CDS 5 Rs' Refresher

Experience with Creating a mobile learning solution

My experience with creating a mobile learning solution was straightforward. The GuideVue Author program is easy enough to use. The interface appears to be clean and professional though it is a little rough around the edges. There are misspellings and a few layout issues in the help screen. I've authored workflow applications in the past and GuideVue presents a similar authoring model, albeit with a much simpler interface. Inserting images was simple, however, the sound recording feature was problematic and I wasn't able to record sound so far.

The article certainly makes the point clear that there is a pronounced trend showing that increasingly more people access the Internet from mobile devices. This trend shouldn’t come by surprise. Most information workers expect to access their email via a mobile device; many youth almost exclusively use their mobile devices to communicate via texting. Also, more and more software being released that allows mobile users to access web services such as social networks.
My thoughts are toward contrasting the quantity with quality of mobile traffic. People are certainly using mobile devices increasingly, however, what use cases are we looking at? I use my mobile phone quite a bit for accessing maps and navigation applications while outside. Email and quick access to specific data is easily accomplished with my phone. Tablet and slate form factors afford larger screen real-estate and perhaps better battery volume. However, the larger size often precludes them from being carried around all the time. Laptop sizes are shrinking to the point where some are the same size as an iPod while offering the full power of a PC.
Mobile computing through smart phones is certainly a fascinating phenomenon, but as many others, is most probably overestimated in some respects. Amara’s law is a maxim stating that we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. I see mobile computing today as being a tool for accomplishing relatively quick and sporadic tasks that do not require deeper reflection. Indeed, mobile/smart-phone computing affords us quick access to information and a device capable of electronically publishing smallish morsels of data. Many of us live in a constantly connected environment where media from camera-phones often precede official news reporting. However, I just do not see people spending the deeper and reflective time on smaller mobile devices.

Experience with Second Life

This has been my first experience with Second Life. I've found that there is certainly a relatively steep learning curve in provisioning an avatar and getting started. The most immediate aspect new users will probably notice is how immersive the environment is. My first impression was how much the environment resembled a video game. At first, I found it hard to take Second Life seriously because it resembled a game and many avatars are 'walking' around with fantastic body types and outfits. As the avatars for my professor and classmates assembled, my perception began to change. The more we interacted, the more 'real' I perceived the engagment. Our first meeting was a bit awkward though, one of our students were 'missing', and we were all new. I discovered that there are many locations from which to choose, however, many of the random locations I 'teleported' to were abandoned. I still find some challenges in seeing how Second Life is a useful tool for common scenarios. I struggle to see how a Second Life experience can measure up to the fidelity and non-verbal affordance of a high quality video conference. Surely there are certain instances where Second Life is ideal.

I have some concerns with the Second Life's software. Yes, the application is 3D-intensive, but it consistently crashed my computer in a similar fashion that certain games bring down my machine. My computer isn't made for intensive gaming, though it has a very powerful 3D rendering hardware for business apps such as AutoCAD. Silverlight may be a better rendering platform because it has advanced 3D capabilities, can leverage the GPU, runs in the browser, and is compatible with Mac, Linux and Windows based machines.

Non-verbal communication during computer mediated communication

Computer mediated communication services certainly come in a wide range of configurations from simple chat to full video conferencing scenarios. None provide all of the non-verbal queues that a fact to face engagement would have. A simple chat experience is least expressive. The only non-verbal communication are emoticons and the unusually long pause that may arise during a chat. Even a pause may be misidentified; is the speaker distracted or was the pause an artifact of the communication in the chat thread? Do computer-generated messages count as non-verbal communication. These automatic messages are often used by support centers to for commonly used phrases/messages. If the receiver identifies a message as such, he may ascertain that perhaps the message was a common. An alternative may be that the computerized, one-size fits all, message really didn't fit what needed to be communicated and perhaps the sender wasn't concerned enough to manually communicate the a 'high-fidelity' message. Video conferencing (audio/video) probably has much better affordance of non-verbal communication. Video provides an uninterrupted stream of communication; even when nothing is spoken, the video is still relaying images captured by the camera. Therefore, body-language and other visual cues may be relayed, provided the subject is in view.

Experience with Synchronous Technology

I've found that synchronous technology is best employed when all participating parties are fluent with the technology. For this exercise, I used Skype's video conferencing service. Both participants were familiar with Skype but the other participant wasn't fluent. The experience had a few snags as the participant struggled to find a particular widget or setting. Unfortunately, video chatting is often beleaguered by inconsistent audio and video quality. A video chat session can quickly degrade into the awkward experience where the audio/video is cutting in and out and the participants aren't sure what was delivered; basically overall confusion. This experience is more tolerable if the participants are well acquainted but is extra awkward when the engagement constitutes the initial introduction and first impressions are established. the participants are still feeling each other out.

