office by Carlos Venegas during this seminar.

A trip down memory lane

It appears that Oregon Trail will be available on the iPhone on February 28!

Oh how I loved computer lab days in elementary school.

Oh the memories... cholera, dysentery, river crossings