Each year, the New Media Consortium brings together a team of experts to discuss trends in technology, especially as related to educational contexts.

From the NMC release:

On January 19, 2010, the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) released the 2010 Horizon Report at the ELI Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas. The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the NMC’s Horizon Project, a long-term research project that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have considerable impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry within higher education.

The seventh edition in this annual series is again a collaboration between the NMC and ELI. Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on campuses within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years.

This year’s report was released at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative conference in Austin, and includes some great things to explore:

• mobile computing – handheld and highly portable devices, able to connect to networks from anywhere
• open content – educational content shared freely, for use and reuse by others
• electronic books – paperless, digital books will finally become as useful as dead-trees versions
• augmented reality – using mobile technology and ubiquitous networking to provide realtime data to enhance interpretation of real places and scenarios
• gesture-based computing – using real-world gestures (waving, pointing, etc…) to control software and interact with others. Wii Tennis…
• visual data analysis – providing rich, interactive visualizations of complex, even realtime data

Grab your copy of the report, or view it online.

Scott Leslie was at the ELI conference, and interviewed several of the NMC board members who contributed to the report. Here’s his video of their conversations:

The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning just released a special issue, focusing on open education and open access. There are several articles in the issue that are well worth reading, giving a strong background into the history of open education, and the possibilities for engagement.

From the issue’s table of contents:

Editorial

Research Articles

Open Access Week

There are many applications that are billed as “ePortfolio management” systems – but most are really complicated, or reduce the process of building an ePortfolio to an exercise in paint-by-numbers and fill-in-the-blanks. What is really needed is a flexible, dynamic, highly personalized presentation, crafted by an individual or a small group over time.

The simplest incarnation of this design is in using a hosted blog website as an ePortfolio – taking advantage of the dynamic nature of a blogging application to craft a set of pages containing any content imaginable, in order to represent yourself (or your group) however is needed.

Tyler Sticka recently gave a presentation at WordCamp Portland 2009, where he describes the implementation of a personal portfolio using the WordPress blogging software.

Skip the first 3 and a half minutes, unless you’re a fan of hipster geekiness, but the rest of the presentation is really useful.

There are lots of options available for creating and hosting an ePortfolio:

• UCalgaryBlogs.ca (WordPress, hosted on campus here at UofC)
• WordPress.com (WordPress, hosted in the States, with millions of users
• Google Sites

Although online tests are often associated with student assessment, online testing tools can be used in many different ways. Yes, online assessment is possible, allowing for students to complete tests for grades. On the other hand, online quiz tools can also be used for collecting information from students such as their understanding of course content prior, during and after the course. These same principles could also be applied to individual class or topic. Knowing what the students understand is usefully to gauge and anticipate what information should be covered in class. The results of such self-tests can also be presented back to the students to show that you recognize where they are at with the content.

Online tests can be created in Blackboard with the results organized and summarized in the GradeCenter. Breeze has a similar but less robust testing feature, and is intended for student self-assessment and feedback only. To create online tests in Drupal take a look at the quiz module for a basic quiz tool.

Research articles or other resources found online through the UofC Library databases can be great additions to course content for students, or even shared among colleagues. The problem I have encountered is that the URL in a browser address bar for such resources cannot be copied and pasted because the generated URL is for one time use only. Luckily, there is something called a persistent link available that can be used to direct students to the resource. Although persistent links can be used anywhere, I will write to using them in Blackboard.

The Library has put together some excellent resources that can be found at http://library.ucalgary.ca/services/information-faculty/creating-persistent-urls that take into account the different databases available. Once the persistent link is found, the one issue is that the URL can be very long and complicated. So the first step is to make sure the entire link is copied. To put the link nicely into a Blackboard course:

1. Login to your course and go to a content area
2. Click Add External Link
3. In the Name field, enter a short name
4. In the URL field, paste the entire persistent link
5. Enter a description if you want into the Text field
6. Click Submit
7. Test your link to make sure it works

Of course, copyright is always on our minds and again the Library has come through with some vital information at http://library.ucalgary.ca/services/faculty/placing-reserve-readings/ereserves.

The New Media Consortium, in collaboration with EDUCAUSE, released the annual Horizon Report this January. The document describes trends and innovations in education and educational technology, providing detailed overviews, investigating relevance for teaching, learning, research, or creative expression, citing examples and supporting resources. It’s a fantastic overview of the state of the art(s), and should be considered required reading for anyone interested in the implications of technological development on the practices of teaching and learning.