That being said, a video conferencing service that is as easy as picking up the phone and calling someone would certainly ease the experience for the majority of people. I consider myself somewhat technically savvy, but I often cringe and become frustrated when troubleshooting something moderately technical when it should 'just work'. The Appliances are often single-purposed and serve that purpose very well.

Chat has generally been the most robust means of synchronous communication in my experience. However, it is not completely painless. Your favorite Instant Messaging software is often blocked by IT policies in many corporate environments. Another potential snag is that the common corporate IM software, Office Communicator, only runs on the computer provided by the company. If a contractor hasn't been granted a corporate computer, he may not participate in corporate IM communication.

When on my own turf, I prefer to use chat because it is generally quick and non-problematic . In cases where I want a more immersive experience, I will sacrifice the time end effort to setup and troubleshoot a video chat session.

Response to Estus article & Experience with social networking

Facebook was used to augment a course that met once a week. Facebook was selected as a medium to encourage students to engage and learn the material. A few students would regularly post a topic for discussion on the Facebook site and all students were asked to participate in discussions. This study shows an example where using Facebook can be a useful medium for encouraging discussion. Students were able to more openly discuss course-related topics. An unexpected development was that older adults become involved with the Facebook site and were actively engaged. Though Facebook is mentioned, this study is essentially employing social networking and collaboration software services. Facebook happens to be an instance of this type of software service; it is unique in that it is clearly the most popular in the US. This study did not make use of the social networking facilities of Facebook, therefore, the entire utility of the software service was merely a discussion thread. I'm not sure whether hosting an academically purposed discussion thread on Facebook is counter constructive. There are many distractions such as new messages and alerts on Facebook that may deter people from focusing on the educational site. On the other hand, regular users of Facebook may log into Facebook for another reason where they are distracted from their original task towards visiting the educational site. It may be useful to consider integrating a module into the common LMS systems.


My experience with social networking
I have to admit that I am not that active in the social networking arena. Linked-In is a service I use most. Instead of leveraging my network, I utilize it as an online resume. In this function, it ranks about the same as employment sites such as Monster and Dice. Linked In appears to have become one of the leaders in the professional networking area. The majority of my Linked In engagements have been incoming traffic from recruiters. So far, I have not discovered any issues or needs that necessitate reaching out and utilizing my extended network.

Experience with Cloud Computing and eBook readings reaction

My Experience with Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is not completely new to me, I’ve been using Google Docs and Microsoft Azure services. When collaborating, I often will use Google Docs. Office 2010 also has a cloud feature where multiple users can edit the document simultaneously; a user can see the other user’s edits in real-time. Microsoft Azure is a particularly useful implementation of cloud services because developers can create an application in a way that is almost identical to the traditional methods. With Amazon and Google’s cloud services, developing for their databases is quite a different paradigm from the traditional relational databases. Though Microsoft and Amazon’s services both run in the cloud and share the core features, the actual application frameworks are quite different. Microsoft’s tooling and development paradigms are reused, this has enabled many developers, including myself, to have a shallow learning curve in developing and deploying applications for the cloud. Being somewhat of an insider, I can appreciate the economic benefits of cloud computing. Many companies spend significant amounts of money hosting their applications in-house on their own servers and must employ expensive IT personnel to maintain and manage the infrastructure. When the servers become outdated, there is a significant amount of effort and cost with provisioning and integrating new equipment. These costs are allayed when corporate applications are hosted in the cloud. The company need not be concerned with the physical hardware on which their application are running; these parameters are abstracted away from the client. When the client needs additional capacity, a request is made to the hosting provider and additional resources are almost immediately available. A real-world scenario where these benefits may be pronounced is if a small, relatively unknown company’s product is to be reviewed by CNN. The company is expecting their web traffic to increase 100 fold in the week following the air date. Obviously, the company doesn’t have the server resources to accommodate the expected traffic and provisioning a powerful server farm for a week of high traffic isn’t economically justifiable or practical to accomplish in a short time frame. With cloud computing, the company can pay for what it needs and easily scale their web site’s resources for a period and scale back down for a fraction of the cost of doing it in-house. Several of my projects involved such scenarios.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------



Response to Yes, People Still Read, but Now It’s Social

The article discusses the traditional reading with electronic reading experiences and aspects of deep-linear thinking compared to an electronic experience that has more content but distractions. The article acknowledges that multitasking does have its detriments but contrasts this with what we gain from multitasking.

