Freepath

Freepath seems like a wonderful tool for presenters and instructors. I see one downfall with this being a download able application. I would like to see someone use this then critique it.

Animoto is the s@#&

I mean check it out
this is my family link

Howard Rheingold Social Media Extraordinaire

If you have read my blog before you may have seen my post on writing objectives. The only reason I bring it up is that BA the coworker that I spoke about actually pointed me in the direction of Howard Rheingold by providing me this link. After reading the blog listed before I became interested in Howard's Social media classroom as seen below and decided to do a bit more research.

There is not much that I can write about Howard that he or someone else has not already written. So instead here is a link to his profile where you will find loads of info about what he has done and the books he has written. If you watched the video above you will see some basic info about Social Media classroom. This is what hooked be because with all the WEB 2.0 tools around and the lack of consistency and no one place to view it all Howard is working to produce that solution.

If you have not been able to tell from his profile or his general involvements Howard is quite the busy individual. So through some conviniantly timed instant messages I was able to get a bit more detail about Howard and that transcript is below.

Greg: Hey Greg again you think you may have time to answer random questions for my school project via IM?

Howard: Sure.

Greg: cool

Howard: Now is good

Greg: Tell me about what you do?

Howard: I explore, understand, and communicate about the individual, social, political, economic meanings of communication technology revolutions.

Greg: How did you get to where you are at in your career?

Howard: I have been a freelance writer since I was 23. In the early 1980s, I sought information about computers because I had heard you could use them instead of typewriters. I found my way to Xerox PARC and wrote Tools for Thought, which is on my website. That was a 1985 look at where people and PCs would be in 2000. The entire book is online. You can look back at my prediction of the future from the future I predicted. In the process of writing that book, I got online.

That led to writing "Virtual Communities" for Whole Earth Review in 1987 -- the first use of that word. That book is online as well. Both at rheingold.com.

Greg: Great info

How do you keep up with trends and keep yourself on the cutting edge?

Why elearning and distance education?

Howard: That's such an interesting question that I made a series of videos about how I spend my time online. I haven't finished the series, but you can find the first of them in the archives at http://vlog.rheingold.com

Education because I believe the answer to "are digital media and networks good for individuals, communities, democracies," is "it depends on who knows what about how to use available media . So I'm teaching. I'm not so much interested in distance education -- although that is one of my interests -- as in the use of social media to teach social media theory.

Gotta get back to work now.

Greg: thanks I will email the last 2 questions and look up the rest

Continued on 9/29/2008

Greg: Howard I wanted to check again just to make sure that I have your permission to use our conversation in print? I also wanted to make sure you got the email that I would like to partipate in the COP?

Howard: Yes, you have my permission. I don't have access to the list, but if you emailed and asked to participate, I saved your email.

Greg: perfect thanks

So back to the title "Social Instruction Extraordinaire" back in 1993 Howard was credited with creating the term virtual community. To me he was way ahead of his time or at least had the ability to come to the realization how important socialization is to learning. Currently I have been working on a project at work to start to integrate WEB 2.0 tools into our instructional workflow. Due to this research I have tested many tools that have been great and many that our bad. It is my hope that when Social Media classroom launches it will be as revolutionary as some of the work that Howard has already produced.

Jing

Jing I hope it is as good as it looks. I use Snag it quite often and what I can tell you is it works pretty well. I have never been a fan of the camtasia product because they keep raising the price with no more value add. I hope this is a revolution for techsmith and they do not suck you in and jam you later.

Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere this is a pretty cool technologies and can definitely change the way we do things in and instructor lead forum. I can see the future for schools and corporations using this same type of technologies to engage and wake the sleepers.

As far as web conference though... I can do with out. Most web conference technologies have some sort of pulling built into them so that is not the right audience.

Overall a good product and I like the free price point (30 users).

Diigo

Diigo like Delicious are pretty lame. I do not feel that they serve a great purpose. Many ning's or social network pages have link list capabilities. I think this is more part of the growing trend of unorganized tools that allow more ads to get in your head. I axed nings before because you can accomplish the same things with out of the box social networks.

