Does Adobe Connect Connect in Class?

Well, I held my first class using Adobe Connect this evening. It was a pretty good experience. We were able to gather 13 of use with cameras and a couple that only had an audio connection with the gang. The interactive quality was OK. We had about a 2 second delay between what we said and when everyone else heard it. Admittedly this may have been a stretch on the throughput from house to house throughout Iowa, but it was a bit aggravating at times.

We began the session by giving each student audio and video access and having them figure out how to connect their camera and mic and brain at the same time.  They had to remember to press the little Talk button in the lower left corner.

The question is will Adobe Connect replace the Iowa Communications Network which is the face-to-face video conferencing system that I have been teaching on for the past 16 years?

Adobe Connect has some advantages:

• Students can connect from their homes.
• All of the students can be available at once (assuming that you have the bandwidth).
• The recordings are automatically digital and immediately available.
• By definition, all of the students will have internet access so we won't have to worry about sites where the schools have locked up the internet access or the sites we want to use are blocked.
• While the ICN has its flaws; when it worked - it worked well and there was a good connection between sites.
• Access is not dependent upon the school's custodian to open the door.
• The cost is almost free.

Adobe Connect has some disadvantages compared with the ICN:

• Students who shared sites with other people often developed a collegial atmosphere.
• All students are geographically alone.
• The audio and video seemed sporatic.
• Adobe Connect was a bit clumsy and not intuitive in many of the actions I had to take to make the connections and interactions.

 I have a long way to go to master using Adobe Connect in my classes.  I like how I can have set up an ongoing meeting where we can always at the spur of the moment.  I still don't think that Adobe Connect is easy enough for the typical teacher to feel comfortable.  It can be learned but there are a number of things that can be done to make it easier to use.

I hope that Adobe finds this posting and asks me for some suggestions about how to improve their interface.  I think that I would like to have such a tool available for my students to use to communicate with one another as well as with me.  I think that it can be an empowering tool, but it has a ways to go.

What do you think?  What are your experiences?

Z

Skyping Guests into an ICN Room

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People don't buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it - Simon Sinek

The sun is out and the skies are clear.  This means that I can walk to school and enjoy life. My favorite part of walking to school is listening to my iPod Touch as I travel. Lately I have been listening to the TED Talks presentations. I have arranged my Synching settings so that every time that I synch, it will place another set of 10 unheard TED Talk presentations on my iPod.

I will NEVER run out of TED Talks presentations this way!!!

Anywho, I had the pleasure of listening to Simon Sinek's Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Action presentation. In this presentation, Simon explores his research into why some companies lead and some follow. He talks about his Golden Circle.

He uses the Golden Circle to describe how some organizations are able to lead while others are not. He states that the followers in a field move from the outside inward. They emphasize What they do and How they do it. Leaders in the field begin with Why they do it, How they do it and What they do.

You MUST watch this 18-minute video. I have watched it about 5 times now and am finding that I am applying it to everything that I do.  I am working on a grant with top-notch team of experts. We are progressing along nicely, but I keep wondering if we are conveying WHY we are doing it. Would it make a difference to its appeal to the funding organization if we began with explaining WHY we are doing our proposed program and then explaining HOW we are going to do it?  Would it appeal more to principals in the schools if we shared WHY we are doing this program and then explaining HOW we will be doing it?  I don't know.

What do you think?

I found that Simon Sinek has a book. Not surprisingly, it is entitled Start with Why. I am going to order this from Amazon.

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action [Hardcover]

image: leadershipnow.com

Wikis and Blogs and VoiceThread . . . Oh My!

Image via Wikipedia

Wondering how you can make your presentations more interesting?  Trying to make your projects in class more interactive?  Here are some resources:

Wikis: 

• Wikis in Plain English
•  Wiki Resource Page on Active Web 2.0 page
• WikiSpaces.com 

Blogs 

• Blogs in Plain English 
• Blogging Resources Page on Active Web 2.0 page
• Blogging Examples
• Blogger.com

VoiceThread

• What's a VoiceThread Anyway? video
• Millennals and Their Learning Styles
• eRacism voicethread
• VoiceThread.com

How Do I Move to an Inquiry-Based Form of Teaching/Learning?

