E for Empathy -- and how being aware of Microaggessions can help

Chester Pierce coined micro-aggression as
offensive mechanisms

I am expanding my e-learning to include empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of someone else.  Over the last few weeks I have been in discussions, have read lots of articles, opinion pieces, and blog posts that very much lament the lack of understanding between different groups in the US population.
Empathy, to me, appears to be a skill many of us can practice more.  A couple of weeks ago Jaena Alabi, one of Auburn University's wonderful librarians, gave a talk on "An Introduction to Racial Microaggession," and what struck me about the talk were the specific incidents of microaggessions that were readily recognizable to me as things I have witnessed or even done myself.
Fortunately for all of us, the talk was recorded, and you can learn more about racial microaggessions by listening to Jaena herself.
I am adding some info that may be tough to read on her final slides to make sure we can all benefit from some of the sources she was referring to and the activities she is encouraging us to work through:
Start identifying your own unconscious biases by taking the Race Implicit Association Test.
Read

• McIntosh, P. (1989). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Peace and Freedom Magazine, July/August, 10-12.Available online here:
  http://nationalseedproject.org/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack
•  Sue, D. W. (2010). Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
• Tatum, B. D. (2003). "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" And Other Conversations About Race (Rev. ed.). New York: Basic Books.
• Mills, C. W. (1997). The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2013). Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People. New York: Delacorte Press.

Online Learning Consortium Accelerate 2016 - Day 2

Here are my takeaways from Thursday and early Friday before I headed back to Auburn.

Stephen Kosslyn showed off his university, Minerva University in

Pushing the reset button on higher education

 where he gave us examples of how the university focuses on practical knowledge that covers critical thinking, creative thinking, effective communication, effective interaction through personal and interpersonal skills.  None of these can be taught in lecture, so classes are capped at 19 students, and the online learning platform incorporates tools that focus on student engagement and interactivity.  I am very much hoping that other LMS look at these options as well for future development.  In addition, Study Abroad is reaching a different level at this university with teams of 150 students going to 7 different international cities for 4 months each.

Takeaway for immediate application for everyone is the expressive focus on learning goals at the beginning of a lesson with a followthrough at the end of each lesson.  

A national study of leadership for online learning in us higher education

conducted by Fredericksen from U. of Rochester - he discovered that the leaders of online education in higher education tend to be faculty who have some online learning, but little online teaching experiences, at least 10 years of other leadership experience.

Yet again - new standards for calibrating fair use

Enghagen discussed the latest development in the law suit between Georgia State and textbook publishers.  The law suit is now in its 8th year, with Georgia State having spent over $3 Mio at this point.  In March, 2016, the Appeals court asked the original judge to review the judgement.  The judge did just that, with the outcome reducing the number of incidents considered copyright infringement from 5 to 4. The key difference appears to be the differentiation between fact and opinion, and a textbook that contains a lot of opinion cannot be distributed in parts to students under fair use.

More importantly, maybe, the judge also found that if a publisher has an easy way for someone to ask for permission to use partial materials, then this someone has less of a chance to claim fair use.  As a result, publishers are now adding Permission Request buttons to their web sites to make it easier for folks to ask for permission -- with a high chance that you will have to pay for excerpts.

So, we may now have new numbers for how much one can pull out of a textbook without violating copyright.

And now the publishers have asked for an injunction as it appears they are using this as a test case how far they can squeeze fair use.

The impact of personalized learning on low income and underserved post secondary students. Strategies for improved outcomes from early innovators

Georgia State and National Louis University shared their ideas about using adaptive learning to improve student success of students who usually are not that successful when going through college.  Scariest were the numbers that only 45% of high school students coming from households with ca $35000 annual income start college, and only 9% graduate within 6 years.  And this percentage of graduation has not changed since 1970.  Other income groups have seen dramatic increases in college attendance and graduation, but this group of students still very much needs our help.

 

Never see a syllabus the same way again. Alternative approaches to reflective practice 

This session shared some techniques to help faculty rethink and revision their syllabi and courses -- so maybe some ideas for Course (Re)Design.

Techniques were:  narrate your syllabus, turn your syllabus into an infograph, use blackout poetry, learn a technology tool you are particularly uncomfortable with, create a short animated video as a trailer for your class.

Tools were:  Voyant for a wordle tool with additional functionality 

Canva to create infographics

Blackout Poetry:  http://www.makeblackoutpoetry.com/

 

Online Learning Consortium Accelerate 2016 - Day 1

OLC

Day 1 in Orlando's Swan and Dolphin Resort brought some interesting and new ideas for technologies and digital content.

Emerging Technologies for Student-Centered Learning (University of Illinois Springfield)

 

My understanding is that this workshop has been a popular one for quite a few years - this was my first year, and the takeaways were a mixed bag or affirmation and new discoveries.  

Some of the affirmations:  use Todaysmeet, Notability, ExplainEverything, Kaltura, give faculty space to experiment and fail without repercussions.

