Keith Newhouse:

Since Project One I’ve decided that I need to have a separate Instructional Goal for the course than for my module that will be worked on as a part of this class as I hope to use the module created here to help me create future modules. The Instructional Goal of the course to introduce the learners to various software programs to increase their productivity and creativity in teaching undergraduate and graduate classes.

For the purpose of this class I’ve come up with an Instructional Goal, Design Goal and three objectives for the first module. The Instructional Goal is to give Professors a general working knowledge of Macromedia/Adobe Dreamweaver and my design goal is to do it in a way that Professors can complete it in small chunks, on their own time and have their learning lead up to something useful to them (which also secretly will be useful to my department in organizing the College of Education’s website and bringing otherwise missing information to visitors to the website).

Even though the course will be self paced for professors, I wanted to make it so that Professors could measure their success and have come up with three objectives for the module:

The learner will be able to understand the basics of using Dreamweaver.
The learner will be able to explore and use various features of Dreamweaver
The learner will be able to create a Professional Web Presence using Dreamweaver

Besides being a performance based assessment, the Professional Web Presence will then be used by my department to inform visitors about the quality of faculty that we have at the College of Education and will act as the professor’s contact center with the website. The College of Education website at present is a design nightmare and finding any information about faculty is nearly impossible at the moment. By having professors attach their CV’s, contact information and anything else their students and other visitors may want to know on their Professional Web Presence, I’m hoping this may help clean up our site at the same time as giving the faculty a way to help others get in touch with them.

Deciding which technology to use is always a difficult task, but trying to come up with ideal technology to create the perfect class is even more difficult. After long contemplation I’ve finally come to my perfect list of technology if cost, time and technology constraints were not an issue. The ideal scenario for my class would be web based filled with instructive interactive media including a specially designed for the course version of the software being taught, in this case Macromedia/Adobe Dreamweaver. To make sure that faculty had all the help they could possibly want I would have a staff working around the clock over video conference answering all faculty questions as well as being available at a walk-in center and telephone hotline for those who may not want to communicate via video conferencing.

Of course just like in most cases, I can’t have my dream class and need to cut back greatly on that plan. Using the ACTIONS model, I’ve cut my class back to a web based Learning Management System to organize the course (In this case moodle), with web based print, graphics and maybe a screen cast video or two (to be added after initial testing of the module). As I am the only staff available at this time, support will have to be email based or done through Help Desk software (Open Source=Free). I also would like to create a wiki and forum to make things more interactive for the learners and so that they can learn from others who have completed the module and share their own ideas.

For the components of the class please see http://www.actsoup.dreamhosters.com/orientation/course/view.php?id=4

I’ve created this moodle class as a self directed course, primarily learner-content course with voluntary learner-learner interaction and learner-instructor interaction when necessary. The content is the most important factor of the class however I’ve included wikis and forums to aid in the learners interacting with each other and I am always available for learner-instruction by email.

