Category: EdTech Coursework

This week, my ed tech course challenged me to use Mozilla’s PopcornMaker to produce a one minute remix reflecting on the maker movement. The assignment suggested we start by playing with PopcornMaker before creating our mashup. I started with this very good tutorial. Playing with PopcornMaker wasn’t like playing with the nice new toy from the the Toy Barn. It’s more like playing with your older brother’s discarded broken thing held together by duct tape.

My completed video only plays all the way through about half the time. Notice how the lengths of video clips in my screen shot are all 3:56? For whatever reason, PopcornMaker would only import the first 3 minutes and 56 seconds of a video. I found myself thinking: why can’t this be iMovie? A product that actually works? 

I started googling these problems. At the bottom of the Mozilla help forums on WebMaker tools, I noticed a challenge, “The good news is that because it’s a free and open source web project, anybody with skills and motivation can take a crack at improving the software and user experience.”

Oh yeah. This isn’t iMovie because people made it for people, for free. It might have bugs, but I didn’t have to buy a $1,400 aluminum slab of Apple product to use it. Thinking about the way big firms appropriate and commodify innovations has always interested me. How do grass-roots innovations take hold? What happens when these are appropriated by corporations and governments, commoditized, and scaled? Can the maker movement re-approprate these innovations once again, for free and beneficial use?

Inspired by thinking about PopcornMaker versus the corporate competition, I decided to apply my questions around the (re)appropriation of maker products to robots. As with software, both open-source and corporate communities propel innovation in machine learning and hardware. But with different aims and very different results.

https://jshelley.makes.org/popcorn/32yf_

References

BullDog English. (2014, March 28). English bulldog puppy rides roomba [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRGsBHu39BA

Lázaro, Edu. (2014, May 22). Automaton: the old man and the sea [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH-aJgBtuvs

MakerBot. (2013, May 8). MakerBot and Robohand | 3D Printing Mechanical Hands [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT3772yhr0o

MilitaryClips.com. (2013, July 12). Meet ATLAS! ie. The Terminator – From Petman to ATLAS DARPAs Killer Robot is almost complete! [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=959puZddZxo

Pasini, Roberto [Kalamun]. (2011). Humanature – Personal Computer [ Kalamun Rmx ] (2011) [Audio file]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/kalamun/humanature-personal-computer

Quintero, Heberto. (2012, July 19). Antique singing bird cage Automaton [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3OaTKVOKc0

Rameses B. (Accessed 2015, May 20). Pride (happy theme) [Audio file]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/ramesesb/pride-happy-theme

Roy, Niklas. (2012, November 25). Roboter Reiniger – Handy little household robot sweeps Brasília
[Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8539DxdmwI

TheSingingNerd. (2014, August 21). Coke Zero Robot [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuuKZ99qGFU

Vought, Jeremy [DevilDog]. (2012, October 11). Robot marines??? Coming to a corps near you… [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri61JqOGA0k

When I began CEP-810, my goal was to better connect my practice as a higher ed IT leader with teaching and learning.

This course helped me learn to deliberately reflect on my practice using a variety of tools. Examples include developing and reflecting on my PLN and learning a new skill using only YouTube and help forums. The structure of the class also practiced what it preached: using blogs, twitter, multimedia, and discussion boards to reflect on our learning. The introspection helped me unpack valuable unconscious learning processes.

The 21st Century Lesson Plan was, hands down, my greatest challenge. It also represented the largest shift in my practice. I’ve never built a lesson plan before. I’d never before understood my departmental leadership as a sort of pedagogy. Last week, I actually taught that lesson to my entire staff. I’ve spent a decade running meetings, giving major conference presentations, and speaking in public. But I’ve never been so nervous. I led a technology-integrated workshop rooted in active learning to a group of busy professionals. Would they participate? Would it be a waste of their time? I was afraid my lesson might be subject to some serious trolling.

My goal was to help our team embrace the practice of change leadership. I think we all needed to norm around a concept of change leadership and explore opportunities for each team member to lead. Almost by definition, you can’t tell somebody to lead. I needed to figure out a pedagogical and technological approach that surrendered the lesson to the learners, to give up control, to allow them to lead. I had just a bit of insight into how instructors must feel every day.

I’m happy to report that it turned out great! The staff worked in small teams, generating five fantastic project ideas that all immediately benefit our university. The winning project is pitching their idea to our Directors tomorrow.