So here is the problem. We need more innovation with integration. I think I'm pretty tired of all the half baked solutions.

Blog Review

http://leisa-what-was-i-thinking.blogspot.com/
http://chadlynch.blogspot.com/
http://ideasonelearning.blogspot.com/
http://katnatlin.wordpress.com/
http://iltctaylor.wordpress.com/
http://bethslabodaidr.blogspot.com/
http://jessicastrendsinelearning.blogspot.com/
http://kerryescobado.blogspot.com/

Well I would have to say it is interesting looking at all these different blogs that are about the same things. Many of them I was able to start a post or add to a comment thread. I would say the most least effective part about reviewing all of these blogs is dialog. When I say dialog I mean contiuned dialog. Every blog has 3-4 new postings a week that it is hard to create deep discussion and remember where you started.

Blog Roll

Well I figured I should try a blog roll. If you are viewing the blog via RSS like the one I have at work you will not see. On the left side of this page under School Blog's you will see a list of all the class peeps. If I left you off please let me know. Maybe this will help in my review pursuit.

Writing Objectives

As part of my individual development plan (IDP) at work I tasked myself with learning how to write objectives. I worked with a colleague of mine (to protect the innocent) we will call him Utah, on a recent project and decided to use him as a resource to help me complete this portion of my IDP. I felt the best way to document the interview would be on this blog because not only is it funny but I learned a lot You must know that we started the conversation with how we write objectives at our company and then we transitioned to how he writes objectives to these guideline or constraints.

First of all we defined objectives as observable/measurable behaviors that can bridge the gap between desired performance and actual performance.

Examples that were used were based on his 6 year old son (here is where the humor comes in)

• Zipping up your pants
• tying your shoes
• peeing on the floor

The gap that we need to figure out is why are these behaviors being performed or not. We focused the rest of the conversation on peeing on the floor.

You need to ask what are things that can be done to bridge the gap and stop the behavior of peeing on the floor like:

• aming
• what are the the problems associated with peeing on the floor
• problem with mom slipping on the floor when it is wet

Back to the 2 types of objectives:

• Enabling = goal "peeing in the toilet"
• Terminal = actual objective "aim straight while peeing in the toilet"

When writing the above objectives first consider the behavior then look for resources such as subject matter experts (SME's) to help you establish what the objectives may be. Schedule a meeting and interview your SME's most of the time you will get lots of information that will help you successfully write your objectives. From the dialogue you will get many goal statements or enabling objectives you need to make sure to take the conversation a step further to determine who to meet your enabling objectives with your terminal ones. Once you have considered the information from the SME's move on to the actual objective writing. Utah provided me a resource that he created based on his knowledge of Bloom's taxonomy which with his permission I provided below:

