I love it when I see teachers like English teacher Jenny Johns at work. Jenny has created a great English lesson using Ning where her students virtually become one of the characters in “To Kill a Mockingbird”.

I love this video for a couple of reasons. For one, digital literacy skills are seamlessly embedded into the assignment. This is not a lesson on how to use Ning, it is a lesson about the characters in “To Kill a Mockingbird”, yet it touches upon many issues young people face in a tech mediated landscape. The second reason I love this assignment is that it resonates with the students because it occurs in a space they are familiar with – a social network (note how the instructor has the students “friend” the other characters from the stories).

The video is from the PBS Frontline documentary digital nation.

• 6190 Commentshttp://clintlalonde.net/2010/02/07/to-kill-a-mockingbird-ning-style/To+Kill+a+Mockingbird+-+Ning+Style2010-02-08+01%3A24%3A08Clint

I have just installed a FireFox addon called Dispute Finder. Dispute Finder is an addon developed by Intel Research and UC Berkley that highlights disputed information on a web page and displays alternatives to that disputed claim. It uses both crowdsourcing and curated resources to try to expose you to alternative views about what you are reading.

As my Masters has progressed, I find myself becoming increasingly interested in adaptive learning systems and the role that technologies could play in shaping a users personal learning environment. Now, I am no computer scientist and when I hear words like ontologies being thrown around I have to admit my head begins to ache slightly. The depth of my knowledge of semantic web technologies doesn’t go far beyond a high level flyby of FoaF and RDF . Nonetheless, I remain interested in advancements in recommendation systems, both technical (semantic) and human (folksonomies) and the implications they could have for learning and constructing knowledge.

More and more on the web we are seeing personalized recommendations pop up for us to explore, often based on our past behaviours or, increasingly, recommendations provided to us by our social networks. Amazon recommends books to me not only based on what I have bought or browsed before, but also what other people who have bought or browsed similar titles to me have found interesting. Facebook will recommend friends to me based on who is already in my network, and adjust the information I see about that network based on my viewing habits (and some other variables, I am sure).  When Facebook introduced a real time stream a few versions ago, it did so with a News view and a Live view. At the time I wasn’t sure what the differences were, but after using it for awhile the advantage of the News feed becomes clear. The News feed is content that the system deems to be more relevant to me – it is a filter to help control the tidal wave of network information (I have Clay Shirky in my head saying “it’s not information overload – it’s filter failure“). And most of the time, it is right.

I am intrigued by what it means for learning if some of the construction of these connections is being done by technology, and how educators can assist learners in setting up environments that are conducive to this kind of semi-organic discovery. On one hand, these types of recommendations help to bring order to the chaos and may open up paths for exploration that may not always be obvious. On the other hand, they also set up the possibility of developing echo chambers. If the only information I am being exposed to is information congruent with my own views, then how can I be expected to become a critical thinker? After all, being critical often means being able to discern between two opposing points of view. How can you do this if you are only being presented one point of view?

Which brings me back to Dispute Finder and why I find this project interesting. Dispute Finder seems to depart from the general trend of recommendation engines on the web. Instead of recommending things it thinks I will like, it shows me information that may not be aligned with my own views, which opens up a possibility for me to learn.

via interview with Rob Ennals on Spark

• 6090 Commentshttp://clintlalonde.net/2010/02/06/adaptive-learning-disputes-and-breaking-out-of-echo-chambers/Adaptive+learning%2C+disputes%2C+and+breaking+out+of+echo+chambers2010-02-06+20%3A28%3A54Clint

This is a short post as I am posting this from my Android phone using the new WordPress Android app that was just released by WordPress. Link.

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I love it when The Horizon Report comes out. It takes me back to being a kid in Northern Alberta, anxiously awaiting the November arrival of the Sears Christmas Wish Book at our house. It offered me a glimpse of what could be in the near future. And it excited me.

If you are not familiar, each year the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative publish The Horizon Report, a look into the future at some of the technologies that may have an impact on higher education in the next 5 years. This year the report has picked the following technologies and estimated a time for adoption for each.

1. Mobile Computing (1 year or less)
2. Open Content (1 year or less)
3. Electronic Books (2-3 years)
4. Simple Augmented Reality (2-3 years)
5. Gesture Based Computing (4-5 years)
6. Visual Data Analysis (4-5 years)

Scott Leslie from BCcampus is one of the advisors for the report. This year he travelled to Austin, Texas for the release of the report and created this video, which features interviews with members of ELI and NMC about the technologies in the report. It’s a nice piece of work from Scott that adds useful context around the reasons why these technologies were chosen.

Some things strike me about this list.

First, mobile computing has arrived at Camosun, at least if the connectivity stats coming from our IT Services department are any indication. Last week I was speaking with some members of the department who said that they have had to increase the number of available IP addresses for our wireless network twice this fall to meet the demand of wireless apps on campus. If you are not familiar with how networking works, each device that connects to the wireless network requires a unique address. These are pulled from a limited pool of addresses. Once that pool runs out, no more devices can connect to the network until a device returns an address to the pool. I don’t think that it’s a far stretch to imagine they will be significantly upping the pool again this fall. So, we know the students are connecting. How much of that connectivity is being used for learning & teaching is the unknown.