Questions remain

I want to learn more about implementing theoretical ideas in practice. For example, if you think about IT as an organizational structure within the university, technology may be seen as structurally separate from teaching and learning. We’ve tried to address that problem by building an IT organization that’s as close to the faculty as possible. Our Learning Tech staff are huge fans of TPACK already and we’ve been talking about how to design faculty development experiences for TPACK. We are exploring ideas such as asking faculty from the various schools to act as liaisons to advise IT and mentor other instructors.

These are practical questions. As technology transforms education, how do we help preserve the best values and practices of our universities while incorporating the best innovations from modern learning science and technology? How do folks in support jobs, like myself, define our roles to be most helpful to our institutions? This all adds up to figuring out the sort of future we want to create. I turn often to the work of Anya Kamenetz for a glimpse into one exciting future for education with technology:

I also want to learn more about pursuing our social justice values with educational technology. How can we support diverse learners? First generation students? English Language Learners? How can 21st century teaching and learning with technology invite more women into computer science? More men into K12 teaching? Offering different modes of learning, knowing, and presenting knowledge may help make many disciplines more diverse.

CEP-810 has provided a strong foundation and excellent network of colleagues. I very much look forward to the next step.

This project was loads of fun. We each had to complete a simple cooking task–but with a couple of twists. First, we could only use three items: a plate, a bowl and a utensil. All the items had to be selected blindly by somebody else. We then randomly selected from among 5 possible cooking tasks. My wife selected a plate, a small bowl, and a spoon. I had to make a fruit salad.

This exercise constrained me to immediately focus on the technology I had available in the context of my goal (make the salad). I didn’t consider the basic principles of fruit salad construction separately from the technology. Neither did I separate either of these from cooking technique. If I frame the cooking project with TPACK, then:

Implements = Technology
Cooking techniques = Pedagogy
Recipe (fruit salad) = Content

I was also struck by the immediate relevance of Dr. Punya Mishra’s definition of an educational technology in his talk on YouTube. That is, any technology we repurpose for teaching and learning. In the exercise, I had to repurpose the spoon, mostly, in place of a knife.

On a personal level, I was struck by the authenticity of the TPACK exercise. Technology integration can often feel artificial. This simple, well designed exercise didn’t just integrate the technology. It made the technology integrate feel urgent, even desperate. What we don’t always need to rethink our use of educational technologies? Might we instead rethink our learning goals and strategies for the 21st century? For example, let’s assume tests indicate learning goals. If you can beat a test with your fancy new Apple Watch–did you cheat? Or did you integrate the technology available to solve a problem?

I’ve completed my network learning project! As I mentioned in my first and second posts, my learning goal was to create an electric cigar box guitar using only online help resources. I had to learn to build the guitar itself, some musical math to space the frets so the notes would sound true, and how to solder to install the electronics.

While I often turn to YouTube and online help forums for learning, I haven’t before restricted myself to using internet help forums exclusively. This added challenge taught be a lot about both expanding and restricting my personal learning network. This project expanded my network because I was forced to dig more deeply into online resources to learn specific skills and principles. However, my network was also more restricted, since I could only use a very small part of my overall network. For example, if I’d been learning to solder without this restriction, I would probably have looked up a YouTube video. But I would also have tweeted my friends around the country asking somebody to do a Skype session to teach me. I may also have talked to some of my very talented work colleagues in person.

In the end, I did learn to solder, build a guitar, and even figure out how to produce notes that were actually in tune. In three weeks, I was able to acquire multiple new skill sets. In learning from online resources without an instructor, I found myself engaging in much more deliberate practice. This project made me responsible for my own learning, so the stakes were higher. I practiced soldering on scrap wire while watching YouTube for a long time before I risked my newfound skills on the real guitar components. I almost didn’t realize that I was practicing much more than usual. Learning in this way made deliberate practice natural and necessary.

I also found myself evaluating online help resources more critically and usual. As another effect of taking responsibility for my own learning, I couldn’t just trust any plan for a guitar, fretting, or soldering. Before actually cutting, gluing, or taking any steps on my project, I checked my sources. Did the authors have credibility? What else had they published online? What did the commenters or reviews say on their sites and videos? I rejected several potential guitar plans after reading the comments in-depth.

