Today’s project demonstrates that by changing how we see information, Web 2.0 also affects how we think about that information.

Flickr introduced the type of display known as a “tag cloud”, and it can subtly affect one’s perception of a block of text. Want a quick glimpse at the content of a large block of text? How about getting a general impression of the text in an article, a web page, an important document, or even a recent chat?

The online text-conversion tool at TagCrowd made that project page possible…

1. open text file (page source, chat archive, etc.)
2. copy text into text editor
3. remove some strings (time signatures, etc.); then copy and
4. submit at TagCrowd.com

Looks as though the forecast will be partly cloudy for quite some time…

And here is a new trail of breadcrumbs: The URL for shared items from my Google Reader feeds has been added to my Links blog (blogroll). Currently, the items shared are all articles containing various bloggers’ predictions for technology and the Internet in 2007.

It is encouraging that a web development icon like Jon Udell frequently shares—through his online presence—his genuine interest in educational technology. In “Re-imagining education” he posts the challenge:

“Access to knowledge, access to publishing. Motivation and context. If an educational system embraced these principles, what would it look like?”

And, for Mr. Udell, it is not just rhetoric. He explores a topic with a mindful bent toward problem solving. In a recent entry, he speaks about his podcast interview with Graham Glass, (founder of edu2.0) about the future of education. This sort of conversation is like ear candy for the edTech-minded. Udell brings unique insight to the conversation; the links alone, given the extent of his journey across technology and the Internet, present a wealth of material that can keep an educator’s eye on the leading edge. Prime example: this link to a project based learning video produced by high school students (app. thirty minutes; worth a look).

I often find it necessary to edit my pessimistic view, if only to keep myself on the constructive side of the dialog. I have, for example, cut entire rants about the inertia in public education (where technology is concerned). Railing on about adoption lag time is not going to bring about change. The teacher’s lounge that is the Internet streams a cacophony of complaint.

It helps to hear such a clear message from folks like Jon Udell.

Interesting how a current mode of thinking can permeate every moment, every random action, completely affecting one’s view. Currently absorbed by the topic of online curriculum development and the collaborative communities forming around this effort (particularly the way in which learning objects can be found, cataloged, sorted and indexed), I see simple mention of a video presentation about some random technology, and immediately see significance for my current obsession.

Could symmetric and asymmetric verification games be used to index online educational content?

Check out the episode of Google TechTalks titled “Human Computation: Games With A Purpose” (July 26, 2006; approx. 50 min, 35 min presentation plus Q&A). Featuring Luis von Ahn (site) - assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University; Microsoft Research Fellowship recipient.

“Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. [von Ahn advocates] a novel approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games. For example, the ESP Game, described in this talk, is an enjoyable online game — many people play over 40 hours a week — and when people play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These keywords can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image search. People play the game not because they want to help, but because they enjoy it.

“Von Ahn describes other examples of ‘games with a purpose’: Peekaboom, which helps determine the location of objects in images, and Verbosity, which collects common-sense knowledge. Von Ahn also explains a general approach for constructing games with a purpose.”

I blogGoogled “games with purpose” and found 74 links. This will make 75, I reckon. Here’s an excerpt from Tim O’Reilly’s take on this video:

“As the symbiosis between humans and computers becomes deeper, and at a larger scale, we’re going to see problems that were formerly construed as ‘hard AI’ suddenly broken, not because computers themselves have become intelligent, but because humans and computers have gotten better at working together.“

Excellent summary, and a thought-provoking prognosis. O’Reilly’s article then led me to Creating Passionate Users , which may also hold some clues for online curriculum development communities, such as the Curriki project.

The segments on PeekaBoom and Verbosity showed how the ESP game data has been extended. Noteworthy is that the project is “funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF)”.

Fascinating.

Note to Luis von Ahn: Where is the data now? Has it been made public?

A new attitude inspired this post: If development is to occur, if my own webquest is to evolve, if I am to learn, then I must step outside of my edBox. With this surfing session I begin to contact bloggers, I will invite them to visit Curriki Workshop, the wiki I opened in anticipation of the Curriki launch. Here are some of the bloggers I am contacting, if only to begin a conversation:

History Tech Teacher Blog: Links

“…a grad student working to become a middle school social studies teacher. I’m also a substitute teacher. This blog is about education, history and tech stuff.”

Using Wiki in Education

“…a blog and wiki based book by Stewart Mader, focused on the wiki as a tool for collaborative learning and knowledge construction.”

WSD - Technology Blog

“News, notes, commentary, philosophy, and position papers on all things technical in Weber School District. Weber School District is a k-12 school district with 28000 students and over 4000 staff.”

Rick Voithofer, PhD (Ohio State University)

Assistant Professor - Technologies of Instruction and Media Program, Social and Cultural Foundations of Education; School of Educaitonal Policy and Leadership, College of Education and Human Ecology

Humane Systems Innovation

Emotional Re-design: Anger innovation and change (pt.2); In defense of information architecture

SparkBugg.com

“…a blog about sharing smart ideas, inventions, and innovation.”

Meet me at this space: Curriki Workshop; let’s talk open source content and effective online curriculum development.

Cheers.

Classrooms have changed plenty since the early nineties. This is not only due to the gadgets that have come into vogue; I was as geeked out as anyone back then. I recall staying late on campus one Friday, hooking up the first laserdisc player on campus; then, going home to spend most of that weekend scripting buttons into a Hypercard stack to remotely navigate a disc’s program while simultaneously throwing instructional text up to the monitor.