Bloom's Taxonomy
Level 1: Knowledge
Competence	Information gathering Remembering The recall of specifics, processes
Skills	Recall of information Knowledge of dates, events, places Knowledge of major ideas
Verbs	Arrange, collect, describe, define, draw, duplicate, examine, identify, label, list, locate, memorize, name, order, quote, recognize, recall, recite, repeat, reproduce, select, show, state, tell, tabulate, who, when, where, write
Questions	Who? What? When? Where? How? Describe
Level 2: Comprehension
Competence	Understanding of information The "knows" the material and can use it. Yet they cannot relate it to other material or see its broader implications The lowest level of understanding
Skills	Understanding information Grasp meaning Translate knowledge into new context Interpret facts, compare, contrast Order, group, infer causes Predict consequences
Verbs	Associate, change, classify, compare, confirm, contrast, defend, describe, differentiate, discuss, distinguish, estimate, explain, express, extend, generalize, illustrate, indicate, infer, interpret, locate, match, paraphrase, predict, relate, report, restate, review, select, summarize, transform, translate
Questions	Retell
Level 3: Application
Competence	Making use of knowledge The use of abstractions (for example, principles, ideas, theories) in particular and concrete situations
Skills	Use information Use methods, concepts, theories in new situations Solve problems using required skills or knowledge
Verbs	Apply, calculate, change, choose, classify, collect, complete, demonstrate, discover, dramatize, draw, employ, examine, experiment, illustrate, interpret, make, model, modify, operate, paint, practice, prepare, produce, relate, report, schedule, show, sketch, solve, use, write
Questions	Why is it significant?
Level 4: Analysis
Competence	Separate knowledge The breakdown of a communication into its constituent elements such that the relations among the ideas are made explicit
Skills	Seeing patterns Organization of parts Recognition of hidden meanings Identification of components
Verbs	Analyze, appraise, arrange, calculate, categorize, classify, compare, connect, construct, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, divide, examine, experiment, explain, infer, investigate, order, point out, question, research, select, separate, sub-divide, survey, text, take a part
Questions	What are the parts or features? Classify according to x Outline/diagram How does x compare/contrast with y? What evidence can you list for x?
Level 5: Synthesis
Competence	Linking knowledge Working with parts and combining them in such a way as to constitute a structure
Skills	Use old ideas to create new ones Generalize from given facts Relate knowledge from several areas Predict, draw conclusions
Verbs	Add to, arrange, assemble, collect, combine, compose, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, generalize, hypothesize, integrate, invent, manage, modify, organize, plan, prepare, produce, propose, rearrange, rewrite, role-play, set up, substitute, what if, write
Questions	What would you predict/infer from y? What ideas can you add to x? How would you create/design a new z? What might happen if you combined w? What solutions would you suggest for x?
Level 6: Evaluation
Competence	Judging the outcome Judgments about the value of material and methods for the given purposes
Skills	Compare and discriminate between ideas Assess value of theories, presentations Make choices based on reasoned argument Verify value of evidence Recognize subjectivity
Verbs	Appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose, compare, conclude, convince, core, criticize, critique, defend, decide, discriminate, estimate, evaluate, explain, grade, judge, predict, measure, rank, rate, recommend, relate, select, solve, summarize, support, test, value, weigh
Questions	Do you agree? What do you think about? What is the most important? Place the following in order of priority How would you decide about What criteria would you use to assess z?

He advised that he keeps an exact copy of the tool above at his desk and looks at it frequently when writing objectives. He did make it very clear to me that when writing your objectives it is important to keep your assessment in mind. If you cannot asses the objectives appropriately then you will need to write them in such away that you can. Thinking back to our situation with the 6 year old peeing on the floor we considered some of the following objectives at different levels in the taxonomy.

Level 1

Identify the importance of peeing in the toilet

List reasons why it is important to pee in the toilet

Level 3

Interpret mom's reaction when you pee on the floor

Level 5

Pretend you are mom and you pee on the floor. How would you react?

Level 6

Which is worse soda or pee on the floor.

From Utah's experience 90 percent of the objectives that he has seen in a corporate environment range from level's 1-3. When writing your objectives you need to make sure that you try to use some from each level but it is important to remember if your enabling objective is a needs a level 3 result then your terminal objectives need to be level 1 then 2. Utah also mentioned that it is important to make note of the level that you are using while writing your objectives so you can balance them out.

*Remember the higher level objectives are harder to asses whether it is for instructor lead or distance education.

Some additional words of advice when writing objectives is:

• look at other objectives before writing your own
• work with the SME's to develop them
• prepare for review once they are written (come with thick skin)

Overall this was a good conversation I was able to take many of the teachings that he provide during the interview into refection on past experiences. I hope you are able to get some valuable tips too.

Skrbl

Skrbl is to much hype for not alot of follow through. When I first went to the homepage I was not very impressed it was very messy and not very organized. I did not sign up for an account because they have the live applet code at the bottom of the page.  As stated by the page the live applet is just like the real deal. So I'm here to tell you it sucked. On the main page it states that it competes with the GE whiteboard app, the only advantage it has is the sharing feature, which is not all that great.