Along with being a graduate student in educational technology, I work as a graduate assistant in the College of Education at the University of Florida. Although Distance Education is probably not the “buzz word” in my job, I can see some real benefits to online learning in my Instructional Technology department.
In the Instructional Technology department I have two coworkers who deal mostly with programming the College of Education website, while my duties mostly concentrate on helping professors use technology to support their classes and research. My coworkers already play a large part in Distance Education as some of their programming skill is used to improve the College of Education’s Distance Education classes. Up until now however, my job has had very little to do with online learning. Through this course, I hope to change that.
My work with professors can range from creating DVDs to teaching them how to use computer voice transcription software. While a lot of the requests are specific to the professor, there are some requests that I feel like I’ve answered for every professor in the college and I’ve definitely answered for the same professors hundreds of times. Right now I am answering many of these on an individual basis, but since starting my job I’ve been trying to work on getting a few workshops where professors could be taught at the same time.
This idea was met with mixed reactions. Although I have had a few professors interested in workshops on various topics, the majority have said that they don’t have the time or desire to take extra time to learn about technology. Maybe if professors had these tutorials online either as separate tutorials or part of a Distance Education course, they might be more interested.
Of course putting an entire course of tutorials online without even knowing if there would be any interest is a risky and possibly useless task. So for the purpose of this assignment I want to narrow this down to one tutorial to test the waters and see if there is any interest to professors.
The request that I get most often is to assist professors in setting up Macromedia Dreamweaver to work with the school’s web server and teach professors how to use it to create personal websites and sites for their departments. So far this has just meant doing the setup work for them, and then giving a face to face tutorial that I created while teaching four face to face sections of EME4406 Integrating Technology into the Secondary Classroom. I needed an easy way to teach basic Dreamweaver concepts while having the students create something they could actually use at the same time. Through my lesson, the students created their first Professional Web Presence.
One issue that my department has faced is that professors expect my department to just do their technology work for them either because they are too busy or are scared of it or just don’t want to deal with it, which is not what we are there for. My department’s mission is to work very similar to a corporate training office, we are there to help professors with their professional development in technology and help them get comfortable with technology so that they can accomplish their goals themselves. While we don’t really stick to our mission as most of our requests involve performing duties for professors, whenever we can we try to teach as well as do. If a professor asks us to edit a video for them, we try to get them to learn how to do it themselves either before or while we do it so that next time they can do it on their own. Although I won’t know until I’ve tried, I think putting the Dreamweaver tutorial online will give a better idea of our mission to teach compared to the perception that we should be doing all jobs related to technology for them.
As most of the professors’ main reason for not wanting to learn about Dreamweaver is that they don’t have enough time, putting the tutorial online should allow them the time because they can do it whenever they want, wherever they want. If they can set aside a few minutes every day, they’ll be using Dreamweaver in no time. Even after they’ve completed the tutorial, having it online lets it act as a reference so they can return and get help anytime they want.
Besides the fact that it’s cost effective for my department freeing me up for more important tasks, having an online version of the tutorial is beneficial to the busy professors because they can complete it on their own time, and as it’s always available they can later return to it as a reference.
An online tutorial would be extremely cost effective as well allowing me to perform other duties in my department. In 2009 the college will be scrutinized by the National Council for Accreditation of Teachers Association, making sure that everything at the college is being run according to standards. One of my priority jobs at the moment is creating a website showing how we are meeting or exceeding the standards and cleaning up the College of Education website to help get it up to standards. Giving teachers and online tutorial would free up more of my time for the Accreditation website that would normally be spent holding professors’ hands through the Dreamweaver process. This week alone I’ve given the tutorial to two professors which if online I probably would have been able to spend at least an hour or two more working on the website.
Right now Instructional Technology has no website for itself and currently serves just the University of Florida College of Education. Creating a Distance Education program in my department could help us expand to create friends and partners in other schools Instructional Technology departments allowing us to get a better idea of what is involved in Instructional Technology in other parts of the country and even other parts of the world.
Although the College of Education has an excellent Distance Education program run by some very dedicated and creative people with some help from my coworkers, our Instructional Technology department’s Distance Education is practically non-existant. The closest thing we have at the moment is a couple of “Knowledge Books” that are accessed through the Help Desk, and are only available to students and teachers in the College of Education. Although the Knowledge Books that we have created are useful and on some good topics like setting up and checking the college email, and how to use the survey program the college purchased for our use, there are very few of them, and they are not advertised at unless we receive a request for them.
Using Distance Education in Instructional Technology, I think we can connect more with professors by helping them get more comfortable with technology and making them want to explore and use more. Right now many of them are afraid to use iMovie, but with a little encouragement and by teaching them how to explore new software, we could have faculty pumping out Final Cut Pro videos, or creating full fledged websites, or even wanting to learn how to create their own programs if we created an online Programming Guide.
I would be very curious to see if we could develop relationships with other colleges as well. There are all sorts of conferences around the country dealing with educational technology for students and K-12 faculty, but I’ve never heard of any conferences for how to teach higher education faculty to use technology. We could have a whole new area of research.
Even in the National Staff Development Council website, compared to K-12, there is very little about higher education faculty, who are very different to work with from K-12 teachers. I think there is a need for either a brand new council or a division of the NSDC specifically for professors based on some of the NSDC ideals. Sections of the NSDC site can be used but need to be rewritten for professors.

Apple

Air Ultra Portable Macbook? I wish I was there… Next year. ^_^

Just a few tools that I came across today to start the new semester (and new year) and make life a little easier.