Some of the new tools and insights:  most of us pick up our phone first thing in the morning -- before we get anything else -- to see what is new in the world.  That would be the moment to have a note waiting for me that something is going on with my learning. Use orientation courses to prepare students for online learning and online tools that your institution is using -- so a revamping of Camp War Eagle.  Get frequent student feedback on how the technology and learning is working.

 Here is one version of the iOS wheel of Bloom's Taxonomy.

Teachthought.com has an annual list of best apps.

And some of the technologies, both software and hardware, that folks may find interesting:

• Liquidtext for annotation on iPad 
• MyScript Nebo for iOS and Windows 10 for annotation
• Trello looked liked a version of Pinterest for project-based online learning
• Paper pile may be an alternative for Endnote or Zotero
• Polaroid cube is a small versatile inexpensive camera cube
• Bored panda translation in your ear -- moving towards the babelfish -- may revolutionize how we interact with folks whose language we don't speak -- and could have an interesting impact on language learning.  Not quite here yet, but they are building the prototype
• Leap motion-- use your hand movements in air to interact with your computer -- this is getting better
• Any of the virtual reality viewers and creators:  Google cardboard, Occulus Rift:  remember that folks with motion sickness will have a real problem with this.
• Microsofts Hololens and the concept of holoportation -- Startrek, here we come...
• The concept of Blockchain Architecture and how we need to figure out what effect it may have on what and how we teach

Talking Texts:  Making Textbooks and Instructional Materials Interactive with Augmented Reality

In contrast to virtual reality, where we immerse ourselves into a virtual environment and interact with it, somewhat isolated from the real world, augmented reality overlays digital content onto the real world.  Think Pokemon Go as the most popular example.  Farah Vallera is doing this for the Sociology textbooks and content she is using.
She is using a combination of Aurasma, an app that allows to overlay such contents and then view them, Audacity for the audio recordings and simple animation through Blabberize to create 19th century talking heads of Marx, Weber, Comte and other, potentially boring, social theorists.  https://sites.google.com/site/sociologyparadigms/ gives the instructions and examples on how this would work.

Keynote:  Goodbye, College as We Know it (Michelle Weise)

Weise reminded us that disruptive innovation as a force in higher education is something to be reckoned with, and that we need to have a plan on how to give the vast majority of non-traditional students the opportunity to get a higher education knowledge and skill sets without wasting their time and money.  So, no longer 4-year degrees but carefully selected and limited new skills that we may have not even thought of yet, but that companies like Nanodegrees, hack reactor, flatiron school, coursera, Minerva, openbadges,udemy, general assembly, pluralsight, Devbootcamps are already working through, with "graduates" who have honed a skill that can immediately be used.
Her talk was punctuated by a poetry performance by Jamila Lyiscott who reminded us of tangible hope.
And, no, this is not the performance we saw tonight, but I hope that you will still enjoy this performance piece: 

Auburn University's Learning Glass

Using the Learning Glass

You may have admired folks who can work magic with green screens -- pointing at hurricanes or making weather fronts move.
And you may have admired touch screens that allow for on the fly content creation and modification.

Both of these technologies are somewhat pulled together in the Learning Glass.

Imagine you want to capture a process in a video -- drawing it on a white board is awkward because your back is to your audience.  The learning glass allows you to talk to your audience while drawing the process.

Auburn University now has this capability, organized through Auburn Online, starting out in the Biggio Center.  For starters, you can check out http://wp.auburn.edu/auburnonline/media-services/ with additional information at

01-    Introduction –https://goo.gl/YbOMkc

02-    Overlay Examples / Image Standards –  https://goo.gl/lht7sA

03-    Examples of Best Practices - https://goo.gl/uOnvi5
I
I I tried it during their open house recently and came up with this video to show you how the learning board works

What do you think you can do with this technology for your class?  Be mindful that the work flow is a complex one that can take quite a bit of time for larger undertakings.  Alternatives that are most certainly less fancy would be using a tablet device with a whiteboard app that allows for recording.  You would lose the coolness factor but may still be able to get the same point across.

Impressions from ALATEC 2016

This year's ALATEC (Alabama Assistive Technology Expo & Conference) happened last week at Auburn University.  I had the opportunity to attend a couple of the sessions and learned some useful insights and tips for working with students who may need special accommodations -- insights and tips that will help a lot of other students as well.

I had the chance to listen to Luis Perez show off features in iOS 10 that may make lives easier for a range of users.  Luis Perez focuses in his research on inclusion and universal design, and his web site contains a number of interesting tools and strategies.

Here some of the takeaways from his session that focused on iOS devices:
If you have visibility issues that can be corrected through changes in color schemes, go to
Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations.  Here you can

• invert colors (note that this also inverts colors of images)
• turn on Color Filters to see your device in Gray scale or in a different tint that may help you with different types of color blindness -- Protanopia, Dueternaopia or Trianopia -- or you can set a Color Tint to create less of an emotional turmoil if certain colors increase your stress level.