Moving forward, I will continue to use online resources for learning. The constraints of this project taught me that increased responsibility for my own learning and naturally increased my deliberate practice and critical evaluation skills. In turn, these skills improved the quality of my learning (and my guitar). While my future projects won’t have the constraints of the NLP, I hope to structure projects to offer greater autonomy to the learner. For example, I’ve applied these lessons designing my 21st Century Lesson Plan to help my team at work produce their own notions of leadership together in an online notebook.

I’ve documented much of my process and my learning in a video on YouTube. I made a few mistakes along the way. For example, I did not fully understand how the guitar tuning pegs would fit onto the head of the instrument, so I ended up having to drill unattractive extra holes. While I did grow more confident in my skills throughout the project, I never learned to actually play a guitar. Perhaps that’ll be my next NLP?

I am privileged to work with a talented IT team at an innovative university. I’ve been working on a broad curriculum to cultivate collaborative leadership opportunities for every member of the staff. My aim is to help develop the great potential in every team member while building a nimble organization. In The Leaderfull Community, Joseph A. Raelin writes, “Conventional leadership may be not what we need as we prepare to manage twenty-first century organizations” (2006).

I’ve developed a 90 minute lesson plan for the IT team to introduce this curriculum by organizing team activities around defining leadership and identifying opportunities for each team member to lead. Leadership is a generative act. Inspiring leadership by telling people to lead is almost contradictory. I’ve therefore designed a lesson asking the team to collaborate on developing leadership opportunities and proposals with an online shared notebook (Microsoft OneNote). By creating together online, the students will model the sort of creative and collaborative activity of leadership itself. The content of the lesson will also focus on notions of collaborative leadership. The technology medium (OneNote) should reinforce the learning objectives.

The lesson is designed to emphasize Hobbs’s five core competencies of access, analyze, create, reflect and act (2011). I notice that these map nicely onto the continuous quality improvement practice known as the Deming Cycle: Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA). Businesses use the Deming Cycle as a methodology to improve any process. After reading about Hobbs’s work, I realized that PDSA is essentially a 21st century learning strategy. IT staff are already familiar with the Deming Cycle, so I organized my lesson around PDSA to better leverage the team’s pre-existing knowledge.

In my lesson, the team will access a common understanding of leadership through the use of poll everywhere. Anonymous online polling will create a safe space to explore the expertise already in the room and correct any misconceptions arising from prior knowledge. Staff will work in groups to create an online notebook (OneNote) to analyze leadership opportunities and produce their own knowledge. They will create project proposals using multiple forms: PowerPoint Online and verbal presentation to their peers. Students will reflect by switching roles so to analyze their own proposals. They’ll explore our organizational hierarchy by taking on managerial roles to find the strengths and weaknesses of the team proposals. Finally, students will act on their proposals when we formally approve the best project ideas as real-world projects to solve problems for our university.

References

Hobbs, R. (2011). Digital and media literacy: Connecting culture and classroom. Thousand, Oaks, CA: Corwin/Sage.

Raelin, J. A. (2006). The Leaderful Community . Winston J. Brill & Assoc, 12 (6). Retrieved from
http://www.winstonbrill.com/bril001/html/article_index/articles/551-600/article579_body.html

My cigar box guitar (CGB) is coming along nicely.

I’ve been following the Art of Manliness DIY Cigar Box Guitar plan for the design and Instructables.com for making it electric. I looked at YouTube videos for help with constructing a guitar, but found them far less useful than step-by-step instructions with pictures. Videos are better suited for demonstrating motion or action, but moved too quickly for me to follow while measuring and cutting. A theme quickly developed in my learning: I need more rote instruction because I lack a deep understanding the principles involved in the process. I am learning like a novice (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, 1999).

For example, I used to wonder how anybody could learn from a TV cooking show. Do you cart the TV into the kitchen and try to keep up with the celebrity chef? As I learned to cook like an expert, I learned that precise instructions aren’t important for master chefs. They watch for new ideas and techniques. The recipe becomes less relevant.

For guitar building, I still need a recipe. Hundreds of forum posts say things like, “there are no rules” (that’s a lie, there are) and, “be creative, no two CGBs are the same”. These comments are from folks who’ve built a ton of these puppies and can improvise based on mastery of the core principles. I don’t understand the principles well enough to know how long a neck should be or what sort of strings to use, so I need to follow a precise model.

