Bruce Montes

Loyola’s ITS division had its first “Tech Conference” on September 27th, http://www.luc.edu/its/tech_conference_2011.shtml . It turned out to be a terrific success. We received positive feedback about the presentations, sharing, and networking opportunities the day presented. We had over 100 student, faculty, and staff participants to see and hear about technology both on and off campus. We also had industry professionals such as Thomas Elward, Vice President, SecureLaw, Ltd., and Patrick Sheren, Microsoft Corporation come speak and share their professional experiences and thoughts. Throughout the day there were 14 presentations on technology from personal technologies, to “how to” sessions, to ITS service sessions. A big thank you goes out to all presenters and volunteers who worked the conference. We are planning to continue to support and offer the conference. Look for announcements in the upcoming weeks. For more information e-mail, techday@luc.edu.

Steve Jobs passed on October 5th and the world paused for a moment. In the last two days there have been millions of comments, postings, videos, stories, and tributes about the man who changed how we look at and use technology. I am struck at just how wide his impact on technology, people, and society has spread. Dictionary.com lists one of the definitions of a pioneer as, “one who is first or among the earliest in any field of inquiry, enterprise, or progress.” When I think back, I remember critics of Apple and Jobs often saying that they didn’t come up with the idea or product. Perhaps that is true with some of Apple’s products. What is hard to deny however, is that Jobs brilliance made technology personable, usable, and “in”. Jobs clearly had artistic vision, not necessarily an attribute associated with technology pioneers. Others will write passionate tributes to the life and contributions of Jobs and we’ll reflect on how Jobs efforts made our lives different. It will likely all be good. I was on the way home from work on Wednesday when I heard of Jobs passing on the radio. After the initial feeling of sadness for his passing, I couldn’t help but to think this thought, “Thank you Steve Jobs for your contributions to making our lives more leisurely and fun.”

There are so many super apps out there for mobile. Recently, I’ve been looking for apps that would be good examples of learning objects or specialized “self-contained” learning. I found this example from 3D4Medical.com called the NOVA series. The picture shown here is of the “Heart Pro” app. I purchased a few of the others as well. I think these are great examples of learning objects that have a plethora of information and are fully engaging. The version shown here is the iPad version. Looking at this I can’t help but think of this as a great study aid and reference for a medical student. I’m picturing a student in a quiet place, going over all of their class notes and having these apps handy all in one device. I believe we certainly learn better when images are combined with text and the learner can control the navigation of the content. These NOVA series apps clearly fit that description.

Perhaps your school started up last week. Maybe it’s starting this upcoming week. Maybe you still have time until after labor day. In any event are your ready? If you’re an instructor have you prepared your course material for the year? Have you added “new” content or come up with “new” ideas? In this day and age with so many tools and so much content on the Web, it’s not hard to find something new, something different, and something that might better facilitate engagement with your students. I’d ask all instructors to pause for a moment and consider what you will bring “new” to your course(s) this year. If you’re a student have you considered your learning objectives for your course(s) this year? What do you hope to “take away” from your courses? Are you simply looking for a grade to complete your credit hour totals or are you looking “wide-eyed” for some insight and partnership with your instructor(s) this year? I’d ask all students to pause for a moment and consider what you will commit yourself to with your course(s) this year. One last thought. Relationships matter in learning. The better your relationships, the better the environment for learning. Let’s all forge some strong relationships with our instructors, students, and peers. I hope everyone has a great fall term.

Wow! I can’t believe how much technology and how many technology tools people and schools are using inside and outside the classroom. I’m at the Campus Technology Conference in Boston, learning about what others are doing with technology on their campuses. I also have the privilege of sharing our Loyola experiences with others. Dan Vonder Heide, Director for Infrastructure Services and I put together a poster presentation called,
“Planning for Technology Rich Spaces Outside the Classroom.” We were able to tell the Loyola IT story of how we worked with Academic Affairs and Facilities to plan for, develop, and implement our new Information
Commons. It was great to be able to share with other schools our experiences. I received lots of positive feedback about our new library and also received a lot of questions about how we accomplished everything. Also, many people asked how we came to the decisions we did. It was good to be able to share with others. I’m so used to hearing what others do and I try to draw from their experiences. Having our own presentation
allowed us to “give back” and to “share” with other schools lessons learned and other good things. I also attended a handful of sessions today and heard presentations from other schools. I am always amazed at how people find different ways to deploy technology. I have another two days of collaboration and sharing. I’m really looking forward to hearing more.

Ever have one of those “technology moments” when you’re in the classroom and you realize that you don’t have the technology you need to teach or the technology in the classroom is not working correctly? The fear and frustration set in and you wonder if the IT group will be able to get you the support you need before the entire class time runs out. Sure there’s often a student in the class who has some familiarity with the technology and they’ll step up and try to help, but the class agenda is now totally off track. Well, in this day and age of “electronic classrooms,” faculty members can help themselves and carry and use a few tools to avoid delays and a total reliance on the IT support group.

