Here is my video response.

After I did the video I felt like singing that old Sesame Street song “one of these things is not like the other” as I have lumped Apple in with this fine batch of openness when, in fact, I have some issues with the open of Apple and iTunesU. But I still think that iTunesU and the announcement last week that they are going to offer full courses through iTunesU fits with the point I was trying to make, despite the open/closed distinction.

And I said Stanford Thrun when it is really Sebastian Thrun from Stanford University.

As I read about the low cost tablets popping up in India like the $140 Classmate and the $45 Akash, I can’t help but wonder, would these low cost tablets exist if it were not for Google and their open source Android operating system?

It once again points to the importance that open source software plays in driving innovation. If Google had decided to create a proprietary operating system available only to an elite group of manufacturers with hefty licensing fees, would we see these kinds of inexpensive products appearing? Would we be seeing the kind of uptake of mobile devices that we are seeing right now?

Sure, you can argue that these tablets are nothing but cheap riffs on a truly innovative product (the much more expensive iPad), and you wouldn’t find me necessarily disagreeing: the iPad was a truly innovative product that created a whole new segment of products. But it is one thing to create an innovative product, and quite another to create an innovative environment that enables more innovation, especially innovation that lowers the cost barrier and allows technology to move from the elite to the common.

More is different. And by providing us with an open source platform to build on, Google has helped ensure that we will see what this different will look like.

Image: Powered by Android by JD Hancock used under Creative Commons Attribution license.

For those of us working within the confines of an LMS, this type of design can be a challenge. And while using an Open Source option like Moodle means we do have some flexibility in customizing the LMS for UID (and Moodle has certainly put some thought into making the platform accessible), customizing is often easier said than done.

Which is why I am happy I stumbled across this IRRODL paper “Universal Instructional Design (UID) Principles for Moodle from Tanya Elias which makes a number of recommendations – both technical and pedagogical – on how to improve accessibility within Moodle.

Elias begins the paper by outlining eight universal design principles, based on the work of the Center for Universal Design (which, as an aside, have this wonderful printable infographic (pdf) outlining the principles). She then goes on to make recommendations on how to design Moodle courses & content to meet these guidelines.

Below is a summary of the principles, the recommendations from Elias, and a few of my own thoughts in italics.

1) Equitable use

The design is useful and accessible for people with diverse abilities and in diverse locations. The same means of use should be provided for all students, identically whenever possible or in an equivalent form when not.

Recommendations

1. Put content online and make them accessible by screen reader, text-to-speech, and screen preferences programs.
2. Provide translation to overcome language barriers for learners for whom English is a foreign language.

The takeaway here for me is make content accessible, and the most flexible, accessible content on the web is HTML. Eliminate those PDF, Word and PowerPoint files and convert them to the native language of the web – HTML.

2) Flexible use

The learning design accommodates a wide range of individual abilities, preferences, schedules, and levels of connectivity. Provide the learners with choice in methods of use.

Recommendations

1. Make synchronous sessions optional, or make them small group sessions to make it easier to for participants to schedule.
2. Provide recordings of synchronous sessions.
3. Present content in multiple formats.
4. Offer choice and additional information.

If you have the option to record what you are doing (which is baked into most synchronous applications), always record it & make it available to students. Not only good for accessibility, but good for review for students who can attend as well.

3) Simple and intuitive

The course interface design is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, technical skills, or current concentration level. Eliminate unnecessary complexity.

Recommendations

1. Simplify the interface.
2. Offer text-only, mobile and offline options.

Most Moodle courses are built from a standard course template, meaning there may be blocks and tools you don’t use. If you are not using them, remove them. They are clutter.

4) Perceptible information

The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the student’s sensory abilities.

Recommendations

1. Incorporate assistive technologies
2. Add captions, descriptors and transcriptions

On adding caption & transcriptions, a good low cost way to do this for video is to use YouTube for hosting your video and take advantage of their transcription and captioning features.

5) Tolerance for error

The design minimises hazards and adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.

Recommendations

1. Allow students to edit their posts.
2. Issue warnings using text and sound.

Moodle gives learners 30 minutes to edit their posts, by default. if your administrator has disabled this option, here is a good argument to have it re-enabled. I would also say that audible warnings are good, but there should be a mechanism to disable them if the user decides they don’t want them.

