ruminators' ilk

Faculty Development News This Week:

--Online Conference: "Surfing the Broadband Wave: The Shape of Things to Come", April 20-22, 2004

Read the promotional literature:

NINTH ANNUAL TCC 2004 ONLINE CONFERENCE
April 20-22, 2004 (1000 GMT)
Pre-conference Dates: April 13-15, 2004
Register Now! (via Secure Server):
Register Here
THEME
SURFING THE BROADBAND WAVE: THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
Faster. Wider. More?
Broadband is the megaway answer to the six-lane punyway, the Godzilla tunnel bypass to the wormhole straw. Broadband is the solution to traffic jams, gridlocks--the answer that will turn the trickle of information into a torrent, the foot-high swell into a tsunami.
As educators, we're on the lineup, sitting on our boards, watching the super set roll in. From first to last, the waves increase in size, each dwarfed by the one behind. The first wave in the set is upon us. It's relatively small. The others, however, are right behind, each increasingly bigger, faster, and more powerful, and the last threatening to turn day into night, shutting out the sun and sky.
We're experiencing the first ripple of the broadband wave that's forming in the distance. Some of us will see the squirt and say, "Ain't no big thing." Others will raise their eyes, point to the massive wall that's blotting out the horizon, and ask, "Oh, yeah?"
Join us at the ninth annual TCC Online Conference to share your take on "Surfing the Broadband Wave: The Shape of Things to Come." This year's conference will focus on broadband's impact on learning and instruction, instructional support, global or International Education and online and hybrid learning. Conference presentations will highlight new technologies, collaborative learning, innovative practices and visions for the future."

The cost is $70.00 (individual fee).

Online Conference

Pedagogy

--Types of Knowledge: Tacit, Explicit, Individual, and Social

John Seeley Brown's diagram below is an interesting visual representation of how to organize knowledge into various categories: tacit and explicit, individual and social.

Acquired from BlogKathleen,
18 March 2004.

--"What Makes a Teacher Great?"

This article is from The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 December 2003.

What Makes a Teacher Great?

--Mailing Lists Dealing with Education

A mail list is similar to an email address, except that when you send a message to a mail list, it is distributed to all subscribed members of that list. This site provides a list of educational mailing lists, along with instructions on how to subscribe.

Merlot Mailing Lists
and
Mailing Lists

--Learning Communities

What is the benefit of learning in a community? To find out, read:

Learning in Communities

--Conceptual Mapping

Below is a short, introductory article from the digital magazine InfoVis.net, 141.
Links to concept mapping are provided in the article.

"Conceptual Maps" by Juan C. Darsteler

Conceptual Maps are simple and practical knowledge representation tools that allow you to convey complex conceptual messages in a clear, understandable way. They facilitate both teaching and learning. Moreover they are represented naturally as graphs. See the conceptual map about conceptual maps in the graphical version at Conceptual Map about Conceptual Maps. Conceptual maps are artifacts for organizing and representing knowledge. Their origin lies in the theories about the psychology of learning by David Ausubel enunciated in the 60s. Their objective is to represent relations between concepts in the form of propositions. Concepts are included within boxes or circles whereas the relations between them are explicated by means of lines connecting their respective boxes. The lines, in turn, have associated words describing the nature of the relation that links the concepts. In this context, Joseph D. Novak in "The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How To Construct Them" defines concept as "a perceived regularity in events or objects, or records of events or objects, designated by a label." The label of a concept is usually a word. Propositions are "statements about some object or event in the universe, either naturally occurring or constructed. Propositions contain two or more concepts connected with other words to form a meaningful statement." They are also called "semantic units. "Concepts correlated by relations, boxes and linking lines... Doesn't this appear familiar to us? Indeed, like many other things conceptual maps can be represented, and in fact are represented, as graphs (see issue number 137, Conceptual Graphs), where the nodes are concepts and the arcs the relations between them. Conceptual maps are structured in a hierarchical way, where the most general concepts lie in the root of the tree and, and as we descend the structure, we find the more specific ones. Probably the best way to understand them is to see a conceptual map about conceptual maps like the one you can find in the graphical version of this issue. Said map has been made from the one existing in the above mentioned article using the tool CmapTools developed by the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition associated to the West Florida University (USA). This is a freely downloadable tool, very versatile and easy to use. There's also a free, web based, similar tool Spanish Version) in Spanish created in the Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona, Spain, by C. Rovira that automatically generates the necessary code to include the map in XML format using the Topic Maps standard (see issue 26 about the semantic web: The Semantic Web). It's very commendable to play with these tools to see how easy and instructive it is to put our ideas in the form of conceptual maps. For this type of maps was developed to understand the changes in time of the knowledge that children had of science. Ausubel's idea is that learning takes place thanks to the assimilation of new concepts and propositions into propositional frameworks already existent in the learner's mind. In comparison to the purely rote learning, Ausubel considers that meaningful learning needs three conditions:* The content has to be conceptually clear and presented in a language and with examples the learner can relate to his/her existing knowledge base.* The learner has to have relevant prior knowledge.* The learner must choose to learn meaningfully. These types of tools, when they are well designed, taking into account the context and motivation of their audience, constitute both a teaching and a learning instrument that facilitates understanding and assimilation of the concepts and their relations. Although their origin is bound to learning, their application to Information Visualization configures them as useful tools to convey complex messages in a clear way. I would dare to say that, moreover, they contribute most notably to clarifying the ideas of the one that is building the message.

Visit all the links.

Recommended.

Article acquired from EduResources Weblog, 12 March 2004.

--E-mail Discussion Lists and Electronic Journals

Read about the contribution discussion groups and electronic journals can make in your classroom and in your own scholarship.

