#smcedu – Social Media Education Chat

Today the Social Media Education Club organized their first twitter chat on social media education. Attendants were few and all of them except me (maybe I’m wrong) were from the US. Some interesting questions were asked but I for one found the twitter chat quite confusing when it came to follow the conversation as people’s re-tweets (RTs) kept coming up and questions seemed also to come from more than one source.

However, it was good to see that there are other educators out there trying to integrate social media in academia and moreover, that there is interest in collaboration and sharing ideas. If you are interested in joining or following the conversation check the Social Media Club Education Connection and to get access to some resources check the Social Media Club Education Initiative. Also to see the complete conversation that  featured #smcedu or #smceduchat check the links. A conversation excerpt and my suggestions are copied below.

Conversation:

1. yongclee: Great question posed by @billhandy earlier: How can we measure the success of #smcedu? Quality of curr? # of schools using? #smceduchat - about 2 hours ago from web · Reply · View Tweet
2. ana_adi: @billhandy – number of schools should follow successful pilot implementation of courses + good student evaluations – the measure #smcedu - about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet ·  Hide Conversation
3. ana_adi: @socialmediaclub @billhandy also, there’s no use to ask about measurement when schools lack infrastructure or interest to support #smcedu - about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet ·  Hide Conversation
4. billhandy: @ana_adi Perhaps thats the first step, creating a strategic plan professors interested in teaching can use to develop course #smceduchat - 5 minutes later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
5. billhandy: @ana_adi Okstate lacked infrastructure and support until they were approached with a legit reason to engage. #smceduchat - less than a minute later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
6. ana_adi: @billhandy bill, professors as early adopters of #smcedu are essential as they can come up with exploratory models- 12 minutes later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
7. billhandy: @ana_adi agreed re profs but not sure creating a student group proves value to the movement. - 4 minutes later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
8. ana_adi: @billhandy @chrisheuer educators should have a common forum 4 discussion and debate as well as a publication to share findings #smcedu - 1 minute later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
9. ana_adi: @billhandy i use my own experience but make sure i point adv & disadv of SM + invite students to explore & discover SM on their own #smcedu - 16 minutes later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
10. billhandy: @ana_adi agreed and good approach. Clinical approach has huge value. #smcedu - half a minute later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
11. ana_adi: @billhandy i use a lot of new media as background info – blogs, non-traditional research, new tools: http://bit.ly/1JvUCs (expand) #smcedu - 13 minutes later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
12. billhandy: @ana_adi class is also reverse engineering text for future class. Using wiki to collect #smcedu - 2 minutes later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
13. billhandy: @ana_adi Curious, what research methodologies are new? How are they used? #smcedu - less than a minute later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
14. ana_adi: @billhandy such as twitter apps for research or google insights for search – freely available, easy to use #smcedu - 5 minutes later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
15. billhandy: @ana_adi gotcha, tools to collect information are different, not research methods. #smcedu - 5 minutes later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
16. ana_adi: @billhandy well, you’re right – but still new sampling or data collection methods meet resistance from traditional reviewers #smcedu - 3 minutes later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet
17. billhandy: @ana_adi agreed and look forward to the day blogging can be part of scholarship criteria. - 11 minutes later from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet

My suggestions:

ana_adi: my suggestions for #smcedu: 1. move chat to platform with video, audio & chat integration; 2. take notes from chats; 3. create blog/forum - 28 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet

ana_adi: my suggestions for #smcedu continued: 4. create online journal; 5. create a monthly blog talk show w/guests; 6. start collaborating - 24 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet

Promethean – the interactive whiteboard

and great classroom tool

I have first used a Promethean board last week when I delivered my first lecture on behalf on On Track, a program that aims, among other things, to prepare Scottish college students to smoothly make their transition to university. The lecture addressed students taking courses at Reid Kerr College in Paisley, UK.

I was prepared with a powerpoint as I was told that the classroom had a projector. However, when I got to there I discovered that they had what looked to me a big TV screen – it had its own speakers system – linked to a both a computer and a projector. Then I was given an interactive pen so I immediately knew that what I had in front of me was a great tool.

Promethean is an interactive whiteboard and I believe it change the whole teaching and learning experience.It’s like a huge tablet PC. It has plenty of features and can be used virtually in any teaching environment, no matter the level and no matter the subject.

Here are some features that I loved:

• interactive polls – the class can be involved in a vote during the lecture (this could help the lecturer explore student opinion or check whether they understand the concepts presented)
• writing on board - helps annotate presentation, highlight important notions, note student answers (to make sure everyone understands the writing use in  conjunction with writing recognition tool)
• save changes - saves all annotations made to a document (great for exam preparation or for archival)
• record on screen activity - recording with sound allows the lecture for example to be later shared on a variety of platforms and be reused in other learning environments. Think here of the online video guest lectures I delivered in the past using TokBox or Skype but had trouble recording for future analysis. Or think of using the collaborative platforms I’ve mentioned in previous posts and recording the whole process for future research. With Promethean this could be possible – use online tools, interact with the screen, annotate presentation and record it!

Promethean however can be considered a rather expensive piece of equipment (I was told it costs around £3,000 per piece) and requires training of staff. Furthermore, the board works best when used within a community where lecturers share their experiences and where students are encouraged to explore new technologies. It also requires schools to reassess their position towards adoption and use of technology in the classrooms. This takes time, needs practice, and requires access to funds. Nevertheless, whoever uses it is in for a fun ride.

