This is just one of those pesky test posts to see if some additional, yet to be revealed, functionality is actually working. Please disregard.
Where is the “Change”?
“MOOCs are all about messing with boundaries, barriers, and silos.”
In May of this year George Siemens announced the “Mother of all MOOCs”, appropriately titled Change. The philosophy is sound: Why have a single person or even small set of people delivering course content when we have a global network of innovative thinkers to pull from. The result is a 30-week series currently happening and still in its infancy at just Week 6. But much of how the course is being delivered is disappointing to me, and some aspects so offensive to the very pedagogy that these men preach, that I believe they deserve to be called out on it.
Disclaimer: I admire and appreciate the work of Siemens, Downes, and Cormier in a huge way. I don’t pretend to be an expert in the field of online education. These opinions are my own. But having people to look up to also requires the critical thinking to question them on their process. That’s what this post is.
“Over the past four years, a growing number of educators have started experimenting with the teaching and learning process”
The Change MOOC has had a roller-coaster of issues in terms of technology to deliver content. BigBlueButton crashed. FuzeMeeting had issues. Although they found a license to use Blackboard Collaborate, Both Downes and Siemens put the call out to people asking for suggestions on how to deliver synchronous course content that would scale. DTLT responded by offering to help them using the same technology we use to broadcast and interact with our network everyday on DTLT Today. This to me is a beautiful thing: trying new products and figuring things out in the open, being willing to change your methods, and using a network of peers to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
But here’s where the criticism comes in. The idea that a course should use Blackboard Collaborate simply because it’s a comfortable space for instructors is just wrong. Much of my work is pushing educators to think differently, not just students. There is no reason that using a free tool like Google Hangout should be too difficult for an instructor that has something to say on innovation in education. If it is a deal-breaker, I’m not sure that instructor has anything I’m interested in hearing. In the process of experimentation with various technologies if we put the stipulation up that the instructor has to be “comfortable” then what are we fighting for?
“Through out this ‘course’ participants will use a variety of technologies”
As our session began at least one person voiced the concern that it felt like a private conversation they were watching. Although Downes had mentioned the possibility of opening up the Hangout to others that wasn’t done. My idea of using Google Voice to take live calls and pre-recorded questions during the event was shot down. Only Siemens was participating with the chat while the discussion was going on (and I recognize it’s difficult to have a meaningful conversation while reading a chat and responding to questions there). The call for interactivity was soundly ignored, and the result was a session that was not much more than a podcast of the folks running the Change MOOC. This stands in stark contrast to all of the ideas and suggestions we put forth both in the previous discussion as well as in e-mails throughout the week.
Communication with the MOOC seems to be another major problem. The announcement for our session with them went out just 2 and a half hours before the session began, even though we had been in talks with them throughout the week to put it together. 29 people attended, yet only 6 have viewed the archive. Again, I suspect most had no clue that the session was happening, and don’t know where to go to get the recording. Only today did I find the magic page housing previous recordings. When you go to Week 5 you get no indication of what actually happened that week. During the session they also announced major time change for the following week’s guest. The session would be moved to Sunday afternoon, just 2 days from when it was announced during that live session. The e-mail newsletter for this announcement didn’t go out until Saturday afternoon. I don’t believe at this point the drop in numbers for participating in this MOOC has much to do with the technological hurdles they had earlier on, I believe it’s due to no one knowing what’s going on.
“We will show you the tool, give examples, use the tools ourselves, and talk about them in depth.”
I want the Change MOOC to succeed in a big way because when the bar for online learning is raised we all win. Collaboration among peers in a learning network is a valuable thing and I think it failed in this context because in a moment of irony many people involved in the Change MOOC (both as participants, facilitators, and guest speakers) were not open to change. If we want to have a discussion framed around innovation in education we have to be willing to experiment and not afraid for things to go wrong. There should be no hard lines or absolutes. No one seems uncomfortable with the idea of using Blackboard software to deliver content about the “open web” or “innovative teaching practices”. It’s something I don’t think anyone in the Change MOOC would have hesitated to call out another group or institution on, but no one is pushing back on the Change MOOC.
And that needs to…well…change.
Custom Post Types in WordPress with Gravity Forms
We recently discovered the great premium plugin Gravity Forms at DTLT from the web group at UMW who purchased it to use with the redesigned UMW.edu site (running completely on WordPress!). One amazing feature of gravity forms is that it allows you to create a form that, when a user submits it, creates a post in WordPress. You can also link form fields to custom field data allowing for a lot of customization. Combine that with this plugin to allow the submission of a custom post type and you start to see the flexibility this tool can offer.