That felt like Education2.0. What we didn’t know back then was that it was still World1.0, and that things were about to change. Oh sure, some few would have seen clear to the tech horizon; but their voices were drowned out by the steady thrumm of copy machines spewing handouts; their vision blurred by chalk dust. And the failure—yes, I think we failed—to keep up with the pace of development has left a great rift between what we now have and what could have been.

In “K-12, Higher Ed, Apples, Oranges…”, Christopher Dawson offers—almost in passing—a notion that has driven my own webquest:

In many ways, higher ed and K-12 are two different worlds.

Could someone please shout that from a rooftop? If we had any hint of the change to come back then, would we have worked any harder to promote development of K-12 educational technology? Tried to keep pace with the development in academia? Well, better late than never. The extent of technological progress over the last decade leaves me grinning at the thought of trying to imagine what the standard will be in ten years. And it will be prudent to temper the charge with advice like that from Kirk Kirksey

“Just because we can create a technology doesn’t mean we will do something worthwhile with it.“

I am reminded here of something that Carl once wrote:

“Even if I could have a to-do list holographically projected in 3-D, floating in front of my face with really cool spaceships battling all around it which was activated via voice command, I still wouldn’t be anymore productive.”

Comparatively, just because a student has posted in a weblog about the way a jazzy podcast has helped him to contribute to a wiki does not mean that he is gaining knowledge. Or, does it? (Carl?)

Best, perhaps, to just keep plugging along, keep looking for what works now.

Technorati Profile

I have been surfing around eLearning technology, scoping out the state of the industry as it pertains to K-12 education. Mostly what I found are sites targetting higher education.

Still waters.

I have done this too many times: begin surfing around SCOs and eLearning, only to become mired in a network of BigCo industry presentations and academic discussions. Joe and Jill Public Teacher do not have the funding to pursue these technologies. Nor do they have the time.

I started this post with a title that read “…and the K-12 Market”. Soon came around to the idea that public education is more “audience” than market. In my experience, most motivated educators are resourceful survivors, not as many are active as technology consumers. An application should start making things easier straight out of the box. There is an obvious need for educational tech-tools to be blatantly, absurdly user-friendly. In his recent article discussing “XERTE” (a Free Visual Editor for SCORM compliant Flash Learning Objects) Scott Leslie writes

…I truly do not think this is what I call an instructor-focused tool.
Seriously, what kind of time should we expect faculty to invest in these types of tools?

Sharable Content Objects, and Learning Management Systems (LMS) might smooth the process of developing and distributing high quality, interactive instructional materials. But the learning curve for any new application can be daunting. In this article, James Burke defines a SCO as “…the smallest piece of content that is both reusable and independent.” The item appears in a table of contents, can contain its own bookmark, score, and completion status, and may be tracked separately from other items.
In “SCORM for dummies”, Rustici Software explains that a LMS, or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is

…responsible for directing the learner to relevant training, tracking the learner’s progress (things like score and current location) and maintaining the learner’s transcript. The essence of SCORM is that any content that conforms to the SCORM specifications will work with any SCORM conformant LMS. SCORM is the ’secret sauce’ that operates behind the scenes to make things compatible.

For a more thorough treatment, Burke directs his readers to a white paper titled “Got SCORM? A Brief Technical Overview That Answers the Question ‘What is SCORM?’” From the Introduction:

When I started researching SCORM in preparation for developing content and implementing an LMS, what I remember most was my frustration at the lack of any concise, hands-on information that was available about SCORM.

The bar of technological literacy has certainly been going up, and up. Still, the new web-based applications of Web 2.0 are promising. Mr. Leslie even seems hopeful by pointing out that “[web 2.0 tools] make it INCREDIBLY EASY to create new, polished looking content.”

So, I am dropping a breadcrumb at Rustici Software. Their offering of SCORM Test Track and Simple Content API represent a curious openness. Both are freely available, and a test of these tools is now on my list of things to do.

Paddling away now; surfing back, once again, to the uncharted water of open source education…finally, the wave breaks:

Sakai is an online Collaboration and Learning Environment. Many users of Sakai deploy it to support teaching and learning, ad hoc group collaboration, support for portfolios and research collaboration.

Sakai is a free and open source product that is built and maintained by the Sakai community. Sakai’s development model is called Community Source because many of the developers creating Sakai are drawn from the ‘community’ of organizations that have adopted and are using Sakai.

Surfs up, I’m going in.

Cheers.

The recent surge in Internet development is flooding educational blogs. By targeting open source technology in these posts, maybe some focus can be maintained. So much is happening in educational technology.

Two projects that have kept me occupied for days: Sakai and Curriki. More about Sakai, perhaps, in another post. At Curriki, the mission is…

“… [to educate] by building a world class learning environment that is community developed and supported, and publishing it for free on the Web, Curriki works to ensure that anyone, from anywhere can participate.”

Robert Stephenson explains that

“Curriki is now looking for curriculum. A number of projects are underway to create a nucleus of learning materials, such as one with the Africa-based Shuttleworth Foundation (home of the Ubuntu Linux distro) to create and distribute open source textbooks for math, physics and chemistry.”

User generated educational content. Course building tools, forums and a wiki. There is potential there for creating a network of inspired educators and a respectable resource for educators looking to tap what is available. I will soon be submitting my Sessions, once the site’s tools go live.

But here is the best ed tech change: I have a new computer. New to me, at least. Not quite whiz-bang, but the fastest box I’ve ever worked with. My favorite feature: a 19″ wide screen LCD monitor. If you happen to live in the Valley of the Sun, the only thing better than the deal on this computer has been the service they’ve bundled. Thank you, Michael.