Live Video Guest Lecture – Florida Southern College

I had a video guest lecture to Florida Southern College, to the class of Dr Chris Fenner. I talked about the Olympic Movement and new media from a historical perspective. Questions about the impact of emerging technologies on society in general and the Olympic experience in particular were asked.

Unlike my previous guest lectures, given to the University of Missouri-Columbia or the University of Kansas, that were done via Skype, we used a browser-based solution: TokBox. Some technical difficulties made things more challenging but the sound and video quality when the internet connection functioned at full speed were very good. The platform also enabled embedding a Slideshare presentation reducing thus the hassle of figuring out how to present additional material while keeping the video on screen.

The presentation is below:

I believe the class was a novelty for the students as well as for the college as a whole. Students engaged with me both by answering and asking questions and they seemed to genuinely enjoy the lecture. This shows that there is some great potential in integrating live video into traditional in-class, on-campus lectures.

Many thanks to Chris Fenner and James Lynch for making this possible.

Collaborative platforms

Researchers in Europe would definitely benefit from including in their work routines some online collaborative tools. In this post I intend to present some of the collaborative platforms that allow sharing and live working on documents I have discovered during the past months. They are Google Docs, Socialtext, Colaab, OneHub and Scribblar.

Out of all the platforms above I am most familiar with GoogleDocs. Their interface is easy to use, has an auto-saver and supports the regular formats with which researchers work: spreadsheets, presentations, word documents. It does require a Google account but once created that account offers access to many more Google resources. Collaboration can take place in real-time due to the embedded chat and users can change and amend documents if given permission by the one who uploaded them. I haven’t figured out yet whether there is a “track changes” function in Google Docs but I believe such a feature would be useful both when users deal with lengthy documents as well as when there is a large number of users with permission to make changes. Also, for those into photo/video collaboration Google Docs does not yet offer any support. For more features check their page.

For academic purposes, Google Docs is a good solution: is free, allows protection of documents, replicates functionalities of traditional software and allows real-time conversations. A short video on how it works can be found on YouTube.

Real-time multi-user whiteboard, image upload and download, live audio and instant messaging are features offered by Scribblar as well. For those in a hurry Scribblar offers the opportunity of using the platform straight away without any ID with, of course, some restrictions on the features available. Creating an account however is free and doesn’t take long. Scribblar also offers a pro version which can be integrated in e-learning sites.

Colaab supports a variety of resources formats, as they call them: from doc and docx (the vista word version) , powerpoint and pdf to images (png, jpg, gif,psd), videos and xps. The platform allows a user to have multiple projects and share them with multiple users. There are notification when users log into the platform as well as their a track changes log which makes it easy to see who, when and where within a project added a comment or an annotation. The advantage of Colaab, as I see it,  lies within its video and photo collaboration opportunities as it enables, among others, quick zoom into large files.  Colaab therefore can be a great platform for arts and creative media schools. In terms of access, Colaab has 4 packages ranging from 0 to 99 USD a month. You can sign up for a 30-day trial as well. To take a tour of the platform and check its other features go here.

OneHub is similar with Colaab in that that is allows users to work on multiple projects, or spaces but the platform is richer in features. Unlike Colaab, OneHub is designed as an enterprise solution and therefore focuses more on offering tools that can support project management and file sharing besides collaboration. OneHub has, for example, a calendar function that enables users to keep track of their projects and deadlines. It also has a hub activity log where the other users actions can be followed (Colaab offers this as well). The platform also supports folder sharing, hub search and has a lot of customization options which might be useful for joint projects or for projects where universities outsource their services to for-profit companies. There is a 30-day trial but no free account possibility. Take a tour of OneHub here.

Socialtext describes itself as a social software platform than can work both as a hosted or as an on-site service. The platform seems much more complex than all the previous ones described promising to offer different solution packages for specific business functions. Socialtext 3.0 extends collaboration to its maximum – there is a dashboard, wiki workspaces, blogs, opportunities for social networking and messaging as well as distributed spreadsheets (this allows spreadsheets to be dynamic by allowing data to be easily interlinked). Furthermore Socialtext is available offline as well as from a mobile device. As with the other platforms there is a 30-day trial but also a free account version that can accommodate up to 50 users with, of course, some restrictions – there is only 1 wiki space available, there are no distributed spreadsheets included in the package and there is no service or support from the Socialtext team. A product demo can be seen here.

Visualisation tools – update

Some weeks ago I wrote a post about vizualization tools focusing on what could be useful for quantitative and qualitative researchers alike. I have mentioned then that my favorite was IMB’s ManyEyes platform. An update to that post is needed but this time I’ll be focusing on chart and diagram making applications. Below is a chart of all the sites I have found. It is an easy way to compare their offer. I will make some additional comments about the quality of the images they produce.

Creately and Gliffy have the most varied offer followed closely by LovelyCharts. Design-wise, my favorite is LovelyCharts but for paying 29 Euros/year for the premium version I would like to have the opportunity to exclude their logo. Apple does it on all their products, so why shouldn’t they? Also, for a premium version I would like to see the audio recording option that Flowcharts and iCharts are both offering. 

Essentially, all these online platforms offer an interpretation for software and programs that already exist be they licensed by Microsoft, Apple or be they OpenSource. It is nice though to have some design alternatives. It is even nicer to be offered the opportunity to collaborate on documents and share them later either by embedding them on third-party websites on by emailing them to people. This is where the advantage of these platforms is. 

Happy diagraming!

Just to make sure, here are the links to all platforms I mentioned:

Creately.com, Chartle.net, lovelycharts.com, chartgizmo.com, archimy.com, gliffy.com, icharts.com, flowchart.com, drawanywhere.com, orgplus.com