6) Low physical and technical effort

The design can be used efficiently and comfortably and with minimal physical and mental fatigue.

Recommendations

1. Consider issues of physical effort.
2. Incorporate assistive technologies and multimedia, and embed links.
3. Include a way to check browser capabilities

The paper notes that “extensive use of external links and external programs (my emphasis) in this way increases the technical effort required by all users.” So, not to harp on this point (but I will), but every time a learner has to open a PDF, Word or PowerPoint file, they have to load a new, external program.

7) Community of learners and support

The learning environment promotes interaction and communication among students and between students, faculty, and administrative services.

Recommendations

1. Provide study groups and tools.
2. Provide easy-to-find links to support services.

An easy win to add a block with links to institutional student services.

8) Instructional climate

Instructor comments and feedback are welcoming and inclusive. High expectations are espoused for all students.

Recommendation

1. Encourage instructors to make contact and stay involved.

As the paper states, “Instructor accessibility is an essential component of course accessibility.” An involved instructor will recognize when a student is struggling and can take steps to intervene and help.

Many of these principles are not Moodle specific and could be easily adapted to any online learning scenario. Where the paper does get Moodle specific is where Elias notes how many Moodle modules and plugins are available to help achieve these principles. This is also where the paper falls a bit short in that Elias gives the number of modules available and doesn’t actually review, or even name the available Moodle modules. So while it’s nice to know there are 4 translator modules available for Moodle, it would be useful to have the actual names of those modules and, even better, a review on whether they met the recommendations. Still, a useful piece of research on accessibility and the LMS.

When I last looked at the Moodle mobile app a few months back, it was still pretty slim in terms of functionality, which was fine. It was a first generation mobile app so I didn’t expect killer functionality out of the box. And I deeply respected the fact that, out of all the functionality they could have delivered in that first crack, they decided that it was important to give students the ability to upload media captured on their mobile devices to their courses – a signal (to me at least) that they were looking at mobile devices through a disruptive lens.

The 2.2 release adds another piece to that mobile app, now giving learners the ability to download course content from the course to their mobile device. I have to say, not quite as pumped about this feature as I was about the upload feature in the first go round, but I get that for many students content is the key – it’s what they come for.

One thing is for certain with this new feature – we are going to have to be ever more vigilant on issues like optimized file size and correct web formats for content as we develop our courses. We do have a fairly stringent technical quality checks for our courses, but stuff does get through.

For example, today I had to deal with a course that wasn’t backing up and restoring properly. The culprit? 2 PowerPoint presentations; 1 was 54 meg the other a whooping 102 meg. Pity the poor student in that class who decided to download that content on their mobile device. That’s 20% of my monthly data right there in those 2 files.

Anyway, not Moodle’s problem. In fact, in this feature they have given me a tool and another reason to enforce standard file formats and optimized file sizes, so I am grateful for it, and for the continued development of the mobile application. And realistically, we won’t have to worry about this for at least a year or so as we are still in the process of migrating to 2.1 from 1.9 and have decided to continue on the 2.1 path and not go straight to 2.2 when we release next year.

You can read the official release notification in the Moodle forums.

I realized something tonight as I read the story of how Virginia Tech professor John Boyer landed a Skype interview for his World Regions class with Aung Sun Suu Kyi, leader of the democratic movement in Burma – I don’t give near enough credit to Skype as a disruptive educational technology.

I’ve helped faculty use it for just this kind of activity – bring in a guest from a distance as a guest speaker, and not thought twice about it. I’ve read stories of teachers who have used it to bring sick kids into class so they don’t fall behind. People are using it to connect with native language speakers to learn another language.

All this for free in a package that most grandparents use to speak with their grand-kids.

Maybe it’s because Skype has reached that point where it has become boring which, according to Shirky, is now the point where the conversation becomes interesting. Which is to say, once we stop our fascination with the technology itself and it becomes first mundane and then invisible, then and only then do we begin to see the change it has on society. Maybe Skype is at that point.

Tomorrow John Boyer is introducing his students to Aung Sun Suu Kyi. Want to see a group of motivated students? Check out the last 30 seconds of Boyer’s video request to Aung Sun Suu Kyi, posted on YouTube.