Under Accessibility, you will also find your Magnifier that allows you to turn your camera into a magnifying glass -- if you ever needed to read serial numbers, you will love this feature.

Under Speech, you can turn on Speak Selection -- this allows you to have written text that you select read to you - -and this can happen in any language.

You will also see your options of Voices here, the speed you want text read to you (turtle or hare) - imagine using this feature for students who are learning a new language.

Typing Feedback allows you to hear the last letter or word you typed -- very useful for dyslexia

And, finally, this is for all of you out there who cannot call me through Siri:  you can train your phone for a particular pronunciation, Speech > Pronunciation where you type in the word, type in an approximation of the phonetic word and then save this for future references.

Of course you can also turn your iOS device into a full braille-capable device and have apps that recognize currency so that you don't have to figure out what a bill is, not to mention the app Tap tap See that takes a picture of an object and then tells you what the object is.

The other session I was at discussed working with students who are diagnosed with ADD/ADHD.  Jessi Wright from UAB gave a passionate presentation on different ways we need to rethink what we do with students -- but most importantly, that we need to help students be stronger advocates for themselves.

As I am sure you know, ADD and ADHD are the number one reason students need accommodation in college, with constantly increasing numbers.  If we get such memos, we know what we have to do to help, but here are some other ideas and these ideas may help all students.

1.  During exams have timers available

2.  During exams and individual activities allow students to wear noise cancelling headsets that may play music of white noise

3.  Have fidget tools at hand

4.  Allow for movement breaks

5.  Provide all students with resources on note taking, focused learning, recognizing when their best time for learning is

6.  use mid mapping or brain storming tools for students to collect an outcome of their thinking

Students can use tools to cut down on distraction -- for example the Readibility extension for Chrome that cuts out all the advertisement and just shows text.  Students need to choose to sit close to the action

Finally -- teaching your courses in EASL spaces makes it easier for students with ADD/ADHD to focus, so they will be more successful as students.

Data & Analytics Summit, elearning guild, September 2016

word cloud:  learning analytics

Last week, I participated in the elearning guild's Data & Analytics Summit, a two-day series of sessions focusing on different kinds of data, collection of data, analysis of data, and what the future may hold in store.

Here some takeaways from the sessions:

Analytics means:   simultaneous use of statistics, software, operations research to quantify performance, meaningful pattern recognition, use of data visualization

How are we using the data: for description (what is happening?) or for diagnosis (why did x happen?) or for prediction (what is going to happen?) or for prescription (how can we make x happen?)

How do we get trusted data?  Not only do we pull in data from multiple sources, but we need to establish relationships with stake holders, so that we can trust the data they provide -- and we need to add to this data governance and quality assurance, a common language, visible data integrity and formal accountability.

A lot of the discussion was not focused on higher education but education in the workforce, which raises a very different set of questions -- still, these questions apply to our university community just as much as we have about 6,000 employees at the university, excluding student workers and graduate assistants.  This substantial number of people deserve serious though on how professional development can help them improve their lives and their jobs -- what areas might benefit from repeating micro-lessons to improve performance?

How is our workforce shifting and what does this mean for higher education:  We know we are moving more and more into a service-based society, and we have see that artificial intelligence (AI) can outperform humans already in a number of jobs.
The key is to self-regulated, self-directed, self-selected learning.  I was learning the other day about Chicago and how its museums, art galleries, and other public educational institutions focus on informal learning with elements of gamification.

Looking for a job?  Think Learning Analytics -- this is a growing field tha tneeds careful thinkers to make sense of the gobs and gobs of data.
Worried about your data?  You should be -- we need policies and governance to assure that all that data that is collected right now and that soon will include data collected through the Internet of Things is managed responsibly.
Finally:  Wanting to try something new? https://h5p.org/ for interaction. This web site makes it easy to develop interactive exercises that can be embedded into any web page, including your LMS.

Ok, I will stop rambling now...

Accessibility and Universal Design

Universal Deisgn

Universal design is design that allows the largest number of , if not all, people access to a place, a web site, information, you name it.  Think of how many times you have used a curb or the button to open the automatic door to get to a particular space -- this may not have been the intention when the curb or the door were installed, but giving more people access benefits all people.
The same principle applies to online materials.  If you are designing content for public web sites, and you are working at a university, you have to design your web pages with universal design in mind.  If you want to reuse web-based instructional materials for a few years, you should consider the same design.
Luckily for us at Auburn University, we have an awesome Office of Accessibility, with an Assistant Director who is willing to talk with folks about how to get started on universal design.  Dr. Scott Renner ran a couple of workshops this week, giving us lots of reasons why we need to do this (just in case federal law was not compelling enough), but also some easy tips and tricks on how to get started.
Why should we do this:  Because it is the right thing to do.
How many times have you turned on sub titles in a movie because you had trouble hearing what is going on, or your high school Spanish was just too rusty?  We all benefit from close captioning.
How many times have you enlarged the font on a word document or web site to make it easier to read for folks sitting in the back of the room?  We all benefit from adding headers to our Word documents and PDF files.
How many times have you moused over an image to find out what it is about, where the image was taken?  We all benefit from alt tags.
Be Proactive!