I do not have a lick of knowledge about audio electronics or soldering. Instructables recommended using a part called a potentiometer. I didn’t even know what this was, but I dutifully ordered it online based on the part number provided in the instructions. When it arrived, it didn’t look EXACTLY like the pictures in the instructions. I was in big trouble.

I had to research what in the heck a potentiometer does (it’s just a volume knob) to figure out how to wire it up. Mine had more wiring contacts than the one in the instructions. I learned that these things have negative and positive contacts, but I had no idea which was which, or why mine had an extra. I finally solved the puzzle by reading customer product reviews for the potentiometer. One reviewer kindly explained which was which. I had to understand something of the basic principles before the advice in the product review made any sense.

YouTube was great for soldering. With no background in soldering, I didn’t know the terminology well enough to follow written instructions. Instructions like “first, tin the tip” were a mystery to me. When the guy in the soldering video (link to YouTube) said it, however, he demonstrated melting solder onto the tip of the iron and shaking it off. Made sense.

I captured a short video of my attempts at soldering:

[made with GarageBand and iMove]

For rote tasks with easy instructions, the internet can be a fantastic teacher. When reality deviates from instructions, however, you need an understanding of principles to continue learning. I was still able to learn the principles online, but it would have been MUCH easier to consult a good teacher.

References

Bransford, J., Brown, A.L. & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.), How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school (pp. 3-27). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Retrieved from http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070368.

Coldrestart, (2007, February 27). How to do it: basic soldering
[Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLfXXRfRIzY

The Personal Learning Network (PLN) project in our class has been a reflective exercise for me. For the last 10 years, I have held several positions in a rapidly changing field. I’ve had to rely heavily on my learning network to help me adapt and find solutions.

My learning network has become an unholy mess

Mapping my network helped me clean house. It forced me to think about which sources are really use at the root, and which are secondary so that I can better target my energy. It also made me think about where my network is vulnerable. What other professional organizations should I seek?

I must contribute as well as consume

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

– Maya Angelou

I’ve always blogged a little, tweeted a little, but I’ve mostly been a lurker on learning networks. I’m might be the free-riding equivalent of the jerk who listens to NPR all year and ignores the pledge drive. This project has re-ignited my commitment for contributing back to my network in order to accomplish some important things:

• Be accountable for my learning
• Promote and celebrate the work of others
• Maybe help somebody else

It’s not purpose-built

This project has also made me appreciate how long it takes to build a robust and effective network. For example, my amazing EDUCAUSE colleagues are among my most impactful teachers. It has taken me almost eight years to build a network of true friends, not just “networking contacts”. When I began building this network I had no idea what it would be good for. I had a different job at that time; my industry had different needs. I realize now that you can’t build a network for a particular project or need. By the time you have a specific need, it’s far too late to build a network. You need to build your PLN before you need it.

Educational technology is a rapidly evolving field. In order to remain competitive as educators, we have embrace a culture of rapid innovation. We can’t afford to await packaged instructions, especially when it comes to navigating disruptive change. We all develop our own robust learning networks that usually outrun formal education. I’ve created a sample map of my learning network:

You’ll note that I have a few main sources of learning: my main professional organization (EDUCAUSE), professional development, the internet, my colleagues, the library, and what I’m calling “direct study”. Direct study means first-hand reflection on my practice, experiment, and consulting.

Every day, it seems there’s a new business area where IT may be able to to help. We work on new learning tools, financial systems, and a variety of unpredictable new things. Every problem in the organization, no matter how obscure, may suddenly benefit from something IT. I must constantly learn all about all aspects of the business. How does the admissions process work? What’s trending in community-based learning and research? How is the US Department of Education First in the World program structured?

Just this week, we learned that a new top-level internet domain (TLD), .college, was released. TLDs are the root at the end of each web address (.com, .org, .net). Universities mostly use .edu domains, which are highly regulated by EDUCAUSE. Should we purchase a .college domain? What if somebody else registers a website for our institution with .college and uses it in unsavory ways? This question came up, and we had to decide on a course of action quickly. I as first alerted to the problem through blog I read using Feedly. I used my colleagues around the university to consult and EDUCAUSE (specifically email discussion lists) to gather details and make a decision.

Our personal networks are always growing, often unwieldy, and resist easy organization. But I couldn’t live without it.