But it doesn’t have to be someone world famous to make it relevant for students. For Camosun College video instructor Andy Bryce, it was a former grad of the Applied Communication Program who now works for CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada.

Which begs the question, who do your students want to see in your class?

Photo: sign of the times by Doug Symington used under Creative Commons license.

@courosa Use ifttt.com to 'trap' and auto-post tweets to Posterous. You can capture tagged items from Delicious and Flickr as well. #eci831

September 18, 2011 4:53 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@thecleversheep

Rodd Lucier

I don’t blog much these days about new web services or tools that I discover (if you are interested in what I find in terms of cool tools then you can connect with me on Diigo where most of the good web tool discoveries I make end up), but this service Rodd Lucier popped onto my radar screen is one that deserves a mention.

The service called If This Then That, a useful little utility that allows you to automate simple tasks from a number of different web services using the simple conditional statement if this happens, then do that. What IFTTT does is allows you to create simple web tasks mixing different web services that follow that flow.

For example, I was able to quickly set up a simple task that posts links I tweet to my Delicious account. IFTTT checks my Twitter account every 15 minutes.  If it finds a tweet with a link in it, then it posts that link to my Delicious account (and, by the way there is already a great service that handles this type of task already, but this was a proof of concept task for me with IFTTT).

IFTTT supports a number of web services, including, Twitter, Gmail, Delicious, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Flickr – basically all the major services are here – and allows you to set up time and date specific actions; a simple cron for web services, without having to know cron commands.

I like this service a lot. IFTTT takes a powerful computer programming concept (the “if-then” conditional statement) and gives us something that is incredibly useful and easy for non-programmers to use to automate web tasks, as opposed to say Yahoo Pipes which held a lot of promise in simplifying programming concepts enough to let the lay person build some powerful tools. I love and use Yahoo Pipes quite a bit, but in my experience Pipes requires a fairly sophisticated grasp of programming to be useful for most people. IFTTT simplifies the process of creating useful tasks considerably over Pipes, and I expect I will be using it quite often in the future.

Nice find, Rodd!

From The Chronicle of Higher Education.

A little searching found a number of sites to create QR codes. After trying a few, I stumbled upon the QR Code and 2D Code Generator by Keram Erkan that generates a huge variety of QR codes, including codes that will create links to a variety of websites, send emails, and even automatically hook your mobile device to a wifi network (how useful/popular would that be for students on campus?)

So, here is my first QR code, created in about 30 seconds. I’d appreciate it if you have a mobile device to give it a try and let me know if it works (I’ve tested on my Android powered HTC Magic running Barcode Scanner). This QR should take you to my About page.

I’m generally not a big gadget guy. I don’t have the desire to have the latest and shiniest, mostly because I am cheap and being on the gadget cutting edge costs more than I am willing to part with. I was late to the game with a smartphone, just got an ebook reader this Christmas, and bought a netbook around the same time the original iPad was released. So, this post might sound very 2010 for many of you.

I got an iPad. No, not an iPad 2, an iPad. Old skool. 5 of them landed in our department last week so we can test out the educational potential of the device. So, of course, I immediately downloaded Angry Birds, a cultural phenomenon I had not had the pleasure of experiencing until last Friday.

That out of the way, I spent some time on the weekend poking around the device. Much has been written and reviewed about the iPad so I won’t go into details here save for a couple of specific things I noticed about the device:

• The screen orientation is crisp and fast. My Android phone takes a few seconds for the display to orient when I flip the phone. The iPad was instant.
• The keyboard is more comfortable than I was expecting. I am a hunt and peck typist so it works for me. Others in our unit who are more classically oriented typists said they found the keyboard a bit more difficult.
• The brushed aluminum finish felt slippery in my hands. I have an out of the box model, and can see where a cover or skin of some kind would make me feel more comfortable handling it and stop the “this thing is going to slip out of my fingers” feeling.
• Setting up Gmail was painless. However, I couldn’t get it working with our corporate Exchange server, but that could have to do with our exchange server setup and not with the app or device.
• The web experience is okay. I am not a big fan of Safari as a browser. It does the job, but the lack of ability for me to add-on extensions means that the browser is just that – a browser. I’m used to my browser being a tool and that possibility doesn’t seem to exist in Safari in the iPad. Other than that, the internal sites our unit is responsible actually worked pretty well, although my testing of Moodle consisted primarily of logging in and checking out content & navigation.
• WiFi seemed iffy. I tried reading in bed one night. My bedroom is at the other end of the house from my wireless router, so the signal is fairly weak. But my laptop, Kindle and Android phone can all get a usable wireless signal while I am in bed. The iPad couldn’t. The signal was too weak for the device.