So, how do we do some of these things?
1.  Scan to OCR, not to an image file.
2.  In Word, use Headers for your headlines

Header Toolbar

3.  Add alternative text for images for description:  right click on image and find, under Properties, the alt tag.  Capture the essence or main point of the image that you want to get across.  The same image may require a different description, based on the context it is placed in.
4.  Use the Accessibility Checker in MSWord and MSPowerPoint for Windows - under File - Check for Issues, Check Accessibility
5.  For Powerpoint and Keynote:  keep it simple, do not add text boxes
6.  For Audio files:  provide a text-based transcript
7.  For Video files:  provide close captioning and/or text-based transcript
8.  Provide meaningful hyperlink description, so not Click here but turn the link itself into a description.

The Office of Accessibility can help you with more complex issues (for example, if you don't want to tackle close captioning right now, they can help).

My challenge to you -- start using at least one of these techniques today when you work on documents, materials that you know are bound to be distributed in some shape or form.  You never know who is going to read or watch or listen to your content.

EASL2Go: New Rooms Online

l 

This summer, Auburn University worked on getting nine new active learning spaces online, funded through a Provostial grant, with some of the departments participating able to add funds to make the room design even more dramatic.
Funding from the Provost's office focused on mobile, that is relatively easily movable, technology and furnishings up to about $20,000 per room.  Proposals had been evaluated in February to ensure a summer timeline, and once all these rooms were taken off line so that no classes could be taught in them during the summer, departments got busy ordering furnishing by certain deadlines and working with Auburn's Classroom Design group to get the technology installed before August 1.  The week before classes started, we organized workshops for faculty scheduled to teach in these redesigned spaces for Fall to give them at least some warning, needed training on the new technology and tips on shifting classroom activities to increased collaboration.

The rooms now contain glass or white boards on multiple walls, with mobile boards in some spaces; sharing technology for students to project their mobile devices to locations in each classroom, and some rooms were able to get a furniture upgrade as well to make the furniture collaborative.  In one space, floor color was used to highlight collaborative organization, and one space also added 3D printing for creation of models that then could be displayed for everyone to see.

Spaces include:

Chemistry 156

Haley Center 3104

Haley Center 3242

Rouse 112

Spidle 102

Thach 228

Wiggins3468

Wiggins 3468 3D printers

InfoComm in Las Vegas, Day 3

The days are bleeding into each other, with a somewhat late night from Day 2 carrying over into Day 3, with musical fountains and musical paint buckets (awesome street performer using the most basic pots, pans and buckets for percussion).

Inside Caesar's Palace

My second (and final) day in the Exhibit Hall brought the challenge of getting to at least see the remaining booths -- and with a total of 1000 exhibitors, that was a formidable task.  I think I may have almost accomplished this, but of course it means that I literally just saw the booth and decided to keep walking for a large number of these.  The two buzz words in the booths I saw were definitely collaboration and huddle (as a prefix). 

Curved moving display

 This day brought a larger number of options for video conferencing, some interesting interactive boards/tables, a few more collaborative options, and of course the random cool stuff.  Lots of displays of multiple displays merged together to create large, interactive walls or differently shaped surfaces for display (curves, crystals).  Some of these displays (multiple monitors managed) raise the question if we need something like this in our School of Communication and Journalism

Video conferencing:
Ubiety, bought by Cisco, claims to have a different licensing model
Starleaf:  video conference in the cloud
Videxio:  also in the cloud
beam max is the video conference system on wheels -- as in, I am at a remote location, and you can talk to me through a quasi robot on wheels that can move through a space and thus have more personal contact than the usual static video conferencing position
Infocus Monopad can connect to up to 46 screens

Collaboration:
HP collaboration with intel unite -- allows for easy file sharing
Displaynote Technologies Montage:  remote users can connect into the collaboration
QVS collaboration allows for up to 64 users to connect to one display who have their content to be shared queued up for up to 4 displayed on one monitor
Mersive has a system called Solstice that is designed around its own app for Windows, Mac, iOS, with unlimited connections and a neat way to shift content about
AMX Enzo:   the latest version now has a Firefox browser, so we definitely want to get ours upgraded to that to see how it fares with virtual machines.  The web site is kind of cool with its Campus Explorer module.

Interactive boards/tables:
Display 10:  has an endless interactive board
Scalable Display has a Huddle Wall that is magnetic, looks like a very thin white board with magnetic backing
QuirkLogic :  they market themselves as digital paper
Salamander Design had some nice models of foldable tv
Odin Tech has a very interesting display that can be turned black and then also written with chalk on -- and I saw a cool eraser with built in water supply -- be aware that the site is in Chinese and I cannot make heads or tail out of it.
Cybertouch was touting Touch Overlays -- if I understand this correctly, this could turn any display into a touch screen

Miscellanous:
I saw a couple of room scheduling solutions, focusing on small displays next to rooms that allow for on the fly scheduling (Eventboard, Condeco claims to sense occupancy
Phoenix has a Condor microphone array that they had set up under their display and could capture sound to at least 26 feet.