Inquiry-based learning seems to be a buzz word in the curriculum overhaul movement of today. I think that most teachers can explain the overall idea of inquiry-based as a method which replaces memorization with a learning experience that engages students to learn by questioning. The question is how many educators can use their present knowledge-base to transfer their existing coursework into a bone fide inquiry-based learning experience?  I am not certain that I can do it.

My Instructional Technology university courses don't usually include much paper and pencil testing.  Most of them involve hands-on learning with projects that apply to the students' professional lives and pursuits. This hopefully makes their work more relevant and they are definitely problem-based, but I am not certain that I am posing the problems in a way that would be considered Inquiry-based.

I am tired of hearing and talking platitudes about changing our educational system from a memorization-based learning experience to a student-engaging learning environment which challenges students to answer problems and convert information and data into useful knowledge. Is there a system for this conversion? Is there a checklist to better identify an inquiry-based system? Is there a premise for the questioning system that needs to be used to optimize this system?

It is difficult for a university professor to acknowledge his ignorance in an area of study where he is supposed to be proficient, but I don't think that I understand the formalized world of inquiry-based/project-based/challenge-based learning.  I know that it is more than doing projects. There is a level of cognitive development that needs to be nurtured to optimize the learning experience for students AND teachers.

I may have a better understanding of Inquiry-based learning than I am admitting here, but I just wanted you to know that I am beginning a pursuit to better understand and implement inquiry-based learning in my courses.

What do you know about inquiry-based/project-based/challenge-based learning?  What resources can you suggest? Are you using this format? What are you doing?

Thanks for your thoughts and support.

Z


photo: flickr.com/MarcoBelluci

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Our Students are Tomorrow's Change Agents

Recently, Magda Galloway blogged about students feeling like they can make a difference. She explained about how we completed our Educational Technology and Design undergrad class with a lecture on "Being a Change Agent in Your School."

This was an interesting way to bring closure to the class. We posted some polls in the CoverItLive backchannel that we ran during the lecture. It was interesting to see that 75% of our students thought that they would be change agents in their schools. 25% of them said that they weren't ready to be change agents. None of the students in the backchannel said that they wouldn't be change agents.

Read Magda's post to learn more of the specifics: Being a Change Agent AKA the Status Quo Sucks!

Innovating Education

Innovating Education is an opportunity for Dr. Z to discuss with UNI colleagues their visions, successes, anticipations and fears of creating learning environments to address the needs of the first digital generation, the Millennials.

One of the tools that we will be using during this hour-long experience will be a backchannel using the CoverItLive utility. It provides an on-going chat that will allow students to discuss the topics with each other while Dr. Z is exploring the topic.

The presentation will be going from noon to 12:50 CST. You are welcome to join in the discussion if you wish no matter where you are in the world. Please chime in.



You will be able to access the slideshow and resources that are mentioned in the discussion at the Innovating Education wiki.

Watch the Earth Shake and Twitter About It!!!!

Just heard about a 7.2 earthquake in Baja California through Twitter.  Can you believe that a friend was on a golf course in Palm Springs when she felt the shake. First thing she did was twitter this incident to her tweet-network. Next thing I knew, there were tweets from Palm Springs, San Diego and Orange County. One tweeter mentioned that he was following the LA County Fire Dept's tweets as they responded to earthquake news. (@lacfd) 

Anywho, I was looking for immediate information about the quake and I found the IRIS Seismic Monitor map. This is OUTSTANDING!!!!  Click on the map above (after you finish reading this posting and leave your comment) and it will take you to their live map of the latest seismic activity around the world. The color of the rings indicates the recency and the size of the rings indicate the magnitude. See the Big Red in the California region?

Click on these buttons to access informative educational resources:

Earthquake Headlines - takes you to the latest Google News about earthquakes;

Special Events - leads you to the Recent Earthquake Teachable Moments page on the IRIS site.

Education Links - links you to the IRIS page on their website that is filled with instructional resources.

This page is a lucky find. Do you see how you might use it in your teaching?

Share your thoughts with us.

Z

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• Mexican Earthquake Felt In Los Angeles (news.sky.com)
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Photo: IRIS Seismic (iris.edu/seismon)