Okay, onto some more educational applications. I wanted to do was to see if there were any Moodle apps available, and there was – mTouch+ for $2.99, so I made the purchase and installed the app. It didn’t work – at all. I tap the app icon, it flashes briefly on the screen, then closes down. That’s it. I’ve posted in the developers forum, but so far haven’t heard back. I’ve also heard getting a refund on an app is difficult.

I had better luck with the next apps I installed – a 3d interactive Brain and an interactive periodic table. Both of these worked like a charm, and in a couple of minutes my daughter was rotating around a 3d model of the human brain.

Up next was the Kindle app. I have a Kindle and Kindle account, so wanted to give reading on the iPad a shot. The Kindle app installed & synced up nicely with my Kindle account, giving me access to the books I had already purchased on my Kindle. Excellent. The reading experience on the iPad was quite nice, but I did have some glare from my bedside lamp that was a tad annoying. But other than that, the short period of time I spent reading felt comfortable. And once I got t eh hang of the highlighting tool, I was able to highlight and annotate passages in my e-book, which I hope will synch back to my Kindle (haven’t tested that yet).

The WordPress app was installed next, which (at first blush anyway) seems identical to the Android app I have on my HTC. There is no WYSIWYG editor, so you are very limited in terms of formatting a posts, but it does the job. You can also moderate and respond to comments.

But the real highlight app in my first few days of using the iPad is Flipboard. First and foremost, Flipboard is a beautiful RSS reader that pulls content from my Google Reader account and gives me a nicely formatted reading experience. But in addition to being an RSS reader that can pull and compile feeds, Flipboard also connects to both my Facebook and Twitter feeds and aggregates the links being shared by my networks and presents those articles to me in a nice package. It’s like an iPad version of Twitter Times or Paper.li, and I found that the way that Flipboard works, it was very easy for me to scan accross numerous links and articles and pick out the ones that were relevant to me. The visual presentation of Flipboard made it easier to discover relevant information from my network.

So far, my experimenting with an iPad has been pretty high level try a few things for a couple minutes and move on, but I can already see some places where this thing could fit into my life. For example, at work taking notes in a meeting the iPad is much less intrusive than having a laptop sitting open on the table, although trying to access our internal Sharepoint collaborative site was (not surprising) an exercise in frustration.

Any recommendations for education type apps that I should try out?

Photo: iFuture by YiyingLu. Used under Creative Commons license.

I want to give a heads up to BC IT/EdTechie types about a couple of upcoming events some of my colleagues are busy organizing and that you may be interested in attending.

The first is the Vancouver Island Higher Education Information Technology Day (VIHET) being held next Wednesday, March 30th at Royal Roads University. I’m looking forward to the day and the opportunity to connect with my island colleagues from Camosun, UVic, VIU and North Island. The theme is Global Connections: International Trends in Educational Technologies. David Porter from BCcampus is the keynote speaker. I always enjoy seeing David present. He is one of the most progressive voices in our field in this province, and his recent excursion to Mongolia will no doubt provide him with some rich material for the theme at hand.

The second is the upcoming Educational Technology User Group (ETUG) spring workshop, being hosted by Selkirk College in Nelson, BC.  My colleagues Tracy Roberts and Amanda Coolidge are part of the organizing comittee this year and are planning a great conference built around the theme of Open4Learning. Think open professional development, OER’s, open courses (MOOC’s perhaps?), open source software & some of the non-teaching & learning issues (privacy) related to being open. Personally, I’m hoping Grant Potter does a bit on open radio & show us all how he set up & manages ds106radio, but I know he’s on the organizing committee & will have his hands full as it is. Call for proposals is on now until April 8th for the event on June 2 & 3.

Photo: ETUG Mosaic by Sylvia Currie used under Creative Commons license.