This is the fifth annual report, and all previous reports are still available online for reference.

In the 2009 report, there are three time frames defined, with probable (or at least likely) developments described for each one:

• One year or less
  • mobiles
  • cloud computing
• Two to three years
  • geolocation
  • the personal web
• Four to five years
  • semantic-aware applications
  • smart objects

The report is available online in web page format, as well as a downloadable/printable PDF document.

When George Siemens was on campus last week giving a presentation at the TLC, he mentioned a handbook that his group at UManitoba had just released. From the preface of the handbook:

Over the last decade, in seminars, conferences, and workshops, Peter Tittenberger and I have had the opportunity to explore the role of technology in transforming learning.

From conversations during these engagements, a set of concerns has emerged:

1. Educators express interest in improving their teaching and learning practices, particularly emphasizing the need to improve engagement of learners (online or in-class).
2. While concerned about improving teaching and learning, educators generally resist:
   • Advanced pedagogical discussions that are not readily transferable to the online or face-to-face classroom

   • Technology-heavy hype and suggestions that the social element of learning can somehow be replaced.

This Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning (HETL) has been designed as a resource for educators planning to incorporate technologies in their teaching and learning activities.

HETL has been developed for a workshop delivered to Athabasca University faculty and reflects several years work with Peter at the Learning Technologies Centre at University of Manitoba.

Distance and online universities such as Athabasca, are well positioned to play a bridging role between tradition and emergence in transforming higher education. Universities that recognize the value of online learning and are able to “get the model right” will be well positioned to respond creatively to developing change pressures.

To extend the dialogue on the concepts expressed in this book, and to ensure information is current, this wiki has been set up to solicit feedback, contributions, reactions, and present updates.

This workbook also supports and leads into the Certificate in Emerging Technologies for Learning offered by University of Manitoba’s Learning Technologies Centre and Extended Education.

The handbook is a fantastic overview of trends and technologies, and what it all might mean for teachers, learners, and administrators.

It’s available as a handy web page, or as a downloadable/printable PDF document.

When integrating online activities into a course, it’s important to clarify what is expected from all participants. How do the instructors define “participating”? What exactly is expected from students? From instructors? How will everyone know if they are participating at the level that is expected? If not, what are the repercussions and implications? How will the activity be graded?

One way to help everyone to understand expectations, and to define and describe levels of performance, is to develop a rubric. A well designed rubric lays out the criteria that instructors will use to assess performance in the activities, as well as defining the parameters for various levels of performance. Sharing the rubric with the entire class early in the process helps everyone understand what is expected, what roles they need to fulfill as part of the activities, and how their performance will affect their grades and other assessment.

Rainer Knopff developed a rubric for use in his political science courses, which integrate a blended learning approach with students participating in online discussions and collaborative inquiry to extend the classroom activities.

Paul Pival just linked to a great video presentation put together by the North Carolina State University Libraries, which describes what Wikipedia is, and how it works, from an academic point of view. If you have (under) 6 minutes, check out the video.

Click the image to view the video

For more background on what wikis are, and how they work, be sure to check out the great Wikis in Plain English video produced by Common Craft.

If you want to explore wikis more in depth, we do have a pretty good one here on campus, and everyone is welcome to play withuse it.

George Siemens (Associate Director of the University of Manitoba Learning Technologies Centre) was on campus on March 11 to give a presentation at the Teaching & Learning Centre, on “The Social Technology Revolution – Tensions and Solutions”. He talked about a pretty wide range of things, and I wanted to capture some of the links he mentioned.

Video of the session

General Links

• Presentation tool: “Personal Brain” – a visual concept mapping application.
• Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus – a network literacy hoax/demonstration site. Is it real? Is it fake? How can you tell?

Open CourseWare and Open Education Resources

• MIT OpenCourseWare
• Open CourseWare Consortium
• Wiki Educator
• Wiki Books
• OER Commons
• Cable Green’s Washington Open Educational Resources

Peer Review and Accreditation

• Public Library of Science
• Wikipedia’s peer review process
• Peer 2 Peer University

Less “official” open-ish education-ish resources

• TED Talks
• Creative Commons images on Flickr

(ok – George didn’t talk about this, but I had to sneak it in anyway…)

• Textbook for Physical Oceanography Course – not “open” but freely available as a pdf, and can be printed by students for under $20, as opposed to $150 it would cost to buy the textbook.

Copyright

• Creative Commons

Images From the Presentation