Connectrack prototype

Connecttrack has very low wire covers and are about to come out with a cover that can go under the carpet, similar to Thread -- key difference is that this solution can also bundle network cables, and it appears to have a very neat way to bring the power into the room.  I just cannot find them online...
ISmart lecture capture follows the lecturer.
Audience Response System has clickers that look rather outdated but they can cover up to 2000 responders at the same time
The couple of companies I saw for acoustic panels had very creative looking solutions

Waveion

Waveion -- I don't know what it does, but it looks cool!

Las Vegas Sunset

InfoComm in Las Vegas, Day 2

InfoComm 2016

InfoComm is just enormous -- 1000 exhibitors, over 40,000 attendees, way too many square feet, and the conference even has food trucks and its on tv channel -- just mind boggling.

View of Exhibit Hall

I spent almost 6 hours working my way through the exhibit hall - and I am not done yet...
Here are some products that peeked my interest.





Classroom Design:
As you know part of my mission I chose to accept is to find collaborative technologies that will work for the EASL classrooms.  This conference has quite a few, and they are all starting to look rather similar.
Blackbox's Coalesce system    This system looks like it would work best in a conference room setting.
Wolfvision Cynap  promising system that even allows annotation across multiple displayed devices
Qomo's Ormi and Ormiboard:  brand new company that allows for the building of interactive exercises, games, etc - and the students can build, too. I am thinking some of the natural sciences where you need to build molecules, DNA, and other graphically based artifacts.  The software they showed is released June 26, so nothing is quite online about it yet.  They also have a document camera that can be mounted to the wall and stored in a little cabinet when not in use -- an interesting concept I had not seen before.
Epson interactive portable whiteboard table -- can be adjusted from whiteboard to table to easle, making it an interesting option for any class dealing with design.  The table is on wheels but not quite what I would call portable.
Crestron
Phillips D-live
VIA (Kramer): promising system, they think linux collaboration may be possible (for our splinter group on campus), system integrates with Skype for Business, and shared content can be annotated and saved locally.  Document camera feed can be annotated as well.
cyviz:  This Norwegian company focuses on collaboration - what I found interesting was their remote management of and training on their control touch panels
Barco:  Yes, they still have the hockey pucks (Clickshare) but are moving into the same direction of no longer needing that kind of device and using Airplay etc to connect.  Their set-up was nice, with the teacher being able to have up to 8 displays on the main screen, to control which student feed needs to be shared to all, to lock the screens for greater focus

I also found some interesting video conference solution that may work for synchronous distance education:
1 beyond - has a portable system, a concept that appears to pick up momentum
onescreen:  is software based, with the beginning license covering 25 seats that may accomodate quite a few classes.
vyopta for video conference management was in the innovation corner -- they manage video conference traffic across multiple platforms to trouble shoot, analyze data, and claim that their product can cut down on cost.

Finally, some miscellaneous finds:
Flexglass - so flexible you can roll it up and store
IDEA Screen from Chief: I am wondering if they are connected to IDEA paint - the logo looked the same
Brown Innovations has physical cone of silence solutions
Samsung's large displays synced to mobile devices
Mybeam explained to me how their system together with sound masking could create a cone of silence.
Drywall Trapper:  for when you have to cut holes in to the ceiling
Nureva Span sticky note wall uses multiple projectors to create one long interactive wall -- looks quite interesting.


My findings are of course barely scratching the surface - one space is covered in stage light, stage audio system exhibits, with fog machines and light shows (and live music).  One place has an artist's installation:  Refik Anadol's Infinity Room

Infinity Room

Animation display

Another area has lots of switches, wires, tools, different systems to mount displays, and another area has a lot of projection system, with the big screens at front and center.

curved display

Finally, the hall also has an innovation corner with brand new products that you can vote on as the most likely success.

Speaking of large displays -- we zip lined under the largest display last night at the Fremont Street Experience -- quite the cultural experience, rounded out by a visit to the El Cortez casino which is one of the older ones in town.  Just like in the movies...

largest video display at Fremont

zipline

downtown Vegas

downtown Vegas

Praying Mantis at Container Park

Container Park

bizarre place to eat

UBTech and InfoComm 2016 in Las Vegas, Day 1

I am spending a couple of days in Las Vegas to see what kind of new classroom technologies I can find at the UBTech and InfoComm 2016 events.  As this is my first time in Vegas, that in itself is rather overwhelming.
First impression (although I have been told this is an exception) -- my flight was quite the carnival.  With a rather lively flight attendant (I am wondering if he has as his night job a comedy routine) who asked riddles, told jokes, sang, and even asked us to participate in, what he called, low-stakes illegal gambling, the flight was certainly one of the noisier ones I have been on.