Chore Wars takes the mundane chores around the house (or in your business, ed tech classes, etc.) and turns them into a game earning you experience points for each chore completed. Anyone from Ed Tech wanna play this semester?

10 sources for learning various computer languages online. I’m thinking about trying to pick up RUBY again.

And a couple of class management websites (I’ll try them out later or let me know if you like one over the others):
http://www.mynoteit.com
http://www.notely.net
http://www.gradefix.com/

Added a Tumblr RSS feed on the sidebar. Really interesting little program that also works with IMified. I’m surprised it doesn’t have an official plugin through Wordpress though.  I think what will most likely happen with this is that when I find something interesting I’ll tumble it first, and then at some point organize the tumbles into entries here if they’re relevant and good enough to blog about.

So I’m on wordpress now and I’ve found a really nice theme that I think looks great and has a lot of great features and navigation. Look for tags to be used from here on out. I’m thinking personal, school, and general ed tech related would be the three major ones. Still planning to bring over my edugadget blog at some point but not a priority at the moment. I’m more interested in getting some good ed tech posts going.

I’m posting this from a new website I’ve just signed up for IMified. It lets you access various applications from an IM. You sign up simply by IMing a bot and from there you can choose which webapps you want to be able to access from it. I’ve set up blogger, google calendar, delicious (which I plan to start using today), twitter (which is set up to update my facebook status as well) and remember the milk. While it’s probably not the best for updating my blog all the time as you can only add text and using Adium I can’t separate my paragraphs, for a quick blog post it seems pretty good. Hopefully it will be something to help me at least keep up a text version of my blog for the future.

iPhone watch out! Samsung is in the works in creating a new smartphone that’s going to kick your butt. The F700 looks a lot like the iPhone, but has a slide out qwerty keyboard (cuz who wants to put their thumbs all over the touch screen?). Not sure if it has all of the iPhone features, for example I know it doesn’t have wifi which is probly one of the biggest negatives to it, but one of the biggest positives to it is that at this time Cingular does not have complete rights to selling it! Please pick it up Verizon! ^_^ Oh yeah, I’ve decided along with most of my family that we’re switching to Verizon in May. Consumer Reports has named it the best in Florida and I tried one of my friend’s Verizon cells from my apartment and got through first try with crystal clear sound.

Other great features of this phone include 5.0 mp camera which would eliminate a whole of weight and make more pocket space along with of course some kind of mp3 player, not sure how big yet.

http://www.samsung.com/PressCenter/PressRelease/PressRelease.asp?seq=20070208_0000320566

Also from Samsung is another really cool little smartphone with a dual slider keyboard that slides out into a full qwerty or slides down for a regular phone number pad. Also with touch screen and really pretty looking. ^_^ Not quite as many features but if the other one gets picked up by Cingular at least still another option of a nice phone for Verizon to pick up.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/samsung-sghf520-cellphone-slides-up-and-down-side-to-side-rubiks-and-iphone-clone-235788.php

So I was surfing around this morning and came across a few articles talking about Apple charging users with Macbooks or other intel Macs for a software upgrade to unlock wireless 802.11n capabilities, so I was wondering how many of you with these Macs are planning on paying the $2 for it. Apparently they’re only charging because law says they have to. If you’d like to read more, check out http://news.com.com/Apple+to+charge+two+bucks+for+faster+Wi-Fi/2100-1044_3-6151281.html?tag=cnetfd.mt

There is nothing listed on Apple’s site yet about the charge, just the benefits of the new wireless: http://www.apple.com/wireless/80211/

So first I just want to thank Vasa for his insider info on wii this weekend in Gville. I’m so tempted to get one and maybe by Sunday if I’m feeling better (I have Strep… again) I’ll get out to buy one, especially as I finished Kingdom Hearts 2 yesterday (44 hours with the Ultima Weapon and Donald and Goofy’s ultimate weapons as well ^_^)

In other wii news, as if we didn’t have enough reasons to buy one, take a look at Engadget’s latest project, The Wii Laptop! I WANT ONE is all I can say! http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/the-wii-laptop/ and I really want to see how they did it, or better yet if they’re going to start selling wii laptop creation kits.

On another note, I know I still haven’t written my over the break update, but it’s coming at some point, I promise. hehe