As it so happens I was recently asked by the Chemistry department to look into the possibility of having a form on their site that would allow alumni to post information that would be added to a forward-facing “Alumni Directory” similar to what Union College is doing here. I couldn’t have asked for a better excuse to put Gravity Forms to work! I’ve played with custom post types before but the best framework I’ve found yet to build off of was Kyle Jones’ Library Custom Post Types which comes as a pack of three custom post types meant for libraries (Databases, Staff Directory, and Journals). It was relatively easy to modify the Staff Directory component to become an Alumni Directory with the particular information that the Chemistry department wanted to collect. What’s great about this solution is that not only do we have a front facing directory (which I’m still working on the style of) and form for automatic submission to that directory, but we also have a beautiful backend interface for the directory that allows admins to search, add, and edit alumni directly from the WordPress interface. It’s one of those moments where WordPress ceases to feel like “blogging software” and shines as a full-fledged flexible content management system (and a shining example of why it’s so important that WordPress is powering UMW.edu!).
The final piece of the puzzle was adding sorting to the table of alumni data so you could sort by graduation year, alphabetical by name, and other columns. That turned out to be dead simple with this small piece of javascript that you simply link to and apply a class to your table. Once the new alumni directory is live I’ll be sure to link to it here, but for now I’ll leave you with these screenshots of the interface.
The 7:30 Project
So Andy Rush came up with a great idea, document all the off-the-wall things I come up with in the early hours of the morning when I get to work. You see, for the time being my wife and I are commuting to Fredericksburg from Richmond. Since she likes to get to work by 8, that means I’m usually at the DTLT office by 7:15 or 7:30 in the morning. I’ve always tended to do some of my best thinking in the morning (when coffee is in the mix of course) so it’s typical for me to be waiting anxiously for Andy, Martha, or Jim to enter the office to excitedly tell them about what I’ve come up with.
Some time ago I decided I could get some cool things put together by simply telling myself “What will you do today, Tim?” and Andy suggested I start a site, “The 7:30 Project” to document it. Since I hope to not be doing this awful commute for too long I figure it’s best kept here on the blog so you will start seeing a new category of posts here where I will be documenting what my “7:30 Project” today was. If nothing else it’s a good excuse to keep me in the practice of regularly blogging and documenting some of the things I’m doing at UMW. If you love them or have ideas to expand on them hit me up in the comments. If you hate them, blame Andy. Easy peasy, let’s do this.
This American Life Sex Tape
This is possibly the best parody I’ve heard, and I think it’s a perfect example of how students can use just audio to create a compelling new narrative.
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.
Today, just one day after announcing a slew of new gadgets and showing off yet more amazing software that seems futuristic, Apple replaced their homepage with an image none of us wanted to see.
At the age of 58, Steve Jobs lost his battle with cancer and passed away. I’ve never cried for a celebrity before, but then again I’ve never had such a high-profile figure so deeply impact my life like Steve Jobs’ work has done with mine. I’m truly at a loss for words right now as I try to articulate what a loss I feel from this. Steve Jobs was the Thomas Edison of my generation, an innovator and thinker that I had the incredible privilege to experience in my lifetime. The products I use every day exist because of the passion and vision of this one man. He changed the level of the game every other marketer was playing by changing the way we see and use computers, phones, movies, and more.
In 2005 Jobs gave a notable commencement speech at Stanford and almost every line of it resonates in my life right now.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Thank you Steve. Thank you for having the courage to stand by your convictions. Thank you for refusing to settle for “good enough”. Thank you raising the bar.
Thank you.
Born This Way
The great @scottlo is back on the radio and doing some great things, one of them being timed #ds106 assignment. ~24 minutes where he plays a few songs and challenges you to finish an assignment. Don’t think, just make.
I saw it this morning and rose to the challenge, another Big Hip Hop picture. It’s a fun assignment to do and I’m glad I got the nudge from scottlo to do it.
Going Home
I grew up in a small town called Fairborn that was situated close to Dayton, Ohio. We moved when I was 11 and haven’t been back in a very long time. From what I understand the town is suffering with job loss and many folks having moved out of the area. I found a ds106 assignment that asks you to create a postcard of where you come from. I had no idea how important this assignment would become for me this evening.
I apologize for the large size of this file but I wanted to have some motion to my image so animated gif it is, and it’s a big one. I happened to find a video of someone driving through Fairborn on Youtube. To you this moving image will mean very little, to me it’s my childhood and I can’t look at it without a wave of emotion coming over me.
Where did that guy come from?!
Spending some time this evening in Photoshop with another fun ds106 assignment. Pretty basic, photoshop a guy into odd scenes. I’m focusing on film scenes. Enter our volunteer stage left:
Let the games begin….
I’ve got quite a few more planned, but I want to open this up to more folks. To make it easier here’s an image file with the background removed.
Go forth and remix!
Math is hard
You know what’s cooler than a million dollars? Me neither.