Take for instance podcasting and capture in the classroom. Many Universities are outfitting their classrooms with technology for capturing audio and video, allowing the faculty to use the captured content to create podcasts of their lectures. The technology may not be in every single classroom, it may not be working, or the instructions to use the technology may be too daunting. Not to worry however because there are a multitude of portable recording devices that faculty can purchase for themselves or perhaps “check out” from the IT group to use in the classroom. Capturing audio lectures can be a snap. There are high quality devices such as the Zoom H2 from Samson (http://www.samsontech.com/products/productpage.cfm?prodID=1916) that is simple to use, provides high quality stereo recording, and is affordable at around $200. This lightweight portable device has four microphones built-in and can record audio in a 360° pattern, picking up not only what you say, but also your students questions and comments. The device saves your lectures to a standard SD memory card. You can plug the Zoom H2 directly into a USB port on your computer to transfer the files right to your desktop or use the SD memory card to save the files to a different place.

Don’t care to buy a device that is only for audio capture? Then how about using your video iPod or an iPod Nano to record your lectures? When I teach I always take my classic iPod with me to class. I attach a microphone to it, press the record button, and put it in my shirt pocket. As I walk around the class and present, the iPod does the trick and captures my lectures. There are several microphones in the price range of around $50 that can be attached to iPods for recording purposes. When I finish the iPod, I simply connect it to my computer where the audio file gets uploaded to my iTunes library. From there I can load the podcast ready content to my course management system.

Video capture in the classroom without IT support staff can be nearly as simple. If you carry your laptop with you to class you can take advantage of the built-in or attachable video cameras and capture the audio and video in your classroom. I’ve heard of professors taking their Macbook with the built-in camera and simply turning the laptop to face the class while they record the audience, or other professors who lecture in front of their laptop in class while they record both their audio and video.

Presenting in class can be enhanced with a few small tools. There are many wireless pocket presenters, which can be used to help you get around the room while you present and step through your presented material. I use a Kensington wireless presenter (about $60) with a laser pointer in class. This device allows me to get away from the keyboard and podium during class and better engage the students. More recently, I’ve seen “You Tube” examples of people using a WiiRemote and a projector to create an interactive whiteboard on almost any surface. When it comes to interactive white boards, not all Universities deploy them and often professors use their own tablet PC’s to create the interactive whiteboard effect.

Not everything in the “tool kit” needs to be a piece of hardware for the faculty member. Free software, readily available on the web, can serve a variety of needs. Perhaps not all of your classrooms have Microsoft’s PowerPoint installed on the classroom PC’s, but the Internet is readily available. There’s a free product called Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net/) that provides the ability to upload your slides in many formats, which can be shared with others. You can sync audio with your Slideshare presentation and view it from a web browser, all for free. Perhaps you want your in-class presentation to be more of a collaborative or interactive experience. If that’s the case, there’s a free product called Voicethread (http://voicethread.com/#home) , which allows for yourself or others to easily add audio, video, or written comments and annotations to your online presentation during class.

During my instructional technology classes I noticed that my students were taking my PowerPoint presentations, which I made available in both PowerPoint and PDF format before class and they were printing them and taking notes on the printed document. I pointed out to the students that they could use the notes feature of PowerPoint or the notes feature of Acrobat Professional to simply add electronic notes to my presentations. While saving the student some printing costs, these simple techniques also allowed them to have electronic versions of their notes linked to my presentation.

While colleges and universities continue to provide more electronic classrooms and more capabilities with course management systems, faculty can augment and enhance those services with some of their own personal technologies and some free tools on the web. These are just a very small sampling of some of the things that faculty can use and do when “IT can’t be there.”