My first stop this morning was at the convention center to pick up my badge -- what a massive place and the conference is rather enormous as well although this is not so much about sessions (I have the sense fewer than at Educause) but about gear, so lots of vendors.
To get started, I went to the Exhibit hall at UBTech.  Most of the venues I saw I was familiar with but a couple of items struck me as worth a second look.

For classroom technology:
HoverCam showed me a couple of very compact document cameras but also a movable (on wheels) interactive monitor connected via an extended arm to a lectern shelf on which they have a document camera and a tablet computer.  It looks impressive and rather heavy, can be lowered and raised and may be the ultimate flexible teaching station:  HoverCam CenterStage

A couple of camera folks were showing ways to keep the camera focused on a moving target -- so, similar to what we have been doing with the swivl, but possibly more stable.  Vaddio has a beacon you can hang around your neck to keep the camera trained on you but also some pads to stand on to trigger adjustment of the camera -- I was thinking that that kind of pad might be useful in a larger classroom when students want to be captured on camera.  Another company is using face recognition software to keep the camera trained, so nothing around your neck that may look awkward but 2 minutes of training.  Dycap connects this feature with their lecturecapture system.

At one table, I found mention of Auburn University, in particular the College of Business and their new Financial Training room that is managed using EBS's Alphadidact Digital system

I had a brief discussion with cboard, a company that focuses on student ID cards, and the future of student IDs -- think apps to show you how much money is left on your student card from Tiger dining, where you left your ID card, an app tied to your ID that may substitute as a way to get into buildings and rooms.

I also had a brief chat with IT Training Solutions as a possibility for a different way to do Auburn's required Securing the Human training.  I hope that we can look at their offers more carefully when we decide on the next version of this training.

Las Vegas Trip Fashion Show

Las Vegas Strip the Venetian

Las Vegas Strip Treasure Island

And then I did a brief dip into Vegas atmosphere by strolling through a casino cavern, admiring architecture and baking in the sun.

Distance Education Academy

Over the next two weeks, about 15-20 faculty in the College of Liberal Arts are coming together for our Distance Education Academy, a series of intense workshops to rethink courses that are traditionally taught face-to--face for complete online delivery.  The subject areas range from Art to Theatre, with English, Psychology, Political Science, Journalism, Foreign Languages (Spanish), Philosophy, and Sociology adding to the complexity.

http://detools.wikispaces.com/

We are using Canvas, our learning management system, and have all the participants in it as students so that they can experience all the tools, content delivery, and communication from a student perspective.  With an awesome line-up of guest speakers we are getting perspectives on

• Quality Matters
• Faculty who are teaching online
• Backwards Design
• Copyright
• Accessibility
• Library Resources
• Video/Multimedia integration
• FERPA

Teaching in EASL

Last semester I had the chance to teach real students in an EASL classroom -- so not "just" workshops with faculty who want to rethink their teaching, but first and second year students in a Freshman Composition class.

I could see if what I have been telling faculty, asking them to try out was actually working.  Here some of my experiences.

First of all one big caveat:  as I discovered relatively late that I would teach this class and had not taught this content in, oh, a middling while, I did not go through as rigorous a process of redesigning the course as I suggest needs to happen.  In particular, what I was not able to do as well as I wished was incorporate collaboration and collaborative technologies throughout the entire course.

Still, I was quite happy with student interaction, engagement, preparedness, and, most importantly, learning.   The class was MWF 8-9am, Spring semester -- for some courses that is the proverbial kiss of death in terms of participation, but with a couple of exceptions, my students were in class, ready to work every day.

What did not work that well:
Well, collaboration - students got very comfortable in their first round of groups, and only until they saw that the second set of groups was based in similarity of research topics were they willing to move to a different table.

Classroom technology:  It worked - I just did not use the monitors and monitor sharing capabilities as much as I hoped I would

Modelling resources:  I thought that if I forced them to come to one conference, they would see how useful these are and would do this again -- not.  I thought that if I extended a deadline so that they can go to the Writing Center, they would see how wonderful it is (and they did) and then go back -- not.

Audience Analysis

Rhetorical Triangle

What worked well:
Getting students used to the room:  on the first day, students were talking, writing on glass boards what they remembered learning in their previous writing classes, taking an online quiz in Canvas (yes, they all had a device with them),  The quiz helped me form the first set of groups in terms of diversity of learning/studying style and major

Gallery walks:  we did these a couple of times throughout the semester with different purposes:
1.  Grammar exercise:  every student received a bad sentence from me that she improved on the glass board.  Then students within that group improved on each others' sentences and then moved to the next group of sentences.  This low-stakes exercise helped them remember concise writing without critiquing their own writing.
2.  Thesis improvement and Audience analysis:   a little later in the term, two more gallery walks focused on improving each other's thesis statements and making suggestions on what a particular audience would be like, know, think, feel.
3.  Final presentations:  brochures and posters were presented as a gallery walk, with one half having their materials while the other half roamed the room to listen to the materials, commenting on them in a Google form

Reading ahead of time and working in class:  I am not claiming that everyone read everything for class but with a couple of minutes of thought gathering, we were able to use the readings for useful discussions about rhetorical strategies and how to apply these immediately to their own writing.