Second, of all the technologies on this list, simple augmented reality is the one that has me the most excited. I have been playing with augmented reality apps on my Android phone for the past 6 months and can see huge potential for education should they take off. Here is an example of augmented reality in which data pulled from the web is overlayed on top of what you see through your camera phone, kind of like a heads up display you might see in a car.

Imagine scanning the horizon with your smartphone and having geographical information pop up on the screen – the names of those mountains in the distance, the number of salmon that spawned in that creek last year, what developers hold development permits for that parcel of land over there. Very possible, and useful, information.

The barrier I see with this right now is that there is no standard for delivering the information. While many augmented reality browser are being created, the layers are not compatible with each other. Kind of like the early days of web browsers where websites would only work in either Internet Explorer or Netscape. Here’s hoping we learned from that mess & some open standards begin to emerge as the augmented reality market matures.

As for the other technologies, ebooks have to catch on at some point and you have to think sooner rather than later. 2010 has been dubbed by some as the year of the e-reader, with numerous options now on the market. The advantages of ebooks are numerous – cheaper, easier to update, they don’t use trees, you can increase the font size (a big one for me after spending a term frustrated trying to read 9 point type in a textbook), annotate, snip, republish yada yada yada. They have to catch on, don’t they?

After having lived with a Wii for the past year, I can also see the appeal of gesture based computing, especially in the areas of simulations. I can imagine a carpentry simulation someday swinging something akin to a Wii remote to simulate hammering a nail into wood, complete with tactile feedback where the remote vibrates as you strike the nail.

Of course, there are many qualifiers, maybes and outright unknowns whenever you try to predict technology and trends. But one thing seems certain – the innovation train is not stopping, and that makes for very interesting times to be working in educational technology.

• 5933 Commentshttp://clintlalonde.net/2010/01/27/2010-horizon-report/2010+Horizon+Report2010-01-27+07%3A28%3A39Clint

I have a project for 2010, and I’d love it if you came along. I’ve started a Flickr Group called 365Retro. The idea is to post one photo a day for the entire year. Now, 365 groups on Flickr are not new, but this one is a bit different. Instead of taking a photo with your camera, you have to scan a photo from your pre-digital photo collection.

The idea came to me while I was going through my old photo albums, which I have done periodically over the years. Every time I do I have this little voice inside me that says “I should really scan these”. But then real life took over and I never found the time.

This year, I am finding the time, mostly because my kids are starting to ask me more about my life, pre-kids. So, once a day I’ll be scanning and adding some old photos of my life pre-digital camera. I am really using this as an excuse to do what I have wanted to do for years – scan my old photos. And maybe share a few memories along the way.

One of the other reasons I am doing this is because in the past few months I have seen how a digital artifact, like a photo, can become a touchstone that connects people.

A group of radio announcers from CFGP radio enjoying a night out in Grande Prairie Alberta. From l to r: Peter Hall, Jeff Bolt, Paul Oulette, me, Daryl Olsen.

Last fall, a friend of mine named Peter Hall passed away. I had not seen Peter for 15 years, but had worked quite closely with him for many years early in my radio career.

I heard about his death via a post on Facebook from a mutual friend. I remembered I had some photos of Peter tucked away in my photo collection. So that night I went through the photos, scanned a few, and posted them on Facebook. Before I knew it, people I had not heard from for years who both Peter and I had worked with began to comment on the photos. I reconnected with numerous old friends I had lost track of (including one who now lives in the same city as I do and we have met f2f for lunch since), and many fun memories were shared, all spurred by these photos.

Over the past few years, thanks to social networks, I have meet a whole new circle of people. Thanks to a continual stream of tweets, status updates, blog posts and Flickr photos, I have a pretty good idea of who these people are today and what they are up to right now. But ask me about these people and their lives prior to around 2005 when I started actively connecting virtually with people, and I know squat. And I want to know. I like history and knowing what happened to people in their lives that brought them to the point they are at now.

So, if you have a scanner,  some old photos, and a Flickr account, come and connect with us in the 365Retro group. Fill in the pre-digital gaps in your life to give your friends and family a more complete picture of your life and history. These photos can be whatever you want to scan and share. If you can add some context or a story that fills in the details about the subject of the photo, all the better. Add some context and share your stories and your history with the group.

If you don’t have a Flickr account, you can set one up for free. Once you have your account, join the 365Retro Flickr group. Scan and post a photo a day to your Flickr account, and send the photo to the 365Retro Group

That’s it! You’ve participated. And don’t worry if 365 sounds daunting. Contribute what you can. Or, if you don’t want to contribute, you can pop by and laugh at the various mullets and facial hair combo’s I have spouted over the years.

• 5740 Commentshttp://clintlalonde.net/2010/01/09/365retro-my-2010-flickr-project-and-maybe-yours/365Retro%3A+My+2010+Flickr+project+%28and+maybe+yours%292010-01-09+23%3A21%3A16Clint