I just got back from an Instructional Technology Conference at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). This was the 13th annual conference at MTSU and the theme of the conference was “Immersed in Learning.” I had the opportunity and pleasure of being able to present to the attendees. I gave a presentation titled, “Using the Technology of Second Life to Create Virtual Learning Spaces.” I shared my experiences over the last year in exploring the 3D virtual world, Second Life. I provided the audience an overview of the environment, how people are using it, and what Colleges and Universities are doing with it. It was a good experience and I received lots of positive feedback from people after the session and into the next day. For a brief moment before my presentation I worried that I wasn’t going to do well. It wasn’t because of “stage fright” or anything like that. Rather, it was because I had attended a couple of sessions just before my presentation. My presentation was at 2:30 in the afternoon, just before, I attended an 11 am presentation titled, “Presentation Design From Bullets to Lessig and Beyond.” The two presenters were Rhonda Crim-Tumelson and Mary Katherine Klose from the University of Alabama. They gave a wonderful presentation on how to best use the PowerPoint application as a presentation tool. After an hour of hearing and seeing some great examples of creating a PowerPoint, I started thinking about how I might change my presentation to better help people learn about my topic area. After the 11 am session I shuffled off to lunch and then a Special Interest Session title, “Legal Implications of Second Life and other Virtual Worlds”, given by a panel of attorneys. At this session I learned about what laws and practices need to be considered when using the technology of Second Life. I also started thinking about how I need to review my presentation for correctness and how I need to review the applications, objects, and practices on my virtual island. These two presentations just before mine got me worried. I started worrying that I was going to miss something that I should be sharing with my audience. Of course, all worked out well. Even if I wanted to modify my PowerPoint presentation, I didn’t have any time to change it. I was presenting right after the others. Also, I had spent plenty of time and review of my presentation and I had to remind myself that it is was my experiences that I was going to share and people were looking to hear what “I had to say.” I very much enjoyed presenting and I also learned a little more from my audience. That’s one thing I really enjoy about teaching and presenting. I usually learn as much as I share during those times. All in all, the conference reminded me that we all have lots of good experiences and knowledge to share. I believe it’s important to share what we know and the more we all share, the wider our knowledge and the closer the learning community becomes. So if you have an opportunity to present, I encourage you to forget any “stage fright”, remember someone out there wants to hear what you have to say, and you can learn something new along the way. Go for it!

Just as I get my arms around the ideas, creativity, and popularity of the term “Web 2.0” and its related services, they throw “Web 3.0” at me. How am I ever going to keep up? The recent onslaught of Web 2.0 applications, tools, and attitudes has infused a new look at learning technologies. Some would suggest that Web 2.0 is not so much about specific technologies, rather how the Web is used to facilitate collaboration. Facebook, YouTube, Flicker, Twitter, (the list goes on and on) are social networking tools that have found a place in many corners of the Web. Students, teachers, and technologists have found creative ways to take advantage of the popularity of these tools and incorporate them into the learning environment. At the Educause Learning Initiative conference in January I attended a workshop on digital storytelling. The workshop facilitator, Bryan Alexander, a researcher at NITLE , guided the workshop participants through a few exercises on using some of the tools in a teaching and learning environment. One of the exercises included using Twitter to tell a story. Participants began to craft “a day in the life” of a virtual character, all in “tweets” (Twitter posts) of 150 characters or less. The exercise was a creative and engaging way to use one of these Web 2.0 tools to approach the age old process of storytelling. As I joined in on the exercise I was a bit anxious because I was not familiar with using Twitter, let along feeling comfortable in collaborating on a story for which I knew little about the character. All worked out just fine however and I realized how this technique could be especially useful for students who have used Twitter outside the classroom. Their focus would not so much be the tool as it was for me, rather it would be using a tool they know in a different, exciting, and engaging way. And to top it off, it would be a collaborative effort. This Twitter example is just one where people are finding creative ways to use these tools, which were not necessarily designed to be used in the classroom. OK, I’ve got it. Web 2.0 is about technology and collaboration. Just as I settle in on working on Web 2.0 and helping teachers and students use and integrate these tools I hear someone say Web 3.0. Wait a second, you mean Web 2.0 don’t you? No, no, it’s really Web 3.0 Bruce. Web 3.0 is the future of the Internet. Some suggest that Web 3.0 is about “building” technologies to capitalize on things such as “artificial intelligence” and the semantic Web. Others will say that Web 2.0 was not so much about technologies rather it was about the way “people use the Web and Web 3.0 is about technology, structure, and standards. Ah, I think I see it now. Web 2.0 came from small groups of collaborators taking advantage of the technologies on the Web and using them for social purposes. Web 3.0 attempts to look forward at technologies down the line, but more importantly, Web 3.0 suggests that we’ll need to get our arms around the “process” of managing these technologies. Web 3.0 may bring with it huge monolithic databases, standards, and control, making it attractive commercially. But what about teaching and learning? What about creativity in an open academic setting? I’ve been around technology and academics for a long time now. I see the advantages of using technology to make the most efficient use of resources and to deliver services. I also see the advantages to “open” environments where learning can flourish. If we are moving from an open Web 2.0 environment to a more structured Web 3.0 environment, I’d best get moving on taking advantage of the Web 2.0 landscape. I’ve been around technology for a long time, I know well enough that there is rarely a release of software or a system without an “interim” version between releases. May I suggest that we have a Web 2.5 release? This is the release where we all are up-to-date on what the thing is and we are actually using it in ways that it was designed to be used with fewer “bugs.” Yes, that’s it, Web 2.5! By the way, where does my Blog fit in here, Web 1.5?