Writing in class:  Because we wrote a lot in class, students worked together on revision ideas, had me as a resource, and may not have felt quite as pressured to pull allnighters and turn in bad writing.

Final Exam:  I asked them to write about the lessons/skills/resources that they think they will use in their future courses, with the idea that if they have written it down, they are more likely to do it.  Of course, I have no way of knowing but the items covered were the library databases for future research, the Writing Center, audience analysis, time management in writing a longer draft.

Games and Gamification Summit

The last couple of days, I spent hanging out with other folks at Auburn University who are interested in how gaming, gamification, playing can be integrated into learning.  The Games and Gamification Summit, hosted by the eLearning Guild, explored the big questions associated with games and gamification. In multiple sessions, we learned about

• serious games
• serious game development secrets
• using games to transform learning experiences
• quantitative and qualitative research about gaming and its impact
• exploring the learning in gaming
• game design

The presenters were a mix of higher education faculty who teach game design and corporate game designers.  Quite a few of the examples were focusing on corporate learning - as in, how can I get my employees to practice certain skill sets, learn certain knowledge to improve levels of customer and other services.  The results of our AU collaborative nuggets is at https://padlet.com/auburnonline/augames4learning.

Here some more details

Atlanta's company SillyMonkey discussed how games engineer learning, tapping into our core compulsions to compete, collaborate, win, learn from mistakes -- games make failure compelling:  you want to try again, you are eager to beat the challenge.  However, a game designer needs to find the balance of making the game challenging enough so that the player does not become frustrated.  Later on, another presenter discussed the scaffolded design towards winning the game, with increasing complexity and difficulty of the various levels.

Games are defined as a strategic experience with rules, goals, and fun -- and the goals contain a victory experience.

Serious Games include conflict and rules, are still entertaining but have a different primary purpose.  Think about Civilization, Celebrity Calamity, AYII:  The Cost of Life.

Games take time to develop - rapid content design and publication does not work for game design, but rapid prototyping with multiple revisions is necessary

Games can be explicitly about learning -- and in that case, think about your learning outcomes carefully -- or they can frame the learning to give the brain a break between work/stress and learning/potential stress.

Designing Digitally suggested that we move away from ROI -- Return on Investment - towards ROE -- Return on Engagement.  He reminded us that when folks come to us with disjointed ideas or goals, it is our task to turn this collection of wishes into a coherent vision.  One of the key questions is what is the intrinsic behavior that we want to change -- leading to a discussion about what kind of game/action would get us to this change in behavior.

Games are about discovery -- they appeal to curiosity

Games also satisfy our new trend of instant gratification -- even if that means we spend money so that our carrots ripen faster than the free carrots (think Farmville).

Games allow us to empathize with characters in a story line, creating emotional attachment

Games create loyalty -- you want players to come back

Game design principles include such points as

MAD -- Mechanics, Dymanics, Aesthetics:  The mechanics of the game are the basic variables (eg, cards, board game), the dynamics are variations that are introduced to the mechanics, and the aesthetics are the look and feel.

Think through all permutations, parallel story lines, what player personae you are likely to encounter (Bartle's player types or Amy Jo Kim's Social Action Matrix)

Assessment is achieved through the points/levels that can be first and foremost seen and experienced by the player.

Who plays online?  We think of gamers as young and male -- 48% of over 50-year-olds play games, 44% of gamers are female -- but these groups are not as heavily invested in massive online games like World of Warcraft but are instead playing casual games -- like online card and puzzle games.

Only 20% of coroporations are using games for learning at this point - some of these companies build games where the thene of the game is related to the learning outcomes, but others simply use the game as an incentive.  Positive outcome for either technique:  corporation's learning management systems have been underused, and with the introduction of games, employees are now aware of the lms and use it on a regular basis.

Some of the tools and game engines mentioned throughout the days (including some companies)

Adobe Captivate:  http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/education.html -- unfortunately, this product is not part of the Adobe Creative Cloud

Articulate Storyline:  https://www.articulate.com/products/storyline-why.php

Gamebryo:  http://www.gamebryo.com/

PowerPoint -- making choices -- here are some templates:  http://powerpointgames.wikispaces.com/PowerPoint+Game+Templates

xAPI/Tincan:  http://tincanapi.com/?adgroupname=experience_api&campaigname=tin_can&keyword=xapi&gclid=CjwKEAjw6_q5BRCOp-Hj-IfHwncSJABMtDaiV8Rx5qNZ0Dxbrajn4aJy_tirae59kypVPXlizGq7PhoCHqTw_wcB

Gamemaker:  http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker

Unity 3D:  https://unity3d.com/

Axonify:  http://www.axonify.com/?gclid=CjwKEAjw6_q5BRCOp-Hj-IfHwncSJABMtDaielryvWwjoog9yNqSQApZBWqzfAJ0f0bSnxBWRb5INhoCIznw_wcB

Knowledge Guru:  http://www.theknowledgeguru.com/

Balsamiq:  https://balsamiq.com/

Powermockup:  https://www.powermockup.com/

Kahoot:  https://getkahoot.com/

and here is one to play:

https://padlet.com/auburnonline/augames4learning - to identify strong passwords

Educause Connect in Miami

First of - this was my first trip to Miami, which in itself was interesting.