E-mail / Electronic Journals

--Link to Search Mailing List Archives

Interested in locating a mailing list in your discipline? Read all about it:

Search Archives

--Using E-mail for International / Cross-Cultural Interaction

International E-Mails Classroom Connections (IECC) is "a free teaching.com service to help teachers link with partners in other cultures and countries for email classroom pen-pal and other project exchanges. Since its creation in 1992, IECC has distributed over 28,000 requests for e-mail partnerships."

Intercultural E-Mail

Pedagogy

--"The Psychology Behind Headphones"

Want some insights into the habits of your "new millennial" students?

This article is from the March 8, 2004 edition of Slash.com.

The Psychology Behind Head Phones

--"Some Uses of Blogs in Education"

This visual / graphic representation of blogs in education comes from Blogtalk

Some Uses of Blogs in Education

--Introduction to Weblogs in Education

This article discusses the use of blogs in education.

Weblogs in Education

--Are You an Analog Instructor Teaching Digital Students?

See this article on Marc Prensky's site devoted to learning philosophy on games, students and education.

Marc Prensky

See his slide presentation, too:

Prensky Presentation

Recommended.

--The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Annotated Bibliography

This bibliography is from The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and is a compilation of almost fifty annotated citations grouped into three areas: Definition, Examples, and Resources. A few of the citations are hyperlinked to web versions, but most are available in print only.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

--Using Listservs for Professional Development

Links for professional engagement.

Listservs for Professional Development

--"Faculty Development and Learning Object Technology"

Read the introduction to this paper:

"The following paper begins with a story, the story of a lived experience that illustrates the mismatch between faculty and technology experts' understandings of learning object technology. It then takes a look at faculty perspectives, to show that moving from the traditional approach in content creation to developing learning objects requires a paradigm shift for faculty content developers. Recognizing the changes that faculty face, and understanding their insights regarding new learning technologies, gives faculty support staff an opportunity to "put on" the faculty perspective. This "putting on" activity provides technical support staff with the mental models necessary to support faculty in "bridging the gap" between traditional content development activities and the creation and development of learning object technologies."

This article is from Teaching Scholars Forum, 10 (February 2004).

Faculty Development and Learning Object Technology

Link acquired from Eduresources Weblog, 12 March 2004.

--Civic Engagement Resources

This site provides resources for community service and activism.

Civic Engagement Resources

Course Design

--Lessons Learned from the Hybrid Course Project

"This article reports on the most significant observations from the Hybrid Course Project and provides "Lessons Learned" about hybrid course design and teaching for: faculty interested in developing their own hybrid courses; faculty developers interested in helping instructors create hybrid courses; and academic administrators interested in supporting hybrid courses."

Hybrid Course Project

--"Introduction to Hybrid Courses"

This article provides an overview of hybrid course design.

Introduction to Hybrid Courses

--Design Concepts

Don Norman is one of the gurus of twenty-first century design. This article discusses his design philosophy.

Don Norman

--Digital Video

"This site is dedicated to helping educators with the ins and outs of digital video, from Pre-K to PhD. If you're an educator trying to get started with digital video, it can be overwhelming. I work with DV at the Instructional Technology Center in the College of Education at Georgia State University in Atlanta. I teach the basics of DV to all sorts of educators - undergraduate majors in education who are training to work with preschoolers to PhD's who want to post a video clip of some best practices on a web site."

DV for Teachers

I acquired this link fromBlogIt

--ACOT Continuum

"The ACOT Continuum, created by Alan Devine, Maricopa Community College, demonstrates the phases teachers go through in using and integrate technology in their classrooms. Use this information sheet to decide which phase of the continuum individuals are at, and then use the appropriate action steps to help them progress to the next level. Each phase has certain characteristics. Decide which ones describe each individual's activities."

ACOT Continuum

Recommended.

Libraries and Information Management

--"Thinking Beyond Digital Libraries: Designing Information Strategy for the Next Decade"

This Conference, held in Beifield, Germany, February 3-5, 2004, now has presentations available online.

Thinking Beyond

This link was acquired from the blog Open Access News, 13 March 2004.

Blog Grab Bag

--National League for Nursing

This site is devoted to lifelong learning for nursing faculty.

National League

--Frederick Chopin

This site, in Polish and English, is dedicated to the music of Chopin.

Polonaise, anyone?

Chopin

--Searching the Internet for Images

This site is a treasure chest for digital images.

Searching the Internet for Images

--Simple, Interactive Statistical Analysis

Try this one out with your students!

Statistical Analysis

--PowerPoint Usability

PowerPoint presentations have been getting a bad rap lately. Read this interview for another perspective.

PowerPoint Usability

--Sedna

"On 15 March, 2004, astronomers from Caltech, Gemini Observatory, and Yale University announced the discovery of the coldest, most distant object known to orbit the sun. The object was found at a distance 90 times greater than that from the sun to the earth -- about 3 times further than Pluto, the most distant known planet. The discovery was made on the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory east of San Diego on 14 November 2003 by the team of Mike Brown (Caltech), Chad Trujillo (Gemini Observatory) and David Rabinowitz (Yale)."

Read the scientific paper about this discovery:

Sedna

This is a12-page PDF file.

--Distance Education on the Rise

The article below is from the March 9, 2004 edition of Eduventures, one of the leading independent research firms focused on learning markets.

...Online Education Post-Secondary Wave of the Future....

This link acquired from Bruce Landon's Weblog for Students, 15 March 2004.

--Lessons from the Cutting Edge

This article considers why Google.com is so successful from a variety of perspectives.

This article is from Fast Company.com, 69 (April 2003):74.

How Google Grows...

--Workforce Connections

Take a look at this.

"Introducing the U.S. Department of Labor's Workforce Connections - a set of Web-based tools that empower non-technical individuals to create, acquire, share and control content in real-time.