A significant portion of the article critically discusses Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows. The author, Johnson, is critical of Carr’s, “unquestioned reverence for the slow contemplation of deep reading”. I agree with Johnson in that the days of slow contemplative reading are long gone, for better or worse. In fact, there were criticizers of the printing press that argued that our capacity for memorization will vanish as people can simply refer to printed material. Indeed, memorization was a common skill in cultures lacking print technology; however, the vast benefits of printed material has more than made up for the detriments of a decreased capacity for memorization.
I sometimes feel that Johnson makes an argument that appears to be a false choice; either deep reading or full on multitasking. I believe that a middle ground is a more rational position. Just because multitasking seems to be ubiquitous today, does not preclude a person from engaging in uninterrupted deep reading when prudent. In addition, peoples’ personalities individualities may play a role with how significant the detriments of multitasking truly are. Some people are easily distracted (ADD/ADHD) and are more negatively affected by the constant electronic stimulus of the screen. Marketers have fully taken advantage of the internet/web medium as a revenue stream. In mainstream, non-paid web content, people can easily become overwhelmed with advertisements. Advertisers have a goal to distract you from your current task harvest your ‘click’. Doing research or completing tasks in such an environment can be difficult. I think that uninterrupted, deep-reading is still achievable even with all the distractions technology affords.

Response to Benjamin E Schreiber article

Response to Benjamin E Schreiber Live lecture versus video podcast in undergraduate medical education

I went a little overboard with the length of this post, it should be just one paragraph.

This study measures students’ knowledge and recall after participating in a video podcast and live lecture. Schreiber measures qualitative data and personal assessments of the two mediums. The study finds that students perform about equally in either teaching medium. Some concerns of the video lecture were that it was not interactive, but students appreciated the utilities of video lectures such as pausing and reviewing.
It is promising that, at this juncture, studies show that video podcasts rate similarly to live lectures. Video casting is relatively easy with a set of slides and an audio track, and has shown to be equally effective and accepted by students. There is significant room for improvement by targeted production improvements intended to improve the utility of educational multimedia. Several organizations are employing multimedia in education that improve upon and mitigate many of the shortcomings associated with faculty produced video casts. These implementations may improve the utility of educational multimedia through several methods including holding the listeners’ attention longer, and employing adaptive testing to improve interactivity and comprehension. A common strategy utilizes video artifacts to capture and guide the listener’s imagination to better engage the student; this may lead to a superior learning experience.







As technologies emerge, we often fail to effectively leverage and integrate these technologies, often in spite of the presence of established knowledge and expertise. That is to say that there is a lag between the emergence of a technology and its effective use. At this time, there is a wide gap between professional educational video and the video content authored by faculty. Certainly, the production quality of professional organizations is out of scope for most educators, but one can argue that with reasonable resources, we can accomplish far more than simple video casts. Faculty is quite proficient at delivering live lectures and is well familiar with the live context. However, as video casting is still new, best practices in teaching strategies have not yet been employed. One possibility of making higher quality video production available to the masses may be similar to the efforts employed to break down the barriers of creating professional websites. For people with limited or no experience creating a traditional website, many alternatives are available. These do-it-yourself sites leverage templates which incorporate best practices and professional design. These generic sites are far cheaper to create and consume less time. The downsides are the sacrifices that must be made to certain customizations and intended features that are not supported. In the same way, educational video production software and skillsets may evolve to the point where a framework that facilitates quality video production and best practices.
One point that Schreiber’s study makes is that students did not like that the video lecture because it was not interactive; they could not ask questions. A skill professors have that have taught the same class for many years is the insight to anticipate the questions that students will have. Faculty may also have the insight as to which areas students are more challenged. Therefore, skilled and seasoned lecturers often give amazingly effective lectures. Lectures for commonly taught classes may be better suited for video casting. These lectures may produce an improved return for investments of advanced video production resources. Additionally, incorporating adaptive testing into educational multimedia may also mitigate the issues with interactivity to provide a better learning experience. After completing the core multimedia learning component, an adaptive testing module can test the student’s comprehension of the material. The software can present the student with ancillary material/modules targeted specifically to the areas where the student needs improvement. Regardless of the possible measures that may be employed, we have not effectively leveraged video casting with existing technology and knowledge in the educational arena.