Lizard on the side of the road

And, this was my first Educause Connect - a conference that is even more than the annual event focused on fostering networking and creating interactive sessions to engage the audience with the content and with others who are grappling with similar challenges.

First session:  Ball State University's Kyle Parker showed us the thought process and the possibilities that various sources of data can provide.  He gave us a set of cards, each representing a different variable (student, location, LMS, institutional data and a wild card) and the goal was for us to come up with scenarios that would combine these cards into different data sets to show students more options for student success.

Cards with variables

For example, the somewhat obvious one is that a student is receiving a failing grade and gets notified that s/he needs to visit an advisor -- but, with the location variable, this notification may happen when the student is actually walking past the building where this advisor's office is.
Imagine the possibilities, though -- student walks by the Wellness Center and gets reminded, because there is a hole in the calendar, that a spinning class is about to start.
Student walks by the library and gets a note that an exhibit is going on related to a class she is in.
Student is at home and gets a note that the bus is on the way, just in time for first class.

Second session:  Innovation at Every Step, organized by Karlis Kaugars (SUNY College at Oneonta, and Somahy Kim Wu (U of North Carolina Charlotte), focused us on being innovative and, more importantly, on strategic considerations to sell an innovation -- what stakeholders do you need to worry about?  What needs to let go if you want to start something new?  How is the innovation aligning with institutional values, institutional distinction, and individual values?  The most difficult question was probably what we could stop doing, providing to our end users, and no one would miss it - because that is where money and resources can be saved.

throwable microphone

One cool feature in all the sessions was the throwable microphone to make it easier to pass the voice - though none of us were truly brave enough to throw it.

Third session:  The Tools to Learn:  Classroom Technology Section, was presented by Paul Stoll, Arizona State, and James Crawford, Lone Star College System.  Its focus was on discussing options for classroom technologies and showing the spectrum for the participants to appreciate.

After lunch we moved into the poster sessions, where I was presenting on the way Auburn collaborates to implement change across multiple university units:

Poster on collaboration at Auburn University

I can proudly say that my poster session was the only interactive one as I forced folks to think with sticky notes.

And, as a nice surprise, Daniela Marghitu, from our Computer Science Department, was also presenting her poster on Leveraging University IT Resources toward Enhancing IT Courses, showing how she is using Office365 and its resources through the university to give students the skills to work effectively with Office applications.

sticky note activity on collaboration

The afternoon session reminded us how important, essential, and necessary digital accessibility is -- to quote the presenters Andrew Graf from TeamDynamix and Harriette Spiegel, U of Tennessee at Martin, digital accessibility is the wheelchair ramp for online content, and wheelchair ramps make all of our lives easier.
The presentation reminded us of the key laws we need to be aware of, the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, section 504, the 1990 Americans with Disability Act (ADA), and 1998s Section 508.
For any of us who put content online, whether in a blog, in a learning management system, or through other online tools, we need to add best practices to our work.  Auburn University's learning management system, for example, automatically uses the name of the image file as its alt tag - so you don't have to worry about adding this information, but you do have to remember to give your image file a meaningful name.
Besides the alt tag for images, also consider using Headings and Styles as a screen reader will be able to guide a blind person more effectively through a text with these than with headlines that are simply bolded or set for a large font.
Everyone has the right to be able to access information -- it is the law.

I am wondering in what classes it makes sense to add the discussion about universal design and accessibility - ideas?
For the university, this also means that we need to demand from online services and tools, and from our software vendors that their products follow universal design.  I believe we now have a mechanism in place at Auburn that will ensure we purchase digital technologies with this consideration in mind.

Final session:  Preparing the Enterprise for the Cloud:  Adoption Strategies, Balancing Stakeholders, and Satisfying Students, organized by Bob Flynn, Indiana University Bloomington, and Andrew Keating, Internet2, gided us through some role playing of different stakeholders at the table who are trying to figure out what cloud services for file sharing area feasible.  Needless to say, we discovered that not one size/solution fits all -- so I am wondering if Auburn does not need to think about a second cloud storage solution that makes cross-institutional sharing of files and sharing or large files easier than what we currently have in place.

Finally, some pictures from Miami, both nature and architecture, old and new:

Banyan , one of the oldest in the country

Freedom tower, a little younger than the tree

highrises

more higrises

Cuban refugee

yellow flowers

Miami looks just like in the movies, and the idea that every day thousands of people move through this city to get onto one of the cruise ships lining up neatly in the harbor every morning is rather mind boggling.  Next time, I need to spend some more time on museums, exhibits, and art.